Chapter Thirty-Six
Bells
THE TARMAC WAS BITING AND SPIKY AGAINST THE SOLES OF Bells’ feet – cool and damp from the rain.
‘Remi!’ she shouted, as breath blistered her lungs.
Remi ran at a pace that made Bells grateful her father had trained her just as much as her siblings.
But no matter how much she called for her to stop, Remi ran as if she couldn’t hear her, as if she was afraid.
As they came to the end of the street, a great red-stone building spired up into the darkness: a gothic cathedral drenched in the full moon’s cold lustre.
Bells staggered to a stop as a car rushed past. Its bright headlights burned her eyes, the red glow of taillights following. Her heart beat wildly in her ears at the risk of being out alone, this danger so much more real than one of her visions.
She craned to see Remi. Her heart shot into her throat as the other girl tripped on the path to the cathedral. She got her bearings and continued, blasting the tall black gates open and then the doors of the cathedral itself with a cry.
Bells finally breached the road and bolted after her. But as she got to the doors, something sharp knifed into her bare foot. She jumped and stumbled with a cry, looking down to see the metallic remnant of one of Lawna’s unlocking devices.
Which meant … Remi had planned this. She’d been scared of whatever this music was inside her and wanted to get somewhere no one would be hurt.
Bells looked back the way she’d come, wondering if Remi would stay in this location, stay safe, and she’d have enough time to run back and get the others.
But then jagged, mournful notes began inside the cathedral, and Bells was—
Spellbound.
This music was like nothing Remi had ever played before.
It rang with the sureness and mournful sweetness of death.
Bells had felt this in her visions. Every night when she was privy to a murder, to a fate she couldn’t stop, it shimmered with this feeling. But did that mean that whatever was happening to Remi would kill her? The icy sickness of the thought pushed Bells closer.
Now, Remi stood at the crossing of the nave and transept, lit by moonlight through the stained glass in an array of jewel colours.
The violin’s strings were slippery with blood. It was sliding down Remi’s arms and staining the silken sleeve of her nightdress. Her body was swaying with the music and the angry slash of her arms. The arpeggio grew fevered, the notes magnified and chorused by the epic height of the building.
But it was no longer just Remi playing.
The echoes of an entire orchestra filled the space with a romantic, tragic song that vibrated through Bells’ bones.
She watched from the shadows as Remi played a frantic melody that felt torn from the throats of gods. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t really an orchestra, Bells could hear it building, deepening with the great thunderous crashes of drums and the sweeping tension of strings.
She didn’t know how to help Remi stop, but she had to try before she wore her fingers to the bone.
‘Remi!’ Bells called out. ‘I’m here!’
Remi’s brow fluttered as if pained, but she kept her eyes scrunched shut as the music built towards a crescendo.
‘Just focus on the other sounds,’ Bells tried, ‘the way I focus on your singing! Listen to my voice!’ More times than she could count, Remi’s humming had helped Bells sink into a vision-less slumber or had awoken her from the cold grip of nightmares.
It felt like a sin to cut through this music. Bells’ words warbled slightly with desperation, but they didn’t seem to breach the sheer wall of sound.
When more tears sped down Remi’s cheeks, Bells allowed herself to be drawn by the dark pull of the music and had a feeling that this song could not be severed before it was done.
As if it was curious at the company, the music careened towards her. It was so beautiful it had tears spilling down Bells’ face, which began to lift, sparkling, as the vibrations in the cathedral spiralled and whipped.
The beauty of it started an ache in her chest that pressed and pressed and pressed, searing her heart with white-hot pain.
Yet she never wanted to stop listening.
And that feeling, that deep, strange thing she had felt in the hallway when she’d awoken, that had been her secret companion since her first visions of death, bloomed darkly in this moonlit cathedral to the croon of this song.
With the final note, Remi screamed a sound closer to a sob.
The windows blasted out of the cathedral.
Bells wasn’t able to stagger any closer, only managed a step before she slumped to the cool stone. ‘I’m here,’ she managed, something hot trickling from her nose. ‘I’m here …’
Ahead of her, Remi dropped, her exhausted sigh ringing in the sudden silence.
Before Bells could crawl any closer, the world went dark.
Nicole
BIRóG WOKE THEM IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT BECAUSE THE wards had been tripped.
Nicole’s heart was in her throat until she and Kyan – having been forced to split up to leave the townhouse – found Bells and Remi in the shattered cathedral, her father already kneeling over Bells as Lawna sprinted down the aisle to Remi.
The cloying scent of blood near cut off her ability to breathe, her terror so intense she couldn’t think.
The girls’ hands were reaching towards one another across a floor of ruined glass that, under the cool glow of the moon, glittered like thousands of fallen stars.
‘Are they okay?’ Nicole demanded, feeling unable to breathe.
‘They’re both all right. Sleeping,’ her father said.
Relief guttered through her like a tidal wave.
Nicole reached Bells first, who lay unconscious with a smear of blood at her nose.
‘Bells,’ she breathed, touching her face softly, her cheeks still warm, her breathing slightly fevered.
‘I’ll Influence any supernaturals away while you get them out,’ Kyan said from the entrance – he’d stationed himself there as a few supernaturals came to investigate.
Their father gently scooped up Bells so Nicole ran to pick up Remi, not caring how the shards crunched beneath her feet.
Lawna was with her when Nicole skidded to a stop and crouched down.
‘Remi,’ Lawna said, gently touching her daughter’s face, checking for her pulse.
Remi’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Bells,’ Remi rasped. ‘Is she—’
‘She’s okay,’ Nicole said. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘What happened?’ Lawna asked, checking her daughter’s body.
‘The Death String,’ her friend breathed, wrapping her fingers around Nicole’s forearm.
Nicole jolted at the look in her eyes – the wild echoes of epic power – and the dampness of her grip.
Slick with blood.
They got them back to the house via the false front, glad Lawna had done a surveillance check around both entrances and found nothing. Her father and Lawna had checked both girls over, coming to the same conclusion: they should be all right, but they’d only know when they both awoke.
‘It’s exhausted her,’ Lawna said, stroking her daughter’s brow. ‘But as she allowed herself to play the song, it seems to have kept her safe from its effects.’
‘Bells’ vitals are a bit off, so we’ll watch over them tonight,’ Nicole’s father said, putting some medical equipment back in one of his emergency cases.
‘She doesn’t seem to be having nightmares or visions though, which means her body should rest properly.
I would guess that because Remi wasn’t playing the real harp or using the real string, an essence of the song must have taken her over, but not the true scope of its power. ’
Nicole thought of the blown-out windows of the cathedral as she took a seat on a padded bench at the foot of the bed where they’d put Bells and Remi, asleep together.
But one thing kept reeling through her head as she spent the rest of the night in vigil.
If just the touch of a divine string had done this, what havoc would it wreak when all three were found and reunited with the harp itself?
And was it worth them finding out?