The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (42 page)

“I’m not yours!” Charles shouted, his voice high-pitched with terror. He reached into himself, trying desperately to find this magic everyone thought he had, to find his fire, but there was nothing. He searched for the White Charles, but he was gone too. There was just Charles, ready to piss his trousers from fear.

“I’m not yours!” he shouted again, because his voice was the only weapon he had. “
Go away
!”

The demon laughed.
“You have no idea who you are. You have never known. Everything they told you was a lie. You are mine, made for me. I have waited long for you to be ready to harvest, and now you are. Mine. You are mine.”

The hand snaked toward Charles’s throat and closed in a death grip with its two remaining fingers.
“See and believe.”

Charles did see—and when he did, he opened his mouth and screamed.

The skull grinned.
“Mine.”

Charles stared into Smith’s crumbling eyes and grotesque mouth and sobbed as he saw it, saw the truth, saw everything. Tears ran down his face as visions flooded him; he tried to reach up and tear the hand away, but he couldn’t.
No
, he thought, the images stabbing him, tearing him apart. But even as tried to deny it, he could feel the truth, and he knew the demon didn’t lie. He was not Charles Perry. He never had been. A lie, a lie—everything,
everything
had been a lie.

The demon is not the monster. I am the monster. There is no monster walking the earth more terrible than me.

The rest of Smith’s face melted away, and the demon glowed blue and hot through his bones before turning a deep, dirty gold. The skeletal grin shifted its focus to Timothy, and then the other hand began to reach. But as the demon began to drag Timothy away from him, something Charles did not know he had inside him roared.

“
No
.”

He whispered the word, but it was a word with teeth, and it shot at the demon like a thousand wool-sharpened needles. The demon hissed and pulled back the hand that had been reaching for Timothy, and aimed it instead at Charles.

But the fire was hot within Charles now, and he had found his magic. So he was a monster? Very well.
He would be one.

“
Go
,” he said to the demon.

The walls shook. The ceiling crumbled. Smith’s body convulsed, then jerked; there was a curdled scream in Smith’s mouth, and then the body burst into flame. It burned white-hot, then crumbled into ash on the floor.

The demon and the fog remained, however, coming closer and closer to Charles. It was much as it had been on the moor, except here it used the dust and dirt and crumbled bits of the abbey to form itself.

Charles ignored it. “
Come to me
,” he whispered, but not to the demon. He let go of Timothy and raised his hands slowly from his sides, focusing on a memory so deep and old that he could barely grasp it, but in this moment he did not need to. “
Come to your Lord
.”

There was a great, hot rush of wind, and for a moment the hallway was as fiery and hot as the center of a star. Then it died away, and the room was filled with glistening shades of pale blue light.

The ghosts had come by the thousands, and Charles could see them all.

They were the wraiths from his dreams—exactly the same, so much so that for a moment he thought he had slipped into one. But he was not asleep, and this was no spell. This was why they hovered over him; they waited to obey him. They were not there to torment him. They were his army. They were waiting for commands.

He would give them commands.

Kill it
, he started to say, but before he could vocalize it, he felt the wall and knew he could not command this. The demon laughed and swiped at him with a thick hand made of fog. Charles dodged the blow, but he was starting to lose his confidence, and he felt the ghosts around him begin to shudder. They were going to fade and go out.

The fog hand reached for Timothy, and Charles shut his eyes and tried again to find that hate, but he could only find his heart, which was full of fear for the ones he loved.

“
Just make it go
,” he whispered to the wraiths, not even able to sense if this was possible. “
Just make it go away
.”

This time the ghosts turned brighter, and they grew, turning into great tall pillars around him. They leaped up and charged as one at the fog-shrouded demon. The demon shouted in rage, then turned and fled, shooting like a streak of dark light down the hall and to the stairs, the ghosts streaming behind it in a blaze of blue fire. Then the ghosts reappeared and formed a semicircle around him, each going down on one knee. Beside Charles, Timothy was making soft gurgling sounds as he came out of the enchantment.

“What do you command us, Lord?”

Timothy’s hand came down hard on his shoulder as he leaned against him, gasping for breath. Charles suddenly felt tired and unsure.

He saw the ghosts begin to fade once more.

“Madeline,” he said quickly, trying to find that centered place again. “Madeline and Jonathan. Help me free them.”

They nodded and rose.
“It shall be done.”

* * *

Sticky. She was sticky, and she was cold.

These were Madeline’s first thoughts: they were floating, unconnected, unexplained shapes in her mind. Thought itself felt foreign, strange, and for a moment she tried to shoo it away.
Go
, she told her thoughts.
Go and leave me.

But the sticky cold persisted. I have a body, she thought. I have a body, and it is cold. Deep, terrible cold.
Far away. My body is very far away
. Madeline tasted sweetness, sticky and sharp against her lips.
I don’t want this
. She tried to leave again.

Slight, strong hands closed over her shoulders. They reached deep inside her, and she felt the hands on her heart, keeping her from sliding away.

“Come,”
someone whispered to her.
“Come. Come home, Maddie. Come home.”

“I don’t want to go.”
She hated even to form the words inside her mind. Each word was pain. She wanted no more words.

“You do not want to stay here,”
the voice whispered.
“Open your eyes, Madeline. Open your eyes.”

“
No
,” Madeline thought, but the voice, the hands made her. They pried, and the cold, sticky sensation deepened. She fought, and she felt something sliding against her like a snake. Her eyes opened, and she saw where she was. And she wished she could scream.

She was trapped inside a sticky and luminescent shell that glowed from within. She could see no farther than the tips of her fingers. Looking down, she saw the snake at her feet was a man, dark and naked and curled into a ball. He was not conscious, but when she moved, he moved with her.

White hands had plunged through the sticky membrane surrounding her, and they disappeared inside her chest.
“Is he with you?”
She saw no face, only the arms, but she heard a voice.
“Is Jonathan with you?”

For a minute Madeline didn’t understand. She looked down at the man cocooned at her feet with new eyes and felt her heart lurch.
“Yes,”
she answered the voice and forced herself to add,
“I don’t know if he’s alive.”

“He is.”
The hands shifted, gripping her tighter.
“Hold on. Hold on to him, and I will pull you both out and take you back to your bodies.”

Madeline tried to fumble for Jonathan, but it was difficult to move. She was regaining her consciousness by bits, and she’d grasped enough to know this was her spirit body, but she also knew this wasn’t the Void. She was severed from her body once again, somehow, but this time there was an edge about it. If the pale white hands were not here, she was certain she would go mad just trying to make sense of it. She thought briefly of asking who was reaching for her. It felt like a guide, and she ached at the thought that they had returned at last. But then the hands began to pull, and she had not yet grasped Jonathan.
“Wait,”
she cried, but the hands kept pulling. She managed at the last second to snare a lock of his hair just before the white hands pulled her from the luminescent muck.

She looked up and saw creatures all around her. They looked like clouds at first, or waves on the water, but then she saw that there were faces on the waves and arms—people, of a sort. They had empty, haunted faces, and they frightened her. Then the shapes faded, and she saw a light, that great and terrible light, and then she saw who the light was, and she forgot her fear.

Charles. Not the strange White Charles—her Charles. He was huge and powerful like the White Charles, but he was uncertain and terrified too. He had hold of more magic than even the most practiced witch would ever be allowed to have, but he had no training, no practice, and no support of any kind. It was like being rescued by a runaway cart as it rushed over a cliff.

He practically threw her at her body; her breath came in a rush, and she nearly lost herself for a moment in the effort to reclaim life. It was not the luscious rush of returning from a guide or the erotic intensity of joining with Jonathan. It was harsh and crude, an artless grasping for organs and blood and mind. Only her training saved her, the practice of coming into a body gracefully more times than she could ever count. The second she was able to move, she groped for Jonathan and Charles, putting a hand on each and barreling power back at them both, slowing Charles down, easing Jonathan in. She tightened her grip on Charles’s arm and felt him sigh as he let the extra energy roll at her; it had the strangest effect of balancing her. She gave and gave from her weak and dry well, but he kept sending more power back at her and refilling her energy at four times the rate she was losing it. Between them, they found a juddering sort of control and balance, and Jonathan slammed back into his body with enough ease to keep him from being destroyed on the spot.

But power was not the only thing Charles was sending her. He was sending her thoughts and memories, shooting them like arrows against her mind. Some of them were old, very old—hulking in shadows behind furniture as he watched his grandfather shouting at his mother on the other side of the room—and some of them were very dark, filled with horrible images of drugs and darkness and painful sex. But some were laced with fire, and she could tell by the feel of them they had been
placed
in his head, not seen: memories that had been grafted onto him by some other force. Memories of before he was born—only shards, but they were grislier than any of the others.

She lifted her head and looked at Charles, shocked and afraid of what she was seeing, wanting to cry
No
!, to shout at him and tell him this could not be real. But she only had to look at his face to see it was true. He was sobbing. He had too much inside him, and like a drowning man, he was clutching at her, pulling her with him under the water, pushing her down with the memories and the pain. He pushed more and more at her, making images tumble together in chaos inside her mind. Madeline felt someone trying to pull her away, trying to soothe her—Jonathan—but she could not let go of Charles, even though she wanted to.

Her father. She saw her father moving silently in the dark, shrouded in black robes inscribed with ancient symbols. She saw Sir Henry Carlton dressed in the same manner. They moved across the moor, across the fields, all the way to Whitby Hall, to the woman’s room. They used spells and enchantments and alchemists, and they spirited her away, away to a house in the hills. They placed her on a rough bed in a circle of candles and woke her from her trance, and while she screamed, they chanted spells as they raped her over and over and over again. Then they wiped the memory from her and took her back to her room, with no one ever the wiser.

Night after night for a month. Then they put her in bed with her mad brother and let them be found. Let her be found with child.

Their child.

Hamilton Elliott’s child.

Madeline watched the images fade, and she saw Charles, pain and misery streaming down his face.

“Brother,” she whispered. “You are my brother.”

“Yes.” She felt his sorrow like a knife as he whispered, “And here is why they did it, what they wanted to do.”

The images came again, faster and faster and faster: they were out of control now, the images like so much water rushing over her head. She saw her father chanting and saw Sir Henry chanting, but she saw monks in robes as well, and she saw thousands and thousands of pale, beautiful people hiding in the dark. She saw the monks part the doors and saw the army rush in. She saw the knives. She saw the children’s frightened faces, saw the adults standing before them with their hands raised, begging for peace, begging them to stop.

She saw what the monks and the armies did, and she died with them.

She saw the ghosts rise up, their empty faces dead and expressionless as they moved over the earth, choking out every breath of life in their path.

And above it all stood Charles, great and mighty as a mountain, a living god. But he was not white but dark, his eyes glowing red and his body burning in an eternal ring of fire.

Then something hard and sharp came down upon their hands, and she heard a great and angry shout. The water broke and washed away, and she fell back into Jonathan’s waiting arms.

Emily clutched the walking stick against her chest and backed away, shaking, as she watched Jonathan draw Madeline away from Charles.

Now that the black fog was gone, the afternoon sun was shining in through the window, and it made everything seem falsely bright to Emily’s mind. A dismal gray day full of rain would have been more appropriate. Everyone in the room looked wasted and beaten, but worst of all were Jonathan and Madeline. Madeline in particular looked very dazed and almost lost. Emily worried she had slipped out of her mind or worse.

Charles had an angry red welt where she’d hit his wrist, but he didn’t seem to notice it or anything else. The only thing that registered at all was when Timothy crouched behind him and touched his arm. Charles made a soft cry and turned around, burying his face in the Catalian’s shoulder. “Too much,” he kept whispering. “Too much, too much, too much!”