Head throbbing, she squinted to bring a bare light bulb into focus. It hung on a chain like a harbinger in the gloom. Dread curdled her stomach as the illumination flickered.
On. Off. On. Off.
She prayed for it to come back on at every twitch of the phosphorus, calling out to any god she ever heard of—save the light! When the bulb went out, she knew that the pain would begin at the creaking of the switch. Pain and sanity, reality and the Dreamland. The line blurred in the darkness.
Doctor B was in session.
She couldn’t even scream with the wooden bar lodged in her teeth secured to her head. Cold seeped into her from the metal surgical table. The straps on her wrists and ankles dug into her skin. When the shocks hit her, electricity exploded behind her eyelids, her limbs flailed on their own.
Time, matter, auras, it all seemed to drift. In the darkness, her spirit gaze touched on glowing sigils and orbs. The energy traces looked like deep-sea creatures with dazzling lights to lure little fish into a waiting gullet.
Nevaeh had teleported into the room to yell at Maxwell to stop the treatments. Did it happen? Red almost had a shred of hope that some compassion returned to the actress. It was only concern for her future body. Both of her tormenters blinked out of the room.
It didn’t matter if they weren’t there. Even without his hand on the switch, the electric shocks still rolled through Red’s body from the cloth-wrapped electrodes placed on her temples.
If wishes were horses, Red would have ridden out of this psycho’s den. The Bell Witch herself had taught her that intention ruled Dreamland. If only she’d had more time to learn. Her knowledge didn’t beat Maxwell’s experience. Or his zeal. The winter solstice had given her phantom enemies a boost.
Red had given up wondering how she could be in such pain so far removed from the real world. The protection spell wouldn’t last much longer yet she still pushed limping magic along the lingering connection to her body.
An unseen, unfelt wind blew the bulb back. The light grew stronger. Glowing green and red ether danced on the wall like the Dreamland’s answer to Christmas lights.
Her eyes watered even as she closed them. Maxwell tormented her with his device, but this presence felt different.
A drawling voice rambled to her ears like a tumbleweed on the plains. “Now, this is a sight for undead eyes, isn’t it, Strawberry?”
A shiver ran down her spine. This specter could only have come from her memories. What was this new mind game? Or was the Dreamland bucking Maxwell’s script again? This was the longest night of the year when the veil between worlds was thinnest after all.
A black cowboy hat shadowed the face, but she knew the sunbeaten tan death couldn’t fade—the former King of the Prairie Dead. Kurt tipped his hat. His lips curled over his fangs. He twirled a long-handled wooden spoon in his fingers. A distant song played in the background. Red killed him to this song. “You got me good, Strawberry. That was a neat trick you and my Sancha cooked up. Nearly ruined Hank Williams Jr. for me.”
“You’re dead!” Her words came out jumbled around the gag. The short summer night in Oklahoma when she had killed a vampire king seemed so far away.
“And you’re about there. Makes us almost even.” Kurt held up the utensil, examining it with a deprecating huff. “In all my years, I never thought a wooden spoon would do me in. I reckon now that my rattlesnake of a queen set me up for the fall. I can’t rightly blame you, being a habitual pawn and all.”
Red flipped him off under the bonds.
Humming, Kurt two-stepped to the electric shock machine, an antique boxy contraption covered with dials on the front and a wooden-handled switch on top. “Let’s light you up like the Fourth of July, little girl!”
The ceiling bulb went black. Electricity flooded her system. A blue-white current rocketed behind her eyelids. She convulsed, pinned by the straps. The bulb shuddered to life.
“Oh, Little Amazon, look at what the warlock has done to you.” Michel de Grammont stared down at her with one brown eye. A cross-shaped scar peeked out from his black eyepatch. Black hair spilled over a missing ear to his shoulders. The exiled Prince of Paris looked just as he did in the seconds before Cora decapitated him to the sound of cheers. He smoothed her hair, murmuring soothing French. “I told you that I could help you destroy him. You only had to give me my Penelope back. A love for a life.”
Sweating, Red shook her head, trying to dispel the hallucination. She liked him better when he was dust blowing in the Santa Ana winds.
“You still don’t understand the purity of my cause.” The vampire tsked, walking over to the switch with the air of a contrite hangman. “Even without my soul, I am distressed to see you so. I may have betrayed my supreme master, but I would have held to my word to you. I held to my word to Iron Jack, after all. The warlock is an enemy of the world. And I had grown quite attached to the world before you slammed a gardening hoe into my skull. Imagine the wasted time. You could have vanquished him by now.”
“Then help me!” She slumped her head to the side, nauseous from the movement.
“I have gotten what I wanted, but the Little Amazon will not get what she wants. I am with Penelope. We are beyond the last apocalypse. That is more consolation than a monster like me deserves,” Michel said. A tear dripped from his eye. “I would have shown you who you are.”
The shocks began again, and her scream echoed in her ears long after it ended. Red didn’t know if it was a trick of Maxwell’s or her own mind. Conscious thought felt fuzzy around the edges like a vignette of darkness around a photo. She made Basil show Nevaeh a horror reel. Somewhere, the starlet was laughing at the reversal of fortune. Probably over Red’s body, taking measurements while she planned a shopping spree.
Christmas ghosts came in threes and Red didn’t need to see the last one. The first two sucked. At least Scrooge got to go to a party and see people he cared about. She only saw a montage of monsters that she rightly slain. Would the Bandage Man of Cannon Beach come to taunt her as the ghost of Christmas future next?
As if her thoughts awakened a watchful leviathan in the depths, the floor quaked and the ceiling bulb brightened and shattered. Glass shards scattered.
Red braced herself for the cuts. Whisper softness landed on her cheek instead of jagged glass. Ruby red petals rained down.
Rose-colored flames ringed the table. Reflected light tangoed on the brick wall. A presence rose from a crouch, materializing as it stood. Darkness swirled around the figure, leaving no facial feature visible, only the outline of a tall man in a black suit with a dark pomegranate colored cape. The shadow of horns rose behind him.
She didn’t need to see his face to know him from the warlock’s vision of a hellish army.
“Beloved.” The masculine voice echoed in the chamber; somber compassion threaded the word. A cold caress ran down her cheek. “I hear your calls even beyond this veil.”
“No.” She moved her head from the invisible touch. He was a hallucination. It all had to be. The shock treatments finally cracked her.
“How confused you are.” The horned stranger stood beyond the flames, yet his voice whispered close as if he were curled up with her on the surgical table. She couldn’t tell if he was speaking out loud or in her mind. “Our enemies seek to drive you mad. They want to keep us apart. They don’t understand that you have a greater purpose.”
“I’m not Juniper. I don’t want her purpose,” Red cried, knowing somehow that even muffled on her gag he would understand. She pushed the intention out with her soul that she would never give in. Even if he could read her thoughts, even if he had bred her doppelgänger to be some apocalypse queen, even if she was strapped to this table for eternity.
“Do not mistake their illusions. You can’t be contained by tricks, beloved. This is not the prison you deserve.” Flames surged, yet the shadows remained around the horned figure. “You will stand once you choose it. Your destiny is yours to command. Freedom is my gift to you a
s it was to the first of your line.”
“I don’t want it!” She denied, muffled by the gag.
“They tell lies in their good books, they tell lies with their holy visions, but you will know the truth. The world will know the truth.” The last word boomed as the figure disappeared, and the echo ricocheted around the chamber.
Red waited for the flip of the switch and the endless zap of electricity. It never came, yet she shook anyway.
“Well, well, well, what mischief have you gotten yourself into?” Maxwell’s Cheshire smirk appeared in the gloom, elongating grotesquely then snapping back to normal. The rest of his body slowly formed. He snapped and the light bulb returned. He snapped again and the wood gag disappeared.
“Just enjoying your torments while you were out.” She glared, swallowing back the acrid taste of fear. Her heart thumped against the metal table. “Really dug deep with those. The country music interlude was a nice touch.”
“Er…” Silver tongue struck dumb, he frowned. His dark eyes glanced around the room before scrutinizing her. “I suppose you are ahead of schedule for the train to madness. I should make haste then.”
Was that doubt in his gaze or another hallucination that her fried brain had cooked up? Red tried to sneer, but the Alice in Wonderful reference only came out an incoherent mumble as vertigo came over her. “What, late for tea, Mister White Rabbit?”
“No need to be out of sorts. You’ll be beyond this soon enough.” He nodded to the switch. “Think about what I am curing you of.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks for the treatment, Doctor B.”
“You should be thanking me, yes. I found you a foot down the same path that damned Juniper.” Maxwell lifted his hand to gesture to the side, iridescent mist spreading in the wake. New figments appeared. These were just as familiar as the others, yet she had never seen them quite like this—the fanged four in their prime.
It was Quinn Byrnes with a flowing mane of blond hair spilling over his refined Victorian suit and demonic anticipation in his eyes. He stood with his hands on his lapels. Nothing beyond his face matched her gentle boss in the present.
Delilah Byrnes lifted opera glasses from her eyes. Golden curls piled on her head contrasted with the crimson of her dress. Now, she might have been a hard bitch running the hottest modeling agency in LA, but at her cattiest, she still didn’t compare to the antique ice queen before Red.
Cherubic in lilac, Selene tipped a small derby hat. Fangs peeked out from her ruby-tinted mouth. Hunger curled her lip up and sharpened the dazed, far-seeing look in her eyes.
Lucas grinned and rested his thumbs under his suspenders. His tie hung loose around his neck. No warmth glinted from his gray eyes. “Kitten, have you been bad?”
Maxwell clapped his hands and the four disappeared. “They found you again. Killing you would have been a mercy compared to life with them. Let alone a repeat of it. Tell me you’re grateful.”
“Just get this over with,” Red said. “You have what you want.”
The gag reappeared in her mouth.
“I’ll get that stubbornness out of you.” Maxwell gritted his teeth. He gripped the switch and tugged it down.
Electricity raged between her temples. Red screamed. An eternity of pain started on the longest night of the year.
23
December 23rd, 2:22AM, Dreamland, The Asylum
“Red.”
“Go away,” she murmured, twisting against straps holding her to the surgical table. Vertigo spun her equilibrium even in the Dreamland.
“Red.”
“I don’t want to see anymore.” Her voice was garbled even without a wooden stick between her teeth. She’d had enough of past sins and future omens. Hallucinated sparks and orbs dazzled her vision.
“Red!” The voice finally broke through the buzz in her ears. It wasn’t a monster. Just persistent.
“Basil?”
“Yes. I don’t have much time. I don’t think the medium can keep boosting the signal for long. Terry finally pushed through the nosebleed.” He sighed to announce his heroic tolerance. Her ears heard him, but she couldn’t see him. His disembodied voice sounded far away as if on a walkie talkie nearly out of range.
“Save yourself. You know what Maxwell is going to do.” Her head flopped to the side as she tried to listen in harder.
“That’s why I’m trying to save you from whatever self-sacrifice he’s convinced you to make.”
“It’s already too late.”
“Dammit, Red. I know.” His voice faded as a louder argument drowned him out.
She squinted against the light. Basil hadn’t appeared like the ghost of Christmas past. Only Maxwell and Nevaeh squared off in the dark chamber by the brutally utilitarian machine that powered the electric shock switch. They didn’t seem to hear him. Had she imagined his voice? In the asylum, anything was possible.
“For fuck’s sake, Maxwell, you’re barbecuing my new body! It’s been too long. We talked about this!” Nevaeh blocked the switch with her body. “You say you’re going to bring me back, but I’m up there watching smoke come out of her ears!”
“This is a delicate process. I am nearly there.” Cajoling tone disappearing, he grabbed her arm. “So shut your gob and be patient.”
Nevaeh jerked away. “I’m sick of being patient. I’ve done everything you asked, given everything you asked. I even let that shaman live after he ruined my career. When am I getting what you promised?”
“I raised you from being an annoying wraith destined to haunt show folk and vaudevillians. That should be worth undying gratitude. I am surrounded by ungrateful women.”
“Don’t act like I am my father slurring for a drink and some respect. You wouldn’t have gotten a whack at this bitch without me.” She matched his haughty pose, the green ruffles on her dress stiffening like the scruff of an angry cat. “I opened the door to Red. You wouldn’t have found her. Hell, you’d wouldn’t be able to see her if I weren’t homing in.”
“She can hear you!”
Red stayed silent, too tired for one of her usual jokes. Her last shred of sanity told her to play possum.
“She’s damn near dead.” Nevaeh huffed. “She was hallucinating when you came back, mumbling crazy talk. She’s probably halfway to the beyond and dragging that meat dress with her. I have plans, Maxwell!”
He leaned against a wall near his grotesque medical equipment, switch to the electric shock treatments in hand’s reach. “Your banal plans include gown shopping and trotting the stage again. Hardly of any importance.”
“They also include a boob job and hair bleach. I won’t be able to do any of that if she’s dead.” Nevaeh tossed her hair over her shoulder. “And by the way, theater is for actresses over 40.”
“You are most tiresome right now.”
“And you need me.” Nevaeh leaned forward; hands planted on her hips. “None of your creepshow visions are breaking Red. Just her body. Toss her into the afterlife already.”
That was a one-way ticket. Red gulped. The word afterlife ran in a loop in her aching head, shaking up the settled fog in her mind.
Basil psychically called out to her again. His voice soft compared to the agitated spirits. “Can you hear me?”
“Everyone’s yelling,” Red mumbled. “No one said that dying would be so noisy.”
Nevaeh sulked. “Look, she’s babbling again. I don’t want a body with brain damage.”
“Finesse isn’t your strong suit. Neither is planning. That is why you died. Leave the thinking to me.” Maxwell pulled her aside, and they passed through the brick wall.
Red turned her head to both sides to see where they had gone. The room tilted. It wasn’t an illusion or a trick. Just her equilibrium. Could spirits get vertigo? Her captors had left. Great. All that left her to deal with was her swiftly intensifying insanity. “I know you’re a hallucination.”
“Sweetie, I get that you’re in a tough place, but I’m about to go tough love on you if you don’t
focus.” Basil’s annoyance was clear through the tinny volume of the mystical connection. “The whole team is rallying to save their best girl. Don’t ruin Christmas like you did my Tahoe vacation.”
She laughed at the wry salty tone. “I’ll listen. That sounds like Basil.”
“So, you know you’re dying? Good, because I’m sick of yelling that to you. I keep forgetting my jaw is wired shut, so I yelled for real once or twice. I’m watching your body fade. I’m trying to send what I see.”
A foggy vision of the hospital room swirled above, blinking between opaque and transparent. Her body convulsed on the bed. A bandage hid her open eyes. Blood dripped from her nose. She looked through his eyes, sight projected up into the heavy gloom hovering on the ceiling.
Slouched over in a wheelchair, Vic held his head. “The seizures aren’t stopping. The Brotherhood is dragging their feet and my alchemist connection can’t get here with a potion for hours. My first apprentice... I thought I could keep her alive until she could take the Hunter’s Challenge at least.”
Quinn put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re fighting for her.”
“I can’t do anything for her.”
Basil’s disembodied voice rang out. “If I was one of those TV sports analyzers, I would be drawing a circle around the man tears that he isn’t letting fall.”
“All I have been is trouble for Vic lately,” she murmured, throat catching.
“Snap out of it! Mentoring you gave that man something to do besides get himself killed hunting werewolves. He doesn’t have working legs. Are you going to take his best friend, too?”
“Is he really breaking down?”
“What do you think it’s like here? I’m holding hands with a medium while my jaw is wired shut as two vampires loom around me. You know—the two who were stabbing each other. One doesn’t have a soul, remember? Who knows what he would do to us if you died!”
Lucas sat on the bed holding her arms, trying to temper the convulsions enough for the medium to keep hold of a hand. The iron dagger lay by his side. Kristoff stood at the headboard; hands clasped behind his back as if he were restraining himself. Neither looked away from her face.
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 21
