Cinderella Dressed in Ashes ( Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries ) (19 page)

He never missed someone’s head, not once. His chops were swift and he never looked back at the heads that rolled on the ground. Some of the other huntsmen picked up a head and started kicking it with their feet while the laughing wind clapped among them. Shew was too shattered to notice that she was witnessing one of the earliest soccer games in history.

Loki’s face wasn’t visible underneath the hood, and Shew still wished it wasn’t him. What if she pulled the hood down and discovered that it wasn’t him, wouldn’t that be the best thing that ever happened to her?

You know it’s him, Shew. Don't try to change it. You can feel it in your heart. Even if you can’t remember everything, you never forgot him. He tried to kill you in the Queen's name when you were sixteen. Only you don't remember how he fell in love with you after that.

"Listen," Shew said. "Stay here, Cerené. I’m going down to Furry Tell."

"No! You stay here."

"I have to go. Maybe he remembers me," Shew said.

"Of course, he remembers you. He is in the Queen's service. Why wouldn't he remember the princess?"

"I don't mean it like that. I mean remember—" Shew held her tongue. She was going to mention that Loki should remember she was the one he loved. Maybe if she managed to kiss him, she'd save him like he’d saved her in the Schloss.

"There is nothing we can do, Shew," Cerené pressed her hand. "I don't think I like him anymore after what I just saw. I mean hearing about someone killing and being powerful is one thing and seeing him do that is something else. How could he kill so many people? There are women with their children down there. He is just like the Queen, and my stepfamily."

“Do you have any idea why they’re raiding this village?" Shew asked.

"I can't hear them from here,” Cerené said. “I could try the earth again.”

“Not necessary,” Shew said, about to run down to Furry Tell.

“I wonder why the huntsmen are gathering so many children," Cerené pointed.

Shew stopped. Cerené was right. Loki was killing the elders in Furry Tell as the huntsmen gathered the younger ones in the middle of the village. The children knelt down with their hands behind their backs while the huntsmen checked them out one by one. They pulled the children violently by the hair, sniffing them and looking into their eyes.

"What’s going on?" Shew said, hesitating again. Should she just run down and face Loki, or?

Stop hesitating!

"I wish I knew," Cerené replied. "Look, he is letting one of the children go."

"Where?"

"That blonde girl!"

It was true. Shew wondered why the huntsmen freed one of the children. She noticed they let another one go, then another one. The huntsmen yelled something, the same phrase over and over.

“Can you hear what they are saying?” Shew asked Cerené.

“Wait,” Cerené knelt down and put her hand on the ground again, trying to listen to figure out what the huntsmen were yelling. Shew wondered if that was normal or one of the powers Cerené possessed. “I think they’re saying something like ‘winter in their eyes’,” Cerené said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Shew said. “Why would they say that?”

"I’m sure this is how the words rhyme, but maybe it’s something that sounds like ‘winter in their eyes.’ I can’t be sure,” Cerené stood up again, unable to listen to the massacre anymore.

Furry Tell was swimming in blood, and Loki finally got off his unicorn, walking among the children. They lowered their heads while shivering and pleading for forgiveness.

Loki said nothing. He pulled a girl’s hair and cut a slice of it with his sword, and used it to wipe his sword clean as kicked a victim’s head and sent it rolling into a well.

“I will stick to liking the prince,” Cerené mumbled.

Shew said nothing. She was tongue-tied. She’d just realized that if she failed in bringing Loki back to his senses, they were destined to become enemies in this dream. As long as Carmilla owned his Fleece, he was one of those she was prophesized to kill.

Unless she found a way to bring him back.

Be honest with yourself, Shew. If you could save him, could you forgive him for the things he’s done in the past, the people he killed, the children he is about to kill right now?

Shew shrugged, dazed by the thoughts in her head. Why wouldn’t she forgive him for the horrors he’d done in the past when he’d forgiven her for all the blood she’d shed in Sorrow. She had killed hundreds of teenagers in the Waking World, and yet she was prophesized to be the Chosen One. Was it possible that becoming the Chosen One wasn’t a quest, but a redemption for her past sins?

“Cerené,” Shew turned to face her. “Are you sure this veiled Huntsman is Loki?” it was illogical to ask, but love was blind, and wishful thinking was its middle name.

Shew wished she’d gone def before she could hear Cerené’s inevitable answer, “Of course, it’s him, Shew,” Cerené said confidently. “It’s him, the Huntsman. The ever famous Loki Van Helsing.”

22

The Name of the Huntsman

“But Van Helsing is just a character in a book,” Fable had never looked so shocked before.

“He is a character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula to be precise,” Axel said. “And yes, the characters in the books have just all jumped out in our faces in Sorrow. It’s so crazy I’m worried I’d discover I am Humpty Dumpty eventually.”

“Stop taking this lightly. This
is
crazy. I need you to explain how you discovered this in the first place,” Fable said. “Then I will decide whether I still want to be part of this crazy world or not.”

“For a start, you should ask yourself why most articles written in the Dreamhunters Guide were signed by a V.H.,” Axel said.

“V.H.,” Fable considered, “Van Helsing.”

“Loki told me that Charmwill Glimmer gave him the Dreamhunters Guide because it was written by his father,” Axel said. “That’s why Loki cherished this book.”

“Van Helsing is Loki’s father,” Fable circled the purple light, thinking it over. “So Van Helsing was an angel, a Dreamhunter?”

Axel nodded, folding his arms.

“Could you please remind me who Van Helsing was in the first place, as a character I mean?” Fable said.

“Abraham Van Helsing, was a titular character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Axel explained. “In the book, Dracula is the villain vampire that no one was able to kill. Van Helsing helped a group of people kill Dracula after a great hunt. Van Helsing was an expert with vampires, and it was never really clear why.”

“Did the book say he was a Dreamhunter?” Fable said.

“Of course, not,” Axel said. “Don’t you get it, Fable?”

“What am I supposed to get?”

“That ‘Dracula’ must have been forged, just like the Brothers Grimm tales,” Axel said, “I bet most of the books in the world were forged, hiding some kind of a secret history, disguised in the pages of novels, fairy tales, and fables.”

“That can’t be,” Fable shook her head.

Axel thought it was amusing how Fable refused to believe it when she still considered Sherlock Holmes was real and Shakespeare was a wizard. He didn’t make an issue out of it, though. He was focused on his own discoveries. “Remember when I told you about Carmilla Karnstein’s name before she trapped us in the kitchen, and how it was also mentioned in historical novels?”

“Yes,” Fable said. “You claimed there was this old novel called ‘In a Glass Darkly’, written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. One of the book’s novellas was called ‘Carmilla.’”

“Exactly,” Axel said. “In fact, the antagonist of the book is a ruthless vampire girl; her name was Carmilla, and she came from the House of Karnstein, a well known family in Austria.”

“Our Carmilla, the Queen of Sorrow?” Fable tiptoed.

“I surely believe so,” Axel said. “Some historians say that Carmilla, the novella, is the very first documented vampire novel ever, even before the famous Dracula—well, there were a couple older books about vampire, but Carmilla was the first to stir questions by historians about the nature of vampires,” he stopped to make sure Fable followed. “Flipping through the book on my phone, I discovered that Carmilla was portrayed as feeding on a young girl named Laura.”

“Why is that of importance?”

“Because Laura herself never turned into a vampire and never died. Carmilla was feeding on her to stay alive,” Axel said. “Doesn’t that sound like our Carmilla who bathed in the blood of young girls to stay alive? The Queen of Sorrow is Carmilla Karnstein, the first documented vampire woman ever.”

“But the stories and timelines aren’t exactly consistent,” Fable rubbed her ear, thinking and analyzing.

“We’re not going to discuss this again, are we?” Axel dared her eyes.

“I know, I know,” she waved her hands in the air. “All these books have been forged. They are bits and pieces of the reality we were led to believe was different. It’s as if some books were forged and some were hidden clues disguised in novels.”

“Written in codes and innuendos for geniuses like me to figure it out,” Axel said.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Humpty Dumpty” Fable teased him.

“Is that so?” Axel craned his neck and squinted one eyes. “How about this discovery? Remember when Loki told us Shew called her mother ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’?”

“I remember that one,” she said. “I thought it was very lame. I mean this really sounds like antagonist’s name in a Harry Potter book.”

“What if I told that it was the other way around? What if I told you that She Who Must Be Obeyed, aka Carmilla Karnstein, aka Mircalla, and aka the Queen of Sorrow has lived long before any of those books you mentioned were ever written?” Axel said.

“Can you prove that?” Fable hated when her brother was a smartass, but right.

“Look,” Axel showed her his most magnificent reference ever known to him: the internet, of course.

“Are you going to show me another book with the name She Who Must Be obeyed in it?” Fable pursed her lips.

Axel nodded confidently, “In 1886, a prestigious writer named Henry Rider Haggard, wrote a book that has never been out of print till this very day. The book is called ‘She.’ It’s about two travelers exploring the unknown African territories at the time. In their journey, they encounter a primitive race of
black
natives, enslaved by a mysterious
white
Queen, Ayesha, who reigns as the all-powerful ‘She’ who killed so many of them that the land was covered in
red
blood.”

“So what? All those color references could be a coincidence,” Fable inquired. “And her name is Ayesha. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“No, her name isn’t just Ayesha,” Axel said. “She’s known to be ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’” Axel slammed his chubby hand on the phone as if it were a precious treasure map.

“Are you saying this
is
Carmilla again?” Fable wondered. “And that this writer, like most of the others, wrote her history, disguised in a novel, to hint at the Queen of Sorrow’s existence?”

“Definitely,” Axel said. “There is even a part in the book where the author hints that she was
feeding
on her slaves, probably trying to tell us she was a vampire. This stuff happened 1886, in between the hundred years of Sleeping Death to all fairy tale character. We know that Carmilla has power over a small part of the Dreamworld called ‘Jawigi’, and that she must have had her way out of it while everyone was asleep, living far away in Africa until the other fairy tale characters woke up.”

“I really need to sit down,” Fable said, crossing her legs like and Indians flute player on the floor. “My head is going to explode.”

 “If the Queen of Sorrow is all of those people,” Axel had to prove he was right. “Why wouldn’t Van Helsing be Loki’s father?”

“Carmilla’s story is different,” Fable wasn’t convinced. “It’s a bit
too
confusing. I was barely keeping up with fairy tale people being real, now the vampire lore, too?”

“It’s not that strange if you ask me,” Axel said. “If you accepted Shew being a vampire, then it shouldn’t surprise you that the Huntsman is connected to Dracula. The Huntsman was sent by the Queen to kill a
vampire
after all. Be it a Huntsman or Abraham Van Helsing it’s not
that
different.”

“OK, Axel,” Fabled inhaled. “Just let me digest this a little bit slower. I understand the V.H. thing, but this could still be a mere coincidence. Why would Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, do that?”

“Because, like the Brothers Grimm, he was forging the real history of vampires and fairy tales—which of course, no one would have ever thought they were connected,” Axel said. “I keep telling you that and you never listen.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell that you don’t know why he forged it, the same way we still don’t know why the Brothers Grimm forged it.”

“That part is true,” Axel raised a finger in the air. “But what if I told you that Bram Stoker confessed forging the Dracula book to his liking, that it was a true story, and that he had to rename characters to protect them?”

“Now you’re crossing the line. No author would even admit that,” Fable said.

Axel said nothing, but a big smiled filled face, making way though his cheeks.

“You can’t prove that?” Fable challenged him.

“I can’t?” Axel accepted the challenge, surfing the internet on Loki’s phone. “Now look at this,” he urged Fable to come see.

“Bram Stoker’s Icelandic Version Preface for the 1901 version,” Fable read from the internet. “So?”

“So read it,” Axel demanded. “It’s a limited edition, printed by the author himself.”

“
The reader of this story will very soon understand how the events outlined in these pages have been gradually drawn together to make a logical whole,
” Fable began reading. “
Apart from excising minor details which I considered unnecessary, I have let the people involved relate their experiences in their own way; but, for obvious reasons, I have changed the names of the people and places concerned. In all other respects I leave the manuscript unaltered, in deference to the wishes of those who have considered it their duty to present it before the eyes of the public,”
Fable looked back at Axel, shrugging.