The altar of earth has no cloth. The weathered wood is bare. The only decoration besides the candle is a big, gray stone. Well, I think, that’s me. No frills.
Naomi lights the dark green candle with her touch and whispers something about the earth accepting the bodies of the dead, the dirt we become a part of when we die. I see Cicely shudder, the memory of her time in the grave still fresh in her mind, and I wonder if this is all too uncomfortable for her. It’s almost too much for me. I’ve told Michael a million times I’m not a circle-of-life kind of guy. I could never manage to meditate with him for more than a few minutes before I got twitchy, and during mass at school my mind always wandered—usually to Cicely. But tonight…
I can already feel the magic moving through me, stirring something deep inside the way the wind stirs the chimes. When Naomi turns to us and says, “The circle is cast. We stand at the crossroads, between the world and in all the worlds,” I find I really believe her. She comes and sits beside me in the West and reaches out her hand to me. I wipe my sweaty palm on my jeans before I take her hand. Her palm feels hot on mine, charged with the energy of the spell.
With Naomi in the circle, there are just enough of us to be able to reach around the light. I take Cicely’s hand on my other side. Her fingers are vampire cold in mine, and the contrast between her cold and Naomi’s warmth makes me feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a magnet, two opposite poles sending a charge right through me. Naomi’s hand feels comforting as always, her animal charming instincts working to calm me, but being this close to Cicely makes my body crackle and hum. I glance at her. Her head is bent, eyes shut, lips parted. I’ve seen her in mass a million times, but I’ve never seen her so reverent, so entranced. Sensible, rational Cicely looks swept away.
Or maybe it’s the vampire stillness that makes her look that way. On her other side, Luke is like a statue, his legs crossed, his head bent. He’s holding Cicely’s other hand and I wonder if she feels like I do, suspended between heat and cold.
I shut my eyes. Naomi’s chant grows louder. Is it in some other language? Or are those not even words? It builds slowly until it echoes off the concrete walls and down the spiral staircase, filling the empty space until I feel like I’ve crawled inside the nautilus shell on the West altar like a baby in a womb. My breath is coming heavy now and I’m grateful for Naomi’s touch because I know otherwise I’d turn. Her voice rises even higher, then branches into two voices. No, another voice has joined her—Cicely. I’ve heard her play violin a million times, but I’ve seldom heard her sing, and never like this. Her voice is clear and pure. It pierces me, pins me to this moment. I recognize the words of her mantra, life after death, life after death… Without meaning to, I throw back my head and howl.
Everything shifts. It’s almost like that moment when I chose to change into the wolf—the good changes, the ones that were under my control. Reality is suddenly as liquid as the sea around us, like it could be poured into any shape. The sound of our voices, the ghosts of our breath, are drawn upwards with the sage smoke, like a single thread being pulled until the whole room starts to unravel. The candle of the South altar flares up suddenly. The glass eye between us catches its light until the center of the circle burns like a column of fire, a light in the center of the crossroads…
Somehow I am down on the beach. The night sky opens above me like a black umbrella. The wind is warmer than it should be, the waves soft. I stand, the damp sand real under my feet, and look around.
Someone is walking towards me. I can just make out his silhouette: slim, strong body; wide, feathered wings. An angel.
My mind slips to the angel statue in the graveyard behind school, to my brother pinned beneath it. I’ve never believed in angels. A low growl forms in my throat, my body tense, ready to attack. But there is something familiar about the easy way he moves, graceful and loose like…
Danny. The clouds shift and the moonlight hits him, full-on like a spotlight on a blood bar stage, and I can suddenly see him clearly: Danny, dressed in a white t-shirt and faded jeans, his dreadlocks tied loosely back, his skin warm brown even in the cool light of the moon. He’s wearing the big, black wings from his Halloween costume for the bar, just like he was the last time I saw him. He opens his arms out wide. “Ander!”
“Danny!” I run to him. I must be in wolf form, because I feel all four paws hit the sand, but I feel in complete control. Because this is a dream, I remind myself.
It must be.
Danny is dead.
But he feels so alive, so real. I press my muzzle into the palm of his hand. He smells like he always does: Juice and hair oil and the spicy potion scent of home. I have never willingly touched him in wolf form like this, but he doesn’t shy away, and it feels perfectly natural when he reaches up with his other hand and tussles the ruff of fur behind my ears. “Ander, honey, how are you?”
It also feels perfectly normal for the wolf to cry, even though I’m sure it can’t. The sob moves through my hulking body like a tremor. My muzzle quivers against his palm. “I been better, actually.”
“I know, hon.” Danny wraps his arms around my neck, his face buried in my fur. “It’s hard.”
That feels like the understatement of the year, but all I can do is nod. My throat is clogged with words I never said. Finally I manage, “Where’s Michael?”
Danny spreads his arms wide like his wings. “Here.”
I don’t see Michael. I’m guessing Danny means he’s here in sprit, and I think I believe that, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he just didn’t want to come.
I wouldn’t blame him. “Danny,” I say, “it’s my fault.”
“Shhhh…” he says. “It isn’t.”
“It is!” I tug away, even though I hate to. “The hunters were coming for me, not you, not Michael. You just got caught in the crossfire.”
“I chose to be in the crossfire, Ander. I wanted to be there.”
“But if you hadn’t been with me and Michael—”
“No.” He places a hand on each side of my face and looks me in the eye. “With you and Michael is the only place I ever wanted to be.”
“And it got you killed! You died because of me!”
“I lived because of you, too!” He strokes my ugly face like he’s petting the face of a little kid. “You think I just did you a favor, taking you in?”
“You did,” I say. “If you hadn’t let Michael and I live with you, we would never have settled anywhere. We would never have had a home.”
“And I wouldn’t have had a home either, you see? My house would have been just a house. You two brought the home in with you. Do you have any idea how I rattled around in that place before you came? How alone I used to feel?”
It never occurred to me Danny could be lonely—Danny the social butterfly, Danny with a million friends.
But we ruined that, too, didn’t we? “We took your house over. We made it a fortress, a dungeon, a lab. You couldn’t even have people over. You had to keep our secrets. You were constantly in danger—”
“Sweetheart, I’m a thrall! The safe life was never worth living. And as far as all of the rest of it is concerned…” He reaches out to take my hands, and I’m surprised to find I have hands to take. I’ve turned human without knowing it. He clasps my hands in his. “As far as all the other stuff goes, you’ve got to remember the easy life and the good life are not always the same thing. Would it have been easier to live without you? At least on the surface, sure. Would it have been better?” He shakes his head. “Easy is overrated. You gotta go for the good.”
I pull my hands out of his grasp. I don’t want to fight with him—that’s the last thing I want to do—but I have the feeling he’s talking about me and Cissa and he doesn’t understand. “It’s not just hard, it’s dangerous! I’m not in control any more. Cicely could get hurt.”
Danny tilts his head to the side, watches me with too-knowing eyes. “Are you sure it’s her you’re trying to protect?”
“Yes,” I say. “Undead vamps may be strong, but I could still hurt her, kill her even—”
“I mean, are you sure it’s not you you’re trying to protect?” He studies my face, his dark eyes so full of compassion I have to look away. “No one would blame you for guarding your heart, Ander. You’ve lost a lot of people in your young life, and you don’t want to lose any more. And yes, if you love her, you may lose her, tomorrow or next week or eighty years from now. You will. But you will never really lose her because you let her in. You loved her. And we never really lose what we truly love.” He smiles, although his eyes are full of tears. “The only way to truly lose her is to never let her in.”
My voice comes out so quiet. “But, the risk…”
“That’s what bonding is. That’s what it means to fall in love, to tangle your heart with someone else’s heart. It’s risk.”
But, I want to say, this isn’t bonding. I won’t mercifully drop dead if Cicely dies. I’ll have to live through losing her again.
But how can I say that to him? “I’m a screw up,” I say instead. “D.J. was my responsibility and he left us. Cicely was mine and she…” I can’t even say it. The salt air off the ocean stings my cheeks. The cold water licks my feet. The tide is coming in.
I have to go, he says, although his lips don’t move.
I panic. “Wait! I haven’t asked about healing Cicely.”
He smiles. We’ve been talking about that all along.
“But how? What do I do? How do I—”
To heal, you have to keep the heart open.
“Her wound?” I ask. “But we have to close it—”
He reaches out and touches my chest. I was talking about you. He smiles. Forget me not.
“How could I forget you? Never!”
A sudden gust blows off the water, kicking up a spray of sand. I shut my eyes for an instant—
And when I open them, Danny is gone.
My eyes sting with the salt and sand and the effort of holding back tears. But the tears aren’t entirely sad. I have the sense that wherever Danny is going, it’s not as far away as I thought. He’s going back to his true love.
And I’m going back to mine. I know that in my heart, and maybe now I’ll find the courage to tell her.
The sky above me folds like a raven’s wing. The beach sifts away and I am suddenly aware of the worn wooden floor against my back. I sit up shakily and wait for the room to stop spinning.
The candles are out, and it’s clear we’ve all been out, too. Naomi is sitting up, bleary eyed. Luke is just crawling to his knees. And Cicely…
I look frantically around the little room, but there’s no escaping it.
Cicely is gone.
Chapter 24: Luke
“Where is she?” Ander casts around frantically. “Where’s Cicely?”
“Relax.” Naomi grabs his hand, no doubt to charm him. He desperately needs it. Whatever he experienced in his vision, it must have upset him, and waking to find Cicely gone has him nearly unhinged.
“Cicely? Cissa!” His voice echoes off the concrete walls. He yanks his arm away from Naomi. “I have to go find her.”
“Not in the state you’re in,” I stand on shaking legs. I feel as if I’ve been running for hours, but I force my voice to be strong. “You can’t go after her when you’re this upset. You’ll kill her.”
He snarls at me.
“You see?” I say. “That only proves my point.”
He glares but doesn’t argue. He must know I’m right.
Naomi takes his hand again and he doesn’t shake her off. “Sit,” she says. “Drink.”
I pick up a bottle of potion from the floor and hand it to him, but he shakes his head. “It’s empty.”
He must be more disoriented than I thought. I shake it so the potion sloshes. “It’s full.”
“Wait,” Ander says. “Let me see that.” He takes the little glass bottle from my hand and screws off the cover.
Instantly, the scent of flowers hits me, nothing like the smell of Ander’s potion. It’s a flower I recognize. “Forget-me-nots,” I say.
Ander stares at the bottle, awestruck. “It’s the healing potion for Cicely.”
“How can it be?” Naomi says, confused. “I wasn’t able to reach my grand-
mother—”
“It’s Michael,” Ander says. “He made it. I know because I saw Danny.”
Naomi’s voice is hushed. “But how—?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “We have to find Cicely quickly.” The huge windows give us the perfect view of the horizon. Behind the Eastern altar where Cicely once sat, the sky is already starting to lighten. I hold out my hand for the potion. “I’ll take it with me.”
“The hell you will,” Ander says. “I’ll carry it.”
“Of course,” I say. “Because you carrying the potion has worked out so well in the past. I think you should stay here. There’s too much chance you’ll hurt her.”
“Fine!” He thrusts it at me. “Go! But we don’t even know how long she’s been gone. How will you know where to look?”
I slip the bottle of potion into the pocket of my coat, right beside Naomi’s silver pentagram. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I have a hunch.”
I race down the spiral staircase, the names of Naomi’s ancestors flashing under my feet. I am out the heavy door in an instant, the cold early morning breeze biting me as I step out into the air. Turning towards town, I run.
There is no time to keep to a dull human pace. I let the ground blur beneath my boots. Here and there I catch a whiff of Cicely’s scent, mingled with the smell of the sea, but for the most part I’m running on instinct, a half-remembered message from the vision I had in the circle tugging me like an invisible thread.
Before I know it, I find myself in the darkened town square. The café is silent, the heavy drapes of the church are drawn, but a single light burns in an upper window of the Hawthorn mansion. A candle. I watch it flicker and a little hope burns in my heart as well. Cicely. Somehow I know it.
I slip silently through the ornate gardens and up to the wide front porch. The grand front doors swing open at my touch. Inside the house is dark, but I can make out the wide, sweeping staircase that leads to the second floor. I climb the steps quietly. I’m sure she is here—her scent is the only thing I detect above the dusty smell of antiques—but I can’t bring myself to call for her. Instead, I move carefully, alert for some danger I cannot name. My heart is pounding in my chest when I reach the room at the end of the hall and see the light shining from beneath the door. I carefully push it open.
“Cicely?”
She is facing away from me, sitting on the wide, white bed. She must have changed clothes when she got here, I think, although I can’t imagine why. But she clearly found the dress here at the house because it looks like a Victorian mourning dress, long and black, its lace skirt and petticoats spilling over the edge of the bed. The neckline rides low on her shoulders, the curve of her neck white against the dark satin. On the table by the bed, a half dozen candles flicker, their light warm and inviting.
For an instant, my heart leaps with he flames. This is clearly a scene set for romance. Has Cicely decided to return my affections? Did she guess I would be the one to follow her here? Or did she hope it was Ander who would find her?
“Querida, we were worried about you.” I step into the room. “We didn’t know where you were.”
“Well, it seems you’ve found me now.”
Cicely stands, still facing away, but I can clearly see her face in the mirror on the opposite wall.
Her face.
In the mirror.
Except it isn’t her face, not really, because Cicely would never wear that cold smile. I know because I’ve seen that smile before.
My vision from the circle comes rushing back.
“Deirdre,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
She turns to me, still smiling. “My love, I was waiting for you.�
�
Chapter 25: Luke
A million feelings flash through me at once, like tiny needles piercing my skin. Deirdre, my Deirdre. The girl I loved a century ago. The girl who betrayed me to the Hunters and cursed my family. The girl who made us able to die.
So why do I feel more alive, just looking at her?
Except, of course, I am not looking at her. I am looking at Cicely, possessed by her. “How is this even possible?” I breathe. “How are you even here?”
She laughs, deeper and smokier than Cicely’s laugh. “You called me, Luke, when you performed the ceremony for the dead. You invited me to come.”
“I didn’t,” I say, but I know I did. My heart called out for her the moment the circle was cast, and I must have known deep down she would come or I wouldn’t have known to look for Cicely here, in this house that reminded me of Deirdre. “But the spell was only meant to speak to spirits, not to call them into the flesh.” I feel my face go hot as I say the word flesh. It is impossible to resist stealing a glance at Deirdre’s curves, at the way the sleek black satin hugs her hips.
Deirdre’s smile widens. “It wasn’t hard to take this body.” Her eyes meet mine. “Anyone could do it.”
I look away, my mouth suddenly dry. Her meaning is clear, but I don’t know what to say.
She laughs again. “So shy! I only mean it is easy for me to possess this body because it is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, a witch of my own line. Although,” she turns and frowns at herself in the mirror, “I’ll admit it is less than ideal.” Her hand strays to the wound over her heart. When she pulls it away, her hand is streaked with black blood, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She smiles at me in the mirror. “I thought you would be happy to see me.”
“Did you?” I want to say something cold and cruel, something that will cut her as deeply as she cut me, but the words won’t come. My stupid heart is leaping like a dog whose master has come home at last. Finally I say, “You betrayed me.” But it doesn’t sound like an accusation. I sound like a petulant child.
Crossfire (Book Two of the Darkride Chronicles) Page 20
