Chapter 41
A while later, the door opens again.
“Sonia? Sonia! Oh heavens, what have they done to you?” my mom says, her clothes torn and filthy and her face bruised and bloody. Her hands are tied behind her back, and one of her arms is wrapped in a white bandage. Her normally silky blonde hair is disheveled, and she’s not at all the calm, beautiful and collected Hedda that I’m used to.
“Mom!” It seems like I haven’t seen her in ages, even though it’s only been a little over a week since she disappeared. “I was so worried about you and missed you so much.” Those words don’t even scratch the surface of the mountain of pain I have suffered since she went missing. She looks both physically and emotionally beat up, and it frightens me to think of all the torture she must have endured. “How did you escape?” I try to sit up, but can’t because the straps hold me down. “Did they break your arm?”
“Don’t worry about me, Sonia—I’m well enough. Maureen let me out and told me where you were. Look at you—you’re hurt.” She sees the deep puncture wounds on my arms and her eyes well up with tears.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say, though my words sound anything but convincing.
“Did they torture you?”
She reaches for and grabs a scalpel from the tool table, straining because her hands are tied behind her back.
“No, just inserted some sort of tracking device into my brain when I got here.” I didn’t think my mom’s face could become paler, but now her face goes completely white. “What is it?” Something is terribly wrong; I know my mom’s expressions.
“Maureen may have implanted an explosive device into your head. She did that to one of my sisters who got away right as we got here, and her head…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, but her expression is pained.
“Did they put one in your head too?” I ask, fearing the answer.
“That’s not important right now. What’s important is that you’re safe, and that we get you out of here now. Hold this scalpel in your hand and I’ll cut myself free.”
I take the scalpel and hold it as firmly as I can. Containing my emotions is much harder and tears stream from the sides of my eyes down onto the table. “I was so worried about you,” I cry.
My mom inches close to the table and moves her hands up and down, pressing the rope against the blade’s sharp edge. “Sonia, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, and you’ll be fine too.”
“I couldn’t stop worrying about you,” I say. “That’s all I’ve been doing since you went missing. Every second it seems like there’s another thing to worry about, another way in which I, or someone I love, will die.”
“Sonia, I’ve been through situations like this many times, and made it out fine, and we’ll be fine this time, too.”
I wonder what other situations she has been through and if this kind of thing is something I’ll have to get used to as a Huldra. “I’m trying to decide whether or not…” I pause as a horrifying thought pops into my mind. Could this person be just another Darkálfar in disguise? “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything Sonia,” my mom says, still trying to cut herself free from the rope.
“What was Dad’s favorite song?”
My mom stops moving for a second but then continues to cut the rope. “Why would you ask? Oh…you want to make sure it’s really me. My, you are a smart young lady. It was When Eternity Calls.”
I smile and nod and let out a pathetic cry as I realize that she truly is my mom, yet not the mom I always thought she was, for she is so much stronger than I had ever realized—than I had ever appreciated. I regret not noticing sooner how wonderful she is.
“I thought I might give up my gift so we can go free,” I say.
Finally her ropes are cut and her hands go free. She hovers over me, and starts frantically undoing the straps that tie me down. “No, Sonia, absolutely not. If we have to die so that Maureen doesn’t get your gift, that’s what we’ll need to do. If she—”
“Have you had enough time to catch up?” Maureen asks, slithering into the room, her hair long, curly and auburn. I feel queasy, remembering what Anthony told me about her changing hairdo and wonder whose hair she’s wearing and how that person died. A Darkálfar, wearing the same uniform as the other Darkálfars, enters the room behind Maureen, and stations himself in the corner. Though he’s very tall, he isn’t quite as muscular as the others. Both my mom and I grow silent.
“Now that we’re all here, we can have an adult conversation and start negotiating,” Maureen says.
“There will be no negotiations,” my mom says. “Sonia keeps her fifth Huldra gift, or we take it with us to our graves.”
“Yes,” I confirm, though I don’t know whether or not I completely agree with my mom because we could always appropriate my gift back at a later time as long as we were still alive, right? If we’re dead, well, then there’s absolutely no hope.
Maureen puts both her hands onto the metal table on either side of my feet and leans forward. “Let’s start with the first negotiation. Victor,” she glances at the Darkálfar, “remove Hedda and take her back to her cell. We’re going to show Sonia how things work around here when she doesn’t cooperate.”
“No!” my mom yells. She kicks in the direction of the Darkálfar, making her arrest more difficult, but he grabs her around the torso, locking in her arms, and drags her out into the hallway. “Maureen, if you harm Sonia, I’ll kill you myself!” My mom’s voice fades the further away she gets.
“So, what have you decided, my darling?” Maureen skirts to my side and jabs the puncture wound in my arm.
I scream in pain, the stabbing sensation spreading through my entire upper body. “I’m never giving you my gift—never!”
“Never…is such a long time.” She jabs me again, harder this time, and I scream out in agony, the pain so intense that I’m slipping in and out of consciousness.
A loud crash thunders through the hallway and footsteps approach. My mom enters the room, swings at Maureen with a vase she picked up from somewhere in the hall, hitting her in the head. Maureen drops to the ground like a ragdoll. Fumbling, my mom undoes my straps. I can’t figure out how she escaped the Darkálfar, but I don’t ask because we can’t waste the precious little time we have to escape.
“Let’s go!” She pulls me to my feet and we run into the corridor. The hallway is dim, making it harder to recognize which door is Anthony’s. We bang on some doors and finally I hear Anthony’s voice from behind one of them, but when I try to open it, the door is locked.
“Anthony, can you hear me?” I desperately hope he hasn’t lost a lot of blood from the gunshot wound.
A small window slot in the door opens. “I’m here, and I’m…uh…fine. Sonia, don’t wait for me. You need to just get out of here,” he says, his eyes barely visible through the opening.
“No—” I start objecting.
“There’s no time to hesitate—just do as I say. I’ll find my own way. Get the horses and head for the shore—now!” Anthony yells angrily.
“What about you and what about the bomb in my head?” I scream as hysteria boils its way upward through my highly frazzled nerves. The two people I love most in this world are here with me and all our lives are in danger.
“Maureen wants your gift much more than she wants you dead, and she won’t detonate the bomb until she has what she wants from you.” Anthony reaches his fingers through the crack. “I’ll find a way out of here and meet you soon.”
“Anthony, I’m not leaving you!” I object wildly, realizing I’d rather die than desert him and leave him with Maureen and Olaf.
“Stand back,” my mom says, holding a machine gun in her hand.
I move out of the way so she can open fire. “Where did you get the gun?”
“The dead Darkálfar over there.” She nods her head in the cadaver’s direction, aims the gun toward the door, and then shoots three rounds into the door’s lock. It opens.
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I run in and embrace Anthony—carefully—since we’re both severely injured. “Will you be okay?” I look at his shoulder where a big splotch of blood has saturated his shirt.
“I’ll be fine. To the stable!” he says, his face twisting in agony, and beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
We head for the spiral stone stairwell, and though Anthony struggles a bit up the stairs, he doesn’t complain, nor does he stop to slow us down. At the top, I finally recognize where we are. We’re at the very end of the hallway, past my room in the opposite direction of the foyer, but when I look back at the door, there is none, only a stone wall—a mirage. That’s why I hadn’t seen it before.
“The foyer’s this way,” I say. They follow me, constantly checking to see if anyone is chasing us. Then Layla comes running through the mirage wall we just came out of, aiming a gun at us, her expression that of disgust.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” she yells.
I pivot around to face her, but continue to back up, inching slowly toward the foyer—toward our freedom.
My mom points the machine gun at Layla, but that doesn’t deter Layla from charging ahead. “Drop the gun, Hedda, or I’ll kill Sonia.” Without warning, Layla fires a shot, nicking my ear and I scream. She then aims the gun at my head.
My mom doesn’t hesitate and flings the gun onto the ground in front at Layla’s feet. Without skipping a beat, Layla strides over the weapon and continues pursuing us. “What a smart mother you have.”
Anthony moves in front of me, creating a barrier between Layla’s gun and me.
I don’t like that he’s in the line of fire, but I try to take advantage of the situation. “You wouldn’t shoot your own brother, would you?” I say.
“I don’t have a brother.” Layla cocks her gun and fires it, shooting right past us, the bullet hitting the far wall in the foyer. “Stop talking!”
“Did you know that Anthony was born only three years after you? And during the same time Maureen was married to Anthony’s father—your father?” I say, arriving in the foyer, and we stop. Anthony looks as shocked as Layla does.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Layla says. “Stop where you are this instant, or I won’t miss you this time!”
We stop right where the sunbeams enter in through the large window above the stairs. “It proves that Maureen lied to you about Anthony’s age,” I say. “He’s only nineteen, not ancient like you thought, like Maureen told you. She’s been lying to you about everything.”
“Are you insinuating that my father cheated on Maureen with a Lightálfar, and then had me?” Layla scoffs.
“That’s exactly what I’m insinuating,” I say boldly, glad she has taken the bait. “You and Anthony have the same father.”
“You’re wrong in your assumption and you’re wrong if you think you can get me to side with you on such weak claims.” Layla’s expression is unwavering.
“You were never one of his girls, were you? Maureen made you tell that lie to convince me that Anthony was evil.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that Layla was never one of Anthony’s girls, since he told me he didn’t even know who she was.
Layla doesn’t answer. Instead she squeezes her lips tightly together.
“There’s no way we can prove any of this to you, Layla, but what if we’re right?” my mom says.
“I don’t care who’s right. I care that I stay faithful to Maureen,” Layla says, now widening her stance and securing her weapon with both hands.
“How can you not care about what is right?” I ask.
Anthony moves toward Layla, his footsteps unsure, with his hands in front of him as if he’s trying to lull her into a trance.
“Stand back, or I’ll shoot!” Layla’s steel gaze has been replaced with uncertainty.
Anthony looks at Layla’s hand. “What’s that on your finger?”
“What?” Layla says, glancing fleetingly at her ring before looking back at Anthony.
“Where did you get your ring?” Anthony asks.
“That’s none of your concern,” Layla sneers. “Don’t try to distract me—it won’t work. Step away!”
“I have an exact match, and I got it from my father before he left—” Anthony holds up his finger to show her his ring.
Layla’s eyes widen and she gasps, but though she’s still pointing her gun at Anthony, now her aim is wavering.
“Kill Anthony, Layla! Kill Hedda!” Maureen darts into the foyer, holding her hand over her forehead, bleeding heavily from the wound my mom gave her. Two Darkálfars are right behind her, carrying machine guns. Layla steps back, refocuses the gun at Anthony, but doesn’t shoot.
“Shoot them!” Maureen yells, but when Layla doesn’t shoot, Maureen reaches for Layla’s gun. Layla wrestles to get it back, and while they are fighting for the weapon, two shots go off.
“No!” Anthony yells, but he isn’t hit and neither is my mom.
Instead, the bullets tear through my skin, piercing my chest.