Page 50 of Enthralled

She turns from me then, steps back through the open doorway into the hall. I try to cry out her name, but the sound dies on my lips. When I attempt to reach out, to catch her shoulder, I find I’ve lost the ability to move. What is happening? Am I in the Nightmare? Is my consciousness split? Is there a part of me which stands in the real world, writing out a spell? Or is this Vervain’s spell, Vervain’s work? I can’t tell. I can’t do anything except watch Vervain progress into those churning shadows, away from me.

She does not have a weapon in hand. She is so small, so delicate and fragile, with her bare feet and her simple gray gown. She makes for the twisting, writhinggubdagog.The Hungry Mother sees her coming. Her awful mouth leers into view between spell-threads. With a powerful wrench, she pulls a distorted arm free, reaching out for her maker.

Mama’s here.

Her voice burns in my brain, dark and terrible.

Mama will hold you.

I want to scream and beg Vervain to flee. But she does not stop. Neither does she crumble into childlike fear and innocence. I blink, narrow my eyes, struggling to see. Because it seems to me that Vervain is . . . growing, somehow. Though the physical frame of her body is as small as ever, something about her shifts, as though her spirit pours out through the seams of her being and fills up the echoing space around her. Energy thrums, like the strange musical hum of the mandala patterns she painted on her walls. A song of peace, a serenity of soul. Beautiful and simultaneously inexplicable.

The Hungry Mother roars, her free arm tearing at thegubdagogthreads. They snap, strain. The spell won’t hold much longer. But Vervain never hesitates. She draws nearer, holds out one hand toward the monster, fingers relaxed.

“I see you, child,” she says.

With a snarl and a last vicious twist, the Hungry Mother rips free of thegubdagogand lands on the floor in a pile of limbs. Pulling herself upright, she looms higher and higher, towering over Vervain. Lashing out with one hand, she smashes into the stone wall. Broken rock falls in a shower, and dust fills the hall, whirling with the nightmare darkness.

“Vervain!” I cry and try to run, whether to her or away, I cannot say. It doesn’t matter. I simply cannot move, cannot tear my gaze away from the two of them.

Vervain stands unmoved in the face of Madjra’s slavering rage. “I see you,” she says again. “I see you and I know you.”

The Noswraith rears back her head, awful hands ripping at the straggling strands of hair hanging from her scalp. Her cruel, long-nailed hand strikes at Vervain’s face, razor nails missing by inches. The wraith recoils, sags into herself and thegubdagogthreads still hanging from her limbs. She rips more of them away, shredding her own flesh in the process. Raw, open wounds cover her breasts, her belly, seeping ribbons of black blood.

Vervain steps closer. Now she is within easy range of those awful hands. One more swipe, and the Hungry Mother can crush every bone in her body. She can lift her off her feet, bite her head clean off her shoulders. But Vervain doesn’t hesitate. She keeps moving forward, one foot after the other. “My darling,” she says. “I see you.” Then she puts out both hands, reaching for the monster’s face. “I see you, Vervain.”

My stomach tightens as though I’ve been punched in the gut. All the air escapes from my lungs in a single burst.

The Hungry Mother roars again, but she’s smaller suddenly. Smaller and shrinking rapidly. Still snarled ingubdagogthreads, she collapses into herself, a horrible sack of bones wrapped in loose skin with lank hair. That awful, rictus mouth gnashes viciously. Nightmare shadows whirl up from the floor, obscuring her in a dense, dark veil.

“Vervain!” I try to call out. But Vervain walks straight into that maelstrom, out of sight. I cry her name again and again and, finding my feet, manage three lunging steps forward. I cannot seem to make myself go farther. Fear binds me, fear of that darkness, that storm. I look down at my hands, struggling to discern whether or not I hold a book and quill. I can’t tell. I don’t know if this is my real body or merely my projected form. I’m trapped between the two states, utterly helpless.

Suddenly the darkness parts like a curtain, revealing a strange tableau. It’s not the gruesome vision I would have anticipated, but a most unexpected sight: a woman, kneeling, holding a small child against her shoulder. The child weeps as the woman strokes her hair, murmuring words I cannot understand.

“Vervain?” I say again, taking another step closer. But the darkness enfolds them again, deeper than before. It whirls up around my ankles, spreading too fast for any thought of flight. I open my mouth to scream, but the nightmare overcomes me, pours into my mouth, my nose, pours into my body—

I blink. Drag a deep gasp of air into my lungs.

I’m lying on the cold stone floor. It’s dark all around, but the shadows are quiet, not alive and churning. Faint starlight gleams through windows strung withgubdagogthreads, which waft gently in a breeze.

A cry rising to my lips, I scramble upright and cast about for my book and quill. They lie a few feet from me, and I crawl to them quickly, snatch them up, and turn the pages of the book. They’re all blank. I never wrote a word. Slowly I look around the hall. Everything is back to the way it was. The broken wall is mended, the torngubdagogreestablished in its place. There’s no sign of either the Hungry Mother or any of the damage she wrought. But Vervain . . .

She’s there. Kneeling in a pool of starlight, her back to me. Alone. One hand hangs limp at her side, numb fingers wrapped lightly around a white quill pen.

I rise unsteadily and clutch my book and quill against my stomach. When I try to call Vervain’s name, no sound will come. I approach her slowly. She doesn’t turn, not even when I stand at her shoulder, close enough to peer down at the book in her lap. It lies open, displaying blank white pages. No nightmare energy emanates from inside it, no sign of magic or containment. Did she not bind the Hungry Mother? Is the wraith still free and on the hunt?

“Vervain,” I say softly. Summoning my courage, I place a hand on her thin shoulder. She startles, lifts her head, and looks up at me. I let go and take three steps back, shocked. Shocked because her face is so . . . calm. So serene. Even as tears course down her cheeks and fall to her breast, an expression of peace shines from her eyes. “Vervain,” I gasp and shake my head. “What happen—”

Her eyes widen.“Look out!”she cries.

Propelled by pure instinct, I throw myself to the ground. A whistle of cold steel rushes through the air just overhead. I land hard and roll. When I come to a stop, I pull myself upright, every muscle tense, every vein pumping with adrenalin.

Throwing back my head, I look up into Ivor’s leering face.

This is not the beautiful fae lord I once knew—the image of golden perfection, a godlike being of majestic glamour. This is the creature that returned from the pit. The being Estrilde and Oscar were willing to pay my child’s blood to retrieve. Nothing but a faint echo of his former beauty lingers in his face. Instead he is warped, grotesque, with his bulging eye and his raw, puss-filled, open-wound skin.

Gone too is the way he once looked at me, all admiration bordering on adoration. There is only hatred in that one-eyed gaze.

“Well, well, Clara Darlington,” he says, his voice a ragged rasp. “We meet again at last. Do you know me? Please tell me that cursed oblivion has faded from your mind. It would not be so satisfying to end your life as a stranger.”

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