Heartache High (11 page)

‘And this is
just a small part of Panthia; but enough of her to control her. The
same way a brain surgeon can manipulate the whole body by tweaking
a minute part of the brain.’

‘When a hologram
smashes, each fragment still contains a picture of the whole
thing.’

‘Try it, Steph!’
Jassy urges. ‘See if you can get back control of your
body!’

I look through
my eyes into the room once more.

Iain has his
head tipped back.

The incubus is
crouched over him, its hands holding him firmly as it gradually
forces its writhing, serpentine tail into his mouth.

‘Stop it! Let
him go!’ I say yet again.

Lamia
laughs.

I tense my
muscles, feeling them reacting to my thoughts at last.

Then I throw
myself across the floor towards Iain.

*

I crash hard
into Iain’s seated, sleeping body.

It’s enough to
send him flying from the chair.

I follow after
him, the chair tumbling across the floor with us.

The lighter,
more insubstantial incubus hangs behind us in the air. Great
lengths of its immensely long tail come spiralling out of Iain’s
gagging mouth, but its end is still deeply embedded within
him.

Iain wakes up.
His eyes widen in horror as he sees and feels the ghostly
monstrosity snaking from his mouth.

I grasp the
strangely wet coils, pulling hard at them to pull the tail free of
Iain’s mouth.

The wraith leaps
on me from behind, wrapping its arms around me in an attempt to
pull me away.

Iain’s still
shocked, terrified. But he also begins to wrench the winding coils
from his mouth, until at last the tail’s thinner ends are spooling
out.

With a
spluttering, gagging retch, Iain coughs the evilly barbed end
free.

I’ve ignored the
clawing hands of the incubus clasped around my shoulders long
enough.

I try and reach
up to pull him off, but he bats my arms away and shuffles to one
side.

Unbalanced, I
begin to topple over until Iain rushes to my aid, grabbing the
writhing demon by what passes for its waist and fiercely tugging on
it.

It screeches. It
lashes out.

With a final,
vigorous wrench, Iain pulls the demon away from me. Whirling
around, drawing on the momentum of his hard wrench, Iain throws the
incubus off to one side.

Almost
weightless, it flies through the air. It crashes against an
elaborate display of yard-long arrows, the shafts scattering,
snapping, interlocking and entangling.

The incubus
wails as the massed arrows pierce it, pinning it amongst the
shattered display.

‘Fortunately for
you, my son can’t be killed so easily.’

Lamia is calmly
making her way back from the potion cabinet.

She’s carrying a
stoppered bottle of urine-coloured liquid, as if she’s been coolly
mixing a new potion as we fought the incubus.

‘The amusements
over, I think,’ she declares firmly, pulling her arm back in
readiness to throw the potion at us.

‘No, stop!’ I
shout, raising a hand. ‘Stop if you care for your
daughter!’

‘Panthia?
Obviously, dear, you’ve managed to briefly wrest control off her;
but she’s a big girl now, and perfectly capable of looking after
herself.’

She says it all
completely nonchalantly, like she doesn’t care.

But she hasn’t
just held back from throwing the potion; she’s lowered her arm,
giving me the impression that she’s prepared to talk.

That she’s not
quite as confident about her daughter’s wellbeing as she’s trying
to make out.

‘We’re holding
her; back at Heartache High, we’re holding her.’

Iain glances my
way with a puzzled frown. Even so, he’s had the sense to begin
moving away from me, just as I’m moving away from him.

We’re putting
distance between us, slowly circling Lamia.

Lamia will have
to choose who she targets with her potion if she ever gets around
to throwing it.

‘Unless you let
us go,’ I continue, ‘she’s staying there.’

‘Hah! She’s only
inside one of you, don’t forget!’

I’d guessed
that, knowing Panthia is inside me, not Iain, she’d be more likely
to target him.

So even as she
spins on her heels to throw the potion at him, I’m reaching for a
huge pike held in the flimsy hand of a suit of samurai
armour.

There’s no
resistance from a hand that’s only formed from the armour
itself.

I don’t waste
time grabbing the long shaft; I simply pull down hard on it,
bringing the blade scything down on Lamia’s head.

The blade slices
through her hair, her skin, her skull.

Her legs
buckle.

Her arms go
limp, the stoppered bottle dropping from her hand only a few inches
off the floor.

She collapses,
her body splaying ungainly across the red carpet.

I rush to Iain’s
side, glancing down at Lamia.

Her eyes are
still wide, still like deep, green pools.

Still
sparkling.

‘She’s still
looking at us!’ Iain says, clasping me tightly against his body.
‘She isn’t dead!’

Cautiously, we
draw nearer to her.

Giving her a
swift kick, I immediately pull my foot back, expecting her to
suddenly reach out and grab it.

There’s no
movement from her.

‘Her eyes always
remain open,’ I say blankly to Iain. ‘A punishment of the
gods.’

*

Understandably,
Iain’s confused.

‘The
gods?’

He looks at me
like I might be a little crazed.

Then, glancing
over at the incubus still trying to struggle free of the pinioning
arrows, he shakes his head, like he’s wondering if he’s caught up
in a bad dream.

‘No, it’s not a
nightmare you’re having,’ I chuckle, drawing him close.

Wow!

I’ve just
realised; this is the first time
I’ve
held him like
this.

The first time,
too, I’ve been held by him.

I wonder – what
is it like to kiss him?

Why wonder
anymore?

*

It’s only as we
finishing kissing that I remember I’ve got an audience back in
Heartache High.

Later, they’ll
want me to fill in the details of the fight I’ve been way too busy
to describe as it happened.

‘Wow!’ Iain says
as we finally pull apart. ‘
That’s
just as I’d always
imagined it would be with you Steph!’

‘That’s became
it
is
me, Iain; the
real
me!’

How will it
happen for me now?

With Panthia as
a prisoner, will I continue to exist in both worlds?

Can I say here,
with Iain?

Will I also have
to continue attending Heartache High?

Or have I
achieved the impossible?

Have I
left
Heartache High?

*

As I hold Iain’s
hand, he begins to rise into the air.

‘What?
Iain?’

But he can’t
reply.

His mouth is
gagged with the end of a barbed tail.

Serpentine coils
loop around his body, holding him fast.

He’s rising
higher into the air, his struggling useless.

‘I did warn you
my son wouldn’t be killed so easily,’ Lamia declares
proudly.

*

Lamia looms over
me.

Or rather, what
had
been
Lamia.

In part, she’s
still recognisable.

The beautiful
face, untouched by the blade that had sliced the back of her head
open.

The upper body,
graceful and toned.

Below this,
however, the body broadens, elongates immeasurably, transformed
into the writhing coils of an impossibly large serpent that takes
up the entire room.

Her arms, too,
are long and lizard-like, as if taken from a dragon.

I glance over
towards the shattered arrow display.

The incubus is
no longer pinioned there.

‘He’s enjoined
with me, Stephanie dear; to give my
body
the energy surge it
needed to swiftly recover. Not that
I
was dead, of
course.’

I haven’t got
time to listen to her.

I rush across
the floor, half rolling, half ducking beneath Iain as he continues
in his useless struggle to break free of Lamia’s entrapping
coils.

I grab the pike
I’d used to split Lamia’s head open, swinging it hard around in a
sweeping arch towards her broad, unmissable torso.

The blade
swishes through the air, directly on target – and clangs violently
against scales as hard as stone.

‘This is the bit
where I should cackle wickedly,’ Lamia casually
declares.

 
Languidly slithering across the floor towards me, she
effortlessly shifts the entrapped Iain behind her, moving him
farther out of my reach.

‘There’s no need
for me to chase you; if you don’t stop now, I’ll squeeze the life
out of your precious Iain.’

Iain’s eyes
bulge as she tightens her entwining coils. He can’t scream; the
tail end still gags his mouth.

‘No, no;
please,’ I plead – then remember we still hold her own precious
Panthia back in Heartache High. ‘Let’s not forget poor little
Panthia; I wouldn’t hurt Iain if I were you.’

‘If you were me?
But you aren’t me, are you Stephanie dear? In fact, you’re not even
you
, are you? Panthia will soon see to that once
more.’

Suddenly, Lamia
lurches down towards me, reaching out with an elongated, scaly
arm.

I duck once
more, throwing myself to one side yet again.

I almost
somersault, almost tumble towards where the potion bottle had
fallen to the floor.

Lifting the
bottle up high, I hurl it with all my strength towards Lamia’s
upper, more human body.

It shatters with
a tinkling crackle against skin every bit as hard as the tile-like
scales.

I’ve no idea
what kind of potion is in the bottle.

No idea what it
might do.

But what choice
do I have?

As soon as the
glass cracks, the liquid inside instantly turns gaseous.

It spreads in a
rapidly growing cloud, rising high up towards Lamia’s face. It
swiftly eddies throughout the room.

Iain coughs and
splutters, unable to move away from the swirling mist as it worms
its way towards him.

But the denser
part of the cloud still chaotically whirls around Lamia’s
head.

Unseen within
it, she screeches and howls.

Iain drops to
the floor with a painful thump, the spiralling coils weakening,
thinning, losing their substantiality and becoming mist-like
themselves.

In the confusing
haze of the vapours, the serpentine loops suddenly appear to be
shrinking, retreating, like the tendrils of a poisoned plant filmed
in superfast motion.

With a last
lamenting wail from Lamia, she dissolves, disappearing as she
rapidly merges and becomes as one with the billowing
cloud.

Then the cloud
turns in on itself, like a black hole sucking up a
universe.

It’s incredibly
quiet in the room.

Iain rewards me
with a weary yet thankful smile.

I grin back at
him.

‘You did it
Steph, you did it!’ he says happily.

But he’s
exhausted.

He drifts off
into a restful, child-like sleep.

Moving closer, I
lie down beside him.

I’m
exhausted too!

I need to sleep,
just a quick sleep before we head off bac–

*

‘Steph? You
okay?’

I slowly open my
eyes, still in a bit of a daze.

Even so, I
recognise Iain’s caring voice.

He’s leaning
over me, stroking my hair tenderly.

He’s smiling
down at me.

‘Iain?’

I reach up for
him uncertainly. Touch his cheek.