Chapter 43
ALEX
The storm outside was getting worse. An update on Alex’s phone told her that the storm warning had been raised to red overnight.
There was a string of messages from her team, but she honestly didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now.
She was exhausted. All she wanted to do was sit in front of the fire they had lit in the fireplace and drink her wine.
Then sleep. But the oppressive sense of the house still weighed on her.
And the storm meant they were trapped in here.
She watched Nick cross to the windows and stare out into the night. She wasn’t even sure what he could see. The rain lashing against the panes obscured even the darkness outside, pressing close as if trying to get inside.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked. The cut on his leg hadn’t been bad but it had bled a lot initially, so much so that she’d feared it was much more serious. And then it had just stopped. Still, it worried her. After everything that had happened…
‘They’re unsettled,’ he murmured. ‘Scared.’
‘The woods?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can sense that? What they’re… feeling?’
‘I can sense the wild wood, the trees themselves and the spirits in them. I don’t know what it’s feeling exactly but… it’s part of me. I feel it inside of me. The woods are scared. Not just of the storm. There’s something else.’
The image of the idol beneath them came vividly to her mind again. Too vividly. Something else indeed. And Nick… he hadn’t been himself since the cellar. Something was wrong.
‘Are they trying to warn us?’
A thud sounded from overhead, where her bedroom was, and then they both distinctly heard the sound of footsteps. Slow and steady, determined, they moved across the ceiling, heading for where the door would be. Footsteps on the stairs. Laughter, dark and terrible.
Alex threw open the door to the hallway. She hadn’t even been aware of getting up and running across the room, but the next moment she had the handle in her hand and she was looking out into the hall leading to the front door.
There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. The hall was empty. Wildewood Hall did so love to play games.
The lightbulbs flickered, dimmed for a second, then blazed with an incandescence which made her eyes burn.
An afterimage appeared, where she had been staring, Blaise Chambers, dark and beautiful and terrible, standing in front of her, one hand reaching out towards her, as if to touch her face. He wasn’t gone. She might have saved Sally but he was still there!
The house plunged into darkness.
Nick cursed loudly and Alex recoiled, bumping into him where he had followed her. They retreated, back into the warm and ruddy light of the fire.
‘Power cut?’ she asked, aware that her voice was shaking. There was no sign of Chambers now, but it still felt like he was watching her. Smiling that horrible smile. Laughing at them.
‘I’ll check the circuit board and get the generator going.’
A dreadful feeling twisted in her stomach. ‘Where is the generator, Nick?’
Don’t say the cellar, she thought, sudden fear clawing at her throat. Please don’t say the cellar.
‘In the outbuilding to the back of the kitchen,’ he said solemnly, as if reading her mind and trying to put her at ease.
‘It’s fine.’ Apart from him having to go out in the storm.
‘Here.’ He grabbed a couple of candles from the mantelpiece and lit them from the fire before putting them into two candlesticks.
He handed one to her. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. ’
‘Is it safe out there?’
He actually smiled. As if having something to do, no matter how dangerous, was finally a relief.
‘I’ve a torch and wet weather gear in the boot room. It’s just a storm. A bad one but just a storm. I’ll be fine. Back in no time.’
She had to say it. ‘What if the house locks you out again?’
He fixed her with a more serious look. ‘You’re in here. It’s not going to stop me getting back to you, Alex.’
There was nothing she could think of to say to stop him. She clung to her candlestick, and watched the flickering pool of light around him make its way out to the hall and vanish.
The house seemed to close its arms around her chest and squeeze. It drove the air from her lungs and her heart lurched up in her throat.
‘You still want him,’ the dark voice murmured from just behind her. ‘Take him. He’ll only thank you for it. He wants you so desperately. He needs you. You know that.’
Alex tried to push the intrusive spirit from her, picturing a beam of light shining down on her, just like Daphne had drilled them all on time and time again. She had never taken it seriously before. Now it felt like the single lifeline she could cling to.
Her legs went from underneath her and she dropped to her knees, knuckles white on the candlestick.
‘Really?’ Blaise chuckled softly. A ghostly hand, like the touch of the north wind, curled around her throat and squeezed until Alex’s mouth opened. ‘You think you’re strong enough to withstand the two of us combined?’
The words snagged on her reeling mind. The two of us? What did he mean, the two of us?
Lips brushed against hers and something kissed her, delving deep into her, every touch maddening.
She couldn’t see him but she could feel him.
She could barely feel anything else. The pressure all around her deepened its grip.
Hands slid down her sides, and then his fingertips were on her skin. Clothes meant nothing to him.
‘Don’t…’ she tried to say.
‘You don’t mean that. I know what you want. Your own body betrays you. Let me show you. Surrender to me, Alexandra.’
The mouth trailed down the side of her neck, captured one hardened nipple and he sucked hard, making her gasp out loud.
‘I’m a god,’ he whispered. ‘I joined myself to Crom. I made that bargain long ago. And now you have released the strongest part of me. Locked in the dark, lost in the depths beneath the house there was little I could do but influence life above. But now… now… We have tasted the blood of the guardian and it is so sweet. Let us take more, you and I together. Let us devour him…’ She could feel the wolfish grin against her flesh, the touch of his teeth.
‘With the idol free of the pit, I can show you pleasure the like of which you have never known. We will bring it into the light, you and I. And with him, I can be everything you could ever wish for. All you have to do is give him to me. You can do that, Alexandra. Give me a new life and I will give you everything.’
His questing fingers slipped inside her, finding the warm depths of her body and her soul, twisting and stroking until Alex’s head fell back, helpless before him. Ghost, god, who knew what he was? But all her defences were nothing now.
The two of them, Chambers had said. The ghost and the god.
She was a fool. What had she been thinking?
Pleasure rippled through her body, raw and terrible. A spear of desire that shook its way to her core and left her gasping and desperate.
‘Let me in, Alexandra. Let me give you everything. Worship me and I will adore you. You’re the last of the de Wildes and you carry the blood of the women of Kilfayne, those very witches who imprisoned Great Crom. And now, my beloved, you will set us free.’
The candle went out. Only the firelight illuminated the room and she was trapped.
In the mirror over the fireplace, she could see her reflection, silhouetted against the flames.
Her skin was flushed and gilded as the infernal light touched it.
And all around her, the shadow wound itself like a great boa constrictor, tightening its grip, burrowing into her and weaving spells beneath her treacherous willing flesh.
She was alone in the house. Nick was outside somewhere in the storm.
But he was near the forest, near the trees.
Surely, they would protect him. She had to warn him!
She tried to reach out again, tried to catch that sense of the wild that had come to her in the undercroft when she had needed it most. It slipped away from her.
‘Not this time,’ Blaise chuckled. ‘Do not fear. You will both be ours. The last of the de Wildes and the last guardian of the wild wood. Don’t you see, my beloved?
You are the key we have been waiting for.
You are the bait for this trap. You made him fall.
And with him everything holding us trapped in this place will fall as well.
My lord Crom and I will be free at last. Free of Wildewood Hall, free of the wild wood itself.
There is a whole world out there ready for us to make our own. ’