Ezra sighed and smiled.
"Thank you."
Helena went into the room. Becky breathed long and slow, fast asleep.
"I'm going to touch your head now, Becky," Helena explained, but Becky did not respond.
Helena pressed her hands into Becky's scalp. She massaged along the back of her skull and down her neck. As her hands moved and pressed, she closed her eyes and focused on transitioning Becky into deeper states of relaxation.
Helena, an air element, could manipulate the mind. The visions, the secrets, had begun for her in childhood. After moving into the Coven of Ula, she worked for many years with Faustine on developing her psychic abilities; however, they often went unused. Helena struggled with guilt when she invaded a person's mind without their consent.
To aid in her psychic work with Becky, Faustine had given Helena the Crystal Pendant of Sight. The crystal helped magnify the energetic connection between the two minds. More importantly, it could store thoughts and memories retrieved during mind exchanges.
She slung the delicate silver chain around her head and situated the crystal over her third eye. If she could conjure enough energy, the crystal would channel Becky's memories and Helena would be able to examine them.
As she massaged, Helena caught glimpses of Becky's inner state. Colors, mostly dark reds and blacks, wove through Helena's mind. Helena began a low chant, heard only as a vibration; it called out to Becky to release the darkness within her.
Becky moaned and sighed. Suddenly, she sat up, her spine stiffening. She clutched at the air and screamed. Helena stopped the murmuring and rested her hands on Becky's shoulders. As quickly as the episode began, it ended. Becky collapsed onto the bed, her eyes closed.
Helena touched the crystal on her forehead and directed her gaze through the prism of light. A flash of Becky's past grew larger in her mind's eye. She saw through Becky's eyes. A ghastly face loomed out of the darkness. Empty black eyes sunken in a ruined gray face. The woman held Becky's shoulders with cruel, gnarled hands. She spoke in rapid bursts that Helena could not understand, but one word she heard for certain—curse.
Helena pulled the pendant away from her head. She closed her eyes against the face, corpse-like, looming in Becky's memory.
The Lourdes of Warning.
***
The cold couldn't reach her. As the heat in her body increased, Abby started to sweat.
Helena called the ritual "Harnessing the energy of the dark moon."
Ezra had chosen the space, an open field tucked miles outside of the city. The black sky held a billion tiny stars and in the far distance the lights of the city cast an opaque glow on the horizon.
After they'd placed protective barriers to block wanderers, Julian had erected the pyre. At first, Abby balked. They could not place her mother's body on a bonfire, for God's sakes, but the older witches prevailed. If not for Helena insisting that the magic was not only safe, but necessary considering Becky's condition, Abby would have refused. Helena had told Abby that a spirit memory tormented Becky and that she would fall into deeper decline until they rid of her of the toxic energy.
As the inferno grew brighter, Abby twirled and chanted. Her arms reached out to either side and soon she lost the feel of her body. The wind whipped and howled around her, although she knew the night, beyond their field of energy, was still.
In the center of the snowy field, her mother lay on a bed of coals. The fire burned red and ominous. The heat snaked through the ground and rose into the witches' feet through their heavy boots and clothes.
Abby's mother did not make a sound. The elixir of tranquility would keep her unconscious for hours, so Julian promised. Abby, Julian, Sebastian, Oliver, Helena and Ezra acted out the magic. Carefully chosen by Faustine, who consulted his crystals and reassured them that their energies matched the task.
Abby's mother had not blinked an eye. Sebastian called it "being in the flow." When your plan, your path, unwound before you like a ball of silk rolling down the stairs, perfectly, without a snag.
Abby had poured the vial of liquid into her mother's wine after her massage. So easy, weirdly easy. Abby watched her mother lift the wine and shoot the amber drink in a single go. Becky's bloodshot eyes lingered on Abby's for only an instant longer, and then she slumped over the table and began to snore.
They had carried her to Oliver's van.
Ezra and Julian had already begun preparations in the field. They had filled a pit with coals coated in an enchanted dust that purged the energy body. As the fire burned, the smoke would wind through Becky's body, into her lungs, through her skin and bones and blood. It would seek to release the darkness harbored there.
When they began the ritual, Abby's fear and doubt slowed them. She had moved reluctantly, filled with anxiety at the thought of her mother waking up. Finally, Julian had clapped his hands hard in her face.
"Snap out of it," he barked. "Of every witch here, your energy is the most connected to your mother. If you don't show up, then neither will she." He had gestured to Becky's prone form. He did not look angry, but vexed.
Abby's doubt arose from the fear that the darkness lived in her mother as fully as the woman herself. Not an insidious outsider, but an aspect of Becky's spiritual makeup that could not be purged with magic and ceremony.
As the chants grew louder, her body lighter and the fire burned hotter still, Abby's doubts slipped away. She closed her eyes and spun. She sang and laughed and cried. The longer she twirled through the field, the sky a spinning mass of sparkling black, the more she left the physical world and the story of her life behind. The lifetime of Abby—her thoughts, feelings and experiences—ceased to matter. They were merely roles that she played for a little while, but the vastness of divinity lived just beyond the veil. She had only to pull it back, step across that thin line and leave the dense form of Abby behind her.
"Dark moon, we call upon your dormant light," Julian sang into the clearing. "Pull the madness from her body, pull the darkness from her soul, release the woman Becky, give her back her purity, her liberation from pain."
Abby barely heard the words, but sang them anyway.
A shadow slithered from Becky's body. Abby slowed in the firelight and watched it approach her. When the wasted face of the Lourdes reared up, Abby's eyes bulged and she screamed. She fell back into the snow and her head struck the ground.
Sebastian rushed to her and scooped her into his arms.
She saw that he too glistened with sweat. His blue eyes shone from his sooty face.
"I'm okay," she whispered. "I thought I saw..." But as she looked around the clearing, she saw only darkness.
The others continued to sway and chant.
Only Julian had paused. He moved closer to Becky. He held his palms above her body and the fire rose toward his palms.
"No," Abby screamed and scrambled to her feet. She ran toward him. Her mother would burn alive.
"Stop," he commanded her, and the force of his energy drove her back. She gasped for breath as if he'd physically pushed her.
"She's nearly there," he bellowed. "If you enter her space, you will disrupt the connection."
"What connection?" Abby shrieked, sure that her mother was burning within the flames.
Julian gestured to the sky and as Abby's gaze trailed up from her mother's body, she saw thousands of tiny luminescent filaments entering her mother's body.
"I saw a shadow leave her," Julian exclaimed. "It is working."
Abby started to move closer to her mother. She had an overwhelming desire to reach her hand into the silvery threads, but as her fingers reached out, a sharp spasm cut through her stomach. She clutched her belly and doubled over.
On hands and knees, she watched the muddy ground swim and tilt beneath her.
She sensed Sebastian touching her, talking to her, but his voice sounded far away.
"There's something wrong," he called to the others and the alarm in his voice should have spurred her to action, b
ut her hands and knees felt cemented in the mud. If she moved, she would get sick again.
"What hurts?" Ezra asked, squatting in front of Abby and holding a bitter-smelling satchel.
Abby jerked her head to the side and shook her head.
Ezra took the satchel away. She touched Abby's face.
"She's feverish," Ezra announced.
"Sebastian, take her back to the room, we're not finished here," Julian commanded.
Abby heard Sebastian stand.
"No, she needs medical help. Ezra, can you come with us?"
"No," Julian snapped. "We're nearly there. We need the collective energy to maintain it."
"Julian," Helena said, an acid tone in her voice. "Let them go, the spell is nearly complete."
Abby sensed Helena close to her, but she closed her eyes and tried to breathe.
"What's happening?" Oliver murmured as if he'd only just woken from the reverie of the spell.
"Can I pick you up, honey?" Sebastian asked, resting his hand on her back.
She watched spots of light dance at the backs of her eyes. Could he? She wanted to say yes and get far away from the muddy, smoky field, but the thought of shifting, even an inch, terrified her. She pushed her attention to the baby and tried to connect. She felt life, a stirring perhaps, but nothing to convince her that their baby girl was okay. What if she moved and the baby died?
Abby's arms shook as tears ran down her face.
Sebastian pressed his hand into her chest and eased her up. She cried harder as spasms snaked through her body. She reached a hand again toward the silvery light, but then Sebastian had lifted her into his arms and begun walking across the field. She could no longer see the altar that contained her mother. She watched the twinkling stars and tried to feel the child inside of her.
****
"Are you sure she's okay?" Sebastian asked again. He hovered over Ezra's shoulder as she removed the blood pressure cuff from Abby's arm.
Ezra squeezed his hand and smiled.
"She is, Sebastian. Blood pressure is down, fever is down. I think that level of spell casting, it pulls in such a huge amount of energy, and just caused a nasty attack of pregnancy sickness. It's normal, you know? I'm not a midwife, but I've worked with a lot of pregnant women. Abby's body gets fatigued easier, simple as that."
"Which is why she should be taking it easy," he muttered.
Ezra nodded.
"True enough, but consider things from her perspective. She's a brand-new witch with all these powers and energy in the midst of a major crisis. Even if she wanted to lie around all day, she probably couldn't."
"At what point should she start doing that?"
"I don't know. It's going to depend on her body. I would recommend this: get one of the witches of Ula on board as a midwife or ask them to connect you to a witch midwife. This is her first baby, both of yours, and you're going to have questions and need the support."
"That's a good idea," he confessed. "Funny that we hadn't even thought about it."
Sebastian moved to Abby's bed. He smoothed the tangled curls away from her face. She looked pale and drawn. Her cheekbones seemed more pronounced and her lips small and colorless in her face.
He knew if Ezra put the blood pressure cuff on him, it'd be through the roof. He could feel blood pounding in his ears and pumping through his veins. The death of his family, the murder of Claire in particular, should have made him stronger, more capable of dealing with illness, but it had the opposite effect. He grew anxious, scared and then finally angry. He wanted to make Abby better. He wanted to punch Julian in the face.
"Here." Ezra held out a handful of heart-shaped candy.
"What is it?" he asked, examining the tiny red and yellow candy.
"Tranquilizing treats, or Kendra calls them sugary sedatives. Many names, same impact."
Sebastian shook his head.
"I don't want to sleep."
"They won't make you sleep, just relax a bit. They're mostly herbs, a bit of honey and drop of magic. They can really soothe the senses. I promise you'll be fully present, just a little less..."
"Nuts?"
"I was going to say anxious."
"How's she doing?' Oliver asked, creeping into the room and edging the door closed.
He had returned an hour earlier with Julian and Helena. They had a special room set up for Becky on the first floor, and Helena would stay with her through the night to observe and ensure that nothing strange occurred.
Sebastian took the candy and threw them into his mouth. They tasted sweet and flowery.
"She's doing better," Sebastian told Oliver, though he said it more for himself. He touched her face, relieved to feel her skin cool to the touch. Her temperature had been down for a while, but he couldn't help checking every few minutes.
"You're like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," Oliver joked.
Sebastian glared at him, but bit back the retort on his lips. He could easily direct his anger at Oliver. The guy just rubbed him the wrong way. If he dug deep, he knew his feelings arose from envy. He felt envious that Oliver was a witch, of his easy friendship with Abby, of his carefree attitude with life.
"Don't you take anything seriously?" Sebastian asked, trying to temper his outrage.
Ezra looked back and forth between them, cocking an eyebrow.
"I see," she said finally.
"You see what?" Oliver asked, ignoring Sebastian's question and stare.
"Like two sides of the same coin, you guys are so alike that you magnetize apart."
"Hardly," Sebastian scoffed.
"Maybe if I were an angry, brooding goat," Oliver countered.
Ezra laughed and shook her head.
"It's true. I'm a witch, remember? I know these things."
****
"I don't feel the heaviness," Helena admitted, rubbing her hands along Becky's temples.
"It's gone, the shadow. I watched it slip out of her. I think Abby saw it too," Julian said triumphantly.
Helena narrowed her eyes at him.
"You were out of line out there, Julian. You do know that, right?"
Julian's face darkened.
"This isn't high school, Helena. You know that if we broke that spell, all of our efforts would have been wasted."
"You said yourself that the shadow had already left."
"And may have been lurking nearby, tethered to Becky's energy body. As long as that light was coming in, we needed to hold the space."
Helena sighed and looked away. There had been a time when she felt so close to Julian. Miranda had been her best friend. She had loved them both without condition, but after Miranda's death, Julian delved further into the extremes. He lost some critical piece of his humanity. Helena had secretly hoped that the years had restored it, but could see they had not.
Julian moved along Becky's body, letting his hands drift just above her.
"Nothing dense," he said finally.
"I'm going to make a cup of coffee and then you can head to bed," Helena told him.
****
"So, what now?" Abby asked Helena after they had returned to Abby and Sebastian's house in Trager. Abby's mother had checked out of the spa with a smile and taken a cab to the train station to return to Lansing. Becky was in the dark about the true intentions of the weekend and did not realize her daughter had been watching her from an upstairs window. Abby couldn't help but feel hopeful.
"Now we wait. I know that's the last thing you want to hear."
"Actually, I don't mind hearing that. I'm exhausted."
Helena took her hands and squeezed.
"You're living for two. One life is tiring, two, well...you're getting a glimpse of that experience."
"Speaking of the baby," Abby added. "Sebastian and I talked this morning about a midwife. Ezra thought you or Elda might know of a witch midwife?"
"You're looking at one," Helena beamed. "I haven't delivered a baby since Lydie, but I would love to care for
you, Abby, if you'd have me."
"Wow really?" Abby asked eagerly. "You delivered Lydie?"
"With my own two hands."
She held up her hands and looked at them.
"Thanks to you they're good as new and now we're practically family."
Helena referred to the blood that Abby had given Helena to heal her.
"I'd love for you to be our midwife, Helena."
"And I would be honored, honey. When can we get started?"
"Started?"
"Sure, go over all the fun changes that are happening in your body, make sure you're eating and doing all the right stuff."
"Lamaze?"
Helena laughed.
"We will cover breathing, but at this point your meditation training will have taken care of a lot of that."
"Sebastian's going to be so excited," Abby told her.
He would be too. Sebastian loved Helena. She was by far his favorite witch at Ula, excluding Abby, of course.
Abby hugged Helena goodbye and walked into her house. It smelled like home, and she inhaled deeply as she moved through the rooms. It also felt freezing cold. She shivered and wrapped her arms across her chest. She walked to the heater and checked the thermostat. Fifty-six degrees. She turned it up and waited to hear the furnace kick on. Silence.
Gathering some newspaper from the recycling bin, she squatted in front of the fireplace and quickly made a fire. Adding two logs and lighting the kindling, the fire gradually came to life. She held her hands in front of the heat and rubbed them together.
A floorboard creaked overhead and she paused, listening. She heard it again.
Hating to abandon the warmth, she plucked a blanket from the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders. Oliver and Sebastian had gone to the woods to check out the area that they believed the map discovered in the Kanti Files depicted. As she walked up the stairs, Abby wondered if she shouldn't wait for them to return.
"Don't be silly," she said. "You're a witch after all."
Before she reached the door to the nursery, she sensed the energy inside. Abby touched the knob, ice-cold, and slowly turned the handle.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 81