Chapter 11 #2
So fuck it.
She straightened, lifted her chin, and walked farther into the room.
And she noticed that Dorian was missing.
He’s trying to slow the unraveling, Hunter told her in her mind.
Are you always in my head? she shot back, because damn it, she didn’t want him to know her moment of weakness.
No, I jump in and out. I’ll teach you how to shield as soon as we’re done here. “Yo, wizard,” Hunter called out when nobody bothered turning in their direction.
Lachlan turned. “Here’s the other wee demon,” he burred in his thick Scottish accent. Then his eyes moved to Daphne and gentled. “Hello, lass.”
“So what’s the plan?” Hunter asked to no one in particular.
“Obviously, we can’t fix this. It’s beyond the scope of all our magic,” Melisandre said. “But we can try to outsmart it.”
“I guess you guys have a plan?”
“A three-part plan,” Lachlan said, unshakably calm.
“Melisandre and I will cast a containment dome around the town, like a pressure seal to keep the bleed contained to where it’s manifesting.
We’ll siphon power from Aryon and Elara for casting,” he went on.
“They’ll also manipulate the minds o’ the folks to override hallucinations and reduce panic. ”
She blinked. “The elves are sedating the town.”
He frowned, thinking for a second. Then, “Aye.”
Nick strode in, Jade at his side, looking way too calm for any of this. “We’ll hit the streets. A few more healers are joining. We’ll patch up whoever needs it, in body or otherwise.”
Because apparently, nightmare injuries were just a Tuesday afternoon now.
Lachlan kept recapping the plan. “We’ll anchor the containment dome at the cardinal points, forming an energy axis. Melisandre and I will anchor North and South. The elves take East and West.”
Like it was just geometry. Or geography. Anything other than the absolute cosmic-level shitstorm that it really was.
“It can work,” Hunter said. “Syphon from me, too. You can use more power, and my kind can be useful given the situation.”
“What is your kind of power?” Daphne asked. Wasn’t all the power just power?
But he winked. “Old, hot, and pulled from the gaps between a heartbeat and a scream.”
“Dark, unstable, and about as soothing as a punch to the soul,” Lachlan scoffed. “But aye. It could work. Give me.” The mayor stretched out a hand like he was asking for a pen. And Hunter, because apparently this was normal, offered his arm.
Wait. What? Why did he offer–
Lachlan pulled a pocketknife from his jeans and casually sliced Hunter’s wrist.
What?!
Hunter didn’t even flinch. And like it was nothing, nothing at all, someone passed Lachlan a fucking teacup, and the Mayor of Mystic Hollow began collecting her soulmate’s blood.
“Technically, I don’t have blood,” Hunter said, calm as you please. “But I’ve got nothing to offer in my real form, so this is the best workaround. My magic lets me take any shape I want, so this body, this blood, it carries enough of me for Lachlan to draw on. It’ll make the spell stronger.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said.
Stupidly.
And when the bled-out was done, his wrist just closed up. Not even a scar. She snatched his hand to look at how perfect, simply perfect it all looked. That night in her kitchen, when he took her knife by the blade... she’d seen the blood, but it had been so fast. Now though...
“She knows what ye are, aye?” Lachlan asked, frowning.
“Of course.” Hunter put an arm companionably on her shoulders. “She never saw me sliced up, but she’ll be fine.”
She didn’t even question leaning a little on him because, man, it had been such a long day. And, she knew, the worst part hadn’t even started yet.
Because they all had their tasks, they would all come together to try to soften the horrid blow the entire town was getting.
But she also realized she was the only one who could stop it.
She left the safety of Hunter’s body and walked to the table where, indeed, a map of the town was laid out.
Four large red circles marked the places they thought were optimal for the energy axis.
All was in place.
Behind her, people had started talking again. Lachlan and Melisandre were brainstorming the best and fastest spells. The elves glowed with barely contained power. Nick and Jade were deciding which roads to hit first as they texted other healers.
It was time to tell them where she intended to be.
“I’ll go straight to the source,” she said.
She’d never know how any of them heard her words, but silence seized the room within a breath. No one moved.
Hunter’s voice cut through the quiet. “No.”
“Yes.” She looked at him, felt his love through their connection, and sent some of hers back.
It wasn’t flowery, she didn’t do flowery on a happy day, let alone in today’s doom and gloom.
But it was fierce and layered with a healthy dose of I love you, now shut up and let me be a badass.
“Yes, Hunter. It opened because of me. I’ll be the one shutting the damn door closed. ”
“You heard Dorian, it’s dangerous. Besides, he’s working on it right now, and I’m going too, as soon as their plan starts working.”
She rested her hand on his chest, on his thundering heart, and pressed a little. “No one else but me.”
“Damn it, Daphne.”
“It might be the only way,” Lachlan said quietly, his face solemn.
Everything in Hunter rebelled at the idea, but he also respected her too much to stop her.
He capitulated with a vicious curse. He spun around, hands on his hips.
“Fuck it. Fuck it.” He took a long breath, closed his eyes, and she felt deep into her bones the weight of how hard it was for him to pull back.
“I’ll be there too,” he said then. “You do this. But you won’t be alone. Not this time.”
She nodded, trying to untie the knot in her throat.
“Can ye give us power while ye’re with her, safely?” Lachlan asked. “I’ll understand if ye pull out.”
Hunter scoffed. “Please. It doesn’t even make a dent,” he muttered.
It made her laugh, for some reason. Maybe nerves. Maybe love. Maybe both. The swagger really was stronger than anything else in this demon.
“Alright,” Daphne said. “Time’s a-wasting. I guess I have to sleep to do this, so... anyone want to knock me out real quick?”
Melisandre came forward with her doctor’s bag. “Let’s get you comfortable in the guest room.”
~*~
Daphne opened her eyes.
She was back in the forest with the weird, mirrored-bark trees.
Okay. Not what she had expected. She would have put good money on being taken back to the night dear father killed her mom.
Alright.
It looked the same. Same tall trees, their bark silver and slick.
The only noticeable difference was the black sap dripping, slow but steady, from invisible cracks, like feelings bleeding from a wounded soul.
It was darker, though. Emptier. It might have been because of how it felt, but her steps, when she took them, echoed.
They blurred into the faint ripple of an off-key lullaby–her mother’s voice? She couldn’t tell.
She neared the closest tree where the smoke in the bark, in the mirror, writhed and twitched as if waiting, waiting. But nothing crept into views, no face seeped out this time. Only the smoke. Only the emptiness of it.
Slowly, carefully, she walked deeper into the forest until it surrounded her like a prison made of twirling reflections shivering with breathless wrongness. The whispers started low, slurred. Convoluted, confusing. She couldn’t catch more than a few words–forgot. Pretend. Fake.
And as the whispers started aligning, as they grew louder, her heart kicked into a panicked rhythm, her breaths tangled and sharp.
Because she knew the voices coming from the endless depth of the smoke-warped mirrors.
The voices were hers. They all were her voice.
And, like something dragged straight out of misery, she knew what those voices hiding behind smoke were saying.
The little girl in the corner of her bedroom, too scared to cry, said, You forgot me.
The teen who planned to escape said, What had been the point of surviving?
The young woman, mastering self-defense and calling it closure, said, You pretended too well. Even I forgot it was fake.
There was no danger, not real. None of them came out for the mirror. But they begged, and accused, and demanded why, why did she leave them behind, why did she let them rot and molder. Louder and louder, everywhere at once, until they were all that was real, all that was her.
And that she could not stand.
She clamped her hands over her ears and fell on her knees as her eyes shut and the scream tore out of her throat. On and on until her throat was scraped raw, until her voice fractured, and her muscles trembled from coiling so tight.
And it stopped.
Silence and quiet dropped on her like a coffin lid. She was left panting, her forehead on the barren ground, folded like a broken marionette with its strings cut. She opened her eyes.
She was not alone.
She was surrounded.
All the versions of her, all those she’d been but somehow cut off like a festered limb, looked at her.
Silence was so loud, a whistle started in her ears.
None of them opened their mouths, and yet, she knew.
She knew what they were saying. We’re breathing truths you can never choke out.
And when Daphne thought they would come at her, flood her mind, and extract their revenge, they knelt.
One by one, they fell on their knees.
One by one, their heads hung low.
One by one, they started feeding her memories. It was a pulling, dragging weight that sank into her chest and mind alike, each forcing her to relive a memory she believed she’d accepted.
The moment her mother died without a scream.
The morning she said I love you to her aunt, but couldn’t feel it.
The day she assured her therapist she was fine and smiled.
The time she flinched at a kind touch and pretended it had been out of silly spookiness.