Page 10 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Ten

M orrigan slept into the following day. Her midnight transformation had left her weakened after all the bloodletting. She’d had a little rest, hanging from the headboard, small as a house-bat. I figured she did not have the energy for anything else. I’d wake every few hours to blink up at her in the semidarkness, nestled with her wings tucked in, still breathing, her heart pattering its feral drumbeat. Once or twice, I reached out to run my forefinger along her snout and marvel at the softness of her fur, a streak of moonlight above me.

It was remarkable to think a small creature could contain all of her. How volatile the nature of sorcery was, contorting her vampiric body into a nocturnal beast, bending and breaking until she was remade. And yet… There was something about Morrigan’s power that had broken her, too. I wondered if it was merely the price of blood magic—shedding your own to take another’s.

I wished she would tell me.

After noon, I slipped from Morrigan’s bed and she hardly noticed the absence of my body curled around hers, the emptiness I left behind. I awoke starving again, but unwilling to rouse her, to take from her when she’d already been drained as it was.

A piece of torn parchment awaited me in the front parlor once I’d readied for the day ahead. Gwen’s note had been left in a rush, her loopy scrawl connected with drawn-out lines. She’d gone to the market to see about getting more pumpkins—we weren’t to touch the bowl of pumpkin seeds in the kitchen; this she underscored twice —and Josephine wasn’t to be disturbed in the tower.

Morrigan’s evasiveness about the locked room and the abandoned corridor had done nothing except increase my curiosity. Despite her orders that I didn’t need to earn my keep, the idea of tidying the forgotten hall had a strange appeal. Not a chore, not someone else’s demands. I’d discovered a certain catharsis in the washing and scrubbing, an outlet for my mind to wander and my emotions to run free while my hands were busy.

The draft in the corridor had gotten worse, or perhaps my unease had summoned an icy breath on the nape of my neck. The sea was closer here, thrashing restless into the stained glass of the arched windows above. I brought one of Gwen’s skull candles and placed it in the crater of wax on one of the gargoyles. The light barely drove back the darkness, though it revealed the gems glinting in the gargoyles’ eyes and the brass detailing on the doors beneath layers of soot and tarnish.

I must’ve searched for twenty minutes, checked every little nook that could have been a hiding place for a lost key. Neither of the handles moved after a few more attempts, made in vain. I lowered onto a knee, stooping to peer through the keyhole and hoping a glimpse would sate my curiosity. The room beyond had been shrouded with threads of spider silk and grime and what I thought could’ve been cinders. I caught a trace of stale dust, tempered by the sort of woodsmoke that latched onto everything it touched.

I blew a current of air into the keyhole. Some of the dust lifted, the cobwebs fraying and billowing. Still, I couldn’t see anything. A gusty chill answered, as if someone had churned the air on the other side. The skull candle extinguished in a hissing puff of smoke, frigid dread slithering into the corridor, sudden and drenching.

A vampire-grey eye blinked back at me through the thready cobwebs.

Gasping back a scream that would’ve roused Morrigan from her sleep, I pushed away from the door and scrambled to my feet. I pressed my ear to the wood, nearly choking on the scent of fire.

There wasn’t another heartbeat aside from mine.

“Hello?” I whispered. “Is someone there?”

No one answered.

“Can you open the door?” I rapped my knuckles against it, wiping ashy dirt across my skin.

A hollow sort of cold answered, one with the power to spread frost through my veins.

The sea-wind shrieked a mourner’s gale, rising in harmony with the wailing woman’s ghostly song. She wasn’t crying, I realized, but humming a melody that seemed to be everywhere, seeping from the walls. Her song had a cadence that was distantly familiar; a waltz or older minuet, something I remembered from the ballrooms I’d once danced in. I tried to follow it, moving toward the opposite end of the hall, turning sharply into an alcove I’d missed before.

Golden torchlight flickered across the stone from a pair of bat-shaped sconces. Gwen had left a small patch of misshapen gourds in the alcove, their stems gnarled, their skins lumpy yet bearing an array of beautiful colors—soft earth tones, cream-white, blues and greens. Instead of seasonal mums, pots of autumn-vibrant dahlias sat between the bulbous pumpkins, orange and wine-dark.

The wailing woman’s song called to me from the top of a spiral, this one narrower than the estate’s main staircase, tucked away into a forgotten corner. She sounded closer now, and as I began to climb upward, her waltzing melody stung at my ears. I stopped halfway, wincing, then continued on until I reached the top. Her singing, though beautiful, had grown painful the more it echoed. A lancing pinprick that stabbed at my eardrums. I touched a finger to my earlobe and found a single drop of blood had wended its way out.

“A ghost whose song makes your ears bleed,” I mused aloud. “No wonder Morrigan didn’t want to tell me.”

The singing stopped, replaced with the screaming of the wind, so constant I’d begun to relegate it to the back of my mind. I was on the third floor now, in another of the estate’s turret perches. High above the sea and the rocky coast, no doubt the wind could be mistaken for a weeping woman or an ocean siren from the sailors’ lore.

But I knew what I had seen.

Flaming torches illuminated the turret room of their own accord. I shivered, dabbing at blood that had gathered on my earlobe. The gasp that slipped from my mouth bounced off the rounded walls. This was what I imagined Josephine’s tower must’ve looked like, a massive circular sanctuary with its stained glass arched windows and a ceiling that could’ve touched the stars.

This one was stuffed to the brim with books. The freezing dread that had lured me here was instantly lulled by the aroma of aged vellum and leather and ink. The bookshelves went on so high up that they could only be reached by tall, rolling ladders. Plodding across the circular rug, I brushed my fingertips along some of the spines, counting several familiar titles. The firelight caught their gilded lettering and made them sparkle and shimmer as if they were points in a constellation. Not a speck of dust to be found here. The books and their towering shelves were well cared for.

Crooked stacks had been left here and there about the room next to plush, ocean-green velvet armchairs. A matching settee lounged underneath the far windows .

A woman sat there, translucent and haloed in a watery, luminous glow. The pages of the book that lay open beside her turned without a touch, her hand poised over it, fingers curled idly. A jeweled ring flashed silver—her left hand, I noticed, where someone might wear a marital band. She had a timeless beauty, her light brown skin ageless, her dark hair a cloud of tight coils, stray ringlets framing her face.

Her dress pooled around her and cascaded onto the rug, an off-the-shoulder evening gown fit for a grand ballroom. The abundant silken skirts were meant to be twirled, meant to be shown off to a crowd of envious admirers. The silk itself seemed to be woven from pure starlight.

“I don’t mean any harm,” I told her. “Just having a look around, I won’t disturb you… I’m very good at keeping quiet. I’m Elspeth, by the way—I was hoping to find you and make my introductions. Your library is beautiful.” A title caught my eye, and I pulled the leather-bound tome out a few inches from its neat row. “ Seawright’s Folktales . Oh, this used to be a favorite of mine as a girl! I haven’t held a copy in years.”

The book snapped shut beneath her fingers. She glanced up at me, her lips parting, curious and wary all at once. I could see the years she had lived in the depths of her eyes, in that storm of grey undeath. I didn’t know until I lost myself there that vampires could leave a part of themselves behind as mortals sometimes did, their souls wandering and aimless.

“I’m new here,” I offered. “New to the coven, I mean.”

The room plunged into darkness as each of the torches went out one by one without warning. My breath chilled in front of my eyes, and beyond the foggy veil, the wailing woman’s silk gown was a beacon, radiant and billowing. A spectral breeze rippled her skirts. And then her luminous halo began to fade like a gaslight dimming.

“Wait,” I called. “I never meant to— ”

But she was gone. The chill she’d left behind was one I could not shake no matter how tightly I held my arms around myself.

“Elspeth?” Morrigan was calling me from below. “Ella?”

Leaving the tower library behind—with a silent promised to spend an afternoon among its plentiful bookshelves—I flew back down the staircase and found Morrigan approaching from the other end of the corridor.

“I see you’ve discovered the library at last.”

“I heard someone crying again, so I went up there,” I explained. “Someone else was in the library with me. I saw her for just a moment. A ghost woman. I feel badly about scaring her away.”

Her face tensed as she peered up into the dark stone spiral and the rustling cobwebs. The draft circulating down to us brought an icy exhale with it. I shivered so fiercely my teeth rattled together.

Morrigan guided me from the alcove, the abandoned hallway at our backs. She wouldn’t even steal a glimpse in that direction.

“The wailing woman,” she replied slowly, with a noticeable reluctance, “she’s Clarabella, Josephine’s wife.” There was a glimmering adoration, a kindness at the edge of Morrigan’s grieved smile. “She haunts the estate’s upper floors…you may hear her often, more so at night. I know it can be alarming, but Jo looks after her, and we keep her company whenever she lets us.”

One of Gwen’s carved pumpkins sat on a windowsill as we passed, red flame-light slipping across some of the stone, casting a glow onto the carpets. Even now, the strains of the woman’s weeping returned like a faraway siren’s call in the midst of an ocean tempest.

“Sonia killed her when your coven split,” I guessed, looking away from Morrigan, afraid of the truth.

“Not exactly. A fate worse.”

“What could be?”

“There are horrors even greater than death.” Morrigan pinched my earlobe, swiping her thumb over dried blood. “You must be careful, her voice can wound you. She doesn’t mean to, it’s not done on purpose. It’s simply another consequence. It took four days for Jo to recover her hearing once.”

“What becomes of a vampire whose spirit is left to wander?”

“It doesn’t happen often, as you can imagine,” she said. “Vampire spirits can do more than haunt. They are not ghosts as mortals have come to understand them, not simply shadows and wisps of resonant energy. When some vampires have their immortality ripped from them in such a way—their soul parted from their body—they become banshees. Like Clarabella.”

I pulled at my ear. The pain was gone, but the memory of it remained, thorn-sharp. A dull ache rapped against my temples. “I thought they were a myth. She can’t speak at all? That must get lonely.”

“She can use thought-speaking, as we do,” Morrigan explained. “It’s safer that way. But sometimes it’s difficult for her to contain it…she described the feeling once—the screaming, the wailing, the rage and melancholy that needs letting out from time to time. Otherwise, it gets to be too much. Without a need for blood, she craves the discord of her shrieking. If she could leave this place, I’ve no doubt she’d turn the rest of Sonia’s coven house to rubble.”

I felt the crease deepen between my eyebrows. “But she can’t leave? Ever?”

How many curses could one vampiric coven endure? Years on top of years of torturous heartbreak seemed unbearable, even to an immortal heart.

“Another curse. Sonia ensnared us in a web of them, spent years building them in secret, hiding her work from me. She always wanted the coven leadership I’d inherited. The one thing she could never hide was her own poisonous jealousy.” Morrigan shook her head, weaving her fingers between mine while we walked. “Bella’s soul is bound to the estate, unlike other banshees I’ve encountered in my travels.”

Banshees were a popular subject in Dreadmist, woven into coastal lore after generations had endured its piercing winds. I, like many others, thought of them as folktales, legends that fishermen and merchants brought to shore, something to scare children when the gales ravaged the harbor. “Shrieking like a banshee out there,” had become a common turn of phrase in greeting on stormy days.

I grew up hearing about one such creature haunting the caves around Fogpeak Cove. My childhood friends liked to test each other’s mettle with those stories, some of them swearing on their ancestors’ graves that they’d gotten close enough to hear the screaming, that they’d seen a glowing figure walking along the beach.

“That must be unbearable for the two of them,” I said. “I cannot imagine being so haunted by the one you love most, helpless to stop it.”

Morrigan pulled me down the hallway by our clasped fingers. Like most of the other corridors, this one had been decorated for the October season, Gwen’s delicate paper garlands strung across far above our heads in whimsical shapes.

“We lost a great deal in our battle with Sonia,” she agreed. “I wasn’t nearly as strong then, and she was…” Morrigan sighed, wrenching at me again so I would fall into step beside her. My mind was still halfway entranced by Clarabella’s ghost. “Frightening. Ruthless. Ambitious to point of ruin. But I would bet my life on our chance now to shatter our curses. Once you’ve been trained up, of course. But then you’ve proven to be a quick study.”

“My father, may the stars guide his soul, used to tell me not to bet anything you’re unwilling to lose. Her power terrifies me. And the only thing that terrifies me more is losing—losing this coven, this home , to her. ”

Losing you , I’d almost said. I couldn’t bear it just then.

Despite my fears, a grin bloomed on Morrigan’s lips, and suddenly I felt foolish for letting the confession out into the air between us. We hadn’t known each other long, of course, but this connection had been intense, this sprawling estate more of a home than any in my recent memories.

“I’m relieved to know you feel safe here,” she said. “And safe you’ll remain, no matter the cost.”

“And you?” My fingers tightened around hers, somewhat fearful she’d pull away.

There’s no home here without you , I wanted to tell her.

She dared not look at me. The beat of her heart quickened, which she must’ve known she couldn’t hide. “As safe as I possibly can.”

“Morrigan—”

“I cannot keep promises like that, Ella.” She stared ahead at the corridor, her thumb caressing mine. A deep sort of pain suffused her careful tone. “I can’t, much as I’d want to assure your heart. You’ve seen duels, haven’t you? Quarrels settled with swords, drawing first blood? The wharf is quite famous for them. Battling a fellow blood sorcerer is much the same, except for the high probability of a swift death. Immortality will not save you. One of us will destroy the other, and there’s a chance our power will destroy us both.”

I towed her to a sudden stop, our shoes rasping on the stone. “I won’t let her,” I promised, though it was more foolish than the heartfelt confession that had burst out of me. “You have me now, and you’ll teach me to use the power you’ve gifted my blood, and we can fight. Together, all of us. We’ll end this before she has a chance at you. We can best her, I feel it. I’m not going to—” The words halted for a moment, but I’d gone too far now to lock them away this time. “I won’t stand idly by and watch her steal you away from us. I won’t lose you, not when—not when we’ve only just begun to find each other. ”

Morrigan’s smile still had an agony about it, but she held my hand between both of hers while she turned toward me at long last. Her sorcerer’s eyes glistened in the dim glow of the hallway. “I’d like to see Sonia try to curse your stubborn optimism.”

“You saved my life,” I told her. “How can you expect me to not fight for yours?”

The way she grabbed my face then was urgent, soft in its caress but simmering beneath with something desperate and primal.

Her kiss felt the same, as if she’d wanted to taste the sweet aftermath of my confession so she would believe in it. Her tears stained my lips, salt mingling over our tongues. The shuddering breath she sighed into my mouth while we kissed broke, a cry that she tried to stifle as she pressed me against the tapestry hanging on the wall. Then the softness of her kiss turned to a sudden violent hunger. I found myself craving it, falling into it, held captive. Morrigan was weeping in earnest now, her body shaking on top of mine, her hands wandering, wrinkling my dress.

“Have I said something I shouldn’t?” I asked. “I didn’t… Oh, Morrigan, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She sniffled, breathing heavily, her hands braced on either side of my shoulders once we parted. Her forehead touched mine, a brief, anchoring nudge. I dried her tears with the sleeves of my dress, dabbing at her wet cheeks with the lacy cuffs.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, my darling,” she reassured. “Nothing at all.” She kissed me quick, a light brush of our mouths, and I realized then that I’d never get tired of how often she loved to do it. “Come with me. There’s somewhere I need to show you.”