Bleeding Violet (15 page)

I spent the rest of the week awake and depressed. I had no desire to sleep or eat, so I didn’t—Rosalee had stopped cooking for me anyway, so not eating was easy. As usual, I countered the depression with tireless activity. I did enough homework to cover the next two units in all my classes, and I sewed two new dresses, all in the space of two days. Amazing how much you could get done when you didn’t have to waste time sleeping.

Wyatt rescued me from my low mood on Friday during one of his rare appearances at school, the first time I’d seen him since we’d showered together. The Mortmaine were training him into the ground, he told me, but he would be free to hunt on Sunday. He said it was all set.

When Wyatt picked me up around sunset that Sunday, I was no longer depressed, just wide-eyed and buzzing. After I proved beyond any doubt that I could take care of myself, Rosalee would stop hating me—that was enough to lift anyone’s spirits.

“That’s what you hunt in?” Wyatt asked, pulling out of the driveway. “A dress and heels?”

I was wearing a backless aubergine dress and matching lace-up boots that came to my knees. I’d wanted to wear something dark, and aubergine was the closest to black I had in my wardrobe.

“What should I be wearing?” I asked him.

“T-shirt. Jeans. Boots
without
heels.” He was describing his own outfit.

“Blue jeans are too complicated, and I don’t wear anything I don’t make myself. And these aren’t exactly stilettos.” I raised my legs to tap my heels together. “I could run a mile in these boots.”

He almost swerved onto the curb from staring at my legs, so he went all serious and eyes-on-the-road. “But can you fight in ’em?”

“Why not? It’s easier to be careful in dresses. You have to be
or you end up flashing your underclothes or destroying beautiful fabric. Dresses force you to be on guard.”

He risked a glance at me, eyes twinkling. “Your mind is weird. Come here.”

“Gladly.” And I was glad. Wyatt’s friends were fun to hang out with, even Petra when she kept her fat mouth shut, but Wyatt understood me. With him, I could be myself.

He pulled away from my kisses, laughing. “Cut it out before we end up in a ditch.” I stole a few more kisses just the same, and Wyatt, trouper that he was, somehow managed not to wreck the truck.

Wyatt drove to Avispa Lane and parked in the parking lot of St. Michael’s, a weathered, slightly gothic church that huddled bravely in the shadow of a great, rolling forest, its huge old trees growing wild together, its dark green canopy mocking the fall season.

I walked around the truck to Wyatt’s side, staring at the tangled expanse of piney woods. “Is that the dark park?”

He nodded grimly.

“It isn’t so bad.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” he said almost pityingly as he led me to the church steps, where we sat holding
hands in the warm, quickly fading sunlight. Cardinals whistled at one another in the eaves of the church.

“A long time ago in Finland, I got lost in the woods on Easter. When I was five or six. It was freezing, and the snow was deep along the paths. I thought a real witch had cursed me to lose my way, to punish me for pretending to be one of them. So I’m not totally oblivious about how dangerous the woods can be. How misleading.”

“Why were you pretending to be a witch?”

I shrugged. “It was Easter.”

Wyatt fell over laughing. “Finnish people dress up as witches on
Easter
? I don’t remember no trick-or-treaters in the Old Testament.”

I snatched my hand from his grip. “I don’t laugh at your stupid culture. You and your doors and keys.”

“Come on.” He bussed my ear. “I didn’t say it was stupid. What do I know? Maybe there
were
witches and goblins at the Passover.”

“Goblins? Who said anyth—?”

Shoko appeared out of nowhere, derailing my train of thought. First an unobstructed view of the empty parking lot, and then Shoko all in green, tossing her long black hair
over her shoulder as she strode toward us. “I’m here.”

“How—?”

“Just more of our stupid culture.” Wyatt patted my knee in this condescending way I’m sure he thought was hilarious.

“
You
can do that?” I asked, preparing myself to be impressed.

“Not yet,” said Shoko, as tall and imposing as I remembered. “We gotta teach him. And then we gotta teach him not to invite civilians into the line of fire.”

And just as mean.

“Come on, Shoko. You used to be cool. You used to take me on hunts before I was even initiated.”

“Well, I obviously taught you some bad habits,” she said, glaring at me. “Let’s get this over with before I change my mind.” She crossed Avispa Lane and was swallowed by the tall pines.

“How can she appear and disappear like that?”

“She’s not. She’s using the hidden doors.” Wyatt flapped his hand when I started to speak. “Don’t get sidetracked by all that now. The sun’s nearly gone. The hardheads’ll be out soon.”

“Hardheads?”

He kissed me. It stung, as though I’d kissed a light socket. “You’ll see.”

When we got into the forest, he was all business, tramping ahead like he knew the way. It was only sunset, but in the woods it might as well have been midnight. Trees loomed in the dark like fairy-tale giants, spindly branches interlacing overhead like fingers twining. I stuck close to Wyatt as he straight-armed the branches aside and led us into a clearing lit with several lanterns emitting a harsh white light. Beyond the clearing, darkness pressed around us, cut us off from the rest of the world; we might as well have been the last three people on the planet.

In the center of the clearing was a hole in the ground bordered with stones. Shoko knelt near the hole, oiling a small pair of metallic pink … maces? Each had a short handle with a single spiked ball dangling at the end of a chain.

Wyatt knelt beside Shoko, unzipped a nearby duffel bag full of blades, and armed himself with a machete and several of his favored push daggers.

“Where are the other Mortmaine?” I asked.

Wyatt looked at me. “What others?”

“She means the foxes and hounds,” Shoko said, rolling her eyes. “And the asshole in a red riding coat screaming, ‘Tallyho!’”

They laughed, revealing an irritating rapport.

“It’s just us,” Wyatt told me. “If the Mortmaine knew
about this, about
you
, they’d disown me. We’re lucky to even have Shoko.”

“Damn straight,” she said, swinging her shiny weapons like nunchaku.

How Wyatt had managed to get close enough to Shoko to have sex with her amazed me. She was like her maces—pretty but deadly. I backed away from her, nervously eyeing the blur of the spiked balls, so busy keeping out of her way that I nearly fell down the stone-bordered hole.

I dropped to my knees beside it and peered into earthy-smelling darkness.

“Don’t worry,” Wyatt told me. “Only Shoko and me are going down the tunnel.”

“Is that where the hard hats are?”

“Hardheads,” Wyatt corrected. “And yeah.”

“How many are there?”

“About fifty.”

I stared at him. “Three against fifty?”

“We know what we’re doing,” said Shoko. “Relax.”

I studied the array of weapons spread between the two of them. Of them all, Shoko’s were the cutest. “Do you have any more of those pink maces?” I asked her.

“They’re flails, not maces,” she said. “And you’d only put your eye out.” Shoko strapped her metallic pink flails into a holster at her waist. Then she picked up a wooden club covered in spikes. “
This
is a mace.”

As I reached for it, Wyatt intercepted it and said, “Never mind maces.” He handed me a short-handled ax.

“I want a mace.”

“But you
need
an ax.”

I took the arm-length weapon and swung it experimentally; it was surprisingly heavy, the blade sharp but pitted and worn, as though it had been put to serious work.

“What about a gun?” I asked. “Or a bazooka?”

Shoko said, “We don’t use guns.”

“Why not?”

“Same reason you don’t wear jeans,” said Wyatt. He held up his push daggers. “It’s easier to make one of these than a bazooka.”

Wyatt and Shoko were so cool and together, I decided to put my fears aside and imitate them. “So,” I said brightly, “what’s the plan?”

“Shoko and me go down through the tunnel.”

“And where do I go?”

“You got the easy part.” Wyatt pulled something from his pocket and threw it to me. “Drink that.”

He’d tossed me a small vial fizzing with a clear liquid, like seltzer. “What is this? More chemistry?”

Shoko said, “It lures the hardheads to you so that they’ll take you into their lair. While they’re busy with you, we can get the drop on ’em.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Busy with me
how
?”

“They’ll be taking you to their queen,” Wyatt explained. “Like a gift. That’s why you’ll be able to take her out—easy access.”

“You want me to destroy the
queen
?” My blood zinged at the idea. “Do you think I can?”

“Absolutely,” said Wyatt. He squeezed the back of my neck and touched our foreheads together.

I thought of Rosalee, the look on her face after I’d told her about tonight. “Okay!” I drained the vial in one gulp and nearly choked on the burning sweetness within.

“Better spray her now,” said Shoko, tossing an aerosol can to Wyatt.

He took me by the back of the neck again and sprayed me head to toe with a warm, sharp-smelling substance.

“Hey!” I tried to dodge him, but he was quick and thorough. “What are you doing?”

“This’ll counteract the stomach acid,” he said. “So it doesn’t burn you alive.”

“Stomach acid?”
I finally managed to pull away, only to fall over backward into Wyatt’s arms, an insidious creeping numbness inching over me, a stiffness that was frighteningly unnatural.

Wyatt lowered me gently to the ground. “Make sure you hold tight to that ax,” he said.

I knew I was holding it—I could see it in my peripheral vision, the ax head laying against my chest—but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. “What’s happening?” The words fell strangely from my stiffening lips.

Shoko said, “You’re dying.”

“What?”
It sounded more like
Whuuuunn?

“Did we forget to mention that part?” Shoko waved her hand. “No worries. You drank an infusion of ghoul’s delight. Drink too much, you’ll be a corpse for real, but in small doses it just mimics death, so that you’ll look and feel and smell just like a fresh corpse.”

“Ghoul’s delight? Is that what you bought at the herbal
shop?” That’s what I wanted to ask, wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My lungs were no longer under my command.

Wyatt’s face hovered above mine, studying me so passionlessly that I couldn’t help remembering what Petra had once said, about how nothing came before Wyatt’s duty.

I hadn’t realized that included my life.

“Hardheads love fresh meat,” he said, actually smiling at me, “but they can’t feed it to their queen.
She’s
a carrion eater, and the only way they’ll feed you to her is if they think you’re dead. Hanna?”

“Damn,” Shoko said, out of my line of sight. “Already? How long’s it been?”

“I think it just kicked in.” Wyatt put his head close to mine. “Ghoul’s delight wears off in, like, fifteen minutes, so once you’re inside her body, hack your way free with the ax. When the queen’s toast, the others’ll be easy pickings.”

Shoko leaned over me, her hair falling into my face, though I couldn’t feel the dark strands. “Okay, she’s ready. Let’s go!”

Wyatt and Shoko disappeared from view. I was alone, without even my own heartbeat to keep me company.

What I had instead were flies.

They landed on my open eyes, their busy little bodies blot
ting out the trees. I wanted to scream. I wanted to
run
, but I couldn’t. I was worse than alone. I was helpless.

A rhythmic thumping resounded beneath me, like someone beating the ground with a sledgehammer, shaking me. I couldn’t feel the shakes, but the trees above me, the sky, seemed to be shuddering. As I sucked in my last few breaths, a terrible smell filled the air. I recognized it this time—the smell of death. Melissa had taught me well.

What if a zombie horde was rising up from the ground beneath me? Was that what all the thumping was about?

Jesus.

And then they were bending over me. Not zombies … things. Veiny, cone-headed creatures with the bluish-gray skin of an asphyxiation victim. They studied me the way Wyatt had, passionlessly, with their white, lidless eyes. The stench emanated from them, from their huge, gaping mouths.

And then the view changed. The dusky sky disappeared, replaced by soil and rock as the cone-headed things, the hardheads, dragged me beneath the earth.

The scuffling crowd of hardheads herded me through a narrow black tunnel that eventually opened out into a massive cave. Weird shadows, dull and greenish, bent and rippled along the cave above me.

The hardheads had to be carrying me on their backs. None of them had arms, only many, many legs, like spiders or centipedes. They scurried forward on either side of me, crawling over each other in their haste. One of them crawled over me, briefly surrounding me in a cage of wriggling, misjointed legs.

The crowd of hardheads carrying me stilled, and my view tilted sickeningly from the cave ceiling to a widening hole,
twice as wide as I was, a hole that grew bigger and closer as I fell into it.

A dark blue space enclosed me; I heard the rushing of fluid like an ocean. I could
feel
—heat and damp, an unpleasant squeeze and deposit. Then another squeeze and deposit, as though I were being birthed and rebirthed into one hellish, wet pit after another.

I could
move
, so I thrashed within the deep blue pit, and the ax in my hand bit into something soft.

The ax.

I gripped it in both hands and hacked into the cocoon of slick meat surrounding me, gasping, sucking in a fetid, animal stink. I hacked an opening wide enough for fresh air to waft in and tantalize my newly functioning lungs. I forced my head and shoulders through, and finally I was free to the waist.