Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series)

by Jenn Bennett

  Jupe saw the light inside the shed, and his mind registered Cady and his dad standing under the utility light that shone down from the roof. But as the falling thing rocketed past the tops of the trees, he realized what he was seeing, and he couldn’t stop himself from crying out.

  The summoning circle was fully charged. Everything was ready. We’d wait until the Holidays called to confirm that they were safe inside the house with Jupe, and then all I had to do was call down my mother.

  Lon had swapped the Lupara for a full shotgun. We’d both already transmutated. “Whatever you do, don’t use your moon power until she’s inside the binding,” he warned. “Don’t give her any opportunity to connect with you during the summoning, or she might end up outside the trap.”

  “I know,” I said testily. We’d gone over this a million times. I’d call her into the circle, and the second she manifested, Lon would shoot her. If for some reason he missed, I would burn her to a crisp, just as I’d burned Dare. Brutal, but what else could I do? She was beyond redemption and a threat to everyone around me. A rabid dog who should have been put down a long time ago. I wanted to skip the shotgun and do the deed myself, but Lon said a child should never have to kill her own parent.

  “You already have enough blood on your hands,” he said, reading my second thoughts. “You don’t kill. I kill for you.”

  “How can I ask you to do that?”

  “You don’t have to. I’m volunteering. Besides, you don’t even know how to use a gun, and now’s not the time to learn. You summon, I execute. This is just like that green Pareba demon that chased you down the cliff the first night you came to my house. Just call her. I’ll do the rest. I can’t say I’ll take pleasure in it, but I won’t be lying awake regretting it, either. So don’t worry about me.”

  I flicked my tail and exhaled slowly. No use pretending that I wasn’t worried, because I was, and he knew it. My own empathic ability was gone when I awoke from the too few hours of sleep we had managed earlier in the day. I missed that connection to Lon, but at the same time, I already had enough crazy emotions jumping around inside me, so I supposed I didn’t need his, too.

  And I definitely didn’t need another random knack to replace the empathy, so thank God I hadn’t noticed one.

  “It all seems too easy,” I said, checking the summoning circle one last time. Even though she’d be coming from the Æthyr, she wasn’t a demon, so I seriously doubted I could trap her in a binding triangle. But I charged one inside the circle, just in case. “I don’t trust it.”

  Lon didn’t, either, but he remained silent.

  A distant sound caught my attention outside the workshop. Something approaching? The road leading up to Lon’s house was heavily wooded, so it could be any number of animals—foxes, rabbits, deer. Lon said he’d even seen a bobcat on his property a couple of years ago. But we were outside the house ward, and I was already in freak-out mode, so when the sound changed from something approaching to something racing, I rushed out of the shed to see it.

  “What the hell is that?” Lon said, striding behind me.

  Barking.

  “Foxglove,” I said, recognizing the dog’s glow-in-the-dark purple collar bounding down the road toward the shed.

  “What the hell is she—” But Lon never finished, because between the Labrador’s sharp warning barks, Jupe’s voice carried in the wind. He was shouting at Foxglove, then answering someone. A girl’s voice. As she cleared the trees and came into sight with Jupe, both of them running as if the devil himself was at their heels, I heard what the girl was shouting.

  “Up!”

  Up? I swiveled around and tilted my face to the sky. A black shape was falling, picking up speed, getting bigger and closer and—

  “Lon!”

  The shape knocked him sideways and hit the ground hard enough to shake the soles of my shoes. As Lon scrambled to right himself, I rushed to help him and cried out when I spotted what lay on the ground a few feet away.

  “No, Jupe! Get back!” I shouted as his long legs picked up speed and carried him straight for what had fallen out of the sky. But he wasn’t listening, concern for his father giving way to horror as he skidded to a stop behind the fallen shapes.

  Two figures, one female, one male, untangled their limbs as Foxglove barked furiously, hackles up. The female was riding on the back of the male. She unwrapped her arms from the choke hold she had around his neck and squatted next to him.

  “Get up!” she shouted at him, and my heart shriveled inside my chest.

  Priya whimpered and pushed himself up. Blood streamed down his face and chest. One of his wings was broken and wouldn’t retract. He cried out in pain when the woman jerked his arm to pull him in front of her like a shield.

  Her hair was tangled and wild; the toga-like gown she wore was bedraggled and dirty. Dark symbols were painted over every inch of her bared skin—magical armor, glowing softly with Heka. And from the way the symbols dripped in places, I had a feeling she’d used Priya’s blood for paint.

  “Ma petite . . . lune,” she said between labored breaths. “I got your message, yes? Thank you for being thoughtful enough to send along transportation with your invitation. I’ve been trying to catch this little bird for weeks, and quelle surprise! He appears right in front of my eyes.”

  “Run, Mistress,” Priya said hoarsely. I could barely hear him over Foxglove’s barking.

  A shotgun racked near my shoulder. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  My mother roughly twisted Priya’s head to the side. “Tsk, tsk, Kerub. You’ll have to kill the bird to get to me.”

  “No!” I shouted. “Don’t do it, Lon.”

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, bracing the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder.

  Jupe took another step closer to Priya, waving his arms. “No, Dad, no!”

  “Get back!” Lon bellowed to Jupe. “Run!”

  Quick as lightning, my mother reached back and snatched Jupe’s hair. His scream shattered my heart as she exchanged hostages, dragging Jupe against her and tossing Priya’s broken body to the ground. He yelped in pain and balled up on the ground, clutching one shoulder while my mother jerked Jupe’s arms behind him.

  “Struggle, and I’ll snap your neck,” she calmly told Jupe.

  “No!” I shouted. “Let him go right now, or so help me God—”

  “You’ll do what? Use your new powers? My powers,” she corrected. “Go on, Sélène. Try. I’d like to see them in action. You, too, demon boy. Just know that this symbol will prevent any of you from using your demonic abilities on me.”

  That’s when I saw the truth in what she said: not symbols painted on her but one symbol, repeated. I’d seen it once before on Rose Giovanni’s signet ring, the one she’d used to deflect Yvonne’s knack at Christmas.

  Oh, God. She’d made herself invincible? What the hell was I going to do now?

  “Dad,” Jupe moaned.

  “Stay still,” Lon said.

  “Listen to your father,” my mother chirped. “If my daughter had listened to hers, she wouldn’t be putting your lives at risk. But now he rots in the Æthyr, and I am forced to fend for myself.”

  “No one to do your dirty work,” I said, trying to waste time as my brain desperately analyzed my options. I could see Lon slinking away from me, trying to get a better angle as he edged toward Priya, but my mother’s sharp eyes were noticing, too. She swiveled Jupe in Lon’s direction as a warning. “I know you had Dad kill my brother.”

  “Your brother was a walking corpse. Your father performed a mercy. He was softhearted that way. And now I’m about to show you an even bigger kindness. I will let all of your filthy little friends live, and I’ll let you live, too. All you have to do is agree to let me transfer my soul to your body.” She grinned, as pretty as pie, behind Jupe’s corkscrew curls.

  But something in that smile faltered, and a strange fuzziness blurred her face for a moment. I’d seen that before, when Priya couldn’t ho
ld his corporeal body on this plane. She was feeling the same tug. Something must have happened to her when she crossed the planes, which meant . . .

  She couldn’t remain here without borrowing an earthly body.

  All I had to do was wait it out, let the clock run. She’d eventually lose her hold and zap back up to the Æthyr.

  And then what? She’d terrorize Priya or some other guardian and catch another ride down when I didn’t expect it? Or she’d continue to puppet me until I ended up hurting Jupe or Lon?

  No.

  I had her now, and this had to end. No more running.

  But how could I get to her without Jupe getting caught in the crossfire?

  Oh! Of course: our connection. He was still under my protection, with my sigil tattooed on his hip, and a thin spider web of light joined that tattoo to my hand. But Jupe’s thread was joined by four others.

  One sprouting in his direction, blinking with static and connected to my mom.

  A black thread connected to Priya’s injured body.

  A green thread connected to Lon.

  And another white thread piggybacking on it, connecting back to my stomach.

  Memories flew back to me like dust being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner: Lon performing the memory spell on me after I begged him to do it; when I first discovered multiple threads in the alley; Lon kissing me in our bed when I came home from the hospital; Dr. Mick informing me that I was pregnant; me telling Lon I loved him after I killed Dare . . .

  On and on, a chain reaction of lost memories filled up my head, each one throwing off the magick that had kept them all hidden.

  Lon made a gut-wrenching sound. His hands shook on the shotgun.

  I blinked away tears and looked up at Jupe, seeing the fear in his eyes in a different way. He wasn’t just a quirky teenage kid, he was mine. All of them were—Jupe, Priya, Lon . . . our unborn child. All mine, and my mother wasn’t taking a single one of them away from me.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “All right. You can have me. Let the kid go, and you can have me.”

  “And have your demon lover shoot me in the process? I don’t think so. Come here, and I’ll release him in exchange for you.”

  “Cady!” Lon warned. “She’s fading. Let her go.”

  But I couldn’t.

  I began walking toward her, slowly, hands still in the air.

  “Don’t do it!” Jupe cried, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  But I had to.

  No other choice, really. If I didn’t, she’d kill Jupe before she got yanked back to the Æthyr, when she realized she had nothing to lose. And what kind of life would Lon and I have left if that happened? No life at all.

  Three more steps, and I’d be within her reach. Last chance to change my mind.

  A movement behind her made me lose my focus. The girl who’d raced down here with Jupe stood in the shadows outside the circle of light beaming from the shed. I’d never seen her before, but I recognized something familiar in her face. This had to be Leticia Vega, daughter of the grandmaster at the lodge in Morella. She was gesturing wildly, pointing at my mother, drawing shapes with her finger on the front of her clothes, tapping her back between her shoulder blades, shaking her head, pointing at my mother again.

  I hesitated in midstep, realization sending goose bumps over my arms.

  An Achilles’ heel. My mother had painted the symbols on herself; she must not have been able to reach her own back. Did this matter or not? I wasn’t sure.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to still my thoughts. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. When I’d needed my Moonchild abilities in the past, they’d shaped themselves without conscious thought. Could I count on that again?

  “Cady!” Lon shouted to me in desperation. He was moving again, racing to get around Priya, and my mom was twisting, trying to shield herself with Jupe without losing sight of me. Or was it that she didn’t want to turn her unprotected back on me?

  And that’s when a strange idea came to me, one I wasn’t sure would work. But what did I have to lose?

  Trust me, I told Lon in my head at the same time as I told my mother, “Take me” out loud.

  And when she released one of Jupe’s arms to reach for mine, I avoided her grip, slapped a hand on her back, and unleashed what I prayed was an actual knack and not just some fleeting, fucked-up magical vision.

  Everything around me vanished.

  Jupe felt the grip on his arms loosen, but he was too scared to move—not until he saw his dad’s expression change. Spiraled horns and fiery halo blurred toward him as he wriggled out of the woman’s stiff hands and propelled himself away.

  His dad grabbed his arm and jerked him to his side, and that’s when Jupe swung around and got a look at Cady and her mother. They looked frozen in place. Like storefront mannequins or one of those stupid artist hippies in the Village who painted themselves to look like statues and jumped out at people.

  And Cady’s eyes were all messed up. Her pupils had disappeared. They were nothing but silver.

  “Get behind me!” his dad snapped.

  But he couldn’t, because—

  “Leticia!” he shouted, seeing her move in the shadows.

  “Don’t go near them!” Dad shouted toward her as he steered them all toward Priya. “Circle around this way.”

  Leticia jogged and met them, Foxglove bounding behind. Jupe grabbed her hand and pulled her behind his dad. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, but he could tell that she was freaking out. And how could he blame her? Dad had gone all Hellboy, Cady had turned into a black and white reptile, a body-painted psychopathic witch just fell out of the sky and nearly broke his arms holding him hostage, and a shirtless boy with a broken wing had crash-landed at their feet.

  Sort of put Leticia’s naked-altar-sister, racist-grandma family to shame.

  Still, Leticia was a warrior. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Jupe that she managed to keep a level head in the middle of all this crazy shit. She didn’t scream, and she didn’t run. She just looked up at his dad and said, “What’s happening to them?”

  “Cady said she was going to let her mom take her body,” Jupe said. “Does that mean her mom’s soul is inside her?”

  Dad’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two frozen women. “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe they swapped bodies, like some kind of bad ’80s movie,” Jupe suggested.

  Dad shook his head. “Cady looked like this yesterday, when she had a . . . vision.”

  “What kind of vision?”

  Dad held his shotgun as if he wasn’t sure if he should be aiming it or not. “Like an out-of-body experience. She traveled somewhere.”

  “Where?” Jupe asked. “Do you think she took her mom back into the Æthyr?”

  “She is still on this plane,” a pained voice said at their feet. “I can feel her, but I cannot hear her anymore. I cannot verify exactly where she is or whether her mother has control over her, and I am not sure if I can locate her in this state of injury.”

  Jupe bent down to inspect Priya. “Dude, are you okay?”

  “I need to heal, or I won’t be able to fly again,” he said through gritted pointy teeth.

  “We know healers. I can call one,” Jupe offered.

  Priya’s skin crackled with static. “I can find a healer in the Æthyr, but I cannot stay here much longer. And if I leave, Enola may return with me.”

  For a moment, Jupe thought this was the best idea in the world. But if Cady’s mom returned with Priya, she might kill him. Or torture him and use him to fly back down here again. Or if she was inside Cady’s body right now, she might try to take Cady’s soul along with her.

  Crap. There were too many possibilities. But he suddenly thought of one that might be the answer to all of them.

  “Shoot her mom’s body,” Jupe said to his dad. “You have a clear shot—just shoot her.”

  Leticia shook her head. “I don’t think
you should. If you destroy the mother’s body while the soul is inside Cady’s body, will the soul be trapped?”

  “Crap,” Jupe said. She might have a point.

  “And what if they’ve swapped bodies?” she said. “You might be killing Cady’s soul.”

  “When magick is present, anything is possible,” Priya mumbled.

  Okay, now Jupe was right back to being overwhelmed by possibilities. “What do you think, Dad?”

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at Cady with a helpless expression.

  Leticia shook her head as if she was unsure about all of it. “This is strange magick.”

  “It’s not magick,” his dad said. “It’s one of Cady’s knacks.”

  “She’s not human,” Leticia said, flicking a glance from his dad to him.

  No use denying it now. Not in the middle of all this. “We’re Earthbounds,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s not something we usually talk about with, well, you know—”

  “Humans,” she finished.

  He nodded. When she didn’t look at him, he felt a fresh burst of panic in his gut. Because they couldn’t see halos, most humans didn’t believe Earthbounds really existed. Cady said half of her order didn’t, which was stupid, because they were all about summoning demons from the Æthyr. Leticia had never mentioned the subject, so he didn’t know how she felt about it.

  Or how she felt about him, now that she knew the truth.

  But what could he do? She either accepted it or she didn’t. Knowing this didn’t make him feel any less anxious; he liked her way too much.

  Exhaling heavily, he studied Cady’s frozen scaly body, partly scared, partly worried, and a little bit amazed. It was so quiet. Even Foxglove had stopped barking. Was that a good sign? He wanted to ask about the baby, what with all this talk of soul swapping, but he didn’t want to worry his dad. Dude was already on edge.