by J. R. Rain
I was careful to guard my thoughts.
“I see you found my home away from home, Samantha Moon,” said a clipped and cultured voice. “Or, rather, my home next to my home.” He chuckled lightly.
“You live here?” I asked, finally finding my voice.
“Often, although I get out as well, generally in disguise. But, yes, you could say that this is my sort of home base.”
Was I talking to Conner Thurman or the entity within? I didn’t know. Perhaps a little of both. Conner was a tall man who appeared to be in his mid-forties—likely the age when he had first been possessed by the entity within.
I noted he was not smiling, not like the others. Also, I couldn’t see his aura, nor read his mind. He was completely closed off to me. Like Kingsley, or Detective Hanner, or the other immortals I’d encountered.
Yes, I thought. He is the source.
The source of the curse.
His family’s curse.
Also, I was certain that Conner Thurman—the real Conner Thurman—had been overtaken completely by the entity within. Where the real Conner Thurman was, I didn’t know, but I suspected he was trapped within, watching helpless within his own body.
Similar to the way the entity within me watched from within my body. Trapped within me—and wanting out. To possess me fully, similar to the way the entity now fully possessed Conner Thurman.
“Who are you?” I asked. I was aware of movement outside the mausoleum. I suspected Allison and perhaps some others had arrived. For now, they stayed outside. Undoubtedly, they were being controlled by the entity before me.
“I am a renegade of sorts, Samantha Moon.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could say I don’t play by the rules. I create my own rules.”
“What rules?”
“The rules of life, death and our immortal souls.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I, and my sister within you, have challenged the powers that be, so to speak. Successfully, I might add. We have effectively removed ourselves from the soul’s evolutionary process.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, I’m sure you don’t. You see, there are universal laws in place that govern not only this world, but the worlds beyond. Others before you have created these laws, laws that govern your soul’s journey through life and death. I happen to not agree with these laws, Sam. I happen to have a rather rebellious streak within me. You see, I like to do things my way. And so does my sister, and so do many others like me.”
He began circling around me, hands clasped behind his back. He went on, “You see, we have figured a way out of this rat trap, Samantha Moon. And you can join us. Forever join us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give my sister the freedom she seeks, and you can share in our eternal journey.”
“And if I refuse?”
“There is no refusing, my dear. You will become one of us or nothing.”
I found myself backing away. There was the scent of something repugnant wafting off him. An actual smell of decay, perhaps. My inner alarm seemed to be blaring off the hook. Yes, I was in serious danger, I got it. I willed my own alarm to quiet down. Sometimes, the damn thing went off so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think.
“You killed George Thurman and Cal Thurman.”
“Yes, I kill when my hosts become problematic or useless.”
“What will you do with my son?” I asked.
Conner Thurman stopped pacing and faced me. “Unfortunately, Samantha, your son consumed something very important to me. Something very important to the process of releasing my sister. But not all is lost.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you have figured out by now that I will need all four of the medallions to release my sister.”
I said nothing, already suspecting where this was leading. I clenched my fists.
“You see, I had a willing host. My host—Conner Thurman—permitted me to take possession of his body. And I gladly did so. Oh, yes. My sister’s release requires aid, if you will. That’s where the medallions come in.”
“But why the medallions? I don’t understand.”
“The medallions were created to aid those like you, Samantha Moon. The combination of all four together was not foreseen, and not predicted. At least, not by those who created them.”
He stepped closer, and I stepped back. I sensed great strength within him. I suddenly very much wished that Kingsley was by my side again.
“Fortunately, the magicks contained within the particular medallion that your son consumed are not lost.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Yes, you do, Samantha Moon. You understand all too well.”
In a blink of an eye, he was behind me, reaching around my throat, one hand clawing up inside my sweater. I struggled but was shocked by his strength, his speed.
So strong, so fast.
His hand continued up over my stomach, over my breasts, up near my throat.
“You see, your son must now...” he began, whispering harshly in my ear, his fingertips now pressing into the flesh of my upper chest, “be consumed completely and totally. Every inch of him. Every drop of blood. Every hair on his head.” He was breathing harder, faster. “And trust me, Samantha Moon—trust me when I tell you that I will enjoy him very, very much. But first—”
I screamed, and not necessarily out of fear or anger, but because his fingers had dug deep into me. He threw me away as an excruciating pain ripped through me.
Stumbling into the hallway wall, I gripped my chest as blood poured between my fingers.
I looked back in horror as Conner Thurman held in one of his hands the medallion that had recently been under my skin, a medallion that was, even now, draped in my own bloodied flesh.
“One medallion down,” he said, turning to face me, “and three to go.”
Chapter Fifty-three
“Lucky for you, Samantha Moon, that I need to keep you alive. You are, after all, graciously hosting my sister.”
I braced myself against the polished wall, even while blood from my chest continued pouring free.
“This may sound, ah, rather ghoulish, my dear, but all that precious blood of yours will not go to waste. I will have one of my—for want of a better word—Thurman minions gather it up carefully for me later. Waste not, want not.” He laughed.
The pumping blood quickly slowed to a dribble. I could literally feel the wound closing underneath my palm.
I gasped and stood straight.
He pointed to the disc-shape bulge in my front pocket. “It would be so much easier, Samantha, if you would just give me medallion number two.”
“Fuck you.”
“For some reason, I thought you would say that.” He cocked his head to one side. “Forgive me, sssister,” he said, the word hissing from between his lips. “For what I am about to do.”
He leaped forward so fast that I had only enough time to turn my head. Still, the blow sent me spinning, and rocked me unlike anything I’d felt before.
And it had only been a partial blow.
I searched for the wall, couldn’t find it, stumbled and fell.
He ran up to me, and in one smooth and horrible motion, kicked me full-force in the ribs, hard enough to lift me off the ground and hurl me deeper into the hallway, where I tumbled two or three more times.
I tried to gasp, but couldn’t. Shards of rib bone had punctured my lungs. I was bleeding internally, and badly.
“My sister and I have decided that, perhaps, it would be best to keep you down here with me, Sammie. Oh, does it surprise you that I am still in communication with my sister? Oh, it’s easy enough. She’s accessible to me through your dream state. So, yes, we have prepared a special place for you down here, beneath my family’s mausoleum. With the dead.”
He came up to me and, if possible, kicked me even harder, a blow that sent me crashing into the far wall and succee
ded, I was certain, in breaking all of my remaining ribs. Blood poured from my mouth, from internal injuries that no one had any right to survive from.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t know, entirely, what was happening anymore. The pain was so intense—and happening faster than my own body could repair itself.
“But you have proven to be particularly worrisome, Samantha Moon.”
I tried absently to push him away but I was certain that my arm was broken as well. He grabbed me by my bloodied jacket and lifted me up to my feet.
“Let me explain the source of my worry,” he said, and then threw me against the nearby hallway wall. My head hit hard enough for me to have briefly passed out. Just briefly. Already, I could feel him lifting me up again.
“I haven’t quite figured out why you, of all people, seem stronger than all the others. Yes, my sister within is a particularly evolved dark master, but that doesn’t explain it, either. Do you see my dilemma?”
He backhanded me so hard that I was certain my jaw broke.
“You seem to have developed talents that far outweigh the others. Why, Sam? Why?”
He dropped me to the ground, where I slumped into a bloody and broken heap.
“Yes, we need to keep you here where I can keep an eye on you, while we fetch your son. Or, as I refer to him, medallion number three.”
He turned and faced me.
My thoughts were scattered, incoherent, shattered. I might have been having a form of a seizure. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t function. I could barely see.
And as he began walking toward me, to deliver a blow that I knew would either kill me or render me completely useless, something appeared in my thoughts.
A single flame.
Chapter Fifty-four
Within the flame was a creature that I knew all too well. A creature much bigger than me, and much more powerful. A creature who was, in fact, also me.
The creature seemed to be waiting impatiently, and as the blurred form of Conner Thurman prepared for his final blow, the creature in the flame rushed toward me.
Filling me. Taking over me.
Becoming me.
* * *
The transformation was nearly instant.
My clothes burst from my body as I rapidly grew and contorted. Soon, I was something that didn’t belong in this world, nor any world, stronger and bigger than I had any right to be.
In a blink, my left hand reached out and grabbed Conner Thurman around the throat. He tried to speak, but only a strangled gasp emerged.
I lifted him off the ground, still holding him by the neck. I was tall enough now that my hunched shoulder just missed the stained glass windows high above. In fact, I very nearly filled the entire hallway. My leathery wings hung behind me.
I thought of the threats against my son.
I thought of what Kingsley had said to me:
Cut off the head of the snake.
And as I lifted him off the ground, as he kicked and gurgled and fought me, I continued squeezing.
And squeezing...
Something black and horrible appeared from his open mouth. A serpent, the same snake I had seen coiled around all of the Thurmans. It continued pouring out of Conner Thurman’s mouth as if vomited by the Devil himself. Now it hung suspended in the air, twisting and coiling before me.
“Sssister,” it hissed, and slowly faded away.
I growled and threw Conner Thurman hard against the far wall, and as he slid down, I swiped a massive claw cleanly through his neck.
Chapter Fifty-five
There were four us in the library.
Allison was holding Tara’s hand. The two of them sat closely together, sharing, perhaps, the world’s most unusual bond: both had been possessed simultaneously by a nasty son of a bitch.
Kingsley occasionally patted my knee, and I let him. The gesture seemed to come from a source of support, not flirtation.
Earlier, I had called my sister and confirmed that they were all okay in a safe house. The safe house was, apparently, Kingsley’s ski lodge in Arrowhead. I hadn’t known Kingsley had a ski lodge in Arrowhead. Either way, all was well, and I breathed a sigh of relief and told them to sit tight for another day or so. I would explain it all later.
I had emerged from the mausoleum as naked as the day I was born and covered with blood—and completely healed. The headless body of Conner Thurman had done something extraordinary before my very eyes: it had literally gone up in smoke.
So weird, I thought now, as Kingsley patted my leg again. Tara cried softly as Allison hugged her close.
Allison had been outside the mausoleum, drenching wet and freezing and briefly confused. I helped her back to the bungalow where we changed into some dry clothes. Once done, she and I watched a very unusual procession: Thurman after Thurman emerged from the surrounding woods. All soaked to the bone. All lost. All confused. Some were even hurt. But none permanently so.
Kingsley emerged, too, carrying Edwin in his arms. The young Thurman had taken the worst of Kingsley’s efforts to fend them off. Edwin, as far as I knew, was resting in his basement room now. Hurting, but okay.
Earlier, we had explained to Tara what had happened to her and her family. The news was, unsurprisingly, devastating. She looked at me now. “I hate him.”
I waited. Outside, the storm had subsided. The trees were no longer threatening to break at their bases. A light rain drifted by the big windows.
“I hate him for what he did to my family. We couldn’t fight him. We didn’t know how. He manipulated our thoughts, our memories, our words, our actions. We were all his puppets.”
I recalled the Source’s words: There is no evil, Samantha Moon.
I wasn’t sure I believed it. I had seen evil firsthand, and I believed it was real. I had seen the joy on the entity’s face—or Conner Thurman’s face—as it delivered blow after blow, breaking me and my body. A body that had, miraculously, been restored once I had transformed back into my human self.
Not even a cracked rib.
“You didn’t know that Conner Thurman was still alive?” asked Kingsley.
She shook her head. “No, although the memories of serving him in the mausoleum are returning now...” she shuddered.
I didn’t want to know what “serving him” entailed.
Sweet Jesus.
“He...he removed those memories from us.”
Kingsley nodded. “He’s gone now.”
“I know,” she said. “I felt him leave...and I felt him leave forever.”
Allison was nodding. She looked at me and Kingsley. “I felt it, too. Granted, perhaps not as strongly as Tara, but suddenly, he was gone.”
Tara nodded absently. I suspected she felt the same, except I knew the trauma of her ordeal ran so deep and for so long, that she would need many months or years to come to terms with what had happened to her and her family.
The Thurman family had a lot of healing to do. After all, did they really know each other? How much of their lives had been controlled by the entity?
I didn’t know, but I did know that it was gone. I had seen it flee. To where, I didn’t know. Perhaps another willing host. Perhaps even now it was cruising over the earthly plane like a diseased wind, looking for a willing partner...or perhaps even, an unwilling one.
Yes, I thought. There is evil.
The entity might be gone, but his sister was not. His sister was still within me, watching, waiting, existing. I shuddered all over again. Kingsley felt me shudder and patted me again. He added a small squeeze. Flirt.
Junior and Patricia Thurman next came into the room. Although Junior looked confused, he also looked vibrant. Noticeably absent—and perhaps most telling of all that the entity was indeed gone—was that his aura, along with Tara’s and all the other Thurmans, was completely free of the black cord. The cursed black cord that had bound them all.
We left Tara with her uncle.
Chapter Fifty-six
I was bac
k on Dome Rock.
The sun had not yet risen. Kingsley and Allison were asleep in the bungalow. It had been hours after the ordeal in the mausoleum.
God, had I really cut off his head?
I had. Or, rather, the thing that lived within me had.
No, it had been me. I had made a point to squeeze the life out of Conner Thurman—or the thing that animated Conner Thurman. I had made the decision to remove his head.
He’d threatened Anthony. He had been going to kill Anthony.
Consume Anthony, in fact.
Yes, I had cut off his head, and I would do so a thousand more times if I had to.
The rain had finally dissipated. The ocean beyond seemed relatively calm. I could even see stars peeking through the thin cloud layer.
Before me were both medallions: the opal medallion that I had plucked from the ocean’s depths, and the amethyst medallion that had once been embedded within my chest. Each glittered dully, catching whatever ambient light there was.
My chest had healed marvelously. Not even a scar.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said a voice behind me.
I gasped, turning. I hadn’t heard anyone approach, and my inner alarm had failed to notify me of danger. Standing behind was, of course, the young Librarian. The alchemist. He was wearing jeans and a sweater and shoes that didn’t seem appropriate for a hike up Dome Rock.
“I’m sorry to startle you, Samantha Moon.”
“How did you get here?”
“The ferries are running again.”
“How did you know I was here?”
He smiled and walked around me and stood over the two medallions. “I, too, am intricately linked to these guys.”
“Because you created them.”
“Yes. Do you mind if I sit?”
“It’s a big rock,” I said.
He chuckled and sat before me. A small wind blew steadily over us. His short hair didn’t move. Neither did his clothing.
“There’s some weird shit going on,” I said.