PROBLEM - Anthony Lockwood

CHAPTER EIGHTY TWO

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lxxxii

the Problem (part ii)

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ADELAIDE DEANE'S BLOOD began to rise, twisting and forming a strange shape in the air. Almost like a long, thin diamond. But ragged along it's edges, wrong.

Alice broke out of the haze of magic to turn back and scream one thing to the four onlookers. "DON'T LOOK!"

And then her head snapped back, her body shaking at the sound of Bickerstaff's roars of protest.

"VELUM APARIRE!"

There was a shockwave so strong, it felt as if a thousand Banshee's had screamed. The ground was quaking beneath her feet and the very fabric of the world was destroyed.

It was the end.

From the shape in her blood, came a very strange sight, like a rip in the air.

A tear.

A break in the Veil.

And when Adelaide spoke next, her voice echoed throught the chamber and struck into the soul of every spirit in London, every spirit in the country, every spirit in existence.

"I AM DEATH, AND I BANISH YOU BEYOND THE VEIL! I CONDEMN YOU TO THE ETERNAL TORMENT OF POWERLESSNESS! SUMBIT TO ME!"

The very shadows of Bickerstaff's ghost were dissipating, disappearing into the air and dimming. Wisps of his being were pulled towards the tear in the world, the rip suspended in the air and the horrible images swimming in the glass of the cracked mirror.

Alice's blood turned to fire.

Pitch black flames that ate away at her ankles and ravaged away at the ghost of Bickerstaff. From those flames, crimson smoke began to rise, curling around Bickerstaff and pulling him into the Veil.

His screams of protest died down as the sheer magic of the other side paralysed him, binding him and forcing him through the gap within the worlds.

Adelaide Deane looked into the Veil.

And she saw things in the darkness.

Terrible. Terrible things.

And then footsteps began to echo.

She watched, tears of blood streaming down her face, a nosebleed also, as a woman exited the tear in the Veil.

She was slightly taller than Alice, and incredibly beautiful. In the way in which she was both utterly petrifying and also striking at the same time. Her eyes were so black and terrifying, it was as if she were gazing into the heart of the Bone Glass.

She had full, red lips, and long black hair. She had pale white skin, a contrast to Alice's copper and their only stark difference.

Delilah Deane stood before her daughter and stepped out of the Veil.

"I have been waiting for you, my child," she declared. Her voice too rich, too real, to be the voice of a ghost.

Alice's brows furrowed, "Mother?"

"I see you have figured out my spell," Delilah replied, her voice clear and commanding. She took Alice's bloodstained hands in her own. "The final part was for you to do what I did, to cause a tear so deep into the fabric of the universe, that all Death is ours to conquer."

Alice pressed her forehead against her mother's, hardly daring to believe it was real.

That her own mother was standing before her. Alive.