Page 36 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Thirty-Six

M orrigan touched her palm to mine, finding the notches between my fingers where hers always fit. Not a word was exchanged between us. We couldn’t even bear to speak into each other’s thoughts. I was afraid of how fragile anything I told her would sound tempting fate.

Sonia’s coven had fallen into wild hysterics at the empty ballroom, and I knew this would only make them more dangerous. It seemed they had lost a few of their fledglings, scraps of charred clothing and flesh still littering the dais. Anastasia was positively murderous, restrained by her coven-mates. I did not trust that they would hold much longer.

Weakened from the loss of demon blood, Sonia retreated behind them. Her snarling, fanged, crimson shield was ready to spring into a fight. Though their numbers had dwindled, they would still be enough to overtake us.

Morrigan ran her thumb along the back of my hand, then let go.

Sonia spread her arms, graceful as a waltzing dancer, ready to take flight. Morrigan sauntered forward, approaching the dais with reckless confidence .

“Running away, as always,” she spat. “Sending your coven out to die for you first.”

Sonia was still waiting for tendrils of claret-dark ichor to halo her like smoke. When it didn’t, unexpected panic fractured her haughty grin and wiped it from her dark red lips.

“Ah, would you look at that,” Morrigan laughed. “Seems we’ve clipped your wings, haven’t we? Now you must fight us yourself—no more demon’s blood, no more shadowy tricks.”

“No, but there’s still your heart,” Sonia said. “Or perhaps I’ll take your fledgling’s first. It’s strong, unscathed…”

The threat made Morrigan strike first. Her sorcery blazing forth—acrid among the blood already spilled—she tried to keep the pain from her face. Sonia doubled over, a hand laid against her ribs, a wet stain blossoming on her gown. It took me a breathless moment, half-distracted by the blood raining from Morrigan’s nostrils, to see the white splinter breaking through the fresh wound.

“You’re only afraid of the wounds you’ll open,” Morrigan taunted, panting, fangs clenched, “if you fight me without the ichor.”

“I’ll heal,” Sonia promised. “Yours will just hasten your death. Look at you, Morrigan.” She clicked her tongue. “You’ve barely touched me and you’re already bleeding on my floor. It won’t take much to kill you, but I won’t deny myself the pleasure of making it tortuous.”

Before Sonia had rushed down the steps, Josephine surged toward the dais, plucking notes of alchemical power as Morrigan had drawn out one of Sonia’s ribs. Josephine conducted a terrifying symphony. Burning through the coven’s shield, their screaming paled in comparison to Clarabella’s. Veins rendered molten inside them, beams of light spilled from their eyes and mouths—how could something so horrifying look so beautiful?

We moved across the throne room floor like chess pieces, blood and stone. Gwen rushed to Josephine’s side to cut off a couple of wild fledglings at the knees. Sonia descended the steps, walking over the ashes and bloody fragments of her coven. I moved to join Morrigan, torn between protective instinct and a desperate need to help Gwen, to shield Josephine. Catching another fledgling as she tried to get her fangs into Gwen’s neck, Josephine’s eyes were pure, radiant light, furious and divine.

My boot heel scuffing the marble, I leapt over the slumbering body of a dhampir, paces away from Morrigan.

Don’t fight her, Ella , she warned, straining to speak to my thoughts. She’s mine.

But—

I had no time to finish the thought. A vampire advanced on Morrigan, trying to catch her unawares. Fear coursing through me, I called up the beast in my blood, felt it shiver with immortal hunger, a feral, dark craving. The vampire’s heart was quick, angry. But I seized it without hesitating. A brutal sorcerer’s touch, an obliterating caress like none I’d unleashed before. Bleary scarlet clouded the edges of my vision. A squeeze of my fist was all it took, then—the vampire’s heart stopped dead. Breath choking out of her one last time, she fell, staring with sightless grey eyes.

My head snapped abruptly to the side, a blow landed on my jaw. Everything went red. With a strained yelp, I barely had a chance to notice the sting. Broken skin, blood leaking down my cheek, a blur of long, pointed nails. And a body shouldering into mine, shoving with rough hands, claws biting at my arms.

Anastasia drove me into a pillar, the marble crumbling at the impact of my spine. Her elbow crushed into my collarbones. “I’ve waited too long to spill your blood, you deceitful little urchin,” she hissed. “I’m going to make your sorcerer watch me lick every drop of blood from your mangled body.”

She grabbed my throat, stealing the breath right from me. I tried to force it out around her smothering fingers, but her bladed nails were tearing into my neck, opening old scars, rousing the fear in my blood. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t find her heart, her veins—all I saw in my racing mind was Anastasia’s fangs ripping my flesh from ear to ear, a gaping wound, red pouring from me in a torrent. Soaking like autumn rain.

I pushed into her with whatever strength I had. It wasn’t enough. I needed sorcery at my fingertips. Blood rushed loudly in my temples, but still, I couldn’t reach it. Anastasia starved the air from my aching lungs. My chest burned. Stars above, just let me breathe. Let me have one more—

Morrigan’s screaming pierced the throne room. I couldn’t see her, but I found the scent of her, fragrant and coppery and much too strong. The pain of Anastasia shredding into my neck disappeared with the sound of Morrigan’s torture. Was she wounded too badly? Dead?

Can’t breathe. Can’t—

Remember your focus.

It wasn’t Morrigan’s heart I needed to touch.

Burying my fist into Anastasia’s stomach, the sudden tactile sensation brought me back to the present. I was dizzy, everything hidden behind a veil of red, senses muffled. I forced myself to reach past that, listening to her frenzied pulse until it drummed in my hand.

I couldn’t find purchase in the blood flowing into her hateful heart. But I slipped into her veins, my power seduced by her violence, her own bloodlust making mine into a raging monster. And I tore at her with abandon, Morrigan’s screams still resonating somewhere.

I was the monster my bloodlust craved.

Anastasia’s bones shattered inside her. Her veins and arteries ripped apart and ruptured. Part of me—the sorcerer, the beast of ancient lore—delighted in the awful, squelching noises her organs and muscles and sinew made while I clawed at everything I could reach .

I wasn’t myself. I was who I needed to be, who Morrigan needed.

Anastasia’s hand around my throat went slack. Bright scarlet gushed from her mouth, her nose and ears leaking profusely. She understood all at once what had happened, that there would never be enough blood left to heal her. And yet her eyes never left mine, still smoldering with hate until she crumpled at my feet.

Air returned to my lungs, though it tasted of iron and simmering ashes. When my senses rushed back, my only thought was Morrigan. Are you still breathing? I slumped against the pillar, waiting for my vision to clear. Mottled darkness became a charging silhouette. Another furious heartbeat racing toward me.

I ducked, whirling from its path, darkness turning blood-red, turning to shape and form again. The vampire—Anastasia’s fledgling, perhaps the last—couldn’t stop her runaway momentum and crashed straight through the column where I’d stood only seconds before. She sprawled in the debris, clouds of marble-dust stained red in jagged moonbeams. I was still trying to catch my breath, my pulse too loud to hear hers. She sprung up from the pile of broken marble, ready to strike as a venomous serpent teased its prey, bouncing on bare, blood-smeared feet.

Morrigan’s still bleeding, I can smell her—

I’d been distracted again. I’d turned my head, trying to find Morrigan through the smoke and cinders and bloodshed. The marble-and-gilt clock chimed the half hour. And when I looked back, the fledgling was making a leap for me. She ached for blood—a gnawing, burning, relentless hunger—and she’d take it.

A shadow darted from the edge of my periphery and cut her down. I caught a blur of black and red, perhaps a wisp of pale red-gold, two bodies grappling as they tumbled back into the debris. They shook loose more pebbles, a whirlwind of hissing and violent limbs, fangs and tearing silk, until the last of the pillar disintegrated on top of them. I backpedaled, coughing from the rising dust.

Gwen’s head breached the plume, ribbons of slimy, bloody flesh pulling taut between her fangs before they snapped from the vampire’s throat. She’d shredded the fledgling’s neck to ribbons. Gwen swallowed down the sinew and muscle, then wiped her bloodstained lips on the back of her hand. Feral with her own hunger, Gwen lingered a moment more.

Morrigan—

Twisting around, I followed the pungent scent of charred flesh. Josephine had captured one of Anastasia’s coven-mates, cinders and smoke streaming from her outstretched arms, her veins glowing as Josephine transmuted her blood with a few elegant gestures. She appeared unhurt, as if Sonia had kept her distance.

Morrigan wasn’t so fortunate. My heart lunged, a painful clench when it battered into my ribcage. Locked in a sorcerer’s duel, they chased after one another, opening wounds new and old. Sonia swept through the ashes of her own coven, side-stepped bodies and kicked aside weakened dhampir.

Her broken rib hadn’t healed, or perhaps Morrigan had splintered it again, tried to pull it out of her entirely. Some of her fingers were bent at sickening angles, another shard of bone protruding from her wrist. Blood sluiced from a deep gouge at her hairline, a deeper one slashed across her chest. While she had one hand focused on Morrigan, the other flexed at her side, evaporating the bloody trails she left behind.

It seemed Morrigan had landed a few meaningful blows, but at great cost. She could hardly hold herself up, one arm wrapped around her middle as she hunched forward. Her clothing hid the stains, but I could still see fresh blood glistening, wet and pooling near her side. She was nearly soaked through with it. Red smeared from her nostrils, down her chin, congealing and sticky. Each breath wheezed hoarsely out of her. She shambled forward with a limping gait, and a torn away sleeve revealed a laceration that had wandered so deep I saw the waxy sheen of tendons, a glossy bone. Morrigan was using half her energy to command her blood from spilling too far from her wounds, willing it back.

She’d never keep up her strength that way.

A splitting pop of bones cracked loud, and Morrigan was pulled down onto her hands and knees. Her broken cry stung against my ears. I wouldn’t leave her to suffer this way. I couldn’t, no matter what she’d told me.

I hurried to meet her, summoning the hungry, salivating monster. Power thrummed through me. And then something pulled taut, a burst of pressure in my veins, a cold, twisting hand punching through my body. It felt as if Sonia had plunged her entire fist into my abdomen and tossed me backward by my insides. Careening through the air, I slammed shoulder-first into the floor, my weight gouging a crater in the bloodstained marble. Her sorcery was still unbearably cold, a corpse’s hand punching between my vital organs.

For a second, sucking in another breath was agony, as if I’d inhaled fragments of the broken glass beneath me. Morrigan shrieked, though I couldn’t tell if it had been my name or a curse.

Morrigan—

Sonia’s burning gaze found mine. At least she had been diverted from inflicting more pain upon Morrigan. Her leering grin was strange and exaggerated at this severe angle—too many teeth. She clicked her tongue with that irritating, overly-sweet pity, moving closer on light, slow hunter’s steps. Behind her, Morrigan let out a groan that fractured into a whimper.

“Poor little fledgling,” she teased. “I bet your heart tastes sweet.”

I knew it was foolish to try. But I stretched my arm out, fingers reaching, power welling up molten and starving. Her heart was right there. I felt it. I skimmed its pulse with my fingertips, pushed inside Sonia’s veins. She was still a freezing dead thing, a creature scarred by shadow. And it swallowed me whole. Pain sheared into my bones, twisting and gnawing somewhere deep within, as though her veins were lined with barbs and nettles. Blood pooled into my mouth, tangy and wrong, so wrong —stars above, the pain of it hollowed me out. I turned my head just enough to spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Its starkness, its gleaming crimson sent my heart into a panic.

Elspeth , Morrigan pleaded with me weakly, you have to—let go—

I choked, sputtering as the blood kept coating my tongue, flooding my mouth. It wouldn’t cease, trickling from my lips, sliding down my chin to the cold floor. A slow creep of frost unfurled in my veins. My fingers twitched. Muscles moving against my will, I felt my hand close around a long, angular fragment of glass.

Elspeth—don’t—don’t let her—

Jaw clenched, a cry buried within me, I tried to push her out. Cold pressure tingled across my fingertips. The edge of the glass dug into my palm, rivulets of scarlet dripping, dripping, dripping. Her will was too strong—my arm lifted, tethered to her by invisible threads. My fist slammed into my chest, the jagged shard piercing, the agony of it knocking the breath from me. I heard Morrigan yelling faintly. My name, perhaps? But the world had become an abstract of shadow and red. Anchored to Sonia’s violent will, I drove the glass deeper toward my heart, sobbing with the effort, my blood another offering to the ancient throne room.

The glass blade scraped against bone. It took me a moment—through bleary, fading consciousness—to realize the wailing that ricocheted to the ceiling was mine.

I knew very well what would happen next.

Morrigan’s warmth soothed my blood. I felt her there, suddenly, her power weak as it threaded itself into my veins .

Stop, I tried, unsure if the words would even reach her, she’ll capture your blood—

Fireworks exploded around me. A dazzling sparkle of golden light, a flush of heat that prickled my face. Sonia’s thread snapped. The glass shard, slicked with red, fell from my hand. The pain hadn’t numbed, but Sonia was howling. Her burning flesh charred the air. Another shadow danced in front of me, the hem of a skirt tickling my nose.

Every breath I dragged back into my lungs felt as if I’d still had the glass buried in my chest. I pushed up onto an elbow, shaking, to see Gwen impale a blade into Sonia’s back. Where had she gotten that? Josephine’s pumpkin seeds still burned, their sunlight blistering Sonia’s arms and face, her skin shiny and pink.

“All out of pumpkin seeds,” Josephine yelled. “Better hurry.”

“Morrigan, here!” Gwen pushed the bloodied knife across the marble and the blade slid just out of Morrigan’s reach. Stretching her long fingers, she got a grip on the handle and forced herself up onto her knees. She struggled to keep her injured body from wavering forward, caving in at the middle.

“I’ll be the end of you,” she promised. “Even if it kills me.”

With her gaze locked on Sonia, Morrigan swiped her tongue across the flat of the blade, languid and sensuous, gathering every drop of blood, drinking it down. It couldn’t have been enough. It wouldn’t be, I knew, but it had caught Sonia off her guard. And that had to be enough. She was still burning, an awful visage of raw, peeling flesh and blisters. She hadn’t expelled any energy to heal them.

Gwen appeared at my side. “You doing all right, lovely?”

All I managed was a nod at first. Gwen helped me to my feet, and the wound I’d torn into myself protested, weeping more blood. I couldn’t take my eyes from Sonia and Morrigan. Only then did I see the flexing motion of Sonia’s hand, her fingers swirling the air as Morrigan attempted to push up from the floor. I scented Morrigan’s power, but Sonia’s was already there, stealing the blood Morrigan had spilled. The blood she’d neglected to protect when she chose to help me. Blood that Sonia was drinking into her veins, into her own wounds.

I drew upon my power, but there wasn’t anything there. Perhaps a flicker, a defanged beast. I’d lost too much and hadn’t healed quick enough.

“ Wait , Morrigan—”

I leapt in front of her—a desperate hope, a last chance—and Sonia caught me mid-stride. My legs buckled beneath me. Fabric ripped as I went down, knees and elbows smarting as I skidded along the floor.

Morrigan’s blood-curdling scream cleaved my soul to pieces.