The Impaled Bride Page 5

I hear the terrible brokenness in her voice.

  I feel broken, too.

  “Where are we going, Ágota?”

  “I cannot speak of it here. Not until we are safe.” Ágota kneels before me. Her eyes are red from weeping and her lips tremble. “We need to fly, Erjy. Fly fast, and far. I have the power to do it now.”

  “Mama’s power.”

  “Yes. Mama’s power is now mine.” Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a cloak. She fastens it about my throat and kisses my cheek. “It will be cold, so hide your face in my shoulder. We have to go very far tonight and I cannot stop. Understand?”

  I nod, sniffling.

  Ágota lifts me into her arms, and I cling to her waist with my legs. I sense the power just below her skin warming me. I can almost imagine she is my mother holding me.

  As our many duplicates rush through the Black Forest, Ágota’s feet lift from the ground.

  Together, we fly to an unknown and frightening future that will doom us both.

  Chapter 5

  The fetid smell of burned and rotting flesh assails me upon awakening. My arms are leaden, so I turn my head to bury my face in the ruffles adorning the sleeve of my dress to quell the smell. How many nights has it been since Vlad left me to endure this stench? My mind is hazy, my thoughts lingering on the edge of another time. It is as though I have not existed in this mausoleum for some time, but in the realm of memory.

  Why must I remember the night my mother perished?

  Why must I remember the devil’s loathsome face?

  This must be a curse cast upon me by the dark magicks that Vlad wields for I would never revisit the night of my mother’s death by choice. It must Vlad’s doing! Only he would know how to rend open these wounds upon my soul. What other reason exists to explain why I am inexorably drawn into the past during my waking hours and forced to suffer through the most tumultuous moments of my long life.

  Will he ever cease in his torment?

  Damn Vlad!

  Though an aspect of my soul is comforted when I remember the love that filled those early years, it is torn afresh by the potency of the memories. It is both heavenly and hellish to recall the life I shared with my mother and Ágota, and its destruction at the hands of Lucifer the devil. How I despise the mere thought of his angelic face! Worse yet, it would not be the only time he devastated my life and stole away someone I loved. As a child, I could never have imagined what ruin he would bring to my life.

  Miserable, I stare into the darkness enshrouding my tomb and listen to the patter of rain against the marble roof. Freezing water seeps through the cracked stone around the iron stake and drips onto my broken body. Yet another bane to heap upon me.

  “Do not be afraid, Erjy. I will protect you. We are safe here,” Ágota whispers in my ear.

  No, she is not here to protect me.

  I am not safe.

  I am in pain and trapped in a damp mausoleum.

  I close my eyes, wishing the dark magic assailing me would let me rest just this once.

  “Here. Eat these berries,” she says.

  Soft, round fruit is pressed into my hand.

  “Erjy. Please eat,” Ágota pleads.

  I open my eyes to see my sister crouched beside me. We are hiding beneath an outcropping of rocks that provide a shelter from the downpour. We are high enough off the ground that we are relatively dry. I curl up tighter in the cloak Ágota gave me and stare at the berries in my hand.

  “You need to eat,” she says again, chewing vigorously.

  The dim morning sunlight sifting through the torrent illuminates her face and reveals teeth and lips stained purple from the berry juice. Reaching out a cupped hand, she gathers rain in her palm and drinks it. Her eyes are hazel once more, the vibrant green having faded since her magic is spent. How far we traveled during the night? It seems such like a great distance.

  “I want Mama.” My voice sounds small and tired.

  “Eat.” The order is clear. Ágota’s eyes are fierce and her jaw set.

  I obey, crushing the berries one by one between my teeth. My stomach is empty and my thoughts wander to the venison stew my mother had been preparing before the devil arrived the evening before. If only we had shared that meal in the quiet of our home and never been accosted by the fearsome creature, I would now be sleeping safely in my bed.

  “Are we going to return home soon?”

  “Our home is gone, burned to ashes with our mama.” Ágota’s tone is harsh with anger and sadness.

  I force the chewed food down my tight throat. It is an arduous effort to accept that my life with my mother is over. Why cannot this all be a dream? Why cannot Mama be alive? I want nothing more than to go home, curl up on my bed, and feel my mother’s fingers rubbing my back until I fall asleep.

  “Where are we, Ágota?”

  “Bavaria.”

  “Is that far from home?”

  “Far enough. I spent most of my magic. It will take a day for it to return, so you need to do as exactly as I tell you.”

  I remember my promise to our mother and nod. I will obey my sister to honor her memory.

  “Good.”

  I am very tired, but Ágota appears alert. She gazes through the gray rain falling steadily onto the trees and bushes surrounding the rocky incline where we are hunkered.

  I eat another berry, but the few I have eaten do not fill the ache in my belly. Before I can ask, Ágota, always prescient, serves me more berries from her apron. The berries are more tart than sweet, but I eat each one.

  Muttering under her breath, Ágota opens the bag that had been buried in our garden and withdraws a thick book. I have seen the tome often during my life and tears drip down my cheeks at the sight of it. I helped my mother make some of the thick paper pages captured between the old leather binding. Often I’d watched Mama carefully write her spells with black ink mixed with her blood or paint illustrations with a feathered brush in very precise strokes. The book creaks when Ágota opens it. The smell of old paper fills the small space. With great care, Ágota flips through the pages studying the drawings and reading the neatly scrawled words.

  Hope stirs in my chest at an abrupt thought. “Can you use it to bring her back to life?”

  Ágota looks at me sharply before shaking her head.

  “Why not?”

  I know my mother was powerful and Ágota has all her magic. I cannot imagine why she cannot restore our mother.

  “He burned her body,” Ágota answers. Her voice is raw with rage. “You cannot bring back a witch that has burned.”

  “Oh.” I stare at my last berry, my appetite vanishing as I recall my mother’s screams of pain and terror. The smell of burned flesh will haunt me forever.

  “That is why he did it, you know. Burned her when she was trying to escape. He wanted her to fear truly dying and not being able to return. He thought he could terrorize her into releasing him. He was wrong.” Ágota’s hands clench into tight fists, her waves of fury washing over me like steam from a cauldron.

  I flinch and turn from her, burying my face against the mossy surface of the big boulder I am reclining against. Ágota touches my shoulder gently. I answer with a sob with despair.

  “I am sorry, Erjy. I’d bring her back and rebuild our cottage if I could.”

  Twisting about, I cry out, “What can you do?”

  Ágota sighs and flips the book around on her lap so I can view it with ease. A map is carefully drawn onto two pages. “Mama left instructions on how to travel to my father’s home in Hungary. See these lines? Those are called ley lines. Magic is very powerful there and I can use those to pull us forward at great speed as I did last night. But I need to rest before I do it again.”

  Sniffling, I stare at the map. It hurts to see my mother’s careful script describing each part of the journey.

  “Mama made sure I had all the information needed in case she could not come with us. She even has a list of magical items I can trade with the fairies for free pass
age through their territory.”

  “So Mama knew she would die?”

  Ágota shrugs. “I suspect she knew she might. The devil has hunted her for a very long time.”

  “Why?” The shrillness of my exclamation makes my sister wince. “Why did he hunt Mama and why did not you tell me?”

  “It was Mama’s choice not to tell you,” Ágota answers. “She wanted you to enjoy your life and not live in fear.”

  “But she told you!”

  “Because I am a witch! Now I am an Archwitch. She had to prepare me for what might happen. You do not have magic, Erjy. You might never have magic. Chances are you are human like your father. She did not want to burden you. So she trained me so I could protect you. I am your older sister. That is my job. My duty.”

  I stare at the seventeen-year-old girl beside me who suddenly seems so much older. She appears altered somehow. Minutes of careful scrutiny reveal why. Her clothes are completely black. Even the once colorful embroidery on her skirt is dark as pitch. Her hair, chopped to her shoulders yesterday, is almost to her waist. Stranger yet, her hands are longer, more slender, and her purple stained nails are sharp. Lifting her gaze, she stares at me with ancient knowledge lingering in her eyes.

  “You are different,” I whisper.

  “I am.”

  “Is it scary?”

  “A little.” She runs her hands over the pages of the book. Glittery, silver magic threads through the veins below the surface of her skin. “I feel magic like I never have before. I sense the remnants of the portal to our dead world.” She points over my head. “It is that way. Near Moldavia. I have memories that are not mine: off the Witch World, of Mama’s spells, her most treasured memories.” Ágota sniffles, her eyes brimming again with tears. “I know, without a doubt, that she loved us more than her own life, and that is why she died for us.”

  My bottom lip trembles and the world wavers as fresh tears come to blind me. “Why did the devil kill her?”

  “Because he now knows I exist. He can afford to lose one Archwitch since there is another to take her place.”

  “I do not understand why he wanted Mama! Does he not have magic? Evil black magic like he used to kill Mama?”

  “He has magic, but he wants more power.”

  “But you have Mama’s power. Not him.”

  “Mama says that the devil wants to disrupt the order of things–that the natural way of magic is abhorrent to him. He wants to twist it, deform it, and use it to infect the world with pain. It is by disrupting how things should be that he gains more power over the world. Mama is from another world and the magic in her–in me–is more potent than the magic that exists in this one. Our presence in this world feeds the natural magic here. That’s why he wanted to corrupt her magic. It would help corrupt all magic. ”

  “Mama would never help him.”

  “And she did not. Even when he promised her all the riches in the world.” Ágota falls silent and eats another berry.

  I rub my sticky hands on the cold wet stone next to me. The rainwater washes over my fingers. My stomach hurts from hunger and despair. After a few minutes, I ask, “Is that why Mama was hiding from him?”

  Ágota gestures with a berry-stained finger and the pages of the book flip. “Yes.”

  “But how did he know about her?”

  Wiping her hands off on her skirt, Ágota lifts the book so I can see an illustration of the doorway between the two worlds. Our mother carefully drew herself as a child stepping through the opening. “When the witches created the passage into this world, all the ley lines in this world trembled with the onslaught of the new magic. All the creatures of magic sensed the arrival of the witches. The devil sensed the change, too, and went in search of the source. He found the lower witches first. Some he turned to serve him. Others fled. One of his new servants told him about the only Archwitch to escape to this world.”

  “Mama,” I say with certainty.

  “Yes. It took him centuries to find her. When he did, he offered to take her to the Scholomance. It is near a hidden lake called Lake Hermanstadt in the Carpathian Mountains.”

  “What is it?” I recall my mother refusing to leave with the devil to travel to the Scholomance. At the time, I had not understood what she was speaking about.

  “It is a school of black magic that only opens every hundred years. The devil teaches ten students the blackest of magicks there, and at the end of ten years, he keeps one student as payment. He tried very hard to persuade Mama to attend, but she refused. Every hundred years, he would appear on her doorstep to beg her to attend. Every year, she told them she would not. Finally, he decided to force her. She escaped and hid for a very long time, but she knew he might someday find her.”

  “He wanted to make her wicked like him,” I say, disgusted at the mere thought.

  “Yes, he did.”

  A terrible thought occurs to me and I burst into fresh tears. “Now he shall come for you!”

  “He does not know my name. Mama kept it hidden from him. It will be very hard for him to locate me.” Ágota smirks with satisfaction.

  “But Enede knows it. So does her mother. And the other ladies in the village.”

  A look of pain flits across Ágota’s face at the mention of her beloved. “Mama cast a spell so they would not remember our names when they weren’t in our presence. And now that we are no longer in the village, they will not remember us at all. Mama cast powerful spells to erase us from the memories of the villagers. After she was tracked down by several people from the other villages we lived near, she knew she had to expend the strongest of magicks to protect us.”

  “So the devil cannot find you because he does not know your name?”

  Ágota nods. “Exactly. Names are powerful.”

  My mind drifts to the promise I made to my mother. I must never tell anyone, not even Ágota, my true name. I pull the hood over my head and stare at the toes of my shoes. My feet are cold.

  “Do you miss Enede?” I ask.

  “I do not know. Maybe. I suppose I will miss her, but she is not the only girl I kissed. Mama was right. Enede and the other girls will marry and have babies. My future is not in that village.”

  “Where is it?”

  “With you. For now.” Ágota leans over to kiss my forehead. Her lips are so hot I flinch. “You are cold. You should have said so. The magic in me is so hot, I cannot feel damp or cold.”

  Ágota’s fingers twist into elaborate shapes and a small golden ball of light forms above our heads. A warm glow fills our tiny haven, and soon my fingers and toes begin to thaw. Ágota flips through our mother’s book, her face twisted into a scowl.

  “Will I get married and have babies?”

  The concept seems so strange and foreign.

  “One day, I suppose.” Ágota tilts her head toward me, her eyes starting to turn green. “Yes, I am sure you will.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “I cannot explain exactly what I see, but, yes, you will marry and have a fine house.”

  “And where will you be?”

  The green in her eyes fades away and she shakes her head. “I do not know. I cannot see the future for myself.”

  Sadness fills my heart. I remember Mama saying that she could not see her own future either. That is probably why the devil found her and killed her. I wipe away fresh tears, frightened for Ágota. I hope my mother’s spells worked and that the devil will never discover her name. My secret name seems more important than ever.

  “Where are you?” Ágota unexpectedly asks.

  I lift my eyes to gaze at her in confusion only to discover she is unmoving. Clutching a berry, her fingers hover right before her open lips.

  This is wrong.

  This is not part of my memory.

  This never happened.

  “Where are you, Erzsébet?” Ágota demands. “Tell me!”

  My sister’s voice does not come from the still form of Ágota, but from beyond our sanctuary. I gaz
e out at the world, transfixed by the rain caught in place, transforming it into a curtain of diamonds. Beyond the frozen rainfall stands Ágota. Not the seventeen-year-old facing an uncertain future, but Ágota as I saw her before Vlad took her from me. Clad all in black, her long hair hangs to her waist in wild disarray. Vivid green eyes stare at me intently.

  “Erzsébet, tell me where you are!” she demands again.

  “Ágota?” I whisper. “How?”

  I am no longer huddled beneath the outcropping, but standing before her in my ragged gold and red dress. I press my hands to the terrible wound beneath my breasts and feel blood seeping through my fingers.

  Without moving her feet, my sister moves toward me, gliding like a swan across dark waters. “Erzsébet, tell me where you are!”

  “I do not know!” I reply, stunned by this strange turn of events.

  “What do you mean? Why are you wounded? What has he done?”

  “How are you here after what Vlad did to you?”

  Ágota’s lips tilt into her familiar smirk. “I have my secrets, now tell me yours. Where are you?”

  She punctuates each word with twitching fingers in front of my face.

  “I truthfully have no idea where he has me entombed!”

  “Entombed!” She growls out the word.

  “As punishment,” I answer, still astonished at this odd turn of events.

  The shadow of a winged creature obliterates the sunlight, turning day into dusk.

  Ágota recoils and raises her hands above her head. “Damn him and his magic!”

  I crane my head and behold the physical manifestation of the ward Vlad cast to hide the mausoleum from the world. The black dragon, made of shadows and fire, surges over Ágota and sweeps her into darkness.

  Pain surges through my body. I am drawn out of the depths of my memory and open my eyes to the dank gloom of the mausoleum. I fear that Vlad will be there, sulking in the dark, but I am alone. In the aftermath of my vision, I am distraught and desperate to be free of my captivity.

  Shivering in my rain-soaked gown, I listen as the thunder rumbles overhead. I grip the iron stake, the cold wet metal unrelenting in its torment. I scream with frustration and agony. I cannot wrench my body free of its captivity. I am too weak and Vlad’s spells are too strong.