Chapter 11 #2
Fierdon moves in front of me. I clutch at his arm, ignoring the wet red that covers my hand. Itrimort clocks the touch, his demonic gaze moving from my hand to my face and back to Fierdon.
“She’s ruined this town for me. So many followers, dead. I’ll have to start all over again. Beginning anew requires such power. Give her to me, Horseman.”
“You have chosen poorly, Itrimort. This town is not fit to host a demon of your foul nature, and this woman will not be going anywhere with you. She bears my mark. She is mine.”
I squeeze his hand tighter. He gives me a quick squeeze back. Reassurance pushes past the fog of dread sucking the rationale from my thoughts.
Itrimort’s reptilian eyes narrow. “She will suffer by one fate or the next. I am master of the suffering fates and I cannot excuse her actions. Revenge is necessary. Of course, you know all about suffering, Horseman. How dark was it in your solitude? How endlessly lonely. I know firsthand the torment of being locked away below.”
“Your breath is wasted on me, Itrimort.” Fierdon remains calm. Meanwhile, my lungs are practically frozen. I might die of air loss, if not fright, if I don’t breathe soon.
Itrimort is undeterred. “I’ll make you a bargain. Leave Sleepy Hollow, travel, roam, collect heads from here to the ends of the Earth. Do whatever you please. Never look for me and never look back. In return, I shall send this mortal to the demon realm in your place.”
Icy fear spiders through my veins.
“What makes you think the demon realm would accept another in my place?”
I blink at Fier. Is he really considering this?
“She already bears your mark. It is within my power to send her to your prison, to fool the world beneath. You’ll never again be summoned or controlled by another.”
A grim quiet falls over the space. The longer Fierdon seems to think it over, the wider Itrimort’s smile grows.
My panic has reached monumental heights by the time Fierdon turns to me.
“Fier?” I want to say more, but I’m terrified.
If I were him, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go back to an eternal prison of darkness.
I wouldn’t want to be trapped below, waiting for someone to summon me and use me before tossing me into the darkness once more. What if he agrees? “Fier. Please…”
“No.” The word is as sweetly sung as one of my own songs.
“No?” Itrimort sneers. “Then I suppose I’ll have to send you back myself.”
“None but my summoner can—”
“Don’t be a fool,” Itrimort spits. “My vessel studied that book for months. I can still see the words of your spell in his mind. He may not have chosen you but he stared at your page enough times to condemn you. That spell has barely been altered since you were first cursed. What makes you think I don’t know it by heart? ”
The book. Is there anything in the tattered pages of that dark presence that can help me protect Fier?
“Emeline.” Fierdon’s voice is quiet. “The book.”
“I’m on it,” I whisper to him.
Itrimort’s laugh rattles the room. “It’s far too late for that. From deep beneath lie worms and dirt. Call home your faithful—”
Fierdon slams into him, tackling Itrimort to the ground.
I break away, sprinting out the door and straight for Alesia’s. There are bodies all around me. I try to ignore them.
Minx hisses as I rush to the cupboard where I’ve stashed the book. I slam it open, flipping until I find The Horseman’s drawing. The words on the backside of his summoning page are glowing, one by one. Itrimort is enacting the spell to banish Fierdon to the demon realm.
My gaze jumps from the different handwritings and to the old blood stamped next to their additions.
“I can fix this. I can fix this.” Gripping a quill and ink from the small writing desk, I quickly scribble new words.
“Only thee who hath summoned The Horseman may release him. Blood must be given. Magic must be paid. The Horseman shall not return until all commands have been obeyed.” I shout several commands at once, “The Horseman will tend to my needs, day and night. The Horseman will use his dark gifts for more than mere fright. The Horseman will obey me until my dying day. Roaming the mortal world even after I’ve gone away. ”
Jamming the quill into my thumb, I draw a thick drop of blood to the tip.
The final line of the spell is being illuminated. It’s almost too late.
My skin burns as I press the freshly wounded flesh to the parchment next to my addition. Magic zaps through me—that’s all it can be. The walls creak, voices screeching from the shadows. Did it work?
Clutching the book, I race back toward my home.
Itrimort and Fierdon are staring at one another, both bloodied and wounded. When I shove through the door with the spell book in hand, Itrimort’s glare cuts straight through me.
“Impossible.”
Fierdon pulls me to him. “I must finish this.”
“I did what I could. I hope it was enough to save you.” My voice is wobbly and quiet .
He asks me softly, “Are you attached to this home?”
I have many memories here. The times I spent with Leed. Good, bad, beautiful, and sad scenes play out in my mind. The dark times outweigh the light now.
“No.” This house is but a shell for my wounded heart, clinging to the air-starved pieces of my former life.
“Good.”
At first, I attribute the trembling beneath me to my own, unsteady limbs. But as dishes rattle in their cabinets and books tumble from their shelves, I realize the house itself is shaking.
Itrimort’s slitted eyes dart around. “Horseman—” his words are cut short.
Vines funnel up from the floor, bursting free and consuming the entirety of the room we are in. A mass the thickness of a tree stabs straight through Itrimort’s abdomen.
He stares down, lips pursing. Instead of dropping dead, he rips the mass free. The hole in his middle seals up. Fierdon strikes again, sending vines through his chest, stomach, and legs.
Again, Itrimort rips them free and heals.
“Fierdon?” What he’s doing isn’t working.
More vines impale Itrimort, so many that it slows his ability to remove them all at once. Fierdon turns to me.
“We don’t have the time nor ingredients to perform a proper banishment spell.” His words are difficult to hear over the writhing greenery still rocking the foundation of the home.
“Then what are you doing?” I watch again as Itrimort removes the vines piercing his internal organs and heals himself.
“I need to completely destroy his vessel. They’ve fused so much. I’ll have to get creative.”
“Enough of this,” Itrimort hisses. He raises both clawed hands in the air.
Fierdon shields me with his body just as the walls and roof are blown off.
My screams pierce the night as I’m ripped free from Fierdon’s hold. Scaled hands grip my waist. How did Itrimort get behind me? Glancing over my shoulder, I find all traces of Reverend Statton have vanished. A dark, lizard-like demon has consumed the entirety of his human form.
He squeezes me tighter. The scent of burning flesh assaults me. I gag, struggling against his hold and gripping the book for dear life.
“You should have taken the trade. Her heart belongs to me, now. You’ll watch her die and then roam this world alone.”
Those razor-sharp claws settle just before my chest. Pain burns through me as they puncture my skin. He’s going to rip my heart out.
The hand burying into my chest abruptly stops. The palm swells as scaly fingers are overtaken by a quickly growing protrusion. His skin splits, and a deep green pumpkin blooms outward. There’s an ear-splitting shriek as a second pumpkin grows from his other hand.
Before I can comprehend what’s happening, a vine snaps outward, wrapping around my waist and jerking me toward Fierdon.
He spins me, clutching my back to his chest. Itrimort is stumbling around.
His mutilated hands clutch his face as a pumpkin grows out through his eye socket.
Another gourd grows from his groin, it’s the largest so far.
Itrimort’s shrieks turn to pitchy squeals of horror and pain. That pumpkin seemed personal.
They grow and grow, with some reaching the size of a wagon wheel. His scales vanish beneath the lumpy collection of various-shaped green gourds.
My own scream breaks loose when the first one smashes wide.
Black pumpkin guts spray across the room.
Fierdon turns me away, keeping me tucked into his chest. The wet squelching and sounds of raining seeds and chunks of rotted pumpkin flesh tell me that the rest of Itrimort’s gourds are rupturing in the same way as the first.
His sounds become garbled and then altogether cease.
Fierdon rises, releasing me from his hold. Everything within a twelve-foot radius of us is covered in black and green goo. Itrimort is nowhere to be seen.
Familiar hoofbeats draw my attention to the left as Horace jumps the remaining wall of rubble and lands inside what was once my living room. He trots around, finding the largest pieces of pumpkin still remaining and stomping them until there’s nothing more than a pile of pulpy mush.
“Is he gone?”
Fierdon takes my hand. “Something as old and powerful as Itrimort cannot be destroyed for good. He’s returned to the edge of the demon realm, waiting to be summoned once more.”
“But if we have the book, no one else can summon him, right?” I clutch the book to my chest.
He shakes his head, the orange glow in his skull drawing me in. “We don’t know that our spell book is the only copy with his name inside.”
My throat tightens. “Will he come back here? If he’s summoned again?”
“He may.” His hand sweeps my hair back and gently cups the back of my head. “If he does, I will be here. You are under my protection now, nightingale. As are the others in Sleepy Hollow.”
The others. I swing my attention outside our crumbled walls.
Even after hearing the screams of the men, their brutal endings still shock me.
The town is covered in a web of vines that runs atop every roof and between each building.
Strung up in those vines are the bodies of every member of the Lamb’s Golden Light.
There are so many, all wearing the golden pin of Itrimort.
Young, old, familiar and unfamiliar alike.
My heart picks up, beating hard and fast as I search for one man in particular. “Is Leed…”
“Don’t look for him.” Fierdon steps before me. I don’t know how he commands the vines, but the ones I can still see vanish from above. The interconnected web of greenery disappears into the earth. All the bodies caught in the deadly vines drop, hitting the ground with wet, hard thunks.
“Go to the forest. Bring the women home.” Fierdon strokes my cheek. I’m crying. When did that start, and why?
A bony muzzle bumps my hand. Horace rubs against me, his forelegs stained in blood and smashed pumpkin. Fierdon lifts me, gently setting me on Horace’s tall back.
“I’ll get this cleaned up. Go. Bring them home.”