Chapter Eighteen #3
The ink coalesces again, forming an amorphous blotch once more, and this time, the blotch spreads across the book, multiplying until it covers the whole page. It turns the whole thing a bottomless black.
Intuition prickles on the back of my neck. I take a step back, pulling Cerise with me.
“What the—” she whispers.
The black ink rises from the page, bubbling to form the shape of something moving. It lifts from the page and twists into a writhing body.
We stumble backward into the shelves as a serpent, inky black and enormous, slithers from the spill.
At full length, it is nearly as long as the table and its body is as wide as my calves.
It rises before us, arching its neck, and opens its sleek, black jaws.
It bares its fangs at us and utters a sharp, menacing hiss.
Cerise curses.
And I shout, “Run!”
The serpent strikes, crashing into the shelves behind us as we sprint for the door. Cerise’s jars fall and clatter to the ground. The snake writhes angrily in the shards of broken bottles and slithers rapidly after us. I feel it snapping at my heels.
We nearly fall through the doorway, and I slam it shut behind us.
Cerise’s hand is pressed to her chest as she curses again. “What the hell was that?”
I’m still holding tight to the doorknob, as though the snake could learn to turn it. I hear it hissing just on the other side, feeling the weight of its body still slamming into the door, begging to be let through.
“I think you made the book angry, Cerise,” I say, and then realization dawns. “Oh Saints—”
“What?” Cerise asks, using the opposite wall for support.
“The book is still in there.”
She lets her hand drop. “You must be joking.”
“I have to get it back.”
“Why?” Cerise asks. “It just launched a fucking snake at us.”
“You don’t have to come,” I tell her.
She cringes. “I don’t want you to go in alone, but … I really hate snakes.” Her face is tinged green.
“And I really hate not having answers,” I mutter as I turn the handle.
The snake is gone. Perhaps it has disappeared back into the pages.
Perhaps I’m not that lucky.
I slink inside and close the door behind me to keep Cerise safe, trapping myself in the room with whatever might be lurking there.
My slippers creak on the floorboards as I step toward the book lying open on the table, right where I left it. Waiting for me.
A sound freezes me in place—soft, like the sweep of a broom—and my skin chills.
Stay calm. You just need to get the book and get out.
I inch toward the book, the floorboards whining under my feet. There’s the sound again, this time across the room. My heart starts to pound.
I reach a hand toward the book. I’m so close.
I catch a motion out of the corner of my eye. A black snout pokes out from the piles of books and bottles on the table. A forked tongue flickers.
I still. The snake and I are equidistant from the book, and, Saints, my chances of reaching it before it can lash out at my hand are slim.
I could abandon this. I could leave the book.
No one would know it was me who left it.
But deep down, I know I can’t. There’s no turning back from the ill-fated quest Roze and I are now on. I need it.
So I reach. I’m trembling, shadows prickling behind my skin, and I think the snake can sense it, smelling my fear with its tongue flickering in the air.
I can see its slitted eyes—it’s watching my hand with deadly focus, its head moving back and forth ever so slightly.
My fingers are nearly on the leather of the book. I can almost snatch it …
Something cool and waxy brushes against my ankle.
I jerk.
The serpent on the table strikes, and I scream. Searing pain burns on the flesh of my palm, and the snake’s fangs are latched on to my hand. I tumble, the serpent’s body flying in the air. He writhes and I try to throw him off as I fall, but he’s latched on tightly. He’s not letting me go.
I fall to the floor, knocking my hip and head painfully.
But then there’s something beneath my back. And under my ankles.
Movement across the floor in all directions.
Quick.
Slithering.
I lift my head—black serpents rush me from every direction.
I thrash, waving my arm wildly to free it from the snake still on my hand. He wiggles angrily, wormlike, and bites down harder.
Cool, waxy bodies descend on me, covering me, touching me everywhere. A stab into my neck, and pain turns my vision white. Another sharp lance on my foot, and I struggle to breathe. Then another on my thigh, and my body goes rigid.
My shadows crash into the door of my mind like a battering ram, shoving at my fingers, begging to be let free, to burst from me, protect me.
No.
No, I can’t.
Not now, when I’m so full of fear that it drowns me.
If I let my shadows loose, I’ll be lost in them.
I might not ever find my way out of that darkness.
I roll and struggle on the floor, screaming, nothing but panic clawing at my brain as they wrap around my ankles, tangle in my hair, coil around my neck.
I reach for the body of the snake that is still caught on my hand, and I rip it free, tearing the flesh of my palm as I do.
I’m desperate to get away. I stumble to my knees, but then I slip and fall again in the bodies. They hiss angrily, and another bites me in the thigh.
Another sting of pain in my shoulder.
There are more of them, multiplying by the second.
My feet can’t reach the floor through the mountain of snakes, and they wrap around my throat, my head.
I can’t see the room anymore, just the waxy feeling of black snakeskin against my face.
Every part of me touches every part of them.
Fangs lance into me over and over, and tears leak from my eyes as I choke and wail.
CALM.
CONTROL.
But my shadows don’t care. They shatter my dam, bursting free, the darkness enveloping me, until—
I hear the thunder of feet on the floorboards. There’s a bright light—a beacon. I look up and see Cerise standing over me with the gas lamp in her hand. She throws a pungent liquid on the pile, splashing it over the bodies.
“Viola, run!” she screams, reaching for me and grabbing me by the shirt.
Somehow her voice reaches me. My shadows snap back.
I grab the book on the table and hobble as fast as I can toward the door, my legs already sluggish from poison.
Cerise throws the gas lamp down. The pool of snakes erupts into an inferno, the hissing bodies wriggling in agony on the floor of the laboratory.
Cerise runs to me and grabs me by the arm. She hauls me through the door. “This is going to burn the whole lab down,” she says as we watch the snakes go up in flames.
We can’t let that happen. If the wrong person were to learn what we were up to tonight, it could mean losing everything. I know I shouldn’t, but—
“No, it’s not,” I say. “Go outside. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She looks at me strangely but then nods, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.
I turn back toward the burning pile of snakes. Some wriggle free of the inferno, flames still licking their backs, and they slide under cabinets and beneath piles of disused crates and scrolls, quickly setting the edges aflame. The laboratory will burn within minutes if I don’t act quickly.
I close my eyes and breathe. I have to be careful. I have to maintain some modicum of control … while also losing it.
I carefully lift the dam around my shadows.
Darkness spills from my fingers. Shadows crawl across the floor like tentacles until they reach the snakes.
Not too much, I beg. Just enough.
Calm.
Control.
With just a pinch of chaos.
Inch by inch, the shadows blanket the pile of black bodies along with the flame, smothering both. They roll across the room, wandering over everything, finding flaming snakes and crushing them.
Saints, it feels glorious—the destruction. Like the first breath of air when you’re nearly drowned. I should pull back …
The shadows crawl up the walls, wafting over shelves, inking over windows. I feel powerful. I feel free.
Pull back, a small voice whispers.
Calm.
Contro—
I snuff the voice out like a candle, letting darkness flow from every pore, surrendering to it, relishing in it.
I don’t know how I resisted this before now. It feels so right. It feels like coming home.
I am one with the darkness, one with everything that hungers and takes, that yearns and pines and devours.
The room is gone. There is only shadow.
Viola.
Viola.
Is that my name?
“Viola!” A hand grabs my forearm, yanking me back into reality so quickly that my stomach flips and my knees wobble. Two sharp brown eyes pierce mine. “Viola, can you hear me?”
My vision clears. Cerise. It’s Cerise.
“Are you okay?” she says, a deep wrinkle between her brows. “It’s over, Vi. You can stop.”
I look around. The laboratory is in chaos, but it’s otherwise fine. No signs of fire or cursed snakes.
“Viola, what’s wrong?”
I turn back to Cerise. “N—nothing,” I croak. My throat is raw, like I’ve been screaming for hours. But I’m not lying to her. There’s nothing wrong—and that’s just the problem.
I gave in to my shadows … and for the first time, I don’t regret it.