Minutes to Midnight (21 page)

"Stop moving…just relax, okay?"

The voice was there again and I looked to my
left to see Stella looking down at me. Stella. She was alive, and
she didn't look crazy. She leaned away for a second and then placed
a cold, wet rag on my forehead. I shivered. In fact, I couldn't
stop shivering. I was wrapped in thick, gray blankets in a large
gray bed. Did I make it out? Was I still in the castle?

I pulled my arms from beneath the blankets
and looked at them. There were marks on my wrists and my left hand
was still wrapped in a strip of my tee-shirt. I tried to move my
left leg to bend it like I always did when I was lying down, but
the pain that lanced up my left thigh made me see stars. I
remembered the sword and the slice through my thigh.

"Darren, you've got some serious wounds this
time. And one of them's infected. I've given you some tea and your
fever has finally broken."

I stared at her. Thinking was slow. Putting
thoughts into a coherent sentence, and then translating them into
questions seemed impossible. It felt like my brain was full of
cotton. "Castle…are we out? The Djin said he let you go."

"Yes, he did." She took my left hand and put
it to her cheek.. "But I came back for you. Raven sent me. I found
you in the hall. You were bleeding. So I dragged you to bed and
I've been taking care of you ever since."

I went back over what she said, making sure
I understood it. "So…Raven sent you in? She didn't get me out?"

She laughed and took the towel from my
forehead. I heard her dip it into more water and wring it out, then
she placed it back on my forehead. "I think you're still delirious,
Darren. You've been sick for a while. But the doctor said you'd
recover."

"Doctor?" I tried to push myself up in the
bed but it was like trying to pull the lower half of my body out of
mud. It felt like the mattress and blanket were wrapping tighter
around me. "Stella—"

"Sshh. Just lay back down."

"I'm in pain…did the doctor give you
anything for pain?"

"No. She said you'd be okay."

Something felt off. Way off. If I followed
Stella's reasoning, then we were still in the Peripheral in that
castle. And with the way I felt, I had a full-on raging fever,
which meant infection. And infection was probably from the Lamia
bite, either from bacteria or because I was becoming a Lamia.
"Stella, I ran a sword through my thigh and a Lamia bit me."

"A Lamia?"

"Yeah…it's a monster. Ghouls make them."

"Yes they do."

I managed to pull the blanket off of me. I
was a human burrito in this bed. What I saw when I pulled it back
shocked the hell out of me. I was still fully clothed. The only
bandage around my thigh was the one I'd made with my shirt. The
bite on the left thigh was green and oozing and the bed was soaked
with blood. I was literally laying in a bed of my own blood. I
hadn't seen a doctor at all.

"Stella, how long have I been here?"

"Several days. Look…" She took the towel out
of my lap where it fell when I moved the blanket. "Let's see if we
can't get you back to sleep. Okay?"

"Stella." I grabbed her hand with my damaged
one. My grip wasn't strong—I doubted I could hold a kitten my hand
shook so bad. "Please, did we leave the Peripheral?"

"Darren, nothing leaves the Peripheral.
That's the rule. The door's gone, so you'll just have to—" She
stopped and smiled at me, as if she forgot what she was going to
say.

"Stella…have you seen anything that looks
like a mirror floating in midair?"

She started to say something, then closed
her mouth and looked upset. "I'm not supposed to say."

"Does that mean you have?"

"Yes, but it's not here. It's in the woods."
She looked to her right, then her left, and leaned in close. Her
eyes had a strange sheen to them. "I was in the woods the other day
with a nice police officer. Don't you remember? You were
there."

A wave of relief washed over me. Good, so
she remembered that much. At the time she looked as if she'd been
restrained, and she might have been. But now she seemed
more…docile. I wiped at my forehead and face with the corner of the
blanket. I was sweating. Hopefully that meant the fever really was
breaking. "Can you take me back there? I think the fresh air would
do me good."

"I'm not supposed to…"

The door opened and a large, familiar raven
flew in. It landed on the foot of the bed and cawed, "Hob! Hob! Go
to Hob!"

Puck! The raven that annoyed Maab by crying
out the truth. Was he telling me to see Hob now as the truth?

Hob was the Urisk that guarded Maab's Cairn
in Alfheim. Hob had helped us, healed us, helped us escape. His
price had been the want of conversation, and I felt a pang of guilt
because I never tried to go back and visit with him.

"Shoo!" Stella jumped up and grabbed a
broom. The raven took flight again and dodged Stella's attack.

"Hob! Hob!"

I managed to sort of move my legs over the
side of the bed. I stopped there because standing terrified me.
"Puck! Where is Alfheim from here?"

"Follow the Black Road!" The raven ducked
past Stella and out the door.

"Damn nuisance! Maab should have killed that
damn thing centuries ago."

I paused in the middle of hoisting myself
off the bed. I looked at Stella. "Maab? You know the former Faerie
Queen?"

Stella looked confused at first, then
worried, and then she wiped it all away with a smile. "My poor
Darren…you're sick. You must have heard me wrong."

"No…I heard you just right. You're not
Stella. I'm still in the Peripheral."

She glared at me. Didn't move. Didn't say a
word.

I managed to pull myself up to a standing
position—of course, the headboard supported most of me and I was
standing on my right leg. "I'm going to find Hob."

"Hob's dead."

Stella's voice wasn't Stella's anymore. It
was a flat, empty voice. No, not quite empty. There was something
there, full of misery and pain.

I didn't want to spend time on who or what
this was. I didn't want to believe Hob was dead, either. Why would
Puck come find me if the Urisk was gone? Puck had been the one to
warn us at Maab's castle that day. He'd been the only one to tell
the truth.

I narrowed my eyes at Stella as she stood a
few feet away, the broom still in her hand. "Who are you?"

A smile pulled at the corners of her lips.
"You really don't know."

"Why would I know?" I attempted to ease
myself to the left toward the open door.

The door slammed shut.

Oh boy.

Not-Stella took a single step toward me, and
as she did, her appearance shifted. The red in her hair slipped
down 'til it hung on the ends of platinum hair. Her long face
morphed to a more petite shape. Her lips went from red to black,
and her body shortened. Her clothing moved and folded until she was
dressed in smoke and shadows. Small fires burned inside of a
billowing skirt and I held onto the headboard for dear life.

But this wasn't Stella—oh fuck no, it wasn't
her.

This was Rhonda Orly.

A sly smile pulled at the corner of her
mouth as she tilted her head toward her right shoulder and her eyes
grew red. "Hello, Darren. I can't say the Peripheral has been kind
to you."

Her voice was doubled like a Revenant's, a
harmonic resonance that scared the bejesus out of me. I swallowed
and cleared my throat. "Who….who else do I have the pleasure of
speaking with?"

"Oh, you mean my First Born?" She laughed.
"We don't call ourselves that here, Darren. That was the name my
grandfather's second wife gave her brood when he mated her. A
direct stab at wanting to make the children of his first love
illegitimate." She laughed. "As if our grandmother cared."

I had no idea what she was
talking about. And I really didn't care. I was still dealing with
the shock of learning Rhonda was now a Revenant and the First Born,
or whatever it called itself, inside of her was a complete nutcase.
Not to mention my own circumstances had just gotten a whole lot
worse. Rhonda manipulated the
Grimoire
to make me love her when she
was just a mortal witch. I didn't remember it, but I got the story
from others. They all told it the same.

She had the key to fucking me up really
bad.

I glanced at the bed. At the
blood-stained sheets.
Stained
being the key word. The blood was dried. I looked
down at my ripped jeans. The blood was dried there as well. I put a
hand to my chest. Had she messed with the
Grimoire
while I was out?

Rhonda and her creepy imaginary friend made
tsk-tsk noises as she moved slowly to the desk on the other side of
the room and leaned the broom against the wall. "I haven't touched
the book, Darren. I no longer have that access. That Angelic whore
locked me out of it. But don't think I haven't tried the entire
time you've been here."

Entire
time
… "How long…?"

"In the Material World, a month has passed."
She smiled at me and a chill ran the length of my back. "Your
friends believe you dead. You shouldn't have made it so easy for
Rippin' Jack."

The Djin! I licked my lips and tested my
power. The book opened, and flipped forward and then back as I
begged it for a way out of this and back home. I didn't want to
believe that much time had passed.

"It's no use, Darren. You see, we have been
searching for a very long time. To find a way to free our mother
from the prison my grandfather placed her in."

"We?" I prompted. I wanted to keep her busy
until I found what I needed. I figured I could use the same spell
I'd used to freeze Raven in the dojo, but I also needed something
to heal me, or at least give me the strength to find Alfheim and
Hob.

But then I didn't need her to answer. I
already had it. I looked at her. "You're Charybdis. You're the one
that turned Lucy into a Ghoul and made her create the Lamias."

She reached out and touched my nose. "Good.
Very smart. Have you figured everything out?"

"No. I don't know how you got to Rhonda…or
why you hired a Djin—"

"I didn't hire the Djin," she spat out and
her eyes flamed behind dark lashes. "I would never lower myself to
make a deal with something as pathetic and simple as one of
those."

She hadn't hired him to take me. "So you
weren't the one he delivered me to."

"No…" she laughed and spun once, her skirts
igniting with dancing flame. "And that's why I don't trust them. Oh
you were delivered correctly, but then the idiot took the one thing
his boss had forbidden him to touch. But by that time, the contract
was finished. And you were sealed."

I knew I was missing something. Something
important. "You…you want to create the Coyote Flame. You want the
large portal made."

"To bring my family into this world." She
held out her arms and curtsied. "Yes I am Charybdis. My brother is
Scylla. My sister is called Chimera. And our mother was known as
Echidna."

I blinked at her. Her family read like a
mythological disaster. "Echidna—the mother of all monsters?"

Whoops. Wrong thing to say.

Charybdis/Rhonda was
instantly in my face, her hands at my throat. I didn't have to lean
on the headboard and wall anymore because she was holding me up by
my spine. "We are not monsters! We were betrayed by the God
Mother…how dare you even speak my mother's name! You who reek
of
her
stench.
Her
blood."

Again…clueless. But it didn't matter,
because the lack of blood to my brain was cutting off all serious
thinking.

Revenants were strong. Damn strong. So if I
didn't act quick, she was going to kill me, and then either the
book would heal me or it'd be on its way to the Well of Souls.

"
Batiltu!
" It came out more like a
cough as I used my cumulated anger and fear to blast her at the
same time. She let go of me and flew across the room, then froze in
midair.

I went down on my knees, coughing as I
pulled air into my lungs. That expenditure cost me, and I didn't
have time to ask the millions of questions battering at my brain. I
had to get back to the Material world—I had to find Hob. I had to
find Mike.

Once standing—sort of—I yanked the door open
and looked up and down the corridor. I was still in the castle. Not
a person in sight. I had no idea where this castle was in relation
to where the ruined hulk of Maab's was. But if I could get to
Maab's, I knew I could find the Cairn entrance. I was pretty sure
Charybdis had closed the one in this place.

As I glanced back at Rhonda, I felt the book
open to a page I hadn't seen before. The spell formed in the air
between myself and her. She saw it as well and screamed through
unmoving lips. She knew what the spell would do. So did I.

But…the real question was…could I knowingly
do this to her?

It was a spell to permanently sever a First
Born from their host. I doubted I had the energy to do it, or the
time. The look in her eyes terrified me about as much as the
thought of performing it. I wiped it away and asked for healing
instead.

A new page appeared in the
air before me. This one was much simpler—but still scary.
"
Emuq tabalu.
"

Golden light sparkled around Rhonda, swirled
like glitter, and formed a funnel from her to my outstretched hand.
The funnel bore into my palm and the tattoo there burst into flame.
My body seized as if I'd been hit with a million volts of
electricity.

Just as quickly, the glitter faded and the
light disappeared. I staggered back, my thigh, palm and head no
longer hurting. A quick look showed the wounds were gone. But when
I dared to look at Rhonda—