Chapter 25 Crimson Crystal Calling
CRIMSON CRYSTAL CALLING
VANESSA
Sleep refused to come, but that wasn’t surprising.
I lay tangled in the sheets, my body restless, my mind clawing for calm. Every creak of the house made me flinch, every rattle of wind against the windows tightened something deep inside my chest.
He was gone.
I didn’t know how long it had been, minutes, hours, but the emptiness beside me stretched like an eternity. The fire in the hearth had burned low, leaving only faint embers that pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat. Each one whispered the same terrible thought.
What if he didn’t come back?
What if this family reunion he spoke of ended in blood… His blood… Their blood?
What if Victor and Talon finished what they started, and this time, his darkness wasn’t strong enough to keep him alive? What if he hurt one of them? All these thoughts made my stomach twist painfully. I was terrified.
Terrified of what he might do.
Terrified of what they might do to him.
He had told me to stay in my room, to lock the door, and I had done just that. I’d lain there after first pacing the floorboards, staring out into the darkness beyond the glass, as if somehow, I’d see him striding back across the grounds.
But there was nothing. No sign of him.
Only the endless shadows moving in the mist.
Finally, I had given up and thrown myself on the bed. But after tossing and turning, I soon found myself up and at the window once again. My fingers brushed against the cool pane, my reflection faint in the moonlight. My pulse beat against my throat like a trapped bird.
At what point had he stopped being my captor and instead become my protector? Become someone I cared deeply about?
Someone I had fallen in love with.
So naturally, I was going out of my mind with worry, and that was how I came to the reckless decision that I would go after him.
Just to see. Just to know if he was really gone.
I didn’t plan on stepping outside, not at first, only to peek, to reassure myself that the manor wasn’t as silent as the grave it resembled. But even as I turned from the window, the floor shifted beneath me with a low groan, the kind of sound that made you wonder if the house itself was watching.
Then I heard it.
The soft click of my door.
I froze.
It wasn’t the storm, nor the wind. It was deliberate… Slow.
The handle turned, the hinges sighed, and the door opened just enough to let the corridor’s shadows spill inside. My breath hitched.
“Vas?” I whispered, relief and worry tangling together in my voice. But there was no answer. Only silence, thick and unnatural. My bare feet soundless on the cold floor as I stepped closer. The air felt… wrong.
Heavy. Distorted. As if the house itself was holding its breath.
“Vas?” I said again, a little louder this time.
That was when I saw it. A shape standing in the doorway. Tall, still, with the outline barely distinguishable against the faint light bleeding in from the hall. My heart stuttered painfully.
“Vas is… is that you?”
And then it came.
That laugh.
Low at first, then rising into a shrill, unholy sound that clawed its way down my spine.
I knew that voice. I’d heard it before. Once, I thought it belonged to the witch, the one who attacked me in that abandoned hardware store.
But now I wasn’t so sure. It echoed through me like a memory older than my own, something buried deep in the corridors of my mind.
Memories whispering of a time when I’d escaped her before… Or thought I had.
The witch.
My blood ran cold.
I stumbled back, shaking my head, trying to convince myself I was imagining it. But then I saw it, the glint. A quick flash of silver, catching the faintest sliver of moonlight.
A knife.
A gasp tore from my lips, the sound too loud in the suffocating quiet. My back hit the edge of the bed, my hand clutching at the post as if it could shield me from what was coming.
The figure moved closer, the blade catching the light again. And that laugh… Gods, that laugh, it echoed around the room once more.
Haunting. Familiar. Merciless.
A sound I felt like I had been suppressing all my life, yet how was that possible?
“Welcome home, little homewrecker,” the voice purred.
The words weren’t just heard, they were felt, sliding under my skin like poison, thick and cold. The air shifted, the warmth from the fire snuffed out by a sudden, unnatural chill.
And then I knew.
It wasn’t the witch.
A laugh followed, high, brittle, unhinged, and my blood froze. A glint of silver flickered in the dark, moving closer with each breath I took. My pulse thundered in my ears as I edged toward the wall, keeping the bed between us, my fingers searching blindly for the switch.
“What do you want?!” I snapped, my voice cutting through her laughter for the briefest, blessed moment. Then I finally found it, and flipped it on, flooding the room in a soft glow, which was when I saw who it was. And with it my proof, as, like I thought, it wasn’t the witch.
No… It was something far worse.
Her hair hung in dark, tangled ropes around her face, damp and matted as if she had clawed her way from the grave.
Her gown, once white, now clung to her in tatters, streaked with dirt and old blood, the fabric whispering as she moved.
But it wasn’t just her appearance that froze me.
It was the way she looked at me. Wild. Unblinking.
Her eyes shimmered between green and gold, like oil on water, darting around the room as though she were trying to cage me with her stare.
Then her face changed.
It happened so fast, I thought my mind had fractured.
One blink and suddenly, it was my mother standing there.
Her kind eyes, her trembling mouth, the faint scar on her chin, I’d once kissed goodnight.
A gift from my father and one of his violent outbursts.
My throat closed, and I staggered back, my voice breaking.
“Mom?”
But the smile she gave me wasn’t my mother’s. It was stretched too wide, too knowing.
“Poor little girl,” she cooed, her voice sickly sweet, almost tender.
“Always running from ghosts.” The edges of her form shimmered again, the illusion rippling like heat on glass, and before I could breathe, my next horror came, as he stood there…
My father.
His expression was cold, carved from the same cruel disappointment that had haunted me all my life.
“Useless!” he spat, his voice low and venomous, slicing through the air like the crack of a whip.
“Just like your mother.” The words struck like a physical blow.
My lungs locked. My heart pounded so violently it felt as though it might burst through my ribs.
The room seemed to tilt, walls pressing in closer with every breath I couldn’t take.
I stumbled back, shaking my head, trying to claw myself free from a memory that wasn’t real… couldn’t be real.
“Yy… you’re not… not real,” I stammered, my voice splintering. But the more I denied it, the more his presence filled the room, his scent, cigarettes and cheap whiskey curling into my nose like the stench of the past I’d buried.
He sneered, the veins in his neck standing out, his shadow stretching long across the floor until it swallowed my feet.
“Why don’t you just do the world a favor?” he hissed, sneering at me.
“Kill yourself, like that dumb bitch did.”
The words ripped the air from my lungs. My knees buckled, and I caught the edge of the dresser to stop from falling, my trembling fingers slick with sweat.
I wanted to scream, but nothing came. The familiar terror, raw and suffocating, rose like a tide inside me, dragging me under.
Every bruise, every broken plea, every night I’d spent praying for the shouting to stop came roaring back in that instant.
And somewhere in that storm of memory and fear, I realized that someone else was doing this to me.
The strange, haggard woman who had first entered the room.
She, whoever she was, was doing this to me.
She was feeding on it. Twisting it. Turning my fear into her weapon, and I was bleeding from the inside out.
The figure laughed, a sound that cracked and bled into another tone entirely. The illusion burned away, melting into someone new.
A woman.
One I didn’t recognize this time, as she was not the same as the first to enter the room.
Her beauty was sharp and terrible, her lips painted the red of ruin, her hair a halo of shadow that framed a face both regal and deranged.
The air thickened with the scent of iron and old roses, and I realised then that whatever she was, she was still gorging herself on my fear.
She smiled, a cruel, delighted thing.
“Ah, there you are,” she purred, her voice curling through the room like smoke.
“Now I see what he saw in you.” My stomach dropped.
“Who… who are you?” I whispered, still backing away, unsure of whether or not she would strike, but waiting for it all the same. The woman tilted her head, the gold in her eyes catching the light, a reflection of something monstrous lurking just beneath the surface.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she murmured, stepping closer, the knife in her hand glinting like a promise. A knife I had forgotten about until now.
“You…” she hissed, the knife trembling in her hand.
“You can’t have him.” My heart stumbled, my mind struggling to make sense of what I was hearing.
“I… I don’t understand,” I stammered, backing away, the edge of the chair hitting the back of my knees. My hands reached out to steady myself.
“Who are…”
“I won’t let it happen again!” she screamed, cutting me off. Her voice was shrill, splitting through the air like broken glass.
“She stole him away from me! But I won’t let it happen again.” My stomach turned to stone. Took him once? Was she talking about Vas?
But before I could find the words to argue against her, she lunged.