When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 254

“I thought I told you,” says a voice in the trees, silvery and full with an airy laughter- or perhaps that is just the wind? “Not to come looking for me.”

Desperately scanning around for the source of the voice, I search the trees for signs of movement, life, but am only met with that sting of unrelenting cold against my skin. But against the shadows of the eternal night and the distant screams of the woodland animals far out in the forest, I know she is there, lingering somewhere against the darkness.

At first I can barely utter a word, and then they come stammering out of me all at once.

“You- I, what are you- how?”

Up in the trees, two white eyes circle into life, reflecting lightly against the soft glow that encases my body. The ghostly figure rolls her milky white eyes with what might me exasperation, slipping down the branch of a tree no easier as if she were a pine marten stalking its home.

“Hello again, hybrid Queen,” she muses, slipping around the base of the tree, circling once, then twice, with each circle her expression becoming more and more deliberating. Grasping out to one of the luminous spirits that trail her form, she stands there for a moment in a bone chilling silence. Then deciding she has had enough, she hoists herself back up the tree once more.

Perhaps that’s how she has managed to stay hidden for so long: lingering in the shadows of the trees above the ground where her prey stalks the earth, glowering with pearly teeth and whispering spirits for a blunder or a mishap to lead them to their untimely demise. Or maybe, just maybe, she is really good at hide and seek.

“You aren’t a particularly good listener are you?” the death soul half laughs, half scolds, never falling down the branches above my head, an eternal wariness picked into her face. Perhaps she suspects me of being someone else, betraying her somehow. Or perhaps she is worried I am someone else, for illusions round here are as common as the starlight.

Around her form, a few wispy green and blue tendrils sink down to the ground level, their forms distorted by the luminescence that radiates off them, neither humanoid nor animal, but both at the same time.

Reaching out, I play my fingers towards them, but the ghostly apparitions do not linger, drifting fortuitously against the darkness and off into the night. I watch them go.

“That was you,” I say slowly, resuming my gaze back to this curious creature above my head. “That night Azrael tried to rape me. That was you there, you helped. Why did you-?”

The soul of death cuts me off before I can even finish my sentence.

“The spirits had told me that Azrael was exploiting the Faeries traditions, that he had turned the majority of the castle into one big, ceremonial orgy-” she spits on the ground in disgust “- regardless of what those under his glamour might want to think,” she says, closing her eyes now, but I do not fail to see the muscle that pops above her brow: she is livid. I have heard that faeries are very particular about their traditions, and that any exploitation or mockery of them might just earn you a one way trip to the dungeons. Such blasphemy as Azrael has committed would never have been allowed in the faeries Palace, but with the majority of its citizens under mind control, it is hardly like they have any choice on the matter.

Shuffling a little forward, I gaze upwards.

“So you tried to stop him then, right?”

“Correct,” she confirms in an icy, emotionless, drone, slipping from branch to branch as she surveys me with those sightless white eyes. A clicking sound arises from the branches above my head, her fingers scratching against the bark. A shudder trembles down my spine. Sighing, she scoops one of the bluish spirits into her palm, playing with the currently shapeless ball of luminescence.

“I had hoped that my spirits might disrupt the glamour he had washed over the entire castle- for Azrael’s powers do not effect the dead And they did for a moment, but it was a brief slip of control on Azrael’s part, he was not immobilized long. I underestimated the strength he would have, it is my fault. I shall have to exert more power next time.”

Sharply, my mind flies back to the shattered glass on the floor, the screams of pure terror and the stench of blood and fear rising up in a whirlwind of confusion. I recall those strange apparitions of blue and green, the way they had sucked at Azrael through a veil of mist, drawing scraps of intangible substance from his body, grasping him there.

How gaunt Azrael appeared, how frail, as though his very life was being sucked out of him.

“Well,” I hurry on quickly, keen to forget my vision and the unpleasantries of the night. “I have to thank you regardless, you saved me there, thank you.”

“Anytime,” the soul says gruffly, but there is a slight twitch of a smile in the corner of her mouth that makes me think she is more grateful for the gesture than she appears to seem. With a slight cough to grab her attention, I start again, realising that I haven’t exactly stated what I came here to ask. Dangling off a branch, the soul gazes down at me, her expression listless.

“Yes?”

Wringing my hands out, I quickly run over what I need to say in my mind, before taking a breath.

“I need you to help me,” I explain hurriedly. “I haven’t got long so I am going to have to be quick as Azrael expects me back in fifteen minutes so he can use me for a meal-” -her expression darkens impossibly- “but some rather large occurrences have come about in the last 2 hours. Azrael is running out of patience with the Faeries because he has seen no sign of you yet. He is killing off Faeries faster than I could hope-”

“I know,” says the soul, softly now. When she next speaks, there is a choking thickness to her voice that lies beneath a well of emotions. I know that the soul of death proclaimed that she could not feel, or love, ever since she became the soul, but given her state right now, I figure there must be some twinge of emotion that still remains in her heart, if only a flicker.

“I have found their spirits scattered about the palace grounds. Let me guess, Asocrates is next?”

Wordlessly, I nod. Puffing out her cheeks, she runs a hand roughly past her head.

“Right. And what exactly do you want me to do exactly?”

“Nothing that would put you in immediate danger,” I assure, lifting my hands to her. The soul raises her brow in disbelief. “I need you to lead Azrael on,” I explain. “Give him some sort of sign of your presence, let him catch a glimpse of you, believe you are there. Asocrates is leading an expedition today to find you, so if you manage to make a show even briefly… I think it might get Azrael to stop killing more of the Faeries, and hopefully will make him more open and amiable. Relaxed even, because right now he feels like it is all slipping from his grasp. Then I might just be able to get the key off him and sneak us both out before all this gets too far.”

There is a moment of silence between us that drags on with the rush of the wind and the toiling moans of the trees that creak around us. The soul ponders for a moment, scratching her ghostly chin, her milky white eyes lowered in a fateful consideration.

“Alright,” she relents at last, taking a few ponderous steps around the grove of trees, the grass bowing under her weight. “It’s not a horrible plan. Perhaps it has a few holes, but I can work with it,” she says with an additional grin, flicking her fingers absently against her nails.

“Does that mean you will help me…?” I ask once more, tentatively, wringing out my hands out against my trousers. Smushing her lips together, she gives me a cheeky grin as she lifts her hands up to capture the spirits that waft around her between her fingers.

“I guess so. But I hope you understand that my methods of presenting myself to Azrael may not be conventional. I am rather fond of tricks and schemes- I am a faery after all,” she chuckles, splaying her dark wings in demonstration of that fact. A mild wash of relief floods over me. Tricks or no tricks, earning her help in this plan of mine is certainly better than I could have asked for, but with the gush of a new force of wind overhead, I am reminded once more of how little time I have left. Glancing back round behind me, I catch a glimpse of the lights of the Palace, obscured mostly by the dense foliage that surrounds us and hindered by the sweeping branches of the large, gnarled trees.

My time is running short.