Chapter Zero #2
Titus grabs my hand, pulling me forward faster. We race down the hill. I risk another quick glance over my shoulder. A silhouette of movement flickers between the trees.
The figure behind us is raising a gun.
A bullet hits a tree branch above. The limb crashes down, blocking my path and narrowly missing my head. We quickly scramble left, my bare feet slipping on mud and leaves with each movement. I steady myself, placing a palm against a tree trunk. Panic floods me. My stomach threatens to empty itself.
Titus yanks me again, nearly dragging me off-balance. We dash through the bushes into a clearing.
The full moon casts its silver light, illuminating the bayou and its peculiar black sand. Stars blink out a message of hope above the shore. Just ahead, across from the dock, rises the mountain of branches that hide the boat Titus made us painstakingly, piece by piece.
I smile at him. My thundering heart slows a beat. We’re going to survive. We have to.
I quickly toss branches from the massive pile, trying to free the boat. I survey the sparkling beach, which ends at a ragged, rocky cliff. The dock, a frayed road to the unknown, juts into the water. A dry road to hope. Stones, dark sand, and sharp branches that will not stop me.
“Hurry!” I say. We need to be in the water and well on our way.
I toss more debris, trying to uncover the boat.
“Don’t move.” It isn’t Sabine’s voice.
It’s Titus’s.
I turn.
He stands, trembling. The gun in his hand is pointed squarely between my eyes. My mouth falls open, and my arm goes limp. I don’t understand what’s happening.
Tears well in my eyes, matching the ones spilling from his. “What— Titus, please…”
His hands shake. “I—I don’t want to hurt you,” he sobs.
“What are you doing? Let’s go. Let’s get out of here!”
“I can’t let you. Sabine—you don’t know what she’ll do if I let you go.”
“I love you,” I plead. “This is our chance.”
Sabine’s laugh echoes from the trees. I tremble from the bones out.
The hair on my arms spikes to attention. My knees quake as sweat stings my eyes. I feel the cold metal of her rifle at the back of my head.
“Good job, boy,” Sabine says. “Now pull the trigger.”
“I can’t,” he replies.
“Don’t you want freedom for your sisters? Your entire bloodline?” She sets her gun on my shoulder, pointing straight at him.
“Yes. But—”
“No buts. Freedom comes at a cost.”
I grit my teeth. “Let us go, Missus. We don’t want no trouble. Please. You don’t need me.”
Sabine clucks her tongue. “Why should you get to leave Grand Belle Island?” Sabine moves in front of me. Rifle held high. She curls her lips into a smile.
“Let us go. We’re in love,” I say.
She laughs. “You think love exists? You think there’s any possibility for love in this place, this time?”
My stomach tightens. Words lodge in my throat. The image of freedom slowly disintegrates in my mind, replaced by the ever-present reality of iron chains.
“We’re more alike than you might think. I didn’t get a choice either, you know?
I was sold here.” She gazes around at the bayou.
“Right from under my mother’s nose to a rich planter ten years my senior.
Forced to carry and bury ten children.” She sweeps a curl from my forehead.
“And now, here you are … the only thing of my husband’s that’s survived besides me.
” Her eyes gaze off in the distance, toward where a garden of crypts sit, full of her dead unborn children.
“That—that’s not my fault. I—” I stammer.
“I suppose not. I suppose this is what life has dealt. This is the game to be played.” She smiles so wide I can almost count all of her rotten teeth.
“But I will win. The old gods of the Haguenau wood blessed me with great power long before I arrived here.” She jams the rifle deeper into my chest, then looks at Titus.
“Now, boy, a wise one casts away their doubts when they have nothing to lose.”
I stare at Titus, desperate to meet his gaze.
She steadies her gun. “Kill her, and I’ll give you and every person who shares your blood the divine gift I promised you.
True freedom from Grand Belle Island, from time itself.
There are versions of this world to come that will be beyond what you can dream of …
where there are no chains, no plantations for either of us. ”
Sweat pours down his face. I search his eyes for the boy I love, the boy I thought I knew.
“Titus, what is this?” I swallow down angry tears.
“Shut up, girl,” Sabine warns with another shove of her rifle. “Dark gifts require the ultimate sacrifice, Titus.”
“Let Venus go.” His voice shakes.
“Come on now.” Sabine laughs. “She’s sick. She’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”
“Don’t listen to her, Titus!” I cry out, the worry, the anger, the sadness breaking loose. “I love you. Please!” I stammer through clattering teeth. “She’s lying! I’m fine.”
“I saw you coughing blood last night,” Titus says, the warmth in his voice gone. He sounds like a stranger.
“You love me. We’re supposed to be together.” Hot tears pour down my cheeks. I can’t die now. Seventeen years isn’t enough. “Please.”
Titus spits, cursing, and lowers his gun a little. “You’ve been tired.”
“Everybody’s tired here!” I shout. “The work never stops. You know that. How can you trust her?” I point at him. “Shoot her! For what she’s done to all of us!”
He shakes his head. “You think my sisters would live if I did that?”
“You promised we’d be free. Be married!”
“I’m sorry.” Titus’s hands shake. “I have to keep my sisters safe. I told my papa I would do whatever it took.”
The noise of the bayou fades as a shot rings out.
No more bleating frogs and buzzing cicadas.
No more wind whipping through the sleepy trees.
With wide eyes, I look down at my belly.
A red stain blooms, darkening my dress. I grip my stomach, and crimson streams through my fingers, causing pressure as it starts to burn.
The taste of betrayal coats my tongue as hot pain sears through me.
Sabine’s laugh rings in my ears.
“I’m sorry.” Titus sobs as I crumple on the sand.
“Master’s been looking at my little sister like he used to look at your ma.
Before my pa died, I promised I’d do anything I had to do to protect my sisters.
Missus would sell me and leave my sisters alone with Master if I didn’t.
” He weeps, eyes pleading for understanding, when all I want to give him is my pain.
“I have to free them,” he says. “Change my family’s future. Make it bright for all of us.”
“And change will come,” Sabine says. A skeleton of a smile cracks her lips, and she puts her weapon down. “But you…” She towers over me. “You will be added to my collection.”
As I twitch and groan in agony, she dips her finger into my blood. A drop dangles from the tip of her black fingernail. She opens the pink cavern of her mouth and lets it fall on her tongue, then licks her finger clean before smiling down at me. “Real power is in the blood.”
Ravens collect in the trees above her.
I squirm, looking at the water, the black sand, Titus’s feet. My heart hurts as it struggles to beat under the weight of my grief, of his betrayal.
“A promise is a promise!” Sabine smiles, twirling in the light of the full moon.
She extends her left arm. “Your bloodline will receive the gift, Titus. And the price.” Beneath her pale white skin, veins rise like black vines.
She slices open her own forearm with her long fingernail.
Inky blood leaks from her wrist. I shudder as a curling worm wiggles and drips from the nasty gash.
My eyes widen in terror. Mama was right. Sabine’s a Devil woman, a witch! The worm grows into a massive snake. Sabine’s eyes darken and morph from ice-blue orbs to pools of midnight.
Titus is shaking. “No!” he cries out. “I changed my mind. I changed my mind, I said.” The snake slithers toward him, hissing. “I don’t deserve freedom after I— Get a doctor. Spare Venus. End this! I made a mistake.”
“End?” Sabine scoffs. “This is just the beginning.” Her eyes lock on Titus.
Black blood flows down her arm and cascades from her fingertips.
She slowly trails her palms down her tiny waist. Storm clouds thicken in the skies above.
Bolts of magic crackle and disturb the murky stillness of the bayou.
A blinding flash of lightning strikes the snake, severing it in an explosion of white.
The creature splits into two massive serpents that slink in the sand by Sabine’s heels.
Sabine smooths her dress and glares at Titus. “Trust me. Power will look almost this amazing on your sisters, too.”
I try to breathe, but my lungs can’t hold air. My throat constricts. Everything seems thicker and bloodier. Like the sticky red pool growing around me. My vision is coal black at the edges, as dark as the sand I hemorrhage onto.
A raven calls out.
The serpents twist and grow, their dark scales igniting, outlined in flickering blue flame as they slither toward me and Titus.
He cowers and inches back. I roll over, trying to slide onto my back, fighting to get on my feet.
But my body has wilted under the gunshot.
One snake loops around my torso, pressing its weight into my wound.
It opens its pink mouth wide, and its razor-sharp fangs bite its own tail. I’m locked in place, stuck in its vise.
My vision turns hazier from the pain. I can’t figure out what’s happening.
The other serpent curls and spins its flaming body around Titus’s leg.
He flails and punches as it climbs him. He falls back, tripping over the branches that had concealed the boat.
The snake circles his muscular chest, pinning him in place.
I’m too weak to fight the snake as it squeezes tighter.
Sabine screams in French; my mind is too frantic to translate.
The snakes begin to sink into us; their scales burn as they cut our flesh and bury themselves inside our bodies.
The pain ruptures through me like the lightning cutting through the sky.
My chest tightens, my breath turning to gasps. I struggle to see Titus, only spotting the bloody hole the snake left behind in his shirt. Did she kill him? Is he dying too?
His fingers twitch. Titus’s body glows, a soft golden light emanating from the gashes on his flesh. I watch as his wounds grow less puffy, less red, and fuse together.
I look down as my skin illuminates. In shock, I watch the bullet lift out of my belly and roll into the sand. My injuries knit themselves back together, and I gasp.
Titus scrambles to his feet and crawls toward me. He tries to reach out, but I slap his hand away. I stand and prepare to run.
“Marvelous!” Sabine shouts. “It is done.”
A cold settles over me despite the muggy heat.
Sabine smiles. “I forgot to tell you about the tax, Titus. In this world, there’s always a price.” Her words echo like a prophecy. “The moon has the sun. Beginnings have ends. And everything in life has an opposite to match it. So the blessing I gave you comes with a curse.”
Blessing? Curse?
“The universe requires balance,” Sabine says. “Titus Baldwin, I’ve given you and your bloodline the power to travel and move freely. You can escape this time entirely, and you’ll have other gifts that shall appear with each descendant.”
“I can take my family? Get away from here?” Titus asks. “Leave all this hate and misery behind?”
Sabine smiles. “Yes.”
He turns to run.
“But … the hate you’re so eager to escape, I cannot erase—only shift it.
There’s so much of it in this place and time, and more will come.
” Sabine gazes out in the distance like she can see it.
“So in return for the hate you can try to avoid now, that hate will linger inside you and your bloodline.”
Sabine tugs at her dress, and its color shifts from white to royal blue.
“I don’t understand. You said—” Titus quivers with fear.
“I’m done with this game.” I look around, frantically wondering if it’s still possible to get away on the boat.
“And, Venus, I could’ve let you bleed to death.
” Sabine’s dress spouts into an elegant upside-down tulip shape.
“You and your bloodline will also be blessed with gifts, but in turn you shall experience the Baldwin family’s hate in the most agonizing ways.
” She shakes her head, and the messy bun crowning it falls to curling strands that darken from red to brown.
“From this moment on,” she declares as the lines around her mouth and eyes soften, her face no longer wizened but beautiful and barely twenty, “you and your descendants will live to see their babies die. You will be the cause of it.”
“No!” My voice is sharp as I yell it.
Her red pupils almost glow. “Your families will seek violence and vengeance. It’s important to anticipate your opponent’s actions. Every move matters. Play without a well-informed plan, and you’re going to lose,” she says. “And your freedom will be wasted, buried in the ground.”
I can’t look away. I can’t make sense of what she’s trying to say.
“Bloodlust will bubble up like boiled cane syrup whenever members of your bloodlines share the same space for too long. A hunger for violence that will only be satisfied by the kill. It’s unavoidable. Hatred demands an outlet, and that bloodlust must be satisfied.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“My reasons are between me and my gods.” She cracks her knuckles.
“You live at and by my mercy no matter how long you live and how long your bloodline grows. Every generation the tax for freedom must be paid. The Baldwins and the Davenports will be forced to play a little game—my game—my Tethered Gambit. But first, I hate disloyal men.” Sabine shoots Titus in the chest.
I cover my mouth, the shock freezing me in place.
His eyes turn glassy as the blood pours out of him. He exhales his final breath with a gentle whoosh.
Sabine smiles. “Such tender skin we all live in. My Tether will show your entire bloodlines how much it bleeds.”
The earth shakes under my feet. The clouds above the trees tremble, and stardust rains down on the ravens and me. My hands soften despite the rage inside me.
Sabine coos, “Now the nightmare begins…”