Cinderella Dressed in Ashes ( Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries ) Read online

  “What kind of clue did the Creator leave?” the lisping girl rubbed her chin.

  The woman under the veil laughed, “I can’t tell you, because like every one else, I want the mirror. Let’s just say it’s hidden somewhere in the Dreamworld,” she whispered.

  “That means that the Boy Who was a Shadow can get it,” a boy said. “He is a Dreamhunter.”

  The woman’s forehead wrinkled slightly. “How do you know that he’s a Dreamhunter? Did Charmwill tell you that?”

  “We also know that he was once a dark boy, a Huntsman, working for the Queen of Sorrow,” another girl said. “She thinks she is smart, but she will lose in the end.”

  The woman stood up with anger in her eyes, “How do all of you know this? Charmwill could not have told you that!” she demanded.

  “Of course, he didn’t. The last time he was here, he only told us he was going to see the boy,” the lisping girl said.

  “Then how did you know?” The children heard the sound of grinding teeth coming from behind the veil.

  “We learned some of the stories through this,” one girl stretched out her hand, revealing a piece of purple candy.

  “What is this?” the woman tried to snatch it but the girl pulled away.

  “It’s the magic candy he gave us before he left,” the girl in the back explained. “He said the candy would make us have happy dreams each night while we slept, but we discovered the candy revealed stories to us from all around the world. One of those was the Boy Who was a Shadow’s story and how Carmilla had his Fleece.”

  “You know about Carmilla, and the Fleece, too?” the woman in the veil sounded furious.

  “Wait,” the lisping girl leaned back, pulling her friends with her. “How could you not know about the candy if Charmwill sent you?”

  “Look!” the girl in the back pointed at the woman, “her eyes!”

  The children squinted in the dark, still keeping their distance.

  “Oh. My. God,” a boy said. “She has the golden tinge shining in her eyes. She has a splinter from the mirror!”

  “She fooled us,” the other boy said. “She isn’t a friend of Charmwill. She’s here to find out about the clue to the mirror. She thinks Charmwill may have told us about it.”

  “Damn you all, little horrible children” the woman’s voice gushed. She talked in a darker tone now. A breeze of wind pulled the veil off the woman’s face as if it had hands and was determined to expose her.

  “Run!” the lisping girl screamed.

  The Children of Hamlin ran away from the woman in the veil, the way their ancestors wished their children had run away from the Pied Piper centuries ago. Although they hadn’t met the woman in the veil before, they suddenly felt they knew her. Her face was engraved in their deepest nightmares. They felt in their hearts that they had inherited her evil image from their parent’s nightmares, and their grandparent’s nightmares, but they didn’t know how this was possible. They were running away from a great evil who pretended to be friends with Charmwill Glimmer.

  Alone in the dark, the Queen of Sorrow pulled off her veil like a devil pulling off his mask. She wiped her dress off as if she’d become dirty sitting around the Children of Hamlin, and cursed them under her breath.

  Her pumpkin coach arrived, and a short hunched man with a silver tooth hurried to open the door for her.

  “My Magnificent Majesty,” the hunched man pulled off his hat. He wore white gloves and used a crooked cane to hold himself up against the weight of his hunched back, which resembled a sack full of dead children. Igor the Magnificent was the Queen’s driver.

  “The best thing about you, Igor, is that your back is arched. It’s like you’re cursed to show your respects forever,” the Queen of Sorrow said mockingly. “I wish every one else working for me was like that.”

  “Don’t worry, Magnificent Majesty,” Igor said. “They will all bow for you eventually,” he opened the door, and the Queen stepped up into her coach.

  Inside the coach, sat her favorite mirror.

  “How did it go, my Queen?” Bloody Mary asked. “Did you find out about the clue to the Anderson Mirror?”

  “No, Mary,” the Queen took off her gloves, finger by finger. “But I learned a couple of other things that worry me.”

  “And what would that be, Majesty?”

  “Charmwill, although dead, communicates with the Children of Hamlin through some kind of candy that makes them dream of things he never revealed to them in his previous stories,” Carmilla said.

  “I know this worries you, my Queen,” Bloody Mary said. “But you chopped off his head and buried him in the Sands of Time. We’ve got more important work to do now. Don’t you agree?”

  “I sure hope so, Mary,” Carmilla said. “The other thing is that Charmwill never told them who he really is. I wonder why.”

  “That’s interesting,” Bloody Mary said. “Charmwill was full of tricks.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find why he chose not to tell them his True Name soon,” Carmilla said. “But let’s get back to the important stuff; I need to find the clue to the Anderson Mirror. I have to get my hands on its power.”

  “Why don’t we start with the Huntsman? You have his Fleece now,” Bloody Mary said, laughing satisfyingly as the Queen turned her head to look at her. “Maybe he could lead us to it.”

  “I already did. I sent him on a mission,” Carmilla smiled proudly, wrapping Loki’s red Fleece around her fingers. “And could you please look the other way, Mary? You’re disgusting.”

  1

  The Phoenix

  The door of the Schloss sprang open, followed by a gust of a sinister wind spiraling in the hallways.

  Snow White, sleeping in her coffin, opened her weary eyes. Her heart tightened in a strange way as if some invisible force wrapped a velvet rope around it and started squeezing. Something dreadful was coming her way.

  The first recognizable voice was Fable screaming outside the castle.

  “Don’t—” Fable shouted.

  The sinister and howling wind ate the rest of Fable’s words like a cookie monster, protecting whatever evil was approaching Snow White.

  “Wake up, Shew,” the wind laughed. Snow White wondered if she had just imagined the wind talk to her. “It’s time to…” the wind laughed again.

  “Stop!” Axel’s voice splintered like shattered glass across the wind’s wings.

  Axel and Fable. I remember them. They’re Loki’s friends.

  Snow White had been waiting for Loki all day. He’d went to Candy House to meet up with the Crumblewood’s foster mother. He was supposed to return to the Schloss before sunset. It was midnight.

  Snow White heard someone enter the castle downstairs. Whoever it was, he or she were breathing heavily, smelling of uncanny evil—a scent Snow White had worn on her soul for years before Loki’s kiss.

  I need to gather my strength and get out of the coffin.

  Snow White felt weary, unable to step out of it. She needed to feed but had stopped herself all through the day, waiting for Loki. Although Loki’s kiss had unchained her from the castle’s curse, she still had to feed. Being a Dhampir didn’t mean she wasn’t partially a vampire. She was the granddaughter of Night Sorrow himself and the Chosen One whether she liked it or not. Saints and monks couldn’t take care of the evil that lurked in this world anymore, and spitting in the face of evil wasn’t a good girl’s quest. She had to be one of them, partially evil, and strong enough to face their darkness.

  Snow White still had a lot to learn about who she was. Quenching her thirst without hurting people was one of her priorities.

  As the intruder neared, she felt even weaker. If only someone had taught her how to use her Dhampir powers. She had been imprisoned in the Schloss for a hundred years.

  “Prophecies suck,” she mumbled, grabbing the coffin’s edge. She gathered her strength and climbed out of it, limping her way through as if there was mud on the floor, she made it toward the foggy wind
ow. The window was closer than the door, and she was hoping she could see who was causing Fable and Axel to shout with such distress.

  Before she could wipe the window with her hand, her foggy reflection sneered back at her. She saw herself in her white dress, the red ribbon in her hair, and her fangs drawn out.

  It was a defensive reaction to the threat climbing up the stairs, she thought. How was she ever going to learn how to control herself? She felt the thirst for blood, but not enough anger to strike. If someone approached her, could she feed on them? Even if she had the strength to do it, she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to kill anymore. She had finally found Loki, and she planned to live happily ever after with him.

  It’s all because of Loki’s kiss, her darker half whispered. Love is a terrible thing. It makes people vulnerable. Are you prepared to be vulnerable while the world counts on you to save them from Night Sorrow and Carmilla?

  Snow White found herself raising her hands and touching her lips.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, ask your lips,’ Loki had answered her when she questioned if their love had been a dream.

  The memory sent an electrical surge through her body, remembering what they had both been through to earn that kiss. Who would have thought that Loki, the dark Huntsman, who had slaughtered more people than he could remember, could be saved?

  Where are you Loki? What’s taking you so long?

  “Loki!” Fable yelled.

  Loki is here? Where? What is going on?

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, Loki,” Axel and Fable yelled outside. “You’re not yourself!”

  Snow White wiped the fog from the window. She couldn’t see Loki outside, but she saw Axel and Fable running into the Schloss, still yelling at the evil approaching her.

  What’s going on?

  The evil, protected by the laughing wind, had already reached the hallway. Snow White could feel it. She could hear it taking confident strides toward her room. Whoever, or whatever, Axel and Fable were screaming at was at her door.

  “Please, no,” Fable said again, climbing the stairs. “Don’t kill her!”

  Is that Loki coming to my room? To kill me? Again?

  The evil scent was Loki’s. She knew it well.

  She wondered how it was even possible: Loki not remembering who he was. Snow White had been afraid to remind him or he surely would have killed her in the Dreamworld.

  She turned around.

  Loki was standing behind her, wearing Axel’s hood.

  Still resisting the idea that he’d come to kill her, her fangs drew back and the muscles on her face relaxed.

  “Loki,” she still liked the sound of his name on her lips. Her eyes widened cheerfully. “You came back for me,” she ran across the room and threw herself in his arms. “You came back for a monster,” she muttered, rubbing her cheek against his hollow chest. Her longing for him blinded her from the obvious. Love tends to blind people and urge them to sleep in the arms of the enemy sometimes.

  Although Loki hadn’t spoken a word or shown signs of passion, she pressed her head closer to him like a lovely pillow she could confess all her secrets to.

  Finally, the truth hit her like a dagger. She noticed he was frigid, cold, and speechless. His heart wasn’t beating, just like the dead. This wasn’t Loki she was hugging anymore. It was the shell of what was left of him. Loki was gone; the boy behind his eyes had disappeared. This was Loki’s shadow, the Huntsman with the three-eyed unicorn.

  She turned away, and then looked into his eyes one more time, wishing she would get a glimpse of the boy she loved. His eyes sent rays of horror into her soul. They were slatted and yellow like a snake, the Queen of Sorrow’s eyes.

  She took two steps back, gathering all of her energy.

  You know what you have to do, Shew. The voice in her head reminded her. If you’re really the Chosen One, the first thing you have to do is … kill him.

  “No,” she screamed. “What happened to you, Loki?” unaware she was close to tripping over the glass coffin behind her.

  Loki didn’t say a word. He just kept staring at her, his eyes turning black as night and appearing endlessly hollow with that glimmer of gold.

  Snow White had confronted many demons before, but Loki’s stare bored through her and a headache started pounding in her head.

  The whiny, funny, and adventurous Loki she knew was gone. This, standing in front of her, was the Huntsman whom everyone in the Kingdom of Sorrow feared.

  “Talk to me, Loki,” she pleaded. Another step back, her stomach hurt as if butterflies where being slaughtered inside it. She felt weaker. “What happened to you?”

  He looked so powerful, so cocky and sure of himself. His shirt, ripped open, revealed a six-pack underneath, his body had changed from a boy to a man.

  Oh my God, Snow White thought when Loki’s hood fell back. She saw his hair had turned platinum blonde again, the color of the Huntsman’s before he’d been unshadowed by Charmwill. He also had his Alicorn in his hand.

  Snow White tripped backwards into the glass coffin, unable to take her eyes off him. It was a hard choice. Death in front of her or the grave behind her.

  Back to where you belong, Shew. Her inner voice taunted her.

  “Come on, Loki,” she forced a crooked smile on her lips. “You’ve killed me before. It didn’t work,” she tried to sound playful.

  Axel and Fable were nearer now, calling for him again.

  “Mircalla did this to you,” Axel said from the hallway. “I don’t know how this happened but Mircalla is Carmilla Karnstein, the Queen of Sorrow.”

  “She controls you through the Fleece,” Fable said, reaching the door with her brother.

  Slowly, Loki turned back to them. He waved one hand in the air, sending the laughing wind whipping at them. The wind laughed hysterically as it blew them back into the hallway. Snow White heard them thud against a wall then fall into silence.

  Loki met Carmilla? In the real world?

  A Dreamhunter’s Fleece was like his soul. She had been next to Loki when Carmilla took it in the Dreamory.

  Loki turned to face Snow White; he had a cocky smirk on one corner of his mouth. The sweat caused by Snow Whites racing heart stuck to her dress.

  “Loki,” Snow tried one last time. “Don’t you remember me? I’m the one you love.”

  Her words had no effect on him. He knelt down and pulled her hair violently with one hand, the way ancient people grabbed their sacrifices before they slaughtered them for the Gods.

  Her veins fueled with anger. The smell of his blood was so intense and beautiful she could just suck him dry. Her fangs drew out, feebly without grit or strength to use them.

  Strength is not what you are lacking, Shew. Don’t fool yourself. You just cannot bite him.

  Loki gave her one last demonic look and staked her mercilessly. It was fast, the Alicorn plunging through her chest, blood spattering on both their faces.

  No apology followed like in the past, nor did he show the slightest signs of guilt.

  Feeling betrayed again, killed by the one she loved, Snow White gave in as the world faded away.

  Before she passed out, she wondered why Carmilla made him stake her. All Carmilla needed now was to find the Lost Seven so she could consume her heart, stay beautiful without killing young girls, and never be threatened by her daughter again. Why would Carmilla make Loki stake her?

  This is much bigger than you think, Shew. It is not just about you. This is about the whole Fairyworld.

  As the world faded to black, Snow White felt the Baby Tears in her eyes—although they seemed a bit different. Loki must have used them so she wouldn’t be able to manipulate the dream.

  Now she had to face another Dreamory. She wondered which one it was going to be. She felt Loki place two Obol coins on her eyes then whisper the Incubator into her ears. The date was 1803.

  How was he going to access something she couldn’t even remember?

  The incubator pr
esented an even greater challenge, a strange word that meant nothing to her:

  The Phoenix.

  2

  A World Between Dreams

  I can control this. The word ‘Phoenix’ has no power over me in my subconscious. I have no idea why Carmilla made him use it. If only I could just control my dream and send Loki to another place. A place where…

  Snow White opened her eyes to the bluest morning skies, bespattered with millions of tiny cloudy patches like snowflakes on a blue veil waving over the world. The sun appeared, slowly wiping the sky clean of the imaginary snowflakes. Weaves of the first threads of an upcoming rainbow curved all over the horizon, and the birds welcomed the morning with their songs as the sun kissed her face.

  Her closed eyes twitched against the sun's warmth—she’d expected to be sent straight to hellish nightmares. Slowly, her eyelids opened up like a flower trusting the light, and her pupils made peace with the flare. She breathed easier and felt the warmth of the day gently piercing through her and reaching behind her eyes. Snow White felt as if she lay in a bed with a cushiony, slightly bumpy mattress. How was it possible she was in bed and could see the sun and the sky? How could she smell the flowers of endless fields surrounding her, and how were butterflies fluttering over her head as she lay down?

  A butterfly with orange wings touched her nose briefly. Snow White propped herself up on her arms and inhaled the image through her eyes as if they were fabulous words from a fascinating poem.

  What a beautiful dream. My dream. Or is it that I am dead and went to Heaven?

  Finally, she discovered she was actually sleeping in a bed made of willows in the middle of the meadows away form the Schloss. Puckers of purple poppy blossoms were scattered like brocade, lightly tossed in heaps along the green distance leading to a river before a set of hills. Rills of water ran in curvy waves through the field, feeding the river in the distance, with dandelions dancing on both sides. The sun slanted through the gaps between thick trees of the forest to her left and splayed over the field, meeting with the sunrays from above. It made her feel like sitting in a bubble of pure light.