Chapter Forty-Three – Molly

 

The damp down in the caves was the kind of wet that seeps into your bones no matter how many layers you wear, where it’s sticky and strange on your skin and hair. And my outfit, with its low, scooped back and shoulderless cut, certainly didn’t help. I hadn’t felt this kind of damp since I’d been back home in Washington, where it’s always cloudy with a chance of more clouds.

I lay there in a pile of old rags, eyes closed. The smell of campfire smoke filled my nose, and the occasional pop and spark of wood burning came to my ears.

Somewhere off in the caves, water dripped with the deliberation of a metronome.

Drip. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Drip. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds…

How long had I been out? Just moments? Hours? Down here, there was no way to tell. All I had to mark the passage of time were my own thoughts, and the monotonous, far-away drip. How many droplets of water had fallen to the earth while I’d been passed out?

Was Luke still above me, still alive and kicking? Searching for me?

Or was he dead, just like the zmeu had claimed?

No, he couldn’t be. He was too strong for that capcaun to kill. Too determined. He was the kind of man that would move heaven and earth to find whatever he wanted to find. He couldn’t be dead.

Could he?

My heart broke a little, at that moment, as I realized that without him, my life would be nothing after this. Even if I did get Heidi and myself out of here, what would be the point with those arms of his never encircling me again? I’d never find a man to compete with Luke, who would make me feel the same way as I did with him.

Never.

Eyes still tightly shut, as if I could magically make this all disappear if I just ignored it hard enough, I shifted on the pile of old rags the zmeu had deposited me on. Swaths of smooth silk and soft velvet brushed against my face, punctuated by bits of more rigid lace.

I opened my eyes and bolted upright, a shiver running down my spine as I realized what I was lying on.

Dresses, skirts, bras, panties, all in reds and blacks and whites. Except for, oddly enough, a brightly colored muumuu. And a sunhat?

I scrambled away from the mound of discarded clothes, the pit of my stomach swirling. I fought down the bile rising in my throat, swallowed back the saliva and the tingling sensation at the back of my mouth as I crawled forward on my knees, pebbles and rocks skittering as they dug into my knees.

“Oh God,” I gasped, getting to my feet, my knees wobbling as I tried to steady myself.

I was here. I was in the zmeu’s lair. This was where he’d brought Heidi last night.

Which meant I needed to find her.

I brushed the hair fallen from my ’do, craning my neck as I looked around. A fire burned in a dug-out pit in the middle of the room, painting the walls in rose and goldenrod and flickering shadows, a décor that stretched all the way to the domed ceiling above. A multitude of passages led off from the chamber, each one shrouded in the deepest darkness, the kind of pure absence of light you could only achieve when you were buried within the ground. In the corner sat a large cage with metal bars nearly as thick as my wrist. Blankets lay on the floor, twisted together and entwined into a makeshift bed. Other than that, though, it was empty.

“Heidi?” I asked, my voice echoing back to me from the domed ceiling, and all the various tunnels leading from the room like arteries from a blackened heart. “Heidi, can you hear me?”

“You’re awake. So good of you to join me.”

I yelped as I spun around, searching for the source of the words.

Nothing. No shadows moving along the walls, no giant bat wings, no shining jewel. Just emptiness.

My hands clenched into fists. “Where is she?” I growled. “What did you do with my friend?”

“What did I do with your friend?” he asked, his voice coming from behind me again. “I? I did nothing. Stryos, on the other hand…I sometimes have no control over my pet. Unfortunately, he doesn’t leave as beautiful and perfect a corpse as I do when he is done.”

My mouth dropped open. The capcaun had been responsible for her disappearance? That meant…this whole time we’d thought Heidi had been alive, when she’d actually been devoured by that thing?

“He is less discriminating than myself, of course. And, if there is an opportunity, he will take it.”

I suddenly felt cold, the kind of cold you can only get from walking out into fresh snow in the depths of winter while wearing nothing but your underwear and plopping down in a solid bank of it. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones, into your organs, chills your heart till there’s no warmth left in your body.

“She’s gone, then?” I whispered, shaking my head, the tears welling in my eyes. “She’s gone? We couldn’t save her?”

A clawed hand rested on my shoulder.

I flinched away, spinning.

The zmeu stood there, towering, its bat-like wings wrapped around its enormous body like a leather cape of some sort.  “Don’t cry, Molly,” it said. “You are more beautiful than she ever was. I’d planned on taking her next, but one moment of looking upon your aloof face last night, and earlier this morning, and I knew you were to be my next. You were to be the one who joined us.”

“Don’t cry?” I shouted, the tears now flowing down my face. “You mean you spared her, only to toss her to your dog? Because, why? You thought I was more beautiful? What kind of fucking monster are you?”

It shrugged, taking a step towards me. “A very ancient one. Now, come. I’ll show you what you’ll become. Show you the beauty that can be.” It walked past me, skirting around the fire in the center of the room, and headed off down one of the earthen halls. It stopped, looking back at me.

Well, what else could I do? I followed after it, letting it lead me through the twisting tunnels that led deeper into the caves.

As we walked, it spoke. “I’ve gathered the hearts of the most beautiful of women from across centuries and centuries of searching. I’ve kept them, Molly, kept them safe from the ravages of time. Preserved their memories, and their souls. And their beauty, I have saved from the clutches of age, the great leveler for all you short-lived folk.”

“Their souls?” I asked. I had to stay close to him to keep from stumbling or walking into a wall.

“Yes. Of course. Because what is beauty without the soul behind it? Not all beautiful people have beautiful souls, but as humans they shine just as brightly as the next. Whether sinner or saint, murderer or victim, you all burn with such intensity.”

Light shined from up ahead, now. A kind of ambient illumination, which coated the walls and floors in a soft gold. We took another turn, and it intensified, making the dampness of the walls shimmer. We turned another corner, and the end came into sight. A kind of glowing aura that silhouetted the zmeu ahead of me.

“I could never release them, you see,” the zmeu said as he came to a stop. A sort of reverence had entered his demonic voice. “Look. Is it not beautiful?”

I pushed up next to him, the light shining from all around the circular chamber. A multitude of glowing, oddly shaped orbs were positioned around the room along the walls in a grid, a foot or two separating each as they climbed up like a lattice to the ceiling. Dozens and dozens of them.

Mouth hanging open, eyes wide, I stumbled out into the middle of the chamber. I turned and spun in a circle, as I looked at the shapes seemingly tethered to the wall in this place, a soft whimper rising in my throat. He was right; it was beautiful. Were these all souls? All the remnants of the women he’d murdered in the past.

But then I heard it. The soft crying, the whimpering of grief and sadness and pain, which blanketed the whole room in its agony.

“What is that?” I whispered, that same reverence from the zmeu’s voice entering my own.

“Why, it’s them, of course,” he said with a broad, toothy grin. “Or, rather, most of them. I take some of their life force to keep myself alive. But, this, more or less, is them.”

I looked more closely at the shining globes on the walls, staring deeply at one of them. For a moment, I saw a beautiful woman, with her perfect jawline and beautiful flowing hair, her swelling hips, her Cupid’s bow mouth. But then, my vision seemed to shift, and I saw the orb again. But this time, I saw the veins and arteries entwined over its lit surface, and realized why they were so oddly shaped.

The sick from earlier, which I’d shoved down so quickly and expertly, forced its way back up. Before I even realized what was happening, I was bent over, emptying the small contents of my stomach on the cave floor.

“You fucking monster,” I gasped out as I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “You absolutely sick freak!”

“This is exactly why I’ve never liked humans,” he growled, stepping into the chamber. “You appreciate nothing. First, I give you gifts, then I give you a chance to be beautiful for all eternity. And how do you repay me? Yelling and vomiting all over my floor.”

Heart jumping, I backtracked away from him, my legs shaking with every step as I stared up into his advancing eyes.

“Not that it matters, of course. Because this is one gift you cannot refuse.”