Frizz nodded. “Everyone here is a witness that you refused.”
“Back away.” The medic didn’t move fast enough and Eris shouted, “Get the fuck back!”
Nana crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the floor. She looked as scared and frail as ever I had seen her, but her eyes were defiant. “I know you’ve been shot, Eris, but that’s enough of that f-word.”
I lit the black candle and placed it on the tray. I took the last Baggie from the box and sprinkled comfrey and patchouli on the black dragon, following its coiled body with a trail of the herbs. It smelled good. Earthy.
That was when I felt Menessos rise, far away in Cleveland. Wholeness surrounded me, and I took it as a good omen.
“I invoke the authority of Saturn,” Eris said. I repeated it. “Where the crossroads meet, where the path is chosen.”
I stilled. Crossroads.
Hecate.
“Where the crossroads meet, where the path is chosen,” she repeated.
I said the words.
Taking up the shiny hematite, I dipped it in the Dragon’s Blood oil and followed the lines of the dragon as Eris murmured, “Saturn, planet named for the Roman god of harvest, with a sickle in his mighty hands … hear me …”
Hecate also carried a sickle.
I gazed at the dragon tattoo.
And Hecate’s chariot is drawn by dragons.
She continued, “You are also the god of the golden ages in history. A golden age is coming. A golden age is coming.”
I knew that, astrologically, the planet we called Saturn was ruled by Capricorn, and together they symbolized the settling of accounts. What we were doing here, the unlocking of Johnny’s tattoos and seeing the penance my mother was suffering … it definitely seemed more like karmic comeuppance than a golden age.
“Help me stand,” Eris said to Zhan.
“That’s not a good idea,” my sentinel answered.
Eris dropped the athame. “Do it anyway.”
Zhan knocked the dagger spinning onto my side of the circle. I helped her get my mother onto her feet. She was weak, moaning, and leaned heavily on the table with her left arm. Zhan stood behind her, steadying her.
“The hematite.” Eris held her shaking left hand out to me. When I gave it to her, she placed it on the dragon’s mouth, then grabbed at her right hand to maneuver it. She cried out and ended with “Help me.”
“Ma’am, really—” the medic began.
Nana grabbed the EMT’s elbow. “Zip it. And keep it zipped.”
Zhan assisted in getting Eris’s right hand to rest upon the stone and the dragon’s gaping maw. My mother held her right hand in place with her left. Staring down at the now-covered dragon’s head, I could guess how it would bite at her. Under her left hand, the fingers of her right were darkening.
Eris’s knees buckled but Zhan held her firm.
“Mother …” I said.
“Help me,” she said. “Hold my hands there no matter what.”
I put my hands atop hers, fingers threaded across her knuckles and heels of my hands resting on Johnny.
She repeated, “No matter what.”
“Got it.”
“Dragon! Master of elements,
here is divinity!
Saturn! Power, luck, and
wisdom for infinity!
Restore to him what I stole!
Restore him, make him whole!”
She repeated the last two lines over and over.
Little by little, the room darkened, or at least it did inside the circle. It wasn’t dimming because the sun had set. This darkness seemed to saturate everything with a damp chill. Even my clothes were weighted, heavy on my body. Wind swirled at the edge of the circle, faster and faster until it roared. Yet the barest of breezes caressed us. The candle flames were unhindered. The howling of dogs filled my ears as if a pack of wild hounds surrounded me, and the circle’s edges darkened.
“And there be no time,” Eris whispered. “Between the worlds are we.” She shut her eyes tight.
“Crown and brow, throat and heart
Solar plexus, sacral, base.
I free you from the art
And end that magic embrace.
That union is erased.
That union is erased.
That union is erased.
Unleash him from this cage!
Unleash his golden age!”
The whirlwind of the circle spat at us, rumbled and thundered at us.
The black dragon became real under our hands. Its body twisted around our arms, tangling and entwining us. The scales were rough and sharp, the cordlike muscles underneath bulged and squeezed.
Eris whimpered pitifully.
When the claws embedded in her left arm, a strangled scream percolated up her throat as if she were trying with all her might to keep it down. At the sound, the claws jerked, tearing the flesh until rivulets of her blood ran down her forearm.
Beneath us, Johnny stirred, moaned.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
I stared at her. Her eyes were clenched shut, a rictus of pain marring her features. She was asking this of Johnny. But I couldn’t ignore the echo in my memory of Amenemhab saying, Sometimes only forgiveness will do.
Her words repeated, becoming a miserable, begging chant.
A dark figure stepped from the vortex swirling the circle’s edge, and the aroma of raisin and currant cakes filled the circle. A cloaked figure with a sickle. That scent. I recognized Her wrinkled hands on the staff.
Hecate.
Her face was shrouded, hidden. She made no move but to bear witness.
“Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,” Eris continued.
I waited.
“Forgive me, forgive me.”
And waited.
Forgive her, Red.
Johnny’s voice!
Yes. Me. Forgive her already, he said.
Me? I thought back.
I already did. If we’re still here …
But this isn’t about me! I swallowed. Hard. I looked from Hecate to my mother and back again. It can’t be. I have no bearing on the breaking of this spell. I wasn’t there when it was created.
“Once, he sacrificed for her. Now she will sacrifice for him,” the hooded figure said, walking the circle counter-clockwise, crossing behind my mother and continuing around to stop behind me. “But you are here now, with me in the place of Time Eternal,” Hecate spoke in her ancient but ageless voice, “in contact with the witch and the one who bears the spell. You have spoken the words. You have participated. And to achieve this purpose, you, too, must sacrifice something.”
I understood.
In my hour of need, I’d asked Johnny to give a piece of his soul to me and another to Menessos. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But he had bravely given. For me. Now I was being asked to relinquish a piece of myself for him, a piece just as important because it had shaped and molded me. It made me who I am.
But now that you know that, do you still need to cling to it? Johnny asked.
It was more complicated than he knew. He was aware that she had rejected me, abandoning me with Nana. But he didn’t know that she had gone on and, apparently, borne a child she then kept and cared for.
“How could you leave me and start your life over as if I’d never existed?”
My mother’s visage of pain faded somewhat and her eyes opened. Mouth gaping, she stared at me, then beyond me to the goddess with the sickle at my back.
“Did you hate me? Were you running from me?”
Eris made no effort to answer. The dragon jerked its claws again, making the tears in her flesh a little longer. She screamed.
“How could you go on and never come back for me?” My tears dripped from my chin onto our hands.
“I made a terrible mistake, Persephone.” Tears streaked her cheeks, too. “I wanted someone to make me feel important.”
“Didn’t I make you feel important? All I wanted to do was m
ake you happy!”
“The responsibility was overwhelming. I wanted … I wanted to matter to an adult. Being an unwed mother meant I had baggage. Persephone,” she sobbed, “that was so wrong, I know that now, but I didn’t then. That’s how I felt then. When Larry found out I was pregnant he threatened to leave. Until he found out it was a boy. His son. He stayed because it was a son.”
“Why didn’t you come for me if you had a perfect family going on?”
“Perfect? Perfect? We traveled like gypsies. You had stability with Nana. You had clothes and a bed and food. We had a horse trailer. We slept in the hay. I wanted you to have better than that.”
Looking at our hands, at the blood and tears and the darkening flesh of her right hand, I thought, Excuses.
“I left Lance, too.”
At that, I focused on her sharply.
“When Larry got sent up, I had nothing—not even the hay to sleep in, and I had a child to feed. I left him with that woman I told you about, who had taught me to tattoo. I checked into that hotel with everything I owned in a backpack … and some downers. I intended to kill myself, Persephone. I got drunk, thinking I’d go back to the room, take the pills, pass out, and never wake up.”
I was horrified.
“That was when he showed up. The man who offered me enough money to buy a new life for me and Lance. I’d never had a shot at independence before. I took it, and damn it, Persephone, I don’t regret it. I grieve over what I did to the boy … this man. My only chance was in his loss. I’ve learned so much since then, about life, about myself. I’ll give him back everything if I can. I owe him that and more. I’m doing this for him, because he deserves it, but I’m doing it for me, too. My conscience will finally be clear. And since you want me to do this, I’m doing it for you as well. I pray to the Lord and Lady that you will give me a chance to show you … to show you how sorry I am.”
Sorry. She said she was sorry.
Hecate gripped my shoulder firmly, anchoring me.
Here it was again. A choice. Do the right thing for the right reason. But what was the right reason? Justice? Family? It was just like the situation with Beverley. Both were noble causes worth fighting for. Both hinged on me. What did I want? I could have justice for my past. Or I could have a family to lean on in the future. A family that might let me down. It was a risk.
Good fighters know when to stop fighting, Johnny said.
I took as deep a breath as my lungs would allow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I forgive you, Mother.”
Anger, resentment, pain, and anguish hardened on my skin like a thin film. I expelled the rest of my breath away, and all of that film cracked, flaked off, and fluttered away from me. I was free of all of it.
Sometimes only forgiveness will do.
The dragon released Eris, flipped and uncoiled its body, sinking back into Johnny’s flesh as it had been. Hecate’s touch faded away from me. She strolled back into the vortex, disappearing and taking the darkness of the circle, the wind, and howling dogs with Her.
Johnny stirred again. I lifted my hands; without pressure on Eris’s hands, both dropped to her sides—the right hand completely dark. The hematite tumbled to the floor.
I took up the athame and gestured the tip at the circle edge. “I cut now a door.” To my mother I said, “Go.”
Zhan took my mother out through the space.
While I completed the ritual, thanking the deities, releasing the watchtowers, and taking up the circle, the paramedics put Eris on a gurney and strapped her down, then left.
Johnny sat up and seized me in an embrace. “I am so proud of you.”
I squeezed him tight. “How do you feel?”
“Tingly. Weird.” Then he stiffened, staring at the mangled carcass on the floor. “Who was it?”
I pointed to the rings.
Between the police taking statements and the arrival of Arcane Ink Emporium’s other employees—one of whom showed up for the evening shift and called the rest when he learned what had happened—the next few hours weren’t boring.
Nana made a call to Celia, who was delighted to have Beverley for another night.
I’d wanted to ask Johnny about the spell, about how he felt, but the wæres and Omori had commandeered him, citing that their world was about to be rocked in an unprecedented way. Johnny had simply said, “Yup. Rock is what I do.”
The AIE employees set about getting a new door put on their boss’s apartment. Once the police were done gathering statements, Zhan drove Lance, Nana, and me to the hospital following my brother’s directions.
I can’t believe I have a brother.
He sat up front. I observed him the entire way. He was worried about her, we all were, but I was judging him by other standards.
He’d responded to the initial threat by having his client hold the tattooing mechanism and keep it running so he could get the jump on Johnny. Had to respect the intelligence that had taken. And the courage.
“How old are you, Lance?”
“Eighteen. Why?”
“You look older,” I said.
The awkward silence that followed was broken by Nana. “You’ll graduate this year, then?”
“I took advanced courses and graduated last year. I go to the Art Institute now.”
By the time we’d arrived at UPMC Mercy, parked, and found where we needed to be, we were told that Eris was in surgery. We waited for about an hour, then I sought out the vending machines. I bought sodas and goodies that I placed on the coffee table in our midst. No one touched them. There didn’t seem to be anything to talk about. Interrogating Lance would be rude and insensitive and he wasn’t in any shape to question us.
After another hour had passed, I had to take a walk around the hospital just for something to do. I ended up in another waiting area, one with big windows and a view across the parking lot and beyond the highway to the river.
“Ever since she saw you on TV, she’s been talking about you a lot. She told me a long time ago I had an older half-sister who lived with her mother. Also made it clear she had no contact with you or her. Said it was for the best. Then she saw you with the vampire.”
Over my shoulder I saw Lance, arms crossed and holding himself. He was so young. Overwhelmed. On TV, emergency surgeries are wrapped up by the end of the episode. Waiting like this was interminable.
I should have guessed he was Eris’s son. The movies by the DVD player screamed “young man” more than “mid-life crisis.” I doubted now that there was a trucker boyfriend who’d be “home” later in the week. “I don’t know what to say.”
“She was nearly broken when she returned from Ohio a few days ago.” He walked over and stood beside me. We stared out the window together. “Say you’ll give her a chance. It’s all she wants.”
I faced him; he mirrored me. My little brother.
“My life is … complicated at best.”
“She doesn’t care. She just wants to make things right with you.” He frowned. “The guilt is eating at her. And now … after this, if you don’t …” He didn’t finish.
I wrapped him in my arms.
His arms lifted in hesitant jerks, then surrounded me and, for a long minute, he gave up the tears he’d been fighting. He sniffled and eased away. “I hate crying.”
“Must be a family trait.”
He found a box of tissues beside a stack of magazines on a coffee table. After pulling a few he blew his nose. He rejoined me at the window.
“Why does she call you ‘bitch boy’?”
He gave a half-laugh. “When I enrolled at the college I wanted to live in a dorm. She said that as long as she’s paying for my classes and books, I had to live at home. I told her I didn’t want people to think I was a bitch boy. She didn’t know what it meant. I told her it was a rich kid, spoiled, who lives with his mom. She thought that was funny and … it kind of stuck after that.” He drew a shaky breath. “Will you give her a chance?”
The
y hadn’t seen or heard what was said while Hecate was present. So I told him, “I will.”
When the surgery was concluded, a nurse ushered us into a private waiting room. “The doctor will be in shortly.” He arrived minutes later, his grave expression cluing me in that this was going to be bad. “Ms. Alcmedi came through the surgery fine and has been taken to the recovery area. However, I have some unfortunate news.”
The room was silent as we each held our breath.
“I was told that the emergency crew was forced to wait some fifteen or twenty minutes before Ms. Alcmedi agreed to be transported.”
“That’s correct,” I said softly, thinking of how dark her hand had been.
“The bullet that entered her shoulder”—he touched the spot on his own shoulder to indicate—“transected the medial cord of the brachial plexus—”
“In English?” Nana demanded.
He reworded, unflustered. “The nerves were severed. The brachial artery was also severed. There was no blood flow in her arm for the time that it took for the medics to arrive, none while they waited, none while they transported her here.”
“What are you saying?” Lance was rigid, his voice tight.
“The arm was dead, son.”
Hecate’s words haunted my memory: Now she will sacrifice for him.
The doctor continued, “We couldn’t save it … we removed it.”
I was stunned. Zhan maneuvered Nana into a chair before her knees gave. Lance had paled again.
“She will be moved to her room in an hour—”
“Can we see her then?” Lance’s voice cracked as he cut the doctor off. He was in tears again.
The doctor continued directly to Lance, conveying sincere pity, and I could tell he hated this part of his job. “For now we’re going to keep her sedated. She’s not going to be awake tonight.” He paused, his own voice thickening. “Go home and get some rest.”
Through gritted teeth Lance declared, “I’m not leaving.”
The doctor left.
“I can’t leave her,” he said. “I’m all she’s got. She wouldn’t leave me and … she’s all I’ve got.”
I put my arm around Lance’s shoulder. “No, she’s not.”
We stayed until Eris was moved from the recovery area to her room. Seeing her all bandaged up, with tubes and an IV, was terrible.
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