My mo-Ash’s words came back to me then; the words she told me when she sent me away.
Morgan Montgomery. He’s a good man.
The others seemed more confused than shocked about what Echo had said. Dr. Static, actually looking up from his book, said, “She doesn’t have a daughter.”
When he saw the way they were silently staring at each other though, he added,” Does she?”
“We do,” she answered and, though I still couldn’t see her, I heard the tears in her voice. “The miscarriage I had fourteen years ago-I had the baby. She’s a Seer. The tower is here, in Weathersby. It’s hidden from you, of course, as is protocol. Then again, I suppose things like protocol don’t matter to Echo anymore; even if it means protecting our daughter.”
“You had a Seer,” Dr. Static mumbled dumbfounded. ”A Seer has lived here all these years. I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Dahlia answered. “Echo should know better than anyone why I’m acting this way. How many nights did our daughter wake up in cold sweats envisioning the horrors the Bloodmoon would do to this world? How many times did I wipe away her tears and tell her that we’d stop it? You promised her, Echo. You promised our daughter that you wouldn’t let this happen. And here it is, right in your hands. Stop this. Stop Cresta; for the world, for our daughter.”
Echo was quiet. I could only see the back of his head, the way his ears pricked when she mentioned their daughter. What was he thinking? What was his expression like? Had Dahlia just convinced him to turn me over to the Council and, if she had, would anybody here be able to stop him?
“Here!” Dr. Static’s voice tore through the silence like a bull destroying everything in its path. “I knew it was here somewhere!”
Neither Echo nor Dahlia answered him and, though I still couldn’t see anything but the Echo and Casper barrier before me, I imagined they were still staring at each other, still thinking about how their lives had gotten to this point. They mustn’t have even looked at Dr. Static, because he shouted again. “Did you hear me? I said I found it!”
“What in fate’s hand are you screaming about?” Dahlia hissed at him.
“The answer. The piece of the prophecy that can fix all this.”
My heart jumped at those words. I broke through Casper, then Echo, and made my way toward him. His thin face bobbed up and down slightly as his read, the brittle lines of his jaw flexing as he silently mouthed the words.
“There is no way to stop this,” Dahlia persisted. “It’s a fixed point. Only death changes a fixed point.”
“Right!” He looked up, though not necessarily at her. His eyes, as well as his index finger, moved around the room like one of those blinking red eyed cameras that were everywhere in Chicago but absolutely nowhere in Crestview. “There’s no way to stop the Bloodmoon outside of killing her, but there is a way to prove Cresta isn’t her.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Dahlia seemed more agitated than ever. “The proof is here in piles. It’s undeniable.”
“Let him talk!” Owen said in a tone that at once startled me and sent jolts of excited electricity through my chest.
“Thank you, my boy,” he grinned and then let his wandering finder fall onto one of the open pages. “Prophecies about the Bloodmoon are countless. We learn about them at birth. They’re our bedtime stories. She’ll rip apart the world. She’ll effectively end the human race. Cities, countries, entire civilizations will fall because she’s just that much of a bitch.”
“You’re not helping,” I coughed.
“Right. My point is, those are the big ones, the prophecies every Breaker knows. But there are more, many more that only the learned, like me, know of.” He brushed his shoulder in a cocky move that, if my life wasn’t on the line, would have struck me as adorable.
“What gibberish are you spouting, Silas?” If Dahlia was impressed, it didn’t come through in her voice.
That didn’t matter to Dr. Static though. He smiled and read on. “Before the sun meets her sixteenth year, she will have tasted of death’s juices. Her hands will have ceased a heart.”
“I’ve never heard that prophecy before,” Echo answered. I tried to read something into the tone of his voice, but it was a blank sheet.
“That’s why I’m the head of your Prophecy department and you’re-Well, you’re my boss.”
“Make it sound less like Shakespeare,” Casper said. His voice, the way it titled up at the end and cracked, was easy to read. He had always been there for me. The fact that he was here now, willing to stand up to, not only teachers, but super powered teachers, told me everything I needed to know.
“Have you murdered anyone Cresta?” Dr. Static turned to me.
“What?” Of all the crazy things people had asked me in the last few minutes, in the last few weeks, that may have been the craziest.
“Have you murdered anyone? Killed someone? Been responsible for the end of another’s life?”
“Of course not,” I said. “That’s ridiculous. That’s insane. That’s-“
“How we’re going to prove you’re not the Bloodmoon?” Echo smiled now too. I realized they were both in on something I didn’t understand yet. Reading my face, Echo explained it to me. “That prophecy that Dr. Static just read is in the Book of the Fates, which means it has been approved by the Council of Masons and must be abided. It also says that the Bloodmoon, whoever she may be-“He gave Dahlia a withering look. “Will have killed someone before sunrise on her sixteenth birthday. Since you say you haven’t, and you were telling the truth-“ He pointed to his temple and I remembered he was a human lie detector. “That means that, as long as you don’t kill anybody before your next birthday, you can’t be the Bloodmoon. Who your parents are won’t matter. What Allister Leeman thinks won’t matter. The birthmarks on your-er, your leg won’t matter. None of it will matter. You either are the Bloodmoon or you aren’t. There is no almost.”
“Wait,” Dahlia started. “If-“
“No, it makes sense,” Owen butted in. “And since you’ve already said that the Bloodmoon has to have been born on the winter solstice, we only have to wait until then.”
“That’s in five days,” Dr. Static’s smile was huge now. “What do you think Cresta? Can you refrain from murdering someone for the better part of a week?”
Chapter 13
Five Days
FIVE DAYS; THAT’S how long they said I had to go without murdering someone. Seemed easy enough, seeing as how I had spent nearly the last sixteen years effectively not murdering people. And hey, I wasn’t even trying then.
Echo seemed thrilled with the idea when Dr. Static brought it up. He said that I should be sent back to my classes, monitored, and allowed to live as usual (or at least, what passed as usual these days) until after the winter solstice; my apparent birthday and the last day I’d have to spend with the spectre of the Bloodmoon hanging over me. That wasn’t good enough for Dahlia though, doll that she was. Folding her arms, she informed Echo that she wasn’t going to be responsible for teaching and training “the girl who’s going to make us all bleed one day.”
To say she wasn’t a fan would be like saying Scooby Doo liked to snack. She couldn’t get around the facts though. As much as she wanted me gone, wanted to ship me off to the Hourglass and let the Council of Masons deal with me, even if that did mean me ending up with my head on a spike, they were all slaves to their prophecies. And the prophecies said if I didn’t kill someone in the next five days, I wasn’t the Bloodmoon, plain and simple.
To satisfy her though, and to convince her not to bring her information to the Council directly, I was locked in my room.
“It’s just five days,” Echo said before he closed the door to my room. “Besides, it’s for the best. The fewer people you interact with, the less possibility of you killing one of them.”
He meant it as a joke; ‘Look how silly this is’. But it didn’t feel like a joke, especially when he slid the lock beh
ind him. Did they think I was really capable of this, of murdering someone?
The days inched along in my room. The sun came up, went down, and came up again. The only visitors I got at all were the people that came three times a day to bring me food (not that I had much of an appetite), and the lady who came by every night to walk me to the shower. Even though my showers were always at seven in the evening, the hallway between my room and the common area was always empty. Had they told everyone at Weathersby about what they thought I was? Did no one want to look at me? No. They were trying to keep this secret from the Council. I knew enough about high school to know that spreading a secret among a group of teenagers, evolved or not, would be counterproductive.
I tried to sleep a lot, but that wasn’t easy. My mind was constantly racing, and staring at the same four walls with nothing to distract me wasn’t helping.
My mom wasn’t my mom. She was my mom’s best friend. My dad, at least the guy I thought was my dad-Well, he could have been anybody. In reality, I was the product of an illicit affair, a union condemned, and I was surrounded by people who, whether it was a glimmer in the backs of their minds or just an outright belief, thought I was capable of destroying the world.
Not to mention the fact that I had weird superpowers that I was only now beginning to access, and a bad case of the hots for a guy who not only pretended to be someone he wasn’t for the entire length of our relationship, but was also basically engaged to a girl who belonged on the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
Bet no one’s accusing her of destroying the world.
To top it all off, the thing that stung the most, and what really truly kept me awake at night, was how much I missed my mom. She wasn’t my blood. We weren’t even related, and it turned out she had lied to me since the day I was born (which was a full three months earlier than I had originally thought). But in all the ways that counted, in my bones if not my blood, Julie Karr was my mother. God, that hadn’t even been her real name. Ash was her name. Or maybe Ash was her Breaker name and her given name was something else altogether. Things like names didn’t matter though, not anymore. The lies didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The only thing I cared about was that I was a girl trapped in a strange place, surrounded by strange people, and I wanted my mother. I wanted to feel her hands in my hair and hear her tell me everything would be okay. I wanted to wrap my arms around her while she told me that this was all just a bad dream. I wanted her to tell me that I was good, and that there was no way in hell Julie Karr’s daughter could be anything other than whatever she wanted to be; prophecies be damned.
She was dead though, and me, I was all alone.
I asked to see Casper on the third of my five days. They said no. I asked to see Owen. They said no again. I asked to see anyone. I was going crazy looking at the walls and trying not to think abouteverything. Instead of people, they brought me a TV.
It helped for a few hours, but there are only so many Maury paternity test results shows a girl can watch before she loses interest. And it wasn’t long before the loneliness crept back in. I looked out the window a lot that day, watching as the Breakers trained, learned, and went about their routines. From my window, they looked like normal kids, like they could be from any high school in any part of the world, except for one thing. As much as I watched them, and I had a long time to watch them, I never saw any flirting. Sure, they joked, they laughed, they got mad, they got happy, and they fought and made up. But there wasn’t even a shade of anything romantic going on.
In Chicago, and then in Crestview, all people did was kiss. They hooked up, broke up, and switched up all before lunch. That was the way of it. We were teenagers, after all. But here, within the walls of Weathersby, that sort of thing seemed a world away. They didn’t kiss. They barely touched. In all the time I looked at them, I couldn’t catch even one longing glance among them.
Maybe it came with being a Breaker. Maybe, when you knew that your eventual life partner was going to be picked for you based on things you had absolutely no control over and that the way you felt or the things you wanted would mean about as much as spitting into a fire, you just didn’t think about the lovey dovey type stuff. It sure seemed like it would suck the romance out of a situation.
But what about people who did take time to nurture their romantic side? Certainly there was somebody in Weathersby who had at least thought about it? They were evolved, after all, not androids. And what about gay Breakers who didn’t procreate regardless of how potent their DNA was?
I didn’t have the answers for any of this and, judging by my unmoving locked door, I wasn’t going to get them anytime soon. I stared off into the distance, into the empty air where the seer’s tower stood. I still couldn’t see it, but I wondered if she could see me. Was she looking at me right now; one girl in the tower to another?
The sun melted behind the hills, stealing the light from my third day as a willing hostage. When seven o’clock rolled around, and the lady came to guide me to my nightly shower, I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“So, what’s your name?” I asked.
She was older than Dahlia and Echo, probably closer to Dr. Static’s age, with dark pinned back hair, flaxen brown eyes that were too close together, and a pinched off nose that looked as though it had been turned up for about thirty years now. She wore a plain white blouse, a long black skirt, and flat black shoes. Here lips were pressed together, turned down at the ends and, when she looked at me, it seemed as though my question pained her.
“Mulva,” she said flatly, and turned away.
“Oh, that’s a pretty name,” I lied. Scratching my head, I said,” Pretty quiet tonight.”
She didn’t respond.
“So, you been here long, Mulva?”
She sighed. “The specifics of my tenure are none of your business. And ma’am will do just fine.”
She marched through the empty hallway, her feet clapping heavy against the floor.
“Not a fan of me, are you, Mulva?” I let her name stretch on my lips. I never called my mom ma’am. I sure as hell wasn’t starting with this chick.
She stopped and turned toward me. The way she crossed herself with her arms reminded me of Dahlia. In fact, there was a lot about her that was very Dahlia-esque; the way she stood up completely straight, the holier than thou tilt in her voice, the sour expression that seemed tattooed on her face.
“It’s change that I don’t care for, young lady. Change is a mistress of the unknown; bred from a lack of discipline and dangerous at its core. You are change, Cresta Karr. And that makes you extremely dangerous.”
“You know,” I said, staring at her. “You know who I am. Or, who they think I am, I mean.” I inched a little closer, examining her. She didn’t move. She wasn’t giving me an inch. “She told you, didn’t she? What are you, Dahlia’s mother?”
Something like a smile, but colder, danced across the woman’s face. “As I’ve said, my life is none of your business. Though rest assured, Dahlia holds her word in too high a regard to ever go against it, even for the likes of you. If she told you she would keep your secret, then she will.”
“Then how do you know?” I asked. There was no denying it. The look on her face, full of anger and disgust, told me everything I needed to know.
“Because I’m no fool. I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen it all, most things twice. Still, I have never seen the likes of you. An unknown Breaker with unknown abilities; it’s unheard of. And now you’ve been locked away just days from the solstice, anyone with a working brain stem could see what’s going on. Not to mention how much you look like your father. That Blut hair is hard to overlook.”
My fingers instinctively went to my head. Blut hair; did that mean white blond, like mine? Did everyone notice it?
“So you think I’m evil?” The words came from me softly, like a little girl.
“I think all people are evil in one way or another. You’re just a cut above the rest.”
“But I haven’t killed anybody. If I don’t kill anybody by the time the sun comes up on the solstice, I’m not the Bloodmoon. Echo said so.”
“Is that what he told you?” Mulva scoffed. “Prophecies are tricky and troublesome things. They don’t always mean what they say and, even when they do, things never happen the way you expect. Do you really think all of this, the nature of your birth, what happened to you back in that dustbowl town you called home, is just a coincidence? You are the Bloodmoon. You know that just as well as I. And every second you walk this earth is another minute closer to its end. You being here, even locked away as you are, is just tempting fate. “
“You know, back in the real world, we judge people by what they do, not by what they might do,” I said through gritted teeth. Her words had angered me again.
“Then isn’t it a pity that you’re no longer in that real world,” Mulva answered. “You’re a girl now, but one day, you’ll be a monster. If, that is, you’re allowed to live that long.”
“What are you-“
“Your head should be mounted on a spike, young lady; plain and simple. And, if by fate’s hand, I had even a wisp of the power I once did, it would be.”
“And you call me the monster!” I yelled. My words echoed, bouncing down the empty hallway. “Have you ever thought that it was people like you that make the monsters? Maybe if you showed a little compassion, maybe if you treated people like actual human beings instead of chess pieces in some game!”
“What is life if not a game, Bloodmoon? You win or you lose, but you always have to play” Her arms were still folded. Her face was still painted with that bitchy Dahlia expression.
“It’s life, you lunatic,” I said, and then ran.
I didn’t look back at Mulva. She probably thought I was going to try to make a break for it, to try and get out of Weathersby and go out on my own. She’d have loved that, me making good on all the horrible things Dahlia had said about me. I wasn’t having it though. I didn’t have anywhere to go and now, thanks to Mulva’s cutting words, I had something to prove. I slammed the door of my room. Grabbing a chair, I wedged it against the handle so that the door couldn’t be opened from the outside. I might have been trapped in here, but now everyone else was trapped out. I didn’t want anybody coming in, not if they were like Mulva.
Paranormal After Dark Page 375
