The Undead Pool

Al pulled his lips from his teeth in a savage snarl. “You let it happen.”

My blood roared in my ears, and I wavered as a small band of mystics found me, bringing a vision of the church and a broken water glass, his chrysalis among the shards. “Go away. Go away!” I shouted, waving at nothing. “Go back to her. She wants you!”

But she can only go in the space between space, one thought, and the rest agreed. We like the mass that defines her better.

Al and Trent were staring at me, and I suddenly realized I had screamed it out loud.

“Please,” Trent begged.

Al turned, voice flat as he said, “It’s too late.”

“It’s not—”

“It’s too late!” Al wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were pained, and his hands in his white gloves scrubbed his face. “If she could be helped, she would have done it herself.”

Trent’s expression became hard. “You mean you can’t.”

“That’s right. I can’t.” Al looked at nothing, still not acknowledging I was standing right there. “The Goddess is a myth, a deified energy source. Voices in her head,” he said scornfully. “This is what happens when you listen to the spaces too long.” Now he looked at me, and the depth of his heartache struck me cold. “Your mind invents a reason,” he said softly. “Mystics are a fabrication to explain a disease. This is a psychosis.” Al’s eyes flicked to Trent. “Your wild magic made her insane, and you will watch her die a slow, confused, worthless death. I will have no part in it.”

A psychosis? He thought I was inventing this? “The mystics are real!” I protested, feeling them rise up in me. “You can see them, record them. I’m not imagining this! The things I can do. The things I see. Explain that!”

Al looked beaten as he cast his eyes on me. “Oh, the energy is real. You can collect it. Use it. The voices are not.”

Trent shook in anger. “You will do nothing?”

“Don’t you understand? There’s nothing to take out!” Al thundered.

My heart thudded in my chest, and I was afraid when Al looked at me again, his thick hands opening and closing. I remembered their feel around my throat, and I took a step back.

“But I can help her on her way,” Al intoned, and I backed up farther. “End this travesty. We do not need another Newt.”

He was going to kill me.

“Al!” I exclaimed, backpedaling, but he had me by the throat.

“Go away,” he snarled, flinging a hand out at Trent, and he was tossed to the pavement, face ashen in the moonlight as he pulled himself up.

The mystics rose, swarming like bees. Trent saw them. Al felt them, his expression becoming even more disgusted. They demanded action, that I strike the demon down, that I destroy him with a word. I knew I could do it, but I didn’t. I made them fall about our feet like dust as I hung in Al’s gentle grip around my throat.

“You could have had everything,” Al said, my face mirrored in his goat-slitted red eyes. “Everything and all time. And you threw it away. If you’d left him as your familiar, we would’ve overlooked it, but you freed him, and we won’t allow you to give them a foot on our neck again. This, Rachel Mariana Morgan, will not be tolerated.”

I closed my eyes, doing nothing as his power gathered, tingling between us. I knew to the bottom of my soul that he’d do it. I’d wounded him too deeply. He knew I’d never be any closer to him than we were today, but that I had found love with those he hated was too much.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing why he’d kept Ceri as a slave for a thousand years.

“It’s not nearly enough,” he said softly.

“Gally!” Newt screamed, and I jerked as my air cut off. “Let her go!”

I choked, eyes flashing open to see her standing beside Trent, horrified.

I clutched at Al’s wrists, struggling for air, refusing to let the mystics harm him. I wouldn’t strike him. I wouldn’t cause his death. Black rimmed my vision, and my lungs burned.

“She looked too long!” Al said, anguish foreign in his eyes. “She drank too deep!”

Newt put a hand on his. It was right before my eyes, the only thing I could see. “Leave.”

“But . . .”

“Leave,” she said again, gentle in understanding. “I’ll finish this. You’ve done enough.”

Finish? I thought, gasping when his fingers eased and I got a breath of air.

“She lay down with him!” Al protested, grip loosening even more. “An elf!”

Newt’s fingers dug into Al’s wrist. Blood began to drip from under her thumb. “I can tell that,” she said tartly. “I knew it would happen. So did you. Why do you act surprised?”

“He is an elf!” Al shouted, and suddenly I could breathe as I found myself falling to the pavement. “A mother pus bucket of an elf! And she freed him! This is exactly how they enslaved us the last time!”

Pain lanced my hip as I hit the ground. Coughing, I rolled out of the way of Al’s boot, finally coming to a stop against Trent. He pulled me farther away as I gagged on the air, my hands about my bruised throat. Newt was inches from Al, looking up as if it pissed her off.