Microsoft word winterb.., p.45
Microsoft Word - Winterborn_final-ADRoland, page 45
lantern strategically on the support posts. Tam got a good look around. The building had been gutted,
all the stalls ripped out and the wood just piled in the corners. A massive, undulated sheet of plastic
hung in front of the back wall. A design painted on the wall picked up the light and flashed dully.
Dust hung in the air and spiderwebs as thick as gauze draped from the corners.
The shadows thickened and the room felt alive. Despite the light, the shadows crowded close,
casting out tiny tendrils to lick at Tam’s feet, at Silence’s feet.
Darien ordered Kevin to call them off. The boy sighed and the shadows edged back.
Did I really just figure out that Kevin controls shadows ? That’s—
Well, after all she went through, it definitely wasn’t impossible.
Darien crossed to the back wall and gripped a corner of the plastic. He ripped it away, jumping
back as it crashed down.
Tam sucked in a breath filled with dust and dirt.
The sun design, from her dream. Huge, close to twenty feet tall, twenty feet across, it took up most
of the wall. Metal glinted from the wall, mixed with the paint and stones and tiles. Below the massive
painting, a low wooden altar stretched out about five feet or so. Another painted design covered the
floor. Something sat on the altar, leaning against the wall, shrouded in thick plastic. Candles grouped
at either end.
Kevin crossed the room, bracketed by a tumbled formation of shadows that just barely skimmed
the edge corridor of light formed by the lanterns.
“I told you my mom was here,” he said, glaring over his shoulder. Tam shivered. He looked like an
old man, a demented old man. His shoulders hunched and the shadows ate away at his face.
Tam gasped. “You—” She faced Darien, the facts slowly sinking into her foggy head. “You brought
her body here?”
“Maman demanded it.” A darker shadow coalesced near the altar. The hag’s shape thickened,
solidified. She shivered as she stepped out of the wisps of darkness. The candles on the altar guttered
low, casting wild shadows on the design. The fluctuated flash of light and sparkle across the sun
dazzled Tam. This wasn’t a hallucination. She couldn’t close her eyes and make it go away. Her mind
and soul and heart screamed out, one single note that blasted through the last vestiges of the drug.
“Where’s Sean?” Tam asked. Darien gestured at Kevin.
The kid grinned, teeth as sharp as a cat’s. Maman limped into the dark side of the stable to the
right of the altar. Sean’s lean, lanky form staggered into the light and fell face first to the concrete floor in front of Kevin.
Tam bolted to his side, casting off Darien’s grasping fingers. She dropped to her knees at Sean’s
side and lifted his head into her lap. “Baby?” she whispered, brushing the cobwebs and dirt off his face with her fingertips. She cursed the drugs in her system that kept her from really seeing his face. His
features blurred and warped. She squeezed her eyes shut and used her fingers to trace his lips, his
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eyes, his nose.
After a moment she opened her eyes. She could see him, at last. “Baby,” she said again. He opened
his eyes slowly, blinked a few times.
“Tam?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Kevin?”
Her heart sank. “He’s right there.”
“He okay?”
She stared down at her husband, incredulous, refusing to believe the strained words coming out
of his mouth. “Yeah, he’s fine.” But I’ve been drugged, pushed around, knocked down a flight of
stairs, assaulted by…party guests, and dragged to a stable in the middle of a haunted estate.
Darien stepped into the circle of candlelight. “Listen to him, Tam. He cares only for Kevin. His
last link to a dead woman. What do you think he’d do or say if he knew the truth?”
Sean stirred, found enough strength to sit up. “Sharla’s here?”
Darien nodded. “Yeah. Right there in front of you.”
Kevin plopped down on his knees in front of the plastic-shrouded form. Dull black shoes poked
out from under the bottom edge of the plastic. Near the top, a split in the shroud revealed a damaged,
partially preserved face. Long strands of blond hair hung out of the shroud and clung to the textured
design behind the head.
Sean crawled forward until he drew even with Kevin. “Sharla.”
Darien whispered in Tam’s ear. “Watch what he does.”
Sean looped his arm around Kevin’s shoulders and held him close. Maman laughed, a wheezing
chuckle that made her belly pulse and quiver. Tam rose and pushed away from Darien.
She grabbed Kevin by the collar and hauled him back, away from the altar. He screamed and
kicked her in the shin. She kicked back, landing a good one to his thigh that left the kid writhing.
“Stop screwing with me,” she snarled. To his credit, Darien snagged the kid as he popped up and
screeched a battle cry. The shadows hissed and screamed with him, but with the light as bright as it
was around her, they couldn’t touch her.
Tam dropped to her knees in front of Sean. He broke eye contact with the corpse and finally
seemed to see her.
Hands gripped her head suddenly and snatched her backwards, into the shadows. She screamed
and struggled against whatever held her down on the ground. A face lit by candlelight leered at her,
rotten teeth glinting.
The hag knelt at her head—if ‘knelt’ could be used to describe the boneless way the horrible
creature seemed to sink into herself. Darien straddled Tam’s body and held her hands against the
rough concrete floor next to her head. Hands touched her ankles, and she strained her neck to see
who. Silence flashed a creepy, too-white smile. Beyond her, Sean reached out with one hand toward
the shrouded corpse.
The hag’s twisted hands hovered over her face, shoving her head down. Shadows swirled in and
out of the uneven gaps between her fingers. More filled the gaps in her wrinkles and swam in and out
of her mouth.
“Sean!” Tam screamed. “Help me!”
Darien snorted. “He’s not worth this fight, Tamsyn! He’s sitting on his ass staring at her corpse.”
Tam spit at him, but the glob fell short and landed on her chest. “Sean, get a lantern! Throw it at
them! Help me, you asshole!”
“Get mad,” Darien said. “Hate him.”
The hag’s hands pushed her skull against the floor even harder, forcing her to tilt her chin to
alleviate some of the pressure on the back of her head. Sobs erupted as Tam realized, he’s useless.
“Hate him,” Darien urged again. “He’s ruined every good thing you might have ever had.”
She screamed and strained to buck Darien off, to kick Silence away. The hag laughed, but it was
the sort of chuffing sound an animal made. She fought, for herself, for Sean.
Why him? He’s gone. Gone. Lost to me forever.
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Grief hit her like a freight train and she went limp so suddenly Darien lost his balance and fell
flat on top of her.
“Can’t say I haven’t ever wanted to end up like this,” he whispered in her ear before pushing
himself back up to his knees.
“Screw you,” she snarled.
Darien looked up at the hag and nodded. Tam hesitated—just long enough for the hag to fall face-
first toward her. Tam opened her mouth to scream, and the woman disappeared inside.
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Chapter Thirty-Four
Tam watched the red mass undulate and pulse. Tentacles flailed and waved. They plowed into the
ground and spread, black and fibrous, like tree roots.
“It’s rebirth, Tamsyn.”
“Darien?”
“Accept the darkest part of yourself. Embrace it. You’ve fought it for so long, and you’re miserable.
You cling to the antiquated notion that you should be good and kind, and that the truest, most
powerful, of human emotions should be hidden.”
Darien’s breath burned the back of her neck. “Do you have any idea how much peace you’ll
experience if you just gave up the charade? The war that is being waged in your heart and soul would
end.”
She turned around to face him. “I’m not like that. I hate that part of me.”
“Then why do you hold on to your pain?” His voice lowered and he whispered seductively. “Why
do you lull yourself to sleep thinking about all the people that have betrayed you? I know why. It makes you feel whole. You pretend to want to be free of all the pain and anger, but you wouldn’t know
what to do without it. That’s why you’ll never forgive Sean. Why you’ll never be able to accept Kevin,
and why you’ll never, ever be able to go a day without some sort of drug.”
That’s not true.
“I’m not like that,” she said. She still couldn’t see Darien, but she smelled him, felt his body heat.
The red gelatinous monster heaved its bulk up. It crashed down with a thunderous quake.
A moist, sticky tendril wrapped around her ankle. Darien’s hands clamped down on her shoulder
and held her in place as it crept up her leg. “Rebirth,” he said in her ear. “Become one of us.”
No more pain. No more worrying about Sean and his infidelity. Accept who you are.
Something pressed against her chest from the inside. Her stomach puffed out, stretched, to the
point if it grew anymore she would split down the middle. Then, like a cartoon character, the hard,
painful bubble popped and the heaviness spread through her entire body, burning through her arms
and legs.
The red octopus’ tentacles wrapped around her legs, up to her waist, pinned her arms to her body.
Darien walked next to her as it drew her in. “I’ll be with you through this. We’re meant to be together, physically and spiritually. You won’t be alone.”
The red octopus dragged her into its hollow insides, where it glistened wet and warm. It gathered
around Tam like a womb, pressing her close to Darien until she couldn’t tell her limbs from his. “I’d
never leave you,” he whispered. “Never abandon you. I’d let you love me like you always wanted to
love him.”
His lips found hers in that hot, blind space and he kissed her in a way that turned her inside out.
Membranes wrapped around them like bed sheets, tying them together, bare flesh to bare flesh.
“You belong to me,” he whispered. “That’s all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it? To belong to someone,
heart and soul, and know they belong to you?”
“Yes,” she replied, softly. His lips tickled hers again, hinting at a passion Sean never showed her.
“Accept us. Accept our gift. Be our guide.”
She thought about Sean, crouching on the floor worshipping a dead woman, with Kevin weaving
shadows to ensnare him even deeper.
The time for pity long past, she only felt disgust at his weakness. Revolted by his obsession, she
found Darien’s mouth in the deep red blindness of the octopus and kissed him, hooking her fingers
behind his neck and dragging him closer. She wrapped her legs around his waist. His hands gripped
her waist, held her tightly.
Heat surged through her, fed into her by Darien’s mouth. They won’t hurt you, he said in her
head.
What won’t hurt me?
Hands quested at her feet, her knees. Grasping fingers took hold of her flesh and tugged, pulling
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her away from his warm body. A pair of arms looped around her waist and snatched her down. She
clung to Darien’s hands.
“Don’t let me go!”
He entwined his fingers in hers. “You have to do one more thing alone. Then it’s you and me,
together, until we can’t hear the spirits anymore.”
You and me, together, until we can’t hear the spirits anymore. Tam stopped fighting and sought
any sign of deception. She sifted through his mind, seeing his heart and his black soul, and all the
thoughts in his head.
Promise?
Darien surged up and kissed her again. Promise.
The shadow hands dragged her away.
****
A hand squeezed her shoulder. She looked. Darien.
They were still on the floor. Silence sat a distance away, her knees pulled to her chest. With
Darien’s help, Tam sat up. Her entire body ached.
She remembered Darien’s powerful kiss, and she wondered if that really happened. She could tell
from the foul, rancid taste smeared around her lips that Maman had really kissed her. She gagged
from the taste and the smell. She spit into the hem of her tank top and scrubbed it around her face,
frantic to remove the disgusting remnants.
“Where’s the old woman?” she asked. Something caught in her throat. She coughed and spat a
wad of something like black gelatin out on the floor. That stuff is in me. She’s in me! Panic squeezed her gut. Darien knelt behind her and squeezed her shoulders, lending her strength—
Tam sucked in a breath through her nose, frozen. She felt him, inside her body, shoring up her
muscles, calming her fears. “Darien…” she whispered, her voice creaking.
“I told you,” he replied. “You and me, together—“
“Until we can’t hear the spirits anymore.”
“Right. It’s give and take. I show you what it’s like to be fearless, to be loved, to be appreciated,
and you show me how to listen.”
“You could leave me, once you learn how to listen.”
“I would never leave you. What we just went through bound us together forever.”
Darien waited until she finished and placed something in her hand. He squeezed his fingers
around hers, around the handle of the long knife. The silver blade seemed to glow in the candlelight.
“Spill his blood, Tamsyn. Put that right through his treacherous, two-faced heart.”
“I don’t want to kill him.” But she didn’t put the knife down. It hung from her clenched fist.
Sean’s soft whispers of undying love grated on Tam’s ears. She rose. Darien’s hand released hers
as she approached Sean.
She kicked him lightly. He didn’t even flinch. She wound back and delivered another kick right to
his blue-jeaned behind. The pain in her toes fired her up. “Sean! She’s dead. That’s a rotten corpse
you’re pledging your heart and soul to!”
She put the edge of the knife against his throat.
He didn’t even flinch.
“Come on, Sean,” she groaned. She looked at Darien. “He’s helpless right now. If I did this, I
would give him exactly what he wants.”
Sean’s face wore a blank expression. Lost in time, he existed somewhere where Sharla was a
damsel in distress and he was her knight in shining armor. Tam knelt in front of him and framed his
face in her hands. “Sean,” she said firmly. His brow narrowed slightly and he blinked rapidly.
“Tam?”
“Yeah.”
“What—?”
“I don’t know, but you’ve got to stay focused. Kevin drugged you and it’s messing with your head.”
His eyes traveled over her shoulder to the shrouded remains. “Sharla.”
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“Is dead. Been dead. Those are just her bones and hair and whatever other gross things.”
A double-punch pummeled the side of her head and knocked her to the concrete floor, stunned.
The knife flew out of her hand and skidded across the floor. Kevin stood over her, enraged. “My
mom’s not gross!”
The blow from his fists, then from her head against the floor snagged reality. It bloomed around
her like cold water dumped into a warm bath. She saw Darien, remembered his kiss, the feel of his
bare sweaty body against hers, and tried not to gag.
What did I promise?
Kevin bounced to his feet and charged at her like he intended to stomp on her head. Without
thinking, Tam lashed out with her foot and caught him right in the gut. The blow flung him
backwards. He hit the ground and rolled around, holding his gut.
Kevin yowled like a possessed cat and sprang again. Tam cried out and shoved him aside. He hit
the altar and Sharla’s corpse slid in the gap between the wall and the altar.
The lit candles fell off. Instantly flames sprang up, eating at the plastic and leaking thick black
smoke. Something within the plastic exploded, a minute flush of flames and foul-smelling smoke.
“Oh, whoa,” Darien said. He backed up a step.
Something hot and sharp pierced into Tam’s side. The pain sucked her breath away and doubled
her over. She hit her knees. Hot fluid poured over her folded arms.
Darien cursed. “Damn it, where’s the book, Tam?”
Book? He’s worried about the book?
She gasped in a hot, pained breath and looked down. Kevin stood over her, snarling like an
animal. She moved her arm up, away, and saw the hilt of the knife sticking out of her ribs. Bile rolled
up her throat. Little punk stabbed me.
Stabbed me.
Big tears ran down the kid’s face. He yanked the knife out. The gut-wrenching agony drew a
