Page 150 of Disillusioned
“I see that look,” Myrddin said. “You’ll only hurt yourself—hurt others—if you get out of that chair.”
The warlock was right, and Garin felt it, too. Although his hunger since saving Lilac had morphed into an unending yearning for her blood, it was nothing compared to the feeling that plagued him now.
It was unnameable, a grief that took his breath and made time stand still. Garin ached to hold her in his arms.
He shut his eyes, imagining Maximillian and his beloved in front of a crowd of hundreds in Vienna. At a podium, surrounded by flowers and attendants, and everything he could not give her, leagues and leagues away from him.
Garin opened them to his clenched fists lifting from the chair, the last of the rope dissolving in a fiery cloud of light and ash that didn’t burn him. Despite Myrddin’s shocked cry, he stood. There was an animalistic sound of despair that rumbled deep in his chest, drowned out by the gasps and whispers from the crowd below.
Disgusted with his thoughts and desperate to shake them, he snatched the neck of the bottle. Myrddin barreled into him, barely moving Garin at all; the warlock’s hand latched onto the neck, twisting this way and that. Garin lifted it to his mouth and managed to take a few mouthfuls before he allowed Myrddin to wrestle it from him.
“I said let,” Myrddin snarled. “Go.”
The moment the warlock finally plucked it from his grasp, he was gone. The warlock, and the bottle. Garin blinked—and so was everyone else.
The Grand Hall was empty. He rubbed his eyes when night began to leak from the high windows, dripping down the gilded walls, the darkness of the sky expanding across the ceiling in a slow-spreading blaze. Like a map held to a torch.
“Myrddin,” Garin stammered, willing his eyes to adjust. He stumbled forward, expecting to catch himself upon the dining table. Instead, his hands found rough wood. As he tried to push up, they sank through the decay.
Marveling at the pieces of bark on his upturned hands, Garin staggered to his feet. Before him was a wide, moss-covered log. The crowd beyond was gone. In its place, a placid lake scattered with enormous lily pads the size of Lorietta’s rugs.
Gnarled white trees surrounded him and the lake, a copse of particularly dead ones crowding the bank he stood on, as if urging Garin toward the water. What little leaves remained clung to branched fingers, rattling softly in the stale air. It smelled like decay and the faintest hint of smoke, but he couldn’t detect any in the cloudless sky scattered with stars.
“Myrddin! What game are you playing?”
A strange male voice answered out in peril—a rattling groan sending chills down the length of Garin’s back.
Garin whipped around. “Kestrel?”
A shuffling came from behind him.Somethingwas crawling out of the trees. Garin’s entire body tensed, his chest vibrating with a low growl. The last of his bravado.
It was?—
An old man. Or, at least the remnants of one, dragging itself forward on his arms. Wisps of gray hair clung to the top of its head, face gaunt as if the life had been sucked out of it, the light gone from its shadowed eyes. The skin and meat of his arms and torso clung to its bones, some of which shone white in the in the dappled moonlight. A tattered shirt torn to shreds hung off its shoulders, along with several strands of something dark and wet.
Seaweed.
“Pascal,” it rasped through rotting teeth, its monstrous voice enveloping Garin in frigid air. “You haven’t aged a day.”
Garin stumbled back, tripping over the log and landing on his ass in the mud. “I am not Pascal.” The animosity in his voice shocked him. Garin righted himself, his gums throbbing, joints aching to spring away or fight. “Stay back!”
The creature approached the log, considering him. “Then, who are you?” It eyed Garin’s teeth. “Whatare you?”
Was this yet another specter sent by the faerie king? Was it here to collect his debt because they hadn’t brought the chest yet? Kestrel had been the one not responding to Bastion’s letters.
“Who are you?” it demanded again.
Garin’s throat bobbed. He’d be foolish in answering, especially if it was a creature from the Low Forest. Who knew what such a creature would do with this truth? But the words were wrenched from him. Monster. Man.Vampire.“I am Pascal’s only child. Garin Trevelyan.”
The creature smiled knowingly, its teeth shockingly straight and intact for something so…so rotted. Despite the light breeze, the seaweed and its hair swung in slow motion, side to side, as if bound to the tide. It started forward again, dragging itself through the shadow-dappled forest floor. It broke through the rotting log, the soft wood seeming to wither on contact.
“Come. Let me see you.”
He certainly would not. Garin’s calves strained—but his feet wouldn’t budge. They were sinking into the mud. Surely he was dreaming. The surrounding trees croaked in warning, their shadows following the creature. The stench of decay and brine rose, choking Garin as it neared. Its face finally emerged from the darkness, cast into moonlight.
The creature’s eyes had been partially eaten from their sockets. Barnacles were embedded into its skin like large boils, but even past the skin and sinew, its features were unmistakably familiar.Familial. It slowed to a halt. “My, my. You look?—”
“Don’t,” Garin snarled. He’d heard it all his human life. He didn’t need to hear it again, not from this ghoul.
