“Lights in here are spiritual, not connected to the house,” Alexis said.
“Column of stone?” I said.
“No go.”
“Crystal spike.”
“I’ve been in every nook and cranny of these cabinets,” Tiff said. “I’d have noticed that.”
I nodded.
I saw Peter’s head raise. “Bitch.”
We collectively looked. I had to step to Alexis’ mirror and then back to the larger mirror to move down to the lower level and see.
Eva had a stake in her hand. She was leaning on the railing, and tossed the stake in the air, catching it. One mistake away from dropping it and letting it fall to the floor below.
“Green wood?” I asked.
“Cut earlier tonight.”
“Give it here!” Ty called out.
“You can go fuck yourselves,” Eva said. “This is my insurance against that thing, but I don’t have any reason to save you.”
More links broke.
I saw Evan take to the air, sparrow wings flapping. Whatever hit he’d taken earlier, he was still in one piece.
The witch hunter caught the stake, and didn’t toss it again.
“If you try, little bird,” she said, “I will stake you. Your tricks won’t work.”
Evan was a soul in a different form, just like the Bane was.
I wasn’t entirely sure the method of soul extraction wouldn’t work on him too.
“Evan,” I said. “No.”
“Dang,” he said, before settling on the railing opposite Eva, the furthest point in the room from her.
My eye fell on Ellie.
It would have been perfect if Ellie had been willing to play ball, to steal the stake and make her way downstairs.
But this wasn’t that kind of scene. Ellie wasn’t that type.
If she had the stake, I could trust her to run away and maybe get it to us.
“What else did the book say?” Eva asked. “There’s one obvious option, but it doesn’t get mentioned that often.”
One obvious option?
“Daylight?” I asked. The only thing I hadn’t mentioned.
“I bet you wish the sun was rising anytime soon,” she said. “Think twice.”
I felt like it was on the tip of my tongue. I’d read something not so dissimilar, once upon a time.
“She wants us to do it,” Peter commented.
She wanted us to do it.
Right. I had to look at her through the lens I used to view the Thorburns. Through the twisted, fucked up viewpoint.
She wanted us to hurt. To suffer.
Ah.
“Bone,” I said. “Like a green stake is living wood, a fresh bone…”
“Exactly,” Eva said.
“Christoff,” Peter said. “You’ve been useless so far. You’ve-”
“You’re not serious,” Alexis said. “He’s a child.”
The last essential links broke. Kathryn and Alexis fell as their end of the chain lost its tension.
“Someone better volunteer an arm,” Eva said, “Or everyone here volunteers their life.”
The noble Roman above the gladiator pit where lives were being fought for. She was reveling in this. Sadistic enjoyment.
Except, if I remembered right, things had never been like they were in the movies. It was all for sport, and few lives were lost.
Which made Eva worse than some of the more decadent and corrupt emperors in Rome.
Fuck.
The Bane turned on Peter.
“Why me?” Peter asked. “Third fucking time. The fuck?”
“Karma,” I said. “Apparently you’ve racked up more bad karma than any of us, except maybe me, and I’m inside a mirror.”
“Karma?” Kathryn asked.
“Lies,” I said. “Lies are one. Even if you’re not a part of all this, it adds up. Wronging people, breaking your word…”
“I’m fuuuuucked,” Peter said, backing away from the Bane. “Fuck me. Kicking myself for ever thinking this stuff was cool. Even with the scary stuff… if there’s karma, I’m so completely and utterly fucked.”
“More than you know,” I said. “You inherit the house, you inherit all the bad karma dating back generations. We weren’t good wizards, in case you weren’t aware.”
“Shit,” he said. He tried to feint to the left, then dodge right, but the thing wasn’t fooled. “Ah fuck. Fuck me.”
Was I willing to do something with sympathetic magic?
What could I do that they couldn’t? My bones weren’t necessarily alive.
Breaking through the mirror? I hadn’t been able to hurt the faceless woman. What if I tried to use the Hyena and failed here? I’d have one mirror left and the problem would still be here.
The Hyena was almost the opposite of what we needed here.
“Ah no. Shit,” Peter said, as his options for escape started to run out. The room was circular, but there was furniture at the edges, and as fast as he could duck to one side, the Bane could follow him.
“Chop off your arm,” Eva taunted. “Stab it through the heart or face. You seem resourceful. I give you one in four chances you’ll manage it. One in ten you’ll survive the attempt. It’s delicious.”
“Ellie,” Peter said. “I… wish I had something clever or meaningful to say.”
Ellie moved to the railing, gripping it and peering over. “You’re an asshole, Peter. Don’t you dare die.”
“Seeing what happened to Callan-”
“I didn’t see.”
“It’s gonna be a bad one. Um. If you make it out of this, you can have my stuff.”
“Fuck you, I don’t want your stuff,” Ellie said.
“Alright,” he said. There was a note of finality in his voice. “Right. Cool.”
Ellie scrambled to the side.
Charging Eva.
She took the kick hard, crashing into the railing.
“Please,” she begged. “Please. He’s my brother.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Eva said.
Ellie crawled forward a bit.
“I’ll do anything,” Ellie said.
“I don’t want anything you have.”
It was, perhaps, a meeting of polar opposites.
Eva was the alpha dog, the one who won fights. The snarling bitch that commanded respect by virtue of how badly she could kick your ass.
Ellie wasn’t. Ellie was a coward, the type to hang her head and slink off out of sight. She broke the rules and stole the scraps. Alone, she begged and wheedled and cheated to forge her way. As part of a group, she thrived, she mooched. She was the omega.
It was common to think of the Alpha as the superior, to imagine that if we were wolves, we would want to be Alpha.
Ellie, I imagined, had never wanted that. She’d learned to take her licks. Even when she’d taunted the witch hunter earlier, baiting kicks, she’d been cultivating an impression.
Now, crawling forward, taking more hits, distracting, taking advantage of the fact that the witch hunter was watching out for the sparrow that might try to steal the wooden stake, she managed to throw herself forward four or five feet, taking another hard kick in the process.
She held a hypodermic syringe to Andy’s throat. I could see the expression on her face. Taut, like every muscle was drawn tight.