Chapter Twelve #2
When my eyes were uncovered, my parents were no longer beside me.
Instead, Catherine took their place, dressed in black silk, her expression defiant.
Behind her, Bell House stood in ruins, the roof caved in, every window smashed and black smoke billowing up into a green sky.
The garden was a wasteland. Instead of waiting for me with anticipation, Ashley lay on the floor, arms and legs jutting out from her torso at impossible angles, her unseeing eyes staring straight to the sky.
Beside her, Lydia shrieked as barbed vines crawled out of the earth to wrap themselves around her arms and legs, draining her life until all that was left was a pale, dusty corpse.
My parents clutched at each other, screaming as a tornado of fire consumed them both, leaving effigies in ash, standing until the slightest breeze picked up and blew them into nothingness.
Wyn and Jackson stood right where they were, side by side, their faces etched with regret, but made no move to help.
The first Emma Catherine was gone. Beyond the walls of the garden, I heard screams that tore up the unnatural night as my nightmare reality bled out into the rest of the world.
‘What do I do?’ I said, turning back to my grandmother in panic. ‘Help me, what do I do?’
‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough?’
She brushed my hair back from my face, her expression impassive. ‘This is the choice you made.’
Pushing her away, I ran, tearing out of the garden and around to the front of the house, just in time to watch a wall of black flame racing toward Lafayette Square, consuming the trees, incinerating my beloved Spanish moss.
Behind the inferno, the howls of hunters closed in, not just the wolves but the other thing, the worse thing.
‘If this is my choice then I’ll unmake it,’ I told Catherine when she appeared at my side. ‘Tell me, how do I stop this from happening?’
Opening my fists, I saw the black arfvedsonite crystal in one hand and my silver brooch with its glinting moonstone in the other.
‘Who’s to say the decision that leads us here hasn’t already been made?’ she said. ‘Who’s to say this isn’t for the best?’
Her gentle hand caressed my cheek for a brief moment then caught my chin and squeezed until her nails dug into my flesh. Ignoring my protestations, she twisted my head, forcing me to look at my fallen family.
‘I tried to stop this,’ she said with a hiss. ‘Don’t you dare look away.’
‘I can still change it,’ I sobbed, reeling at the sight of the broken bodies, Jackson and Wyn unmoved, still staring blankly in my direction. ‘I can still fix it.’
The pointed tips of my grandmother’s nails dug into my cheeks, deeper and deeper until I cried out in pain.
Wrenching my face from her hands, I turned back to her but Catherine was gone.
Bell House was gone. The full moon shone down on Bonaventure Cemetery, my family’s monument lying shattered before me, the staircase to the underground chapel smothered by rubble, and under the rubble, Jackson’s mauled body.
Wyn emerged from behind an oak tree, his green-grey eyes full of tears and razor-sharp claws at the end of his fingers.
‘It’s your choice, Emily,’ he said, voice breaking as he spoke. ‘It’s your choice to make.’
Blood ran down my cheeks as his claws pierced my skin, but instead of pushing him away, I pulled him closer, meeting his lips with an urgency I couldn’t begin to understand. His claws retracted and his hands knotted themselves in my hair, drawing me in as if I could never be close enough.
‘I’m sorry.’
A whisper on the wind, a voice I couldn’t place.
Wyn seized up in my arms. His chameleon eyes widened until I could see the whites, then he collapsed against me, sliding down to his knees as I struggled to keep him upright, a dead weight in my arms.
‘Help!’ I screamed into the night as his head lolled back, the gold string that tied us together unspooling. ‘Someone, anyone, please help us!’
Seven figures stepped out from the shadows wearing grey robes.
Forming a circle around me, they pulled back their hoods to reveal their faces one by one.
Ashley, Lydia and Jackson, resurrected, Catherine, Wyn’s brother Cole, and two others.
A man and a woman I didn’t quite recognize but somehow knew.
‘You’re not ready,’ sang a high-pitched voice, as sweet and southern as a magnolia blossom.
Still in her party dress and pretty shoes, the little girl’s hair curled against her pale cheek as she skipped into the centre of the circle. We’d met before, she and I, here in this graveyard, on the way to my Becoming.
‘Someone gave me a gift,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like it. You should take it away and keep it safe.’
She placed something cold into my hand and, leaning into its weight, I brought it up to my face, the ornate gold handle, the sickening serrated silver blade shaped like a tree branch and crusted with Wyn’s blood.
It was a sword, and when I curled my hand around the hilt, my fingers fit perfectly into the grooves as though it had been made for me.
A dozen or more images shot through my mind.
A burning pile of wolves, Wyn’s body on top.
Lydia writhing on the ground, screaming.
Jackson surrounded by sapphire flames. Ashley brought to her knees, clutching at her throat.
Catherine with her head thrown back and her feet floating off the floor.
Crystals, herbs, black fire, green skies, skyscraper tides, and Bell House wrapped in thorns, being pulled down into the earth.
‘You’re not ready but you will be. You have to be,’ the little girl said.
The seven figures replaced their hoods and stepped back into the darkness. And as they vanished out of sight, the ground beneath my feet crumbled away and I was falling through the inky black, a haunting voice whispering in my ear.
When the dead fight back. When the earth consumes. A lie becomes the truth. She will return.