SWNOVELS Phantasma: Chapter 44
Ophelia’s flesh pebbled as a strange vibration of energy ran through her, making her blood sing with power.
Cade’s life force, she realized. She had stolen it, recharged herself with it.
A golden door appeared in the center of the room, and Ophelia wiped her stained hands on her dress before grabbing up her skirts and marching toward it, not bothering to glance back as she left Cade and his forgettable legacy behind.
As she made her way to the portal, to return to the manor, pride seeped into every inch of her marrow at the hard-won victory of making it to this point. But her high was quickly dampened as the dining room came into view around her.
Something was very wrong.
The change in ambiance was so visceral that her spine began to tingle at the shift in the air around her. Everything had become drenched in shadows, the food that was usually still out on the table in the dining room now nothing but dried up fruit and the rotten carcasses of roasted birds. If she had once thought the Gothic opulence of the manor was something to behold, everything was now sharper, darker, too harsh for her to feel comfortable within the treacherous walls.
She frowned as she trudged through the archway of the dining room and into the corridor. It was pitch-black, not a single one of the sconces that lined the hall lit. The shadows around her seemed alive.
“Something wicked this way comes,” an insidious voice crooned from down the hall.
She froze, her stomach a pit of fear. That hadn’t been in her head.
“Hello, Ophelia,” the Shadow Voice hissed as it stepped into view. It seemed to smile as it spoke, though it was only made of shadows and swirling tendrils of smoke.
“How did you get out?” She fought to contain the tremble in her voice.
“You let me out. When you gave in to my wicked desires.”
It was the same as it always had appeared in her dreams, the embodiment of darkness, a manifestation of every sin in her mind. Almost human in its form, but there were no discernable features in its face, no eyes, just depthless black holes, and only a gash of razor-sharp teeth for its mouth.
“You mean—”
“You killed Cade with your bare hands, and now you have unleashed me on the world.” Its raspy cackle sent a shiver through her body. “Oh, how I cannot wait to commit all of the sinful fantasies I have so longed to enact all these years.”
She took a step back from the figure and it mirrored her movement. She halted and it did the same.
It laughed at the horror on her face. “Yes, you’re starting to see. I am you and you are me. Our darkness is intertwined.”
“No,” she whispered. “We are not the same.”
“Oh, but we are,” it insisted. “Don’t look so disappointed. This is what you’ve always wanted, yes? Me outside of your head?”
Her fists balled at her sides. “Not if it means you will be free to torture others like you have me.”
“Are you saying you’d rather me back in your head?” it purred.
Her breath hitched at the question.
All her life, all she had wanted was peace. To be fixed. To not be a burden on those she loved most. But if being rid of the voice in her head meant she would never know peace in a different sort of way… was that worth it?
You don’t need to fix yourself. You’re not broken. But it’s okay to get outside help if it gets too loud.
Blackwell’s words came slamming back into her, and she realized how right they were. Every time the Shadow Voice urged her to do something insidious or viciously evil and she resisted… that was her choosing who she really was. And unleashing such a force on the world where she could no longer mitigate the consequences of the Voice’s actions was a much larger burden than she was willing to live with if those were her only two options.
“Tick, tock,” the Shadow Voice prompted.
“I’m not letting you go free,” she declared, lifting her chin in defiance.
“Then come and get me,” it snarled.
It plunged down the hallway and into the darkness, and Ophelia took off after it. Her skirts billowed behind her as she sprinted through the corridor and down two flights of stairs to the manor’s first floor—a place she had not been allowed to step foot in since entering Phantasma. Her hair whipped across her face as she followed the same sharp turn the shadowy creature took as soon as they hit the bottom step, and ran out into the open space of the upper landing where the double, crescent-shaped stairwells led down to the front foyer. Milky moonlight drenched both the upper landing and foyer through the enormous Gothic windows, silhouetting the Shadow Voice as it continued to skitter through the night and down the left side of the crescent-shaped stairwell. She hurried after it, making her way down to the first floor, but as it plunged into the darkness beneath the overhanging landing, where the moonlight could no longer reach, Ophelia paused to yank down the brass candelabra from the post at the end of the banister at the end of the stairs, letting the dim light guide her into the unexplored parts of the manor.
At the very back of the foyer she found a U-shaped alcove with three sets of double doors. She held the candles before each of them in turn, trying to assess if any of them were slightly ajar. When she neared the set on the right, her locket’s pulse began to thunder, and she didn’t hesitate to yank the doors open and step through.
What she found was a room full of mirrors framed by lush, red velvet curtains. Each reflection of herself contained something different—one where she was screaming, one where she was crying, one where the smile on her face stretched unnaturally wide. A most terrifying vision.
Her dress was bloody and torn from her fight with Cade, and the firelight in her hand danced with hypnotizing fervor as she slowly turned to look at each version of herself.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she whispered.
Something moved swiftly from behind her, bursting out from one of the curtains and tackling her to the ground. The candelabra flew from her hand, bouncing noisily across the ground and skidding to a halt at the foot of one of the plush curtains. The flames ignited the fabric instantly, smoke filling the room as the fire licked its way up to the ceiling. Her focus, however, was on the Shadow Voice pinning her to the floor by her shoulders.
She struggled against its hold as its writhing, smoke-like hands elongated into something akin to talons.
“Ophelia Grimm,” it rasped, dragging one of those sharp talons down the side of her cheek as the fire spread and the temperature in the room blazed dangerously close to suffocating. “You have always contained your own worst enemy.”
She summoned her magic, using the spurt of power she’d received from Cade’s death and blasting it through the tendrils of the Voice’s shadows. As her magic ripped through the dark figure, its claws sank into her chest and ripped. She screamed in agony as her skin tore open, flayed away in jagged pieces. She tried to flip over and drag herself away from the creature as her blood swelled through the ruined fabric of her chemise and corset, but it pressed its weight down into her even harder and scrambled to keep her on her back. She tried to make herself invisible, but it wasn’t working, and as the growing flames depleted the oxygen, she began to heave, smoke slowly seeping into her lungs.
She sent out another blast of her magic into the figure’s core, and this time, it slashed open the sensitive skin of her belly, nearly gutting her in the process.
“Blackwell,” she cried, desperate. “Blackwell.”
“He’s not coming for you, sweetheart.” The Shadow Voice laughed. “You’re on your own.”
“Blackwell,” she screamed until her throat was raw.
Over and over and over she called his name. But he did not come.
“When are you going to realize that the only person you can rely on is yourself?” the Voice spat. “When are you going to give up on the idea that he is your savior?”
She continued repeating Blackwell’s name until it was all she knew, and the Shadow Voice grew angrier with each call of the Ghost’s name on her lips.
“Shut up,” it hissed. “Shut up!”
The thing was, she didn’t need Blackwell to always be her savior, but it was beginning to dawn on her that he had become her safe haven—someone who made the Shadow Voice go silent whenever he was around. And despite her injuries, and the fact that she was about to be incinerated, she didn’t want him to come save her in this moment. She wanted him to come make sure the Shadow Voice didn’t get away.
… it’s okay to get outside help…
Yes. It was. She had been so alone for so long. Trapped in the confines of her own mind. She didn’t see why she needed to be alone now, just to prove that she was the only person she could rely on. Because she knew that wasn’t true.
“He’s not coming, you bitch,” the Shadow Voice shrieked, and now Ophelia knew it wasn’t just angry—it was frightened.
“He will always come to me,” she whispered. “We find each other every time. And you cannot stand that, because it means I’m no longer alone with you.”
The Shadow Voice screamed in fury as it poised itself to land its final blow, and she sucked in all the air she could manage to whisper Blackwell’s name one last time.
And then everything went black.