Turning the Stone

by S. L. Perrine

  “Well, that’s the one thing you cannot have,” Silas yelled from behind Gwen.

  “I don’t intend for you to give it to me. No, I will take it. By force.” The stranger laughed, its red eyes glowing brighter.

  “I’d like to see you try.” Gwen balled her fist and the air around them sped up.

  You're tapping into the baby’s powers again. Be careful.

  No, I’m not. I bound her magic. That’s not me.

  The figure in the street began to walk forward. “I will cut her from your womb, and take her far away from here. Leaving you to bleed to death in a puddle of your own blood.”

  “You…you can’t. We’ve been bound together. Until her eighteenth birthday, whatever harm falls to either of us, it will happen to both. You’d kill her.”

  “No. This cannot be.” The voice seemed to split into many, encircling from all around them.

  “It’s true. I did it during the belly blessing. Killing me will only kill her.”

  “You’ve lost. There is nothing you can do.” Silas moved in front of Gwen.

  “Oh, but there is.”

  Four massive animals sprang from the dark. In a flash of fur and fury, the figure turned and darted away from them. Silas knew their protectors had the situation under control. He pushed Gwen back to the driver’s side of the car. She got in and slid across the bench to the other side. Silas jumped in behind her and put the car in gear.

  Once they were home, Silas wasted no time dragging his wife into the house.

  “We can’t hide forever.”

  “Yes, we can. We just have to make it a little while longer.” He looked at the journals in Gwen’s hands. “And figure out what is in those books that can help us.”

  “Nothing. Nothing Seraphina said or did can help us. I just hope the power our daughter will have, helps her.”

  “Damn it.” Silas punched his hand against the wall creating a giant hole next to one of the windows.

  “It’s happening.”

  “Not tonight. It can’t.” He took her in his arms. Pressed their bodies together. His hand cupped her face, his thumb rubbed her jaw and hair. She looked at him, her big blue eyes swimming with tears. “It just can’t. There’s too much to say. So much to do.”

  “It’s not. Listen.” He looked around at the near empty house. They’d prepared as much as they could. Moving most of their belongings to the cabin in Dublin. They were going to run away. Raise their daughter away from whoever it was that wished to use her for her gifts.

  She stopped crying and listened to the night. Nothing stirred beyond their walls.

  “See, if it were going to happen tonight it would have begun.”

  “You're right.”

  “I know.”

  She gave him a quick smile, then laid her head against his chest.

  “Come. You should rest. We can go back to see your folks in the morning. I think it’s time we get the goodbyes over with.”

  “Your right. If it had been tonight and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye…” A sob caught in her throat and Silas held her tight.

  “Rest tonight. We can do everything else tomorrow.”

  They hadn’t done much more than climb into bed and fall asleep. Though Silas woke the next day and felt a sense of dread overcome him. He promised Gwen they would go back to her parents and give them an explanation of what was going to happen. He knew she wouldn’t be able to let them believe they were dead. The rest of the world maybe, but not them. Isabella had become sicker the last few months, and although she didn’t wish to be healed by magical means, Silas hoped she would change her mind if she knew Gwen was in danger of never seeing her again. So, as they climbed back into the car he thought of what he would say to the woman.

  Silas also knew Alistair would insist on them staying at the Crawford house. He would want to protect his child and grandchild from whoever it turned out to be that was after them. Silas thought for sure it was his father, but Gwen didn’t think so. She said she believed Sigmis when he said he didn’t wish any of them harm. She was more inclined to suspect one of the neighboring houses than his family. The Sands of Luxe and The Raven’s Watch were the more likely suspects.

  If they were going to start pointing fingers at their own covens, Silas was willing to bet it was Mortimore Delaney and no other.

  The house was in full swing when they arrived. Gwen’s coven and friends had all shown up to help with the clean-up efforts. As per usual, the four shifters shadowed Silas and Gwen’s every move. That would also have to be dealt with. Though, Silas had no idea how he would get Chester to agree to back off while they were in hiding. Silas had to speak to him.

  Gifts towered in the parlor of the old house. Elle and Marshal sat cataloging every gift. For each gift, a thank you card would be mailed. Silas had come to know Elle was just wired that way. Marcus and Chester followed in behind, offering to help with the clean-up out back. They were directed to a pile of trash bags before Silas heard the familiar slam of the wooden framed screen door against the opening.

  Gwen grabbed Silas by the hand pulling him toward the sun room.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Barnaby shot out in front of them.

  “We need to speak with mother.” Gwen glared at her older brother.

  “When you’re done, be sure to come help us clean up.” He scowled.

  “Nonsense. Leave your sister be.” Alistair rounded the corner from the sun room.

  Elle bound up behind them, tapping on Silas’ shoulder. “I need the key to your place.”

  “What for?”

  “The gifts for the baby, silly. We’re going to bring them to your house. We’ll be quick.”

  He reluctantly held the keys out to her letting her take the gold ring, leaving the car keys, which he shoved back in his pocket.

  “Thanks.” She beamed with a large smile. It was the first he’d seen from her since her brother’s death.

  “Well, go on. She’s just about to take a nap.” Alistair looked at him and Gwen motioning them toward the sunroom door.

  The bright morning light filtered through the semi darkened windows. The only solid wall was the one shared with the rest of the house. In the middle of the room was a small russet colored chaise lounge. Isabella lay in a ball covered in a slew of blankets that made sweat trickle down the back of Silas’ neck just thinking of how warm he’d be if their places were reversed.

  “Mom?” Gwen whispered softly.

  Dark hair began to move under the blankets. The woman’s small frame came to view as she pushed them away from her and struggled to sit up. “My Gwenie. How are you this morning?”

  “Fine.”

  “But you’re not. Are you?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I still have my gifts. Even if I never use them. Sometimes I use them without knowing or meaning to.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  The woman patted the chair, and Gwen sat with her mother. Her thin hands grabbed Gwen and pulled her close, whispering something to her. Tears welled up in Gwen’s eyes and began to fall. She looked up to Silas and back to her mother. “So, you know then.”

  “I know more than you do about this day.”

  “Like what?” Silas couldn’t help himself.

  “It’s my last.”

  “You're last what? Your last day?” Gwen looked between the two again frantic. Silas could feel her mind in search of something to do. Anything to grasp onto her mother’s life.

  “It’s ok. I’m ready. Gwen, listen to me.” She cupped her hands against Gwen’s face, holding her so she could look at her. “It’s ok. I’ve known for a while.”

  “Is it the cancer? I can heal you.”

  “No.” Silas had never seen the woman so stern. “It’s not something you can change. Promise me.” Gwen closed her eyes. Her face still firmly held by the frail woman. “Gwen. Promise me. You will do nothing.”

  She sighed, letting out a long breath b
efore she opened her eyes and looked at her mother. Tears streaked her face. “Fine.”

  “I don’t understand.” Silas stood nearer.

  “You will. In time, you both will.” She lifted a hand for him to take. Silas held on as she looked at him and spoke. “For now, I need you to promise me something, young man.”

  “Anything.”

  “Give her your heart. Your whole heart, and protect them with everything you have.”

  “That’s not a hard promise to make. She already has my heart. As for protecting them, I’ll never stop.”

  “Good. And now a truth.”

  They looked at the woman. What more could she tell them?

  “Mother?”

  “I know why Seth was cursed. I know why Seraphina loved him all the years of her life.” She cleared her throat, with her hands she placed Gwen’s and Silas’ together. “The two of you together now has broken his curse. You see, for every action, there is an equal reaction. That is why I must go.”

  “I don’t understand.” Gwen began crying. Tears fell as freely as air struggled to find its way to her lungs. Silas silently wished Chester were near, to soothe her.

  “Seth tried to use the book’s power to give Seraphina a gift. The gift of life.”

  Silas held tighter to Gwen’s hand. The woman was speaking of the curse that ruined his entire family line. "But she was immortal," he heard himself say.

  Isabella shook her head. “He didn’t abandon her because he had betrayed her love. He tried to use the book to bring back her friend. When Magnus’ sister died, it changed the relationship between Seraphina and her dearest friend. He wanted to help save that relationship, for her. Even though he knew Magnus loved her. He wanted to prove he loved her more.

  “But for every action the reaction. He cursed himself. He went mad. Crazed with envy. He knew he didn’t feel that way about Magnus, he knew what Seraphina felt for him, so he left. He took the other book, the book of shadows, and he left. Hoping to free himself of the madness.”

  Silas couldn’t think. His legs gave way from under him and he slumped to the floor on the side of the chair. “Instead he passed the madness to the rest of his line. To us,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Yes.”

  “So, how does it end?” Gwen asked worried for Silas’ sanity.

  “Seraphina changed it. She made his family a head of house. Naming Seth the high priest of the coven. She worked magic no one else could ever duplicate. Spells that she never wrote down. When my mother told me who she was, and why she did what she did, I was furious. I wanted nothing to do with magic or love, but I fell in love anyway. Or I thought I had.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Silas watched as Gwen’s eyes swam with confusion.

  “I dated Sigmis. Almost married him.” She turned to Silas. “My mother told me of the responsibility I had to ensure the rest of your line and I panicked. I didn’t know if I loved him, or if I had been tricked into it. So, I ran. I left him, and that made him very angry.

  “I suppose I’ll never know if it was because of his love, or because of his mind.” She wiped away a tear from her cheek. “When I met your father, I knew he was the man I was supposed to be with, and your grandmother was never happier. I know she’d be happy to see the two of you together.”

  Isabella moved and placed a hand on Gwen’s stomach. She whispered to it as if the baby could hear her from within the womb. “I have loved you since before you were conceived. Since the moment I held your mother in my arms and had a vision of the child she would have one day.” She looked between Silas and Gwen, more tears fell, but she did nothing to move them. “This is how it should be. Your child is the one who will set things right. She will be our hope of a new life where all is right with the world. No more fighting amongst our own people. She will end the rift between us.

  “I know of the fire.” Gwen looked stunned then broke down in tears and sobs. “I know you will get through it. I don’t know how, but I know you will be with this special young lady in the end. When all things come out. Then you will understand everything.”

  Gwen threw herself over her mother’s form. They cried together like that for what felt like hours. Silas sat on the side of the chair, his head resting in his hands.

  “I need to speak to my son-in-law. In private.”

  Gwen sat up nodding. She wiped her eyes and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek before looking to Silas and walking out.

  He moved from the floor to the end of the chair. “Thank you,” he said before the woman could speak.

  “What for?”

  “Answers to questions my family has spent a hundred years trying to answer. I just can’t believe it was that easy.”

  “You must learn, nothing is ever that easy. Now, you must listen closely. There isn’t a moment to lose. When you walk out of this room, you must take Gwen home, immediately. Don’t speak to anyone. They must think you’re dead.”

  Silas couldn’t keep the look of shock from his face. He jerked, stood and paced the room. “She’ll never forgive me.”

  “Yes, she will. She must. If they look for you, it will raise suspicion.”

  “Surely, they can keep it from my family…” She snapped her fingers and his mouth shut.

  “It is not your family that seeks your ruin. Your only hope is to flee. Let no one know, where it is you are going.”

  “I don’t understand. She’s going to want more time.”

  “There is no time.” She listened to the air. “You must go, now, but always know this; I would see them with none other...than you.”

  She snapped her fingers again and he was walking from the room. He walked to Gwen standing with her brother and grabbed her arm. “We need to leave.”

  “Silas, I haven’t spoken to father yet.”

  “We need to leave, now.”

  He ushered her out of the house and to the car. Once she was belted in he took off out of the driveway and didn’t give her an explanation. Mainly because he didn’t have one to give.

  Chapter XXVIII

  The sky clouded over, the light of the sun hidden behind the threat of rain, but none fell. The woman lay there huddled in her blankets. Her body shivered, but not from the cold. She knew what was coming for her. Who was coming for her. She’d said her goodbyes to the ones who would need to hear it the most. She was ready.

  She saw the vision early on. When she and Sigmis were so very happy together. She thought because it was a child of his that the vision would come true. Only she found out much later that her path in life was never for her to end up with Sigmis.

  Even as the small frame of a child entered the room, she knew she could not have stopped it. She would not cower or hide from it. No, she would welcome it. She would be reunited with her mother. She would become a spirit that helped guide and protect her family’s legacy.

  “You knew?” The girl laughed. Her eyes red even as she entered the room.

  “I did.”

  “Still you won’t stop it?”

  “No. I won’t stop you from this path. I will tell you, even in the end, you will not have what it is you desire. You will be nothing.”

  “Oh, wow. What a pep talk. Is that the kind of talk poor precious Gwen was given?”

  “No. She deserves more.”

  “See. That there is your problem, mother. Always thinking Gwen deserves more than me. Why? Is it because she is the oldest girl? Maybe you should have stopped when you had her. Then I wouldn’t be such a huge disappointment.”

  “You’re not a disappointment, Sabina. At least you weren’t until you stepped foot through that door, but I still wouldn’t have wished I never had you.”

  “Why, if you know what’s to happen, why wouldn’t you wish I’d never been born?”

  “Because you are my child. I would not wish that for anything in the world.”

  “Not even for another day with Gwen? Or to be able to meet your grandchild? She’s going to be amazing,
you know that right?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “No. I don’t think you know. I don’t think even you could have foreseen the little something extra I put into the belly blessing.”

  Isabella’s eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”

  Sabina chuckled. “See. I knew you didn’t know. There is no way you would have let that happen.”

  “What are you talking about, girl?”

  “You’ll see, but from where you’ll be watching, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  Isabella tried to speak. She tried to reason with her daughter. Tried to ask what she had done, but she couldn’t. A bright white light consumed her. She fought for a breath and lost it in the back of her throat. It was stuck and pain built as if she’d been choking on something solid. Her body began to twitch and then she lay limp. Her subconscious saw Sabina move her hands from her neck just as her eyes closed.

  She was looking at the scene from above in a flash. Her body weightless. The air in her lungs felt like silk. She no longer had the pain from her treatments or the weight of her illness. She was free. Her body lay below her in a heap. Her child sat next to her for a moment more, then a forced tear spilled from her eye and she began to scream. She yelled for her father and her brothers.

  Everyone in the house flooded into the room. Alistair shook his daughter by the shoulders as she tried to tell him Silas killed her mother. Isabella watched the man she loved go completely still, let go of his daughter and rush to her side. He moved his hands about her body looking for a pulse; her neck, her wrist then back to her neck again. He kissed her lips and laid his forehead against hers.

  "Until we meet again, my love.” Isabella floated away.

  Chapter XXIX

  They made it to the house as Elle and Marshal were leaving. Gwen waved to her friends as they drove away and Silas parked the car in their driveway. She looked at the sky. It was morning, yet the clouds moved in making it look almost as black as night. It was happening.

  Gwen suddenly felt a heaviness in her heart as she entered the house, then felt a light fill her. “She’s gone. Why did you make me leave? I could have been with her when it happened.” Gwen rushed over and started to pound her fists into Silas’ chest.