by Marta Szemik
My head lifted forward again, and I closed my eyes to the dimming and brightening flashes behind my eyelids. The left side of my head throbbed, from my eye to the back of my head. A headache? Impossible. The stabbing pulse cut like a razor. I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut, hoping it’d stop, but hope was all I had.
An odd smell of peppermint and garlic entered my nostrils. I didn’t recognize the strong scent that seemed to camouflage the owner’s identity. To the left I saw a tall man’s back. Beneath a long black hooded cloack, his shoulders were padded and squared like in the eighties. He was taller than the seekers who’d chased me in Pinedale. His upper body proportions suggested someone shorter so he might be wearing platform shoes. I hadn’t seen a seeker this tall yet. All seekers should have been dead or in hiding anyway. Was he a demon?
He threw a piece of paper into the garbage pail beside the table, then stood by the door, his arms folded into the cuffs of his cloak, the hood drawn low over his eyes and nose. A cracked lower lip tightened when he noticed me looking at him.
I slid my gaze to the table set up on the wall where he’d been working, meant to hold the usual utensils for an execution, and saw not only syringes and needles but an electric saw.
The man’s mouth curved. He couldn’t be a seeker. Seekers did not express their emotions.
For some reason, my heart didn’t begin pounding at the thought this could be a demon. In fact, the rhythm of my pulse was weaker. My heart couldn’t pound. Why am I so weak?
The door opened, as slow as all the other movements common to creatures from the underworld when they weren’t fighting. The warden wobbled inside like a penguin, turned and locked the door, then reached out and touched the teeth on the saw. The blade cut his finger. He wriggled in pleasure, put the finger in his mouth to suck the blood off, and focused on me.
“Who are you?” I mumbled, feeling the effect of the toxin inside me overpowering my blood flow. The corner of my lip cracked when I spoke.
“For a half-breed vampire, I thought you’d be more perceptive,” he rasped, then cleared his throat as if trying to find his voice.
“Who are you?” I repeated.
“Ah, Sarah.” His speech was no longer sluggish or slurred. His shoulders broadened, and the hump on his back disappeared as he straightened. “You’ve done me a great favor.” He examined the way my body was positioned before shifting the cross table I lay on half an inch to the left, licking his lips. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he murmured, his tongue sliding in and out like a lizards’.
“He looks at you as if you’re the next in line to go into that room,” I remembered my father saying.
“What favor?” My tongue touched my cracked lips. My throat was sore as well, making my voice scratchy.
The warden looked toward my feet. I lifted my head as far as I could and saw an expressionless vampire standing against the wall. The vampire’s skin was not as pale as most, but smears and streaks revealed that that was due to carelessly applied makeup, similar to what the warden had worn before. He bore an identical cloak to the warden’s, the hood also shadowing his eyes and nose. His lips were slightly parted, revealing an extended overbite; this vampire was waiting for his meal.
The back of my head hit the steel bed again as pain lanced into my chest.
He can’t hurt me. The vampire can’t hurt me, I thought, doubting that was true. Cuts on my skin would heal, but I was still half human. What would happen if he drained my blood without leaving a drop to keep my human heart alive?
Something stung at the crooks of my elbows, embedded in my skin. Needles?
I used my remaining strength to look down to my arm. Four-inch needles extended from my veins to clear tubing, emptying my blood into two half-full buckets, one on each side. Now the dryness in my throat and my near lack of a pulse made sense.
They’re going to drain me. I wiggled again, trying to work my way free, but the ropes holding me down singed me, frying my skin. How long will it take?
“Who are you?” I grated.
The pain shot through my head again. How much blood have I lost? I concentrated on the drops flowing into the bucket; their momentum slowed.
“Ah, Aseret hadn’t mentioned me, had he? Smart of my older brother.” He grinned. “Very smart.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes, we had different views of how the world should be. Though he promised to spare a few vampires and humans, having you all to myself now is much better. You took care of the underworld; I will take care of this one.” He tested the end of a tooth on the saw again. When it cut his finger, the warden hopped from one foot to another. “You’ll make a good meal for the wolves.”
“My family will find me,” I said.
“Perhaps. In pieces.” His gaze slid to the mirrored window, then back to me.
My spine froze. Was he planning to spread the word of a dead half-breed vampire as a warning? I panicked, but the beating of my heart remained sluggish, dying. I closed my eyes. “You will not get away with this,” I said, my voice faint.
“I think I already have. Your family is busy. They cannot help you.Your husband is dead, I hear. Too bad the lava bestows quick death. So unlike what you’ll face.” He looked at the saw again and laughed freely. The bellow reminded me of Aseret. Even his speech, now that it was not disguised, was slower, with pauses between words, though the tone was much more confident.
The warden didn’t know William was saved after he fell into the crevice.
Eric, help me. My head throbbed again. The room spun. What had the warden given me?
“The connection you have to the twins is more than that of motherhood,” he continued. “Your connection is magical; after all, they were conceived because of magic. You don’t even know the strength of your own blood.”
I had a different theory about how my children were conceived, but I wasn’t abot to share it with him.
“You hold power over the casters. When you die, they will be weakened. In fact, it may be just enough to push them over the edge so they’ll join me. I’ll recreate the underworld on Earth, the way it should have been, the way my brother never agreed to. The keepers themselves will dance in the palm of my hand.”
“They will kill you. I’ll make sure of it. If not from this world, then from the next.”
“I let you take care of my business; I couldn’t have Aseret stand in the way. See, whereas my brother thought humans and vampires should die, I disagreed. Why waste such a good resource? Slavery will be redefined when they all serve me. I recognized your strength the minute you shoved me against the wall.” He focused on the viewing room again. “I couldn’t compete with the power of your essence. So why bother?” He shrugged. “Let the strength come to me. And you have. Now, you die, the twins die, and I collect all your essence, including the one the keepers are channeling to the twins.”
“You’re more delusional than your brother,” I whispered. All strength had disappeared from my voice. Just moving my lips had become difficult. My breathing was shallow. The room began to haze over.
Eric, where are you? The pain in my head flew from my left eye to the back of my skull again. My eye twitched.
“No one can hear you. You didn’t think I’d leave such an important detail overlooked, did you?” he mocked as if he knew my thoughts.
I focused on his drooping face, which looked less wrinkled than before. He wasn’t lying. I was on my own.
“See, my brother’s calculations may have helped him to build a following before the prophecy, but he didn’t consider failure. I have. And where he failed, I’ll gain.”
“He never mentioned you.”
“Of course he didn’t. I let him think he used me to get to you. I knew a prophecy to destroy him couldn’t be stopped. After all, it was a prophecy.”
“You’re forgetting the prophecy was to stop the extinction.”
“And you have. Like I said, I have no reason to waste the essence of billions of humans and who knows how many
vampires.” His laugh was less annoying than Aseret’s. “Now, don’t you think you’ve wasted enough strength? Save it for me.” He lowered his head closer to my face, and I saw his sharpened teeth, below a flat nose which, unlike Aseret’s, didn’t twitch. His breath reminded me of the grossest dumps I’d scouted for rats before I knew who I was, back in Pinedale.
“You searched for me,” I said, remembering seeing the warden in Pinedale.
“And with Aseret’s help, I found you; I made you seek me out.”
My arms felt limp, and I imagined that the vampire against the wall was William. Oh, how much I missed William! I fixed my gaze on his face. Each time I blinked, the contours of his jaw intensified. The vampire lowered the hood off his head. The turquoise eyes struck me. His cheeks and forehead morphed, readjusting other features that grew more identical to my husband’s every second.
“William. You’re here,” I whispered, or I thought I had, because the voice that escaped me was barely composed of a breath. My eyes closed. My concentration flew to my right hand which I thought I lifted toward him. “Help me. Please.” I opened my eyes, but my hand was still tied to the table.
The vampire against the wall had his hood lowered over his eyes, down to the tip of his nose.
It took all the strength I had in me to turn my head the other way, to not see this monster, to try to rationalize that it was a hallucination.
The warden backed toward the door, nodding to his demon and vampire.
I took another shallow breath. Was this the end? I shouldn’t have discouraged William from coming. I should have listened to him. But we were so sure it was safe, that no one would hurt me.
Drop after drop, the buckets filled. The vampire waited, I didn’t know what for, but he seemed indifferent. I wasn’t sure if I’d lose consciousness before I’d die, nor how long it would take before my heart beat for the last time. Would anyone hear it?
The sound of a hundred hooks sliding along a rail in the distance reached my ears as I began to drift off. It reminded me of someone scratching their fingernails on an old chalkboard. My head fell to the right as I tried to locate the source of the sound.
I didn’t want the warden to be the last person I’d see, and he wouldn’t be. As I looked at the two-way mirror, I realized my last memory would be much worse than seeing the warden.
The viewing room curtain was open. Any hope I had vanished. Seated in two rows were my family and friends, all staring at my body like a bunch of drugged zombies. Eric sat at one end, my children beside him, then Xela, the siblings, Mrs. G, my father, and William’s parents. Their faces showed no fear, no pain, no emotion. They were bound hand and foot with magic ropes, their hands behind their backs, their legs to a metal bench that had replaced the chairs I remembered.
This isn’t happening! I shut my eyes, trying to shed a tear as a human should, but my body was nearly drained and no drop could escape.
I didn’t want to give up, but how couldn’t I? This was even worse than any nightmare I could have had. How I wished it was only a nightmare! It wasn’t like me to lose faith, but I had no choice or control over my physical body and its response to the loss of blood. Lifting my arm was impossible, as was swinging my head to the other side; I was forced to look at my family.
My eyelids drooped lower and finally closed. My last thoughts were directed to my husband and children. I love you. Perhaps someday, those words would reach them. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I knew I’d see them soon, in the hereafter.
The world went black beyond my eyelids, then lightened.
My soul detached from my body. The rip away from my flesh was quick, feeling like a continuous papercut across all my limbs. Confused, I hovered above my corpse not wanting to float any farther. I’d stay near my body until someone dragged me to the hereafter. Would I join my mother? What about my aunt? When I thought about the hereafter, I wanted nothing more than to live longer. My wish was to stay here, in the flesh. Just when I’d finally gotten my life figured out and accepted who I was, I’d lost it again.
I had looked forward to spending time with the twins at the emerald lake when they visited. I’d zip through the canopy, William holding me from behind when we went to collect fresh orchid blossoms. I’d linger in the sun as it warmed me while I pulled fresh weeds out of my new garden. These were dreams now impossible to fulfill. I was a ghost. And soon, once my body was cut and mangled, there’d be no way to return. He’d feed the pieces to the wolves.
The vampire at my feet strode to the table and fiddled with some switches. The other demon blocked the doorway when the warden stepped closer to see.
I didn’t want to die.
The electric saw started up.
I wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t. I grabbed my legs and pulled myself along the corpse until my soul was sucked back into its body. I closed my eyes, bracing for the sawed flesh and cracked bones.
Chapter 17
A face hovered below mine and I wanted to scream but couldn’t. The hollow eyes were darker than black with depth that reached into the pit of hell. The unibrow was gone, along with all the other features I remembered. Had he walked down the street, I would have not recognized the contorted face. The angles of its cheekbones shifted with every expression. The face of a murderer, thief, rapist and a con man: each time the warden grinned, he resembled one of the inmates I’d seen when I passed the cells in the prison. Somewhere in between the shifts, the face of a demon lurked. It was unlike any I’d seen, close to what I’d imagined Lucifer himself to be.
Shivers run through my body. A cold chill climbed from the bottom of my spine.
“This is not the end,” the warden slurred. He sucked back on the saliva that hung out of his mouth. He bellowed a ghostly laugh and focused on a body that lay face down on the floor. The legs bent and black cloak rose up, revealing platform shoes.
One of the two vampire guards.
That’s when I noticed the empty metal bed and me hanging over someone’s shoulder. The grey linoleum floor turned crimson with splattered blood. Lightheaded, I knew I was on the brink of death. If I’d only close my eyes, my soul would find a way out of this body. The sound of a hacking chainsaw behind me rung in my eardrums. My limbs bopped up and down in the motion of calculated swings. The shaking of my captor’s shoulders vibrated mine, and I didn’t want to turn to see what he was doing. I smelled burnt flesh and dead blood.
I tried to pick up my head again but couldn’t. It would take too much strength so my gaze remained on the lower part of the room. The warden’s ghost flew toward the corpse lying on the floor. I saw his smirk, and just before he reached for the new host, I closed my eyes, choosing to leave my body. When the limpness returned, my ghost hovered over the table where I’d been tied a few moments ago.
One of the two guards held my loose body over his shoulder while cutting the warden to pieces. The vampire’s head was still covered with the hood, his arms and cloak drenched in blood.
His guards turned on him. The thought elated me for a moment, but this only meant we faced a new war against the vampires. How could I find the strength to fight my own kind?
Below, the warden began to enter the lifeless body on the floor but bounced back. Confusion swept his face as he examined the corpse and pushed toward it again.
“No, you don’t.” I rushed at his ghost with as much speed as I could. My hands found his neck, and I pushed him off the body, through the wall, then the floor. My feet pressed harder against the floor, taking us below ground. New energy circled me. I smelled honey and lemon as yellowish mist enveloped me, and I wasn’t sure whether I smelled it or my body back on earth did. As a ghost, I felt oddly connected to the realm above.
As I tightened my grip, we passed earth, rocks, and an underground river before falling into a hall in the underworld. The landing broke my hold on the warlock, but we ended up exactly where I wanted us to. I backed toward the wall, letting my ghost disappear into it.
The warden leap
ed at me, but I moved out of the way and followed him into the room behind me that he fell into. Before he gathered himself, I shot up to the rooted ceiling and pulled out Miranda’s book of spells on the top of the table. The pages flipped by themselves, opening to a spell.
The warden’s ghost hovered back and forth in front of me, and I recognized confusion on his face. His gaze skimmed from me, to the book, then back to me again.
“This is a witch’s lair.” He circled around me, scanning the room, but I ignored him, knowing he’d figure out a way to recompose his thoughts. I couldn’t hesitate. The fireplace roared with fury, welcoming me back.
The letters on the opened page in the spell book glowed blue, and I read them.
The warlock launched at me again but was stopped before he reached me. His spirit faded from translucent to barely visible. I connected to my inner witch ancestors, continuing down the page. A gust picked up the dust in the room, spinning five tornadoes around the warlock. Each time he tried to grab me, his ghost vibrated until the magic spell tied his ghost to the ground.
“Silly, Sarah. This isn’t over. It has just begun. I will find a way to get your essence. After all, you’re all connected to the keepers,” he threatened.
The page of the book flipped, and I read the next glowing paragraph. Light flew out of my mouth toward the ceiling of the lair. It collected into an oval above the warden’s head and opened a portal.
As I finished the spell, the five funnels around the warden merged into one, spinning him upward, until he was sucked into the warp.
The dust settled. I lowered my shoulders.
The book shut, and I exhaled an unnecessary breath, making a mental note to remember to come back and get the book for Mrs. G.
In the far distance, I heard familiar voices reciting the same words over and over again. I hid the magic book back up in the roots. The chant became louder and louder, and I felt my ghost being pulled back up to earth. Giving into the hymn, I let my spirit follow the witches’ mantra, their repeated words beckoning me back to the prison. My ghost slammed into my slouched body, cradled in someone’s arms, and everything went black.
