To The Fairest Page 16

  In my head, the world clicked in a way it never had before.

  Rather than trying to hide the life growing in me, I let it fill my body. Seep into my blood. My own magic joined it in a rush. No longer two conflicting energies, but one solid force with a single goal. I no longer had to try and drive the magic along a set course. I simply let it fill me to the brim, until I could practically feel it against the back of my eyelids, against the inside of my lips, in every strand of hair on my head. Then, rather than trying to control, I simply let it flow out of me. Directing it with gentle nudges and whispered instructions. I filled the dead vines with life, skating along their pathways until the blooms burst open in an explosion of color in a dreary world. Though I felt it happen, I couldn’t see it with my eyes shut. So my first, concrete clue that I’d done it right was when my mother laughed.

  “That’s my girl.” She said, delighted. I felt sick. Not from the magic. If anything using it had made me feel strong in ways I was unused to. Instead I felt nauseous at the approval in her voice. The pride. As if she had any right to either anymore. She came back to my side and Rachel collapsed, her hair streaked white and shadows beneath her eyes. For one horrifying moment I thought I was too late. That she was dead. But as I watched, I saw something shimmering and translucent rise from her body. I stared as Rachel stepped out of herself and looked down at her own body in patent disgust.

  I’d never seen anyone but Zaran do that to someone and I examined what I could of her body before relaxing. Danielle had been stealing her essence, her life. As a result there was no gaping, bloody, hole in her chest where Danielle had forced her way through. I’m sure there was some sort of physics behind it. Some way in which she’d altered the space and shifted between dimensions. Someone a lot smarter than me would probably give long, detailed explanations about 4D and altered paradigms, but I only understood the process in the simplest, and the most classic, of terms.

  It was magic.

  Danielle drug my attention from Rachel’s Ghostbuster impersonation when she came to crouch at my side again. There was a bounce to her, a life now that she had lacked before and I sneered, flinching back from her soft hands on my face when I thought of just how she’d gotten all of this new energy. For a moment she examined me, her eyes curious and alien, and then leaning forward she kissed me softly on the cheek.

  “I’ll miss you.” She said against my skin. Then, just as she’d done with Rachel, she drove her hand into my ribcage and wrapped her fingers around my heart. My lips parted in a silent scream and my head fell back, striking the ground hard enough to leave my senses reeling. There was no real way to describe the agony of it. The taste it left on the back of your tongue as if you should be choking on blood and ashes. I felt my nails bite into my palms and my back arched off of the ground entirely. Danielle was a star above me, her face a mask of gluttonous hunger. She was beautiful even in her madness, and soon one hand was joined by a second.

  The Toadstone was a burning coal against my skin. Just another source of agony. I felt it grow hotter and hotter still, until I finally gave voice to the pain in a scream that left my throat aching and raw. The sound seemed to shift something in Danielle. She’d been staring at my chest, her hair floating about her features, and practically salivating. But at my scream her gaze darted to my face. I saw the second the Toadstone caught her eye.

  Then something strange happened.

  The reflection of the Toadstone, the pure white of it, filled Danielle’s eyes with light and her features went slack at whatever she saw in its depths. She started to shake her head, first in disbelief, then in horror. The light grew brighter, the heat of the stone boring a hole in my skin. It was a shock to see her laugh suddenly. The sound was an explosion of pure joy and tears filled her eyes. She looked at my face again and there was a smile on hers bright enough to light up the world.

  “A baby.” She breathed in awe. Then she laughed again, barely able to contain herself. “A baby.” She said again and before I could fully comprehend with what had happened she jerked her hands out of my chest, leaving my heart intact and, for the most part, whole.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The demons began to whisper to one another, grumbling and discontent and Danielle blinked in surprise. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that she had completely forgotten our audience once she realized I was with child.

  The whispering of the surrounding demons became a collective growl of discontent. One by one, like a wave, the eyes of the demon’s masks began to glow red with intent. Danielle’s own eyes narrowed and she got to her feet. There was shout and I looked up and over to see Chris finally manage to make it past the demon that had been keeping him from either Rachel or I. Seeing that I was fine, he went for Rachel’s body and scooped her up in his arms. Never realizing that her spirit stood silently next to him. Spirit Rachel was too busy staring at the ground to talk to Chris and tell him she was all right. I didn’t even have time to wonder at what she was looking at because I felt the first tremor at that very moment.

  The demons were hissing and spitting, the red of their eyes deepening the longer Danielle simply stood there, staring back at them. The tremor in the ground grew more pronounced, and my pulse leapt. For a moment I was convinced that we’d have to contend with another giant. But just as I was tensing for that very possibility the demons in the stands got to their feet and began to walk towards the center of the amphitheater. Their numbers shrank with each step they took. They were cards being slid together, droplets of water reforming, shadows merging, until there was only one. One demon striding forth, his attention focused on Danielle and his eyes lost behind a veil of red. He reached up, pulled off the mask and laughed.

  I’d expected Rumplestiltskin, the demon with no name, to be a bit more intimidating. But he looked like any other man I had ever met. His features were sharp, almost too much so, and his curly brown hair was messy despite how short it was. He was on the thin side and of average height. In fact, everything about him was just that.

  Average.

  Except for his eyes. It was like someone had dipped two silver dollars in red ink and replaced his eyeballs with them. They sort of bulged from his skull and when he smiled it was if he was crying tears of blood.

  “Darling girl.” He purred, tossing the mask to one side, his long fingernails dancing against one another to create a tapping noise that made my skin crawl. “Why’d you stop? Things were just getting good.”

  Danielle hesitated and then she sighed.

  “It isn’t ready yet.” She said and the demon, still smiling, cocked his head to one side.

  “And yet she made the flowers bloom.” He grinned down at me, the flesh of his cheeks folding and overlapping with the force of his smile. Danielle lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.

  “A fluke. Nothing more. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Her heart’s no good. I can’t use it.”

  Briefly, his tongue darted from between his teeth and he licked his chops. A trained killer tasting weakness in the air.

  “I think you lie.” He sang softly, his head lowering so that he could look up at her from beneath lowered brows. It wasn’t the bloody eyes that made my breathing hitch in sudden terror but the fact that he was still smiling. In fact, no matter what he said, or how the rest of his face contorted, his lips were still peeled back in that shit-eating grin that strained his cheeks and put his teeth and gums on full display. “You lie, Danny.” He accused, anger in his voice and in his gaze, but not in his smile. “You know what I do with liars. You saw what happened with Zaran.”

  Danielle actually flinched. She tried to hide the motion but I saw the demon take immediate notice of it, his eyes brightening with interest and his nose wrinkling slightly as he sniffed the air.

  “Maxamillian Zaran was a sentimental fool.” My mother said, stepping over me as if she’d forgotten I was there. To a casual observer, it may have looked as if she were dismissing me completely. But I couldn’t help but no
tice that her body now blocked me from the demon’s sight.

  “And you aren’t?”

  “Of course not.” Danielle replied without hesitation. The air next to my face stirred and I looked over to see that spirit Rachel had come to stand by my side. The demons that had been guarding her and Chris were no longer paying them any mind. In fact the longer Rumple spoke, the more nervous they became, the expression on their masks twisting in fear. Chris was still tensed, waiting for them to turn on him again. Though I wasn’t sure how he expected to fight anyone when he refused to let go of Rachel’s body.

  Looking back up at her spirit I saw that her eyes had closed. Her face was a mask of concentration and adrenaline hit my bloodstream like a drug when I saw the binding around my arms and ankles start to loosen. Spirit Rachel was shaking as she worked and I had to keep myself from shouting encouragement as the bonds loosened inch by agonizing inch. There was a part of me that believed I wouldn’t get loose. That Rumplestiltskin would realize what I already had, that my mother was stalling, and finish the job for her. Thankfully however, he hadn’t caught on just yet and they were still talking.

  “—her name again? Maleficent? I thought they hated one another. Why would he have tried to save her anyway?”

  “Who knows? He’s dead now so it matters little.” He snarled. Imagining that animalistic noise coming from that Cheshire grin had me tugging desperately at my wrists before Rachel was fully finished. The tong tore at the skin of my wrist but I didn’t care. I gritted my teeth and jerked my arm loose only to reach over and begin untying my other hand. “Zaran should have been replaced as head of his department centuries ago. Giving him so much freedom made him cocky. Ambitious.”

  “Aren’t all demons?” Danielle asked mockingly.

  Rumple laughed. “To a point. But a demon who forgets his place must be put down.” A beat of silence, of stillness. “And the same can be said of dragons, witches…and widows.”

  My second arm got free and I let magic fill my hands, sending a bolt of heat to the leather holding my ankles down so that it melted away into dust.

  “Yet no one was there to put you in your place.” Danielle said stiffly. “Even if you disagree with my decision, you made promises.”

  “Promises are made to be broken. After all, what use is a spider that can’t bite?”

  “The curse can still be broken. I’ll find another way-”

  “Why should you have to when we have a perfectly good solution to our problem right here?”

  I stumbled to my feet only to fly back on a wave of air. I looked for the source and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Rumple’s mouth was splitting at the corners, his top and bottom lips peeling back from his skull. Down his neck and past the down his body like a suit to be stripped off. His face was a gleaming bone mask, his eyes red marbles and his pupils were split like a snake. He was a muscled beast, skinless, with leathery bat wings rising from the center of his back while sharp, curved horns rose from his bald head. His still sported that wide, wide, smile. The one too large for his face. His teeth were sharpened points and he his hands and feet only had three digits each but the talons sprouting from them were longer than my forearm.

  The demon caught sight of me and his wings pumped, sending him towards me with such speed that he was reduced to nothing more than a dark blur. I closed my eyes, my body freezing in terror. My mind blank with it. Made useless and immobile by fear. I heard a wet, crunching sound. Like raw meat being ripped apart.

  But there was no pain.

  Instead, when I was brave enough to open my eyes again, I saw Danielle drop to her knees in a pool of her own blood.

  Danielle who must have thrown herself in the path of the demon.

  Danielle, my beautiful, wicked, mother.

  And standing over her as she bled out was the demon with no name, clutching her still pumping heart between his taloned fingers and grinning as if he’d just been given the greatest of gifts.

  The world went very quiet.

  It was hard really, to feel anything when everything was so quiet.

  I saw her fall and I went to her, catching her in my arms and lowering us both to the ground. She was heavy and my arms strained beneath her sudden weight. Her head was in my lap and I knew she was dead before she’d even started to fall. But tears had leaked from the corner of her eyes, and I liked to think that maybe she saw me. Felt me, before it was all over and done.

  Hands landed on my shoulder, and I looked up to find my brother trying to drag me to my feet with his free hand while his other held Rachel tight against him with his free arm. The demons that had watched over them lay on the floor struggling, hands clasping their throats as they drowned in the bubble of water currently surrounding their heads. I could see the strain on Chris’s face, the fear in his eyes, and I could appreciate just how much effort he was putting in to try and save me.

  But I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t leave her here like this.

  There was a fire in my belly, hatred swimming beneath that well of silence. I felt my skin flush with both and the heat in my blood sang, music pure enough to rival the call of any siren. When I could look at him, I saw that Rumple was laughing, head thrown back and arms clutching his middle. Deep, belly rumbling laughs that almost made the smile on his face look natural.

  Almost.

  I looked back at the demons that Chris had managed to spell, watching the way their faces changed color beneath the surface of the water in rising curiosity.

  “Do you know what happens to a demon after it dies?” I asked, speaking to the room in general. Stillness joined the silence and I met Rumple’s eyes with my own beginning to brighten with the heat of dragon fire.

  “Do you?” I whispered, and saw a muscle in his jaw twitch. His red eyes shifted, became unsure for a heartbeat, and then rage tore through him. The ground beneath us shook again, harder than the first few time I felt it. It knocked Chris off of his feet and it was only when my hands touched the ground that I realized that it had grown hot. Another quake hit us and then I heard a cracking sound. A tearing. It was the first thing to penetrate the numbness in my head. I stared down at the ground, so the fissures that began to widen, felt the heat from underneath scorching my skin, and I began to laugh. There was no point in moving. Not when I could practically feel what was coming. Not when I recognized that heat.

  A clawed hand appeared at the edge of the crack next to my hip. The nails scraping along the ground itself as the owner of the hand pulled himself up from the depths. Smoke surrounded him like a cloud and when his head finally appeared, I met those purple eyes and knew that he was too far gone to bring back. For the first time since Zaran had built his heart, I didn’t want Sam to come back to his senses. To come back from that brink where evil whispered and destruction was music in the blood. We had work to do, he and I.

  “Burn it.” I whispered hoarsely, clutching Danielle against my chest and rocking back and forth. “Burn it all.”

  Sam grinned at me and there was nothing human in that smile.

  In fact, there was nothing dragon like in that smile either.

  From behind him I saw the clutchmates who Danielle had enspelled crawling from the crack in the ground, fully shifted and free now of her influence now that she was dead. Sam’s skin began to crack and break apart and their movements became jumbled and panicked as they flew off. Scattering in all directions. Desperate to escape before Sam finished shedding his skin.

  “Alex get up.” Chris hissed, grabbing for my arm and trying to drag me away. But it wasn’t as if I refused to leave Danielle. It wasn’t really a question of will. My body just wouldn’t allow me to let her go. “Come on darlin’.” He said, voice breaking with some emotion, “You can’t stay with her. No matter how much you want to.” I caught the eye of one dragon in particular and the dragon fire deep in the pit of my stomach had me talking on steaming air.

  “Get them out.” I ordered, indicating Chris and Rachel with a to
ss of my head. The dragon hesitated, jewel toned gaze uncertain, and I sent a jolt of raw allure towards him. His body slackened and his eyes went blank. He was happy, after that, to do as he’d been told. I could hear Chris screaming for me even as he was grabbed by massive claws and lifted struggling into the air. The heat from the hole in the ground was growing in intensity, so hot it made the air ripple around it.

  The last of the dragons dispersed just as Sam shifted. His human body ripping apart like wet paper. He filled the amphitheater and roared, the sound echoing in the sky and shaking me down to my bones. Rumple stood in front of him, gazing up into Sam’s eyes as something that looked very much like horror transformed his face.

  “Burn it!” I screamed, wild with my hatred, with the pain underneath my skin, and Sam’s armor fell away. Striking the ground with all the force of bombs. He shed his outer skin and stood there before us, a bloodthirsty star unleashed upon the world. Rumple’s mouth moved and I could have sworn he mouthed the words, ‘Hellfire’, before the swirling flame that was Sam swallowed everything in an inferno that would never die.

  * * * *

  When I was seven, it snowed outside of our house for the first time.

  In the south, snow was a commodity. We had a rough understanding of what it was, but it was rare enough to cause a stir when it arrived. It was just a few weeks after I’d been kidnapped by my first grade teacher. It had been the first, but not the last, time I’d been too afraid to leave the house. The world had seemed too large, too frightening, to trust anymore and all I’d wanted was to feel safe again. So I’d sat in my room clutching my favorite bear and wishing for something better. I’d seen the snow falling through my window, but hadn’t cared enough to investigate. That is, I didn’t until Danielle came into my room late that night and shook me awake.

  “Come along Alexandria Marie.” She said, voice as imperious as always. She’d taken my hand and led me down the stairs and through the halls. Together we had come to a stop at the back door. Her hand had been on the top of my head and I remember thinking how warm she’d felt. When she’d opened the door and had begun to lead me outside, I’d balked. But she’d looked at me, giving that stare of hers, and I’d forced myself to take one step after another. Almost dragging myself outside in her wake.