I found my magical tool, an amulet, and when I used it, it restored one small part of Demetrius’s soul and released him from his prison.
Now you must find your tool. I do not know what it is. I only know that when you use it correctly, it will restore another part of his soul to him. And then it will be Lilia’s turn.
But you must be careful, because Demetrius has been imprisoned so long that he no longer remembers his humanity. He’s a dark and raging beast who cares for no one. He’s dangerous. But we made a vow, and we cannot be free until we fulfill it. In fulfilling my own small part in this, I found the love I had lost in that long-ago lifetime, and I hope the same will happen for you.
I don’t know where you are, or where you will be when your turn comes to pass, so I’ve hidden this letter along with the details of our history in a cave near the portal, knowing you will find it there somehow. But the writings will not tell you what to do with your magical tool. That’s something you have to figure out on your own. I can tell you this much, however: Love is the key. Love is the whole of it. Love is all there is, really. Look to love for the answers and all will be well.
I hope we meet soon. I feel it’s destined that we will. Take care, my sister, until we are reunited again. And blessed be.
Indira
Lena refolded the letter and returned it to the envelope. Then she unrolled the parchment pages, but they were written in a language she didn’t recognize. Still, it didn’t matter. This Demetrius...maybe he had been innocent, even heroic, once, and maybe he had been tormented beyond her wildest imaginings, wrongly, horribly.
But she knew what he wanted from her. And she didn’t care how many lifetimes ago she had vowed to help him. He was not getting her baby. Period.
* * *
Ryan hunched against the freezing rain and slashing wind as he made his way toward Bahru’s cottage, his flashlight virtually useless in the storm. He wasn’t convinced of any of the crazy theories Lena and her mother had come up with to explain the weirdness going on around this place—yes, there was definitely something supernatural going on, but a rogue spirit that wanted to take their baby’s body? He didn’t think so. Still, he didn’t have any better theories to offer. So he figured if he could get the knife away from Bahru, take it back to the house and make Lena watch him break it in two with a sledgehammer, maybe she would trust him again.
Lena afraid of him was a sight he disliked more than just about anything he’d ever seen. It ranked right up there with the sight of his mother in her casket at the wake. It was just that unnatural, just that surreal. Dead people who looked as if they were only sleeping and Lena Dunkirk looking terrified. Those things didn’t match up, didn’t make sense. Didn’t jibe in his brain.
As the image of her fear kept bubbling up in his mind, he flashed on something that brought him to a halt in the middle of the sleet storm.
Lena again, only...not. Or not exactly, anyway. Dark hair, not red. Tanned skin, not pale. Clothes from some other time, and not many of them. Hands bound behind her back. Two women by her side. Standing on the top of a cliff. Just a flash, there and then gone. But in that instant he felt a scorching sun pounding down on him, and the heat and pungent sweat of a horse beneath him. He felt the pounding motion of the stallion galloping over burning sand that blew into his eyes and nose, and coated his tongue. He heard the flapping and snapping of his own robes and wrappings in the wind. He felt the paralyzing, desperate, horrifying realization that he couldn’t get to her in time.
There and gone. Full-blown. A second long. No more.
He shook himself free of the lingering aftershock that image had left and felt a brief sense of dislocation as he came back to the here and now. He was standing in a sleet storm, with freezing wet wind buffeting his face, not sand and searing sun.
“What the hell was that?” he whispered.
But there was no one there to answer him. He tried to get hold of his senses, but it was harder than it should have been. He felt as if he’d checked out for a minute there. Stepped into another existence, another realm.
It hit him that if Lena’s visions were that real, and more than a second or two in duration, then it was no wonder she believed in them so strongly.
Okay, okay. He was overtired, stressed, and his brain had obviously had a bit more to deal with than it could handle lately. The death of his father, Lena’s pregnancy, a knife that shot fire. Who wouldn’t be on the verge of a breakdown?
Sighing, he pushed on to the cottage where Bahru had to be hiding that blade. The cottage was dark and even from outside, it felt empty. Where the hell could Bahru have gone in this weather? He opened the door, walked inside to make sure, checking the little bedroom, even the tiny bath. No sign of Bahru, and though he opened drawers, closets, even looked behind the firewood bin and under the furniture and mattress, he didn’t find his knife.
Frustrated and angry, he went back outside, debating his next move. The wind hit him in the face, and he turned away from it, then stopped himself and faced it full on, sniffing the air. Was that...was that fire he smelled?
Smoke, from the fireplace in the house. That’s all.
But no, the wind was blowing toward the house. This smoke had to be coming from somewhere else.
“That way,” he whispered, facing the woods on the other side of the dirt road. The same woods where Selma had photographed hooded figures around a central fire. “Maybe they’re at it again.”
Remembering what had happened to Selma, he took his time, moving slowly, silently, using the trees as cover. He walked through the woods, his senses overwhelmed by the scent of pine and earth, rotting wood, and that distant woodsmoke. Keeping his flashlight turned off, he moved only when the wind blew and stood still in between gusts. The sound of the sleet on the skeletal trees was like bacon sizzling in a pan, only dark, menacing.
He stepped softly, ice-coated leaves crunching under his boots, and he crouched low, using those bare crystalline trunks for cover. It was like tiptoeing through a forest of glass, where everything he touched shattered and tinkled noisily to the ground.
Finally he spotted the fire, a soft glow broken up by shadows as the participants in some arcane ritual passed in front of it. A little closer and their voices reached him, too, dull murmurs at first, blending in with the freezing rain, the ice, the wind, but then becoming clear enough for him to distinguish what they were saying.
He was close enough to count the hooded figures around the fire when one of them lifted a box. His box.
“I have the Master’s Blade! There is no longer any obstacle to our mission.”
“Praise be the Master,” the others intoned.
“Who will be the one to wield it?” someone said. It was a male voice, and one he kept thinking he should recognize.
“I will, of course,” said another vaguely familiar voice. “The mother must die before the child takes its first breath.”
“Is it truly necessary?” a woman asked.
Why was it so hard to identify them? It was almost as if there was a layer of insulation around that fire, something that muffled and altered their voices. And he couldn’t see their faces, which were deeply hidden within the cowl-like hoods of the robes they wore.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is. She’s a powerful witch, more powerful than even she knows. Her magic would prevent the Master from entering the body of the child. The blade must be driven into her heart, so that the Master enters with the newborn’s first breath.”
“And what of the child’s soul?” another man asked.
“The Master will banish it to the other realms, with no harm to it at all. It will simply await another opportunity to be born.”
The man with the box turned, and Ryan got a look at his hands. Long, gnarled fingers, caramel skin. Those hands were familiar to him. They were Bahru’s hands. His pendant
was dangling on the outside of his monk’s robe, and now that he noticed that, Ryan realized they all wore them. Crystal prisms on longish chains.
Bahru lifted the lid of the box and gazed down into it. Then he grasped the knife and picked it up.
Immediately there was an electrical crackle, a flash of light, and the knife fell to the ground, while Bahru yelped in pain. He gripped his own wrist and examined his palm. “I do not understand.”
“Let me try,” said someone else.
Holy shit, was that Dr. Cartwright?
“No! I am the chosen one, I am the one called by the Master to gather you all. It must be me.” Bahru bent low and grabbed the knife again, but the same thing happened, and this time he jumped backward, falling on his ass on the ground. He pressed his palm to an ice-coated rock nearby.
“I will try,” said a woman—that nurse, Ryan realized. The one Lena had hated on sight. What the hell was her name? Sheldrake. Yes, that was it. Eloise Sheldrake. She reached for the knife. “Maybe it has to be a woman.”
But she couldn’t pick it up, either. In fact, none of them could. One by one they tried. And one by one they failed.
Ryan saw his opportunity and stepped out from behind the tree where he’d been hiding. “There’s only one person who can wield that knife,” he said. “And you’re looking at him.”
A couple of men he hadn’t seen emerged from the trees outside the circle and grabbed him by both arms. The rest were more careful than ever to keep their faces averted, their voices low, but he didn’t think he would recognize them even if they hadn’t. Wait, was one of them the guy from the hardware store?
They held him steady, but he didn’t fight. He was concocting a plan on the spot, hoping to hell it would work. “Let me show you,” he told them. “Just let me show you.” He nodded at the blade.
Bahru stepped up to him, apparently not caring that Ryan could see his face clearly. “Go ahead, show us. Pick it up.”
The hands holding him let him go. He had a plan. He was going to pick up the blade, and this time he was going to master it. He was going to spin around and shoot fire at these freaking hooded maniacs, blowing them to pieces if that was what it took. Because yeah, they were insane. There was no way they were going to be able to evict his baby from its body so some demon could take up residence there. And he would be damned if he was going to stand by and let them try.
And no one was going to hurt Lena. No one.
He straightened his jacket, looked at the blade, clenched his jaw. Okay, ready. Make it work this time. Lena’s life depends on it. He walked to the knife, bent down, closed his hand around the handle. “See?” he said, still crouched. “I told you I could—” He rose and spun and thrust the dagger toward them all in one smooth motion.
Fire spat from the thing, setting someone’s robes alight. And then something stung his neck—a dart, he thought—and his vision went cloudy. He told himself to hold on to the blade as the world around him swam and he dropped to his knees.
Bahru looked down at him, smiling. “It’s all right, Ryan,” he said. “You were right. You are the one who has to wield the blade. But first you have to see as we have all come to see. And I’m going to help you do that.”
He held up a chain with a dangling quartz prism at the end of it that was glowing like fire. Like hellfire, Ryan thought. He ducked his head to avoid it, but Bahru only smiled. “There’s no point in trying to fight. You won’t remember this tomorrow. But you will awake seeing the truth. You must. Because we need you.”
He lowered the chain around Ryan’s neck, and Ryan felt its power licking at his brain like a hungry fire at dry kindling.
“You will be a hero, Ryan. You will right a wrong that has persisted for more than three thousand years. You will free an innocent soul, restore that which was taken from him, and you will be richly rewarded.”
“You’re nuts. You’re all freaking insane.”
“Drop the knife into the box, Ryan.” Bahru was holding the box open, waiting for him to give up the knife.
“No fucking way,” he whispered, but his hand let go of the blade and it fell into the box. How the hell had that happened? He hadn’t opened his hand. It was as if someone else had taken control of his body. Oh, this was bad. This was really bad.
Bahru closed the lid. “Relax. It will all make sense to you soon. The Master’s stone will clear your mind. Relax, Ryan. Father of the Chosen One who shall be the Master’s host. It makes sense, somehow, that you should be the wielder of the blade.”
16
Lena had begun her night in the temple room all but cowering in fear. But by the time morning approached, just as the sky began to pale from the dark gray of a stormy night to the pink and deep blue of predawn, she felt a little bit foolish for being so terrified. She was a witch. She was not powerless. Whoever this being was, one-time hero or otherwise, she had banished him from her home and apparently kept him from coming back inside. She was strong.
The house was silent. Everyone was asleep. So she took out the enchanted chalice, filled it with holy water and sat on the floor, gazing into its depths. As her vision lost focus and the mists swirled into shapes and forms around her, she saw herself as she had been before, a condemned captive in that other lifetime. She stood on a precipice, her hands bound behind her stinging, bleeding back. Her sisters stood beside her, the wind whipping their hair. Beautiful, proud, powerful women.
A bed of jagged rocks awaited them far below, and yet they were not afraid. She was filled again with the knowledge that death was not an ending. That in fact one was far more alive on the other side than one could manage to be while condensed into a tiny physical body.
In the distance she saw a lone rider racing across the desert, sending up a plume of sand in his wake. Her prince, determined to save her.
She hadn’t told him the secret she kept. It was that secret that made her so afraid to die. It wasn’t the loss of her own mortal life she feared, but the loss of the child she carried.
I was pregnant then, too. That’s what made it so horrifying.
She felt again the hands on her back and her toes trying to cling to the stone beneath them, and then...nothing. She was airborne, plummeting, falling, knowing she was about to die.
And that even if her prince had reached her in time, he would have died, too. The high priest was in a rage. The king—her prince’s father—was dead, killed by her sister Lilia’s lover, Demetrius, in his rage to set his woman free. And the three sisters knew that Demetrius would pay with more than his life. He would pay with his soul.
But they had a plan, the three of them. They had a plan to make it all right. A plan that was even now playing out as intended. A plan she had to see through to the end.
No. Not if it means giving him my baby...
In the magic chalice, she saw an image. The chalice—this very chalice—held in hands that might have been her own. And the blade, the golden blade she so feared, poised above the cup in hands that were unmistakably Ryan’s. She knew those hands so well. She knew their touch, their strength, their warmth. Then she heard a voice, a powerful voice that was vaguely female but more than human. It whispered from the echoing, cavernous, bottomless cup in which the vision swam: As the rod is to the God, so the chalice is to the Goddess, and together they are one.
You can trust your love. But you must save my love. You gave your word.
“Not at the cost of my child.”
Only love can save your child. The kind of love you know so well. You know the love I mean. What are the passwords, Magdalena? How do you enter the sacred circle of the wise?
“In perfect love and perfect trust.” She whispered the words uttered by students of the Craft down through the generations, the passwords that allowed them entry into the circle of the witch.
Perfect love and perfect
trust, the voice from the chalice repeated. They are your only hope. Keep the chalice within reach at all times. Keep it near.
The vision faded. The cup sat in silence, and Lena stared into it in disbelief.
She didn’t know who or what to believe. But that voice felt true. It felt genuine. It felt personal, close to her. She was pretty sure it was the voice of her childhood imaginary friend Lilia, who she had since come to believe had been one of the women standing beside her on that cliff. One of those two who’d died with her. One of her sisters in that lifetime. And it was telling her the same things as the note claiming to be from her other sister, Indira.
She trusted those two women—or spirits or memories or whatever they were—intuitively.
And yet she had trusted Bahru, as well. And now it seemed he was evil. She had believed the house ghost to be good. Now it seemed that it wanted to take her child from her.
How strange to trust a voice coming to her in a vision in a cup. A cup given to her by Bahru himself.
She didn’t tell you to trust her. She told you to trust Ryan.
Lena closed her eyes. “With my life? With my baby?”
His baby, too.
She got to her feet, her knees shaking. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, but she was still certain that leaving this place like her feet were on fire was near the top of the list. She opened the circle, grounded the energy, and then carefully, slowly, she unlocked the temple room door and opened it.
Ryan was sitting on the floor in the hallway, his back against the wall, his breath coming slow and steady, his eyes closed.
He’d slept outside the door. To keep her safe?
Her heart contracted a little, and she bent far enough to touch his face. “Ryan?”
He opened his eyes, looked up at her, and then blinked the confusion away as he looked around. For a moment he looked as if he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there, but then he seemed to shake it off and got—a little unsteadily—to his feet.
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