Blood Magic (Blood Magic Series Book 1)

by Ann Atkins

  I made it halfway on foot, but I finally had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl. When I reached my room, I grabbed a handheld mirror off the dresser and crawled onto my bed.

  I took a deep breath as I slowly raised the mirror to look at my reflection. I cried out and threw the mirror on the floor, and the black spots returned with a vengeance. My neck was bruised and swollen, and there was an angry red line marring my skin. The blood was coming from several deep scratches, and I held my hands up to check underneath my nails.

  Unfortunately, I found what I was looking for, and I knew the reason why. I had believed I was dying, and I’d tried to claw the rope from around my neck. But it hadn’t been me; it was Anna. She had been hung. She had died, yet her wounds appeared on me. Maybe more than just my unconscious mind had been there, but how was that possible?

  Another wave of pain and nausea hit me, and the black spots in my vision expanded, and finally, swallowed me whole.

  I could hear voices fading in and out all around me, and someone was saying my name. The blackness that had cradled me and shut out the pain was trying to let me go, but I struggled to hang on. My body might be ready to return to the light, but my mind and my heart weren’t so gung ho.

  I was fading in and out of consciousness, but I refused to open my eyes, hoping to hide for just a little bit longer. But it wasn’t long before the voices became less faded and more frantic. And as much as I would’ve liked to ignore them, I couldn’t.

  The voices belonged to Mason and Sarah, and they were obviously very concerned about me. I could not, in good conscience, ignore them any longer, so I allowed my eyes to slowly flutter open. Sarah’s face was streaked with tears, but Mason, although I could tell that he was just as worried as she was, was holding it together.

  “Oh, thank God!” Sarah exclaimed as she sat down on the bed and grasped my hand.

  Mason sat on the other side and leaned over to kiss me on the head. “Allie, can you tell us what happened, baby?” he asked gently.

  And despite my best efforts, my face crumpled, and the tears began to flow. “They died.” Those were the only two words I managed to get past my lips.

  “Who died?” Mason asked uncertainly.

  “Annabelle and Joshua. They … they were killed. He was … he was shot trying to save her, and she was hung!” My voice was thick with tears, but judging by the twin looks of horror on their faces, they had understood me.

  “Allison, is that how you got these marks? Did you wake up with them after that nightmare?” he asked, clearly horrified.

  My hand flew to my neck, and I was surprised to feel that it was still swollen. They understood the look of confusion on my face and rushed to answer my unspoken question.

  “We tried giving you blood … but it’s healing at a much slower rate than usual,” Sarah explained.

  I nodded. “It’s because the wounds aren’t really mine; they’re hers.”

  Mason suddenly flew into a rage, startling both Sarah and me, but his anger was directed only at her. “Why didn’t you tell me that something like this could happen? How could you allow her to go into this blind, knowing that she could be hurt or killed?” he yelled, and his eyes had started to glow a bright fluorescent green.

  She was clearly shocked by his outburst, and it took a moment for her to find the words. “Son, you have to believe me; I had no idea that this could happen. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked back and forth between them, but neither of them said anything else; they just stared at each other.

  “Mason, how could she possibly have known this might happen?” I asked him.

  His eyes returned to their normal color, and he looked at me, almost as if he had forgotten that I was even there.

  Then, his gaze returned to his mother, and he said, “Are you really willing to jeopardize her safety for the sake of your stupid rules?”

  “Mason, don’t!” she said, looking frightened.

  “Look at her! You don’t think she deserves to know why all of this is happening to her?” he yelled.

  My heart was beating like a drum. They knew. They knew why I was plagued by these dreams. And they had said nothing. Why didn’t they want me to know, and how long had they been keeping this secret from me? Was there no one that I could count on to just be honest with me?

  “Is this what you were whispering about in the kitchen a few days ago?” I asked.

  They both looked startled. Had they forgotten I was here again, or did they just realize that maybe they’d said too much?

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Mason wanted to know.

  “Because I didn’t think you would tell me. And it hurt that you were keeping things from me. Lies of omission are still lies, but I didn’t think my heart could take having you both lie to my face.”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they were clouded with so much sadness that I almost caught my breath. “I’ve never wanted to lie to you or hurt you, Allie. I love you so much that I ache inside, and I will always be sorry for any part I’ve played in deceiving you.”

  I closed my eyes as moisture gathered behind my eyelids and hung in my lashes like drops of dew. I wanted so badly to run into his arms and tell him that I loved him too, but I couldn’t. Happiness over his declaration of love mingled with dread over the things he kept secret, and as hard as I tried, I could not separate one from the other. The things I was imagining in my head were probably far worse than anything they could reveal; at least I hoped so. But the only way to know for certain was to ask; so that’s what I did.

  “Then tell me the truth! You both know something about these dreams, don’t you? How am I supposed to put this puzzle together when you’re hiding half the pieces from me?” I asked in frustration.

  He smiled sadly. “You’re right, but you’re wrong too.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Mason.”

  “You’re right; we do know about the dreams, but we haven’t hid half the pieces; we’ve been hiding them all.”

  Tears of hurt and anger filled my eyes. “How could you not have told me? I asked you to help me figure out why I was having them and what they meant, and you looked me in the eyes and lied!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “We were only trying to protect you,” Sarah said.

  “That’s funny,” I said, “because lies are usually told to protect the liars, not the ones dumb enough to believe them.”

  She looked as if I had slapped her, but I was too angry to care. I was sick of lies and half-truths, and the way they were acting was making me feel sick. Just how volatile were these secrets?

  Mason sighed loudly, and his shoulders slumped under the weight of his guilt. His eyes were full of pain and sadness, and I almost got up and went to comfort him, but I held myself back. I had been so confused and worried and scared. At one point, I had actually wondered if I was crazy, and if there’s anything he could’ve done to assuage my fears, he should’ve done it! Now, there was only one question that tore at my heart.

  “Why?” I asked, in a voice that I didn’t even recognize as my own.

  But he was not the one who rushed to answer me. “We were told that there could be severe consequences … if you were guided in any way. You were supposed to go through this alone … we weren’t supposed to intervene at all. But you have to know, he has wanted to tell you a thousand times over, and I convinced him not to. It nearly killed us both, not being able to help you, but we didn’t feel as if we had any other choice. It was never our door to unlock, but yours, and you have just barely scratched the surface. There are so many more locked doors ahead of you, but you are the one who must figure out how to open them, Allison.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you’re still not going to tell me?” I asked in disbelief. “I’ve seen everything now, how can you justify not explaining all of this to me? I know they died; I just don’t know what it has to do with me. That dream ripped my heart out, Sarah, and I deserve to k
now why I was subjected to it in the first place!”

  A stubborn, yet sympathetic, look crossed her face, and she shook her head, no.

  Realizing a lost cause when I saw one, I turned to Mason. “Please?” I asked him.

  He looked at Sarah and then back at me. The tear-stained look of desperation on my face must’ve finally cracked him.

  “He didn’t die, Allison.”

  “What?” I asked as my heart increased tempo once again.

  “Mason, no!” Sarah pleaded.

  “How could he not have died, and how do you know?”

  “Do not answer that Mason! You know what the prophecy said,” she warned.

  “Yes, Mom, I do. You remind me of it everyday.”

  I had never heard him sound so tired and defeated, but I couldn’t let it go. The more they refused to tell me, the more I wanted to know.

  “Joshua lived?” I asked him.

  “Yes, but there is so much more to the story than that,” he answered.

  “Will you tell me?”

  He looked at her again, and I wanted to scream.

  “Sarah, can you give us a few minutes alone?” I asked.

  “No, I won’t,” she said to me, and then she turned to him. “I’m not letting you do this Mason.”

  “How do you plan on stopping me?” he asked.

  “The only way I can,” she said sadly. Then, she held up her hand, and a ray of purple light shot from her palm and encased him in an iridescent lavender glow. His eyes fluttered closed and he began to fall, but she was across the room before he ever touched the ground. She wrapped her arms around him and lowered him gently to the floor. I hadn’t even seen her move; it was like she had just appeared by his side out of thin air.

  She stepped away from him and looked at me with sad, tortured eyes. “Allison,” she said, taking a cautious step toward me, but I staggered backwards out of her reach, and she stopped.

  I slowly edged my way around the bed and ran to his side. “What did you do to him?” I shrieked as I knelt beside him and tried to revive him.

  “Nothing, he’s only sleeping,” she replied as a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? He’s your son for God’s sake!” I wanted to believe her, but the person standing in front of me was not the person I’d thought I knew.

  “I’m trying to save you both. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to either one of you.”

  “Why would it?”

  “There’s so much you don’t understand. Magic has rules, and consequences when those rules are broken, and the consequences are cruel and painful, and sometimes even deadly!”

  “What rules is he breaking by wanting to help me understand all of this?” I asked, bewildered.

  “The only rule we were given, that you must discover the truth on your own.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I love you and Mason both so much! I couldn’t love you more if you were my own little girl, Allison,” she answered as more tears leaked from her eyes.

  I sighed in frustration. There was something so intrinsically nurturing and motherly about her; I had no choice but to believe her. She thought she was protecting both of us, but I thought she was overreacting. My only hope for understanding all of this was in a magically induced coma, so there really wasn’t anything I could do.

  “You realize that all this does is buy you time, right? What are you gonna do when he wakes up?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was hoping that with a little more time I could make you both understand.”

  “He’s probably not going to be very understanding when he realizes you put him into a magically sleep-induced time-out,” I warned her.

  She glanced at him, looking contrite, and then looked back at me with a sad smile. “That’s exactly why he will understand. I have never used magic against him before. He will understand because I was willing to risk both of you hating me in order to save you,” she answered. “It was never meant for us to reveal; he will come to his senses and remember that.”

  “So do you just expect me to let this go?” I asked stubbornly.

  “No, you aren’t meant to, but your answers must come from within,” she said as she placed her hand over my heart.

  I rolled my eyes. We were at an impasse.

  “Can we at least get him off of the floor?” I asked.

  She walked over and picked him up as if he weighed nothing, and I stared at her in surprise.

  “Vampire strength, remember?”

  I only nodded as she carried him down the hall. She put him on the bed in his room, and I lay down beside him. I planned on continuing our earlier conversation as soon as he woke up. I think she knew that too, but she didn’t chase me out of the room, so I assumed she would be lurking nearby.

  I actually found myself growing drowsy as I waited for him to open his eyes. I guess everything that happened today took a lot out of me, but my heart lurched and my eyes flew open when he started muttering in his sleep.

  “Anna, Oh God, Anna, no,” he whispered.

  I reached out and took his hand trying to tap into the magic she had used to put him to sleep. I could still sense it, and I tried to absorb a little of it, so I could enter his dreams the way he had so often entered mine. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I tried with every fiber of my being. I had to know what he was seeing.

  Sarah’s warnings echoed in the back of my mind, but I pushed them away. She had said that it must come from within. The information was still coming from my dreams, though, did it really matter that the dream was ‘borrowed’? The information was his, but I would still be the one discovering it. He wasn’t exactly telling me; he wouldn’t even know I was there.

  My ability to rationalize and twist things around to my satisfaction was unparalleled. Part of me felt a little guilty for going against Sarah’s wishes, but I told her to shut up.

  It had been several minutes, and just when I was losing hope, a faint purple glow lit my fingertips and traveled up my hand, wound around my arm, and slowly covered my whole body. I felt warm and sleepy, and I fell backwards on the bed, my head landing on the pillow beside him … and my heart seeking him out in Salem.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Joshua

  No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! NO! I had no strength to scream my protests out loud, but they echoed inside my head. I was barely even conscious, but I was finally able to lift my eyelids and look for, Anna. I immediately squeezed them shut again when I saw her body hanging from that tree, and a sharp pain shot through my chest, that had nothing to do with the bullet lodged there.

  Everyone else had gone, and I did not know how long I had been here. They undoubtedly believed me to be dead, and I prayed that I soon would be. The best part of me had died with her, and the broken, mangled remains of what was left, were not worth living for.

  I had failed her. I had promised to protect her from this village’s madness, but I had let her down. She had said that she loved me only moments before her death, but that only made me feel worse, because I knew I did not deserve it.

  Hot tears leaked from my eyes as I replayed that night at the barn in my mind. I should never have taken her there; it had been too big of a risk, but she had followed me with blind trust and love, and the faith she had in me was the reason she was dead.

  What had I been thinking? One more day and we would have been safely away, and I had jeopardized everything for a barn full of kittens! I should have fought harder to keep them from taking her. I should … I should … I should have done something … anything, but I had let those monsters destroy her.

  I wanted to kill them all, but most especially, I wanted to kill Prudence. I wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and silence her lying lips once and for all, so she would never be able to do to another what she had done to Anna.

  I was so caught up in my vengeful thoughts that I did not hear anyone approaching. My eyes were s
till shut when I felt a soft hand brush my hair off of my forehead.

  I slowly opened my eyes to see a beautiful dark-haired woman with eyes as green as my own looking down at me. Her cheeks were wet with tears and her lips trembled slightly as she leaned down and kissed my cheek.

  “My son,” she whispered brokenly, caressing my face.

  My mother had died when I was only a boy, but this woman looked remarkably familiar to me. Maybe it was over. Maybe I was dead and she had come to take me to Heaven.

  “Momma?” I asked. Then, I began to look around for Anna. “Where is she? Is she with you? Please … I need her,” I sobbed.

  She looked confused for a moment and then her face crumpled and she started crying too.

  “Momma?”

  “You are not dead, Joshua,” she croaked, when she was finally able to speak. “But you soon will be if you do not accept my offer.”

  “Then, how are you … what offer?”

  “It is a long story, one that we do not have time for now, but I am giving you a choice. I can help thee, son. If you choose … you can live.”

  “There is no reason to live without my Annabelle,” I replied.

  “There is a chance that you might not have to.”

  “How? She is already gone.”

  “Magic, but if you choose to live, your life will be forever changed. And I am not certain how long it will take to bring her back to you … but it can be done.

  My mind reeled with this new information, and I did not know why, but I trusted this strange woman who claimed to be my mother. And if there was a chance that Anna could live again, I had to take it.

  I had no idea how long I would have to live without her, but it was what I deserved. It would be like Purgatory, not able to live, but not able to move on either, but I was willing to live in this limbo for the chance to be with her again.

  “I want to live,” I finally told her.

  “Are you certain, because once this is done, it cannot be undone,” she warned.

  “Do it.”

  “You will have to swallow a few drops of my blood,” she informed me.