Blood Moon

by KB Anne

  My throat catches at the sight of them. For the first time in my life, I truly see my mom—an exquisitely featured woman whose love emanates a dazzling glow to behold. Beside her sits Gram, indeed a mirror image of her daughter caught ageless in the Otherworld.

  “We knew you were coming,” Mom says, indicating the large worn leather volume on the bench with the pale gold lettering. Briguathe Grimoire. The book from my vision with Amorin.

  Raw emotion, pure and primal, surges through me, making it difficult to speak. I finally whisper, “Mom, I’m sorry. I had no idea what I was doing when I released Clayone.”

  Her hands—her warm soft hands—reach up and cradle my face as her blue eyes stare lovingly into mine, and I remember what it felt like to be an infant in her arms and even before, when she carried me in her womb. I remember everything.

  There’s so much I want to say to her. So much I want to ask. So much of everything I don’t even know where to begin, except that I know there isn’t time for lovely reunions. There’s no time period.

  “My Gigi, my love, my life. My sacrifice is nothing compared to yours. Are you sure you want to follow through with your plan?”

  The power of mind reading greatly diminishes the need for lengthy conversation.

  Tears form at the corner of my eyes. Never have I felt so much love. It’s like my heart will burst. It’s like I will burst. “I don’t see any other way. I must protect the ones I love. Nothing else matters. Is Brigit here? Will she help me?”

  Gram embraces me, whispering, “She’s here. She’s always been here.”

  I break away to search for the Goddess, but no one’s there, and I realize that Gram’s back to her Gigi-is-the-Goddess delusions.

  “They are not delusions, and what you plan is a huge gamble. I don’t think you should take it. We are all willing to sacrifice our lives for you.”

  I blink back tears and swallow hard. “I know, but I’m not willing to let everyone sacrifice their lives for me. Which ones should I use?”

  Mom pats the space next to her, and the three of us leaf through the book together. The pages spring to life, presenting various spells and incantations. Most of them assist the harvest or heal someone who’s hurt. There’s nothing about fighting lethal enemies. I practice calling the wind a few times, wondering if the wind can possibly be of use to me. I cast a protection spell on my trusty old silver bullet, hoping I have the strength to thrust it into Clayone if he should show up tonight, though he is the least of my worries. He’s most likely roaming the mountains around Vernal Falls, waiting to strike—Imagine his surprise when he realizes I’m gone. All his careful planning and preparation, and I’m thousands of miles away. That will be sweet justice.

  I murmur a binding spell that will bind any evil to me. As I practice, Gram interrupts my chanting.

  “Be careful with binding spells. Especially evil-binding spells. They are particularly draining. If you bind Carman to you, you won’t have the strength to protect yourself. Use the spell only as a last resort.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I agree, but I know she can read my mind. She knows I’ll use it regardless of what she says.

  After studying a few more spells, the sun still high up in the sky, Mom clucks her tongue. “It’s time to go or you will be locked in the Otherworld forever. As much as we would love that, we know there’s still work for you to complete.”

  Gram places a bundle of dried plants in my hand. “This herb is for you. Hold onto it for the time being. It won’t help you tonight, but if all goes well, it will save lives in the future.”

  I clutch the herbs to my chest, knowing that she’s not telling me everything, but this time I don’t feel like fighting for more information. These final moments might be the last time I’ll ever see them again. If Clayone should find me or if Carman destroys me, I will be cast to the Underworld forever.

  They both smile at me with so much love it overwhelms me. Mom whispers, “We will be together again, one way or the other.”

  If I let myself think about their love or what’s happened or what I have planned, I might break down and be unable to carry out my plan, so I turn away and step into the fountain. The fairy winks at me, and I step out of the sacred well at Alaric’s secret spot. Through the canopy of vines, I can see the darkness. The moon flowers are in full bloom, and day has shifted into night. I sprint in the direction of the round tower, praying I’m not too late.

  After the door opens at my entrance spell, I realize something’s different.

  “Gigi, it’s a trap! Get out now!” Dad yells from above, just as filthy hands grab my arms.

  “So nice of you to join the party,” cackles a disgusting ogre of a man. His foul breath alone could kill someone.

  “Calliope and Carman will be so pleased you decided to join us after all.”

  He tries to force me up the stairs. I punch and claw, refusing to cooperate. But he’s not deterred. He throws me over his shoulder and climbs the stairs while I kick and scream. If there is a god, our combined weight will break through the rotted wood and we’ll plummet to our deaths. But I have no such luck.

  At the top of the steps he stomps across the landing and into the room. I never closed the door. That’s how he discovered I’d been there. That’s how he knew I would return. He tosses me onto the floor next to Dad, shackling my arms and legs.

  “Just in case you try to escape. Calliope will be here shortly to bring you to the ceremony this evening. You two are the guests of honor.” He cackles on his way back down the stairs.

  Dad nudges me with his shoulder. “Gigi, I told you not to come. I am willing to sacrifice myself for you.”

  “I know,” I whisper, “but I’m not willing to sacrifice you.”

  Tears stream down my face. Stupid tears for a stupid idiot. I am so stupid. So fucking stupid. For the first time since Lizzie’s funeral, I let myself cry for all those I’ve lost and will lose from my own ignorance. With no ability to wipe the tears away, they roll down my face and onto my fettered wrists.

  The last colors of sunset disappear from the horizon. Soon, the moon will be full.

  “Gigi, look.”

  Vines begin wrapping around our iron shackles, prying them apart.

  “What the devil?” the guard cries out. “What kind of hocus pocus are you working up there?”

  We stare wide-eyed at each other as our chains fall away. Without a word, we climb down the stairs. At the bottom, the vines have twined around the guard, holding him in place.

  We slip into the night. I beckon Dad to follow me to Carman’s house. “We have to find Scott.”

  He grabs my hand, pulling me in the opposite direction. “We need to get help. We can’t do this alone. Wait—someone’s coming.”

  Before I can see who it is, he pulls me behind a grove of oak trees. The open spaces blur into the trees, and we are completely camouflaged. It’s probably a trick of the light, but after all I’ve seen, it might just be magic.

  We watch a lone woman approach the tower. Calliope. Her appearance now unmistakable. She was the woman from the flames. The woman who betrayed her family. The woman who killed my mom. Anger boils through me. I prepare to spring up and confront her, but Dad pulls me back.

  “She knows where Scott is.”

  Nodding, I grit my teeth.

  We watch her enter the tower. A scream fills the space between us. She reappears on the doorstep, a frenzied look in her eye. She wildly scans the countryside for us. When she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she takes off at a sprint in the direction of Carman’s.

  I follow her in the darkness with Dad hunched beside me as we steal across the fields. Carman’s ceremonial fire glows in the distance with the same supernatural radiance of the night before. We duck behind one of the outbuildings to watch.

  Carman raises her hands above the flames. She looks young and every bit the sorceress she promised to be, and I know at once that Clarissa and Amorin were telling the truth. My life force gave
her energy. My life force made her young.

  “Tonight is an evening of monumental change. No longer will we, the practitioners of Maleficium, remain in the shadows biding our time. The time has come to take what is ours.”

  My attention shifts to the objects she’s holding.

  “Doo-loo, Foo-loo. Doo-la, Foo-lah,” she chants as she releases the straw and the hair above the fire. The straw begins to dance from the heat. As its movement grows faster, my heart stops. Two men drag Scott from the barn I was in just yesterday. It wasn’t a giant rat I heard, it was Scott. I was within an arm’s reach of him, and I walked out. I could’ve saved him.

  His feet begin to move on their own. His body jerks to the left and then to the right. My horror grows when I realize Scott’s feet are moving to the beat of the straw above the fire.

  Carman laughs in delight as the straw jerks and spins and Scott jerks and spins along with it.

  “We will begin the evening with the sacrifice of a god to awaken the Fomorians.”

  Calliope rushes over to Carman, her hair wild. “We had a deal. I bring Gigi, and you promised Scott and Mark would not be harmed.”

  “You didn’t fulfill your part of the bargain, did you? Where is this goddess you promised? Where is Mark? You didn’t bring them.”

  She crashes to her knees in front of Carman. “I don’t know where they are. When I got to the tower, they were gone. I don’t know what happened to them. Carman, please. He’s my son.” She pulls at Carman’s robes.

  “I know he’s your son, but he’s also a god. A minor god, but a god nonetheless. The Fomorians will be pleased to receive Oegden, his Earth parents, and Brigit tonight. The sacrifice will bind them to me forever. I will become their master.”

  “His parents . . .” Calliope repeats before realization dawns on her. “You betrayed me. All this time you’ve treated me like a daughter. You promised me one day I would get my son back. We raised Alaric together. We were a family . . .” she trails off. “You used me.”

  “Calliope, dear, you came to me twenty years ago, bitter about the powers Brigit bestowed upon your sister. I showed you another way to power. You possessed such potential, but you fell in love with that poor excuse for a witch. More brains than ability. You. Left. Me. Remember? When Clayone sniffed you out, you betrayed your family and came groveling back to me. Here’s a little secret,” she says, putting her hand to the side of her mouth as if to whisper confidentially, “who do you think sent Clayone?”

  “I left my son, my husband, because of you, you malevolent bitch.” She spits at Carman’s feet.

  “A means to an end. Multiple sacrifices during the Super Blue Blood Moon on Samhain are necessary to enact my plan. This night was planned many moons ago. Now, onto our first sacrifice,” she says raising her hands in the air.

  The straw copies her movements and so does Scott, moving closer and closer to her, all the while his feet moving uncontrollably.

  “Against my dead body, hag,” Calliope shrieks, leaping in front of Scott.

  “Very well. The order of sacrifice is incidental to the cause.”

  She begins chanting something that causes the flame to bend toward Calliope. Calliope knocks Scott to the ground and conjures a fireball out of the air. She whips it at Carman. Carman flicks it away as if nothing happened. Calliope throws another round of fire with one hand as she struggles to untie Scott’s binding with the other.

  Dad and I leap from behind the barn.

  Carman throws back her head and laughs. “It’s about time you two showed your faces.”

  My anger blurs my sight as I try to conjure fireballs of my own, but nothing happens. Not one damn thing. I shove my hands into the ground and murmur to myself, hoping I can get vines to grow like I did in the tower, but again nothing happens.

  I call the wind, but it does not respond.

  Dad helps Calliope untie Scott. The rest of the coven crowd around them. They withdraw wands and swords from beneath their robes as if they were prepared for this battle all along. And maybe they were. Alaric told me Carman had the gift of sight. Maybe she saw this very moment.

  Attack curses and counter spells fly in every direction. It is madness. It is chaos. It is death.

  Carman’s cackles rise above the din and confusion. My attention shifts back to her. I run at her, figuring that I can at least push her out of the way, but an invisible force stops me. I try again and again before I realize I can’t move forward. I watch as the young mousy girl, Marie, stabs Calliope with a small dagger. The man who wanted revenge for his cheating wife keeps chanting a curse as he strikes both Dad and Scott with his fists over and over again. It’s as if he has a thousand arms and is everywhere. I stare, powerless to stop it.

  Carman watches me struggle with the invisible barrier. A cruel smile crosses her face.

  “Is this amusing to you?” I hiss at her. “Are you afraid to fight me.”

  “Me, afraid to fight you? I am far more powerful than you will ever be. You are a poor excuse for a goddess. I was actually thinking about the surprise waiting for you.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Old Carman still has a few tricks up her sleeve. I’ve been preparing for this moment long before your grandmother’s vision. Fifteen hundred years ago, I wanted to stand watch at Brigit’s fire, but you wouldn’t allow it because I had dabbled in the Dark Arts before coming to you. You told me I could not be saved. You said I was marked forever and one day would personally meet Derg instead of spending the afterlife in the Otherworld. You refused to forgive me, and it was that day I began devising my plan for your demise. To destroy you for destroying me.”

  Is Carman telling me that she’s actually more than fifteen hundred years old? How many life forces has she sucked to keep alive?

  “Let me get this straight. You’ve spent your entire life—fifteen hundred years—scheming a way to destroy Brigit?”

  “Yes,” she shrieks. “I worshipped you. I loved you. My entire childhood was spent dreaming that one day you would bless me with your presence, and then you reincarnated at Kildare. How was a sixteen-year-old learning the ways of the world to know that a little dark magic would destroy my chances of joining the Order of Brigit and presiding over your Flame? I made one mistake, and you couldn’t see past it. You couldn’t see my potential. I believed in you, and you destroyed me, so now I will destroy you!”

  She throws something into the cauldron causing it to bubble over. A river of fire shoots twenty feet into the air then veers off toward me.

  Two flashes of light burst from my hands, extinguishing the flames, before hurling off and blocking Dad, Scott, and Calliope from their attackers. The light expands, forming a shield in front of us. The rest of the coven members back away from the blinding radiance.

  “Scott, Scott, are you okay?” I sprint over to him. I try to help him stand, but there’s no indication that he’s conscious, or even alive. “Scott, wake up! Don’t you die on me. Don’t you freaking dare.”

  He groans, and I know that whatever curse was laid upon him has been lifted. He tries to sit up but winces.

  I tug on his arm. “Let me help you!”

  “I’m right here. You don’t need to shout.”

  “Always the pain in the ass. Even in a death match with a sorceress you manage to find your comedic side. Lucky us.”

  Dad helps Calliope to a standing position. Blood seeps from every part of their bodies.

  “You can’t win,” Carman shrieks from the other side of the light. “The night isn’t over.”

  A firebolt flies past my arm, narrowly missing Scott. I urge him on. We don’t have time to find out what else Carman has in mind. Dad drags Calliope beside him, but their injuries are severe. They soon fall behind, but I can’t worry about them right now. I need to get Scott—my brother, my best friend—away from Carman and her coven of twisted sorcerers. I tug him along, as fast as his damaged body will take him. When the screams of the fighting fade into the night
and I can no longer see the flames, I slow down, suddenly feeling the absence of Dad and, by default, Calliope.

  “Dad? Are you coming?” I shout.

  When he doesn’t answer, I glance around to make sure we weren’t followed before I even consider leaving Scott to check on them. The familiar crumbled walls of the ruins give me hope. We’re closer to Amorin’s than I realized. We might have a chance after all. I ease Scott onto the laid stone.

  “Scott? Scott, can you hear me?”

  He makes no reply, but I can feel his chest weakly rising and falling.

  “I need to help Dad. I’ll be right back.”

  “And Mom . . .” he groans. “Don’t forget Mom. Help her, please.”

  “I will,” I promise him.

  With the full moon to guide me, I retrace my path, searching for them. A few hundred paces or so away, I find their collapsed forms on the ground a few feet away from each other.

  “Dad? Calliope?”

  When neither one of them replies, I kneel over Dad and check for a pulse.

  “Gigi, you need to get out of here. I’ll be okay,” he protests weakly.

  “But I won’t. Where are you hurt? Let me help you.”

  “How’s Scott? Is he all right?”

  “I think so. I’ll do everything I can to fix him.”

  He smiles with his eyes closed. “I know you will, honey. I know you will. And Calliope?”

  “Let me see.” I crawl over to her. Her likeness is to Mom is uncanny except for the black hair. I bare her mark as well. “Calliope, can you hear me? Can you tell me where it hurts?”

  She draws in a breath, and I know she’s still alive, but who knows for how long. “Tell Scott, I’m sorry. My whole life has been about keeping him safe.” Her body begins to seize. Her arms and legs jerk along with her torso until she goes still. A minuscule light exits her mouth, and her body goes slack.