Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  “So I’m George and this is Tomas, if anyone’s asking, and we’re just about to break through to the box he’s kept in,” the camera guy said, narrating like he was on one of those cheesy paranormal hunter shows, “but if our spades are anything to go by, this fella’s been cased in iron all these years.”

  David and I exchanged looks, flicking them onto Jason and Lily when they came in.

  “You guys on the call?” Jason asked.

  “Yeah.” We both looked back at the phone.

  Lily sat beside me, taking my hand, and Jason stood by the bed, looking at the screen. We watched as the two men jammed their shovels into the ground, cheering when they struck metal. They jumped into the shallow hole then, and the guy with the camera attached to his head started sweeping the dirt aside to reveal the black matte surface.

  “Who buries their husband in a metal box?” I said.

  “A witch,” said Tomas. “Those Blackworth’s are legends ’round these parts—”

  “All kinds of stories surrounding them,” George said, “even to this day.”

  “They’re still around?” I said.

  “No, but their ghosts are. ’Cept this fella, not if he’s been in iron all these years.”

  “Really?” I looked at David, about to call bullshit, when it occurred to me that I often saw ghosts, so the likelihood of evil ghosts existing was actually quite high.

  “Anyhoo,” Tomas said, appearing in our line of sight with a big grin and a broken iron lock, “I just cracked this baby open, so let’s jump this evil bugger’s dusty old bones, yeah?”

  “Let’s hope there’s no curse remnants that’ll kill us when we open it,” George said.

  “Yeah, like that movie.” Tomas bent to look in the camera, winking.

  “Which movie?”

  “You know, that one.”

  “Mate, there are a hundred movies where that happens.” George kicked Tomas in the butt as he bent over. “Just open the damn coffin.”

  They stood back to lift the lid, dirt falling away like rocks in an avalanche, the rest of us watching on, breathless. I had to hope this was what we’d been searching for, but my heart wouldn’t grasp that hope yet, not after being so close before. As the puffs of dirt cleared and the men stood back, all eyes went to the right hand of the skeleton.

  “Where is it?” I grabbed the phone and practically pressed my nose to it.

  “Missing,” Jason stated the obvious.

  “Where would it go? Who would take a dead guy’s hand?” I asked, panicking. What now? We were so close. How could it all just be ripped away from me again?

  “Just hang on a sec,” George said, bending down to reach into the coffin. He dug around a bit, lifting the bones, the old fabric of Blackworth’s clothes flaking away into powder. The image on the screen moved from side to side then as he shook his head. “Nup. Sorry. Thought it might be stuffed under him, but… nothing.”

  I got up and left the others to it. I just needed to leave the room—to feel a breeze on my face. It was like I was suffocating in there, like my soul was trying to accept that it would never be free. That David would never be free. That Mike… and Em…

  “Ara.” David’s long fingers came up over my shoulders and then moved down my arms, squeezing firmly. “My love, stop worrying.”

  “I wish I could, but I need this to end, David.”

  “I know.” He kissed my head. “And we’ll keep searching, but all this worry isn’t good for the baby.”

  He was right. I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, using my own supernatural talents to force myself into a calm state. “Back to the library then, see if we can find out what happened to that hand?”

  “I doubt the library has anything, but we can Google the Cursed Hand of Blackworth and see if anything comes up,” he suggested. “Maybe it was taken by grave robbers.”

  “Then we’ll do that,” I said, walking away. “God knows I have to do something.”

  * * *

  Jason laid the book he was reading against his chest and looked at me sympathetically, his gentle smile warm in the glow from the grand fireplace, sitting like a shrine between the windows in this place lost in time. I hadn’t noticed his feet propped on the chair behind my butt until now, which made me realize just how comfortable we were in each other’s company. And I checked myself—making sure it wasn’t the ‘wrong’ sort of comfortable, as David had said in our fight yesterday. But I was happy to find that it was a familial kind of love. A brotherly kind.

  “Why don’t we get some rest, Ara?” he said, rubbing at the newly grown stubble on his chin. “It’s late and—”

  “And I can’t rest. I have to be home for Harry. It’s Christmas in a few weeks and—”

  “And working yourself to the bone won’t help anyone.”

  “I know, but…” I cast my eyes down absently to the page, my shoulders going back when I saw something. It was the strangest connection to make, but as my brain snapped together the story of Lilith stealing the seed of men to make one hundred babes with the story of Mrs. Blackworth punishing her husband’s infidelity by cursing the woman responsible, I couldn’t help but see it. It was there all along.

  “Ara, are you okay?” Jason asked.

  “We’ve read and reread a hundred accounts of men claiming to have been raped by the Goddess of Seduction—all of them in our records because they were Lilith’s victims,” I said.

  “And?”

  “And why are they here?” I said, expecting him to catch on. “I think she collected these as a sort of trophy.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “That curse—the one to bear a hundred dead sons—was put on her as a way to trap her, scare her into returning to her husband. But her refusal was like, I guess… like she was breaking free of him. Standing her ground. She would rather lose a hundred sons than go back to being a slave to man. And, so even though a witch cursed her at some point, this journey”—I tapped the page—“conquering all these men, losing all those babies, escaping the iron cage of a man, it was a great accomplishment for her.”

  Jason nodded, his brows pulling tight in thought. “So where are you going with this, Ara?”

  “She kept these records in the family scroll room—everything she could find on those that suffered at her hands. So if she kept records of this, then maybe she hunted down the biggest trophy of them all.”

  Jason sat up, bringing his feet down to the ground. “She has the hand.”

  I nodded. “But where?”

  We both just stared at each other, eyes wide with a million thoughts and worries.

  “Don’t s’pose asking her would shed some light?” he suggested.

  “No.” I pressed my back teeth firmly together. “But knocking her senseless might.”

  “Ara,” Jase called, but I was gone, vampire-style, before his hand even left his pocket to grab me.

  * * *

  It felt like summer in the forest today. While winter was setting in deep out there in the grounds surrounding the manor, something strange was taking place here under these sacred trees. A deep sense of tranquility swam around me as I walked toward the tree at the center of the clearing, and for the first time, I actually felt the need to remove all of my clothes and let the rich energy of life touch my skin. But there were matters to be dealt with. This curse would end today, or I would end Lilith. Ethereal being or not, she had solidity in some forms, and she was still bound to this earthly plane. She wasn’t all ghost, all goddess or all human, but I knew there was a way to end each and every one of those creatures.

  “Lilith!” I yelled, sending my voice to the farthest reaches of the mortal world. “Lilith, appear before me now!”

  Nothing. No light pink glow, no strange sensation, no sense that I was being watched. I looked at the tree, aged and wilted on first glance but radiant and youthful as I looked deeper. Someone had told me I’d once set that tree free—that it was trapped before I came along—and
in setting it free, I also released Lilith of her ties to this forest. She wandered freely through the mortal world now, so she could be anywhere. Yet she had to be connected to that tree if she was once bound here by it.

  I studied it from a distance, wondering if it was some kind of summoning force—like a phone. Like if I touched it, she would appear.

  I walked toward it, stopping suddenly in the circle of its power as the magnitude struck me. It was a heavy and yet light feeling all at the same time—made my skin tingle and my toes scream to be free of their confines so they could touch the soil in which the tree stood, as if they were burning for the cool of the ocean. I fought against every instinct in my body that wanted to lay naked in its warmth and feel the life around me, pushing on to stand beneath its boughs instead, fully clothed. As I reached up to touch it, call to her again, I felt that strange sensation in the air, like being watched. When I turned around, she was standing there defensively, about to smack my hand away from the tree.

  “Why do you summon me?” she asked coldly.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” I said.

  At first, I thought she was going to play dumb, but then she smiled. “So you have learned about the hand.”

  “Why? Why would you do that to me? Why not just give me the hand to begin with?”

  “We have been through this—”

  “Yes, and you tried to convince me this curse was a good thing; that it would help me rule my people, but you’re wrong—”

  “No, my darling, you are just too young to see. You of all people should know, should understand what a man is capable of, what pain they can cause us, and yet here you are fighting to free them all of this curse—every one of them, not just those we love.” She swept closer, the warmth coming off her in pulsing waves. “If you break this curse, their allegiance dies with it. Do you think men would follow a woman?”

  “We’ve been through this, Lilith,” I said, following her when she turned away from me. “We don’t need a curse to make us powerful. Look around. Look at the way the world has changed by women, just like us, paving the way.”

  “And yet there are still more men in power than women—”

  “But that doesn’t change what we are, what we fight for.” I stood my ground, digging deeper than before to find the words that would finally convince her. “Women are just as powerful, if not more powerful than men, because not only can we do everything they can’t, we can also do everything they can.”

  She smiled to herself, knowing that was true.

  “You once wanted a better world,” I continued, finding her weak spot, “one where women were free to choose their own lives, where you would not be forced to bow down to everything with a penis. You fought for that, stood behind women as they gave birth, fought for the vote, fought for equal rights, and yet you are the biggest hypocrite of them all.”

  “Watch yourself, Amara.”

  “No. You need to hear the truth, because that curse does not define you. It does not give you your power, Lilith.” I edged closer, ready to zap her dead if I had to. “Men do not give you power by loving you, and you need to realize that—you need to let go.”

  Her eyes went past me, focusing on something, maybe on another world.

  “What do you care now?” I said. “You never come to this mortal realm anymore. You no longer rule here, where you were once celebrated as the first woman. You are an entity—a belief, and nothing more.”

  “I am so much more,” she raged, her soft pink light going red.

  “Then prove it,” I challenged. “Prove you’re so powerful by being so without the curse.”

  “I will never give you that hand, Amara.”

  “Then I’ll fight you for it until I die.”

  “Then you will die today, no matter how important you are to the spirit realm.”

  I shook my head, defeated, looking up then as a shot of thunder rang out somewhere near the manor, a weird sound that didn’t really seem at all like thunder since it came from the ground. Lilith smiled, angling her head to the crossway.

  “My dear grandson. How long has it been?”

  “Lilith,” Drake said in a commanding voice, walking toward us like a hunter to a deer. “Put that down. Please.”

  “She will not let this go, Drake,” Lilith warned, facing him. My eyes went to the twisted dagger she had tucked beside her in the folds of her dress.

  “No. She won’t. Because she loves David. She loves her friends. Her people. She wants their love, their loyalty, by earning it. Not with a forced hand,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “And I would’ve expected the same from you.”

  “You know nothing of me, Drake.”

  “I know more than you think. I know what the people say—what your faithful subjects say. They believed in you, Lilith. You exist here because they believe in you still. Imagine how they would feel to know the icon of their sex, the warrior of their feminine freedom, relies on a curse to place her above men.”

  “They would say it is just,” she said. “That all men are vile and controlling—”

  “Including your son?” he said, stopping and standing tall again. He knew his point had been made, but I had to look at her face to see it sink in. Not all men were the same. Not all of them treated her the way her husband had before she married Cain. Not all men deserved to be trapped by our curse, controlled. If the love for her own son wasn’t proof of that, what was?

  “Give her the power to set her loved ones free,” Drake pleaded, “as she once set you free from the binds of this forest, and you will see that you were truly more powerful than you ever understood—that you never needed the curse in your blood to make men love you or respect you.”

  Lilith’s face changed a little, her harsh eyes softening, focusing on Drake as if she drank in that truth and only saw it for what it was now. After all the fighting, after all the wars for freedom, after all the battles for the fairer sex, with Lilith at the helm every time, she had nothing left to fight for. Not here. And while prejudice and sexism still existed out there, it was not to the degree that she suffered in her time. Not in this country.

  Drake could tell the battle was won. He could see she wanted to give up that cursed hand, but I saw something darker: I saw a woman that had just lost her reason to live.

  “They still need you,” I said. “There are women out there all over the world, suffering. You need to widen your grid once more, Lilith—go to them. Forget this life you have here and seek out those suffering, as you did so long ago.”

  She faced me slowly, as if she only just remembered I was here. “It will not bring you happiness,” she said, reaching forward as she floated over. I felt my hand lift, even though I didn’t tell my brain to move it. “You imagine this world where those you love are free to love you at their own will, but it will only bring you sadness—loneliness.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Lilith.”

  “For what?”

  “That your life was so empty,” I said, trying not to cry for her. “That you repeatedly had your faith in people tested and tarnished. But you’re wrong about me. I will be happy. Even if everyone I love goes away when the curse is dead, I’ll find new people to love and I’ll be happy knowing that it’s real.”

  “Then it is in your hands,” she said simply, lifting hers from mine and leaving a long, sticky black skeleton behind. “Or perhaps, on your shoulders.”

  She flickered then and faded away, leaving Drake and I alone in the forest with the cursed hand of Blackworth. I looked up at Drake, part of me wanting to throw the icky hand down and run away from it, another part of me wanting to smash it right here. “How did you get here so fast? You were at Elysium last night, weren’t you?”

  “Magic,” he said, glancing back toward the manor. “I’ll pay for the windows that broke.”

  I put two and two together then. “That loud bang? That was you?”

  “It was me.” He grinned apologetically. “I happened to ca
ll Jason just as you left him this morning.”

  “And you were worried?” I pouted mockingly.

  “That would be an understatement, my dear,” he said with a laugh, walking briskly toward me. I went to hand him the bones, thinking that was why he approached, but instead he threw one arm around my shoulders and kissed my head. “Come.” He started walking. “Let us end this curse once and for all.”

  * * *

  The library was on lockdown—access given only to those in the royal family, and Ali. I sat on David’s lap in an armchair, while Lily and Jason giggled and talked softly over by the fire, Beth between them. Elora and Eric sat on the desk where Ali and Drake pored over a spread of witchy brews and herbs, a small wooden chest open in front of them.

  Watching Drake with Ali, one could almost believe they were related. She had his dark hair and bone-deep interest in magic, but most of all, they seemed to have a kinship. I didn’t know it until now, but Ali hadn’t just been a student of Jason’s since she entered this immortal world. She’d first been a student of Morgana, and then of Drake himself. She was taught all forms of magic, including black magic, and so as Drake picked up a strange stick with a gem on top and said it was time to carve the runes, he then handed it to Ali.

  “Really?” she said, shocked.

  “I trust you.” He nodded at the chest and took a step back.

  Ali studied the stick, bringing it up to eye level, the gem casting a blue prism over the bridge of her nose. “Question is, do I trust myself?”