Electric Blue (36 page)

In front of her, with the wall completely gone, she could see the Otherworld. It shone brightly and Mistress could see the pathway, made of yellow brick, as it stretched into the distance. She could smell the softness of the Otherworld and it made her body ache. That wasn't what made her eyes widen however. Standing in front of all this was Poppy, with Alicia standing behind her. A man stood to Poppy's left and he seemed strangely familiar to Mistress, though she could not place his face. A Fairy fluttered by the Shifter’s shoulder. The earth stopped shaking around them. Poppy looked at Mistress, still inside the shell of Karma's body. Her eyes narrowed. "What the hell are you doing here?" she asked.

Chapter Forty Eight

The Two Meet

Karma's eyes widened. "What am
I
doing here?"

Poppy narrowed her eyes. Something was very wrong here. "You're dead," Poppy said. "How can you be here if you're dead?"

Karma smiled a cold smile. "Oh, my dear, the things you don't know. . . ." Except the voice was not Karma's. The voice sent a chill down her spine and Poppy felt her blood run cold when the smile on Karma's face began to stretch and pull as if it were being pulled taut over the skull. Karma's teeth looked misshapen for a second, as if they too were being stretched beyond recognition. A mouth appeared inside Karma's mouth and from this mouth there came words.

"I had wondered how I was going to find you," the voice said. It seemed to make the temperature in the room drop and make everything colder. "I tried so hard to enter these walls, knowing that they would recognize me. I had it all planned out: I would find a way in, find you and kill you. Now I don't need to find you after all."

Poppy let out another gasp as the mouth opened even wider and out came the mouth, its tongue licking its lips, and a nose and then a face with cold, cold grey eyes. Still the face continued to talk as it stretched itself out of Karma's body. "This is much easier, much nicer. We can face each other, woman to woman. Just as God intended." The woman let out a cold laugh, for Poppy could now see that it was a woman. She slithered out of Karma's body like a snake, her eyes on Poppy's all the time.

"Who are you?" Poppy was able to rasp.

"Who am I?" The woman laughed. "The question here is, who am I not?" She had her shoulders out of Karma's mouth and now her collarbone and her torso. "I am everything and nothing. There are others who have been trying to prevent my finding you, but I always prevail in the end."

"It is HER!" Tholonious whispered in Alicia's ear. "It is the one who eats the Otherworld!"

"Clever little Fairy. It is too bad you couldn't figure that out before you died." The woman coming out of Karma's mouth and body spat at Tholonious. A black goop hit him in the face and he fell to the floor with a smack. He was dead before he hit the floor. "I am blackness, the darkness that runs in your nightmares."

Grant bent down and picked up Tholonious. He put the small Fairy in his pocket. "You must stop her," he whispered to Poppy. "I will go for help. Don't worry; I will not be far from you. I will send help." His whisper was urgent and hot on her neck. "Don't despair, I am never very far from you, daughter. Use what you have learned about yourself. We must not let her enter the Otherworld, we must keep Ashling safe."

Before Poppy could ask what her father had planned, the ground beneath them began to shake again. Even the woman coming out of Karma's mouth stopped and her face registered some shock.

"What is going on?" she said. "What is happening?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Poppy shouted at her. The shaking of the ground increased as the hole in the wall mended itself; great chunks of stone were sucked back into place by an invisible hand and they watched as the wall was once again standing as if it had never been broken.

"Enough of this," said the woman. She pushed with her hands, which were now free and Karma's body came off her with a sickening wet sound that reminded Poppy of ripping cloth. She realized that the woman had stretched Karma's body to beyond recognition. Karma lay dead on the floor once more, her body contorted and lifeless. "She gave me her life, what little she had left, so that I could come here to you. It is as the prophecies decreed, Shifter."

Poppy stared at her in horror. She felt Alicia behind her, shaking. Her father had left her alone to defeat this thing? This woman who had climbed out of the body of her dead friend and killed another while he was beside her without so much as a second thought? She had no idea what she was going to do. She had to think of something, get herself some time. She tried to keep the woman talking.

"What is your name?" Poppy asked.

Thrown off, the woman stared back at her. "What?"

"You heard me. If I'm going to fight you, I have to know your name so I can curse you."

The woman laughed. "You may call me Mistress."

"You said this was decreed by prophecy. Whose prophecy are you talking about?"

"Why, yours and mine. Your father created the Coven."

"You know of that?"

"I know many things," the woman said.

"YOU!" there was a rushing sound and then a wispy shape threw itself at Mistress. Monica had floated down through the floor to see if Poppy needed help and found her enemy present. "I SHOULD KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME!" Monica screamed. "YOU TOOK AWAY MY LIFE! YOU TOOK AWAY MY LIFE!"

"I can take away your afterlife just as easily," Mistress said with a cold smile.

"You wouldn't dare!" Monica turned to Poppy. "Stop her before it's too late, Poppy! She's the one who put me in that room! She's the one who-" but Monica never got to finish. Mistress grabbed hold of Monica as if she were wisps of cobwebs. She stretched Monica as if she were cotton candy, making her scream with each pull.

"NOOOO!" Poppy turned at the sound. Moe had arrived to help, coming in time to see the love of his life hurt at the hands of a madwoman. She tossed Monica's deformed spirit away as it were a shadow; Moe cradled her to him as if she were a baby. "Oh, Monica. . . ." he said, his voice choked. He dragged her body to a corner in the basement. Poppy could hear him whimpering. "Please don't leave me. . ." he said. "Please. . . ."

"Oh, how touching," Mistress said. "Young love. I remember love once."

"How could a thing like you remember love?"

"Even evil can be loved," Mistress said.

"Who are you?" Poppy asked again. "Who were you before you were Mistress?"

"Her name was Anna Margarette," said a voice on the stairs.

Poppy, Alicia and Mistress turned to see who had uttered those words. Cecelia, Naomi and Lucia were on the stairs.

Mistress laughed. "This is your army?" she cackled. "This is all you have?"

"There are others upstairs," Cecelia said. Lilly and Edgar were with David, staying with Chip and Roz in the attic. They had to keep Roz safe. "They are not involved in this fight; they are not part of the Coven. These people are." Cecelia gestured to Naomi and Lucia. "They are part of the Coven. You may not fight the others. You know the rules."

"Of course I do." Mistress snapped. "You and I helped write most of them after Poppy's father gave us control of the Coven."

"You?" Poppy turned to Cecelia. "You were the ones that helped my father?"

"Yes, Poppy. The Prophecies spoke of you long before you came."

"Did they speak of this?" Poppy asked. "Did they speak of this fight?"

"Not this fight specifically," Cecelia said. "But they speak of one between good and an ancient evil."

"The evil is older than me," Mistress said. "I have my own agenda here."

"One we can't let you get away with," Cecelia said. "To kill the first Shifter in a thousand years would bring about the death the Fey. We can't let this happen."

"Spare me," Mistress said, making a gagging motion with her long red fingernails. "I don't want to hear this. I want power, don't you understand?"

"That's what this is all about?" Poppy said. "Your quest for power? You want my power, I know this. You've gone through all this, killed people, for your quest for power?"

"Others have done worse," Mistress said. "I am just following in their footsteps."

"Not if we don't let you," Alicia said. Blue magic flickered at her fingertips.

Mistress rolled her eyes. "This is where we fight, right?" Mistress sighed. "Alright, come on. . .let's see what you're all made of."

* * * * *

Upstairs, David paced the floor. He had not been allowed to go downstairs when they had heard the commotion start. Cecelia had shot a look at Lilly and the woman had nodded and then Lucia, Naomi and Cecelia had shot down the stairs to the battle below them. Lilly took David's arm and steered him towards the attic.

"Someone needs to stay with Chip and Roz, to make sure they are alright," she said.

"And we're best kept out of the way. This is a Coven fight," Edgar said.

"I still can't get over the fact that you can talk," David said.

"Neither can I," he said, with a growling laugh.

"How can you laugh at a time like this?" Lilly asked. They were going up the stairs to the attic, despite the sounds below.

"What better a time for happiness than a time of sorrow?" Edgar asked.

"I think we're going in the wrong direction," David said.

“What do you mean, dear boy?" Lilly replied.

"The fight is down there,
Orlando
is down there."

"Which is why we're going up here," Edgar said. "We are not part of the Coven."

"But we can still fight with them!" David said. "When Jethro came back, we all fought together."

"This is not your fight," Lilly said. "This is Poppy's. It is part of her quest."

"Have you seen the outcome?" David asked.

"No," she said. "Only the possibilities."

"What is the use of prophecies if they can't tell us what will be?"

"Because prophecies can show us what is possible, what
can
happen, what has happened. Like anything spiritual, it is not an exact science.”

They closed the door to the attic and locked it behind them. Chip came out to meet them. "Is everything okay down there?"

"
Orlando
is down there," David said. "I have to go to him, see if he's okay."

"I'm sure he's alright," Chip said. Lilly shot Chip a knowing look and Chip understood.

"He wasn't with the others," David said. "They all went downstairs, I didn't see him. I have to go see if he's alright."

"But David," Edgar said, "we have to,"

"We don't HAVE to do anything!" David screamed. "My soon-to-be husband is down there and I'm going to go find him!" He pelted down the attic stairs, unlocked the door and ran out. Lilly and Edgar were close behind him. They chased him down the front stairs, but Lilly knew they would not have to chase him much further. She could see
Orlando
's arm in the hallway. David saw it too. Lilly watched as he slowed down and turned to look in the kitchen. She watched him back away, slipping on a little of
Orlando
's blood that had pooled on the floor. He hit the floor with a thud, falling on to his butt, and the wind was knocked out of him. He looked at
Orlando
's blood on the floor, streaks made by his running shoes. He looked at his hands.

Lilly's heart broke in two for David; she knew the pain he must be going through. She too had lost a love. Everyone at one time has lost a love, someone important to them. Even though
Orlando
had been brought back to life once before, it was too late. The time between his death and his discovery was too long. They could not bring
Orlando
back to the land of the living. Lilly watched as David, a sob breaking from his mouth, went to Orlando and kissed his face softly, touching his cheeks softly with his lips, placing a hand over the wound in his neck to stop the blood that still flowed from Orlando's body. David kissed
Orlando
's eyelids, his lips, not caring that his lover's blood stained his face.

She went to him then, Edgar behind her, and watched as David lifted
Orlando
into his arms and then he looked at her. His face was crestfallen, devastated. His heart had been broken again. "We'll bring him upstairs," David said. "We can't leave him down here. He'll get hurt." David blinked back tears as they spilled down his face anyway. "I don't want him to get hurt," He said. Lilly nodded and, together, they went back up the stairs. She had failed in keeping
Orlando
's death a secret from him and for that she was sorry. But Lilly couldn't help thinking that, if David had found out after the battle, the result would have been much worse.

David cradled
Orlando
like a baby in his arms. Lilly listened as David sang to
Orlando
, softly, as if he were afraid that anyone would hear him singing. The notes sounded clear and pure. When they walked to the attic, Chip was shocked to see David holding
Orlando
. He nodded and pulled up another cot. He placed a blanket and a pillow there and David lay his lover down on the pallet. He closed
Orlando
's eyes and crossed his hands on his chest. He then sat down on the floor, in front of the cot. David then placed his head on
Orlando
's chest. Lilly, Edgar and Chip said nothing. They knew David was grieving. Chip squeezed Lilly's hand as he moved past her to check on Roz. Lilly listened to David sob for a few moments, but her attention was drawn to Chip, who stumbled out of the bedroom and vomited in the corner.