Chapter 49
ALEX
Alex thudded onto the marble floor, back inside the house, her clothes, skin and hair all soaked, while the wind and the storm screamed on outside, rattling the windows and the doors like some kind of demonic force intent on its destruction.
And perhaps it was. If Crom could tear down Wildewood Hall, and kill her in the process, that might free him too.
He already had Nick, the guardian of the wild wood. And he had almost had her as well.
With no idea of what had just happened or how she had found herself back here, Alex tried to make herself move, to roll onto all fours and get up.
She was clutching the circle of vegetation in her hand, half crushed and still as wet from the rain as she was.
She had no idea where it had actually come from and how she had brought it inside.
Her hands were torn and scratched, with smears of blood, dirt and sap all over them. Had she made it? Or found it?
Or… or had that dream been real? Had she been given it?
She thought of the stone circle, and the light of that ancient sun, and the Cailleach. And the old oak tree.
If that was real, Nick was gone.
Something like a stone landed in her chest and all her ribs seemed to tighten. She felt brittle, like she would crumble to pieces. Her eyes burned. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…
Blaise’s soft laugh echoed through the hall and that brought her back to her senses. He was still here. And so was Crom. Without Nick to contain them, their spirits roamed free.
Bury him deep…
That’s what her grandfather had tried to do, right under the house, in the undercroft after she had let it out. He had buried it deep, bound it with charms and sealed it up again, hidden the very chamber which contained its resting place.
The study door was open so she made for it.
Nick could still be outside in the storm, in the forest. He’d been helpless and lost and…
Or he was gone. Really gone.
Alex had to push the thought away. There wasn’t time.
‘Really?’ Blaise’s voice asked. ‘You’re just going to abandon him to his fate? The man you so recently claimed to love? The man who sacrificed himself to save you?’
‘You said he wasn’t a man,’ Alex snarled.
His figure coalesced from shadows now, standing behind the desk.
His desk, of course. He had ruled this house with a fist of steel and a voice which wrapped it in velvet.
Now he appeared again, drawing on every ounce of power left to him.
He looked like his portrait, in the prime of his life, heartbreakingly handsome, a Regency rake who would sit perfectly in any period drama and steal the heart of everyone who looked at him.
His smile was a twist of disdain on his perfect features and his eyes dark as his soul.
‘True,’ he told her. ‘He isn’t. I am here though and I can be whatever you want me to be, Alexandra. You know that. You always knew that. I will give you whatever you want and all you will ever know is pleasure. Just stop this foolishness. Accept your fate.’
The urge to listen to him was powerful. Because it would be so easy.
He didn’t lie to her. He never had. Her family had done nothing but lie.
To her and to Nick. Everything was based on lies.
From the very first. The de Wildes had lied and lied and used all those lies to gain power and influence.
They had used the power of the wild wood to draw on the power Crom granted them.
Their daughters had been the price, unless they ran as far and as fast as they could away from this place.
‘Run, Alex.’
Her father’s voice. The last thing he had said before Blaise had taken him over and turned him into a monster.
She clenched her hands around the circlet until its thorns dug into her hands. Her blood was fresh and bright, and the stab of pain drove a single moment of clarity into her.
Why was she even standing here talking to a ghost?
She lunged forward, through the secret door and down the stairs.
Blaise screamed in abject fury as he threw himself after her, and the house shook, the ground beneath her bucking wildly, trying to throw her off her feet. But Alex didn’t stop. She couldn’t. To stop now would be to give up and she couldn’t do that.
What would Nick say? What would Theo and Sally tell her?
Run, Alex.
It was his voice. Not her father, not her brother.
It was Nick. She knew it was Nick. His voice rippled in the air, in the earth beneath her, in the water that forced its way through the gaps and into the undercroft, trying to find its way in.
Because water always found a way. And in the earth there were roots and living things.
In this place of death and misery, there was still life.
The idol was still in the corner on the far side from the steps. She skidded to her knees and grabbed it, turning as she did so.
Call on the wild wood, the old woman had said. Bury him deep, bind him and call on the wild wood.
Alex threw herself at the pit where Maeve had found the idol and Blaise’s cry of fury took her off her feet.
The ghosts raced in towards her, so many of them.
She could make out Daisy and Rose, but there were so many others.
Countless insubstantial hands tried to grab her and hold her, bathing her in that eerie ectoplasmic glow.
They raked over her flesh and dug into her clothes, tore at her hair.
They were the only light down here now, the only thing she could see, eyes like old coins, and mouths which opened to the void.
They were the playthings of Blaise Chambers, and nothing but food for Crom.
The old god had fed on them for all those years and they were as trapped in this as she was. All of them.
Daphne would tell her she needed to send them to the light, but there was no light down here. There was nothing but darkness and misery. That was why they congregated here.
There was no light. And she was as lost as they were. That was what they were all trying to tell her, a chorus of voices, all whispering, all lamenting, all telling her to stop, to give up, to give in.
To let Blaise Chambers win. As they had. It was the only way.
No, she refused to accept that.
Alex dropped to her knees, as the strength finally left her body. She was still holding the idol, but her hands were numb and helpless now, the circlet crushed in her grip against the cold metal.
She felt Blaise appear behind her, felt his hands on her back, on her shoulders, wrapping around her throat. He squeezed until her breath almost stopped. Her eyes fluttered closed. She couldn’t fight him anymore.
‘That’s it, my beloved Alexandra,’ he murmured. ‘Just give in. Just let go.’
Just let go.
Alex smiled. It wasn’t what he meant, but he’d said it all the same. A command. And he did so love to command her, to have her obey. She released the idol, letting it fall into the pit, and with it the circlet to bind it.
Her whole body slumped down until her hands, scratched and bleeding, hit the bare earth, her nails digging into it as deeply as she could.
‘No,’ Blaise snarled, his grip tightening. ‘No, you stupid bitch. What have you done?’
‘What I have to,’ she told him, her voice no more than a hiss, and then she called on the wild wood. She didn’t have to speak to do that. It was in her blood, in her soul. And thanks to Nick, in her heart. She just reached for it.
And the wild wood answered.
The roots surged up from beneath her, and her mouth filled with the taste of leaves, and moss and living growing things.
The rustling of unfurling foliage drowned out the ghosts, the creak of branches and bark.
A green glow filled the darkness, the bioluminescence of verdant and growing things, of life itself, of sunlight filtering through the high canopy and dappling on the ferny floor, the shifting light of evening through the trees.
It was everywhere, everything, in her and all around her.
Filling her and spilling out of her, engulfing this space.
Alex slumped down and let it take her, let it fill her and the void beneath her house.
Wildewood Hall shook as the storm outside became a storm at its foundations and she was the source of it.
Part de Wilde, part Kilfayne, part something else entirely.
Herself. Alex O’Neill, PhD. Determined, stubborn, defiant, the cynic, the rationalist, the killjoy, the great debunker, the sceptic’s sceptic…
Vines wound about her body, tendrils threaded through her veins, flowers filled her eyes and leaves her mouth and she was lost in the wild wood. She was never coming back. She knew that. She was part of it now. She was gone.
A hand took hers, strong as oak, but gentle as a newly unfurled leaf. Another touched her face, cradling her cheek. He tilted her head up from the ground, from the pit and the endless dark, like a flower turning to the light.
‘Alex?’ Nick murmured. His voice carried a strange reverberation, as if it was so much bigger than it sounded, as if the whole forest filled it. And perhaps it did. ‘Alex, a chuisle mo chroí, look at me.’
She blinked and her sight returned to her. Nick was kneeling before her, where the pit had been, his smile so perfect. The one sight she craved above all else.
He was safe. He was here.
Or else, the more obvious thing struck her, they were both dead and this was some kind of afterlife which she had never really believed in.
Nick gave a soft laugh as if reading her thoughts. Because he had always seemed able to do that. ‘We aren’t dead, mo stór. Far from it. We have never been so full of life. Come on, let’s get out of here, you and me.’
‘How are you here?’ she murmured, as he lifted her from the dirt floor which now was covered in green and growing things, all entwined together.
The pit was gone, buried in a mass of vegetation, criss-crossed with roots and branches, still moving, reclaiming this place.
Trees had torn through the ceiling and had burst through up into the study, and were still forcing their way onwards through the floors and walls of Wildewood Hall.
One of the unused bedrooms above it was no doubt gone as well, along with part of the attics.
‘Nick, answer me.’
‘The wood sent me back. For you. Hush now. We’ll talk later. Let me get you to safety.’
Nick carried her up the stairs, and out into the hallway, and from there to the kitchen.
He always gravitated to the hearth. Alex stared at the remains of the Hall as they went, the devastation from the broken windows, the deadwood and broken stonework in the drawing room, and the very much living wood which had erupted in the study behind her, and she wondered how on earth they would explain any of this to the insurance company.
But for now, Nick held her. Nick was there. Real and solid, and he felt so very human. As exhaustion took her, she decided that she would just be happy with that.