Her Soul to Take

Rae cries while driving out of town and has to pull to the side of the road. She decides that she cannot leave Leon to fight alone and turns around. Locking Cheesecake in the cabin, she texts Inaya to pick him up in the morning. Rae then goes walking into the woods with the knife and the grimoire page, using her phone as a flashlight.

Rae finds Leon, who is deeply injured and cold but alive. Leon tells her to go because Jeremiah is coming. Rae asks how she can offer Leon her soul, and he tells her there’s not enough time. Then, he tells her that to do so, she has to put his name in her flesh.

Jeremiah finds them and tells Rae that it’s time to stop running. Rae is frozen, and Jeremiah begins mutating. His arm becomes a tentacle, and “his entire form seem[s] to grow, so huge and so unnatural that it [i]s impossible to look at him without falling to [her] knees in abject horror” (432). Leon lunges at Jeremiah, who flings him aside. The Libiri that Jeremiah brought capture Rae and put a bag over her head.

The Deep One is calling Rae’s name. Rae cannot wake up but also cannot sleep. She feels a pinch as a needle is inserted into her arm. Finally, she wakes up, but she’s been strapped down. She’s still dressed, and while she does not have her phone, she does have her dagger and lighter. An unfamiliar voice tells her that it’s time, and she is shackled and carried outside.

The person puts her into a car and starts driving. Rae tries to keep calm, knowing she needs to save her strength. When they arrive at their destination, Rae is carried through the rain again. When the bag is removed from Rae’s head, she finds herself in St. Thaddeus; the Libiri are lined up, and Jeremiah is at the pulpit. Rae is dragged to the pulpit, and Jeremiah slices through her shirt. He carves lines, runes, and words from an unfamiliar language into Rae’s chest. The group then unchains Rae and drags her to the shaft of the mine. Rae pleads with Jeremiah not to do this, but he shoves her into the dark.

Rae plunges into icy water, though she can touch the ground with her feet. The pale light from the entrance above disappears because the Libiri are boarding up the mine shaft. Rae cries and wants to die. Then, she realizes that she has to fight to survive. She gets the knife and lighter out and uses the lighter to look around. She sees Victoria’s muddy, naked corpse. Rae rushes away from the body, seeking another exit.

While Rae is walking through the tunnels, a skeletal canine stalks her. She plunges into the water to escape. The tunnel narrows, and Rae desperately crawls down it as the Deep One’s voice tells her to come to it. Suddenly, the tunnel opens, and she is in a large chamber filled with gray, pale light. There is no way out—only back toward the monster. She pulls out the grimoire page. She decides to carve Leon’s name into her thigh, giving him her soul because he, not the Deep One, deserves it: “I didn’t really care if I bled anymore, so long as I bled for this: for love. It was the only thank-you I could offer—my final devotion he’d likely never even knew I gave” (449).

Rae rests after giving her soul to Leon. Just before her eyes close, she sees the still, black pool begin to move as something emerges.

Jeremiah left Leon to die in the woods. Hours or days passed as his body began healing. Leon is baffled but in awe that Rae loves him. He decides that he will massacre the Libiri if they’ve killed Rae, but he is still weak, unable to go to Rae. Then, he feels something brush his mind, and he knows that someone is calling his name. Leon feels suddenly hot, and he’s getting stronger somehow: His healing is accelerated painfully. Leon realizes that Rae has given him her soul and that every passing moment binds them more tightly together. He is strong enough to walk and then to run. He is determined to save her.

The Deep One rises from the pool and is “both incomprehensibly large, and only as tall as a man […] It should have been impossible; no Earthly being should have been able to take that form” (455). When it speaks, its voice is the one that haunted Rae’s dreams. The Deep One tells Rae that it waited for her even after she traveled so far from her home. Rae tells it that she does not belong to it. When the Deep One touches her forehead, she remembers all the times in her childhood and adolescence when she felt drawn to the Deep One.

Suddenly, all Rae’s choices make sense to her: She was meant to be here. The Deep One tells her that her soul was meant to belong to it and that she will never die; her body will be consumed, but her soul will know “no respite nor comfort. Only perfect, holy suffering” (459). The Deep One tries to take Rae’s soul, and it hurts. However, no matter how much it tries, the Deep One cannot take Rae, as her soul belongs to Leon.

Rae pulls away. She sees a massive tentacled form and tells the Deep One that it cannot take her. She is tethered to Leon. She knows that Leon is alive and that he will come to protect her. Rae decides that if she is going to die, she will die fighting.

The Deep One is furious, making the stones of the cavern crack. A tentacle grabs her as she tries to crawl away. The Deep One tells her she has betrayed her god. The Deep One is no longer beautiful; it now looks monstrous. The cavern has completely collapsed, and they are sinking into mud, rock, and water.

Rae’s body is slowly being crushed by the water and the tentacle, but she then plunges the dagger into one eyeball of the tentacle holding her. She keeps stabbing the tentacle until its grip loosens. The water sucks her down and rushes into her lungs. Rae knows she’s dying, but then she sees a silver thread in the dark. It glows so brightly that it will not let her eyes close. Then, she hears Leon’s voice, telling her not to give up.

She wraps her hands around the silver thread and uses it to pull herself through the darkness. She is not sure if she’s still in the water, and air no longer seems necessary. Finally, she surfaces, and Leon drags her from the water and tells her to breathe.

Rae can still hear the Deep One calling her, but Leon tells her that it will stop because it can’t take a soul that belongs to another. Leon tells her that she injured the Deep One and that perhaps Everly is strong enough to kill it.

Leon is relieved to hold Rae again and decides that he will destroy Jeremiah for hurting Rae. He carries Rae through the woods to the Hadleigh property, puts Rae down by a tree, and approaches the house, which is on fire. The fire is massive, consuming the house. Leon then sees Juniper and Zane and realizes that nothing is alive in that house and that Juniper likely killed Jeremiah.

Juniper asks where Rae is, and Leon tells Juniper that Rae is safe. Juniper explains that she and Zane left no one alive: The Hadleighs and the Libiri are gone. She tells him that Jeremiah died like a coward. Leon says that he wishes he could have killed him, but Juniper says that she sold her soul to get revenge and that it was hers to take. Then, she offers Leon her hand. As he shakes it, Juniper tells him that she forgives him.

Leon carries Rae through what remains of the house. He finds Jeremiah’s burned body and tells Rae that Juniper and Zane killed him and the Libiri. Leon says that he wishes he’d killed Jeremiah, but Rae tells him that she’s glad he didn’t and that he’s killed enough. She says that they can both rest now.

A record-breaking storm hits Abelaum. It rains for days. The cabin loses power, but Leon lights candles. When the rain stops, there is more destruction. The mine and old tunnels have collapsed. St. Thaddeus still stands, but the roof has caved in.

Some people on campus look at Rae bitterly, and she wonders if they were part of the Libiri. She no longer dreams of the Deep One, and her bruises from the Deep One’s tentacle fade. Leon tells her that if she wants to minimize the scars that Jeremiah left, money is not an issue. However, he loves the scar that she gave herself by writing Leon’s name in her flesh. It represents that her soul is Leon’s.