Jim C. Hines has been writing for over a decade now, though he tries not to think about that. His humorous fantasy novels Goblin Quest and Goblin Hero are both available from DAW. His short fiction has appeared in over thirty magazines and anthologies, including Realms of Fantasy, Turn the Other Chick, and Sword & Sorceress. Jim lives with his beautiful wife and two wonderful children in Michigan, where he is patiently waiting for fame and fortune to arrive. They haven’t shown up yet, but Jim remains hopeful. He suspects they took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. If you see them, please direct them to www.jimchines.com so they can get in touch.
TO ONE ATTUNED, the scent of dark magic was unmistakable, even through the sweat and dust permeating the stamp mill. Valerica Eminescu rested her sledgehammer on the floor and wiped dust from her eyes, wondering if she had imagined it. Already the tang of burning blood, sharp and coppery and hot as the devil’s forge, had begun to fade. Her hand tightened around the handle of her hammer as she searched the crowded mill for anything unusual.
“You all right, Val?” asked Jim Daley, as he dumped another shovelful of crushed ore into the pans.
Before Valerica could answer, Jim’s shovel clattered from his hands, and he lurched forward.
Valerica tried to catch him. Her fingers brushed his coverall, and then he twisted sideways, staggering like a man too drunk to walk. Another miner shouted, but it was too late. Jim fell against the machinery and didn’t move.
There was no way for her to stop the riverwheel from rotating, lifting, and releasing the heavy weights of the mill. Designed to pulverize crushed ore, the stamps smashed down before Valerica had taken two steps.
She grabbed Jim’s arm and dragged him back. Blood spurted from his ruined right hand, spraying Valerica and darkening the dusty floor. Jim stared dumbly at his hands. Splintered bone protruded from the broken fingers of his right. His left hand hung limp. The stamps had torn skin and muscle near the wrist, and already his entire sleeve was dark with blood.
Someone shoved her aside, wrapping a belt around Jim’s left arm, then twisting a sheathed knife through the belt to tighten the tourniquet. Another miner handed him a steel flask and forced him to drink.
Nobody noticed as Valerica slipped out of the mill, hurrying around back to plunge her bloody hands into the stream. It wasn’t enough. She waded into the water, fighting the urge to strip off her bloody clothes and fling them away. Blood trailed downstream like smoke in the water.
“Control,” she said through clenched teeth. Her hands twisted the denim of her overalls. The yearning hadn’t been this strong since she left Romania, nearly ten years before.
She could almost hear her father’s voice whispering, “The blood burns with power, ready to be claimed.”
Valerica dropped to her knees and plunged her face into the water. The shock of cold finally purged the scent of magic from her nostrils. She remained there until her lungs threatened to burst, then sat back, gasping for air.
This was an accident, nothing more. The Red Eagle Silver Mine was a dangerous place. A sinkhole had claimed three men earlier this year. A cave-in had buried another group only last week.
Heavy footsteps crunched the rocks behind her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Henry Cooper had worked this mine since eighteen fifty-four, taking over as foreman a few years later. He was a God-fearing man with a temper hot as a smelting fire. A black bush of a mustache covered his mouth, and his bald head was damp with sweat.
“Is Jim—”
“Cussed fool will probably be dead by dinner.” Henry crossed himself, then said, “I let you work this mine because you’re strong enough to swing a hammer, and you don’t complain. But this is dangerous work. Man’s work. If you’re going to run off and swoon every time—”
“I’m the one who pulled him away from the stamps,” Valerica said.
“That so?” Henry folded his arms. “Old Clyde says it looked like you were the one who pushed him in the first place.”
Valerica didn’t answer. Against the word of a man, hers was worthless as pyrite.
Eventually, Henry shrugged. “ ’Course, Clyde’s half-blind, too.” He turned and spat. “So if you’re through with this little display, why don’t you get back in there and start cleaning the pans.”
As she returned to the mill, Valerica saw the other workers carrying Jim Daley downhill, toward the makeshift city of tents and cabins that surrounded the mine. Others ran out to help, and to learn who had been hurt.
Valerica ducked into the mill and did her best to lose herself in the work. She yanked the pans from beneath the stamps, then began to rinse away the pulp and mud. It was a mindless task, one that slowly allowed her to regain her control.
By the time she began to draw the quicksilver from the bottom of the pan, shaping it into crude, fist-sized balls, she felt human again. The splotches of blood no longer called to her, or if they did, she refused to listen.
Valerica’s cabin was a quarter mile south of the main camp, away from the others. She reached for the heavy canvas that served as a door, then yanked her fingers back. She might have imagined the smell this morning, but here the scent of fire and blood made her eyes water.
“Bill,” she whispered. “Alina!” Valerica ripped the door aside. Stepping into her cabin was like walking through cobwebs. Foulness permeated her home, a shadow that clung to her skin and seeped into her lungs. “Where are you?”
She found her adopted nephew in the corner. Bill was half-naked and trembling, his eleven-year-old body curled into a ball. Thin lines of blood crusted his forehead, the Cyrillic characters barely legible. Others marked his chest, over the heart.
Valerica grabbed him by the arms. Without thinking, she smeared her fingers through the blood on his chest, severing the enchantment.
“Aunt V?” Bill coughed and looked around. “What are you doing here?”
“Where is Alina?” She held him still as she checked his body for injuries. The cuts were shallow, and should heal quickly. She licked her thumb and scrubbed his forehead.
Bill looked down at himself, and his face went white. “How…who did this to me?” He tried to squirm away, but Valerica held him fast.
“Let me go.”
“Where is Alina?” Valerica shouted.
“In her crib!”
Valerica released him.
Bill’s shirt was balled up in the corner. He slipped it on and began doing up the buttons. “She’s been bawling all morning. I thought about mixing a bit of whiskey into the goat’s milk, but she finally settled down.” He pulled his suspenders up over his arms, then stopped, staring through the open door at the sunset. “Aunt V, what the hell is going on?”
Valerica was already moving into the other room. A set of bunkbeds stood against the wall beside the small crib Valerica had built almost a year ago. She knew it was empty the second she stepped into the room, but she tore through the blankets anyway. She ripped apart the lower bunk, then dropped to the dirt floor to check beneath the bed. There was no sign of her daughter.
Bill stared at the empty crib. “I didn’t doze off. My word on it. I tucked her in, safe as—”
“Get out.”
His eyes shone, but he blinked back the tears. “Don’t be like that, Aunt V. I can help you search. Little Alina can’t have gone far. The pup can barely crawl.”
Valerica grabbed him. One hand twisted his collar, the other seized the seat of his pants. She dragged him from the cabin and set him down hard, facing the town below.
“You can help by going to church and praying for Alina.”
Bill scowled, his face red. “You don’t have to—”
“Now.” Perhaps a bit of power slipped into her words. Or maybe fear alone compelled him. Bill fled without another word.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. Slowly, her anger turned inward, where it belonged.
Father Fanshaw had refused to allow Valerica into his church, ever since he learned of her relationship with Elizabeth. But he wouldn’t refuse a frightened boy, and the church was the one place Bill should be safe.
Valerica closed her eyes. She should have known. With all of the commotion after Jim’s accident, who would have noticed a lone figure making his way through the camp?
She had known. She had simply refused to see.
“Watch over her, Elizabeth,” she whispered. “I swear to you I’ll save her. Keep our daughter safe until I can find her.”
It was a year and a half since Valerica had taken Bill’s mother into the desert. Elizabeth hadn’t understand at first, thinking it nothing more than a fancy picnic. There were so few chances to be alone, away from the gossip. But this morning Bill was in church, and the mine was shut down for Sunday worship.
The two women were a sight. Valerica was still caked with dust and sweat from yesterday’s work. Her loose miner’s overalls hid a muscular body, and her black hair was tucked into a blue cap. By contrast, Elizabeth Bemis was a proper lady. She wore a black silk hairnet with beads and blue ribbons dangling down her neck. Despite the heat, she refused to remove her bonnet, nor would she soak it down with water from the canteen, as Valerica had done with her cap.
“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked, taking Valerica’s hand in hers and swinging them like a child.
“There.” Valerica pointed. The blood spell she had traced on the cracked boulder was gone, washed away by the elements, but the power remained. Trapped by the magic, a coyote whimpered at the base of the boulder. The animal favored her back left paw as she paced, and her ribs were clearly visible against the dirty gray fur. Even without Valerica’s spell, she would have died within a few days.
Valerica pulled out a razor she had borrowed from Elizabeth’s cabin. She opened the blade and nicked her palm, then extended her hand so the blood dripped onto the coyote.
The coyote’s legs collapsed. Her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth as she struggled to raise her head.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked.
“Did you mean it?” Valerica tightened her fist, squeezing more blood into the dirt. “What we talked about last week, after Bill’s birthday?”
Elizabeth stared. “That’s impossible. You can’t—”
“We can,” Valerica said. “If it’s what you want. There will be questions and rumors. Ugly rumors. Are you sure—”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said firmly. She bit her lip as Valerica moved toward the coyote. “Are you going to kill it?”
“She’s paralyzed. She won’t feel anything.” Valerica hesitated. “The spell will work better if we both…”
Elizabeth’s hand closed over her own. They slit the coyote’s throat together, making the death as swift as possible.
“How?” Elizabeth asked.
“The coyote lived a long life, and carried many litters.” She wiped most of the blood from the razor. Blood sank into the engraving on the ivory handle, highlighting the initials G. L. B. Gary L. Bemis, Elizabeth’s husband, who had died of influenza several years earlier.
Elizabeth pulled out a lace-trimmed handkerchief and began wiping the blood from her hand. “Is all magic so bloody for a strigoi viu?”
Valerica dropped the razor. “Where did you hear that term?”
“You whisper in your sleep sometimes,” Elizabeth said. She put her clean hand on Valerica’s shoulder. “When the nightmares take you. What does it mean?”
She stooped to retrieve the razor, never meeting Elizabeth’s gaze. “The words are Romanian, the title for a child of power.” Not a lie, but far from the truth. “You may wish to turn away.”
Without waiting for a response, Valerica knelt and sliced open the coyote’s stomach and chest. She peeled back the skin and cracked the ribs, shoving organs aside until she exposed the pink of the uterus.
To Elizabeth’s credit, she never averted her eyes. She was pale and sweating as Valerica used the razor to reopen the nick on her palm, but when it was Elizabeth’s turn, she held her hand steady for the cut.
They clasped hands, pressing together until their palms and fingers grew slick, and blood dripped onto the coyote.
Blood burns with power. Jaw tight, she ignored the words, repeated so often by her father in another land, another life.
“How does it work?” Elizabeth whispered. “Which one of us will—” Her eyes widened, and her free hand went to her stomach.
Valerica grinned and put her own hand over Elizabeth’s. “You will.”
Elizabeth’s face was like the morning sun, burning away Valerica’s fears. “I can feel her,” she whispered, her voice soft with awe. “Valerica, it’s a her. Bill’s going to have a sister.”
For nine months, Valerica had known joy. She deluded herself into believing she could violate the laws of God and never suffer. She and Elizabeth had created life. They had done no harm. Surely God would bless a child born in such love.
Alina was born in winter. Elizabeth lost consciousness shortly after the contractions began. She never woke up.
The quarter moon provided enough light for Valerica to make her way back to the stamp mill. After checking to be sure it was abandoned, she crept inside.
Even in the darkness, she had no trouble finding Jim Daley’s blood. It called to her, stirring memories of that day with Elizabeth, the way the blood had coated her arms like a second skin.
Someone had washed away the worst of the blood, but enough remained, clotted in the cracks between the planks. Valerica opened her penny knife and used the blade to dig up clumps of bloody dirt, which she sprinkled in a small circle.
When she had enough, she pulled out a dented silver rattle, tarnished where Alina had gnawed on it. Giving the rattle a quick kiss, she placed it in the center of the circle.
An observer would have seen nothing. At most, one would hear a faint ringing as the rattle rolled to one side. Valerica picked it up, feeling a soft tug at her hand. She stood, wincing at the cramps in her legs. Outside, a glance at the moon told her only an hour had passed, but her muscles were tight and knotted.
She ignored the pain as the rattle led her uphill, past the miners’ main camp. She stopped behind the cooking tent when she realized where Alina must be.
A place of darkness, where screams would go unheard. A place where one could work magic, unseen by the eyes of God and men.
Up ahead, the entrance to the Red Eagle Silver Mine was an open mouth, laughing as it waited to swallow her in darkness.
The cabin door was still ripped asunder when Valerica returned for supplies. Candlelight flickered inside. Valerica hesitated, but there was no trace of new magic. “Who’s there?” she called.
Bill stepped into the doorway. “Now don’t get all sore, Aunt V. I know you said to stay away, but—”
“No.” Valerica stepped past him. She opened her trunk and grabbed a dark jacket, a handful of candles, and some matches. “Go back to the church.”
“Jim Daley’s body is down there, along with some whore who got herself stabbed.” He tried to act nonchalant, but Valerica saw him shiver. “They say she’s the third one this month.”
She nodded, unsurprised. “You can’t stay here. Return to town, and—”
“No.” He folded his arms, and Valerica had to fight back tears. Standing like that, jaw clamped with determination, Bill was the shadow of his mother. “I want to help you find my sister. She’s in the mine, isn’t she?”
“How did you—?” Valerica swore. Alina’s rattle had come from Elizabeth. No doubt it was the same one Bill had used as a baby. Valerica’s spell must have called to him, too. “You’re not coming.”
“It’s my fault she’s gone,” Bill insisted. “Let me help!”
“Bill, please.” She forced the coldness from her voice. “The man who took Alina is worse than a murderer. He’s probably the one who killed those prostitutes.” The more blood he harvested, the greater his power.
“What does he want with Alina?”
Valerica closed her eyes. He would take Alina to live among the dead. He would teach her power others never imagined. He would give her the strength to defeat death, and he would damn her forever. He would make her strigoi viu, as he had done to Valerica. And he would use her to control Valerica, to punish her for her disobedience. “Let me worry about Alina. If you interfere, you will join Jim Daley.”
“He didn’t kill me before,” Bill said.
Only because I would have sensed your death and come running. “You should thank God for your good fortune. If you return willingly to his grasp, he will make you beg for death.”
Bill reached behind his back and drew a Bowie knife. The blade was twice the length of his hand. “I’d like to see him try.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Don’t matter. You didn’t expect it, and neither will the bastard who took my sis.”
Valerica grabbed his arms and shoved him against the wall. Years of working in the mill had strengthened her muscles, so she barely noticed Bill’s weight. His dangling feet kicked her shins, and the knife point pricked her side, but she ignored it. Her right hand held him pinned. Her left twisted the knife from his hand and stabbed it into the wall beside his ear.
Bill’s face was white. He was breathing so quick he couldn’t talk. His panicked gasps reminded her of the coyote, right before she and Elizabeth had killed it.
“I know you love Alina,” she said. “But this man will eat your heart while your blood is still hot. The only way I can save Alina is by destroying him. Alone.”
“Who—” Bill swallowed and tried again, but the words didn’t come.
“My father,” Valerica said. As a child, she had been too weak and afraid to fight back, choosing instead to flee. Had she fought, he would have killed her…and Elizabeth would still be alive.
“What kind of man—”
“He is strigoi mort,” Valerica said. “Living dead.”
What she would become after her own passing.
Valerica had never won an argument with Elizabeth when she set her mind to something, and Bill was his mother’s son.
“You need me,” Bill said as he followed her toward the mine. “I’ve been running ice in those tunnels for a year. You ain’t never gone farther than the ore dump. Without me, you’ll get yourself turned about or trapped in a sinkhole.”
“If I need guidance, I’ll ask one of the men.”
“Those same men who say ladies oughtn’t be in the mine at all?” Bill shot back. “What are you gonna tell them, that your dead pa ran off with Alina?”
“When has anyone in this camp ever thought of me as a lady?” Still, he had a point. Her spell drew her toward Alina, but it couldn’t guide her through the labyrinthine twists of the tunnels.
“You’re scared for me, I know,” said Bill. “You worry like my own ma. But that’s my sister down there, and no walking corpse is going to stop me from getting her out.”
“You don’t know what he is.” Valerica’s father had been buried facedown, with sharpened stakes planted in the earth to impale his body should he try to return. It hadn’t been enough. Others had tried to warn them, urging her grandfather to burn the body, but he had refused. He hadn’t believed, and it had killed him.
Valerica had thought she would be safe in America, with an ocean between her and her father. The purity of water was one of the few things his kind feared. Had the ship gone down, or had he fallen overboard, it would have destroyed him. His body would have sunk quickly, drawn toward hell. She had seen it once as a child. Her father and his fellows had flung one of their number into a pond as punishment for some transgression. Like a twisted baptism, the immersion purified him, burning the very flesh from his bone.
She had underestimated her father’s determination. You are mine, little Valerica, to the last drop of blood in your veins.
“Please, Aunt V.”
Valerica bit her lip. If anything happened to Bill, Elizabeth’s spirit would never forgive her. But without him, her slim chance to save Alina dwindled to nothing. “I’m sorry, love,” she whispered. To Bill, she said, “You may guide me through the mine. When we are close, you will stay hidden.” She raised a hand, chopping off his half-formed protest. “Promise me.”
Bill scowled, but nodded.
They walked in silence toward the square hole in the earth. To either side, iron pumps rested over narrow air shafts. With the pumps shut down for the night, the air inside would be hot, bitter, and stale.
The rattle in Valerica’s hand drew them down the ramp, into darkness.
Candlelight sent shadows flickering over the planks and timbers of the tunnel. The huge support beams locked together in an unending series of squares and triangles. Valerica’s hand was sweaty on the rattle.
“You still haven’t told me what your pa wants with my sister,” Bill said.
“He wants me.” Alina was born of dark magic, the strongest she had ever cast. That had to be what had drawn him from Romania. She had led him here. “He and his fellows taught me the black arts.”
She glanced at Bill. His face was pale, but he didn’t react. “So you’re some kind of witch?”
“The name is strigoi viu, those who are cursed from birth.” Her own evil paled beside the sins of those who returned, the ones who defeated death through blood and blackness. The ones like her father. “They teach their children the magic to escape damnation. To endure death and rise as strigoi mort.”
She wiped her face. “He would have burned me on the pyre to stop me from leaving.”
“Is that why he’s here? To kill you?”
“To reclaim me.” No doubt Alina as well. Her father’s blood pumped through Alina’s heart, too. She raised the candle. The tunnel leveled off here, opening into a loading platform. “We need to go deeper.”
“To the right,” Bill said. “The ladder’ll take us down.”
Bill had been right. Without his guidance, she would have been lost.
At the bottom of the ladder, she stopped to put a fresh candle into the holder. Wax dripped along the iron spike of the handle, singeing her callused fingers.
Bill pointed to a sign nailed to an overhead beam. “We’re at fifteen hundred feet. They closed this part down a week or so back, after the tunnel flooded.”
Valerica nodded, remembering the men who had barely escaped. Many had burns on their hands and faces from the steam.
“When they finally got it pumped dry, they lost a blasting team in a cave-in. Foreman wants to tunnel around, go after a more stable part of the vein. Don’t know why he didn’t—”
Valerica grabbed his arm. “He is there. In those tunnels.”
Bill swallowed.
“No matter what you hear, no matter how fear compels you, do not follow. If I do not return, run to the surface.” She handed him the extra candles and several matches, as well as Alina’s rattle. “Flee as if your soul depends on it.”
She expected an argument, but he only nodded. Perhaps he could sense it too, the smell of decay and the heaviness of the shadows. The walls were hot and damp, as though Valerica moved through the bowels of an enormous serpent.
Valerica drew her penny knife and jabbed the tip into her forearm. A thin line of blood tickled her skin.
A small spell, undetectable against the stench of magic that filled this place. She used it to draw the shadows close, wrapping herself in darkness. Her candleflame took on a blue hue, invisible to any but herself. She saw Bill searching, proof her spell had worked.
Her father had the blood of his victims to fuel his power. Valerica had only herself. But she had slipped past him once before, in Romania.
These deeper tunnels were rough and unfinished. Loose rock and dirt made her footing treacherous. She moved cautiously, testing the ground before each step.
She smelled the fire before she saw it, an oily smoke that dried her eyes and filled her nose with the scent of burned meat. She glanced behind to be certain Bill hadn’t followed, then moved closer. The tunnel split, veering off at right angles. Her father was to the right.
Knife raised, she moved closer. A knife blow wouldn’t kill him, but her blood gave the blade power. So long as she struck quickly, before he could defend himself, she had a chance.
“Hello, Valerica.” The dry voice plunged her into despair. “Come, let me look upon my only daughter.”
Running would only anger him. Praying Bill would have the sense to flee, she stepped around the corner. Her father was unchanged. He wore loose trousers and an embroidered, off-white shirt. His face was the color of old linen. Even his lips were bloodless. Dirty tangles of black hair hung past his shoulders. He reached for her, and his yellow nails were like claws.
Valerica raised her knife. “Where is Alina?”
He nodded to a broken rail car leaning against the wall, up the tunnel. Valerica could feel his power reaching for her, like insects burrowing through her skin. She ignored it, hurrying past the small fire to peer into the car. She jammed the pointed handle of the candle holder into the wall between the planks and reached for her daughter.
Alina lay naked, sprawled in a bed of dirt and straw. Blood crusted her round cheeks and pale chest. Valerica lifted her. Alina didn’t respond, and Valerica felt like her own heart had stopped beating. She forgot about her father, about Bill, about everything but the tiny, bloody body in her arms.
“Open your eyes, child.” She scrubbed desperately at the blood. The cuts were too shallow to have killed her. She fought to keep from shaking Alina. “Please.” She smeared her own blood over the cuts, using all of her strength to try to break her father’s spell.
Alina whimpered softly, and tears blurred Valerica’s vision. “You’re safe now,” she said, slipping into Romanian. “Tu eşti în siguranţă.”
“You thought I would harm her?” asked her father. “Why would I hurt one with such potential?”
Valerica ignored him, rocking her daughter against her chest. For the first time, she saw the shadows farther down, partly concealed by a bend in the tunnel. Shadows resolved into bodies as she walked closer. Bill’s lost blasting team, no doubt. Lost, but not to a cave-in. Still holding Alina, she approached until she was certain they were dead. The chests were torn open and the limbs broken. She turned away.
“What potential?” she asked.
He smiled. Decay had taken most of his teeth, and the ones that remained were brown, whether from rot or blood, she couldn’t say.
“You’ve done well, Valerica,” he said. “Can’t you taste the power in her blood?”
She backed away. He had swallowed the blood of her baby. That was how he had pierced Valerica’s illusion. She wanted to vomit.
“But you’ve done nothing to prepare her for the darkness,” he went on.
“Alina is innocent.” Unlike her father, whose birth caul had covered his face like a mask. Even as a babe, he had hidden his face from God.
He laughed, a sound of genuine amusement that pierced her with memories from her childhood. “The girl is damned, Valerica. I can smell the darkness enveloping her. Your darkness. You damned her, from the very moment you created her.”
“No.” It was Valerica who had cast the spell. The mark was on her soul, not Alina’s. “She was baptized the week after her birth.” Father Fanshaw had insisted. Elizabeth had borne a bastard child, and he wished to cleanse Alina of that sin. Valerica had been all too willing to comply, even if she wasn’t permitted to attend the ceremony. “She is pure.”
“I can save her from the hellfire of damnation. We can save her. Would you deny her that protection?” Her father scoffed. “You know nothing, Valerica. I have faced death. I know the fate you would lay upon her.”
She shifted Alina to her left arm and pointed her knife at his throat. Before she could take a step, the wooden handle twisted. Splinters drove into her palm, and the knife dropped to the ground, warped by his magic.
“You should have fled,” he said. “But I understand. It is difficult to abandon one’s child, yes?” He clapped his hands. At his feet, the small fire flashed, and suddenly Valerica felt Alina sliding from her grasp.
Valerica tried to catch her, but blood had turned Alina’s skin slick. Valerica’s fingers clamped around Alina’s leg, slipped. Alina wailed as she fell headfirst to the—
The fire faded. Valerica staggered back, nearly dropping Alina for real. She clutched Alina as tightly as she could without hurting her. The strigoi mort were adept at drawing nightmares from the mind. After so many years, Valerica was unprepared for such an assault.
Another flare, and Valerica stood in the desert again, holding the bloody razor. But where the coyote had been, now Bill lay butchered on the rocky earth. She tried to look away, but the vision followed.
“Ah, yes, I almost forgot.” Her father smiled as this second illusion faded. He licked his lips. “The valiant brother. Your baby’s blood calls to him as well. Shall I show him the fate which awaits him?”
Before Valerica could move, the fire brightened again. This time Valerica was unaffected, but Bill’s terrified screams echoed through the tunnel.
“You could fight me.” He pointed a bony finger at Alina. “Her blood is quite potent, Valerica. Your broken knife should be more than adequate to slit her throat.”
Valerica shuddered. She returned Alina to the rail car just as another nightmare took her. She pressed her forehead to the wall, eyes squeezed tight as she watched Elizabeth burn.
He knew she wouldn’t hurt Alina, but he wanted her to fight. He had the strength of the dead miners, as well as his victims on the surface. Nothing Valerica did could overpower him. He would wear her down until she had no strength left. Then he would take her. Her and Alina both. Bill, he would simply kill. Or more likely, he would taunt Bill’s mind until he took his own life.
Valerica grabbed her candle from the wall. Too shaken to stand, she bent down to kiss Alina’s forehead.
“Let them go,” she said. She rested her arms on the broken car. Alina reached up to tug a lock of Valerica’s hair. Valerica smiled and squeezed Alina’s hand, then brought her own fingers to the base of the candleflame, where the fire was hottest. “I’ll come back to Romania with you. I’ll do whatever you ask.”
The calluses dulled the pain for a moment, but soon the fire burned deeper, searing the nerves. Her arm shook as the skin of her fingers turned red, then black. Blood began to drip from cracked skin.
“Valerica, you are already mine, as is your daughter. Do you truly think I would accept such a bargain?”
Valerica looked up. “No.” She pinched her fingers together, screaming as the pressure sent new pain through her hand and up her arm. Collapsing against the cart, Valerica drew the fire into her own blood, then flung it away, down the tunnel, toward the broken bodies of the blasting team.
“Bun rămas, father.” Farewell. Perhaps this time he would stay buried.
He stepped toward her, and then thunder and light filled the tunnel. Her tiny flame had been enough to light only a single stick of the dynamite carried by those poor miners, but when it exploded, it triggered the rest. A wall of wind toppled the rail car. Valerica caught Alina with her good hand and rolled, covering her with her body. A futile gesture that would do nothing against the collapse of the tunnel, but she couldn’t help herself.
Stone and dirt rained down, but the tunnel held. Alina burrowed her head into Valerica’s chest.
Her ears rang, and she could see her father striding toward her, but she was too battered to flee. Blood welled from his chapped lips. His whispers charged the air with magic far more powerful than Valerica could fight. Then he stopped. In a single heartbeat, rage transformed to fear.
“Valerica!” he shouted, his bloodshot eyes wide. He backed away.
Water had begun to rise. The explosion hadn’t brought down the tunnel; it had cracked the floor, breaking through to the water below. The fire disappeared in a hiss of steam and smoke, and the tunnel went black. By the time Valerica pulled herself upright, the water was already to her waist.
“Where is the ladder?” Panic gave her father’s voice an edge she had never heard before.
The sharp scent of magic overpowered the salty, muddy smell of the water. The planks along the wall began to burn. Her father held one hand in the fire, maintaining the spell as he frantically searched for the way out. Spotting the ladder, he waded away from the wall.
He had only taken a single step when a surge of water knocked his legs from beneath him. He lurched back, grabbing the wall with his fingers and straining to keep his head above the surface. Valerica could see terror on his face. For so many years he had evaded death, mocking the laws of God.
He reached for her, and his arm was little more than bone. “Daughter!”
“Bun rămas,” she whispered.
A moment later, he was gone.
Any satisfaction she might have taken from his destruction was lost in her fear for Alina.
Valerica raised her daughter over her head, trying to get to the ladder, but the water was rising too quickly. Alina squirmed and batted Valerica’s hands. Over the pounding in her ears, Valerica could make out the sound of crying.
“I’m sorry,” Valerica said. Her father’s fire died, and Alina began to scream. She wanted to hold Alina close, but the water was already to her neck. “You’ll be with Elizabeth soon. You’ll be safe.”
She lost her balance. Salty water scalded her throat and face. She kicked as hard as she could, desperately trying to keep Alina above the surface. Her stomach convulsed, and her body tried to gasp and vomit at the same time.
Alina kicked and twisted. She started to slip away.
“Please, God!” Valerica tightened her grip as she floated through the darkness. “Elizabeth, help me.”
She knew Alina would die. She had known it from the moment she touched the flame. But not alone. She would die with Valerica, safe from the darkness of strigoi magic. And she would go to be with Elizabeth. But still Valerica fought, desperate to give Alina every last second of life.
A hand grabbed her wrist. She tried to twist away. How could her father still survive? The water should have destroyed him. She pulled harder.
And then a quiet, frightened voice said, “I’ve got you, Aunt V.”
Valerica stood with Bill and Alina behind the church, near the back of the cemetery. It was the first time Valerica had visited since Elizabeth’s funeral.
She coughed, then flinched, but Alina continued to sleep. Her cuts had begun to heal, and she seemed unharmed, aside from a powerful fear of being alone in the dark. Valerica prayed that would fade with time. Until then, she and Bill were scrounging every extra candle they could get their hands on.
“I want it to be here,” Valerica said. She reached out with her bandaged hand to touch the small gravestone. “With her.”
Bill nodded. “Shouldn’t you tell Father Fanshaw?”
“He wouldn’t understand. He thinks I’m damned.” She chuckled. If Father Fanshaw had known the truth, he would have burned her alive.
“You’ve got my word,” said Bill. “I’ll cremate you myself if I have to. God willing, that won’t be for a good long time, though.” He stared at the grave. “Are you really cursed? I mean, would you really come back like him?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about Alina?”
Valerica shook her head. “Alina is innocent. The potential may be in her blood. But the power must be taught, passed down from parent to child. No one will teach Alina while I draw breath.”
“Parent to child,” Bill repeated. “He called Alina your daughter.”
Valerica took a deep breath. Bill must have heard the rumors, but he had never once asked about her relationship with Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said. “Elizabeth’s and mine.”
“Oh.” He pursed his lips. “That’s mighty strange.” Clearly he didn’t understand. Just as clearly, it didn’t matter one whit.
She laughed, tried to smother it so she wouldn’t disturb Alina, and ended up coughing again instead. Alina’s eyes blinked open. Valerica hummed an old folk song, bouncing Alina until her eyes eased shut once more. “Yes, it is,” she whispered.
“She’s got my mama’s face, but your eyes,” Bill said.
Valerica grabbed him and planted a quick kiss on the top of his head. “Thank you.” Gingerly, she lifted Alina and passed her into Bill’s arms. “She needs to be changed. I’ll be back shortly.”
Bill made a face, but didn’t argue. As he took Alina back to their cabin, Valerica knelt and pressed her hand to the headstone of her lover. “Thank you.”
She leaned forward to kiss the dusty stone. For the first time in years, she felt free.
She felt alive.