| |
I gasped. The front gate of the No Spell had been yanked off its hinges with enough force to bend the metal. A great tornado had ripped through what had been my garden and even pulled my snapdragons out by the roots. They lay gasping in the sun. Ajax ran over, cradling them delicately and placing them back into their beds.
But what struck fear into my heart was that every single window I could see had been smashed.
"Precious..." I breathed. "The girls..."
I ran up the steps. The door looked like whatever had ruined my front gate had come up here and blasted through, too. I ran through the lobby on my tiptoes, trying to keep my movements quiet in case whatever monster had done this was lying in wait.
My blood turned cold as my ankle started to twinge, letting me know that bad things were afoot.
"Miss Spell!" came an urgent whisper.
It was Precious's voice. I turned, searching frantically for her.
"There!" said Ajax, pointing.
She faded out of the woodwork, perfectly camouflaged. She wore my glasses, but ripped them off her face and handed them to me.
"I stayed... I couldn't let him... I kept him from destroying it all..." A sob I knew she had been holding all this time came bubbling up out of her chest.
I wrapped the poor girl in my arms and then brushed her cheeks with my hands, forcing her to focus on me. "You did great. You did better than great. You protected the No Spell like no one else could have. I bet it's still standing only because you were here taking care of it."
She nodded, affirming that she had been our sole sentry on duty. I had been so focused on Ajax, I never thought she would have stayed here and put herself in danger because of this old building. Albeit, the keystone to survival as we knew it, but it was a battle she shouldn't have had to face on her own. She should have run.
"Is he still here?" I asked.
She nodded. "The man. The tall man who tries to get us to forget. John Doe."
Suddenly, an earthquake shook the hotel on its foundations. It was so violent, it knocked us off our feet. As he went down, Ajax hit his head with a sickening crunch on the counter's brass foot rail. It left a streak of red.
Precious crawled to his side. I braced myself for the worst. We couldn't have survived all that with vampires and dragons and elves for Ajax to bite it in a slip-and-fall.
"Ajax! Ajax!" she whispered, tapping him lightly on the cheeks.
His eyes started to flutter open and I released the breath I didn't know I was holding. I ran over to grab the first aid kit from my office. The earth trembled again and I gripped the doorframe. I didn't know or care where John Doe was at this moment. All I could think about was Ajax.
He was still coming around when I returned.
"Miss Spell?" he murmured.
"I'm here!" I said. I snapped on a pair of gloves and grabbed a wad of bandages from the box. I wrapped them tightly around his wound. "You must have hit your head pretty hard if you started actually talking to me politely."
"Take some of my blood." He struggled to get up. "There's plenty of it here on the floor. You'll need it to activate your magic."
Broomie was propped up in the corner, still motionless after our battle with the dragon. We all needed to be recharged if we hoped to protect ourselves from John Doe with any form of magic. But to use Ajax's blood? Blood from a living thing? It would tie him forever to the magic I would cast. His soul would carry the weight and responsibility and the darkness. It would haunt him every time he closed his eyes.
"I'll do no such thing," I informed him.
"Elle... please... for all of us."
"I do not use blood magic and I most definitely do not use the blood of my friends. You might as well encourage me to turn to cannibalism."
"If we were in a snowstorm and starving to death, I would chew on your arm after you were dead," Ajax insisted.
I smoothed my dress primly. "Don't you try to sweet talk me."
I crawled behind the counter as the earth began shaking again. I didn't even want to think what John Doe was doing. I didn't have to bother opening up the drawers because they slammed open, all at once. There was a tiny, enamel pillbox that once had held some ghoul goo somewhere. I thought it might be pretty to carry, but it leaked in my purse and that is a lesson you only have to learn once. But I had never washed it out the pillbox. There might be a little left.
The building shuddered again.
It was so strong, it almost knocked the glasses off my nose. The drawers tumbled out of their frames, spilling their contents in one gigantic mess. Frantically, I tried to sift through, looking for the small, cloisonné box with the prettiest flower on the top. I couldn't find it anywhere. Quills and scissors and bottles of ink and papers... The ground kept rattling and shifting.
And then...
A glint of red and brass caught the corner of my eye. I reached for it, but it danced away from my fingertips under a stack of receipts.
I heard Ajax groan and Precious try to soothe him.
I was filthy, my dress was ruined, I hadn't had a bath in days, my friend might be dying, and I was about to lose because I couldn't catch a tiny box in the middle of an earthquake?
I pounced like a puma and tore through the mess. My hand slapped down on the pillbox. Dare I say it almost felt like it was trying to get away?
I snapped open the lid. There was a fingernail's worth of ghoul goo crusty in the corner. I scraped it out and smeared it on my bracelet. There was so little.
I checked Broomie to see if it was enough.
It wouldn't last for long, but slowly, Broomie righted itself, ready for action.
I grabbed my broom and ran back to Ajax and Precious. He tried to sit up, but then swooned and fell back to the ground.
Precious, that wise girl, pressed her hand against her stubborn friend's chest, trying to get him to relax. "You stay here. Guard the front door, just like I did for you. Don't let anyone past," she instructed.
He was in no condition to guard anything, but as long as he had a logical, useful job, he'd actually feel better about staying behind.
He gave her a weak little salute. "I'll guard the door with my life. Just for you, Precious."
She jumped up and ran to me. She had already been through so much, seen so much, and here she was, ready to leap into the fray. I wished I was half as brave at her age. Maybe I wouldn't have grown up to be the woman who allowed a mess like this to happen.
The earth quaked again and the personal reflection was going to have to wait. We had to find John Doe before he shook the building off its foundations.
"This way," I said.
We dashed toward the steps, when suddenly, there was the sound of two screams, two women shouting for help. One from upstairs. One from the ballroom. Precious and I froze.
"I thought you were alone," I said.
"I was."
"Do you think it’s the girls in the glass?" I asked.
Precious steeled her courage. "I'll go up to room 3D. You take the ballroom."
"We shouldn't split up."
She gripped my hand. "We have two people in trouble. We don't have time." And then she took the stairs, two-by-two, plaid jumper and penny-loafers flying.
I could have chased after her. I should have chased after her, but the scream came from the ballroom again, and this time with fear and desperation.
I hiked up my red skirts, hopped onto my broomstick, and raced to the ballroom. I aimed my palm at the double doors and used my energy to fling them open as I flew through.
A tall man with slicked back, silver and black hair was standing in the middle of the room. He was facing the colored windows, arms outstretched. All twenty girls in the glass were turned toward him, hands up as if trying to brace the window from the other side and keep him out of their world.
But my dramatic entrance broke his concentration. He snapped his head my direction, then nailed me with the icy cold of his deadly, sea foam eyes. "Lovely glasses, Miss Spell."
Suddenly, all the memories that had been repressed came flooding back.
It was like they had been there all along, but the room had been in the dark. And now, it was like someone flipped a light switch and I could suddenly see. My broomstick stuttered as everything came washing over me.
"All those times you came to my hotel," I gasped, remembering everything, remembering every terrified face and cry in the night. "Twenty girls you lured here with the promise of safety, and instead you stole their souls. You were at the coven." Realization began to dawn. "You were the one who planted the vampire here so that I would be stripped of my powers. You were the one who convinced Miss Trudy to neuter me so that you could infiltrate my hotel. You wanted to buy this place!"
"How very perceptive of you, Miss Spell," said John Doe. He smiled, but it did not reach past his chiseled cheekbones.
"I will not allow you to do this," I swore. "I will not allow you to open a hellmouth to the Dark Dimension in my ballroom!"
The earth began to shake. The iron chandelier swung on its chain. A column toppled over and tiles fell from the ceiling.
"The work is already done," he replied, pleased that the ground beneath us threatened to swallow us whole.
I noticed he did not cease pushing against the dimensional pocket, however. He was still struggling to break through.
I pointed my finger at the exit door. "Don't make me show you the flip side of hospitality."
He began to laugh. It was a cold, cruel laugh, the laugh of a warlock who had succumbed to wickedness. "Show me your worst."
"How about I show you my best?" I replied.
While I might not have my powers, I had learned from the goblins there are a lot of other ways to create damage. I aimed my broomstick toward the rafters. All I had to do was distract him enough that I weakened his spell. The earth was still shaking, which meant he had not yet achieved his goal. I began taking Broomie for a spin around the room, picking up pieces from the walls and hurling them at the wizard.
"AJAX! PRECIOUS! I NEED YOU!" I shouted, using just a little bit of my reserve power to reverberate the call through the bones of the building.
The girls scraped the inside of their prison.
John Doe laughed again as he dodged the bronze bust I aimed at his head. The laugh was getting a little more strained, however. With a movement of my hand, I ripped up my beautiful, hand-polished parquet floor and sent the splinters straight for his eyes and heart. He was getting angry now as he tried to deflect them.
Ajax came limping in, carrying his battle-axe. As he saw who I faced, he lifted his weapon overhead and let out a fearsome cry that would make his ancestors proud.
The wizard turned his attention from me to face the dwarf.
A bolt of energy hit Ajax square in the chest and I screamed. Broomie faltered. John Doe then aimed the palm of his hand at the mirror over the mantle. Ajax turned into a stream of light and suddenly was inside. I saw my horror mirrored in Ajax's eyes. Magic wasn't supposed to work on dwarfs.
A deep, black swirling pit began forming in the middle of the ballroom. The energy picked up chairs and tables and dragged them into the darkness. It was like a tornado and it swept me and Broomie into the eddy. I gripped onto a pillar as the force threatened to pull me in. The girls in the stained glass pulled against their prison, trying to resist being dragged out of the glass and into the hole.
It was the hellmouth to the Dark Dimension.
The ley line beneath it illuminated, feeding John Doe as he stood in the center of the room. The energies swirled about him as he lifted his hands in victory.
"STOP!" I yelled at him. "STOP!" I commanded.
He began to laugh.
I needed to disrupt the flow. I needed to keep the vortex from achieving a sonic rhythm. "Come on, Broomie!" I urged my poor little stick. I pushed the opposite direction, trying to break the pull of the vortex. It was like swimming upstream.
"You'll run out of energy on that sweeper there, Elle."
"That is MISS SPELL to you!" I shouted.
My little broom began to sputter. That little bit of goo was running out. I wasn't going to be able to protect us. John Doe noticed.
"You'll need to kill someone!" he bellowed. "You'll need to tap into some blood source to find the magic to defeat me!"
Ajax pounded from the inside of the mirror at me, screaming something. I couldn't hear him over the roar of the hellmouth.
Precious ran into the ballroom. She was dripping with sweat from whatever she had faced in that upper room. "Miss Spell! Miss Spell!"
"Stop! It's a trap!"
John Doe turned and saw her. He licked his chops like a wolf in a field of lamb. "How long can you resist her?" John Doe taunted. "She has all the life source you need to defeat me! Just a little nick, just a little sacrifice and you'll have everything you need. I'm still weak, Elle. I'm still not able to resist you if you were to make me stop." He shot a bolt of energy at me. I ducked...
But the glasses were knocked off my nose.
Dizzy. I was so dizzy.
The world was becoming hazy.
I tried to pull myself out of it.
But I wanted nothing more than surrender. Why was I even fighting?
"Miss Spell?" Precious called worriedly.
My broom stalled, dropping me right in front of her, as if it had wanted this all along. I stood. I could feel the electricity sparking from the tips of my fingers. My hair morphed into a mane from all the static as lightning cracked across the room.
"Just a little sacrifice!" John Doe called. "Everyone will die if you don't stop me!"
"Stop..." Precious mouthed. Her voice was becoming hard to hear. She backed away in fear, as if she was seeing something on my face that was terrifying her.
John Doe was right.
All I needed to do was to run a long fingernail across her dark brown throat and I would have all the power I needed to end this. All I needed to do was plunge my hand into her chest and rip out her delicate heart, and I would be more powerful than anything this sorcerer could throw at me. One innocent human sacrifice held more power than all the ghouls and vampires I had been wasting my time with. I would have all the magic I needed forever.
Ajax had lifted his axe and was crashing it against the inside of the mirror, splintering the glass surface, as if he had something important he was desperate to tell me.
"Please don't..." Precious begged. "Snap out of it. Remember! Remember who I am! Remember who you are!"
"Use the power of the gem I left for you!" shouted John Doe.
He had left me that gem.
He was behind stripping me of my powers and behind the one thing that gave them back to me again. Why? It was an odd, disconnected thought.
"Use the stone! Use the magic available at your fingertips! Kill the girl!"
He needed me to wield the stone.
Precious gasped in fear then yelled. "He wants you to tie all our souls to the portal forever!"
I stumbled.
There was something crunchy beneath my feet.
I looked down. My broom had fallen and in its last gasps, it had tried to trip me, tried to stop me.
And in that moment I was distracted, Precious waved her hand. The glasses flew across the room and slammed onto my face. Clarity returned like a head-on collision with a freight train.
John Doe needed me to destroy myself and everyone I loved so he could get what he wanted.
I turned back and faced him. This witch was tired of being his pawn. "No, thank you."
Ajax stopped pounding his way through the glass and lifted his fists in celebration.
John Doe stared at me and snarled. "Do it!"
I stepped toward him, a slow swing to my hips. A hint of fear crossed his face. "Why do you want me to do it so badly? What is it about me spilling her blood that you need me to do soooo baaaadly, sugar?"
"Don't call me sugar," he growled.
There was the block the witches had placed on my magic. Tapping into it for a spark to light a flame had just about killed me. But I knew if I didn't tap into it now, I would be dead anyway. So I dug in, allowing the pain to consume me, leaning into the feeling of a thousand jagged knives cutting into me.
"Oh, darling, I can see right through you. You go walking around, making people think you are just a big, ol' powerful meanie, but I can see your tender soul." I gasped as I pushed against the power he was trying to throw up as a shield.
The thing about a man who could act the way he acted, kill the way he killed, trap people the way he trapped them... his heart may still pound in his chest, but he was a monster.
And I had no problem killing monsters.
My mind screamed at me from the pressure. My skin felt like it would flay itself from my frame. I held out my hand and Broomie smashed into my palm as my power burned my bones.
"Shall we see how tender you are?" I grunted as I placed my broomstick handle to his chest, using it as a wand to focus all the magic that had been trapped inside me into that one... soft... spot...
The agony as I reclaimed my right to work my magic was like swallowing the sun. I opened my mouth and white hot power poured from my lips, my eyes, my fingertips...
And I felt the world explode.
He split into a million shards and was sucked into the vortex he had built, clogging it up like a wad of hair in a drainpipe. The dark whirlpool jammed. The ley line surged with bright light as it sealed him in. There was a roar and a hurricane and a storm of rage and hate that sliced through the connection like a lightning bolt to a transformer.
And all around me, the windows shattered. The girls who had disappeared into the glass came tumbling onto the ground, all twenty of them, gasping and coughing. The girl with the blue pillbox hat, the woman with the wild black hair. All of them. Ajax tumbled out of the mirror, but being a little warrior man, tucked into a roll and leaped to his feet.
I, however, was really looking forward to sitting down.
And there was silence.
I plopped onto my ruined floor and gripped the side of my head. "Ow."
Laughing, or maybe she was crying, Precious crept up next to me. "Are you okay?"
"Oh, honey, did I scare you?" I said, trying to give her great big bear hug. "Miss Spell would never let anything bad happen to you. Never..."
"You're crushing me," she said, her voice muffled in the piles of filthy ruffles of my ruined dress.
Ajax was helping the terrified girls to their feet. They were all sporting cuts and bruises, but were flinging their arms around one another with joy and relief that they had survived.
"I was so scared you were going to kill me," Precious confessed.
I waved her worries away, not about to tell her that I had been scared about the very same thing. "Never. Gotta stay true to your heart, honey, no matter what the cost. The moment we start betraying ourselves to get ahead, the forces of darkness have won."
I smiled. And then, darkness won and I passed out.