Almost Alive (The Beautiful Dead Book 3) (32 page)

“And a Human,” Jasmine responds. “Yes, and he’s likely to die in there. The Shee-lady has too much power. Any Unliving who dare step near her are turned to ashes, poor rabbits. Our best chance in doing anything to her is with a Human, and … and the only Human among us is down there grieving. And he’s likely dead by now.”

I stare at the ground near Marigold’s feet, lost in dark thoughts and darker feelings. My fingers have curled into fists and I’m furious at everyone. Even John.

Even John, who I haven’t had time to caress, to kiss, to love and hold and hate again. “If we’re so confident that we can’t go back in there,” I whisper, defeated, “then tell me, Jasmine … Tell me we have a plan.”

“We have a plan,” answers someone else entirely.

The four of us turn. A woman stands between the trees, tall and strong and lean. Her face is beautiful and her eyes striking and grey. Her dark hair flows forever and the dress she wears, which I imagine at one point was exquisite, is in tatters. At her side hangs a crossbow and she is barefoot, a woman of the world, a warrior woman.

A warrior woman who I happen to know.

“Mom,” I whisper.

C H A P T E R – E I G H T E E N

F L I G H T

Strangely, my first instinct isn’t to race up to her and embrace her. Watching her warily, I only marvel at how
different
she looks. She doesn’t look like the Deathless King, because when she was the Deathless King she had no face—as she’d clawed it off. She doesn’t much look like my Living mother as her hair’s all wrong and she’s, well, standing. I know my mother was only in a wheelchair for the end of my First Life, but considering all the times she’d be seated at a desk at home ignoring my ample tantrums and whining, I always saw her as permanently seated my whole life. And then there’s Mad Malory …

“Claire,” she says.

The sound of my name outside of my head startles me, my skin crawling and my hair prickling as though every follicle was just disturbed from a very long sleep. I feel Jasmine’s eyes on me … and Marigold’s, and John’s.

“What do you mean we have a plan?” I ask coolly.

She hasn’t moved from her spot between the trees several paces away. She turns her head, and it’s then that I hear the footsteps. Slowly, steadily, I watch as two figures approach through the mist and the gloom of the spidery woods. One is a very short man. Lynx, of course. The other is a stumbling, clumsy one with a bag over his head. It takes me a moment to realize that the man is not following willingly; he is on a leash.

He’s on
Lynx’s
leash. “I’ve brought us a present,” he grumbles, his voice slippery and horrible.

“Who is that?” I ask at once. The urgency in my tone makes Lynx come to a stop. The leashed man stops too.

“Claire …”

“My name’s Winter,” I snap at my mother, then face the little Lock to repeat my question. “Who is that?” I take two steps toward him. Lynx takes two back. “I asked you a question, Lynx. Who’s wearing your leash? Who is that?” Still without an answer, I march to the man and whip the bag off his head.

An eyeless face meets mine. I choke on my words, my eyes flashing wide and full of fear.

“The plan,” my mother murmurs quietly, “is to have
Shee
come to
us
… as we’ve taken from her the only thing she holds dear.”

I’m still staring into the eyeless face of Grim standing right in front of me. The former Green Prince. The one who murdered the man named John who is only meters away from us. The one who used to do my mother’s bidding when she once wore a ridiculously tall crown. The one who took me on a date and taught me how to laugh at this world, how to smile, how to love poetry.

“So the spider-thing comes to us,” I finally manage to say, overcoming my trance and turning to face my mom. The sight of her again is still as startling as the first sight was—her striking grey eyes and forever-hair, and the way her lips smirk just like mine do. “Then what? Shee turns us all into Undead splinters? We run again?”

“We are after the stone,” my mom patiently explains.

Shee had said her tummy hurts when she gets angry and that’s when things turn to dust. “The stone is in her stomach,” I blurt out.

Lynx gives one dry chuckle. “How’d you figure that?”

I consider him for a moment, then answer: “Because I listened.”

To my surprise, John has come up to my side. His arms wrap around me protectively, pulling me from Lynx and from the eyeless, motionless Grim. After a matter of shuffling, I’m returned to Jasmine and Marigold and John is standing in front of me. Were someone to observe our peculiar gathering here, they’d assume we were prepping for a little fight, the four of us against the three of them.

My eyes find my mother’s again. She’s staring at me with a chilling mixture of emotions, her eyes saying what the words can never. So much has happened between us, so much in both our Lives. I needed her motherly love and comfort desperately when John died and I carried him halfway across the world to find her at the base of the cliff. Now, I’m not so sure. I see her and I think on the coldness and pain of our First Life. I see her and I think on the vileness of our Second and the Deathless nightmares she birthed. What am I to do? Forgive her? Let it all go? Absolve her of all her terrible actions?

“We can cover the exits to her lair,” my mother volunteers. “There are only two. When Shee emerges, we will ambush her, cut her open and take the Lock-stone. Then we will be safe once again to … to …” Her eyes drift, lost in the same thought I’m likely having.

The thought being: we will never be safe, not ever.

“To return to our lives,” finishes Jasmine, though we all know it isn’t true. Even Marigold’s face is twisted by the doubt that’s resting patiently on all our shoulders, waiting for us to fail, waiting for us to turn into particles and blow away into the wind.

John and I share a look, our eyes heavy with unspoken understanding. He gets it. I get it. This was only ever a long shot, this big and long and ridiculous journey.

At least it was fun while it lasted. Fun in that dreary sort of when-am-I-gonna-die way.

“Lynx, still got that spider colony inside you?” I ask, not hiding the bitterness in my voice.

He grins, his gross, jagged teeth shining grey and black. “So you figured out how I escaped the spider cave?”

“Yes. But that’s not why I asked.” Moving forward, I climb up and perch on a nearby boulder dripping in moss and insect gunk. I can see the mouth of the cave. “Think your little critters can follow orders? We need to make a web, right at the exits.”

“A web? Orders?” Lynx scoffs, or perhaps he’s making half a laugh, I can’t tell. “What do you think I am, some sort of spider-whisperer?”

“That’s exactly what I think you are, after being in the home of spiders for six years. Or rather,
being
the home of spiders for six years,” I revise, narrowing my eyes. “And we’re going to trap her. In a big spider net. Grim will stand on the other side of it. Then …” I glance at my mom. “Then you’ll have to attack her. You’re the only one of us who’s armed. I lost my sword back in the—”

My mom’s other hand moves, drawing something from her back and presenting it. The rest of my sentence dies on my tongue, my eyes falling on the sword.

“Oh, this thing?” she says teasingly.

I take a few steps toward her, then stop to appreciate the dark irony in her handing me this sword. I’m stunned by a tangle of feelings and frustrations I can’t even begin to detail. The world is suddenly so full of beauty and poetic reciprocity and meaning.

Lynx makes a loud snorting sound, dislodging a triplet of spiders from his nostrils, and the moment’s ruined.

“My sword,” I agree dryly, taking it from my mom’s hand and meeting her eyes. “This is the same sword with which I impaled you.”

“I remember,” she says sweetly.

“You’ve been out here all this time?” I study her eyes, unsure if I can trust them or not, for some reason. “You left the Necropolis to pursue Shee, and—”

“New Trenton,” my mother says, and I’ll pretend like she wasn’t just correcting me. “Yes. I’ve bided my time. I watched her. I learned my way through her labyrinth. I even reconnected with Grim in private. When I saw your group arrive and the spiders overrun you …”

“Wait. You
saw
that?” I step back from her, furious suddenly. “You saw that and you didn’t do anything??”

“There was nothing I could do, Claire. When the spiders descend—”

“You could’ve helped us! You could’ve—You could have shot them with Gunner’s crossbow or something!”

Now it’s out. I had recognized the weapon that hung at her side. When we were in the cave and I was almost hit three times in the face by an arrow—which I now realize were bolts from a crossbow—I almost thought it was Gunner in the shadows, having secretly Risen in the wilds, then come to save us from certain doom.

But it was only my mother. “Claire,” she says, trying to calm me. “I had to wait for the right moment. When I realized that little Deathless was with you—”

“
Lynx
,” I correct her, annoyed.

She nods. “When I realized Lynx was with you, I knew what I’d need to do. I couldn’t get to the chamber where you were kept, but lucky for me, I didn’t have to. Lynx had freed himself and I caught him in the hall.” Her nose twitches, and she scratches her arm. It annoys me so much because it reminds me of the way Claire would scratch
her
arm. I want to shout at her that she doesn’t need to scratch at her arm, that nothing in this world could possibly cause us to
itch
at all, until I realize it might just be one of those annoying habits that lingers into this Second Life, like my constant, unnecessary sighs or deep inhalations of breath. “I found Grim once again and, with him, I devised a plan. Unfortunately, when you ducked, my aim was terrible.” She smirks, staring off at Lynx with grey eyes that seem more like steel than anything. “I am no Gunner. Of course, after he fell in Garden and broke himself, even Gunner was no Gunner.” She frowns, faces me again. “Megan, perhaps, filled me in on more than I needed to know.”

I want to ask her so many more things. I want my mind to be selfishly put at ease, but I realize this isn’t the time or the place. “The battle isn’t over,” I state simply. A nasty blend of regrets and danger and sourness cloud both our faces. “It will not take Shee long to realize her Prince is missing. Shee will be here soon.”

“Empress,” squeaks Marigold.

I turn to her. It might even pain me the worst, to see Marigold’s usually-cheery face filled with such paralyzing fear. Her whole body is rigid, her arms bent and her hands stiff, and the whites of her eyes flash with such awareness I might almost take her for a Human in this moment. She may never have had cheer in her wasted First Life, but I hope above all else that Marigold never loses the cheer she’s found in this one.

“Someday soon,” I tell her gently, “you will never need to fear any Empress or her name, ever again.”

Jasmine gives me a wink, then says, “Let’s make that day today.”

With resolve, she leads Marigold back to the cave. Lynx’s dark gaze lingers on mine for a moment too long, his jaw set and his hair twitching—or perhaps it’s a spider or two dancing within it—and cryptically he says, “Our arrangement, Winter. Do not forget about our little … arrangement.” He gives a tug on the leash as if to remind me of said arrangement, causing Grim’s head to bob, and then Lynx turns to follow Jasmine, Grim pulled behind.

“Arrangement?” asks John quietly.

I look into his eyes. “Don’t be mad, but …”

“Run!” cries Jasmine, having spun around to race back with Lynx and Grim too. “Shee has already emerged!” she calls out. “We’re too late, we’re much too late, Shee is out of the cave! RUN!”

The plan we’d only just begun to form, already shattered to pieces … much like we all will be if we don’t move. John and I break into a run, cutting through the woods. I see Lynx and Grim running on the heels of Jasmine and Marigold. My mother hurries too, running with impressive speed.

Someone is calling out for us, but the woods diffuses the voice so much I can neither recognize the voice nor tell what they’re saying. We hurry between trees and skip over roots underfoot that poke unexpectedly in and out of the gritty ground. Even the earth is trying to grab hold of our feet, stopping us from running.

“Don’t run!” sings the airy voice of Shee. “Please!”

I feel the sickness within me, the push and pull of a Lock’s necromancy trying to consume me. I remember when Lynx’s power alone disintegrated half my arm.

“Please, little spiders, little friends, please! Don’t run!”

We break from the thick of the woods and tumble across a barren spread of jagged stones and boulders and fractured earth. Hurrying over the broken landscape, I realize we’ve come around in half a circle and are racing across the top of the cave.

“STOP!” she screams, desperate.

John and I both collapse, stricken with a queasiness that threatens to pull us apart. I grab John, whether to steel myself or protect him, I can’t say. When I turn my head, Jasmine and Marigold and my mother have all fallen too, each of them with their arms wrapped tight around their own bodies as though they were balls of string that feared unraveling.