Authors: Cameron Jace
“No more thinking about going back home?” Axel wondered.
“Don’t worry,” Loki said. “I’ll stay here for a while.”
“You see it’s not so bad here,” Axel looked around. “I understand the town’s name is creepy—who wants to live in Sorrow? And I understand that the town is a part of a place called Hell. But what the
hell
? Who cares about names and labels? If you stay here with us, we could make this Heaven. Our Heaven. We’ll make the rules, and keep saving lives. You don’t need to be immortal or a half-angel to be cool, right.”
“Right,” Loki nodded, pleased with Axel’s spirit.
Loki heard Carmen’s radio buzzing faintly in the distance. The Pumpkin Warriors were back. They were singing:
You don’t have to be an angel to be my friend.
You don’t need to be immortal to rock my world.
Fable giggled.
“I think we should go now,” Axel said. “We have a lot of cleaning to do before our foster mom arrives.”
“You’re right,” Fable said. “The house is a mess. We should also leave Loki with the princess,” Fable winked at Axel.
“Yeah,” Axel said. “Just don’t kiss on the first night—ah; I forgot you don’t believe in a true love’s kiss.”
“Don’t blame me if she eats you alive,” Lucy stood up, pulling out her car keys. “And you Crumblewoods, today is your lucky day because I’m going to give you a ride home. Only you have to sit in the backseat. I only allow boyfriends in the passenger seat.”
They all waved goodbye to Loki who watched them walk away. Fable was reminding Axel that she’d clean the house but not the places where he ate, and Axel started whining about stopping at the Belly and the Beast to get a bite.
“Lucy,” Loki summoned her, and she turned around. “Aren’t you mad that I didn’t kill the vampire princess?”
“Me?” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t really care. But I think my dad will be mad. You’ll have to deal with him later. By the way, you should know something, too.”
“What is it?”
“I know this will upset all of you but I am entitled to my own opinion,” Lucy said. “From what you’ve just told us, I totally sympathize with the Queen of Sorrow.”
“I can understand why,” Loki said. “But you just said that a minute ago.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Lucy gazed at the castle. “I don’t believe Snow White’s story,” she said and walked away.
After they left, Loki walked back into the castle and entered Snow White’s room. He knelt down beside her and didn’t hesitate to pull the stake.
It took her a moment to adjust to her surroundings before she snarled with her black eyes at him. Loki kept still and didn’t move. He was counting on her remembering him and appreciating what they’d been through together.
Although her monstrous nature didn’t change, she recognized him. Her love for him inside surpassed any curse caused by Carmilla’s apple. She lay back in the coffin and placed her hands on her chest.
“You should go,” she said. “I won’t be able to stop myself from hurting you forever.”
“If I had a dollar for every time you asked me to leave you, I’d have around three dollars in my pocket,” Loki said.
Sadly, she didn’t laugh. Snow White felt weary and tired. Loki knew she wasn’t going to hurt him, but what if anyone else entered the castle? It was best that he stayed with her until the morning. Then he’d start a new journey to find a cure for her curse.
“Scooch over,” Loki said playfully.
Snow White’s face knotted.
“I said scooch over,” Loki said, squeezing himself next to her in the coffin. “There’s room for both of us.”
“You really want to sleep with me in a coffin?” she said.
“Wow,” he waved his hand. “Sleep with you, no. That’s too soon to talk about in our relationship. I’ve only known you for a couple of hours…and in a dream. But sleep in a coffin
next
to you, yes. It’s not like I have ever slept in a bed before.”
Snow White laughed. Her blue eyes struggled shining from behind the blackness. Loki didn’t mind. Her laughter was enough.
“You’ve never slept in a bed?” she wondered as he embraced her from behind, his arms caressing her, his knees bending to fit in the coffin.
“It’s on my bucket list,” Loki said.
“What’s a bucket list?” she wrapped her hands around his.
“Oh, I forgot you’re immortal. You don’t need a bucket list. It’s a list mortals like
me
—now that I’m officially a Minikin—have of the things they want to do before they die.”
“What else do you have on your bucket list?”
“Saving a princess,” Loki teased her.
“And sleeping in a coffin with her?” she joked.
“If she’ll let me grow old with her, then it doesn’t matter where I sleep next to her—of course, I know you’ll never grow old.”
“Even if she’s a monster,” Snow White sounded as if in pain. She was resisting hurting him and submitting to the darkness inside her. It made Loki remember when Carmilla looked at him in the dream, provoking the same unexplainable darkness inside him. “They say that all monsters have to die, you know,” she continued.
“Except the beautiful ones,” Loki held her tighter and closed his eyes. He knew that he’d sleep well tonight. As eerie as it seemed sleeping in the coffin, he didn’t care. He was next to her, and her cold body gave him the warmest feeling he’d ever experienced.
As he slept he saw the two black sheep he’d been dreaming about. This time it was clear to him. One was Snow White and the other was him. They were the two outcasts who were going to make it through this world as long as they were together.
***
Hours later, Loki woke up to a screaming in the castle. He let out a sigh, wondering when he’d be able to wake up peacefully like ordinary people do. He wiped his eyes and noticed Snow White wasn’t in the coffin anymore.
The screaming got louder downstairs.
“She’s mad,” Loki heard someone tell him. It was Nine, the cat. “Really mad,” Nine bit his nails, his tail standing upright.
“What are you doing here?” Loki snapped.
“We like to follow you, in case you need our help,” the squirrel said, standing behind the cat. It was looking with wide eyes toward the door leading downstairs where the screams came from. “She’s really mad, and she’s going to kill everyone downstairs.”
“Who is mad?”
“Snow White,” Nine said, trying to get the squirrel off his back.
“Move away,” Loki was worried he’d step on them and ran to the door.
He stopped midway when the Schloss started shaking heavily all of a sudden. It wasn’t the Schloss’s anger this time, but the whale’s. It was shaking the whole island. Loki looked back at Nine and Mr. Squirrel for an explanation. They’d always seemed to know more than him.
“Part of the curse of eating a piece of the apple is that the whale will keep shaking the island madly until she feeds her darkness,” Nine said.
“It’s Carmilla’s way of making sure Snow White stays cursed,” Mr. Squirrel explained.
Loki didn’t care much about the island or the curse. He was only worried about Snow White, knowing the kind of pain she was suffering.
“Loki,” Nine and squirrel said in one breath as Loki rushed down the stairs. “Only you can save her. Do you understand? Only you can save her!” Mr. Squirrel stood up on Nine’s shoulder in case Loki couldn’t hear him.
Loki dashed downstairs, skipping steps as everything in the Schloss shook violently. Lamps flickered here and there as he caught a glimpse of the forest outside falling apart slowly through the vibrating windows.
As Loki came down the stairs he noticed someone fall from the second floor and land on the couch. It was a young teenager. He was bleeding, but wasn’t dead.
“What’s going on?” Loki quickly reached the teenager and shook him by the sleeves.
“It’s her, the vampire princess. She’s got my girlfriend,” the boy shrieked. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. We were only curious and wanted to visit the Schloss after we learned the details on how to reach it from a forum. Please, I don’t want to die.”
“A forum?” Loki squinted. “So you’re a trespasser like all the other stupid teens?”
“I didn’t believe the vampire princess existed. I’m a fool,” the boy said. “My girlfriend came up with the idea after she met with Genius Goblin in the forum.”
“You’re stupid, you know that?” Loki shook the boy harder, listening to his girlfriend’s screams upstairs. He let go of the boy, wondering how he was going to stop Snow White from hurting her. “I swear I’m going to kick the Genius Goblin’s ass one day.”
The boy’s girlfriend fell from the second floor onto the couch as well.
“She’s mad,” the girl screamed hysterically. “We have to get out of here,” she punched her boyfriend in her panic.
“Shhh,” Loki shushed them both. “Don’t you two dare move. If she sees you again she’ll kill you. Let me take care of this. Did she bite you?”
“No,” the girl sobbed. “It’s like… it’s like she wanted to but held back for some reason. But I’m sure she’ll kill me if she sees me again,” the girl started screaming again, shaking with her boyfriend on the rumbling couch.
“Get a hold of your girlfriend,” Loki ordered the boy and turned around to go look for Snow White.
Loki found her gliding over the famous stairs again, looking as monstrous as when he’d first met her. Except that she was struggling in pain this time; she was struggling between giving in to Carmilla’s curse and feeding on everyone around her or fighting back. She must have sensed the nosy teenagers sneak into the Schloss when he was asleep, and couldn’t control her hunger. Then after catching them, she did her best not to bite them. Loki had to find a way to deal with her anger. He couldn’t think of a greater pain than that which she was suffering.
The notable difference about her this time was that she was holding her apple-shaped necklace, which she usually wore. It was hanging at the end of a thin string dangling from her hand, wrapped smoothly around her fingers. The necklace looked like it had some kind of liquid inside it.
“Why don’t you ever leave me be, Loki,” she said with black eyes.
“I can’t,” Loki said. “It’s not like I have control of it. Besides, you asked me to save you the first time we met, remember?” he climbed a step higher, gripping the banister tightly so he wouldn’t lose balance. It was true that everything was shaking around him, but he hoped he’d be able to sneak his way up to her without her noticing.
“I’m cursed and I need to feed. If I don’t feed now, the whale is going to sink Sorrow into the water and all will be lost,” she said.
“I know,” Loki nodded, taking another step. “You told me that your soul is bound to the island in some way.”
“But I don’t want to feed. I want to resist it,” she said. “If I resist, the island will sink and everyone on it will die. If I feed, I will fully become one of them. I’ll be letting the darkness inside surface, and I also don’t want to do that.”
“I understand. If you just let me up there, we can work this out together,” Loki said.
“No, we can’t,” she growled. “You missed a lot of things you were supposed to understand in the dream. This is why I can’t. I have to die so everyone else lives.”
“I did my best in the dream. I don’t think I missed anything. And you don’t have to die,” Loki shook his head. “You can’t die, unless in a dream, and we’re not in a dream right now.”
“You’re wrong,” Snow White said, swinging the apple necklace like a pendulum in the air. “There is a potion inside this necklace, and if I take it willingly, I can kill myself. It was given to me centuries ago in case I became stuck in a situation like this.”
“Wait,” Loki stretched out his hand and stepped up. He had to stop though when she drew the potion closer to her mouth. “You survived two centuries against all of this and want to kill yourself now?”
“Is he talking to the vampire?” Loki heard the boy on the couch asking his girlfriend. “He’s freakin’ talking to the vampire.”
“I guess it’s my destiny, Loki, to eventually succumb to the poisonous apple. I’m Snow White after all.”
“Did she say she’s Snow White?” the girl said to her boyfriend on the couch. “Has she gone cuckoo in the head?”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Loki said, the stairs shaking wilder. He had no idea what to do to save her. All he knew was that he wanted to be near her. It wasn’t rational, but he thought he could help her if he was closer to her.
“I’ve waited for you so long, Loki,” Snow White said. “I guess we’re not meant to be. Who was I fooling? Our love is forbidden. Dhampir or not, I’m still a vampire, and you’re a vampire hunter.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Loki said. “I don’t want to be a vampire hunter anymore. I want to be with you.”
“I’m sorry but I will have to sleep forever now,” she said. “It’s the only way you, the town and its people, will live, and ease my pain.”
Snow White lifted the potion up, ready to drink it.
With a sudden surge of power, Loki jumped the steps, trying to pull the potion away. Instinctually, Snow White scratched her fingernails across the left side of Loki’s neck. It was a deep scratch, and he bled instantly. He still didn’t care. He grabbed Snow White by her shoulders as she screamed and flashed her fangs at him. She was cold as ice. Loki didn’t know if he could hold her any longer. She was like an angry child who needed a big dose of tough love to calm her down.
Snow White snapped and sent Loki flying through the air like she had with Big Bad. Loki soared high into the air, lucky to grab the diamond chandelier before he dropped two floors and crashed onto the furniture below.
“Loki in the sky with diamonds,” he mumbled to himself as he swung like a monkey from a tree.
“Leave me alone, Loki,” Snow White used her powers and swung the chandelier harder. Loki lost his grip and fell onto the couch with the boy and his girlfriend.
“She’s mad,” the girl held Loki by his shirt, shaking him out of panic. “She will kill us all.”
“Seriously,” Loki grinned at her boyfriend. “When are you going to get a grip on your girlfriend?”
Loki stepped off the couch, walking back wanting another go at Snow White. He flashed his Alicorn at her, saying, ‘Ora Pedora.’