Wraithsong (38 page)

“
I’m just as good as any
other Huldra,” I say.

Olaf leans over me, his
eyes inflated with loathing. “Deep in your heart, you know that is
not true,” he says.

I feel the tears press
against my eyes and I blink them away—I can’t afford to let
weakness take over. If I want to get out of here alive with
Anthony, I need to remain focused, strong and calm.

“
Truth cuts like a dagger,
does it not? Ah, the pain of being something incomplete. It hurts
like…a fiery inferno, I suppose. I would not know.” Olaf smiles,
his hollow cheeks look ghoulish as usual.

“
I see it as having the
best attributes of two species.”

“
Keep telling yourself
that, but it will not do you any good.” Olaf turns on his heels and
leaves the room.

Chapter 41

A while later, the door
opens again.

“
Sonia? Sonia! Oh heavens,
what have they done to you?” my mom says, her clothes torn and
filthy and her face bruised and bloody. Her hands are tied behind
her back, and one of her arms is wrapped in a white bandage. Her
normally silky blonde hair is disheveled, and she’s not at all the
calm, beautiful and collected Hedda that I’m used to.

“
Mom!” It seems like I
haven’t seen her in ages, even though it’s only been a little over
a week since she disappeared. “I was so worried about you and
missed you so much.” Those words don’t even scratch the surface of
the mountain of pain I have suffered since she went missing. She
looks both physically and emotionally beat up, and it frightens me
to think of all the torture she must have endured. “How did you
escape?” I try to sit up, but can’t because the straps hold me
down. “Did they break your arm?”

“
Don’t worry about me,
Sonia—I’m well enough. Maureen let me out and told me where you
were. Look at you—you’re hurt.” She sees the deep puncture wounds
on my arms and her eyes well up with tears.

“
It’s okay, Mom,” I say,
though my words sound anything but convincing.

“
Did they torture
you?”

She reaches for and grabs a
scalpel from the tool table, straining because her hands are tied
behind her back.

“
No, just inserted some
sort of tracking device into my brain when I got here.” I didn’t
think my mom’s face could become paler, but now her face goes
completely white. “What is it?” Something is terribly wrong; I know
my mom’s expressions.

“
Maureen may have implanted
an explosive device into your head. She did that to one of my
sisters who got away right as we got here, and her head…” She
doesn’t finish the sentence, but her expression is
pained.

“
Did they put one in your
head too?” I ask, fearing the answer.

“
That’s
not important right now. What’s important is that you’re safe, and
that we get you out of here
now
. Hold this scalpel in your hand
and I’ll cut myself free.”

I take the scalpel and hold
it as firmly as I can. Containing my emotions is much harder and
tears stream from the sides of my eyes down onto the table. “I was
so worried about you,” I cry.

My mom inches close to the
table and moves her hands up and down, pressing the rope against
the blade’s sharp edge. “Sonia, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,
and you’ll be fine too.”

“
I couldn’t stop worrying
about you,” I say. “That’s all I’ve been doing since you went
missing. Every second it seems like there’s another thing to worry
about, another way in which I, or someone I love, will
die.”

“
Sonia, I’ve been through
situations like this many times, and made it out fine, and we’ll be
fine this time, too.”

I wonder what other
situations she has been through and if this kind of thing is
something I’ll have to get used to as a Huldra. “I’m trying to
decide whether or not…” I pause as a horrifying thought pops into
my mind. Could this person be just another Darkálfar in disguise?
“Can I ask you something?”

“
Anything Sonia,” my mom
says, still trying to cut herself free from the rope.

“
What was Dad’s favorite
song?”

My mom stops moving for a
second but then continues to cut the rope. “Why would you ask?
Oh…you want to make sure it’s really me. My, you are a smart young
lady. It was
When Eternity
Calls
.”

I smile and nod and let out
a pathetic cry as I realize that she truly is my mom, yet not the
mom I always thought she was, for she is so much stronger than I
had ever realized—than I had ever appreciated. I regret not
noticing sooner how wonderful she is.

“
I thought I might give up
my gift so we can go free,” I say.

Finally her ropes are cut
and her hands go free. She hovers over me, and starts frantically
undoing the straps that tie me down. “No, Sonia, absolutely not. If
we have to die so that Maureen doesn’t get your gift, that’s what
we’ll need to do. If she—”

“
Have you had enough time
to catch up?” Maureen asks, slithering into the room, her hair
long, curly and auburn. I feel queasy, remembering what Anthony
told me about her changing hairdo and wonder whose hair she’s
wearing and how that person died. A Darkálfar, wearing the same
uniform as the other Darkálfars, enters the room behind Maureen,
and stations himself in the corner. Though he’s very tall, he isn’t
quite as muscular as the others. Both my mom and I grow
silent.

“
Now that we’re all here,
we can have an adult conversation and start negotiating,” Maureen
says.

“
There will be no
negotiations,” my mom says. “Sonia keeps her fifth Huldra gift, or
we take it with us to our graves.”

“
Yes,” I confirm, though I
don’t know whether or not I completely agree with my mom because we
could always appropriate my gift back at a later time as long as we
were still alive, right? If we’re dead, well, then there’s
absolutely no hope.

Maureen puts both her hands
onto the metal table on either side of my feet and leans forward.
“Let’s start with the first negotiation. Victor,” she glances at
the Darkálfar, “remove Hedda and take her back to her cell. We’re
going to show Sonia how things work around here when she doesn’t
cooperate.”

“
No!” my mom yells. She
kicks in the direction of the Darkálfar, making her arrest more
difficult, but he grabs her around the torso, locking in her arms,
and drags her out into the hallway. “Maureen, if you harm Sonia,
I’ll kill you myself!” My mom’s voice fades the further away she
gets.

“
So, what have you decided,
my darling?” Maureen skirts to my side and jabs the puncture wound
in my arm.

I scream in pain, the
stabbing sensation spreading through my entire upper body. “I’m
never giving you my gift—never!”

“
Never…is such a long
time.” She jabs me again, harder this time, and I scream out in
agony, the pain so intense that I’m slipping in and out of
consciousness.

A loud crash thunders
through the hallway and footsteps approach. My mom enters the room,
swings at Maureen with a vase she picked up from somewhere in the
hall, hitting her in the head. Maureen drops to the ground like a
ragdoll. Fumbling, my mom undoes my straps. I can’t figure out how
she escaped the Darkálfar, but I don’t ask because we can’t waste
the precious little time we have to escape.

“
Let’s go!” She pulls me to
my feet and we run into the corridor. The hallway is dim, making it
harder to recognize which door is Anthony’s. We bang on some doors
and finally I hear Anthony’s voice from behind one of them, but
when I try to open it, the door is locked.

“
Anthony, can you hear me?”
I desperately hope he hasn’t lost a lot of blood from the gunshot
wound.

A small window slot in the
door opens. “I’m here, and I’m…uh…fine. Sonia, don’t wait for me.
You need to just get out of here,” he says, his eyes barely visible
through the opening.

“
No—” I start
objecting.

“
There’s no time to
hesitate—just do as I say. I’ll find my own way. Get the horses and
head for the shore—now!” Anthony yells angrily.

“
What about you and what
about the bomb in my head?” I scream as hysteria boils its way
upward through my highly frazzled nerves. The two people I love
most in this world are here with me and all our lives are in
danger.

“
Maureen wants your gift
much more than she wants you dead, and she won’t detonate the bomb
until she has what she wants from you.” Anthony reaches his fingers
through the crack. “I’ll find a way out of here and meet you
soon.”

“
Anthony, I’m not leaving
you!” I object wildly, realizing I’d rather die than desert him and
leave him with Maureen and Olaf.

“
Stand back,” my mom says,
holding a machine gun in her hand.

I move out of the way so
she can open fire. “Where did you get the gun?”

“
The dead Darkálfar over
there.” She nods her head in the cadaver’s direction, aims the gun
toward the door, and then shoots three rounds into the door’s lock.
It opens.

I run in and embrace
Anthony—carefully—since we’re both severely injured. “Will you be
okay?” I look at his shoulder where a big splotch of blood has
saturated his shirt.

“
I’ll be fine. To the
stable!” he says, his face twisting in agony, and beads of sweat
appearing on his forehead.

We head for the spiral
stone stairwell, and though Anthony struggles a bit up the stairs,
he doesn’t complain, nor does he stop to slow us down. At the top,
I finally recognize where we are. We’re at the very end of the
hallway, past my room in the opposite direction of the foyer, but
when I look back at the door, there is none, only a stone wall—a
mirage. That’s why I hadn’t seen it before.

“
The foyer’s this way,” I
say. They follow me, constantly checking to see if anyone is
chasing us. Then Layla comes running through the mirage wall we
just came out of, aiming a gun at us, her expression that of
disgust.

“
Stop or I’ll shoot!” she
yells.

I pivot around to face her,
but continue to back up, inching slowly toward the foyer—toward our
freedom.

My mom points the machine
gun at Layla, but that doesn’t deter Layla from charging ahead.
“Drop the gun, Hedda, or I’ll kill Sonia.” Without warning, Layla
fires a shot, nicking my ear and I scream. She then aims the gun at
my head.

My mom doesn’t hesitate and
flings the gun onto the ground in front at Layla’s feet. Without
skipping a beat, Layla strides over the weapon and continues
pursuing us. “What a smart mother you have.”

Anthony moves in front of
me, creating a barrier between Layla’s gun and me.

I don’t like that he’s in
the line of fire, but I try to take advantage of the situation.
“You wouldn’t shoot your own brother, would you?” I say.

“
I don’t have a brother.”
Layla cocks her gun and fires it, shooting right past us, the
bullet hitting the far wall in the foyer. “Stop
talking!”

“
Did you know that Anthony
was born only three years after you? And during the same time
Maureen was married to Anthony’s father—your father?” I say,
arriving in the foyer, and we stop. Anthony looks as shocked as
Layla does.

“
That doesn’t prove
anything,” Layla says. “Stop where you are this instant, or I won’t
miss you this time!”

We stop right where the
sunbeams enter in through the large window above the stairs. “It
proves that Maureen lied to you about Anthony’s age,” I say. “He’s
only nineteen, not ancient like you thought, like Maureen told you.
She’s been lying to you about everything.”

“
Are you insinuating that
my father cheated on Maureen with a Lightálfar, and then had me?”
Layla scoffs.

“
That’s exactly what I’m
insinuating,” I say boldly, glad she has taken the bait. “You and
Anthony have the same father.”

“
You’re
wrong in your assumption
and
you’re wrong if you think you can get me to side
with you on such weak claims.” Layla’s expression is
unwavering.

“
You were never one of his
girls, were you? Maureen made you tell that lie to convince me that
Anthony was evil.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that
Layla was never one of Anthony’s girls, since he told me he didn’t
even know who she was.

Layla doesn’t answer.
Instead she squeezes her lips tightly together.

“
There’s no way we can
prove any of this to you, Layla, but what if we’re right?” my mom
says.

“
I don’t care who’s right.
I care that I stay faithful to Maureen,” Layla says, now widening
her stance and securing her weapon with both hands.

“
How can you not care about
what is right?” I ask.

Anthony moves toward Layla,
his footsteps unsure, with his hands in front of him as if he’s
trying to lull her into a trance.