15. Chapter 15
The library in town was a gorgeous three-story building right out of an architect’s wet dream. The walls and ceiling were made of gorgeous glass that let in so much natural light that the artistic glasswork of the light covers was pure decoration.
If the library back home looked like this, I might have been tempted to go into the archive careers with my cousins.
Each handcrafted bookshelf was taller than me. Even better, the library had an entire section of books dedicated to Dudleytown on the third floor. Most local legends weren’t usually documented so well. These types of things were spread by word of mouth.
It gave me a lot to work with, but there was a lot of hot garbage mixed in, too. The inconsistent stories and embellishing details made me question what could be trusted and made my eyes glaze over.
“You could give me some information,” I said. Partially because research was tedious and partially because he’d been so quiet, I wasn’t sure if he was with me or not.
He chuckled. “I like watching you obsess over me as much as I obsess over you.”
This asshole.
After hours of research, the overhead lights finally cut on as the sun went down outside.
I called Willow and whispered. “Are you struggling as much as I am to find what’s real and what isn’t?”
“Not really.” She sounded like a smug asshole when she did that. “I specialize in research. I can spot a fake from a mile away.”
I flipped off my phone.“I saw that, bitch.”
“I’ll give you something to see in a minute.” I rolled my eyes. “Do you have anything about which Rinah witch caused this?”
“I’m not sure we did.” Surprise colored her tone. “Not officially, at least.”
The lights flickered overhead in a lazy way. I frowned at the hanging lamp in front of me, but couldn’t tell what his emotion was. But it got a reaction. So it was important.
Poke here to learn more.
“All the signs are there.”
“I agree. It’s got our name all over it. But I don’t have anything about it. All the warnings seem to be true, because we’ve lost a lot of good witches trying to solve it. So we left it to the branch that lives there, since they are the only ones who’ve been able to coexist.”
“Anything on the dandelions?”
“Nothing other than what we already know.”
“Anything?”
“Well, there is reason to believe this has nothing to do with the Dudleys that were deemed traitors in England. I traced the bloodline records to France. So a curse on the family line isn’t valid. Most of them are alive and thriving. Abiel Dudley is the only one who was impacted by this ‘curse’.”
The lights flickered again, but this time it was rapid and sharp. Finally something familiar, irritation. “Assuming that’s what this is.”
I sat at a table with books stacked everywhere. Luckily, it was pretty empty except for one college-aged young man across the way, and he didn’t seem to care that I'd taken a call.
“Let’s see here.” I grabbed a book to my left. I’d noticed Abiel being mentioned. “They say he was a magnificent builder and single-handedly built most of the houses in Dudleytown after he founded the settlement. Says he even partnered with a local witch to make his house impenetrable.”
“Margaret Rinah. She is why I don’t think this is our doing.” The sound of pages flipped in my ear, before she settled on what she was looking for. “Ah yes, my good friend, Abiel and I have put in fortifications to defend the city from evil… She married him.”
It was a gut punch that took my breath away at the confirmation that there was indeed a wife. “Marriage gone wrong?”
“No. She describes it as being similar to a lavender marriage. Except instead of hiding that she was gay, she was hiding that she was a witch. It was meant to take scrutiny off of her, and he protected her from prosecution. They each had outside affairs, and she stayed by his side, even when he lost everything to some unsavory accusations.”
That made it easier to breathe. It shouldn’t have bothered me. Why did I care who he fucked a few hundred years ago?
I was becoming unhinged.
“They were best friends. Loyal until the bitter end.”
The darkness in the room grew thicker. Now we were to the meat and potatoes.
“What accusations?”
“That he killed his brother.”
The lights above me cut off completely, and like an outward wave, took out the rest of the lights on the floor. The man across the room gasped in surprise. Slivers of the sun setting outside gave enough dim lighting through the tinted windows to keep it from being completely black.
He was still pissed about that accusation.
“Margaret testified in court that Abiel had nothing to do with it, that Abiel had simply found him in the woods and tried to get him help. But it didn’t matter, the village vilified him for it.
” She hummed with curiosity. “Her handwriting is stressed here as she mentions it, and I think these are tear stains.”
“Is that a journal you’ve got?”
“Yes. She mailed her journal to us shortly before she died.”
“How did she die?”
The air pressure grew so thick I couldn’t breathe. The wild thought that I was in the eye of a storm hit me sideways.
My table shook. The table legs loudly clattered against the hardwood, echoing in the eerie silence. The table decayed until there were clear black handprints on each side of me.
I hung up my phone and stood up just in time for all the books on my table to fly away from me. A roar that sounded like nothing else in this world pierced my ears, making me flinch away.
“Okay! I’m sorry I asked,” I apologized to him.
The other tables flew away from me as if someone pushed them. As they came back down they slowly disintegrated to ash. It was like time slowed enough to show me every stage of the decay.
Highlighting exactly what he was capable of.
A song of glass cracking sliced through everything and made my heart pound against my breastbone. What did I do?
My eyes went up to find that the glass above me had cracks running through it. The cracks were spiderwebs that were growing exponentially by the second. It was beautiful.
It was deadly.
“Kid! Take cover.” I turned around, yanked books off the giant shelf, and tucked myself into the giant bottom shelf. Kneeling and bending down like every horrible hallway tornado drill on the planet.
The shattering made my ears ring, but I opted to use my hands to protect my head instead. It rained down over the shelf, and I could hear the glass lodging into the top.
Please hold up.
Raining glass wasn’t a proper way for a witch to go out.
The sound of a giant piece of glass snapping made my breathing halt, waiting for the collapse of my shelter. It sounded like the entire building was collapsing.
“You’re going to kill me,” I warned my shadow stalker, hoping that he gave enough fucks to pull back, if only for my well-being.
The seconds dragged before the ear-splitting noise settled into eerie silence that unnerved me more than I cared to admit. My fingers trembled, waiting for the other shoe to squash me.
A cool evening breeze blew over me, and my eyes finally snapped open. Glass and black decay covered every surface. As if this pristine and sparkling library were an old, fading memory.
Pages floated in the air, yellowed and worn. There was a giant hole where I’d been standing previously. Like I was the center point of an explosion of destruction.
A shadow permeated every corner of what was left of the room, even the sun dipping on the horizon couldn’t ease the sense of danger.
“Kid!” My voice broke, and I had to clear my throat.
“I’m okay.” But the answer was numb enough to twist my stomach.
I found him under the computer desk across the way. He was worse for wear. His shelter hadn’t been as good as mine, and a healthy amount of blood trickled down his face, but I didn’t see giant shards of shrapnel in him, so that was a good sign.
He was alive.
I unfolded myself and took a tentative step to find alarmingly soft wood under my feet. This floor wouldn’t last much longer. I forced my voice steady, “We gotta go.”
We didn’t want to be here when everything fell apart.
“You’re safe with me, Dandelion,” the monster whispered sweetly in my ear. The sensation of gentle hands caressed me as if to double check that I wasn’t damaged.
He wasn’t even angry at me.
The thought of seeing him truly malicious made nausea settle in. Good cock or not. Sweet on me or not.
He was dangerous.
It was a wake-up call I needed. He was volatile and destructive. People died because of him.
The kid’s eyes locked onto me with a flat look of defeat that I recognized all too well.
“Kid,” I snapped to get his attention, ignoring the monster on my heels as I carefully inched closer. “We’ll get through this together. I need you to stay with me. Okay?”
His eyes went to where the window wall was nothing more than a rusted framework that didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. I’d hate to see what the support beams looked like.
“Hey! We’re going to be alright.” I took easy steps to where I knew he would be going.
The kid stood up in a way that reminded me of a lifeless puppet, and his eyes never left the window. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Can you feel that?”
I ran across the floor as he bolted toward the window. The floor wobbled under my feet like gelatin, but I didn’t have time to step carefully.
If the floor fell out from under me, so be it.
I grabbed his hand, yanking him to the floor.
“It sucks, but we’re going to keep our heads,” I commanded him. “And not make any rash decisions.”
“It’s the end.” He sighed with relief, like all the hard work was done and over.
“No. It’s not.” How did I become the representative of life? “Listen to me. I get it. I’ve been there, but it’s not the end.”
His eyes went wide as he stared over my shoulder, much like the man who hung himself did.
His fingers shook in my hand, where I still had an ironclad grasp on him.
The sclera of his eyes turned veiny and red as if he was having a sudden allergic reaction and his pupils blew until they were uncomfortable to look at.
“The harbinger of ruin is here.” His numb words made nausea fill my stomach.
He kicked his foot hard on the floor, making the wood splinter and fall away under him.
“No!” I locked my other hand around his wrist as the floor gave way. His weight yanked down, popping my shoulder out of socket, but I refused to let go.
The floor below became visible. I could see the second floor rotting until it collapsed and the bookshelves crashed and shattered against whatever was below. Until they were spikes waiting to welcome this kid with open arms.
“Fuck.” The floor below me was seconds from giving out, then we’d both be kebabs. There wasn’t even something solid to hold onto to wrench him up. I was stuck. “Hold on, kid.”
“Let me go,” he told me with submission in his eyes that didn’t sit right with me.
How did I get him back up? Sweat poured down my temples, and the muscles in my arm burned, begging me to release him. That stab in my shoulder was a painful reminder that I was alive.
At least for the moment.
The screams of terror filled the air as people processed what was happening around them. How many wouldn’t escape?
The sweat gathering between our fingers made him slowly slip from my grasp. Panic made my breathing come in sharp breaths.
Not now!
I forced deep breaths, knowing I’d kill both of us if I didn’t get my shit together.
Focus and think your way out of this, witch.
The floor under my chest was giving way, and I could feel the cracks growing beneath me. One snap and we were both falling.
I released one hand to grab a precarious piece of broken rebar that had become exposed nearby. The hardwood fell away in giant chunks. The grooves in the rebar dug painfully into my palm, but I held on.
The rust on the metal confirmed what I’d suspected. Nothing was spared.
The rod bent and sagged under our weight. I screamed when my abused shoulder took the brunt of the dropped weight.
My shadow against the wall morphed into the shape of my stalker with one hand lifted as if he was ready to interfere in a second.
“You have a good heart,” the kid said, staring up at me with those strange eyes. Then he released his fingers so we weren’t interlocked anymore.
“Don’t do that!” I tightened my sweaty hand, but he was sliding from my grasp. Too fast to do anything about it, but still agonizingly slow enough to rip my heart out of my chest.
Tears poured from my eyes when he slipped from my grip. “No!”
His blank eyes stared up at me. Guilt squeezed my insides in its tight grip.
Damn it, Sasha. Can’t even save a fucking kid.
As if to punctuate exactly how much I failed, bodies rained down as people jumped from every level into the massacre below. Each thump was a shot to my fragile brain.
The rebar holding me snapped with a loud metallic ring.
I’m sorry, Willow. I’m sorry, Esme.
I shrieked as I flew through the air, sending the scent of rotten wood and rust up my nose.
Darkness wrapped around me, smothering me in a cocoon that left me confused about which way was up. Perhaps I’d already hit the ground.
I blinked.
If I was lucky, the other dead bodies would cushion the fall. What a fucked up thought, Sasha.
But when the darkness faded, I was looking at the ruins of the library from the safety of the grass ten yards away. Bodies lined the ground as people leapt from the windows. Some were screaming, and I suspected that was the people who hoped they’d survive the jump.
Others were gone before they even stepped out.
The building groaned before cracking under the pressure and collapsed on itself like a house of cards.
It left the bodies looking like effigies to warn people away. The sirens blaring in the distance didn’t help any.
Turn back. Death is here.
Tears streamed from my eyes, and I hated how my hands shook.
The scent of metallic blood and rust carried on the wind, and a soft gargle of someone’s last breath filled the ringing silence.
A footprint blackened each side of me, like he was standing right over me. “You don’t need to be afraid, Dandelion.”
One question, and he’d destroyed this place in minutes.
What would happen when I wasn’t special anymore?
His fingers rubbed soothing circles, and I hated that it eased the frayed edges of my mortification.
It was my job to kill him.
I’m so sorry.