Beauty Never Dies (4 page)

Ironically, I was flying over to Venice to find the real Cinderella. The one everybody accidentally killed when they believed that she was a fairy tale character and didn’t exist.

It didn’t take me much time to travel from Germany to Venice. I was so curious to see the corpse: an 800-year-old Italian witch. She was found by archeologists with seven nails driven to her jaw. Gruesome stuff. My perfect taste.

“Why seven nails?” I asked Bella, the Italian archeologist’s assistance while standing over the grave in broad daylight. Bella was about twenty-four years old, seven years older than I was. I am sure her name wasn’t Bella. Some of the investigators around the world preferred not to make their names known to others. “No one really knows,” She said. “It was what they used to do to European witches in general, nailing them in the jaw.”

“You mean women who were accused of witchcraft,” I corrected her. Women had been burned, crucified, and killed for practicing things like playing a game of dice, which was considered witchcraft at that time. I hate when someone calls them witches because they weren't. “We all know these women were innocent.”

“Whatever,” Bella said absently as I noticed her wearing those white gloves. It was ironic that I was the one defending witches, since my ancestors had taught me to search for the likes of them all of my life. Not only witches, but fairy tale characters that secretly lived among us. Sometimes, they didn’t even know who they were.

“What’s really interesting is that the skeleton was wrapped up in a shroud and nailed to the ground.”

“Any reason for that?” I wondered.

“Of course. It was the common believe to cover the body of a witch or a vampire in a shroud and nail it to the earth so its spirit stays trapped and can’t wake up again and hunt them.”

“Oh—“ I still couldn’t understand why they had sent for me. They knew that I wasn’t here for this. My secret investigations were about discovering the truth about fairy tales. The stories my ancestors actually managed to forge.

“I’ll get to what you want in a minute,” Bella said, pointing at the corpse covered in white sheets in its grave. Then she gazed toward the other workers leaving the site. “I need to make sure everyone leaves the scene and only us, who know why you’re here, stay.”

Finally, Bella uncovered the corpse. That is when I got a glimpse of why I was here …

There were seventeen glass slippers surrounding the corpse.

“That’s odd.” I mumbled, kneeling down.

“See? Italian witches from the 12th and 13th century are usually surrounded by 17 dices because dice was the game that women were forbidden to practice at the time since it was thought of as a form of witchcraft.”

“Why seventeen?”

“Seventeen was considered bad luck. Don’t ask me why.”

“And we have … glass shoes? Hmm.” I thought I knew why seventeen glass shoes surrounded the corpse, but I needed to know more to confirm my suspicions.

“That’s why you are here,” Bella announced. “These are 800-year-old glass slippers, astonishingly still looking as new. I think it is her.”

“This is almost impossible. She should be buried Six Dreams Under,” I touched my lips with my reluctant finger. “If that’s her, then it’s starting, which is not good at all. Someone wanted us to find this. Someone is sending a message.”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. It’s 2012, Alice,” Bella said. “And I don’t mean that bullshit about the Mayan discoveries about how the world ends. You know what I am talking about. We both now how the world might really end.” She shrugged.

“2012. Exactly two hundred years after the Brothers Grimm wrote The Children’s and the Household Tales,” I mumbled, staring at the glass shoes. “So it’s true? I didn’t spend my childhood chasing shadows?”

“I would have preferred if spent your childhood watching Snow White and Cinderella movies and chasing Prince Charming instead.”

“I tried to, believe me. Every time I watched the lies, I couldn’t bring myself to it. I prefer Edward and Bella. At least, they are absolutely ridiculous lies we can love.”

“Philosopher much? Anyway. You did a great job so far.”

“You really think it’s
her
?” I raised an eyebrow. Part of me was frightened and the other part almost enchanted.

“Might be.”

“And how are we going to know?”

Suddenly, a smile curved itself on Bella’s full lips. She cocked her head at someone in the scene: A slender and fair boy with platinum-blonde hair.

“Who is he?” I wondered.

“Whoever he is, he is hot.” Bella winked, which confused me. Even though there was something so devilishly attractive about the boy, he looked much younger than she did. About my age.

“So he doesn’t have a name?” I mused. “Or is his last name
hot?
” I loved gorgeous, slender boys with that unseen aura surrounding them, implying that they were as much trouble as good, but I had a job to finish. The world was about to fall apart if I didn’t do my job right.

“His name is actually interesting,” She said, not taking her eyes off him. “Blackstar. Loki Blackstar.”

“I don’t know which part I hate more. The Loki, or the Blackstar.”

Bella laughed. “You too could be a match made in hell—I mean heaven. We should introduce ourselves.”

“Shouldn’t a Loki have black her?” I squinted, pretending the sun annoyed me while checking him out one more time.

“That’s like saying, 'Shouldn’t every hulk be green?',” Bella commented. “We live in a world where we've discovered that fairy tales were altered. Why wouldn’t a Loki be blonde? Too blonde actually.”

Loki was standing in front of an old and dirty red Cadillac. I rubbed my eyes because I thought he just talked to it, and it wheeled back a little on its own. Then the radio was turned on at a sudden without anyone  touching it. It played an oldie song that said something like
Red Cadillac and Black Moustache.

“Stop it.” Loki hissed at his car … and it stopped.

As he approached us, he was guiding other men to construct something around the corpse. They dragged two huge mirrors along.

Looking over the corpse, Loki blocked his nose with one hand while gobbling on a greasy slice of Pizza with the other. It was interesting how he did that while still looking elegant.

“It doesn’t smell,” I commented. “It’s 800 years old.”

He didn’t acknowledge me whatsoever, his other hand in his front pocket.

“You’ve been
pulp-fictioned
my friend.” Loki barely whispered to himself, looking at the corpse while tooking another bite.

“She is a witch,” Bella kind of introduced herself. What a start. “You know back in the day they were scared of the witch’s powers and abilities in Italy.”

“Yeah, I remember.” He muttered, still not looking at us.
Yeah, I remember?
“This one had rather a particular power,” He said. “She could make better pizza than the other Italian witches, and she bathed in Olive oil.”

Bella laughed. I didn’t find him funny, smelling arrogance reeking out of his green eyes. Bad metaphor, I know. Sue me. I am not a poet.

“A pretty bad way to kill and bury a competitor.” Bella commented.

“Better than the Danish people,” He said, finishing the sandwich and throwing the wrapped foil recklessly into the grave. “You know they used to drink, dance, and eat around the corpse of the dead in the 17
^th
century?”

“No shit.” I found myself blurting, not knowing why I said that. He kind of got on my nerves. What did this guy even do?

Loki finally looked my way, neglecting Bella casually. He stared at me from top to bottom then licked his lips and some ketchup off his thumb. His stare was straight and sharp and unapologetic, but not in a weird and creepy way. Still, I scanned the membranes of my head for a good comeback. I had the feeling he might say something insulting and silly.

“What do you think are three things about you that would make me want to know you better?” Hetook a step closer toward me, grabbed my hand, and put a small plastic bag in my palm. He did it swiftly and gently like a magician. Somehow, any come back I was about to spit back on him escaped me when he looked into my eyes. It was a short glance. One that i couldn't forget. Then he turned around to guide the men placing the mirrors.

They placed the two mirrors opposite to each other and perpendicular to the corpse.

“Who said I want you to want to know me?” I finally said over his shoulder. Bella omitted a laugh.

“What?” he said as he started drawing a circle in the ground around the mirrors and the corpse. “I can’t hear you.”

I gritted my teeth, as I am sure he did.

“Who is this guy?” I asked Bella. “And what is he doing exactly?”

“I am a Dreamhunter.” Loki answered instead over his shoulder then he went on explaining to the helping men that the setting with the mirrors in the circle is called a Dream Temple, which is the place from where a Dreamhunter can enter the witch’s dream after performing a certain ritual.

“And what do Dreamhunters do?” I asked, folding my hands in front of my chest.

“The name is self-explanatory. What do you think a Lawnmower does? Oh yes,” he looked at the sky with his forefinger on his lips. “He flies a spaceship—I mean he mows a lawn,” he bent over and rested two
Obol
coins over the skeleton’s eye-sockets --I knew of these coins. One if the coins fell through the hole in the witch’s skull. “Oh. Sorry, wrong size,” Loki talked to the corpse and pulled out a properly sized coin to put on the corpse’s eyes again. This one fitted. Bella chuckled. “Awesome. Sorry. I thought you were a coin size 5. My bad.” He continued talking to the corpse.

“And why do we need a Dreamhunter?” I asked Bella.

“Dreamhunters are the only ones who can enter the dreams of immortals—” Bella explained.

“Usually with the purpose of killing them in their dreams.” Loki  interrupted her as he stabbed the skeleton with a stake, still not looking at us. “You’re not immortal, are you?” he teased me.

Bella rolled her eyes. “If the skeleton is who we think she is, it means that she
is
immortal.”

“I don’t want to know, and I don’t care who she is, by the way.” Loki felt the need to interrupt again as he pulled out an egg timer like the one my used in the kitchen and a red fleece from his backpack. Who was this guy?

“Immortals don’t die,” Bella explained to me. “You know that, right?”

“Never?”

“Never,” Bella confirms. “The only way to kill them is in their sleep while they are dreaming.”

“Wow. How does that work?” I raised an eyebrow, pretending I didn’t know. The last time I was in my grand grand father’s dream, I have actually seen the Evil Queen herself.

“Dreamhunters, like Loki here—“ Bella said.

“Which are very rare.” He added as he stretched down on his back next to the skeleton.

“Dreamhunters have the ability to enter the dreams of the immortal. Sometimes, the immortals don’t know who they really are in their dreams. The Dreamhunter kills them in that dream. The immortal’s mind gets kinda hung up and paralyzed. Being killed in a dream could do that to you. And they will stay in a coma forever in real life. It’s the only way to kill an immortal.”

“But this witch was burned.” I remarked.

“Which proves that she died in her dreams,” Bella explains. “Or they could not have killed her in real life.”

“Still, she could be just someone who was wrongly accused of witchcraft in the 13
^th
century like others,” I suggested. “How do we know she is an immortal?”