by Ann Atkins
“Why?” I asked, aghast.
“There is magic in my blood that will heal you and make you like me.”
I thought about it for a few moments before nodding my assent. She used one of her long fingernails to slice her wrist open and held it to my mouth.
After about one minute, she was pulling her wrist away from my lips. I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and I ripped away what was left of my shirt. I would not have believed this if I had not seen it with my own eyes.
The bullet pushed its way through my skin and lay on top of my chest. I picked it up and stared at it in wonder, and when I looked back down, the wound had completely healed.
She had been telling me the truth, and if she was right about this, she was right about Anna as well. I did not hesitate.
“Tell me what to do,” I said as I stood up. “Tell me how to get her back.”
* * *
She had, indeed, been telling me the truth; she was my mother. When I was a child, she had become quite ill and wasted away to almost nothing. After several weeks, her body had finally given out—she had actually died. My father had gotten drunk and passed out, but I had crawled in bed with her; I was lying by her side when she took her last ragged breath.
I remembered being carried out of the room screaming, and that was the last time I had seen her. She had been alone when he crept through the window.
The stranger who changed her was somehow able to restart her heart long enough to feed her his blood. She had been healed almost instantly; the closer a person is to death, the faster the change takes place.
She had not been able to stay with me, for obvious reasons. She had wanted to take me with her, but she could not bear for my father to lose us both; it would have completely destroyed him.
She had explained all of this on the way to Madame Delilah’s house. There were jars of all kinds of things in her small cottage, and I looked around in wonder. Potions in a variety of colors were lined up neatly on shelves. There was an array of creatures trapped in bottles, some familiar and some not. There were strange smells coming from a huge black cauldron over a fire, and I was afraid to ask what was in there.
When she had answered the door I had been speechless. I was expecting an ugly old woman with warts and a hooked nose; I had not expected her to be beautiful. With white-blond hair and dark blue eyes, she looked more like an angel than a witch.
“You do not look like a witch,” I said, without thinking. This seemed to amuse her.
“You do not look like a vampire either,” she said with a smile.
“Why have the townspeople not beaten down thy door and arrested thee?” I asked curiously.
Her beautiful eyes had darkened even further, and her smile had vanished. “Those fools would have no idea how to handle a real witch. A real witch would not hang; someone with true power would destroy them,” she said angrily.
I looked down at Anna, who was cradled gently in my arms. She had not stood a chance against them, I thought, as a tear rolled down my cheek and landed on hers.
I had refused to leave her there, and my mother had not argued with me. She had said that it might actually help to strengthen and bind the spell if Anna was in the room with us.
“Can you help her?” I asked, and my voice cracked.
“There will be consequences. Magic always comes with a price,” she warned.
“Then I will gladly pay it; please just help her!”
Her eyes filled with sympathy and unshed tears as she laid her hands on Anna and closed her eyes. She began to speak in Latin, and a warm glow spread over Anna’s cold skin.
Suddenly, she stopped speaking and stepped back; her eyes were wide with shock.
“I do not believe it,” she whispered.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.
“This one had the potential for great power, but she did not know it; she was never taught.”
“What are you saying?”
“I am saying I was wrong, because tonight, a witch did hang.”
Nothing she could have said would have shocked me more. My mother seemed surprised as well, but she recovered more quickly than I, and asked the next logical question.
“Does that have any effect on the spell? Will the magic still work?” she asked.
A slow smile spread across Delilah’s face, and she said, “It will work even better. I can feel her spirit lingering near him—unwilling to let him go. She is fighting to stay with him, even in death. With her lending her strength to the spell; there is no way it can fail.”
“When can we begin?” I asked anxiously.
She gestured for me to lay Anna down inside a circle of candles, and with a wave of her hand, they lit up. She opened a few of her potions and rubbed them into Annabelle’s skin. She chanted in several languages that I did not understand, and she burned sprigs of herbs and waved them over Anna’s body.
The smoke turned from dark gray to light blue and wrapped around her, lifting her off of the floor. She floated like that for a long time, and Delilah continued to chant and weave complex patterns with her hands.
A gentle breeze blew through the room, and I swore I could hear Anna whisper my name. Delilah reached her hands upward and a gentle mist began to fall on us.
Nothing that had happened tonight seemed real. In a moment, I had lost the one person I could not bear to live without. I did not want to be here; I didn’t want to be anywhere; all I wanted was her, and I held my breath as this beautiful witch worked her strange magic. I wanted this spell to work so badly, but my motives were not entirely altruistic. I wanted her to have a second chance to live the life that had been stolen from her, but in this moment, I wanted it more for myself, because I honestly did not know if I could survive without her.
Several things happened all at once, jarring me from my maudlin reverie. The flames of the candles shot towards the ceiling, before being blown out by the wind, and the rain stopped just as abruptly. The blue light around Annabelle disappeared and she floated back to the floor. A bright outburst of white light seemed to explode from her chest, and it flew toward Delilah and was absorbed by the crystal sphere in her hands.
Delilah collapsed onto the floor, and I ran to her side, cradling her head in my lap. Her skin was flushed and sweaty, and she was breathing very hard, but as I knelt over her, her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled.
“What happened? Why did it not work?” I asked desperately, and I did not realize I was shaking her until my mother laid a restraining hand on my shoulder.
Delilah sat up gingerly and placed the crystal sphere in my hands. It was very warm to the touch, almost hot.
“It did work,” she said gently, “and you are holding the proof in your hands.”
I did not reply; I just looked more confused.
“Her spirit has entered this globe, and here it will remain until her time to return draws near.”
“You mean you have trapped her in here?” I asked angrily.
“Joshua,” she said quietly, “It was the only way. Her soul will rest here until she is ready to be set free, and she will return to you.”
“How? When? Will she suffer? Will she know that she is trapped in here?” I asked holding up the ball.
“I cannot tell you when; it is not for me to decide, but when the time is right, the light will begin to glow once again, and thou must break it to set her free. And no, she will not suffer, she will rest peacefully until her time draws near.”
“She will not be returning to this body, will she?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, I am sorry.”
“Is there anything else we need to do?” my mother asked.
“Yes,” Delilah nodded, “The spell was bound with fire, water, and air. It must also be bound with earth … you must bury her Joshua.”
I buried my face in her hair and cried for a long time. The last thing I wanted to do was put her in the ground, but in order to get her back, I would have to let her go.
>
When I finally looked up, I saw Delilah scribbling on a piece of parchment, but her eyes stared straight ahead. Her hand moved swiftly across the paper, and when she was finished, she walked over and reached it to me.
It was hard to see through my red, swollen eyes, but I read every single word.
“How can this be? I will be lucky if I ever find her again!” I said furiously.
Her eyes were full of sympathy when she looked at me. “Sometimes the price is high … but the higher the price … the greater the reward.”
Those words reverberated through my brain that night as I laid Anna to rest. I wanted to crawl into that dark hole with her, but I didn’t. I would keep this shell alive for her, because I would see her again; I had to. This was not the end; I wouldn’t let it be.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shattered
I wondered how many times a person’s heart could shatter before it was irrevocably damaged. How many times could the pieces be put back together? How many blows could it suffer before it just became too fragile and was finally pounded into dust?
Dark creatures relentlessly hunted me, unless I was in a protected space. I had just found out that the man who raised me, the man I’d always believed to be my father, had kidnapped me as a baby and killed my real parents. I had powers that I’d never wanted, but I’d had to learn to embrace them, because ironically, the powers that had wrecked my life were also the only way to save it. But it all paled in comparison to the fact that I’d been lied to by the only guy I’d ever loved.
I stared up at the white ceiling with glassy, unfocused eyes, but I didn’t actually see it; I was too busy looking within. Silent tears ran down my cheeks and my neck as I struggled to understand something that just could not be possible.
I had read every word on that piece of parchment along with Joshua, but my brain stubbornly refused to process what my eyes had seen. Was that the same prophecy that Mason’s mom had warned him about? Did they have it? Would they show it to me? Probably not, but I wasn’t going to give them a choice, because I needed to see the real thing; the dream version just wasn’t gonna cut it! Until I held it in my hands and read the words for myself, it wasn’t real; it was just a dream.
I slowly started to come back to reality and realized that Sarah and Mason were leaning over me and saying my name. I didn’t know how long they’d been trying to snap me out of it, but I guessed it had been a while, if the looks on their faces were any indication.
“Allie, are you okay?” Mason asked.
“You’re joking, right? Because I am as far from okay as I have ever been!”
“I’m so sorry. I should never have let you find out this way,” he said.
I wasn’t interested in apologies right now, so I got straight to the point. “Mason, where is the prophecy? I want to see it.”
“Of course,” he said as he stood up, but Sarah stepped in his way.
He looked annoyed, but she looked scared, and then she turned those frightened eyes on me. “You jumped into his dream using my magic, didn’t you?”
“What if I did?” I asked belligerently.
“Oh, Allie, you don’t know what you’ve done,” she said.
“No, but I know what I will do if I don’t get some answers. I’ll walk right out that door, and I will not come back,” I said too calmly.
“But you’ll be vulnerable to attack,” Mason said as his face paled.
“I don’t care!”
“You don’t mean that,” Sarah said. “You’re just angry.”
“You’re powers of observation astound me,” I said hatefully.
She took a deep, calming breath before she spoke again. “If we answer all of your questions, will you agree to stay here and let us protect you?”
I stared at them for several long moments before I answered. “Yes, I’ll stay.”
They both slumped in relief. Sarah nodded at Mason, and he left the room and came back carrying a little silver lockbox. He turned a small silver key in the lock and reached it to me. I slowly lifted the lid, with a pounding heart, and stared down at the faded, yellowed piece of paper. I picked it up gently, with shaking hands, and began to read …
A life lost violently for sins not her own. Cried out against as a witch and hung from a tree, her soul ripped from her body, was finally set free. Free from persecution, sorrow and pain, but cut off from the love she had died to keep safe. Claimed by his sorrow, ensnared by his pain, he could not let go, but she could not remain. He searched for one, and he prayed it was true—that what the laws of nature had done—she could undo.
So by powerful magic, worked under the blood moon, her soul was held captive, and bound to this earthly plain. Until two who were strong enough to bear her, would bring her forth again. The blood of the kitsune and the blood of the fey will mingle with a vampire, this child to create.
Her powers will be great, this child who’s been reborn. And there will be many who wish to do her great harm. This will be the price she pays for cheating the laws of death. And she will have to fight to be able to claim her very next breath.
Magic is not freely given; there is always a price to be paid. And so the coming of this child will—for centuries—be delayed.
He will have to search the world to find out where she will be born, and fight to keep her from being ripped, once again, from his arms.
She will remember who she was, and who she shall be, only when she is ready, to claim her destiny. She must not be led or guided; the path is hers alone to take. In the claiming of her powers, her enemies shall be slain.
The paper fluttered from my numb, lifeless fingers as that feeling spread to encompass the rest of my body. The tears dried on my cheeks, and an eerie sense of calm fell over me, because none of this could be real. I was probably safely enclosed in a padded room somewhere, and this delusion was a result of missing my medication. Or someone had slipped me some seriously mind-altering drugs. Or maybe none of this was real; maybe I was nothing more than the product of someone’s screwed up imagination. I would have been happy to believe any one of these scenarios, but reality isn’t something you can hide from for long.
“Allison, please, say something, anything,” Mason begged.
“What would you like me to say, Joshua? It’s true, isn’t it? Mason Adams is nothing but a lie, so let’s just cut the crap! Allison is not the one you want; it’s Anna; it always has been. The only reason you want me is because you think I’m the reincarnation of your dead girlfriend!”
He flinched as if my words had caused him physical pain, but I had only just begun, and I didn’t give him time to respond before I launched my next verbal attack.
“Everything you’ve ever told me has been a lie! You said you were born a vampire, when in reality, you were turned over three hundred years ago in Salem, by your own mother. You both lied about who you were. You lied about who I was, and you lied about the dreams. And did it never occur to you that watching myself die could be a little traumatic for me?”
I paused only long enough to draw a breath, but before I could continue, he spoke.
“You’re right about almost everything, but you’re wrong about me not loving you. If you believe nothing else, believe that, and I can explain the rest.”
The look of desperation on his face still pulled at my heart, but I wasn’t about to let him know that, so I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to continue.
“First of all, Mason isn’t a lie; it’s who I am now. I changed my name almost eighteen years ago, when I found out you were coming back to me. I knew you would be a different person, with a different name, and I wanted to make a fresh start right along with you. I wanted to get to know the new person you would become, and I love you now just as much as I loved you then. The past does not define my love for you; it’s grown and changed just like you, and I love you more now than I ever have. Please believe me, Allie.”
My throat was closed off by emotion and my eyes shone with
tears that I refused to let fall. I simply nodded for him to continue.
“I lied to you about my birth, because if I’d told you that I was over three hundred years old, you would’ve figured it out. And the witch who cast the spell said that if we told you, the magic would be undone. We don’t exactly know what that means, but we assumed it meant we would lose you again. That you might even die. She said that unless you discovered this on your own, we would never truly be able to be together. I was afraid that if I told you, the same magic that gave you back to me would take you away again, and I was too afraid to risk it. But I would be lying if I said I only did it to protect you. I did it for myself as well, because I honestly don’t believe I could survive losing you twice.” Tears ran down his cheeks, and I ached for him. I wanted to ease his suffering, but I couldn’t even deal with my own, let alone his.
I wiped a few runaway tears from my cheeks, which had escaped, despite my best efforts to hold them back.
I glanced around the room for Sarah, wondering why she had been so quiet, but Mason and I were the only ones here. She must’ve slipped out when I wasn’t looking.
My voice was hoarse with emotion when I finally spoke, but I had waited for answers for so long, and now I was going to get them.
“Why don’t I look like her?” I asked.
He smiled. “You kinda do, except for the eye and hair color, but the soul is identical. That spell captured your spirit, and that is the most beautiful thing about you. A person’s looks may change, but you’re still the same inside, and everything about you, then and now, is beautiful.”
“Wow, you should’ve been a poet,” I said. The anger over the secrets he kept had dissipated a little, but the hurt remained. It was still too fresh, and it would take me awhile to get a hold on my spiraling emotions.
“I’m just telling the truth … for once,” he said with a cautious half-smile.
My lips twitched in response, but I could not yet manage a full-fledged smile.
Can I ask you another question?”