Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Shoulders of Atlas

“I’ve got you. Don’t leave,” Matthew’s voice calls me away from the gray mist that beckons to me inside my mind. “Kate, if you go back now, you will die in your body. Stay here. Stay with me.” His voice is panicked and urgent. My eyes flutter open and look directly into his.

“Matthew,” I whisper, scanning his body for signs of injury. He lets out a relieved cry and buries his face in my hair. Other than some blood near his temple, where he’d been kicked, he seems relatively unscathed despite having been covered in burning chains. I want to run my fingers through his hair. Pull him toward me and kiss every inch of him. But I am too weak.

An erratic growling grows louder as one of the animated skeletons crawls quickly across the ground over to us. It reaches out and grabs my ankle, snarling and baring its teeth.

Matthew’s fist flies and connects with the creature’s head, breaking off the jaw, which lands on my stomach.

“Ugh,” I groan at the sight of it, trying not to think which one of my great-aunts it belongs to.

The skeleton still grasps my ankle but doesn’t move. Matthew gathers up the shattered jaw and whispers over it. Black shadows pour from his hands and swirl around the disembodied bones. When the inky clouds fade, Matthew yanks the skeleton head toward him and thrusts the jaw back onto the head. A horrifying gasping sound emanates from the corpse.

“Fight my enemy,” Matthew says, his voice rough, his eyes an opaque black. The skeleton releases my ankle and turns around, crawling like a spider over the ground, right toward the pumpkin throne. My vision is blurry but flashes of silver and sparks fly all around the graveyard. The sounds of shrieks and howling dogs fill my ears. Specters fly past my field of view with alarming speed. The battle is still ongoing, with Matthew’s newly turned thrall joining the fray.

“How …?” I look at Matthew bewildered. He scans the graves around us. No more skeletons are close by.

He turns to me with a knowing smile. “I told you there is power in placing the final piece.”

Then, ever so gently, he pulls me up off the ground. “Where are you hurt?” he asks.

“Ribs,” I groan, suddenly aware of the excruciating pain searing through my abdomen. I cry out as Matthew shifts me, supporting my back with his knees. He places a flat palm onto my stomach. There is a large rip in my tartan dress. He places his other hand on his own shoulder and breathes deeply. A pleasant warmth fills my stomach, and there are several odd cracks and popping noises as my bones shift back into place. The veins on Matthew’s arm turn black, and his skin begins to decay.

“No,” I moan, trying to push his hand off my stomach. He presses down more firmly, and a sharp pain from my cracked ribs shoots up my spine. I gasp.

“This isn’t up for debate, Kate,” he says through gritted teeth.

“You’re hurting yourself,” I cry. Without a sacrifice to consume, the magic is eating away at him with a ferocious hunger.

“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters if you’re not okay.”

Matthew’s breathing is heavy, labored.

The King Below is perched atop his throne in a defensive, crouched stance. Lightning cracks in the sky above him in strange slow motion. At the base of the throne several of my ancestral spirits are trapped in gilded chains, writhing, trying to escape. Others are clutched near their graves, captives of their own bones. A handful still fight. They dodge and swarm, ripping at the King’s clothes and hair. Blood drips from his skull and skin, but he is smiling. Cackling.

“We’re losing,” I whisper, watching as another gold chain shoots from the King’s hand and wraps around a spirit. It pulls her instantly to the ground, and her screams join the wails of all my other ancestors.

“We’re going to get you out of here. Don’t worry,” Matthew whispers against my temple, leaning heavily into me. “When you are healed, Shadow Walk back to your body. Hide in your cottage, and don’t leave the boundary until sunset tomorrow. By then, it will be too late for him to reach you. He will have to wait until Beltane to try again. If he even survives that long. I will fight him off while you run.”

Before he can say more, Matthew is ripped away from me. He lands with a thud in the grass several graves away and doesn’t stir. The King Below’s indigo cloak blocks my view as he stands above me, wheezing heavily. I bite my tongue to keep from whimpering in fear. The graveyard goes silent. Cracks of lightning still spiral across the sky, but no sound radiates from them. The whispering screams of my ancestors die down as the King Below steps closer to me.

“The Cyphers enjoy making promises they don’t end up keeping, my dear,” he rasps. He is more corpse than man now, with his ribcage ripped open and exposed. He bleeds from every orifice, and his breath is little more than a death rattle. He sinks to the ground beside me, leaning on his knees, those skeletal eyes staring at me.

“What say you now, little hedge witch? Now that the one you love lies dying. Now that most of your ancestral line, the source of your family’s magic, is bound up in chains. The peace of their afterlife shall be sacrificed because you called for their aid. The guilt must be eating you alive.” He leans closer to me, pressing his bony fingers onto my stomach, and my still unhealed ribs scream in protest. For the first time, I can smell the way he reeks of rotting flesh.

“What say you now?” he repeats with a soft purr, stroking my cheek. My head pounds as I wince at his touch.

The King Below tuts, his eyes appraising me. “A cracked skull and broken ribs. We can’t have that. Say you will be mine and rule the lands below and above with me, and I will heal you, sweet.”

The wind whips his cloak up for a moment and I catch a glimpse of Matthew crumpled behind him. Blood and bile gather in my mouth as pain and fear are replaced by rage.

“I’m a hedge witch,” I say breathlessly. “I can do it myself.”

Screaming through the pain, I sit up, shooting a hand out and grabbing the silver chain around his neck, pulling him closer to me before he can move away. I wrap the chain around my hand twice, tethering us together, and firmly place my other palm on his chest, just above the bones of his exposed lower ribs.

He growls at me, his own hand wrapping around my throat, squeezing my airways and trying to push me back down to the grave. At our adversarial embrace, spirits and shadows alike erupt in a writhing panic. The few unbound ghostly figures who remain encircle us, blocking the mutilated hellhounds, who whimper and keel, unable to move closer to their master.

I don’t fight against the waves of pain and the burning need for oxygen. I don’t let my concentration waver to Matthew or the ancestors circled around me. All my intention, all my focus is on the very center of the King Below’s chest, where no heart beats but shadow magic thrums. And just as I had done with the energy and life of Goodwin Manor when I healed Miranda, I begin to pull the shadows toward me.

“What are you doing?” The King Below seethes, his wretched breath sputtering against my face. Bits of dark smoke dribble from his loose jaw. Black flame-like tendrils unfurl from his ribs and curl around my arms, sending sparking electric currents through my body.

There is no air left in my lungs to answer him. I coax every precious dark filament from him, each a thread of the very fabric holding him together. His grip on my throat loosens as shadows pour from his arms, down along my neck, before settling into my skin. I accept them into me, sending them to all the parts of my body that are broken and bleeding. The throbbing of my head eases, the stabbing in my ribs disappears, and my thoughts become sharper as I draw in a quick breath beneath his weakened fingers.

His eyes are wide with surprise and, I can only hope, fear. The hand around my neck crackles as he sends a surge of his own necrotic intention toward me. My vision goes black from the blinding pain. Skin on frozen fire, muscles clenching and shrinking as the blast of energy tries to spread atrophy through my body. For a moment, I know the pain Miranda felt when Matthew destroyed her arm. But I don’t let it take root, instead Siphoning this magic as well, pulling it in deeper with the other shadows, letting it mix and dissolve and become a part of me until I can see clearly once again. The King Below’s jaw goes slack as he watches me consume his last line of defense.

“Thank you,” I say in a low whisper. “I will take all that you are to become whole again.” I breathe in deeply, smiling as my lungs expand painlessly into my now healed ribs. He let’s go of my neck and tries to scramble away, pushing off my shoulders. But the chain of his necklace is wrapped so tightly around my hand that it keeps him connected to me, cutting into my skin as it does so. I pull more shadows from him and heal those bleeding cuts instantaneously.

I brace myself for more resistance, for another necrotic attack, for something, as I pull the death out of him, thread by thread and morph it into myself, letting it join my own magic. But he ceases all action and smiles. Then laughs.

“Enjoy the fate you’ve designed for yourself, my dear,” he says, his words little more than a whisper. “It would have been more pleasant for you had you just accepted me.”

I ignore him, continuing my Siphon as the skin on his face unravels, sloughing away into mist that I, in turn, take into me. He laughs again, the brief chuckle barely an echo on the wind as the last remnants of his skin sag and turn a sickly orange, then brown, and then quickly fade away into dust. All his weight, pressing into me, disappears, leaving me alone on the grave, with the silver chain he wore around his neck still dangling from my hand, the key at one end swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

A groaning rumble sounds out as the pile of rotted pumpkins collapses. I jump away as the entire throne comes tumbling down, the rotten gourds rolling across the graveyard. Lifeless skeletons are strewn about, every grave ripped open and empty. But the hellhounds are gone, and the dozens of chains connected to the demolished throne melt into the grass. The spirits of my ancestors soar into the air and turn into a sparkling mist, free.

After all the commotion, the quiet that has settled over the graveyard is eerie. The night sky still cracks with silent thunder, but the forest does not stir. I’ve won, but there is no sense of victory inside me—only the memory of the King Below’s final words and ghostly laughter as I defeated him. And the growing weight of the chain still in my hands. I pull the key up into my palm, to study it. It’s warm to the touch and sparks with the electric current of death magic. My muscles clench with tension. The sense of impending doom has returned.

“Hecate,” a voice calls out. I look up as my mother rushes over to me, her feet not leaving any impression in the grass.

“Mom?” I call out, trying to fight the anxiety building in me.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” she says mournfully. Her eyes scan me and she shakes her head.

“What’s wrong?” Please, just let her tell me that everything will be all right. That all the secrets are revealed. The fighting finally over.

“This is all my fault, honey. I tried to protect you. To keep him from you.” If spirits could cry, I would swear by the tremble in her voice that she was moments from tears. “I agreed to name you as a hedge witch, which is what I had promised. But I never promised to train you. I thought that loophole would save both our lives. But he’s had his final revenge on me now. He’s signed you off to a fate worse than death.”

“He can’t hurt you anymore. We can all go back home now.” I want to sob. Because nothing has ever felt so far from true.

“Oh, honey,” she says softly. “If we do that, everything in the land below will follow behind us. It will be madness. Chaos. You hold the key now. You must accept it into you and become the gate. Before it destroys you.”

The key burns, and the edges begin to shimmer and sharpen. It shifts in size, extending into a multichrome dagger in my hand. I can see my face in the reflection of its surface. I try to drop it, but my fingers won’t release their grip. An urge builds as I stare at my reflection in the knife’s edge, an urge that won’t be satisfied until I bring the dagger to my chest and plunge it into my heart.

“Mom?” I ask again, scared and confused, fighting the desire to pierce myself with the key.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she says, shushing me. “I will stay with you through all of it. Until another hedge witch is born and your burden is eased.”

I am truly worse than dead. Miranda and Celeste will watch over my sleeping body, which will never wake. I will never see them again. I will never see Merlin, the women of the Atlantic Key, the children of Ipswich—all will only ever see me as a comatose corpse, stored away in some hospital room for the next fifty years until my corporeal body decays.

In the meantime, I will be forced to be the glue that keeps the veils of the worlds in place. This horrid, muted limbo where nothing lives and grows will be my home eternal, for who would ever again name their daughter a hedge witch?

“I am damned,” I whisper, horrified.

“No.” Matthew’s hushed voice is behind me. I turn and let out a gasping sob to see him awake. But his entire right arm is shriveled and black. He walks quietly, slowly, over to me and takes my free hand in his. The coppery scar of his left arm glimmers in the candlelight. He reaches for the dagger but I snatch my palm closed. He sighs.

“Kate,” he whispers softly.

I shake my head furiously. “No. No, I won’t let you.”

“I am dead already,” he says, looking down at his arm. “The decay has gone too far.”

“You’re lying!” I insist. “I could save you. I used Siphoning to fix Miranda’s arm. I can heal you like I did her.”

Matthew looks at me with admiring surprise and runs his good hand through my hair softly.

“Did you really? Extraordinary,” he breathes. “There hasn’t been a day since we met where you haven’t completely left me in awe.”

I lean into his touch but keep my hand closed tightly over the dagger. Its edges are slicing into my flesh. The urge to become one with it is almost unbearable.

“I can save you. I promise,” I whisper.

“I have no doubt,” Matthew says, putting his forehead to mine. I wrap my free arm around him, holding him to me. His good hand cups my cheek. “But the point is irrelevant. You’re not going to stay here. This realm was never meant to be your permanent home. You belong with the living.”

“So do you!” I shake my head.

“Listen to me,” he says, his lips pressing softly against my cheek. “I have spent the past ten years desperately working to save you. From the moment we met, during those first sips of cinnamon mead, I knew you were too good, too full of life to be subjected to His cruelty. Every day I have worked, invisibly sabotaging His efforts, turning my family against Him. All to keep you from this dark fate. I refuse to come all this way and fail.”

“It’s not your choice,” I insist.

He laughs softly, his breath tickling my neck. He pulls away and looks me in the eye.

“I’m a shadow hexan, Kate, just as he was. It’s my fate.”

“You were forced to choose shadow magic. You never had a choice,” I remind him.

“But I do now,” Matthew says, “I want this. Let me choose this.”

“Listen to him, Hecate,” my mother’s spirit insists from behind me. I turn to look toward her, and her eyes are shining, full of hope. I shake my head.

“You don’t want this. You can’t.” I push away from him, but his good hand moves quickly, clutching my waist and holding me to him. The air is dead silent, but there is a screaming cacophony inside my mind.

“I do want it,” he says through gritted teeth. “I need it. Nothing is worth anything unless you’re happy and safe. I will beg you if I have to.” His voice trembles, not from fear, but some other cocktail of emotions.

My whole body is shaking. Drops of blood are running down my palm from where the dagger bites into my skin.

“Please, Kate,” he whispers, and leans his forehead against mine again.

I breathe in the scent of him, autumn rain and freshly ground cinnamon. My throat is so tight, fighting against tears, that it’s almost agony to speak. I grasp for that perfect calm I feel whenever we’re together. But the panic coursing through me is too strong. It would be so easy to rip away from him and plunge the dagger into me. And a part of me wants to, desperately. But Matthew’s eyes are pleading. His whole face is tense, waiting.

“I love you,” I say, gasping for air.

My palm unfurls, exposing the dagger.

Matthew lets out a sound of strangled relief. My heart shatters as he pulls the dagger away from me. He bends down, slides it out of my palm, and leaves a gentle kiss on my bleeding fingers. A wrenching sob escapes from me. I want to wrap myself around him, prevent him from using the dagger, prevent any harm from coming to either one of us. But he pulls away from me, his eyes suddenly wary, as if he expects me to snatch the weapon back out of his hands.

My mother’s cold presence embraces me.

“Thank you,” she says, staring off at Matthew as she holds me. And I want to scream at her joy. Matthew stares at me, a soft adoring smile turning up the corner of his lips. He raises the dagger up, and my heart begins to pound, blood rushing like a roaring train through my ears. A shimmering brass chain begins to extend from the blade in Matthew’s hands and wraps itself around him. He hovers the dagger above his chest. His eyes meet mine. I can’t draw breath.

“This is not goodbye, Kate,” Matthew says. “This is the beginning of it all.” And then he thrusts the dagger into his chest.