No. A sacrifice.
“I give of this sacrifice to the damned,” I say through gritted teeth. “This man will be the last. Through this, our contract is complete.”
I lift my hand from his throat to clasp the dagger with both. He opens his mouth, lifts his arms, but I’ve learned how to be quick. My aim is true. No hesitation halts the blade as it performs the mercy strike he taught me. What the stiletto knife was designed for. Through his suit, through skin and bone, and through his heart.
Douglas’s blue-gray light spreads across Mr. Pratterman’s chest. I remove the blade. Dark blood bubbles up from the wound. Ash spurts out, darkening as it wets. And something else. I reach down and grasp a withered red petal. Hibiscus. He tries again to say something. To curse me, to damn me to hell, to decry my end of his nightmare. Instead of words, blood flows from his lips.
I roll his body into the water. The souls swarm his still-twitching form and drag him under, into the depths.
The knife’s still in my hands, dripping but no longer glowing. I can’t hear Douglas in my mind or feel him in my blood. There’s only searing, ecstatic heat as the tyrant king of this realm is consumed by those he fed from.
I loosen my connection with the power until my body is once again solely mine. The surface of the water stills.
Only I remain.
Pratterman never meant to pass it down to me, or Thomas, or any other person. No heirs. Does that make it safe to leave behind? If this place was found once, it’ll be found again. I inspect the walls around me. The meat has stopped its pulsing and is graying rapidly between the stones but not loosening the structure.
What will happen to the souls that powered these unhallowed halls? There is no true rest here. How can I leave them behind, vulnerable to the whims of whoever next poisons themselves for power?
I can’t linger in this victory against the would-be Devil. There’s one task left before I can rest.
I will end this place.
31Liney
To Transform
I’ve never been one to scream. Too hard on my lungs. Too violent for my constitution.
Lying on the floor of the cave, my back to the sealed-off entrance, I try anyway. It starts as a whimper, then becomes a ragged cry, then the cave walls fill with echoes of my raw howling. The echoes redouble themselves until I’m a chorus of banshees.
How much more can be ripped from me before there’s nothing left but this sound?
My fingernails are jagged and the pads of my fingers are bloody from scraping at the rough stone wall. I try to catch my breath, but a choking wet sound in my throat won’t stop.
Grief spouts out of me. Tears, spit, blood. Why did I think I could beat this place?
I should’ve prepared Bridget for Chamomile. She could’ve defended herself. Recognized the danger before it was already grabbing fistfuls ofher hair. I should’ve run away with her, not dallied to bring Douglas’s skull up only for his ghost to be captured.
My jaw shudders with the tension I force on it, yet I’m still making ungodly noises.
There’s no ice in me anymore. This magnitude of guilt has flooded me, breaking through me like a river does a glacier.
I let in the water that’s been pounding against my mind since my drowning. Fire can suffocate itself. But water only grows with more poured in until it’s an ocean. A force of nature beyond the meddling of men or demons. In ice, rain, snow, fog—it covers the world. I’m only one girl. Forever drowning.
Snow swirls at the entrance of the cave as the water swirls inside me. There’s nothing left to believe in. Not my prayers or my sister. Not even my Bridget.
Her name startles me back to reality. If Chamomile had taken me instead, Bridget wouldn’t sit here. She’d find me. That’s what makes her brave and me a mouse.
But if my sister can turn into a monster, and Chamomile can come back from the dead, then perhaps a mouse can become something greater.
My muscles ache and my lungs burn, but I stand. Bridget isn’t yet lost. I won’t believe it until I see the lights from her eyes fade. And God—
No more prayers. If I’m to pray to anything, it’s to my own resolve.
I walk out of the cave. The snow has thickened. It’s a dangerous day on the water, the flurries so thick I can’t see the mainland. The cold should prickle my skin, but I’m numb to the gales. My whole body, as I walk back to the infernal lighthouse, doesn’t feel entirely part of me. There’s a current inside me. I’m not afraid. This separation between my body and my senses, allowing a force of nature to guide me, is a relief.
When I reach the lighthouse, I consider the options. Douglas spoke of something deeper under the lighthouse. A secret passage or hidden chamber? The cave went underneath the island. Is there a connection here?
