Coldhearted (9781311888433) (41 page)

She felt born again, reunited with Mason,
their souls intertwined, so strong in love and dedication, and no
man or spirit could ever destroy what they had. Theirs was an
eternal bond. She knew that to be a fact, just as she knew the sun
rose in the east, and set in the west. It was indisputable and
unchangeable.

When they finally pulled apart, she said in
agreement, “Love conquers all.”

She could see Mason’s lips move, but she
couldn’t hear him. He was being drowned out by the loud growl in
her ear, and then Tristan yelled, “WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT!”

And then all hell broke loose.

Chapter 27

First, the lights went out, and then the
music abruptly shut off, but the fog remained.

A chorus of whiny “aahs” echoed all around
the gym with a few curses. The students thought that the power had
gone out. Edie knew better, watching her breath escape into a misty
white trail.

“
Power outage,” Mason said,
oblivious as the rest, finding Edie’s hand in the dark.

“
No.” Her voice was barely a
whisper. “I’m sorry,” she told Mason, raising her voice just a
little, scared to death. “I’m sorry, Mason. I don’t know what to
do.”

Mason squeezed her hand, and Edie found his
eyes, as the dim emergency lights came on inside the gym. He was
staring into her eyes, confused. “Edie, what’re you sorry for? The
power’s just gone out.”

“
Then why is the fog machine
still working?” she pointed out.

“
I, uh, I don’t know. Wait.”
He squeezed her hand again. “It’s him, isn’t?”

She turned away and nodded, unable to look at
Mason, to look at what she’d done.

I’ve just signed his death
warrant
.

“
Is that all he’s going to
do?” Mason asked, sounding unimpressed. “Cut the power?”

Suddenly, a girl screamed, somewhere in the
dark. As Edie and Mason stood to find out what’d happened, the main
lights came back on, followed by the music, but it wasn’t the pop
song that’d been playing earlier. It was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue
in D Minor; a classical piece that’d been used in horror films for
years. If Bach were alive, Edie wondered what he’d say.

“
What the hell’s going on?”
a familiar voice asked.

Edie turned to see Quinn with Jules, Diana,
and Madelyn. All the other students were making their way toward
the exits. They were thinking that the party was over.

They were wrong. It’d just begun.

“
It’s Tristan,” Edie told
her friends. “He-he’s doing this because of me. It’s my
fault.”

Jules threw off her bed sheet and advanced
toward Edie. “Don’t say that. None of this is your fault.” She,
along with Diana, Madelyn, and Quinn, observed Edie and Mason,
holding hands. “Don’t let go of each other,” Jules told Edie and
Mason. To Edie, she said, “Don’t give in to him,” indicating
Tristan.

“
Yeah,” Diana said, throwing
her stethoscope aside, along with her bloody lab coat. “But if we
have to fight, we’ll do it together, yeah? He can’t take us all on,
can he?”

“
Yeah,” Madelyn agreed,
pushing the bonnet off her head. “We’ll band together.” She came
and stood in front of Edie. “He’ll have to go through me,” she
said, displaying her loyalty.

Now Quinn came and stood behind Diana and
Madelyn, placing an arm around each of their shoulders. “Me too,”
he said, joining the quickly-forming defensive league. “I ain’t
afraid of no ghost,” he quipped.

Edie giggled, despite the perilous situation
that they were all in.

Mason reached over and playfully pinched her
nose. She realized that she still had the clown nose on, took it
off, and placed it securely inside her pocket to return to Uncle
Landon. If she ever saw her uncle again; she wasn’t too sure about
that. Of course she wasn’t too sure about a lot of things. So far,
Tristan had been quite mild in his vengeance. She’d been waiting
for the ceiling to drop, literally.

“
You kids okay?”

They all turned and Edie saw Russell, walking
fast toward them. He came to an abrupt halt next to her and grabbed
her hand.

“
Edie, are you all right?”
he asked, concerned.

“
She’s fine,” Mason growled
at him, and then pulled Edie closer to his side, causing her hand
to tear away from Russell’s.

Russell appraised her other occupied hand
glued to Mason’s. “I see you’ve reconciled.” He didn’t sound too
happy.

“
Yeah, and I’d like to have
some time alone with my girl,” Mason continued in that aggressive
tone. When he turned toward Edie, his face softened, just a little.
“Let’s get out of here, Edie. Tristan’s just playing games. He
wants us to be scared. Let’s show him that we’re not and leave. I
haven’t been with you in so long...”

She was sure what Mason had in mind, and she
was definitely sure that Tristan would never allow that to happen,
ever again. Yet she allowed Mason to drag her toward the exits.

A large crowd of people were already there,
not moving, murmuring to each other.

“
Hey, what the hell’s going
on?” Quinn demanded, muscling his way through.

“
Door’s locked,” a guy
said.

“
We can’t get out,” a girl
added.

Suddenly, they were plunged into darkness
again—total darkness. The emergency lights were dead and Bach was
silenced. The fog machine was making funny noises like it was
overworked, and then sparks flew from it, zapping wildly. An
electrical show of blue zigzagged lines illuminated the pitch black
darkness, and then the machine exploded with a loud bang, sending
shrapnel across the gym.

Several students cursed around Edie and she
joined in, exclaiming her fear. She sensed it from the others, as
well. They were all very, very afraid. And Tristan had yet to
really come out and play. The lights went off again, then back on,
and then off, until they settled in to an eerie flickering motion,
flashing everyone in a fluorescent glow. Students were banging
their fists against the locked exit doors, trying to escape, but
failing.

Russell left the group, being pulled away by
the other teachers, trying to find out what was happening and
restore calm; they were failing. The students, because they
couldn’t get out, felt confined, despite the super-sized gym. They
were panicking, pushing people aside, and flipping over tables full
of food and drink. Students slipped and fell on the waxed floor,
while other students trampled over them, not caring, just trying to
flee.

There was one lone girl, hiding in a corner.
She looked young, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Edie assumed that this
young girl had been the first one to scream, but she didn’t know
why until she approached. The girl was sitting paralyzed, as a
skeleton’s hand held her ankle in its grasp. Edie tore it away and
told the girl to find her friends. When she didn’t move, Quinn
helped her up, soothed her with whispered words, found her friends,
and then came back toward the group.

“
Thanks,” Edie told him.
“She was terrified.”

“
Still is, unfortunately.
They all are,” he said, and then looked around. “We have to find a
way out.”

“
Why don’t we split up?”
Mason suggested. “And we’ll call each other if we find a way
out.”

“
No, no way,” Jules
disagreed. “We can’t split up. Bad things happen when the group
splits up.”

“
This isn’t a movie,” Mason
said, ticked off.

“
No,” Edie agreed, and then
gave him a kiss on his cheek. “This is real life, Mason, and it is
way scarier.”

Mason sighed, and then nodded. “All right,
we’ll stay together.”

And they did, moving along as one, as they
checked on the injured, while trying to find a way out of the gym.
It was like the doors had been magically sealed. Only a blowtorch
would set them free and Edie doubted anyone had that on them. Mason
and Quinn, in all their manly strength, tried to beat and kick the
doors down, but they gave up when they wouldn’t budge, and then
limped along with hurt limbs, as the group moved around the
gym.

Edie’s friends were looking for hope. She was
looking for Tristan.

He had yet to appear. But he
made his unseen presence known when the hanging skeletons started
walking among the students; the zombies made chomping movements
with their rotten yellow teeth; spiders, roaches, worms, and other
bugs fell from the ceiling, crawling down the walls, terrorizing
girls’ hairdos; the animatronic witch came alive, stirring her
cauldron of brew, as it bubbled and smoked, reciting lines
from
Macbeth
:
“double, double, toil and trouble...”

If the students were panicking before, they
were hysterical now. So were the teachers. They were supposed to be
calm and rational, but they were shrieking and screaming, as they
pushed their pupils aside and banged their fists against the doors.
Edie looked for Russell, but didn’t see him with the teachers, or
with the students. She feared something had happened to him, until
he appeared out of nowhere, standing in front of her.

He lunged and grabbed her arms. “Edie!” he
pleaded not in his voice, but one very familiar to her.

“
Adrian?!” She gripped his
elbows. “What are you doing here? How’d you get here?”

“
I felt you in pain and
sought out my descendent. I managed the distance from Lockhart
Manor, but I don’t know how long I can possess him. Edie, please,
you have to stop Tristan. You know what you have to do!”

“
I can’t leave! We can’t
leave! He’s preventing us!”

Russell/Adrian shook his head. “No, no! While
there’s still time, hold onto me, and I’ll guide you out, but just
you! I can’t rescue the others, I’m sorry.”

Edie heard a growl, then Mason’s hand shot
out, and grabbed Russell’s arm, intending to cause pain. “Let go of
her!” he demanded, then turned toward Edie, and in a softer tone,
said, “Edie, what’s going on? Who’s Adrian?”

“
My brother,” a deep voice
replied in scorn.

Russell/Adrian’s eyes went wide, and then he
swayed, as if he’d become weak. Edie held onto Adrian, as he
pleaded for her to stop Tristan before it was too late, and then he
was gone. Russell had control over his body and voice again. But,
as before, the strain of being possessed by Adrian was too much,
and Russell almost collapsed on the floor. He was saved, as Edie
kept him in a tight hug, making sure he could stand on his own two
feet, before she let him go.

Her efforts were in vain, as a hand flew out
and swatted Russell away from her, causing him to crash hard on the
floor. She feared that he was dead, but as Diana and the others
checked over him, he was found to be alive. He was slightly
shaking, and his eyes were wide and terrified, staring at something
(or someone) over her shoulder. She knew who was behind her, but
she didn’t want to believe it. So she kept her back to him.

“
Tristan,” she said in a
calm tone, despite what his manifestation meant.

“
My love,” he greeted from
behind, and then placed a solid, cold hand over hers. He
intertwined their fingers and forced her to turn around. She saw
with absolute horror what Arianna had feared: Tristan, fully
corporeal. “How do I look?” he asked with a conceited
smile.

He was wearing jeans and Russell’s “Keep Calm
and Carry On” red T-shirt. His face was how she’d remembered: tan
skin and lapis lazuli eyes. His dark, brown hair was wild and
unkempt but in a sexy way.

All in all, he looked gorgeous.

“
Hideous,” she
lied.

Tristan kept smiling, even as he pulled her
closer against his solid chest, and wrapped his arms around her.
“Care to dance?”

From somewhere, Mason spat out the foulest
curse. Edie couldn’t see him, her vision overshadowed by Tristan,
but she felt his confrontational presence, fists undoubtedly
clenched. And behind her, she felt her friends’ presences, their
fears at finally seeing the ghost, who’d been tormenting her life.
The rest of the students were unaware of the new kid at the party.
They were still trying to flee skeletons, zombies, and spiders.
Adding to their miseries, a werewolf howled in the distance, and
the mummy rose from its coffin.

Tristan didn’t turn, didn’t even acknowledge
Mason’s presence. He kept staring at Edie with those dark, blue
eyes, so cold. “I’ve waited for this moment for so long, Edie.” He
leaned forward and brushed his cold lips against her ear, saying,
“You should have obeyed me. His death is on your hands, my
sweet.”

Tristan released her, but she had no control
over her body. She was paralyzed all over, except for her mouth,
which she used to her full advantage.

“
No, please, don’t!” she
pleaded. “I’m sorry. Punish me, not him. I’ll do whatever you want.
I promise. Just don’t hurt him!”

Tristan ignored her and turned to confront
Mason, who wasn’t afraid, but should’ve been.

Tristan looked over his shoulder at Edie, and
said, “Lessons have to be learned the hard way, my love. And your
promise doesn’t mean a damn thing to me! Yes, you will be punished
and you will do whatever I want!”

At this threat, Mason growled, clenched a
fist even tighter, then reared it back, and with all the force that
he could muster, slammed it against the side of Tristan’s face.
Struck, Tristan’s head whipped to the side. He was still for the
longest time, until he finally lifted up his hand, and massaged his
jaw, before letting his hand drop to his side, as if he had no
intention of retaliating.