by Nichole Van
And now I knew why.
Tennyson pulled back. “No! I told you not to kiss me, dammit—”
“It’s okay. Trust me. This is meant to be.”
“Olivia, NO!”
“Trust.”
I pecked his lips again before pushing off his chest.
I flashed a quick smile at Chiara and Jack, Dante and Branwell.
I faced the scar, hovering beside the trapdoor to the roof, sensing the daemon coming for me.
“You got this,” Chiara tensed.
I nodded.
“No!” I heard Tennyson behind me, scrambling to his feet. Dante stepped between Tennyson and myself, putting a staying hand on his brother’s chest.
I reached out my hand, searching for Jack’s. His fingers grabbed mine.
The daemon came for me, pouring out of the scar. Black slime slicked the stones as it reached for me. The dark sludge wrapped around my body, tugging me toward the scar.
It wanted me back.
But Jack held my hand.
As a former resident of the shadow world to which the daemon belonged, he had a sort of immunity. This protected me . . . enough. It allowed me to stand firm and resist the daemon’s insistent pulling. It also augmented my ability to see the shadow world.
Looking around, I saw it clearly.
A chain wrapped around the brothers—Dante, Branwell and Tennyson—before leading to me and, from me, disappearing into the scar.
The chain is what linked us all together.
I needed to follow the chain. So I allowed myself to be pulled toward the rift.
That was the difference. The missing element all these years.
The thing the old gypsy woman had been referring to—
You must choose the path instead of being compelled to follow it.
Choice. Free will.
You had to willingly go through the scar.
The scar fluttered wider, expanding by several feet, its edges roiling a sickly green-yellow, acid lava. The daemon pulsed around me, eager and hungry.
“Olivia! No!” Dimly, I noted Tennyson’s voice.
“She’s got this, Tenn,” one of his brothers said. Branwell.
A slight scuffle. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Dante had his arms banded around Tennyson’s chest, holding him back. “You’ve got to let her do this, Tenn. Trust us. Please.”
The scar stretched higher, at least ten feet high now, a ragged portal into another realm.
I clutched Jack’s hand and stepped through the scar in reality, one hand connected to Jack in the physical world, the rest of me in the shadow world.
And there she was.
Just as I had suspected.
Standing on the opposite side. Waiting. Tears streaming down her cheeks.
A woman.
She stood alone, dressed in a bright, yellow robe that belonged in another age. A riot of dark, curly hair. Dark eyes. Heart-shaped face.
It was like looking at myself in the mirror.
A length of chain was wrapped around her hands, one end connected to me and the brothers. The other end trailed off into the mist. The entire length of the chain roiled with the seething darkness of the daemon.
She smiled at me, a wobbly thing. “Mia bambina,” she said.
My baby.
I knew enough Italian now to understand that.
My mother. My birth mother.
She had been the sacrifice the gypsies had made so long ago. Giovanni had promised them safety, and to save her people, she had allowed herself to be cast into the shadow world, a willing sacrifice bound to the daemon.
And from there, the link that bound the daemon entity to the D’Angelos.
My vision blurred, but I valiantly blinked the emotion away.
Not now.
Later I could mourn this.
I clutched Jack’s hand with painful force.
She came forward, the chain still wrapped around her hands.
“Mamma,” I kissed her cheek. “Ti amo.”
“Ti amo,” she replied.
I knew what I had to do. I knew it, but part of me still broke.
She smiled again, quickly kissing my cheek on a sob, tears blinding us both.
I took the length of chain from her, holding it in my free hand.
No one else could touch it, not here in the shadow world. Just her, and because I was part of her . . . me.
The slimy sludge pulsed along the chain. But it wasn’t the full sentient, daemon being.
That I could sense, racing toward us in the fog beyond. It rumbled and huffed, lightning chasing before it, crackling across the formless sky.
She pushed me away.
I kissed her quickly again and stepped back through the scar, returning to the top of the tower.
Because of my bloodline, the chain stayed with me. I was the only person who could carry it through the rift, making it visible to others involved in the curse.
“Holy crap! I can see the chain!” Dante said.
“Me, too,” Branwell joined him.
“Whoa.” That was Tennyson.
“I can’t see it, but I trust you,” Chiara yelled. “Pull the chain free. If you pull the chain binding you out of the shadow world, then the curse will be broken.”
The sound of the daemon grew louder.
“Hurry!” Dante said.
I tried to pull on the chain, drawing more of it to me. But it was heavy and my one arm wasn’t strong enough.
“I need both hands,” I panted.
Jack shifted his grip to my waist—he had to keep a hand on me or else I would lose the ability to see the chain. I tried to use both hands to pull the chain, link over link.
But it was still too heavy.
“Help her! We have to pull the chain all the way out!” Chiara called. “I’m no help, as only those involved in the curse can see and touch it.”
Instantly, hands joined mine.
The brothers.
They each grabbed on to the chain behind me, pulling with me. Jack still kept a hand on me. As long as he was touching me, I was grounded to this world. As long as I held onto the chain, the brothers would be able to see it and touch it.
I was the key.
The scar expanded outward, becoming nearly circular, allowing me to see clearly into the shadow world—a place of gray, swirling fog. But I could hear the daemon, its sounds drawing nearer: growling, thrashing, howling.
“Faster!” I yelled. “The daemon is closing in on us.”
Though the brothers could see the chain, only I could see the scar, the shadow world and possibly the daemon itself.
Link after link, we heaved on the chain. The brothers’ combined strength was just enough to pull it forward, piece by piece.
My eyes raised to the scar. I gasped, nearly flinching backwards. The fog had parted, showing a gray lunar landscape.
In the middle, the daemon undulated toward us, an enormous, dark shape. Eyes the same acid-green-gold as the edges of the scar. Mouth a gaping maw. Body a black mass of morphing slime.
A demon out of the most terrifying nightmare.
I gulped.
“Hurry!”
We pulled faster, but it wasn’t fast enough.
In the shadow world, the daemon lunged atop the slithering chain, yanking it in its powerful claws.
We all lurched forward.
The daemon roared in triumph, the chain slithering through my hands, back through the scar.
“It’s going to win,” I moaned. “I can’t hold on.”
“Not now!” Tennyson’s voice in my ear. “Not this time.”
“How? It’s too strong.”
“I’ll be damned if I don’t win this. We haven’t made it to this point to lose.”
We all leaned back, putting our entire weight into the chain, but it wasn’t enough.
The monster was too powerful.
The daemon pulled us forward, inch-by-inch, slowing winning our tug-o-war. Another step and I’d
be through the scar.
I didn’t want to know what would happen if we all tumbled through the scar. Would we be lost forever?
Abruptly, the daemon let go, roaring backwards in protest. It’s enormous shape looming like a skyscraper.
What—?!
And then I saw it. My mother. Her small form, clinging to the daemon’s back.
My mother was hurting it somehow. She was distracting it, allowing us to finish pulling the chain out.
The daemon writhed and lunged, intent on dislodging her.
Frantically, we pulled, loop after loop. My arms ached, my breathing lagged. But the brothers supported me, pulling the chain behind me, taking more and more of its weight.
My mother fought the daemon. It threw her off its back, but she clambered back to her feet. Dodging in and out, she attacked it, stabbing it with something. A knife, maybe?
The daemon fought back, turning pieces of itself into lashing whips, slicing her over and over.
At last, I saw it.
The end of the chain, a large mass of links rolled around itself.
“Faster!” I called, moving with renewed energy.
We had to get the entire chain out. That would end the curse, once and for all.
The chain was the connection between this world and the next, the power of the GUT flowing along it. The daemon fed the D’Angelos knowledge through it, and in exchange, the D’Angelos fed it their life force.
We had to pull the chain free, breaking the connection.
My mother was flagging, blood pouring from her wounds.
The daemon roared in triumph, moving in for the kill.
We heaved and pulled, the lump that was the end of the chain moving closer and closer to the scar.
Abruptly, the daemon reared upward, a black blade flashed from within its slimy, amorphous shape.
The blade sliced through my mother’s body, impaling her. She crumpled onto it, red blood pooling around her.
Howling in glory, the daemon roared its triumph to the indifferent gray sky.
And then it saw the bundle and realized how close we were to severing the tie.
The daemon turned and raced for us—a roiling blackness coming toward the open scar between our reality and its world.
Close.
We were so close.
We just had to get the end through the scar.
One pull.
Then two.
The daemon was closing in.
“We got this!” Dante called. “We can do it.”
My palms were aching, pain flaring with each heaving tug. Tennyson stood right behind me. Dante and Branwell behind him. All of us straining and pulling in unison, hand over hand.
The daemon reared upward and leapt for us.
We hauled the final mass of chain, heaving it through the scar.
The scar slammed shut on the daemon’s face, twinkling out of existence.
The chain melted away.
I collapsed, hands and knees to the pavement, chest panting from exertion, mind stunned.
We had done it.
We had succeeded.
My mother had died, once and for all, to save us.
The chain had been the link to the daemon. With all the chain here, in this physical reality, the connection was permanently severed.
The gypsy curse had been broken.
My brain blipped and sputtered, trying to process it all.
I sank all the way to the ground.
Arms surrounded me.
I was in the center of the brothers. I lifted my head, seeing Branwell and Dante. Tennyson was still behind me, my back to his chest, his arms wrapped around me.
We were all shaking.
“Everyone okay,” Dante rasped.
A chorus of groans and yeahs rose. Tennyson’s arms tightened around me.
“Did we do it?” Branwell asked.
“I think we did.” Dante’s voice held wonder.
Tennyson nodded, his face pressed into my neck, mumbling something I couldn’t understand.
“We did it!” Chiara squealed and launched herself into Jack’s arms. He laughed and swung her around.
Branwell stood up and pulled Dante into a hug, the twins back slapping it out.
I sank back into Tennyson, the adrenaline bleeding from me, leaving me trembling and chattering. I clutched his arms around me.
“You’re here,” he murmured in my ear, rocking me to him. “You’re here. Missed you . . . m-missed you s-so damn much.”
He pressed kisses against my hair, my neck, my throat . . . until I turned fully into him, bringing his mouth down to mine.
His lips were a revelation. Achingly sweet. Breathtakingly romantic.
He was home and hallelujah and Icannotbelievethisishappening.
“I-I’m here. I’m with you,” I hiccupped, continuing to pepper his lips with small kisses.
“Anima mia.”
“J-just so glad you’re a-alive,” I pressed my nose against his cheek. “I was so worried w-we wouldn’t reach you in time—”
“I’m free, carissima mia.” A lingering kiss. “S-saved me, dolcezza mia—”
A groan rose from the corner.
Tennyson froze, pulling away from me.
Another groan.
I whipped around.
Everyone turned toward the sound.
The ball of chain moaned and moved.
Chiara screamed.
Jack thrust her behind him. Branwell and Dante instantly assumed fighting stances.
Except . . .
It wasn’t a ball of chain, anymore.
It was a heap of clothing, grunting and gasping.
Tennyson pushed backward, trying to move himself between me and the . . . whatever it was.
Chiara screamed again, frantically shoving Jack out of the way.
“Chiara!” Dante grabbed for her.
But she was too quick.
Darting past her brothers, she collapsed on top of the groaning mound, hysterically sobbing.
Chiara rolled it over, pressing her hands into the moldering cloth.
“Babbo?” she cried. “Babbo, is it you?!”
The clothing fell enough away for me to see a confused, blinking face inside of it.
Older. Grizzled and unkempt, but familiar.
The man wasn’t Dante or Branwell or Tennyson, but some combination of them all.
Cesare D’Angelo.
THIRTY
Tennyson
Even years later, specific details of the next few hours remained vivid and clear.
That first intense look into Dad’s eyes, those hazel eyes that I had thought to never see again.
His gruff voice, “There’s my Tenn. My beloved boy.”
The tears streaming down Branwell’s face, disappearing in his beard, as he and Dante helped Dad off the tower.
Chiara curling up beside Dad in the bedroom he had always shared with Mom, cuddling into his shoulder as Dad laughed, exhausted and tired but impossibly jubilant.
Mom arriving home and calling to us up the stairs, “Is everything okay?” Her surprised face as we three boys poked our heads out of her bedroom.
One look at our faces and she . . . knew. How she knew, I’ll never understand. But something about us must have seemed instantly different.
“What is it?” she whispered, fingers flying to her mouth, eyes darting between us. “Did it happen? Did we succeed?”
And then her keening cry as she threw herself onto Dad. The one and only time in my life I witnessed my mother collapse in sobbing hysterics.
We siblings quietly closed the door and let them have time alone together.
We all gathered in the kitchen, sitting in the overstuffed chairs and loveseats around the large farmhouse table.
My mind was numb, stunned.
Looking at my brother’s faces, I wasn’t the only one.
The curse was broken.
Dad was alive.
Alive!!
&nbs
p; Dante sat wild-eyed. He had both hands on the table, palms spread wide. Branwell appeared just as shell-shocked.
Olivia cuddled beside me on a loveseat, our hands entwined.
Chiara was sitting on Jack’s lap, her nose buried in his neck, occasionally sniffling.
Huh.
Why wasn’t I holding my Olivia like that? I turned and pulled her onto my lap.
She came only too willingly, tucking her head into my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around, reveling in the feel of her curves against me.
I pressed a kiss to her temple.
“You do realize that I’m not letting go of you anytime soon, right?” I murmured in her ear. “I owe you so many kisses.”
She smiled and pecked my mouth before snuggled into me, wrapping her free hand around mine and hugging it to her chest, trapping our hands between us.
Yeah.
I intended to spend the rest of my life just like this.
I looked over at my stunned family.
Dante shook his head. “It’s gone,” he finally said.
Chiara sniffed and turned in Jack’s arms. “What do you mean?”
“My GUT.” Dante swallowed. “It’s just . . . barely there.”
Whoa.
“I think—” Branwell swallowed. “I think . . . me too.”
He tugged off the gloves he always wore. His hands hovered above the table, hesitating.
“It’s okay, Bran,” Chiara whispered. “Test it.”
He licked his lips. “I just want it gone so damn bad.”
I knew how much Branwell’s GUT crippled him. Like me, Hope was his nemesis.
But Branwell was no coward. He sucked in a deep breath and set his palms down beside Dante’s.
Branwell closed his eyes and inclined his head, expression moving from concerned to perplexed to ecstatic.
“Well?” Dante raised an eyebrow.
“Faint.” Branwell raised his head, smile brilliant. “Just the faintest thread of noise. Like you said . . . barely there.”
He lifted his hand, wonder written on his face. Most notable, Branwell did not immediately put his gloves back on. Instead, he ran his hands over the tabletop, the velvet upholstery of his chair, clearly savoring the texture and touch of each thing anew.
My eyes stung.
I knew how much that moment meant to him, to experience touch as a sensation, nothing else intruding.
Dante and Branwell both turned to me.
“Tenn?”
I cuddled Olivia closer. “I’ve been sensing little in the way of emotions over the past hour,” I admitted.