21 Shades of Night, page 461
Alyse cackled and spun up higher, her face tilted toward the rain. I realized she was washing out the poison my knife had injected. She glanced back down at me, and before my eyes, the bloody wounds I’d carved into her face began to fuse and knit into new pink skin. “You think you can hurt me, silly girl? I heal as soon as you cut me. Can you produce magic that strong?”
She flew at me again and gouged supernaturally inflicted wounds in my scalp, this time with no fingernails. I bit down on my tongue to avoid giving her the satisfaction of my cries. The deep, painful wounds throbbed along with my every heartbeat. I tried to recall the healing spell from my book. Chanting what I could, my head gashes prickled in their effort to knit together. As I chanted, I flew out over the ocean, forcing Alyse to follow me.
The closer I was to my beloved sea, the more I could pull power from its tides. I felt a sweet infusion of buoyancy as I hovered over the breakers, and the pain in my scalp lessened.
“Murderous hag,” I spat, “you’ll never get the grimoire, not after you tried to kill me.”
“I’ll tear your limbs off,” she screeched and flew at me, her eyes afire with rage. We wrestled each other, rolling over and over in the sky, our fury and magic keeping us aloft as we tore out clumps of hair, twisted arms, and landed brutal punches. I pocketed her hair and pieces of her torn flesh. This was not how witches fought. Even I knew that.
But before I tapped into my truest powers, I had an irrepressible urge to release the pent-up rage and agony of years that I didn’t even know I was harboring. Why did she birth me only to abandon me? How could she hurt me so deeply and not even care? Did she have no heart, no compassion or love for her own flesh and blood? “Why? Why do you hate me so much?” I blurted.
“The sight of you makes my skin crawl,” she spat. “You have no right to share my power, my world, or the sea I swim in. I despise your every breath.”
So, there were no rational answers. She was a rabid lunatic. Who else would attempt to kill their only daughter?
“Where is it?” Alyse asked, clamping my neck in a vicious chokehold.
The pinch on my muscles was excruciating, but just as painful was the constant awareness that it was my mother doing this to me. A scream was trapped in my contorted throat. The moment she eased up, I slid from her grip and shot down under the water.
Where I was at home. For a second, my truest mother, the blissful saltwater, swaddled me.
Then mighty thunder seemed to reverberate up from the ocean depths, and Alyse’s dark form streaked toward me. I might have the grimoire now, but she had years of supernatural practice over me. She grabbed my feet and pulled me down. Held me in invisible chains. But I didn’t need to breathe. Had she forgotten?
We wrestled once again in a black explosion of bubbles. The virtual chains she had imprisoned me with rattled as if they were made of heavy iron. I couldn’t do this alone. I called out my first magical plea for the sea creatures to help me.
In panoramic majesty, a hundred or more fish sped my way, followed by larger, more intimidating creatures—whales, billowing eels, a lumbering, blue creature with a hammer-shaped head, a fish with fins like sails, dolphins, and sleek sharks. They repeatedly batted Alyse with their tails. Five or even twenty wouldn’t have made a dent. But there were thousands now, switching and smacking their tails in the dark currents. In a whirling swarm, it was clear they were diverting her focus. She belted out an angry chant and some of the fish withered and fell, in seesaw arcs to the ocean depths. This pained me. Yet the biggest, most fierce creatures persisted. In a supernatural burst of power, they gnawed on my chains. Amazingly, I heard the invisible chains crack and crunch in their massive jaws. Alyse cursed me and chanted ever faster, while I wriggled out of the broken chains and shot upward, frantically pumping my legs.
I heard the dull clanking of metal below as the chains hit rocks on the sea floor. My magic was so new I was like a kindergartener in my wonder. I howled out a spell for the fish to reconvene and strike Alyse with renewed vigor.
In archaic commands, she chanted back at them, which spun them into a disorganized dance. I tried to call the school of fish back to order, but they were already gone. Alyse’s magic was still too strong.
Up above, the sky released another Dante’s hell of thunder and lightning. It shot right through the sea currents and down. My thoughts went to Peter, I wasn’t sure why. I wondered how the Morro was faring in this dreadful storm.
Was Alyse causing this weather? Was her magic that potent? No, she was a witch of the sea, not of the sky.
“You’re wrong, stupid daughter,” she yelled through the depths. “I have mastery over the sky too. And your Peter is not safe, not by a long shot!” With that pronouncement, she released a combined bellow of rage and laughter. Barreling toward me at frightening speed, she raised her arms. With that action, my body spiraled through the water. It felt as if I’d forgotten how to swim and was hopelessly trapped in a breaker.
“I know your true weakness,” she cackled.
“You’ve no idea,” I shot back as I tried to stop myself from careening all the way to shore.
“I do. You’re so very transparent.” She used her traveling powers to instantly speed over. She leaned aggressively into my face as the pounding undercurrent snaked me around. “Your Peter,” she countered. “He’s your weakness. That silly card reader.”
“He’s no card reader,” I argued, anything to dissuade her. Finally, I steadied myself and dove out again, into deeper water. I wasn’t sure why it mattered, why I cared if she got it in her mind to destroy him. “He’s a fraud. He’s a con artist,” I argued. “He collected evidence on me, to destroy me. And you.” Maybe if I got Alyse on my side, I could run my own game on her. Sure, that was the ticket.
“You can’t fool me.” She launched forward in the tides and lunged at me, so close our noses and arms touched. The sting of her flesh on mine repulsed me. “You’re in love with him, Fiera,” she accused. Her gray eyes were electric eel lights, blinding me in their eerie brightness.
“You’re wrong. Forget Peter. This is between you and me.”
“Ha. That proves it.” Alyse declared. “I’ll kill him. Try to stop me. The only way you can is to give me that goddamn spell book.” Her eyes glinted as she stretched out her hand. “Give me that book. You’re no match for me.”
“Never!”
“Idiot. You’ve made a terrible choice, and now Peter Dune will suffer for it.” She poked a sharp fingernail in my rib. “Catch me, witch.” With that, she was gone.
* * *
I SHOT UP to the water’s surface. Covering my brow with my hand to protect from the battering rain, I gazed at the inky sky and sank deep in thought, deep in worry—for Peter.
I loved him. He betrayed me. Like Alyse, but not like Alyse.
She’d tried to murder me—twice now.
Peter was just doing his job. No, lousy excuse, start again, Fiera. I loved him. But it was no longer safe to feel anything for him because Peter had lied. Liars will lie again. He pegged me for a fool. Had he ever loved me? Who was the real Peter? I never knew.
The battering rain felt right. Punishing. I let it pound on me as I tread water. Our connection when we met, what about that? The way, at the touch of my hand, Peter swooned into a trance. What about that? The warmth in his dark gaze, the way he stroked my hair, my naked back, even my soul, was that just some clever act?
My truest intuition tells me no.
But facts are facts. He worked for Dickerson, whose mission was to round up and wipe out mediums, spiritualists, and surely witches. I needed to stay away.
Peter is in danger though. I feel it with every breath I take. My lungs were clogging with supernatural smoke, and the sky was ablaze with scorching hot rain. My heart burned in fear. Like my séance visions, this suddenly scalding heat was very real.
Where had Alyse gone? She would not hesitate to snuff out Peter’s life as completely as she tried to end mine. If I ignored that and let him perish, would that mean I was as heartless as she was?
Another burst of smoke invaded my lungs so intensely that it made me gag. I raised my head to the wind and sniffed. This wasn’t just a feeling. The anxiety plaguing me had its earthly nexus in that burning odor. Fire. Real fire. My mind traveled back to the first night at Peter’s store—to his mesmerized state—him yelling about a fire, my choking on rising seawater and smoke. I felt a flipping over of my entire soul, as if the ocean had churned me up and swallowed me.
As I craned my eyes, I saw it, an eerie gray mist pouring through the thunderous downpour. Dense, sour, and malicious like the devil himself. Peter’s boat was due back tomorrow at dawn. I knew without a doubt what my earlier visions had all pointed to. Alyse was seeing to it Peter would never, ever disembark from the Morro.
A terrific pain stabbed me, much worse than any blows Alyse had delivered. I dove under the ocean swells where my powers reigned, tore through the deep currents, and out to the injured vessel.
Chapter 28
A JOLT WOKE me out of a restless, troubled sleep. Shaking off my covers, I had a nagging awareness that everything was dreadfully wrong. A vision of Fiera struggling in the ocean invaded my senses. All around me pulsed a menacing presence, like some ghoul escaped from purgatory, lurking in the shadowy corners of my cabin.
To feed on me.
Get a hold of yourself, I silently scolded. Intuition was one thing, but falling prey to delusional specters was altogether unacceptable. I mean, Bela Lugosi was real, but Dracula was just a character from a gothic novel.
Still, I strained to peer into each corner, every crevice. There was only a suitcase in one corner, a chair with red-striped cushions in another, the bed I was on in the third, and the forth corner was devoid of any clutter. It only led to my small washroom. The cabin smelled oddly woody though, like a blazing hearth fire.
Once again, visions of Fiera pummeled me, of her screaming, her choking on seawater. It was just as I had seen in the séance. Back then, I’d been out cold with no memory, but, unexpectedly, I recalled everything. Everything.
This was no fit of neurotic worry. My earlier visions at the store were leading up to this moment in time, shouting out a dire warning. Yet, what exactly were they warning of? I leapt out of bed, scrambled into my clothes and thrust my cabin door open. That was when I smelled fire so dense and corrosive it bowled me over.
With a dampened shirt pressed over my nose and mouth, I dashed into the hall. Everyone was teeming into the hallways in nightgowns and pajamas, their jackets haphazardly flung over them. Babies screeched, a mother was sobbing, and I saw Tim and Dickerson’s boys greedily trying to beat the pack to the upper deck and lifeboats.
Where were Dali and his friends? Had they made it to the upper deck? I hadn’t thought to ask where they were staying.
The boat made a sickeningly loud crack and more thick, acrid smoke surged toward us. People were choking on it. A few had already succumbed, their bodies hunched on the floor. Suddenly, the vessel tipped on its side, sending people crashing against the walls. I picked myself up and helped fellow passengers to their feet before crawling toward the staircase to what was once the upper deck, but was now a sideways deck. “Hold on!” I yelled at random. “Grab onto something.”
I struggled up the stairs, one hand gripping the railing, the other pressing my shirt to my face, to slow the scorching of my lungs.
Another deafening crack angled the ship halfway upright again. Many more people were thrown about. Some, wailing, fell clear down the stairway. I managed to struggle to the uppermost deck where I could see the locus of the fire. It was worse than I feared, billowing out of the starboard side in back. The library was under that section, where Dickerson had called that fateful meeting. No doubt, that meeting room was a blazing pile of book ashes by now. Because up here, the fire had eaten clear through the deck. Angry plumes of smoke ballooned between yellow flames arcing far into the stormy sky.
Hordes of frantic passengers struggled to board the lifeboats. I had never bothered to count the boats before, but clearly there were more people than boats. How could the Morro staff be so incredibly negligent? People were brawling, punching one another in their haste to board. In another violent jerk of the boat, many folks went screeching to their deaths in the black waves below, inspiring ever more panic amongst the crowd. In the morass on the deck, I spotted Dali and Elsa. Elsa had on a rumpled bathrobe with her hair in curlers. Her eyes were round as saucers in their pure terror. Dali’s impish smile was replaced by a grim set of the jaw.
“Over here!” I shouted. “Over here!” They clambered my way, and I helped Dali and Elsa into a lifeboat already brimming with people.
“What’s the big idea?” crabbed a dowdy man, pushing ahead in line.
I had no desire to argue. After making sure Elsa and Dali were safely ensconced, I turned away to find Bela and Irene. Somehow, if I could help them, this sickening doom might lift. Perhaps then, my lucid nightmares of Fiera thrashing in the sea might fade.
I wove my way back to the crooked staircase to help two bleeding children screaming for their mother when a monstrous headwind caught me and lifted me right off my feet. The children, clearly so shocked at this, stared up at me, their cries forgotten.
“What in heavens?” I exclaimed as this singular wind lifted me further.
I’d been in fierce hurricanes. Never had the gusts been this strong or specific in their choice of victim. Suspended in sheer space, I flailed my arms and legs like an overgrown child, trying to root myself again on solid ground. I tried in vain, because something invisible but as powerful as Zeus kept ferrying me up and up and up. “This is no tornado. I’m not in the eye of a tornado,” I reasoned to tamp down my growing agitation.
“You’re not,” boomed a female voice from the smoke-poisoned sky.
Where are you? Where have I heard you before?
“In the speakeasy. In your Tarot parlor,” answered the disembodied woman to my unspoken questions. And then, like a menacing Gorgon, Alyse materialized around me, her hair flying in wild, seaweed-like strings. She was wrapped in a silvery gown covered with shimmering fish scales. Alyse wasn’t touching me, yet I felt her arms close in a vice grip around my ribs. Holy hell! Talcott was onto something after all. This woman was no mortal. She was soaring next to me, and I was soaring as fast as she was, in some supernatural sync defying the laws of gravity. To plummet into the ocean’s vast and mighty waves so far below would be a sure ticket to an early grave. Out here, the roiling water was deep as Davy Jones’ locker.
“Where’s Fiera?” I asked her.
“It’s not your business,” she snapped.
“Fiera is my business. What did you do with her?”
“The same thing I’ll do to you!” She took an abrupt ninety-degree dive into the monstrous ocean swells. In my magnetic lockstep with her, under I went.
Hitting the water so violently stunned my heart and paralyzed my muscles. A second ago, I’d been suffocating on thick smoke. Now I had to try to pump my shocked limbs and hold my breath not to choke on icy seawater.
Kicking my legs as best I could, I swam toward Alyse. I got a firm grip on her scaled robe, and I shook her hard to try and free myself from her bonds. She magically pushed me off and laughed. Yes, she laughed underwater. With no breath, how was that even possible? Yet the sound of her mirth gonged like a funeral bell through the currents.
In a desperate second attempt, I lurched upward and kicked her head. My boot landed hard on her ear and jerked her head sideways. She howled and grimaced. But she was abnormally strong, and in some form of godless spell, she yanked me back again without even touching me. Waving her hands, she carved supernatural cuts into my face and arms. My skin split into so many crimson ribbons. Going for my neck, she pared the muscle like a filet. It hurt like a bastard, and my blinking eyes watched the water darken into purple swirls. Groggy from loss of blood, my last conscious visions were of Fiera, slumped over a boulder on the ocean floor.
Chapter 29
I SMELLED DISASTER. I tasted it, like the iron of blood, the bile of sickness, and the flinty crackling of bones. My every limb trembled violently with the sense of it. Still, I kept hurtling forward, cutting through brackish ocean water shot through with jellyfish. I had less than thirty seconds. My sensate brain knew this somehow. Cutting up toward the water’s surface, I saw a deeply sorrowful sight.
The Morro was on its side with flames shooting skyward, the deluge of rain doing nothing to blanch the inferno.
Peter wasn’t on the boat; my enchanted animal sense told me that too.
I had less than twenty-five seconds to find him. I projected a message for the fish to please, please, please ferry any drowning passengers to safety they could. Magic had its limits. I was already weary. My supernatural strength would deplete before long.
I treaded water while I sent out psychic feelers in all directions. Like a bat sensing heat, I homed in on a circumference of water hotter than the rest. It was a good ways toward the shore. Under it beat the heart of a man. I dove under where I could best track the sound and the heat and barreled forward. I had about fifteen seconds left. The time ticked down with each of his slowing heartbeats.
I drew closer. There was blood, swirling in dark red clouds. Peter was hurt. I shouldn’t have cared, but I couldn’t help it. Alyse had trapped him. I felt her murderous rage and wondered how and why anyone could stay that angry. Pure evil was the only answer. I aimed for their tangled torsos. Must keep my edge of surprise and speed. Have to beat Alyse at her malicious game. I chanted an unlock spell because I sensed she’d wrapped her magic chains around Peter as she’d done me.
