“And then my famous Snow White journey began,” Snow White said. “She sent me to the Black Forest to collect roses and play with the wolves without me knowing what was really going on, why she suddenly hated me, why she was jealous of me, or why she wanted me dead. She sent the Huntsman after me to kill me,” Snow White lifted her head and stared into Loki’s eyes. She was sobbing harder, and Loki saw the air rippling around them again, the way it happened when they were close to exposing their presence to Angel and Carmilla in the cottage. “He’s a vicious person, full of darkness in his heart, and she told him to stake me in the heart and bring it back to her, along with my liver as proof of my death.”
Loki was amazed that Axel’s theories were mostly right. But digging deeper into the mystery of all those fairy tale characters was the least of his concerns. The air around him was rippling harder with Snow White’s continued sobs. He wanted to hold her even closer to his chest to muffle her cries a little. But he didn’t. He decided it wouldn’t be right to deprive her of expressing herself. Sometimes tears, although painful, wash the pain away, and he wanted Snow White to let it all out, even if it meant manifesting their presence in the Dreamworld.
“That’s how they thought vampires—Dhampirs in my case—were killed at the time. Her plan was to rid the vampires, and herself, from the threat I was imposing as the chosen girl. She also wanted to use my blood to bathe in, and gain my powers for herself. She was blinded by lust for beauty and power,” Snow White continued. Then she cried out her last words, “My mother had become my own enemy.”
That was when Loki saw the Queen of Sorrow noticing their presence in the dream.
26
What Dreams May Come
Loki saw the air ripple like radioactive waves before his eyes. The Dreamhunter and the dreamer’s identity had been exposed in the Dreamworld.
In a flash, the servants tilted their heads toward Loki and Snow White. They seemed shocked for a moment…all but Carmilla.
She turned her head toward the intruders. She did it slowly as if she had all the time in the dream on her side. It was as if she’d been expecting them. A wicked smile curved on her fine lips as she looked at Loki holding Snow White tighter in his arms. It was as if he was protecting her from a hurricane that was about to huff and puff their lives away.
The Queen of Sorrow’s confidence was intimidating. Loki expected her to snarl at them with fangs and red eyes. Instead, she held her chin up high, brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, and looked down upon them like a lion watches its prey. Her face oozed with vitality, shining bright and deceivingly elegant as if there was no beast living behind her blue eyes.
A trickle of blood dripping from her lips exposed her disguise, and showed her wrath. Slowly, her tongue appeared from between her heart-shaped lips. It wasn’t a human tongue. It looked more like a snake’s tongue, forked and split at the tip. It was thin and it stretched long enough that the Queen managed to lick the trickle of blood from her chin. Drawing her tongue back, a smile curved itself on her face. She closed her eyes, swallowing the blood then opened them again. It was puzzling how she looked so beautiful and yet capable of doing something so gruesome. She wiped her lips with her fingertips, showing a pearl ring around her middle finger.
Loki was speechless, almost paralyzed, and unable to shake the Queen’s presence away. Carmilla was incomparable to all of the stories he had heard before. Her presence was powerful and unavoidable. Again, Loki experienced that strange feeling like he had when he was in the closet and felt the need to obey the Queen. It was a wicked feeling, as if she was able to control him in some way. It was if he had to obey her, and he needed all his strength to resist her deadly charms. No wonder they called her, ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
“Don’t let her control you,” Snow White told Loki. “Avoid her eyes.”
Loki was still hypnotized. The short moment of confrontation felt like long days, struggling against his own shadow to free himself from her—or from the evil inside that inexplicably connected him to her.
“Look at me, Loki,” Snow White pleaded, caressing his face.
Slowly, Loki glanced back at Snow White. It wasn’t easy, though. Looking at Carmilla made him understand a little bit about the darkness inside him. He knew that whatever darkness he possessed, Carmilla knew about it and was trying to use it against him. How much did she know about his past?
The only thing that saved him from Carmilla’s effect was looking back into Snow White’s eyes. It brought him back to his senses.
It brought back…home…where he could choose who he wanted to be.
Freed from her trance, Loki looked back at the Queen, a little blurry now behind the steam. He held Snow White’s hand for assurance. He needed it while he thought about how to escape this dream. This or the Queen would devour them both like the young girls she’d killed before.
“The Fleece,” Loki remembered. He reached to tap it three times on his wrist, sending an emergency call to Axel and Fable. It was time they break the mirror with Lucy’s axe to save them from this horrible, never ending dream.
As he tapped his wrist, he carefully observed the Queen of Sorrow. To his surprise, he couldn’t feel the Fleece on his hand. Loki’s eyes widened and his heart pounded against his chest. Looking at his wrist, it was impossible to believe what he saw or didn’t see.