‘Nick, there’s a door in the study!’ Alex yelled. ‘There’s another way down. Bring a torch!’
She didn’t even know if he heard her until the racket stopped.
And then the laughter began.
It came from the ground, from the ceiling, from all around the two of them. Maeve’s arms locked around Alex’s leg. Alex could feel the wet goo seeping in to her jeans, like acid against her skin underneath, and she couldn’t have run even if she had been able to find the strength. All she could feel was the ground shaking like they were in the middle of an earthquake. The fetid liquid sloshed out of the pit, that eerie glow illuminating the chamber. In the far corner, where whatever Maeve had pulled from the pit had rolled, Alex caught a flash of dull gold. It looked like a misshapen figure, its mouth open and hungry. What was it?
Blaise Chambers rose up before her, coalescing in that light over the pit into his handsome, devilish form, his predatory smile fixed on Alex. He offered her his hand and when she recoiled, he laughed.
‘He’s Crom,’Blaise murmured.‘You know him. You know him most of all. You were here before, Alexandra. You were to have released him, but you were too young, and your father interfered. It takes a woman with de Wilde blood. Not this child. But you can still serve your part now. You will free us all. It was meant to be you.’
No. This wasn’t possible. This wasn’t happening.
Memories, tangled and worn at the edges, flooded back with terrifying clarity.
She had been sixteen years old. Her father had told her to run. And she had run. She had run so far and so fast that she thought she would break apart. She had never stopped running.
Dad had found her here in the darkness. Her father had come to find her.
She had run and he had never left.
They hadn’t been in the forest. Not at first. She remembered now. They’d been in the darkness. Down here. And that face, that same open-mouthed hungry face, had come alive and grinned at her.
Alex’s hand trembled, the one holding the candle, a tremor that ran up her arm.
Blaise took another step towards her. She just had to drop the candlestick and supplicate herself before him, reach out for him, beg him… She could already feel her fingers loosening, her knees bending, her mouth opening. It would only take a moment. Drop the candle, let the darkness take her and …
Sally Walker swept over her and through her, as cold as a winter’s night, her voice twisted into an incoherent scream. Alex threw herself and Maeve back with a cry of alarm and watched in horror as whatever remained of Sally’s spirit threw itself at Blaise.
And he caught her with hands like eldritch claws, holding her tight.
Sally jerked like an old rag caught on a thorn bush. Her eyes opened wide, her mouth wider, huge and stretched beyond bearing, a scream that was both wrenched out of her and made up of the core of her. But the sound came from Maeve, still clinging to Alex’s leg, her fingers like nails driving in through the material of Alex’s jeans.
‘Oh Sally, sweet Sally,’Blaise purred.‘So impetuous. You always thought you knew best. And you were wrong. I destroyed you in life. Now let me do the same in death.’
Dark lines threaded Sally’s pale skin, moving like living things now, like black worms under her incorporeal flesh.Blaise Chambers was claiming the spirit of Sally Walker now, corrupting all that was left of her, making her his own.
No, Alex’s mind screamed at her. This had to stop. It needed to stop.
She still had Maeve’s charm around her own wrist and it hadn’t lost its power. Not yet. This was Sally’s symbol, her creation, even if her daughter’s hands had made it. This meant something to her.
‘Sally,’ Alex shouted and her voice didn’t even sound like her own. It was strong and powerful, a voice that would not be argued with. Somehow she found the words Daphne would have used. ‘Sally Walker! Depart this place in peace and in light. You are no longer needed here. Open your heart to the light waiting for you, Sally. Look for it. There are people waiting for you. They’ve been waiting so long. It’s time to go, do you hear me? Now, before the darkness devours you.’
There had to be a way to stop this, to save her. To drive Blaise away and break his hold on the spirits of the house, before he took Sally as well. Blaise laughed, his fingers digging into Sally’s incorporeal flesh. Sally flung back her head and screamed, her mouth distended in agony.
‘You think you have power here, Alexandra de Wilde? You think this is your land? You have denied it for twenty years. And with her gone, the guardian can be yours and yours alone. Even if you could help her, why would you?’
Because it was the right thing to do. Because she couldn’t let him take Sally. He would just keep coming, for her, and eventually for Maeve.
At that thought Alex locked eyes with Sally, her frantic hollow gaze.
Maeve was her daughter, her child, the one good thing she had ever done in her life, she seemed to say. She needed toprotect her. That was all she had ever wanted. That was why she was still holding on.
‘Maeve is protected,’ Alex told her. ‘Nick loves her. He’ll do anything for her.’
‘Not enough,’said Blaise.‘And when she comes of age she’ll be mine as well. Mine forever, all of you. You will give her to me.’
No. Alex’s hand tightened into a fist around the salt cellar. It was all she had but most of the salt was gone now. She’d driven off the girls and poured it into Maeve’s hands to protect her. And Chambers was so powerful.
