‘Run, Alex.’
Her father’s voice. The last thing he had said before Blaise had taken him over and turned him into a monster.
She clenched her hands around the circlet until its thorns dug into her hands. Her blood was fresh and bright, and the stab of pain drove a single moment of clarity into her.
Why was she even standing here talking to a ghost?
She lunged forward, through the secret door and down the stairs.
Blaise screamed in abject fury as he threw himself after her, and the house shook, the ground beneath her bucking wildly, trying to throw her off her feet. But Alex didn’t stop. She couldn’t. To stop now would be to give up and she couldn’t do that.
What would Nick say? What would Theo and Sally tell her?
Run, Alex.
It was his voice. Not her father, not her brother. It was Nick. She knew it was Nick. His voice rippled in the air, in the earth beneath her, in the water that forced its way through the gaps and into the undercroft, trying to find its way in. Because water always found a way. And in the earth there were roots and living things. In this place of death and misery, there was still life.
The idol was still in the corner on the far side from the steps. She skidded to her knees and grabbed it, turning as she did so.
Call on the wild wood, the old woman had said. Bury him deep, bind him and call on the wild wood.
Alex threw herself at the pit where Maeve had found the idol and Blaise’s cry of fury took her off her feet. The ghosts raced in towards her, so many of them. She could make out Daisy and Rose, but there were so many others. Countless insubstantial hands tried to grab her and hold her, bathing her in that eerie ectoplasmic glow. They raked over her flesh and dug into her clothes, tore at her hair.
They were the only light down here now, the only thing she could see, eyes like old coins, and mouths which opened to the void. They were the playthings of Blaise Chambers, and nothing but food for Crom. The old god had fed on them for all those years and they were as trapped in this as she was. All of them.
Daphne would tell her she needed to send them to the light, but there was no light down here. There was nothing but darkness and misery. That was why they congregated here.
There was no light. And she was as lost as they were. That was what they were all trying to tell her, a chorus of voices, all whispering, all lamenting, all telling her to stop, to give up, to give in.
To let Blaise Chambers win. As they had. It was the only way.
No, she refused to accept that.
Alex dropped to her knees, as the strength finally left her body. She was still holding the idol, but her hands were numb and helpless now, the circlet crushed in her grip against the cold metal.
She felt Blaise appear behind her, felt his hands on her back, on her shoulders, wrapping around her throat. He squeezed until her breath almost stopped. Her eyes fluttered closed. She couldn’t fight him anymore.
‘That’s it, my beloved Alexandra,’he murmured.‘Just give in. Just let go.’
Just let go.
Alex smiled. It wasn’t what he meant, but he’d said it all the same. A command. And he did so love to command her, to have her obey. She released the idol, letting it fall into the pit, and with it the circlet to bind it.
Her whole body slumped down until her hands, scratched and bleeding, hit the bare earth, her nails digging into it as deeply as she could.
‘No,’Blaise snarled, his grip tightening.‘No, you stupid bitch. What have you done?’
‘What I have to,’ she told him, her voice no more than a hiss, and then she called on the wild wood. She didn’t have to speak to do that. It was in her blood, in her soul. And thanks to Nick, in her heart. She just reached for it.
And the wild wood answered.
The roots surged up from beneath her, and her mouth filled with the taste of leaves, and moss and living growing things. The rustling of unfurling foliage drowned out the ghosts, the creak of branches and bark. A green glow filled the darkness, the bioluminescence of verdant and growing things, of life itself, of sunlight filtering through the high canopy and dappling on the ferny floor, the shifting light of evening through the trees. It was everywhere, everything, in her and all around her. Filling her and spilling out of her, engulfing this space.
Alex slumped down and let it take her, let it fill her and the void beneath her house. Wildewood Hall shook as the storm outside became a storm at its foundations and she was the source of it. Part de Wilde, part Kilfayne, part something else entirely. Herself. Alex O’Neill, PhD. Determined, stubborn, defiant, the cynic, the rationalist, the killjoy, the great debunker, the sceptic’s sceptic…
Vines wound about her body, tendrils threaded through her veins, flowers filled her eyes and leaves her mouth and she was lost in the wild wood. She was never coming back. She knew that. She was part of it now. She was gone.
A hand took hers, strong as oak, but gentle as a newly unfurled leaf. Another touched her face, cradling her cheek. He tilted her head up from the ground, from the pit and the endless dark, like a flower turning to the light.
