A look of bewilderment crossed his haggard features. At that moment, I realised he wasn’t even really listening: it wasn’t what I’d said, it washowI’d said it that was the fatal mistake. ‘You still seem a little too clear-headed to me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied, and regretted it immediately. Even I could hear it now: there was too much edge to my voice, it was too cold. Not half as vague as it probably should have been, given that my soul had supposedly been blotted out to make room for Norah’s in my body.
Victor frowned, and I felt sick. Moving with deliberate slowness, I tried to take a step past him, but he blocked my path. ‘What are you doing?’ This time my voice was unpleasantly thin and reedy.
‘Something I’ve been wanting to do for a really long fucking time,’ he replied with a grim smile, before he reached out and clutched my throat.
I tried to push him off me, but he shoved me back against the wall with a thud. And then… he hurled himself against me, without coming even a centimetre closer. He clutched at something inside me with unimaginable violence, far more brutal than Ashton had been a few days earlier: I felt the full force of him slamming against me, so hard that I felt my soul transforming into a pulsing bruise.
I had to… But my thoughts crumbled, becoming a thick layer that coated my whole mind. My eyelids grew heavy, my knees weak. I collapsed, and I would certainly have fallen if Victor hadn’t held me up.
‘Stop that immediately!’ The bright voice shot swift as an arrow through the pain vibrating through me. My brain tried to connect it to a face, but all it managed was the thought of red hair like a fairy’s.
Victor sighed, but his grip relaxed inside me, even as his hand tightened around my neck, still holding me up. ‘I was just preparing the body for you. Cliff was a bit sloppy.’
‘He wasn’t sloppy,’ the other voice snarled.Norah–of course. ‘He was just leaving some for me. Unlike you, he respects the fact that I like to do it myself. I’m the one spending the next few years in this shell, after all–it’s my right to prepare it the way I want!’
‘Fine, fine. There’s still some of her left.’ He grabbed my shoulder and shoved me over to Norah.
My knees were still too weak, and I sank helplessly against her. Norah grabbed my arms and held me upright. Vaguely I felt her fingers skim my throat. I thought I heard her say something else, but I was too far away to reach for the words. Everything around me interwove into a blanket of cotton wool. There was a buzzing in my ears, and inside me, too. Perhaps it was the echo of my heartbeat, which was the last thing I really registered.
At the fringes of it all, I sensed us moving. A breath of wind on my cold face, Norah’s warmth, which never left my side. Behind my closed eyelids was a spreading darkness, shot through with a few dabs of gold. More voices drifted loosely past me, but I made no effort to catch them. I didn’t want to hear anything, I didn’t want to feel anything, I didn’t want to…be anything. I didn’t want anything anymore.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I felt another touch on my neck. With an effort, I made my eyes blinkopen, and blearily I recognised Norah’s face in front of mine– creased brow, narrowed eyes. She leant towards me until her mouth hovered close to my ear. Her fingers were resting on my carotid artery, where my pulse thudded with all its might against her touch.
Something strange was happening: the longer I felt her touch, the more I grew warm. It didn’t feel like she was taking energy from me, more like… giving it back. I gasped as a wave of strength surged through my exhausted body. Reflexively, I struggled to break free of her embrace, but she held me tightly, pressing her lips closer to my ear. I sensed her breath, her fluttering heartbeat, and my own, growing stronger with each and every thud.
I blinked, turning my head to look around. We were in a round room lined with floor-to-ceiling columns. The black stone at our feet was inlaid with gold decoration, and all around us were pillar candles, the only source of light. I took this in only vaguely, because my attention was drawn to the middle of the room.
On a waist-high marble plinth was a vessel made out of slate-grey glass. The size of an ostrich egg and quite unremarkable, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off it. As I moved, the candlelight fell on the material, bringing out faint grooves. I had to squint hard before I realised it was words–in a language I didn’t understand.
Victor’s eyes met mine from the other side of the plinth. He grinned, before my eyeline was blocked by the back of a man I didn’t know. The guy who had been with Victor earlier was now lying motionless on the floor beside him. Slowly it dawned on me the situation we were in: we were standing in the room where it was going to happen. Where… Victor was going to take over his body, and Norah mine. Panic convulsed in my muscles, but so weakly that all I did was begin to tremble.
Norah increased the pressure on my throat, snapping my focus back to her. At that moment it hit me with a certainty that made me gasp: I didn’t stand a chance–I never had. How could Cliff and I ever have hoped otherwise? I was only human, and neither my body nor my soul were at their strongest. My muscles felt limp, my insides skinned and sore, my mind spinning. I wassotired. It felt like part of me was missing: the part that had housed my resolve, the part that had promised I’d do everything I could to get out of this situation.
I had wanted to fight, but now I just wanted it to stop. Everything. Deep down, beneath the exhaustion, something whispered to me that it made sense: what Cliff had taken from my soul had been a tiny sliver, but what Victor had ripped out had left a hole. An aching, pulsing breach that leaked its agonising nothingness across the surface of my mind. Whatever Norah had just done, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the strength to pull this off alone. There was no way I could hold my own against all these people in this state, no way I could destroy that thing.
‘Listen: you have to concentrate. When I saynow, you have to do it. You have exactly one chance, so don’t hesitate.’ Norah’s voice flowed softly into my ear, a salve to my raw thoughts.
Her gaze focused my eyes–focused my soul. It felt like she was reaching out a hand and trying to bind the loose ends back together.
‘Got it?’ she hissed.
I wasn’t sure I had. It made no sense. As far as Norah knew, my only plan here was to die. She couldn’t know what we intended. And even if she did–surely, she wouldn’t be on our side.
I parted my lips, but at that moment I sensed the person at my back.
‘Ready?’
Norah’s eyes were still locked on mine as she nodded. One by one, she took her hands off me. I staggered a little, but stayed on my feet. Norah took the box from the man, wincing faintly as she did so. Even though she was standing at a distance from me, I felt the heat radiating from the wood. My eyes slid past her. Victor wasn’t standing on the other side of the artefact anymore. A second glance, and I realised he was lying motionless on the floor beside the other man. Instinctively, I knew that one was unconscious and the other was dead. Victor had left Jess’s body and was now… in the glass vessel on the plinth? I narrowed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the silvery gleam that seemed to float inside it. So that must be… his soul? I felt like laughing, somehow like crying, too, but it was taking all my concentration just to breathe.
‘Horatio?’ asked Norah tonelessly, interrupting my thoughts.
He had already taken a step towards me, but now he stopped. ‘Yes?’
Just as he turned in her direction, Norah looked at me and said, ‘Now.’
In the same fraction of a second, she lunged out of nowhere, raising the box to bring it slamming down on his head. The edge of it struck his temple, and he let out a groan. Wide eyes staring at her in shock, he sank helplessly to his knees.
