by A. L. Knorr
“She’s awake, her pulse is strong and regular. I guess that was the best we could get. She just needs some time to recover, gain back what she lost.”
His brow creased as we began to walk again, watching Lachlan’s form with Evie’s feet sticking out over his arm, her head just a mound of hair over his shoulder.
“I thought she’d go back to normal, you know. Be able to walk on her own.” He gestured to the pair ahead of us. “Not this.”
“Whatever was holding her was powerful, Jasher. So strong even my own magic wasn’t able to help her without the potion Fyfa gave us. I think we’re lucky that she didn’t die.”
Jasher nodded but still looked unhappy.
My own thoughts crowded in on me. I had also expected Evelyn to be returned to her former glory, so to speak. After all, it was a potion from a fae queen that we had given her, not over-the-counter drugs. Why hadn’t it done more? I’d been hoping to be able to take Evelyn to her home, present her to her parents as whole and healthy once more. But though she was conscious now, she looked like a famine victim. She’d have to go back to the hospital.
I jumped when Jasher’s fingers clamped over my forearm. “What’s that?”
He didn’t have to point. The edges of the field were now completely invisible, swallowed up in a gray fog so thick it was opaque. The fog rolled toward us, churning and swirling and swallowing up terrain like a hungry monster as it came. Jasher and I called to Lachlan, sprinting to catch up with him. He’d seen the fog too and stood there with Evelyn in his arms, gaping at the fog as he turned slowly.
“What is that?” His face was a pale circle with dark holes for eyes. The light was changing. The fog was not only closing in on us on all sides, but appeared to be steaming its way over top of us as well, slowly shutting out the stars.
“We need to get back to the car, now!” I put my hands against Lachlan’s lower back and urged him forward.
He took a few steps. “I can’t even see the car anymore.”
The fog swept overhead, blocking out the stars and leaving us with only a few feet of visibility on any side. Lachlan’s toe caught on a tussock and he nearly stumbled. Jasher caught him by the elbow.
Don’t speak to it, don’t tell it your name, Fyfa had warned. I reminded Lachlan and Jasher about the fae’s warning and they nodded, looking frightened.
We were in a bubble now, the thick mist swirling and circling, billowing around us as if it was alive. Maybe it was.
“Keep going,” I urged. “Even slowly. If we can make it to the car…”
“Except I’m not even sure which direction the car is parked in anymore.” Lachlan spun slowly, squinting into the gray cloud.
“It’s this way.” Jasher took my hand and put his other hand under Lachlan’s elbow, leading us in roughly the direction we’d been headed before we’d lost all visibility.
“I think a little more to the right,” Lachlan replied, correcting the trajectory.
We took slow steps, moving together and warning one another about the little hazards coming out of the gloom––tree trunks and rotten logs half swallowed by gorse and grass.
“Smells like mothballs, or old moldy clothing,” Jasher muttered as we plodded far too slowly for my comfort.
“Yeah, musty.” Lachlan agreed.
“Like a grave.” The words were so quiet the hair on the back of my neck stiffened. It was Evelyn who’d spoken. I let out a pent-up breath and felt my shoulders drop. You’d know, I thought.
“Who dares interrupt my awakening?”
The words stopped us in our tracks. It was a cold, slithery voice. It felt like the words slid past my skin and left a trail of slime.
“Evelyn, was that you?” I felt Jasher’s hand tighten on my own.
“Don’t answer.” My warning came out sharp. “Keep going. Just ignore it.”
“You can’t ignore me.” This time the words were an amused hiss. “Tell me…who are you?” Slow. Breathy. Seductive…and oh so cold.
I put a hand on Lachlan’s back and encouraged him to go forward. He took a few steps and almost tripped again.
The voice snickered, wrapping itself around us and between us. The fog swirled faster when the voice spoke, and now it had a point of origin––behind us, and close.
Lachlan and Jasher both began to turn around. I tried to urge them onward, but when I saw their gazes both fixed on something behind us, I couldn’t help but look.
A tunnel had begun to form in the fog. Grass and gorse and mulch became visible in a line leading away from us. The walls of the tunnel churned and puffed, boiling as if angry. The smell of death grew stronger. Jasher put a hand over his nose and mouth.
“Something is moving.” Lachlan’s voice was low and querulous. “Down there at the end.”
“I see it.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the end of the tunnel. In the dim light, a flickering shape with too many limbs appeared and disappeared in the swirling mist. Even before the fog pulled back, I knew it was the ithe. How did it have more limbs? I squinted, and saw that it didn’t have more limbs…it was carrying something. Someone.
None of us had words for what we were seeing. The eldritch thing stepped from the fog carrying an emaciated woman in a fine dress the color of red wine. It stood there, the top of its head flickering like a black candle flame, its hands flickering from where they cradled the woman. They were the mirror image of Lachlan and Evie, only like something out of a nightmare.
“Daracha.” Evelyn whispered the name, hoarsely.
I tore my eyes from the scene at the end of the tunnel. Evelyn’s body had grown tense, her thin hand knotted in Lachlan’s sweater, her pale face pinched and her eyes on the thing now standing less than fifty feet from us.
“Yes.” The woman in the flickering thing’s arms smiled, and it was like the grin of death’s head. A skull shrink-wrapped with skin, and framed with startlingly long and lustrous hair. Her eyes were bright. She had glassy fingernails. Her skin seemed to thicken as we stared, smoothing over and plumping out. Her gown looked new and of a rich fabric.
Daracha patted the eldritch thing on its shoulder and it bent and set her on her feet. She straightened slowly, like an old person getting up from sitting for too long. She lifted her head and gazed at us. I could see the mummy’s face in the face of the woman now standing before us.
Betrayal turned my spit to powder and my own foolish assumptions about the body in the wall turned my bones to lead.
Daracha had come back to life, and she’d used Evelyn to do it.
Chapter 25
Daracha took a few steps toward us. The ithe followed closely behind her.
“Stay back,” I shouted, stepping forward to come between my friends and Daracha, my heart picking up speed.
“Who dared to close my wellspring?” Daracha said. “Name yourself!”
“Don’t speak to her,” I instructed quietly. Glancing back at them, my stomach gave a lurch at Lachlan’s face. He was filmed with sweat and cords on his neck were standing out. He was getting tired; he’d carried Evie a lot tonight and was now just holding her, fear making his face pale and his eyes wide.
“What do we do?” I felt Jasher’s hand on my lower back as he whispered. “She’s advancing.”
“I can’t run,” Lachlan said under his breath. His arms were trembling.
“Let me take her.” Jasher stepped close to Lachlan and with a quick backward glance, he took Evelyn in his arms. Her eyes were just slits and her head lolled as though it was a little too heavy for her. Her lips were chapped. “Are you okay?” he asked Evie.
Her tongue darted out in an attempt to moisten her lips. “So thirsty.”
A muttering from the end of the tunnel brought our attention back to Daracha, who’d come only a few feet toward us, I saw with some relief. She seemed to be speaking to the ithe in a foreign tongue.
Jasher didn’t wait. He stepped into the fog as though he could see where he was going, heading roughly in the direc
tion of the road. Lachlan grasped my hand and we watched Daracha as she came over the landscape. She walked like a woman of ninety, which––considering that she had been mummified for centuries––was terrifying. The ithe and she seemed to be in communion as she struggled to make her way forward.
“Come on.” Lachlan squeezed my hand and tugged me backward. “We can move a lot faster than that, even if we can’t see where we’re going. At this rate, we’ll reach the car before she’s even halfway.”
We faced forward and took a few steps. Jasher and Evelyn were lost from view, somewhere ahead of us and invisible.
“Where are you?” I called softly.
“Here.” Jasher sounded a winded. “Follow my voice.”
A glance over my shoulder sent a jolt of cold fear through me. Daracha and her pet were invisible too; the fog had closed in behind us. There was no longer any tunnel.
I put a hand on Lachlan’s arm. “She’s gone.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his mouth pressed into an unhappy line. Sweat trickled down the side of his face in spite of the fact that he’d released his burden, in spite of the fact that it was a cold night. “That’s even worse than seeing them.”
I agreed. “Hello?”
“This way,” Jasher replied from the darkness.
Lachlan and I corrected to continue to follow the sound of Jasher, trusting he knew where to go. We continued in this way, following Jasher’s voice, which seemed farther and farther away from us with every call. The time between calls grew longer, then…
“Hey,” I called.
No answer.
Lachlan stopped walking, his hand squeezed mine. “Listen.”
We stood there banked by fog on all sides, looking at one another, panting and straining our ears. There was nothing. Not a footstep, not the call of an owl, not anyone breathing except for ourselves.
I called to Jasher again; again there was no answer. My mind raced, tripped, got up and raced again. If I could control the wind like Petra, I could blow all this blasted fog away so we could see what was happening. I couldn’t control air, but maybe… maybe there was something else I could try.
I toed off my boots and ripped off my socks again, using Lachlan’s hand for balance. He just watched and held me up, like he was afraid to make noise in the silence which had become so complete.
Planting the soles of my feet firmly against the cold ground, I closed my eyes and sent feelers through the earth like tentacles. My awareness raced outward, winding through complex root systems and deposits until I found the massive underground structures of the trees bordering the open space.
Leaves began to rustle as though a strong wind had blown up, only there was no wind, not yet. The whisper of moving leaves increased and became a loud whoosh, which escalated to the creak of branches rubbing against one another. Then the cracks and pops of thicker limbs came as they hit against each other. The sound had risen to a near-deafening cacophony, like a storm at sea.
The fog began to swirl and blow, and slowly grew thin.
“It’s working.” Lachlan had to yell over the sound. His eyes were bright and hopeful.
For all the swinging and swishing the trees were doing, they moved the air but a little. They were far away, and were like a small fan in a large room filled with smoke. The light wind lifted my hair and ruffled the locks at Lachlan’s brow.
We saw the glittering eyes in the thinning fog at the same time, and we grabbed each other’s hands. Lachlan let out a curse as the fog shifted, revealing the scene that had been hiding in the mist.
I gasped in horror.
Jasher was on the ground, Evelyn’s body curled half over his stomach and half under his arm. Both of them were still. Standing over them was Daracha, and behind her towered the flickering thing.
She was taller now, straighter, and younger. Her face was filling out even as the mist diluted. Her hands, near skeleton hands only minutes ago, were now rounded out and strong. The hollows of her cheeks filled in as we stared.
“No!” I ran forward.
“He was just what I needed to be complete.” Daracha said, unmoving. “Thank you.”
Bare feet sliding on the wet grass, I sprinted to where they lay, so still, so pale. I fumbled in my pocket for the vial. Evelyn lay half conscious, cradled in Jasher’s arms. She actually didn’t look any worse, but Jasher…his skin was paler than I had ever seen it, his eyes closed. His lips were the color of chalk.
“You’re too late,” Daracha said softly.
Hands shaking, I unscrewed the cap and drained the rest of the liquid into Jasher’s mouth. Tossing the vial aside, I planted my feet, pressed my fingertips to his cheeks and drew all the earth’s energy I could manage, spilling it all into my friend.
The bones of his cheeks seemed too close to the surface, his skin too thin.
But his eyes drifted open and his heartbeat thickened. He took a breath. “Georjie?”
I felt Lachlan’s hands on my shoulders, his legs against my back.
I glared up at Daracha. “I’m not too late.”
But the words died in my throat.
Daracha was beautiful now. She was erect, her cheeks were rosy, her mouth a full rosebud. Her hair was long lustrous waves cascading over straight shoulders. A full, rounded bosom tapered into a tiny waist before flaring out into voluptuous hips. The sleeves of her gown were cut at three-quarter length, and her slender, pale arms ended in long-fingered, elegant hands—the kind of hands that any piano player would envy. She appeared to be no more than twenty-five.
Gooseflesh swept down my arms and across the back of my neck and I realized what she’d meant about being too late.
She was back. She was complete.
I put a hand on Lachlan’s arm without taking my eyes off Daracha. “Get them to the car.”
“What about you?” Lachlan bent to help Jasher rise, who was doing so under his own power, but he was slow, his movements weak.
“I’ll be fine.”
“We’re not going to leave you here,” he said.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I whispered. “Just get them out of here.”
I got to my feet and stepped over Jasher and Evelyn, putting myself between her and them. At my words, Daracha’s fine dark eyebrow arched and her long slender arms crossed over her chest. Daracha wasn’t fae; she didn’t have the sharp-tipped ears. All witch, then?
“What are you?” I asked as I heard my friends make their way back to the car. The night sky was now visible, the fog nearly gone. The ithe wouldn’t be far. If I could make Daracha talk for long enough, maybe my friends would get away.
“You know perfectly well what I am,” Daracha replied with a laugh. “I’m not any different than you.”
I couldn’t hide my shock. “You’re a Wise?”
Daracha’s smile dissolved as quickly as it had come and she gazed at me with her beautiful eyes wide.
“Of course,” she hissed slowly and her gaze turned hungry. “You’re a Wise.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides. She’d tricked me into giving away something about myself.
She uncrossed her arms. The movement put me on edge. “I can hardly believe my good fortune.”
I didn’t like the look on her face, the predatory ambition. She took a few steps toward me, heading to my left side. I took a few steps to the right. We circled one another like cats preparing to fight.
I didn’t know what to expect. Would she attack? What kind of magic did she have? Should I run? All too late, I realized this was what Fyfa had been warning me about.
My senses reached into the earth beneath, stretching out to the ground Daracha was standing on, tasting, searching for some knowledge of her. My tendrils of energy snapped back the moment they sensed her acrid being. Her energy was like an impenetrable wall, a block of concrete, a dense mass of something still and cold and unforgiving.
Daracha was something altogether different. She wasn’t like any of my elemental friends, w
hose power ebbed and flowed in tandem with the earth’s magnetic fields. This woman had an entirely different aura. She felt…wrong. She was a bottleneck, a place where energy stopped moving and died, where life withered. The power she had didn’t come from the earth.
“What is your name, beautiful one?” Daracha asked, her voice oily. “I mean you no harm.”
Distantly, I heard a car door shut and then another. The engine turned over and then idled. They were waiting for me.
With my pulse a steady throb in my ears, I turned to walk away, and almost ran straight into the ithe.
Gasping, I stepped back and stared up into its vacuous face. It was featureless, just a black hole. It looked like it wanted to suck me into itself, and once I disappeared inside, there would be no coming back. But it didn’t touch me. It just stood there, its head tilted. Its long arms and the black flames on the ends of its hands flickered at its sides. They seemed to lick toward me, tasting me. I took another step back. I faced Daracha and crossed my arms.
“Let me pass, Daracha Goithra.” Underneath my feet, unseen in the soil as it rolled beneath the surface, a tangle of twisted roots and threads of earth energy waited for my call. “You don’t want to do this.”
I didn’t know what the witch and her tall fiend were capable of, but they didn’t know what I was capable of either…I hoped.
Her lips parted. “You know my name. Let’s not be rude. Come now. Your name, dear.”
“My friends are waiting.” Though I turned away and began to go around the ithe, my attention was in the soil beneath us, gathering power.
A few steps over the wet grass and I thought she might actually let me go. Maybe she was afraid to test me. The witch had been dead a few centuries and had nearly sucked Evelyn dry in order to resurrect herself. I wasn’t eager to see what else she could do. I just wanted to get out of there.
A black flame appeared in the grass ahead of me. It shot upward and formed the body of Daracha’s minion, standing in my path.
I didn’t stop walking, didn’t alter my course. My hands and fingers curled, feeling the teeming power beneath my feet, flowing through my limbs. “Move.”
