After a second of silence, I hear a loud slap.
“Ow! Goddammit, that hurt!” Alex screams, obviously on the receiving end of a smack across the face.
“Did it?” the woman asks. “Because if that hurts, you’re not going to enjoy being ripped apart by a werewolf at all.”
“You certainly won’t.”
Darius has joined the mix, probably appearing out of nowhere in his annoying way, which I swear I will never reprimand him for again if he can get us out of this mess.
His arrival seems to put a temporary halt on conversation as fighting ensues.
I hear crash after crash and loud growls from Zev, who sped out of the bathroom without me even noticing.
“Hold on, Rune!” Darius says. I don’t know what he’s asking the fae to hold on to, but the fear in the vampire’s voice is tangible and makes my own fear that much stronger.
Snapping myself out of panic mode, I scan the bathroom, searching for any sign of Rain or a weapon I can use, anything to make myself useful. Maybe this is my chance to sneak into the bedroom and try to find my baby.
I feel the urge to help, to do something more proactive than just sit on my ass like a damsel in distress. I want to help Rune, or distract the attackers so Zev can maul them or Darius snap their spines. But more than that, I want to find my baby.
I creep toward the door, trying to be wary of the fight that’s going on while staying under the radar. Peering down the hallway, I see a whirlwind of activity. Chairs crash against the wall, flashes of light scorch my plants, and AJ lies slumped against the floor, a blindfold tied around her eyes. I’m about to throw caution to the wind and rush to help when I see her push herself up.
“Rune!” Darius sounds more anxious this time, causing my anxiety levels to spike as well. How dire is the situation out there? Is Rune going to die? Where the hell is he?
But before I can worry about the guys, I need to find Rain. I take a deep breath and slink down the hallway toward the bedroom, hoping I can turn the corner into my room before someone grabs me.
I make it through and close the door quietly behind me, leaning against it while I reach behind my back to turn the lock. I search the room, starting with the crib and moving over to my bed, hoping a mother’s intuition will help me find a baby that’s shrouded in a magical illusion.
As I fumble around checking the most obvious and oddball places for a baby, I hear a soft cry. It doesn’t sound like she’s in distress, but it still makes me that much more panicked about finding her. I move more slowly, listening as hard as I can, inching closer to the source of the whimpers...
And then the world goes dark.
I can’t see anything, and sounds are muffled.
My first guess is that the lights went out. My second is that I’ve been knocked out. My third is that a bag’s been put over my head.
When I try to lift my hands up to my face, someone with an iron grip grabs my wrists and thrusts them behind my back, binding them with something warm. It ties too fast for a normal rope but doesn’t hurt like a zip tie. Before I can guess what’s holding me in place, I’m hoisted over someone’s shoulder and carried toward the back wall. I’m helpless with no hands or vision, and I can only scream as I feel myself falling out the window and through the cold night air.
I don’t have a clue where I am when I come to. It’s still dark, my hands are still tied behind my back, and I’m shivering from cold.
At first I panic, trying to fight out of my tethers and shake off whatever’s covering my head. All that does is fill my hood with noise and make me less aware of my surroundings, so I stop. I take a few deep breaths, then try my best to be still and listen.
There’s the sound of a fire crackling nearby. Not close enough for me to feel its warmth, but not too far away. There are also voices--soft and distant, but loud enough to make it through whatever fabric covers my ears.
Another sound cuts through it all. The same sound that rose above the chaos in my apartment. Rain is crying.
As I listen, her tiny voice gets closer, as do the voices of others, along with the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow. My heart races as I prepare for the people, witches, or monsters that are coming my way. To kill me? Maybe. To kill my baby? That’s the only thing that worries me.
I feel a body come close, stopping right beside me. Suddenly, the hood over my head gets ripped off, and cold air hits my face. The distant fire provides the only light, and I blink my blindness away, allowing my eyes to focus. The first thing I see is trees everywhere, branches heavy with the recent snowfall, the ground covered by a fresh layer. I can’t hear or see any signs of city life. We must be deep in the woods.
Whoever lifted my hood steps behind me and unties my wrists. Moments later another captor passes me Rain. I cry through a painfully dry throat and pull her close, trying to give her every ounce of warmth in my body, doing whatever I can to protect her and make her feel safe. My touch seems to settle her a little, which in turn calms my nerves the slightest bit.
“Beautiful.”
I hear that same voice, the familiar woman from my apartment, though now she sounds soft and nurturing. I look up to find the source of the sound, and see a cloaked figure a few paces away. She’s outlined by the fire in the background, so I can’t see anything except her profile.
“She’s absolutely beautiful,” the woman says again.
Who the hell is this? Who kidnaps a mother and child, only to tell the bound-up mom how pretty her baby is?
The figure steps closer until she’s right next to me, and as the moonlight illuminates her face, I finally get to see her.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says as she kneels down and touches my cheek.
It takes another moment before I can place her, because it’s been almost twenty years… but that smile. Those eyes. That voice. The small scar on her forehead that I used to run my finger over.
I’m staring into the face of my dead mother.
Chapter Nineteen
“…Mom?”
My voice catches on the word. Is this a trick? Some kind of magical illusion making me see things that couldn’t possibly be here? My mom is dead, and therefore this can’t be real.
An icy numbness burrows into my heart, steeling me against unwanted emotions. My entire adult life has been defined by the day I lost my mother. A part of me died with her, as I shut myself off from feeling the type of love that could lead to that type of loss. More than one therapist tied her death to me seeking companionship with unavailable or inappropriate men, like my music professor. Her death crushed me in a way nothing else ever would or could.
But now she’s here. And I don’t know what to feel.
“Hi, Sunshine,” she whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks and coming to rest on her smiling lips.
Sunshine. She always called me Sunshine, and I haven’t heard that nickname since. I wonder how much that word, stuck deep in the recesses of my psyche, led me to name my daughter Rain. Like somehow the opposite word would lead to the opposite outcome. I squeeze my baby a little tighter, needing her for emotional support right now far more than she needs me.
My mom looks from me to the baby, a grandmother’s love radiating off her face. She doesn’t move to touch Rain, probably because she knows my guard is still way up. If she was hoping for a joyful mother-daughter reunion, she picked the wrong way to go about it.
“How?” I ask, choosing the only question I can give voice to right now. A deep hurt in my chest is threatening to crash over me, and I have to keep it at bay if I want to get through this.
“Come, join me by the fire,” she says, extending a hand to help me up. “I’ll tell you everything, but I also need to prepare you for what’s to come. You’re still in danger.”
Yeah, no shit. I’m surrounded by the people who have been trying to steal my baby.
Seeing no other choice if I want answers, I stand and follow, my gaze taking in everything I can as I try to figure out whe
re I am and who I’m with. About a dozen figures cloaked in dark robes form a circle around us, pretty much exactly what you’d expect a creepy cult to do. Their faces are cast in shadows from their hoods, and none of them move. They could be statues for how still they are, but I wouldn’t bet on it. My guess is they are armed, with magic and weapons. Whatever they’re packing, they’re no doubt ready to intervene if I go off-script. I clutch Rain harder to my chest, then ease off when I realize I’m about to wake her. My skin thrums with the power in this place, and I suddenly feel desperately alone.
I try to quiet the sound of my heart pounding in my head and reach for that small strand that still connects me to Darius. Will he feel where I am? Will he know I’m in danger? Try as I might, I can no longer sense him tethered to me, and this breaks me almost more than anything else has. That sense of loneliness is now completely consuming.
With hesitant steps, I join my mother by the fire. My uneasiness is at war with another, deeper part of myself--the child in me who recognizes with longing the way my mother walks as if her feet barely touch the ground; the way she flicks her wrists like a ballerina, so graceful and lithe. She had been a dancer once upon a time, and though she mostly abandoned her studio sessions when I came along, my fondest memories are of us dancing together in the kitchen while baking banana bread.
I study the woman before me now, and I see that same grace, that same easy fluidity, and I know that part of my mother couldn’t possibly be faked. Which makes all of this so much harder. While I’m desperately clinging to my fear to keep me alive, I’m also trying hard not to fall into that safety net she always provided. It’s a dichotomy I don’t know how to justify within myself, and I’m torn apart by it. Once I’m close enough to the flames to feel their warmth penetrating the cold that has sunk into my bones, I look for a place to sit. My legs feel unstable, whether from exhaustion or from the recent revelations I’m not sure. As I search for a stump or a log, I hear my mother speak in a slightly affected tone.
“Lángol.”
I look her way just as she finishes waving a wand--like, an actual witch’s wand, and suddenly two flames leap from the fire, turning a radiant blue as they split from their source, one landing behind each of us. I jump a little, afraid of getting burned--since that’s what fire does. Meanwhile, my mother sits back into the blue flames beneath her, and the fire expands around her body like a really bizarre bean bag chair.
“Go ahead, Bernie,” she says in her soothing tone. “It’s safe.”
Safe is debatable, but I’m curious despite myself. I inch closer to the blaze, noticing that it’s warm but not painfully hot. I ease my body down and feel a resistance come up to meet me. It molds around my body like a cushion, and just like that, I’m relaxing in a fire chair. Well, relaxing may be too strong a word, but tensely sitting for sure.
I have plenty of questions about the seat she just conjured, and my mom must notice because she starts to explain.
“Fire is one of the greatest tools for a witch,” she says. “It’s part of the reason we’ve been able to survive despite--”
“Why are you after my baby?” I ask, cutting her off.
As much as I want--and need--to know what she is and where she’s been all these years if not dead, my most immediate concern is keeping Rain safe.
My mom just shakes her head, a pained look in her eyes and a quiver in her lip. “To save you, sweetheart. We’ve been trying to save you.”
She seems entirely earnest, but things haven’t been as they seem for quite some time. Recent events have primed me to stay skeptical of everyone, and that definitely includes my dead mother.
“I don’t understand.” I really don’t. I don’t know what to ask, because I’m too overwhelmed. Too many questions are crowding my thoughts to pick just one.
“I know, Sunshine. There’s no way you could. Even after I explain, there will still be parts that don’t make sense, but I’ll do my best to ease your mind.” My mom takes a moment to compose herself, wiping away some tears and dabbing a handkerchief under her nose. In the most extreme, unnatural circumstances, she’s still kind of normal. Like a regular mom, sitting in a chair made of fire after pulling off a supernatural kidnapping. Someone sign us up for our reality TV show, stat.
“You might never trust me,” she says. “I accept that, and part of me expects it. But I won’t stop trying to save you, and hopefully, you’ll come to understand…” she pauses again, her voice cracking with emotion. “You’ll come to understand that everything I’ve done is because I love you. More than anything.”
I want to believe her, almost as much as she wants to be believed. She sounds so sincere. Her tears, the emotion straining her voice, the look of love she gives me that’s so reminiscent of my memories of her. It’s almost too perfect. Too much like a movie scene. Either I’ve become jaded, or I’m missing something here. Still, the child in me wants more than anything to trust what she says, because the alternative might just break me.
She leans forward, her gaze locked on mine, her words earnest as she continues. “I found out I was a witch on my twelfth birthday, which is the year most girls’ powers manifest. I fought it for a long time, not wanting to believe I was different. You know how it is at that age. You just want to fit in. Then I went through a rebellious phase, discovering all the worst uses for my powers and--”
“And what does this have to do with me?” I ask sharply, leaning forward with Rain held firmly in my arms. “With what’s happening now? Kidnapping me and my child?” I really do want to hear my mother’s life’s story, but there’s a time and a place. This is neither.
“Everything changed when you were born, Bernie,” she says quickly. “I’m not trying to ramble on about my past, but I think you understand how becoming a mother upends your world. And you’re starting to understand how much crazier it is when you know magic exists, for better and for worse.”
Her words give me pause as I realize my estranged mother and I have something very much in common. Well-played, mom.
“Nanny filled me in on the prophecy after you were born, and I briefly lost my shit on her for waiting until I’d had a child to drop that bombshell.” It’s nice to hear mom sounding a little like me. “But once I cooled down, I knew what I had to do. I went all in. I wanted to master my powers, to harness my capabilities, all so I could protect you. And then…”
My breath catches, knowing she’s about to talk about the day she died. Or, rather, didn’t die.
“I still didn’t really understand my magic, but I knew that I was part of this prophecy, and so were you, and it was too much to bear. I didn’t want you to suffer the way I and your nanny had.”
“So to ease my suffering you faked your own death?” I ask bitterly, on the verge of losing the battle to control my sorrow and anger.
She shakes her head. “I tried to cast a spell, just before you turned twelve. I wanted to protect you. I just… I wanted you to be safe forever.”
“What happened?”
“I almost killed you,” she says, wiping away more tears wetting her cheeks. “I put my baby girl in a coma. Nanny had to pull out some deep, dark magic to bring you back.”
“Wait, when I was eleven? I don’t remember any of this.” Even if I didn’t remember the coma, wouldn’t I have at least remembered all the magic spell stuff leading up to it? Wouldn’t I have any memory of missing school? Wouldn’t AJ remember something this big?
“Tilly took care of your memories,” she says.
“What about school? Friends? AJ?” I ask, shaken to the core that my kind old Nanny messed with my brain.
“It was summertime, and Nanny handled the rest.”
The rest being AJ. Jesus, what kind of family do I belong to?
My mom continues, seemingly oblivious to my own horror at learning all this. “She tried to tell me it was okay, that you would be okay and I should forgive myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at you after what I’d done. So…” she form
s a fist with her hand like she’s trying to hold in all the pain as she speaks. “I decided you would be safer without me. I chose to end my life.”
I exhale, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Except you didn’t,” I point out.
“I tried,” my mom says, sounding even more remorseful than before. “I threw myself off a cliff into the ocean.”
I shiver as the memories I keep carefully suppressed come rushing back. Finding her suicide note. Searching the shoreline for her body. Friends with fishing boats patrolling the coastline day and night. Her body was never found. She was presumed dead. After all, how could anyone live through that fall?
“How did you survive?” I ask. “And where have you been all these years?”
She sighs and looks away, her gaze lost in the darkness of the surrounding trees. “I woke up here, in this very forest, staring into my mother’s face.”
That’s actually something I can imagine quite readily, though her circumstances were a bit different. “So what, this is like some weird recreation reunion for you?”
“No. But I wanted you to understand why I did what I did. Why Nanny did what she did.”
My heart skips a beat. “What did Nanny do?”
My mother stands and approaches me, then kneels down and takes one of my hands into hers. “She stole your magic to bring me back from the dead.”
My throat goes dry and a cold sweat covers my skin as I yank my hand from hers. “What do you mean, stole my magic?”
“I didn’t want her to. I never meant for any of this to happen. I didn’t consider what it would do to a mother to lose her child. She snapped, even before she absorbed too much power. The grief turned her into someone else.” My mother rocks back on her heels, her eyes, the same deep blue as my own, locked on mine. “She used dark magic, blood magic, to pull your power from you and then harnessed it to find my body and bring me back. When I woke up in this forest, I was yanked from the afterlife. The use of that much power made her crazy.”
A Werewolf, a Vampire, and a Fae Walk Into a Bar Page 18
