Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
The four of us sit in a circle on the cushions. In the center, the candles flicker, their flames casting long shadows as Mrs. Grant takes my hands in hers, holding the branded one gingerly. “All right, Rune. Whatever Ella told you, we need to know. And if this is your condition, then a deal’s a deal.”
A fiery tendril sprouts from thin air, winding its way around our hands, binding them together. Gasping in shock, I try to jerk away, but the tendril winds itself faster, wrapping tight. It doesn’t burn, like the brand did, but it won’t let go, either.
“We look to the east,” Mrs. Grant says, her voice low, intent. “To the place where the sun rises, giving birth to each day.”
“To the east,” Mrs. Fontaine and Mrs. Hernandez echo in unison.
She tilts her head back, glancing upward. “We look to the north. To the place from which the snows come, washing us clean.”
“To the north,” the other Sinsters chorus.
“We look to the south. To the place from which the fire comes, burning within us.” Mrs. Grant glances downward, at our joined hands, twined together with that fiery cord.
“To the south.”
“We look to the west. To the place where the sun sinks, that it may be renewed once more.” Her head turns to the left, fixing on the doorway that leads to Mrs. Fontaine’s kitchen. I could swear I see a shadow move within it, slinking from table to stove and back again.
“To the west,” Mrs. Fontaine and Mrs. Hernandez repeat, and now their eyes are fixed on the doorway to the kitchen, too.
What the hell is in there? Was I crazy to agree to this? I try to yank my hands away again, but no dice.
“We call on the spirits, and give thanks for the powers they lend us. For we are but the vessels for their gifts.” Mrs. Grant’s face is only visible to me in profile, but I can still see the small smile that lifts her lips. “Those who have come before, be with us now. We humbly request your presence, and accept the responsibility of your summoning.”
The shadow from the kitchen sweeps through the doorway, toward us. It settles over Mrs. Grant, into her. And then she turns her head, her eyes meet mine, and I shriek.
Her eyes have gone completely black, the whites and irises swallowed up by her pupils. What in the ever-loving?—
Mrs. Grant’s mouth opens, and a voice issues from it. It’s deep and cracked and…not hers at all. “What would you have of me?” it says.
I want to leap to my feet. To flee. But instead I say, “My name is Rune Whitlock,” summoning all of my courage. “I’m trying to find out what happened to my family. Mrs. Grant said if there was a memory buried in my subconscious…if I’d seen something…she could help me remember.”
She tilts her head, regarding me with those peculiar eyes. “Well, then. Let’s begin.”
Her hands grip mine even more tightly. And then I feel the strangest sensation…as if someone’s riffling through my mind, flipping the pages of my memory back and back, like I’m a book they’re reading from last page to first. I see me, sitting in this room with my hands in Mrs. Grant’s. The bathroom at Charlotte’s. The fair. Donovan’s office. The further back in time the memories go, the faster the pages flip. I’m graduating from college. I’m in the juvenile detention center. I’m in the yard with the monster, watching everything burn.
“Interesting,” her voice says from far away. “But not impossible.”
I want to ask her what she means. But I can’t speak. I’m caught in a whirlwind of memories, the images rippling faster and faster. I’m in middle school, with kids laughing at me. Kindergarten, my hair in a braid, clutching my lunchbox, hoping to make a friend. Four, clutching the yellow-trimmed blanket that I’ve had as long as I can remember. Three, trying to warn my babysitter that someone’s going to steal her wallet, only she won’t believe me can’t believe me and I don’t have the words. Two, sitting in a wood-paneled, windowless room, playing with some plastic toys while adults whisper behind me. One, and…
I’m standing in a light-drenched room, painted a cheery yellow, filled with plants. On the wall hangs an abstract art piece, splashed with bright, primary colors. And in a cozy rocking chair, piled with pillows, sits a beautiful woman. Her wavy, dark brown hair, so like my own, spills over her shoulders and down her back. Bars of sunlight spill across her face, highlighting a constellation of freckles that dot her cheeks. But it’s her smile, open and happy and free, that sends a wave of longing rippling through me.
I know this woman, not with my conscious mind, but on a bone-deep, visceral level. I recognize her. Everything within me gravitates toward her, like a plant long-deprived of sun.
She cradles a bundle in her arms. As I watch, she ducks her head and begins to croon to it, her voice soft and gentle. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
At the sound of her voice, the longing within me intensifies. I edge closer, but the woman doesn’t glance up, and as I pass through the bars of sunshine that stripe the floor, I leave no shadow. Finally I’m standing next to her, peering down. My heart flutters, then starts pounding, so hard I can barely catch my breath.
In her arms, wrapped in the yellow blanket that’s all I have left of my childhood, is a baby who stares up at her with my too-wide, thick-lashed gray eyes.
Holy crap. I’m looking at myself. And the woman holding me…this lovely, sweet, kind woman…is my mother.
I’ve always wondered if my biological parents loved me. If they couldn’t wait to give me away, because I was different and unlovable, wrong, from the moment I came into this world. But here, watching my mother rock the baby that I once was, seeing her stroke my cheek, I know the truth. The ache that’s always simmered inside me subsides, replaced with a relief so profound, I fall to my knees next to the rocking chair. I want to savor this moment. To stay here with my mother, forever, as she sings to me about how I make her happy, even when skies are gray. Here, in this cocoon of a moment, I’ve found perfect, absolute peace.
And then it splinters.
The sky outside the windows darkens, the bars of sunlight fading. My mother’s head turns, and her eyes go wide. She leaps to her feet with me clutched in her arms.
“David!” she screams. “David!”
A man comes thundering into the room. He’s tall, bearded, built like a lumberjack. Deep within me, recognition thrums: This is my father.
“Run,” he says, his voice urgent. “Go!” Then he faces the window, raising his hands. “ Hic sunt dragones ,” he chants, louder and louder. “Hic abundant leones. ”
As my mother sprints for the door, honest-to-God dragons and lions materialize in the room, forming a barrier between my father and the window. The glass shatters, and hooded figures climb through, one after the other. “Don’t be a fool, David,” one of them shouts. “Give us the child, and we’ll let you and your wife live.”
I know that voice. I’ve heard it before. But where?
“ Fortius!” my father bellows, and one of the dragons opens its mouth, unleashing a stream of flame at the man. He dodges it, but the curtain behind him catches fire, and the baby I once was shrieks in terror.
The man in the lead, the one who spoke, tsks at my father, as if scolding an errant child. He pulls a knife from his pocket and cuts his arm, then dips his fingers in the blood and flicks it at the beasts. “ Evanescere,” he says, his voice echoing off the walls, the floors, the ceiling. I can feel the power of it, as if the word has actual weight. And one by one, as the blood hits them, my father’s beasts wink out of existence.
Blood witches, I think. Is this who they are? What they do?
What do they want with us?
The heat in the room is rising, degree by degree. Sweat slicks my father’s forehead as he looks from one figure to the other. “Get out—” he begins, just as my mother screams again.
He wheels. Between her and the door is another group of darkly hooded figures. One of them grabs for her, and she kicks them in the shin. But she’s holding me, and she can only fight so hard. Still, she struggles against the figure who holds her—holds us— prisoner.
“ Non ducor— ” she begins, but the man claps a hand over her mouth.
“No you don’t,” he snarls. “You think we don’t know what you are? What you can do?”
My mother tosses her head, biting at his hand. She thrashes and kicks, but it’s no use. One of the other figures wrests the baby from her arms, and it shrieks— I shriek—even louder than before. The flames are raging now, gobbling up the curtains, racing along the walls. I want to put the fire out. To save my parents. But when I tear at the man who holds my mother prisoner, my hands pass right through him. Because of course, I’m not really here.
Three of the men who climbed through the window have my father pinned, holding him back as he screams for me, for my mother. The leader dips a finger in his own blood again, but this time he paints it across my father’s lips, trailing a bloodied fingertip down his throat. My father’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. The veins in his neck bulge as he tries again and again, struggling vainly to break free.
“We ruled once,” the leader says, his face invisible beneath the hood, his eyes dark pits. “We will rule again. Let this be a warning to those who stand in our way.”
And oh God, I know where I’ve heard his voice before. In my premonitions, saying Our day will come.
He stalks closer to my father, until their faces are inches away. My father stares back at him, and in his eyes I see only defiance. Not fear.
“Goodbye, David,” the man says, and cuts my father’s throat.
I hurl myself at the man, screaming, trying to rake my nails down his face, to gouge out his eyes. But he feels nothing, hears nothing. I know it’s too late, that all of this happened so long ago, that I’m helpless to stop it. But I press my hands against my father’s throat all the same, trying to staunch the flow of blood as he crumples to his knees.
It does no good. His eyes dull. He falls, face-first, to the floor in a pool of his own blood.
Across the room, my mother howls from behind the hand that’s clamped over her mouth. “It’s time,” the leader says to the man that holds her back.
Oh. God. No.
She doesn’t go down easily. Instead she strains toward baby-me, trying desperately to get away, twisting and writhing. Tears pour down her face.
But he kills her anyway.
My mother and father lie on the floor of the once-peaceful, once-beautiful room, crumpled and bloodied. Baby-Rune wails, coughing and choking as her— my— lungs fill with smoke. She reaches out for her parents, but no one pays her any heed. Instead, one by one, heedless of the flames that rampage through the room, the black-hooded figures cut their arms.
“Non sine sanguine gloria,” the leader intones.
“No glory without blood,” the others echo.
As one, they dip their fingers into their blood, then raise their hands high. And in the middle of the room, that familiar scroll-and-dagger symbol materializes, burnt into the very air.
Their job done, the hooded figures flee through the window once more, taking baby-Rune with them, still wrapped in the yellow blanket. The last thing I see before the memory fades to nothing is the rocking chair engulfed in flame, fire devouring the last place where I felt safe.