Page 12 of Enthralled

Suddenly a hand bursts through the mist. The skin is mottled purple, covered in pustules and open wounds. The fingers, straight and tense, shake wildly.

“It’s him!” Estrilde cries.

Oscar pushes his sister roughly to one side and dives for the pit. He grasps that hand with both of his and pulls with all his might. Clara utters a strangled cry that wrenches my heart as she lunges after her brother, gripping the back of his shirt, fighting to drag him away from that terrible brink. If only I dared interfere. If only I dared grip her arm and wrench her back. But my slowly-dripping blood is the only thing keeping this portal open, and I cannot stop now.

Oscar adjusts his grip, reaching lower to grasp an elbow then a shoulder. Slowly, painfully, a figure swathed in shadow emerges from the mist. There’s a sound like sucking mud, trying to draw him back. “Ivor!” Oscar screams through his tears. “Ivor, don’t let go!”

With a last burst of suction, the dark figure emerges, tumbling out in a tangle of limbs there on the floor. Oscar pushes himself upright, his arms around the naked, gross, shuddering form as Clara and Estrilde work together to pull them both away from the edge. “I’ve got you!” Oscar weeps. “I’ve got you! You’re safe now!”

Then Ivor rears back his head.

He’s hideous, warped. One eye bulges from a face nearly devoid of skin. The other eye is gone, the empty socket gaping. His flesh is gory, bloody, with a few straggling strands of once-golden hair clinging between the open wounds across his scalp. His mouth is fixed like a skull’s grin, and when he opens it, a diabolic rasp tears from his throat. “Sweet Oscar! You saved me!”

Oscar screams, throwing himself backwards into his sister’s arms.

I close my fist, stopping the stream of blood and the flow of my power.“Mita naessyrh!”I cry, ending the incantation, closing the tear between realities. The demon of Saalvru resists, stretching its tentacles out over the lip of the pit, eager to reclaim its prey. But the price is paid, and the pull of the mist is too strong. With a last, furious cry, the demon sinks, and the pit closes, issuing a last geyser burst of red glare into the chamber. Then it is gone. Darkness descends. I stand before the stone slab, which boasts a spreading, circular crack in its center. Staggering backwards, I hit the wall and press myself against it. Weakness shivers through my limbs. For the moment it’s all I can do to keep myself upright. Blood pounds in my ears, dulling all other sounds. That is until Estrilde’s wailing cry breaks through.

“You tricked me! You played false on our agreement!”

My swimming gaze clarifies, and her face comes into focus. She stands across the chamber from me, also pressed against the wall. But her eyes are fixed on the ruinous figure of Ivor, crouched on the floor. Oscar, recovered from his own shock, once more grips the broken fae lord by his shoulder, murmuring a stream of comforting nonsense. Clara has turned to one side, dry heaving. But she won’t abandon her brother.

I lift a cold gaze to Estrilde. “I may have promised to bring him back,” I growl. “But even I can’t make him pretty again.”

With a wordless cry Estrilde raises her arm, ready to hurl a blast of pure magic straight at me. But I’m prepared; I’ve summoned a blast of my own, drawing on what reserves of power remain to me. Even weakened, I am stronger than Estrilde. I send a bolt of light across the room, knocking her off her feet. She falls in a crumpled heap, her glamours momentarily evaporated. No longer the glorious princess, she is now a frail, bony hag of a woman with sharp teeth and talon-like nails. She moans, struggling and failing to pull herself up.

I draw three long breaths. Then straightening my shoulders and tossing a lock of hair back from my forehead, I approach Ivor and Oscar. The nearer I come to Clara, the more my breathing eases, the more the tightness in my limbs relaxes, and my blood flows freely. It’s incredible what simply sharing her atmosphere does for my wellbeing! But I dare not so much as look at her, dare not face the absence of her memory. The pain would undo me. Instead I stand over my fallen enemy, gazing down at the ruin that was once Ivor Illithor. Perhaps I should pity him. No living creature should endure what he has endured—and his fate might well have been mine had the gods not looked upon me with mercy.

But I still vividly remember bursting into his bedchamber and discovering him with my wife pinned against the wall. Whatever pity I may have felt evaporates.

“Rise, Ivor,” I demand.

My enemy lifts his face. That one bulging eye stares up at me, gleaming with horror. He had not realized my presence until that moment, and now looks as though he would dive back into Saalvru to escape me.

“Get up,” I say, my voice cold and cruel, “or I will end your miserable life here and now.”

“Don’t touch him!” Oscar scrambles to his feet. “Leave him alone!” He steps between us, this slender lad with his brittle bones and delicate features. Features which bear uncanny resemblance to his sister . . . which may explain why I didn’t kill him long ago.

“That I will not do,” I reply. “I may have brought him back from hell, but he is not free. I intend to throw him into the deepest, darkest cell, far from all light, all warmth, all joy. There let him thank all his gods and angels that I chose to be merciful.”

“You won’t lay a finger on him!” Sunlight pours once more through the roofless cell, lighting up Oscar’s face with manic courage.

“You have no power here, boy,” I growl. “For the love I bear your sister, I will not hurt you unless you drive me to it. Now stand aside.”

His eyes seem to spin in his skull, so wide, so wild. Then he smiles and holds up his arm. To my surprise, I see a smear of blood across his forearm and realize he’s holding Estrilde’s knife in his other hand. “No power?” he says, grimacing against the pain. “You’re wrong, Prince. It is you who are powerless against me.”

My eyes fasten on that wound, that blood dripping down his arm. And I realize what it is: a word, a single word, carved directly into his flesh. “What have you done?” I breathe.

Shadows burst to life all around us, full of churning movement and energy, rushing in, overwhelming. The next moment the sun is blotted out. I whirl in place, stare up through the broken roof.

Up into the face of a vast, dark, twisted nightmare-made-flesh.

There’s nothing in my realm of experience to help me comprehend what I see.

A tremendous being looms above me, twenty meters tall at least. Its frame is gaunt, almost skeletal, but the arrangement of the bones protruding through its paper-thin flesh isn’t human. Its hands are enormous, six-fingered monstrosities, with sword-length claws, razor sharp. A demented smile slashes across its face, the teeth protruding from black and bleeding gums. A shadowy tongue laps the air, and more shadows lick from the corners of its cavernous eye sockets. But worst of all is the great hole in its chest. The splintered rib cage, the gaping wound, revealing utter emptiness inside. The size of it, the sheer wrongness of its proportions, the evil of its lines and construction strikes a blow to reason and shatters it into a million shards of madness. I gape up at that apparition in utter horror.

And I know it. I recognize it. For I encountered it for the first time only yesterday. Then, however, it had been safely confined within the pages of a glossy magazine and my own imagination. A real terror, alive and thriving, but bound.

It is bound no longer. The Hollow Man walks unfettered in this world.

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