Shutter (36 page)

She burnt out. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

“Don’t you see?” she whispered in my ear. “There are no glass windows and no mirrors in this house.”

Before I even processed what she’d said, Mom fisted her hand in my hair and yanked so hard, bright lights exploded through my vision. Breathless, I jabbed my elbow into her abdomen and slammed my heel into her foot. She released me with a shriek, but as I pivoted, she spun and slapped me across the left cheek. Hard, almost as hard as Dad hit. Blood burst in my mouth, sharp and coppery. The blow knocked me into the wall and made the floor heave.

Bracing my back against the wall, I slipped behind my camera and lined up the lens. She was too close—I ducked as she grabbed for me, dropped to the floor, and drove my heel into her left shin. She howled. I rolled and pushed up to my knees, put my camera to my eye and snapped.

Mom didn’t shriek—

I did.

Pain stabbed into my eye, like someone had taken a screwdriver and jabbed it into my pupil. When I looked up, the vision in my right eye was hazy.

What the hell just happened?
I touched my temple, finding a chain of tight little knobs under my skin. My soulchain floated over my cornea.
I’m almost out of time.

I hesitated a second too long. Mom dove for me, grabbing my throat and slamming me into the hardwood floor. Once. Twice. My camera skittered away. For a moment, the world blacked. When I got a grip, Mom’s fingers pressed into my eyelids.

“No,” I screamed. I flailed and managed to kick her off me. Scrambling, I grabbed my camera and ran—no plan—up to the second floor. Up ahead, the panic room door hung open. Hungry. Two children peered around its doorframe, tow-headed as California sunlight, with Dad’s big gray-sky eyes. They were dirty, and tear stains cut through the grime on their cheeks.

I stopped in my tracks. My mouth went slack. Everything I’d ever thought about death and the afterlife ruptured in a heartbeat. The boys should’ve moved on; they should’ve been at rest.

Ethan.

Fletcher.

“What are you doing here?” I shrieked.

“She won’t let us leave,” Ethan said, hugging Fletcher tight. Both boys were shackled at the ankle. Now I knew why I’d heard Fletcher singing, seen their shadows haunting the woods … my mother trapped her baby boys here.

“Micheline!” Mom screamed. The boys clapped their hands over their ears. She appeared at the top of the stairs, her fingers extending into long claws. I looked back at the boys, realizing failure meant more than death for me and my friends.

I would not fail my brothers a second time—so I did what I should have done eighteen months ago. I turned and ran for the panic room and slammed the metal door closed. Mom hissed, flickering, disappearing, just as I’d hoped she would. She reappeared at my side and bashed me into the wall. Held me fast.

“You were always the obstinate one,” Mom said, her claws piercing my back. I gasped, pain ravaging the rational thought in my brain. “Stubborn to a fault, just like your father—”

“And proud of it.” I managed to twist my wrist and hit the flash, pitching back the shadows. She startled. I wrenched free of her claws, shoving off the wall and body-slamming her into the opposite one. Her head made a
crack
against the drywall.

Pushing away, I leapt for the stairs, but she tackled me to the ground. I rotated and thrust my right elbow into her jaw, wincing when pain bit into my shoulder. I hit her again, loosening her grip, and shoved to my feet to sprint for the stairs.
Twenty feet should do,
I thought.

I spun on the ball of my foot and palmed my camera.

“Trying the camera again?” Mom said. “Little fool, it won’t work.”

She stood right in front of the stainless-steel panic room door, which reflected her bubbling violet light.

A smile touched my lips.

I aimed my camera, zooming in till all I could see was Mom. She threw back her head and laughed. I crossed myself and hit the shutter. Electric pain rammed into my eye, hot and fresh, and something warm leaked down my cheek.
Please let it be tears.
Mom screamed, the shot smashing her into the door. She turned her head, saw the burnished metal, and gasped. Before she could push away, I shot her again, and again, and again. Pinning her. Filling the whole hallway with throbbing white light. Shooting her until I thought the pain would axe my head in half, until my camera crackled with her energy and ghostlight.

I watched her wither through the click of my shutter, my vision draining down to almost nothing with each successive shot. When my right eye gave out, the pain shoved me down to my knees. Through my left, I could see her crumpled at the base of the panic room door, barely more than bones.

“Clever … girl…” Her voice was hardly more than a rasp.

I couldn’t sit straight. My soulchains pulsated in my arms, drawing corset tight around my ribs.
No time left.
Hitching my camera on my belt, I got to my feet. Everything hurt, everything ached, so I shuffled to her side and fell to my knees.

Mom looked like she’d been mummified, her skin shriveled back against bone, her teeth exposed in an awful grin. She tried to lift her hand but couldn’t, her shackles weighted her arms like anchors. Only her ocean-blue eyes remained vibrant. When I was little, I’d always said my favorite color in the world was the blue of Mom’s eyes.

Every bit of her broke my heart, but her eyes just cracked me open.

“You have killed me twice over,” she rasped.

“No.” I shook my head. “I came to free you from this place, to save you from that psycho’s lies.”

“He was here for me, he said my fury was his fury.…”

“Only to shackle your soul,” I said. “I don’t know who murdered you, but I will find them and make them suffer.” I felt the weight of the promise settle on my shoulders like a mantle, and I meant every word, Helsing tenacity and all.

I touched one of her cuffs, finding the metal cracked. Weak, and powdery to the touch. “Let go, Mom.”

“I don’t believe you.” A tear leaked out the back of her eye socket. “I won’t.”

A laugh snuck out of me. Or maybe it was a sob, I wasn’t sure. “Damn your Helsing stubbornness.”

She tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. I ripped her cross from my throat, holding it out for her to see. It glittered in the anemic light, almost producing its own luminescence.

“This belongs to you.” I put the cross in her palm, sandwiching her hand between my own. “Give me your vengeance in return, and take the boys to a better rest than this one.”

“I … can’t…”

“Go home,” I said, tears pricking my eyes and spilling over.

She blinked slowly, her autumn-leaf lids crackling. When she reached up to touch the tears on my face, one shackle cracked and fell off, hitting the floor with a hollow
thud
.

“For me?” she asked.

“They only fall for you,” I said. “I love you.”

“Even now?”

“Always.” I pressed the back of her frail hand against my cheek, the one my father hit and bruised. “Me and Dad both, always.”

Her lips parted and she gripped the cross in a fist. “Your father…” She drew in a rattling breath, her ghostlight fading. “He always said you were born with a brave heart.… He was right, Len was always…”

My breath caught, but before I could say anything else,

Her other shackle snapped open,

And her ghostlight died away.

The miasma in the walls turned to carbon ash, which slid down and made dunes against the baseboards. Mom’s presence began to retrograde in my body. I felt the chains breaking down, my own soul surging forth and smothering them.

When she was gone, I clutched her hand and sobbed. I’d lost her a second time, and now I’d never see her again. I missed her desperately. I missed her more than my innocence, I missed her more than my father’s pride, I missed her more than my old happiness. Her death left a hole in my life, one I could never fill with anything but memories of her—but those did not a mother make.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.” I bowed my head over her body.

Without warning, white light filtered through my eyelids.

A whole light, the color of an entire, pure spectrum—

And Mom’s hand squeezed mine.

OBSCURA, 00:00

W
HEN THEY WERE GONE,
I sank down against a wall, promising myself I wouldn’t cry. My family was free, safe from the Obscura’s terrors, safe from Luca. And with my mother and brothers at peace, I could lay my guilt to rest, too.

I bent my head over my knees. Pain and I were old acquaintances, but we hadn’t been this cozy in a while. My body felt flimsy, my limbs cardboard. A dull ache hammered through my skull, scattering my thoughts, and I could barely move the fingers on my right hand. Long minutes passed as my stress, fears, and pains circled through my system and drained out. The anger slid away, too, leaving me exhausted. A small price to pay to send my family to rest and save the lives of my friends.

Downstairs, the foyer floor creaked.

I looked up. “Ryder?”

No answer.

“Jude?”

Silence.

Quietly, I reached for my camera and pushed to my feet, creeping down the staircase, watching the shadows. I didn’t find anyone in the foyer. Nothing lurked in the family room. Maybe I hadn’t heard anything more than the phantom creak of an old, worn house.

Everything stood still as I eased into the kitchen.

I barely saw the shadow of the rifle’s stock before it cracked against my head.

*   *   *

W
HEN
I
WOKE,
I
had to claw my way to consciousness. Sight came back in degrees, like a photo developing in a chemical bath. I couldn’t make sense of the kitchen chandelier hanging just a few feet over my belly, or how I couldn’t move my arms or legs.

Everything came into focus with ghoulish clarity: I was tied to the kitchen table, Vitruvian style, with thick rope and big knots around my wrists and ankles. Knives glinted on the table beside my hip, big ones used to break bones and serrated ones for sawing flesh. Adrenaline gushed through my system. I fought the knots, pulling and straining against them until the ropes were slick with sweat. With every passing minute, my heart thumped harder.

All the knives lay out of reach. I spotted my camera atop the kitchen island, alongside Jude’s M16 rifle, my monopod, and Dad’s Colt.

The upstairs floorboards groaned. I fisted my hands, my breath sawing in and out of my throat. I tried to think rationally, but my thoughts scattered and ran.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs.

The foyer floor creaked.

A dark silhouette stepped into the kitchen. “Have you figured me out, nymphet?”

“I know you’re a psychopath,” I said, straining against my bonds. “Does that count?”

He laughed. “Perhaps a demonstration will help you understand?” Crimson swirled into his irises, the color of ripped-out, cochineal hummingbird throats and darkroom safety lights. Luca unbuttoned his coat and dropped it to the floor, then removed his shirt in a smooth motion. Lightning forked under his skin but didn’t fade, his veins lighting with a deep cobalt blue.

“Vampire,” I whispered.

He smiled fully for the first time—a toothy grin, one that exposed his long canines. He ran the tip of his tongue up and down one of his fangs.

“Not just a vampire,” he said. “I am
the
vampire.”

My gaze fell on the circular tattoo on his shoulder, a dragon with its tail curled around the base of its head. The details converged so fast, the epiphany slammed my brain into a brick wall. I arched my back, trying to win leverage from my bonds. “You-you’re lying—”

“I’m surprised you failed to make the connection before now. Don’t you read Stoker’s dratted book in that academy of yours anymore, now that the vampire has been ‘exterminated’?” He made air quotes around the word. “Pity, you’d think I’d still be required reading.”

“I’ve read it,” I said, snarling. “And you aren’t
him
, you aren’t Dracula—vampires don’t have souls.”

“You humans are always the experts, aren’t you?” He chuckled, a deep sound that caught me in the navel and pitched upward. “Tell me, do you know why vampires don’t have reflections?”

“Go to hell.”

“That’s exactly right,” he said, twisting my meaning. “We go to
hell
. Once the body is turned, a vampire’s soul becomes trapped in the Obscura, rendering us incapable of producing a reflection or traveling through mirrors.”

Luca stepped close and ran a knuckle down my bruised cheek, chuckling when I turned my face away. He took hold of my chin in his forefinger and thumb, and forced me to look at him. “My people are condemned to wander this eternal twilight with no hope of respite, while our bodies are shackled to the night on the other side of the mirror. In some cases, we are shackled to dust.”

“Are you looking for pity?” I replied through my gritted teeth.

“No, little Helsing,” he said. He leaned toward me, so close his scent of funeral flowers and moldering dust filled my lungs. “I’m looking for a way
out
.”

He leaned down and kissed me. I bit him hard, but the pain only made him laugh. He pulled away, black blood spilling off his lip and down his chin. It splattered on my skin, cold as ice, and stained my lips and teeth. He tasted rotten, like I’d bitten into a piece of slimy fruit.

“Be careful, or I might return the favor,” Luca said, leaning over me and running his nose along the column of my throat. My chest heaved as he breathed me in, and I trembled when he ran his teeth over my jugular.

“You will make a lovely handmaiden,” he murmured, rising and dithering over the knives by my hip. His hand hovered over a serrated nightmare first, then settled on a cruel-looking cleaver. He examined himself in its reflection, straightening a lock of his hair before smiling at me. “I don’t usually start with the face, but in your case…”

He angled the blade so I could see a slice of my reflection: wild, wide eyes and sweat-scabbed skin; my bangs plastered to my brow. I narrowed my eyes, drawing on the dregs of courage left to me. “You’re sick,” I whispered.