“I'll not let them kill you, Mother.”
“There is nothing you can do to prevent it, child. I’ll have your promise, though, and I will die in peace because of it. Promise me, Raven.”
Sniffling, I muttered, “I promise.”
“Good.” She sighed, so deeply it seemed as if some great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. “Good,” she whispered once more, and then she rested. Slept, perhaps. I could not be sure. I cried in silence from then on, not wishing to trouble my Mother with my tears. But I think she knew.
When dawn came, it brought with it the magistrate, and beside him a woman, looking distraught with red-rimmed eyes. Behind them walked a man who wore the robes of a priest. He had an aged face, thin and harsh, with a hooked nose that made me think of a hawk, or some other hungering bird of prey. He was pale, as if he were ill, or weak. And then they came closer, and I could see only their feet, for I could not tip my head back enough to see more.
“Lily St. James,” the Magistrate said, “you and your daughter are charged with the crime of witchcraft. Will you confess to your crimes?”
My mother’s voice was weaker now, and I could hear the pain in it. “I will confess only if you release my daughter. She is guilty of nothing.”
“No,” the woman said in a shrill voice. “You must execute them now, Hiram. Both of them!”
“But the law—” he began.
“The law! What care do you have for the law when our own child has become ill overnight? What more proof do you need?”
At her words my heart fell. She blamed us for her child’s illness, just as my aunt had done. No one could save us now.
I heard footsteps then, and sensed the magistrate had gone closer to my mother. Leaning over her, he said, “Lift this curse, woman. Lift it now, I beg of you.”
“I have brought no curse upon you, nor your family, sir,” my mother told him. “Were it in my power to help your child, I would gladly do so. As I would have for my own husband and for my nephew. But I cannot.”
“Execute them!” his wife shouted. “Michael was fine until you arrested these two! They brought this curse on him, made him ill out of pure vengeance, I tell you, and if they live long enough to kill him, they will! Execute them, husband. ‘Tis the only way to save our son!”
The priest stepped forward then, his black robes hanging heavily about his feet and dragging through the wet snow. His steps were slow, as if they cost him a great effort. He went first to my mother, saying nothing, and I could not see what he did. But he came seconds later to me and closed his hand briefly around mine.
A surge of something, a crackling, shocking sensation jolted my hand and sizzled into my forearm, startling me so that I cried out.
“Do not harm my daughter!” my mother shouted.
The priest took his hand away, and the odd sensation vanished with his touch, leaving me shaken and confused. What had it been?
“I fear you are right,” the priest said to the magistrate and his wife. “They must die, or your son surely will. And I fear there is no time for a trial. But God will forgive you that.”
Pacing away, his back to us, the magistrate muttered, “Then I have little choice.” And the three of them left us alone again. But only for a few brief moments.
“Mother,” I whispered. “I’m so afraid.”
“You’ve nothing to fear from them, Raven.”
But I did fear. I’d never felt such fear grip me as I felt then, for within moments the priest had returned, and he brought several others with him. Large, strong men. People filled the streets as my mother and I were taken from the stocks. The people shouted and called us murderers and more. They threw things at us. Refuse and rotten food, even as the men bound our hands behind our backs and tossed us onto a rickety wagon, pulled by a single horse. I crawled close to my mother, where she sat straight and proud in that wagon, and I leaned against her, my head on her shoulder, my arms straining at their bonds, but unable to embrace her.
“Be strong,” she told me. “Be brave, Raven. Don’t let them see you tremble in fear before them.”
“I am trying,” I whispered.
The wagon drew to a stop, and the ride had been all too short. I looked up to see a gallows, one used so often it looked to be a permanent fixture here. I was dragged from the wagon, and my mother behind me. But she didn’t fight as I did. She got to her feet and held her head high, and no one needed to force her up the wood steps to the platform, while I kicked and bit and thrashed against the hands of my captors.
She paused on those steps and looked back at me, caught my eyes, and sent a silent message. Dignity. She mouthed the word. And I stopped fighting. I tried to emulate her courage, her dignity, as I was marched up the steps to stand beside her, beneath a dangling noose. Someone lowered the rough rope around my neck and pulled it tight, and I struggled to be brave and strong, as she’d so often told me I was. But I knew I was trembling visibly, despite the warmth of the morning sun on my back, and I could not stop my tears.
That priest whose touch had so jolted me stood on the platform as well, old and stern-faced, his eyes all but gleaming beneath their film of ill health as he stared at me...as if in anticipation. Beside him stood another man who also wore the robes of clergy. This one was very young, my age, or perhaps a few years my elder. In his eyes there was no eagerness, no joy. Only horror, pure and undisguised. They were brown, his eyes, and they met mine and held them. I stared back at him, and he didn’t look away, but held my gaze, searching my eyes while his own registered surprise, confusion. I felt something indescribable pass between us. Something that had no place here, amid this violence and hatred. It was as if we touched, but did so without touching. A feeling of warmth flowed between him and me, one so real it was almost palpable. And I knew he felt it, too, by the slight widening of his eyes.
Then his gaze broke away as he turned to the older man and said, “Nathanial, surely ‘tis no way to serve the Lord.”
The kiss of Scotland whispered through his voice.
“You are young, Brother Duncan,” the older man said. “And this no doubt seems harsh to you.”
“What it seems like to me, Father Dearborne, is murder.”
“‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’” the priest quoted.
“‘Thou shalt not kill,”’ the young Scot—Duncan—replied. And he looked at me again. They’ve nay been tried.’’
“They were tried in the square by the magistrate himself.”
“It canna be legal.”
“His Honor’s own child is ill with the plague. Would you have us wait for the child to die?”
The young man’s gaze roamed my face, though he spoke to the old one. I felt the touch of those eyes as surely as if he caressed me with his gentle hands, instead of just his gaze.
“I would have us show mercy,” he said softly. “We’ve no proof these women have brought the plague.”
“And no proof they haven’t. Why take the risk? They are only witches.”
The beautiful man looked at the older one sharply. They are human creatures just as we are, Nathanial.” And he shook his head sadly. “What are their names?”
Their names are unfit for a man of the cloth to utter. If you so pity them, Duncan, ease your conscience by praying for their souls. For what good it might do.”
“‘Tis wrong,” Duncan declared urgently. “I’m sorry, Father, but I canna be party to this.”
“Then leave, Duncan Wallace!” The priest thrust out a gnarled finger, pointing to the steps.
Duncan hurried toward them, but he paused as he passed close to me. Then turned to face me, as if drawn by some unseen force. His hand rose, hesitated, then touched my hair, smoothing it away from my forehead. His thumb rubbed softly o’er my cheek, absorbing the moisture there. “Could I help you, mistress, believe me I would.”
“Should you try they would only kill you, as well.” My voice trembled as I spoke. “I beg you...Duncan....” His eyes shot
to mine when I spoke his name, and I think he caught his breath. “Do not surrender your life in vain.”
He looked at me so intently it was as if he searched my very soul, and I thought I glimpsed a shimmer of tears in his eyes.
“I willna forget you,” he whispered, then shook his head, blinked, and continued, “In my prayers.”
“If there be memory in death, Duncan Wallace,” I said, speaking plainly, even boldly, for what had I to lose now? “I shall remember you always.”
He drew his fingertips across my cheek, and suddenly leaned close and pressed his lips to my forehead. Then he moved on, his black robes rustling as he hurried down the steps.
“Do you wish to confess your sins and beg the Lord’s forgiveness?” the old priest asked my mother.
I saw her lift her chin. “‘Tis you who ought to be begging your God’s forgiveness, sir. Not I.”
The priest glared at her, then turned to me. “And you?”
“I have done nothing wrong,” I said loudly. “My soul is far less stained than the soul of one who would hang an innocent and claim to do it in the name of God.’’ Then I looked down at the crowd below us. “And far less stained than the souls of those who would turn out to watch murder being done!”
The crowd of spectators went silent, and I saw Duncan stop in his tracks there on the ground below us. He turned slowly, looking up and straight into my eyes. “Nay,” he said, his voice firm. “‘Tis wrong, an’ I willna allow it!” Then suddenly he lunged forward, toward the steps again. But the guard at the bottom caught him in burly arms and flung him to the ground. A crowd closed around him as he tried to get up, and he was blocked from my view. I prayed they would not harm him.
“Be damned, then,” the old priest said, and he turned away.
The hangman came to place a hood over my mother’s head, but she flinched away from it. “Look upon my face as you kill me, if you have the courage.”
Snarling, the man tossed the hood to the floor and never offered one to me. He took his spot by the lever that would end our lives. And I looked below again to see Duncan there, Struggling while three large men held him fast. I had no idea what he thought he could do to prevent our deaths, but it was obvious he’d tried. Was still trying.
“‘Tis wrong! Dinna do this thing, Nathanial!” he shouted over and over, but his words fell on deaf ears.
“Take heart,” my mother whispered. “You will see him again. And know this, my darling. I love you.”
I turned to meet her loving eyes. And then the floor fell away from beneath my feet, and I plunged through it. I heard Duncan’s anguished cry. Then the rope reached its end, and there was a sudden painful snap in my neck that made my head explode and my vision turn red. And then no more. Only darkness.
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Twilight Guardians
Killian Garone was the last of his kind. So yeah, he was lonely. But he’d had no idea what lonely was until her.
He wandered, Killian did. Had ever since his building had been torched by vigilantes back in the wars of 2011. When humankind found out the boogiemen of Bram Stoker’s inkwell were real, they decided pretty quickly that they had to return vampires to the realm of fiction. And they’d pretty much succeeded.
Killian had survived the fire in his home, and the extermination of his species. As far as he knew, he was the only one left. So he wandered, and he avoided humans, and he survived by drinking the blood of wildlife, rather than feeding on humans. He didn’t mind so much that animal blood left him weak. A watered down version of a vampire.
And then one day, he’d dreamed of her.
He’d dreamed of her.
Everyone knows vampires don’t dream. The day sleep is death. It’s nothingness. But he’d dreamed of her. Could two years of isolation make a vampire go crazy? He didn’t know, and who the hell was he going to ask?
She came to him in flashes. Hair as red as a new penny, lots of it, rippling down way past her shoulders. Huge blue eyes that held the world inside them. A white owl. And the feeling that she was in trouble and didn’t even know it.
He knew two things about her right from the beginning. She was one of The Chosen. That is, she had the rare Belladonna Antigen every vampire had as a human. Only The Chosen could become vampires. They would bleed out easily if cut, and they tended to die young unless they accepted the Dark Gift. It would be almost impossible for a vampire to harm one of The Chosen. They were compelled to protect them, instead.
Charlie O’Malley was one of The Chosen. And Killian was drawn to her like he’d never been drawn to one of them before. There was something off about that.
The second thing he knew about her was that she was dreaming of him, too. He felt it in brief, strobe-like glimpses inside her mind.
What is this? Who is he?
Am I losing my mind?
God, I wish this was real.
He’d been trekking through the cathedral forests of northeastern Oregon when he’d started experiencing her. And he’d changed directions, because he couldn’t help himself. She exerted some kind of force on him, pulled him to her. It felt like a long rubber band had been snapped around the two of themF and stretched to its limit. When he tried to go the other way, it was like he just couldn’t stretch that band another inch.
He had to go to her.
And now he was as close as it was safe to get, but he knew he’d keep moving closer. He stood on a winding road, looking down on Portland, and he knew she was there. Somewhere in that mass of human beings who would kill him on sight if they found out what he was. But he didn’t care. He had to get to her. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do once he did. But he had to get to Charlie.
He pulled up his hoodie and headed into the forest to seek shelter. Dawn was calling. But when he woke tonight, he was going into that city. Maybe if he kept his head down and his mind open, he could get to her before the humans got to him.
# # #
Charlotte O’Malley caught a glimpse of the morning news’s nonstop media coverage of what was being called The Bloodbath of 2014. The story even had its own graphic—the word “Bloodbath” in a scarlet font that appeared to be dripping. It had been a week since the bodies of seven people had been found in and around Portland, bloodless, with twin fang-sized holes in their necks. It was a deliciously gruesome story that was just what she needed to distract her from her...issues.
Namely a dream lover who was...well, haunting her. Making love to a phantom all night every night wasn’t exactly restful. She was exhausted and frankly, feeling like hell lately.
Charlie’s mother was in a state of panic about the circles under her eyes. But if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. Trish lived in a constant state of fear for her only daughter and hovered to the point of near suffocation. All of which added motivation to Charlie’s goal: get her own apartment before she turned 21 in a few weeks.
She glanced at the clock. Still twenty minutes before she had to leave for her job at the local Rent-A-Center. Plunking her ass onto the sofa, she reached for her coffee mug and thumbed up the volume.
“None of the seven vampires responsible for these slayings survived our tactical team’s raid,” said a man whose face was as saggy as a bulldog’s. The text at the bottom of the screen identified him as Commandant Barnaby Crowe of the DPI. He had expressive brown eyes that seemed sincere, and he sat at the news desk across from morning show anchor and American cutie pie Sherri-with-an-i Jarrard.
“With all due respect, Commandant,” Sherri said, “authorities assured the American people three years ago that vampire-kind had been wiped out. Obviously, that was untrue.”
“Obviously,” he replied, his eyes as steady as his voice. “If we missed even one, that was one too many. I hope the bleeding hearts bemoaning the extermination of a race we know nothing about” (in derogative falsetto) “will pay attention. They propagate like rats. But they’re predators. And humanity is the
ir prey. This is a matter of self-preservation, Sherri. It’s us or them.”
Sherri Jarrard kept her poker face intact, providing her eager viewers no clue where she stood on the issue. “The autopsy reports on the victims, which the government released to the press just this morning, show that every one of them shared a rare blood antigen called Belladonna.”
Charlie sat up straighter. Wait a minute, did she just say Belladonna? Hell, I have that!
Sherri was still talking, though. “This is the same trait shared by people who claim to have been used as bait in a black ops plot to lure vampires in for the slaughter at the conclusion of the war of twenty-eleven.”
Commandant Crowe nodded firmly. “We had a rogue agent trying to run his own show back then. He went too far. But the truth of the matter is that if there are any surviving vampires out there, then anyone with the Belladonna Antigen is in grave danger. They are the Undead’s favorite...food.” He thinned his lips and lowered his head a little, as if his words were almost unspeakable.
“Holy shit,” Charlie muttered. “Hey, Mom?”
I shouldn’t tell her. She’s gonna freak.
“What is the government doing to protect these individuals?” the anchor asked.
Commandant Crowe lifted his head, looked her dead in the eye. “First, Sherri, know that this attack was an isolated incident. We have no evidence that there are any other vampires still in existence. Secondly, I must remind you that the United States government made a promise to the few thousand citizens with the Belladonna Antigen, that they would never again be monitored without their knowledge. We do have plans in place to protect those who ask for it, but participation is entirely voluntary. We’ve reached out to all of those that we know of to offer our assistance. And obviously, I can’t tell you what that assistance will entail. The enemy could be listening.”
“If there are any left. Which you’ve just assured me isn’t likely.”
Three Witches and a Zombie Page 31
