No, Elena moaned, that must not happen! Hiding in her heart, Elena was not so lost to her grief and sorrow that she had forgotten the others who were still on board: Er’ril, Joach, Flint, and Moris. They would all be slain!
Elena fought against the wit’ch. The dagger trembled in her hand. But it was like fighting against a raging river. She could make no headway as she was buffeted back by the strong currents now racing in her blood. The wit’ch refused to relinquish control.
Throughout her inner battle, mad laughter flowed out from her throat. Behind the glee, no one heard Elena’s cry for help.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” FLINT asked.
“I’m not sure,” Er’ril said, keeping an eye on the goblin horde. A moment ago, he and the others had faced the beasts over the slain body of their queen, both sides clearly baffled. No one had moved; no one had dared speak.
Then, wicked laughter had suddenly erupted into the tense silence from the center of the deck—first softly, then more feverishly. It now echoed off the sails and water. The quality of the voice spoke of madness and something more—something hungry.
The drak’il horde squirmed and hissed, unsure of this strange phenomenon. A few goblins sniffed at the air. Then a handful of the beasts fled—and that was all it took. Soon the whole army retreated, writhing over one another, claws scrabbling at the deck. The splashes of fleeing drak’ils sounded from all around the boat.
Er’ril and the others kept their posts. Though the laughter raised the hairs on the plainsman’s arm and tortured his ears, he knew the battle was not over. Rockingham, and the demon spirit he carried, still stood by the mast of the mainsail. Like a raging flood over a rock, the goblins fled past the golem.
Still, it was not the presence of Rockingham that kept Er’ril from moving. For just the briefest moment, he thought he had recognized a certain lilt to the disembodied voice.
“Joach, go check on your sister,” he ordered quickly.
“But—” The boy’s eyes remained fixed on the fleeing goblins.
Er’ril elbowed the boy toward the damaged hatch. “Get below!”
Joach hesitated, then dodged through the doorway, his heels flying down the wooden steps. Er’ril listened to the wicked laughter, his eyes narrowed. The maddening glee bubbled over the ship, seeming to rise from the wood itself.
“What is that?” Flint asked.
Er’ril swallowed hard but remained silent.
By now, only the goblin dead still remained atop the deck. Even the direly wounded drak’ils had dragged themselves overboard, taking their chances among the sharks rather than risk the wrath of the ghost who had slain their queen.
AMID THE LAUGHTER, Elena continued to battle the wit’ch, struggling to wrest control of the wild magicks. The point of the dagger now scraped against the flesh of her palm. Elena fought savagely.
Around her, the goblins had seemed to sense the menace about to be unleashed and had fled in all directions, leaving the deck empty except for the dead.
Elena struggled harder. With the drak’ils gone, there was no need to free her magicks. The deaths of her companions would be for nothing.
Still, Elena could not stop what was about to happen. Mad laughter poured uncontrolled from her throat.
Elena searched for help—and found it in the most unlikely place.
Across the deck, standing by one of the masts, stood a figure she had barely noticed among the press of goblins. Black magicks surrounded him like a foggy mist. With the deck now clear, she had a better view of him. At first, Elena’s eyes grew wide with slow recognition; then her lids narrowed with hatred.
It could not be! Yet, there was no denying it. Rockingham!
A fire in Elena’s belly that had long gone to ash flamed anew. He still lived! A scream of rage escaped her heart, bursting through her blood.
The laughter of the wit’ch suddenly died in her throat as the woman in her flamed up with hate and fury. Wit’ch and woman were no longer blurred—no longer fought. The twin sides of her spirit fused in the fiery forge of her rage.
Silence descended upon the deck. With the dagger still poised above her palm, Elena once again had control of her limbs, but now the coldness of the wit’ch was not something to be resisted, but embraced.
The murderer would not escape her again.
She dug the point of her dagger into her palm.
THE LAUGHTER DIED as quickly as it had come.
Er’ril strained for any hint of the mad glee, but the ship was dead silent. Even the gulls had fled. Nothing stirred, not even the sails. The winds themselves seemed to be avoiding the ship.
The two parties—Rockingham and the wit’ch’s guardians—stared at each other across the corpse-strewn deck.
Rockingham had not moved. He still stood steadfast in a spreading pool of shadows, a smirk on his face. “Now that all that foolishness is done,” he said casually, “maybe we can get back to the matter of the wit’ch.” Rockingham stretched his arms out wide, his eyes flaring to match the crimson glow in his chest. The golem was being possessed by its master. Its voice became ancient ice. “Enough play. Now it’s time to die.”
Through the jagged tear in its chest, shadows rolled like oily thunderclouds from some black well. But instead of thunder, the screams of tortured spirits and the howl of demons accompanied this storm front. Out of these clouds, snaking ropes of darkness spread in all directions—not toward Er’ril or the others, but toward the dozens of dead goblins strewn on the deck.
Where these tendrils of shadow touched cold skin, the corpses convulsed, as if repulsed by the black caresses. Then all across the ship’s deck, goblin flesh sank to bone, the darkness sucking the very substance from the corpses. In only a few heartbeats, all that was left of the goblins were leathery skeletons, all knobbed joints and poking bone. With their flesh winnowed away, their teeth and claws seemed more prominent, shining bone-white in the sunlight.
But soon it was clear that what appeared as illusion was in fact real.
The fangs grew longer on the shadow-touched dead. Daggered claws stretched into sickles longer than a man’s forearms. Soon the beasts were nothing but teeth and claws connected by leathery bone.
“Now what?” Flint asked in a hushed voice.
Moris answered, his voice deep with doom. “I’ve read of these creatures. The golem creates ravers—demons of the underworld who inhabit dead flesh to hunt the living.”
“How do we fight them?” Er’ril asked.
Moris only shook his head.
The sound of footsteps behind them interrupted their words. Joach’s frightened face appeared in the shadowed doorway. “Elena . . . She’s gone!” he said, his cheeks red with panic. “I found her clothes . . . and . . . and this!” Joach held forth a handful of bloody bandages.
Er’ril took a deep breath, his fist closing tight on his sword hilt. So he had not imagined the familiar lilt in the mad laughter. “Elena . . .”
Before them, the fanged beasts rose up on razored claws, like huge spiders of teeth and horn. They chattered at Er’ril, the noise like a jagged knife dragged up his spine. Eyes stared at him, hollow sockets that glowed a sickly yellow, as if glowing fungus filled their skulls.
But Er’ril knew the demons were the least of his worries.
“Elena,” he mumbled to the empty air, “what have you done?”
HOLDING HER BLOODY right fist clenched to her chest, Elena crouched and watched as the snaking shadows spread out from the core of Rockingham’s chest. Before her, the flesh of the goblin queen had withered to leathery bones, claws and teeth sprouting like weeds in a barren field. Beyond it, others took form.
Ravers, she had heard Moris name these creatures.
The corpse of the goblin queen grew to be the largest of these foul demons, its fangs dragging on the deck. Now, with its possession complete, the raver lifted its head. Baleful yellow eyes sought the life essence of its prey. All across the deck, its foul brethren rose and scrambled to flan
k this huge monster. While the others chattered and hissed, the raver who inhabited the goblin queen remained as still as a cold grave.
Elena sensed that here stood the leader of this pack; the goblin queen had been possessed by the ravers’ king. This largest of the demons raised its hungry eyes and stared straight at Elena.
It somehow was able to see her.
Good, Elena thought. Let the demon see who was about to tear its spirit to shreds and feast on its energies.
Elena thrust out her fist and slowly opened it, exposing the bloody slice across the palm of her right hand. Silver flames rose from the wound, as if her blood were afire. Dancing like whirlwinds, the flames spread up her arm and over her naked skin. Elena somehow knew this fire would burn away her spell of invisibility, but she was past caring.
She heard gasps from the guardians behind her and ignored them.
The wit’ch in her smiled at the raver king, stretching Elena’s lips into the wicked rictus of a naked skull.
Let demon fight demon.
ER’RIL WATCHED THE fiery apparition materialize between him and the gathered raver demons. First a silvery flame, the size of a small torch, blew into existence, floating waist-high above the deck. Then from this seed of flame, the blaze billowed out in sheets and runnels, growing into a pyre of silvery fire.
“Get back,” Flint yelled, urging them all toward the hatch.
Only Er’ril refused to budge. He stood before the growing conflagration, his sword raised. Unlike Flint, Er’ril knew this was not a new manifestation of black magick, but something . . . something else.
As the others gathered behind him, the flames flared higher. Silver and azure hues writhed in the wild blaze. Then, from the heart of the inferno, a figure was born. She stepped forth from the flames naked as any squalling infant; yet this was no newborn babe, but a woman of stark beauty. And it was no cry that issued from her lips, but wild laughter.
Er’ril’s skin prickled at the mad sound. It ate at his mind, worming like maggots into his skull. He retreated a step, instinct urging him to flee. But instead he tightened his grip on his sword’s hilt and held his ground. He knew that what stalked from these flames was not entirely of this world, but something from the darkness between the stars. Yet, as foreign and strange as the figure seemed, Er’ril’s heart recognized the woman behind the savage magick and feral laughter.
He spoke her name. “Elena.”
The woman glanced fleetingly toward him. Flames still trickled across her naked skin as she stepped fully from the conflagration. Once free of the blaze, the fire that gave birth to the woman died away, sucked back into the void from which it came. Now only the woman remained on the deck, naked except for traceries of fire running like oil across her skin.
Er’ril found his eyes meeting her gaze. What stood before him was not Elena, at least not entirely. The contours of her body, though familiar, now seemed carved of pale moonstone, as if the figure were only a sculpture of the girl he once knew.
But what dwelt inside her now?
As their gazes locked and the wild laughter died away, Er’ril saw his answer. He gasped and stumbled back. It was as if he were staring into a maelstrom of wild energies, a storm of such ferocity that it threatened to burn the very spirit from his flesh. But that was not the worst, not what squeezed a gasp from his chest. He now spied what sat in the center of this vortex of magicks. It was no demonic intelligence that guided these colossal forces. It was only Elena.
“Child, what have you done?” he moaned.
“Stand back, Er’ril,” she commanded him, her words echoing with both human rage and a power as immense as the flow of tides. “This is my fight.” She swung away to face the ravers.
“No! Leave them! This is not the way!”
She ignored him. Her flames flared higher as she faced the demons.
“What’s going on?” Flint said near his ear.
Er’ril’s brows darkened like thunderclouds. “The wit’ch in Elena has broken its chains. It now runs wild in her blood.”
Joach pushed up closer, his staff still in hand. “What does that mean?”
“It means Elena has given part of her spirit over to the wit’ch. A part of her is now a force as strong and wild as any cyclone and with as little heart.”
As if to demonstrate his words, Elena’s form blew forth with silvery flames, driving away the raver pack except for the largest of its foul ilk, which still stood with its claws dug deep into the storm-hardened wood. As Elena approached, its yellow eyes did not reflect the wit’ch’s flames but seemed to consume them. Finally, the monstrous raver beast raised its leathery head and screamed at the wit’ch.
Elena met its challenge with her own wild laughter.
Beyond them both, Rockingham stood with the raver demons capering about his shadowed feet. A smile of victory etched his lips. Er’ril knew why the monster smiled. Even if Elena defeated the Dark Lord’s beasts, a small victory had already been achieved. A fraction of the girl’s spirit had died today, not killed by the drak’il’s poison but given freely to a force that did not belong to this world.
Elena was no longer fully human.
Er’ril felt ice settle around his heart. If the wit’ch ever wrested full control, all would be lost. Elena would become as dark and heartless a creature as the Black Beast himself. Er’ril raised his sword.
Moris stepped beside Er’ril. “She balances on a thin wire,” the dark-skinned Brother warned. “If she does not rein in her magick soon . . .”
Er’ril only nodded, his eyes still on Rockingham’s gloating smile. He suddenly understood the true ploy here. He now understood why Rockingham had been dragged out of his moldering grave and back into the world of the living. Just as the Dark Lord had used the drak’ils to wear the men down, now he used the visage of her parents’ murderer to strike where Elena was most weak—at her spirit, at her heart.
The Dark Lord meant to goad Elena into a blind fury, forcing her to touch such titanic forces that she would be consumed by her own passion, leaving only a burned-out husk of a girl—someone filled with magick but no longer tempered by human emotion.
Er’ril knew what he must do. He waved the others toward him as he circled around the flaming figure of Elena. “We must stop her from confronting the golem,” he urged.
“Why?” Joach asked. “She’s the only one with the power to destroy him.”
“No. That’s just what the Black Heart wants. To Elena, Rockingham is as much an inner demon as a physical one. She risks destroying herself as much as harming him.”
Flint and Moris flanked his other side. Moris spoke. “What do you propose we do?”
“Leave her to attack the ravers, while we deal with Rockingham.”
As if hearing his words, the pack of ravers scrambled across the deck toward Elena like moths to her silvery flames, leaving a path open to the shadow-shrouded golem.
Joach’s eyes were on his sister. “She’ll be swamped by them all.”
“Good,” Er’ril said, drawing the shocked eyes of Joach and the others. “Let them keep her distracted from the true demon here. It’s better that she die among the ravers than lose her soul to the Black Heart.”
The others had no words, too stunned by his cold statement.
By now, the scrape of their boots on the deck had drawn the attention of Rockingham, still rooted by the main mast. “So the tiny rats think to take down the lion,” he said with venom. “I thought you wiser than that, Er’ril.”
“Even the fiercest lion has a weak spot,” he answered and raised his sword. “A well-placed spear thrust to its heart will still kill.”
“Ah, that might be true,” Rockingham said as he cast aside the shreds of his linen shirt, revealing fully the gaping black well in his chest. “But, you see, I have no heart.”
ELENA LET THE smaller demons circle her. The scrabble of their claws filled her ears, but she ignored them. Her eyes remained fixed on the largest of the beasts, the raver k
ing. She sensed that here was the heart of the pack. Defeat it, and the rest would fall.
Sheets of flame spread in small waves from her body, flowing across the deck around her bare feet. The smaller ravers kept wary guard on these flames, scurrying forward when her magick waned, then dancing back on sharp claws when the waves of silvery flame approached.
Yet so far the king of the demons had kept its post upon the deck, claws dug deep in the hard boards. It seemed little daunted by her display of ghostfire.
One of the smaller ravers clacked its fangs in menace and made a bold move. It leaped over Elena’s spreading pool of ghostfire, hurdling through the air. It dove toward her throat, razored claws stretched out like an iron bear trap.
Ignoring its threat, Elena turned away. The wit’ch would guard her back. Elena’s right hand rose on its own and pointed toward the hurtling raver in a warding gesture. A spurt of magick lanced out from her palm to strike the demon, ending the raver’s attack in midleap.
From the corner of an eye, Elena watched as the demon beast was consumed in ghostfire. Its flesh was burned from its spirit. All that was left was an outline of the raver etched in silver flame. Her ghostfire held the writhing spirit trapped. Then the magicks burned deeper, branding the demon spirit with her mark. Elena could hear its wail as the wit’ch took possession and bent it to her will.
No spirit could resist the burning touch of her ghostfire.
Elena smiled as the demon spirit was spat away. It struck the deck and scrambled back up, shining now like a silver ghost. The spirit, still in its beast form, turned and attacked a neighboring raver. It dove atop its unsuspecting prey and latched onto its new mount. Then slowly it sank into the heart of the demon, disappearing inside it. Assaulted, the raver writhed in silent agony, claws skittering on the deck. Its neck arched back, and a horrendous scream tore from its throat, casting the invading spirit out through its black gullet. The silver spirit rolled across the deck, and with a shake, stretched back onto its ghostly claws unharmed.