by Koboah, A D
Chapter Twenty Five
At first I was only aware of the cold, an unforgiving chill deep within my bones, spreading outward to the very tips of my toes. Then, like a veil slowly lifting, I became aware of blinding whiteness and a pair of scuffed brown men’s boots, my boots, immersed in soft snow. The boots were far too big, making my legs look like brown stalks. And no wonder I was so cold for I wore only a ragged blue dress that was too small and had only an old moth-eaten blanket around my shoulders.
Something else was different. No, not different, changed. And when I brought my hands up to my face I saw what it was. These were not the wrinkled hands of an old woman. These were the hands of a girl. Exalted, I touched the smooth, supple skin of my face and almost wept.
I was young again. But how? And where was I?
Teeth chattering, my feet feeling like chunks of ice, I turned around slowly, and when I saw the restored mansion, our mansion, looming before me, I felt an unrestrained joy that was wild, bold and mine. Mine.
And as the faint light of a wintery dawn bled into view, it all slowly began to come back to me. The weeks searching for the right herbs and then preparing them according to the instructions Mama had left for me. Watching a new day break over the oak trees as I tried to gather the courage to begin a journey I wasn’t sure I would have the strength to complete. And that horrifying moment when the last of the potion passed my lips and I felt myself being dragged into a sleep that locked tight around me like a vice.
When I woke up in the dark and began to scream and struggle against the wooden coffin, my cries muffled under six feet of earth, I thought I would go mad. And I would have succumbed to my terror had it not been for Mama’s soothing presence reminding me of what I needed to say and do to call forth the spirit within the chapel. Gradually, I was able to rein in my panic for long enough to harness my power, the power of which I had only been vaguely aware my whole life, and then I was standing outside the chapel.
At last I came face to face with the evil that had sought possession of Mama’s soul. It stood before me in a ghastly rendition of my younger form under a sky bleached of colour and substance. Everything in this place it inhabited was devoid of colour and light, only shadows seemed to flourish here, shadows and undulating cycles of its rage, loneliness and hatred for the living. But most of all, for Avery. I understood now that the vampire who had turned Avery had spent years conjuring up this entity with the blood of many, and had succeeded in bringing it to this place, a place which would eventually be its gateway into the world of the living. That vampire had been close to bringing it over into the body of a living being when Avery fought her and set the chapel alight, leaving the evil spirit trapped in this netherworld of shadow.
I fought to control my fear and revulsion as it slunk toward me, its laughter a piercing victory that stung and angered me.
It thought it had won. It thought it finally had what it had coveted for centuries: a body, and not just that of an ordinary woman, but the body of a powerful seer with which it could wreak unthinkable destruction. But like Mama and Avery, this wretched evil had underestimated my strength. It would never take over my spirit, as I would always be too strong. My power, the power of a witch, lay in the ability to not only summon spirits and unseen forces, but to bend them to her will. This ancient evil was no different and I was able to easily subdue it and use its power to do my bidding.
Now I was here. Cold, weak, but here. And my years of pain and suffering would soon come to an end because he was coming.
I could barely contain my tears as I stood there waiting for him, those few minutes in the cold seeming longer and much harder to bear than the years I had spent pining for him. But finally I saw a dark shape standing motionless in the endless ocean of white snow.
As I looked at him my elation faded, and then crept away, because although he could see me clearly with his heightened supernatural senses, he didn’t make a move toward me. He just stood there, tall, regal, and out of reach. For a moment, I was distraught and uncertain. My whole purpose for being here, all I had endured over the last forty years, and the hell I had gone through to bring myself to him was now being called into question. Had I made a mistake in thinking he wanted me to return to him?
I received no answer to that question, only the silence of a winter dawn and the being I loved standing motionless beneath a mournful winter sky.
After what seemed like an eternity of uncertainty, I reached out a trembling hand and took a step forward. Immediately, he appeared before me and grasped my outstretched hand, confusion and turmoil displayed across his face. I also saw hope, hesitant hope, but it was there in his soft blue eyes.
“Luna? Is it really you?”
“Yes,” I said reaching up and touching his face. “Yes, Avery.”
He was even more beautiful than I remembered and now that I was once more under the light of his loving gaze, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how I had survived the last four decades without him.
Overwhelmed with happiness and with tears sliding down my frozen cheeks, I folded myself into his arms and lay my head against his chest as he brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it. All my fears vanished and I wondered why I had ever doubted his love for me. It was in his eyes, in his voice, and the way he held onto my hand. He would never stop loving me.
“How? How is this possible?” he asked, his voice trembling with emotion.
“Magic. Powerful magic. Mine, Mama’s and...and the spirit from the chapel.”
I felt him stiffen and gently, he tilted my face up so he could peer into my eyes. “You summoned it? Was that wise?”
I pulled away from him sharply, the anger I had been harbouring against him for the past forty years rising up unbidden. “No, Avery. It ain’t wise. But what else was I gonna do? You’s able to walk away from me but I ain’t never gonna give you up. Never! I thought I’s gonna die without ever seeing you again but I still ain’t give up on you.”
“Please, don’t be angry with me, Luna. I had to do it. In the chapel, when they had me bound and I thought I was going to die at sunset, the demon spoke to me. It said it would save my life, but in exchange it wanted you. It wanted me to make you into what I am because it knew that once the lust for blood became a part of you, it would be easier for the spirit to take over your soul. If I kept you with me I would have done the unthinkable and turned you into a vampire even though it would mean giving you up to evil. And I couldn’t do that to you, Luna.”
“I...I know. I know why you done it. But you shoulda had faith in me. I’s stronger than that thing. I always was.” I forced the anger from my voice. “With you by my side I’s strong enough for anything.”
“I know that now,” he said reaching for me, and I let myself be drawn back into his arms.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “Let me get you—”
“N-no,” I said even though my teeth were chattering so hard that I was finding it difficult to speak.
“I don’t know how much time I has but I wants the last thing I see to be this place so’s I can remember them days waiting here for you at sundown. But...but there be another reason why I’s come. I can’t leave you, Avery so I has to ask something of you. Something I ain’t sure you’s gonna be able to do.”
“Anything. Ask anything of me and I will do it.”
“I wants you to make me into what you is, but there’s something you needs to know first. The spirit in the chapel, it give me my youth but it hates us and so I don’t be knowing if what it promised be the truth. If you trys to change me I...I might not live and if I does, I might be an old woman again. I wants you to choose and if you says no, I...I can accept it ’cause I at least got to lay my eyes on you one last time.”
“Oh, Luna. Of course I will. I may have had the strength to walk away from you forty years ago but that strength has been broken by the pain of living without you. I cannot let you go a second time.”
“But I mightn’t stay like this.�
�
The thought of losing my youth was a harrowing one, for how could he continue to love me if I were an old, wrinkled hag for all eternity?
“Your beauty never left you, Luna. I saw you change over the years and I loved all that I saw.” As he spoke, he lightly traced his fingers along my face. “I loved the lines around your eyes from laughing, mostly at Mary. And these ones across your brow from worrying about little Dembi. I also loved watching your body grow softer and your bosom heavy from giving sustenance to your own children, no one else’s. All these changes were signs of a full, happy life. It was the only thing that made it possible to stay away, the knowledge that if I hadn’t let you go, you wouldn’t have had a family. You are beautiful, Luna. Not even time can take that away from you.”
I let the tears of relief flow freely and again, I wondered why I had ever doubted him and his love for me.
“There be just one other thing that I wants from you, Avery. I’s doing this ’cause I wants to be with you forever. So you has to promise that you ain’t never gonna leave me again. You has to promise, Avery, ’cause I ain’t gonna let you do that to me a second time.”
I knew there was an echo of that anger in my voice but it was hard to keep it hidden because the thought of being separated from him again tore too sharply at my wounded psyche.
“Nothing will ever keep us apart again.”
So that is how I came back to him. But we still had one last hurdle and that was whether or not I would survive the change, and if I did, would I wake up a beautiful young girl or an old woman? But nothing could make me turn back now that a life with Avery was once more within my grasp.
So I lay in the newly redecorated red velvet bedroom in one of the gowns he had bought for me all those years ago, my face turned to the window as I bid the light of day a final farewell.
He made sure I felt no pain when he bit into my neck and the last of my strength began to fade away as the blood drained out of me. I felt a little of that strength return when I drank his blood but I was still weak and time was running out fast for me.
The final moment had come and when he looked down at me with traces of blood on his lips and placed both hands on the sides of my head, he hesitated.
I reached up and wiped away the tears that were trailing a silvery path down his cheek. He was hesitating because he had to kill me to begin the transformation and I started to panic slightly at the realisation that I had maybe asked for too much from him. But if he didn’t go through with this, I would die anyway.
“Avery, you has to hurry,” I said, my voice no more than a whisper.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments and when he opened them again, he looked completely broken. “Just...just make sure you come back to me, Luna.”
“Avery, even if this don’t work, I...I’s gonna find a way back to you. I always gonna find a way back to you.”
He kissed me carefully on the forehead, his grip on the sides of my head tightening. The last thing I saw was the haunting agony in his eyes, and then nothing.
***
When I woke up I knew immediately that I must have died and gone to Heaven because although I was lying in the red velvet room at the mansion, it was filled with flowers. Everything around me looked and felt different. The dress I wore was so soft and luxurious against my skin; it was as if I could feel the caress of every individual strand of the fabric. The colour was the most intense red I had ever seen. It shimmered softly under the lamplight, which was no longer a soft amber but a vibrant yellow that made the room look as if it were awash with sunlight. Everything in the room seemed to have hidden layers I could unearth simply by looking hard enough. The only thing wrong was the pain, a burning ache radiating from my bones and unlike anything I had ever felt before. I was also plagued with a hunger and thirst that seemed to eat away at my very soul.
I got out of bed, marvelling at how light my body and movements were. When I went to the mirror, a shock awaited me. I expected for a moment to see myself as I had been before Mama’s potion. Although I was young again, I had never seen myself like this before. My skin was completely breathtaking. If there was such a thing as brown gold, then I was looking at it. And my eyes were like a dark prism of so many different colours hidden within the deep brown. The longer I looked at myself in this new form, the more it dawned on me that my outer appearance hadn’t actually changed. It was my vision that had changed, for I no longer had the vision of a human being, but that of a vampire. I tried to remember what I used to see whenever I looked in the mirror and the effect began to lessen even though it was all still slightly heightened. It seemed I could command what I saw, just as I could control the things that I could hear. The house, which had always been as silent as a church, was so noisy. Its creaks, groans and sighs were like an eternal lament and even the sound of a spider in the corner spinning its web had become a part of that mournful symphony. Outside I could hear the heartbeat of some woodland creature and the sounds it made as it foraged for food. I could also hear a million insects, their movements like that of a small army. It was all a beautiful chorus that I could amplify or dim with a mere thought.
I found myself drawn to another noise from outside, some distance from the house and realised that it was footsteps, a man’s footsteps. They were like the sound of a heartbeat to me. My heart sang with joy and it was almost enough to drown out that awful ache and thirst. Those footsteps were Avery’s and he was coming back home. I focused on him and miraculously, although I was still in my room, my mind was somewhere else entirely, in a vast domain of rooms and doorways and sometimes large stretches of unfilled space.
I knew I was in Avery’s mind because everything I saw in those rooms invariably seemed to lead back to me. Even the memories of his life before he came to America were coloured with his impressions of what I would think and feel about the person he had been back then. But I couldn’t help focusing on those years he had spent alone in the wilderness before he’d found me. There were so many of them, stretching forth like a dry, arid desert. Seeing those lonely years combined, along with the ones that had followed after he’d let me go eased some of the anger I had harboured for most of my life. He had suffered so much and so had I. But those days had finally come to an end for both of us.
He was on the way back to the mansion with gifts for me. My beautiful, thoughtful Avery. He was mine now until the end of time.
I left the room and hurried out of the house toward the sound of his footsteps.
One chapter of my life had come to an end and another was just beginning. I was a daughter of the moon now and I gladly cast off my old life along with its fears as I ran to the man I loved.
Chapter Twenty Six
Atlanta 2011
I put the journal down and sat staring at the wall for a few minutes. My mind was ablaze with images of Luna and Avery and I had no doubt that what I had read was real. Luna and Avery had existed and they were still out there somewhere.
But behind the exhilaration I felt at my extraordinary discovery lay a quiet anguish and a feeling of intense foreboding. Not wanting to acknowledge its existence, I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to search the internet for information. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for and for a few minutes I could only sit and stare at the computer screen in amazement, an icy chill running up my spine. By the time I shook myself from my awestruck reverie and printed out what I wanted, the sky had begun to lighten and I could already see the sun making its ascent over the horizon.
At the sight of the sunrise my thoughts turned briefly back to Luna alone in the crumbling mansion and her feelings of dismay at the coming of the sun and another day separated from Avery. I also saw her as the powerful vampire retreating from the dawn with her beloved, knowing that nothing would ever keep them apart again. I realised that in just one night, I had completely fallen in love with those two beings and I knew I wouldn’t rest until I had found them.
Needing to share my life-changing di
scovery with someone, I ran upstairs to my aunt’s room, even though I knew she wouldn’t appreciate being woken up so early, especially after such a late night.
My hand was shaking as I gently shook her awake.
“Auntie,” I said softly.
She woke with a start, her arms flailing as she looked around in sleepy alarm. When her gaze fell on me she sank back down onto the pillows, her dreadlocks creating a dark halo around her delicate heart-shaped face.
“Dallas?” she mumbled, her eyelids already beginning to close.
“I found Luna’s journal. She’s real and so is Avery.”
“Luna’s journal? What are you talking about?”
Her eyes were still closed and I knew she would be asleep in a few seconds if I let her so I sat down heavily on the bed. Her eyelids opened to thin slits.
“Luna. She was real. We’re her descendents. We’re even psychic like she was. Look. I found this online. It’s the chapel.”
I pulled out the photograph I had found and gave it to her. She yawned and put it on the bed without even looking at it. I noticed her eyelids beginning to droop again so I spoke quickly.
“I’ve seen the chapel before. I’ve been dreaming about it for years. And yesterday something odd happened with this girl. I didn’t understand it at first but now I do. They were here. They were here in Atlanta.”
She was wide awake all of a sudden and propped up on her elbows, her almond-shaped eyes fixed on mine in a penetrating stare.
“Forget about the journal, Dallas.” It wasn’t like her to be this serious. “And stay away from that chapel.”
I looked down, upset by the fact that she couldn’t see how important all of this was to me, to all of us Marshalls. I was quiet for a few moments as I tried to steady the heavy swell of disappointment.
