winged baby snakes swarming into the room and filling the space under the glass dome. Their high-pitched squeaks and chirps sounded even madder than before. The bats circled the dome once, twice, and then dove for her.
Zoe stood and scrabbled up the pile of junk as quickly as she could. The giant mirror was just ahead. If she could reach it, she’d be close enough to the window that the bats and archers wouldn’t matter.
When the first wave of snakes swarmed around her, they hit hard enough to knock her down. She had to grab the base of a withered old potted palm to keep from rolling over the side. The next swarm hit her just as she got to her feet. Zoe was ready this time and ducked, so she was able to take the blow and stay standing. She made it up the pile a few more feet before they hit her again. From where she stood, it was a straight line to the mirror. If she leaned forward far enough, she could almost touch it.
This time when the swarm slammed into her, the snakes didn’t fly away. They dug in with their fangs and beat her with their wings. Zoe covered her face, trying to protect her eyes. She swung her free arm before her, trying to keep the snakes off as much as she could. She couldn’t breathe. It felt like she was drowning, drowning while being eaten alive. It took her a second to realize that the screams she heard were her own.
Zoe fell to her knees as more snakes landed on her. She closed her eyes and crawled a few feet, using one hand to move and the other to cover her face. Every inch was agony. Covered with snakes, her arms felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each. Then her hand landed on something glassy. Zoe tilted her head up and opened one eye. Through the trembling mass of serpents, she saw the gold frame. With her free hand, she reached out, grabbed the edge of the mirror, and pulled herself up. When she stood, the snakes lifted off her as one.
Her legs shook but the snakes were gone. Relief flooded through her. She looked down on the wolf men and humans below.
In the split second before it happened, she remembered the first time she’d seen the queen. Zoe had known instantly that she was more than a simple ruler. She was a warrior. That’s why it was so frightening, though not at all surprising, to see Hecate aiming a longbow up at her.
There was the slightest of sounds, as if someone had delicately plucked a string on a classical guitar. A second later, something slammed into Zoe’s chest. It didn’t feel like an arrow, what she imagined an arrow would feel like. It was more like being punched with a fist made of fire. When she raised her hands, however, she felt the arrow’s shaft buried deep in her chest. She looked down at Hecate and watched as a satisfied, feral smile split her face. The sight made Zoe’s head swim.
She stumbled back, grabbing on to the mirror. One of her legs slid from beneath her and slammed into something. Zoe felt the junk mound move ominously. Boxes shifted and settled. Something cracked. She didn’t care. She slid down onto her belly as her vision collapsed into a long dark tunnel. From somewhere a million miles away, she heard Hecate scream “Don’t let her fall! I need her body!”
Zoe tried to push herself back to her feet, but her bones had turned to rubber. She leaned back onto the boxes and felt them slide away from her. A roaring, crashing sound filled the room. It took her a second to realize that she’d started an avalanche. A whole section of the junk mountain was beginning to move. A fault line opened in a lower section, wobbled from side to side, and slammed into the mirror. She heard a scrape and a screech as it shifted and began to slide.
Boxes cascaded around her and over her. The hand she’d been resting on the mirror was suddenly empty as the enormous slab of silvered glass toppled forward.
“No!” shrieked Hecate in a new voice, one more fearful than angry. “What have you done, child?”
Zoe didn’t answer. She lay on her side, one hand on the arrow buried in her chest. Her arms and legs didn’t work anymore. She couldn’t see much more than gray outlines below. Each breath she took was harder than the last. Something wet sloshed around inside her, filling her lungs. Each breath hurt more than the one before. She couldn’t keep her eyes open. Zoe knew that she was dying and she was so tired, she was happy to just let it happen.
At least I’ll be with Valentine and Dad, she thought.
When the mirror hit the floor, it shattered with a sound like the earth bursting open, of the sky cracking. Everything shook, like all of creation was trying to rip itself apart from the inside.
Light burst from beneath the shattered glass and wood. Even at the edge of death, the light was so bright that Zoe had to raise a hand to shield her eyes from it.
Her body began to fill with a strange warmth and she found that she could breathe again. The dull pain in the center of her chest began to fade. When she touched the arrow, it crumbled in her hand. Through her closed lids, the light that filled the room faded, drawing in on itself until it was a floating ball of burning gold. Zoe opened her eyes.
Rising slowly from the floor of the auditorium, from the middle of the broken mirror, was the stolen sun. It moved slowly, elegantly, rumbling and sizzling, filling the room with a brilliant healing light. Zoe pushed herself into a sitting position and touched the skin between her breasts. Though the front of her shirt was damp with her blood, the arrow wound was gone.
“No! I beat you! You’re mine!”
Zoe looked down and saw Hecate shrieking at the burning star floating just a few feet over her head. Around the queen, her wolf men ran from the light, bursting into flames as they went. The floor was already covered with them. Hecate’s snakes sizzled like sparklers, floating in the air like thousands of fireflies, before falling to the ground at the queen’s feet.
“You’re mine!” Hecate screamed. She had been looking at the sun, but now turned her gaze on Zoe. “You’re all mine.” Hecate’s face went soft and the bones seemed to shift under her flesh. Her hair and dress were already beginning to smolder. She paid no attention to any of this as the human part of her melted away like candle wax, leaving only the snarling she-wolf behind. Hecate’s dress was burning now and the flames spread quickly over the fabric and onto her coarse black fur. Burning, she leaped from the floor onto the boxes and desks and began to climb.
Zoe fell back against a card catalog. Looking around, she saw that there were enough boxes to reach the window. Still weak, she began to climb. She’d only gone a few feet when she felt a blistering heat rising behind her.
Hecate stepped onto the platform just below Zoe. The queen was a pillar of pure flame now, and the furniture that was nearest to her immediately began to smoke and smolder. Hecate reached up, but Zoe pressed herself into the wall. It was so hot that she was afraid of her own clothes bursting into flame. The queen braced herself to climb onto Zoe’s level, but as she moved to rise up, her leg collapsed. She lunged at Zoe with both arms and froze in place. Her ashen body wouldn’t move. Not much more now than a statue of orange-blue flame, she raised her burning snout in the air and let out one last long and ferocious howl. Then her body caved in on itself, crumbing and drifting away to the floor in a cloud of burning ash. Zoe lay still, unable to think or move.
Silently the sun rose, swelling as it went. When it reached the ceiling, it was as big as the glass dome. It burst through without slowing, gliding away, growing larger and more dazzling by the second. Zoe looked up at the window. Outside, the moonlit sky gave way to a deep blue.
She climbed up to the window and pushed it open. Swinging her feet over the sill, she dropped onto a fire escape. Leaning against the railing, she looked down on Iphigene, seeing it lit up like it had been on that one perfect day she had spent with her father. The air felt lighter, the atmosphere clearer. She could feel it. Some powerful spell had definitely been broken. Souls poured from the restaurants and bars, out of the alleys and backstreets. They ran past the boardwalk and onto the beach to watch the sun rise over the city.
Zoe rested on the metal steps and watched the city come to life. She stayed there a long time, just breathing. When she was ready, she got up and went down the fire escape to the street below.
Whatever the sun had done to her back in the auditorium, she sensed that it was still doing it. She felt stronger with each step she took, not at all tired. The dozens of little bat bites were healing, though the marks were still visible. She was glad of that and secretly hoped that some would scar over. She didn’t want to have gone through all this without something to keep so that when she was back in the world, no one, not even she, could tell her that it had all been a dream.
People streamed out of City Hall. Papers, uniforms, and broken glass were scattered among piles of ashes
