What I’d perfectly understood had been nothing by a dying man’s nonsense to her.
The darkness sank like a hook into Kline’s parted mouth, consuming him from the inside out and to the unholy choir was added one more voice. His. Screaming out in agony and anguish and vows of retribution.
“Ohmygod!” Blue gasped as we were violently shoved from out of that scene into another. “This is...this is too much.”
“I sense we are nearing the end of these truths, hang in there just a little bit longer.” Zinnia’s voice was strong in the darkness.
Shocked as I was, I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to see this to the end. I had to be here for Annabelle, no matter what came.
The cloak of shadows and night pervaded the derelict state of the room. Midnight obscured the figures within. One lay prone, another bent over, and the smell of dirty blood permeated my nostrils.
I coughed, covering my mouth as I choked on the stench of filth.
A sliver of moonlight cut through the smog-stained and moth-riddled curtains, illuminating the faces within for just a moment.
Two women. One blond. One raven-haired.
I gasped when I recognized Annabelle. She lay on an insect-infected cot, legs spread as the blond bent over her and sliced her open with what I knew was an unclean blade.
Annabelle cried.
“Oh, baby,” I whispered, heart in my throat as I shook my head, wanting so desperately not to see this.
Why were we here all of a sudden? Why had the magick cast us into this place? Why?
Not even a second later I had my answer.
The pillar from Hell had followed us here. I shivered as the voice of Kline rang out loudest.
“Doomed. Doomed. Doomed!” It cried, and just as it had done to him, that darkness slid over her body.
Suddenly Annabelle jerked, pleading with the butcher to stop.
“No more! I can’t bear it. Stop!” She sobbed as blood gushed out from between her legs.
That darkness slid over her like second skin, and it covered her form. Annabelle’s once vibrant form began to lose its shine. It was killing her, sucking the light out of her, bit by bit, driven by Kline’s madness to take her down with him. But she didn’t belong there, a light shone from within her, one that fought the demon fog with all its strength.
The blond butcher, maybe aware on a sixth sense kind of level, dropped her knife with a clatter to the disgusting floor and murmured soothingly that Annabelle would be alright.
Though I could see the stain of death’s hand curled malevolently around Annabelle’s throat.
A soft gasp of shock sounded to my left. And when I looked it was not my sister or even the witches that had made the sound.
It was my Annabelle. She was in spirit form again, looking with tears shimmering in her lashes as she shook her head and whispered, “No,” over and over.
“Annabelle, don’t look at this,” I cried, jerking the chain of hands with me as I marched toward her, wanting to comfort her however I could.
“Dante, don’t!” Zinnia cried. “You cannot break the chain. You must not interfere.”
But I was driven to hold her. To save her. I took another step and slammed headlong into a wall.
“Ouch!” I barked and rubbed the goose egg forming on my forehead. “What the hell was that?” I snapped at Zinnia.
But it was Hyacinth, not Zinnia whose fingers sparked with power. “Ye canna interfere!” She glowered at me. “This must be. She must know all. This is where it ends. Stand aside, Dante. I don’t want to harm ye, but so help me Goddess I will if pushed to it.”
I hated her in that moment, hated these rules, hated that each sob that spilled from Annabelle’s lips felt like a blade to my heart that cut me open. I was useless and unable to stop this pain. Unable to help her at all.
“Please, Dany, listen,” Blue pleaded, and I glanced at my sister, feeling as though I had just swallowed a bag of stones.
“I...I can’t—”
“But you must. For her sake,” Zinnia pleaded. “Stay strong, Dante, for just a little longer. Then this will all be over.”
Over.
As in Annabelle would break the curse and move on. To another world. Another life. One without me in it. One where I might cease to even matter to her.
“I know you love her,” Zinnia bore down on my hand, “and that’s exactly why you have to let her go. Let her go, let her be at peace, Dante. Let this be.”
Chapter 11
Annabelle Lee
I FELT THE POWER OF the witches spell consume me. All that I’d seen tonight, I couldn’t believe it. I knew the truth of it now.
What had haunted me for so long, but I had to see just a little bit more. I had to know. I had to.
I watched as the darkness infected my spirit, sucking the soul and life slowly from me. Each memory so clear in my mind that I knew in excruciating detail what would happen before it did.
I watched as Mother Mary found me draped over the stoop, near to death. Watched as the darkness was held back from the light and goodness within the covenant. Saw the spiritual battle rage around me and the light overcome the darkness. Saw myself come slowly out of the nightmare, but always the darkness remained. A cancerous leech that would slowly consume me no matter how valiantly I fought to hold the tide back.
Billy’s final breath had cursed me. His hate for me was so strong that he’d deflected the very last dregs of strength remaining him to coat me like tar, cling to me so that I could never again know true happiness.
I’d not known it in life, but I could recall with perfect clarity now the sadness that had always remained with me after that day. How nothing seemed to ever go right for me.
Even after the call to Blue Moon Bay and finding Julian’s tender warmth and strength to guide me, even then I saw the darkness veiling me, gripping me tight, waiting for just the right moment to curse me true.
And then came the night that had been so special, so happy for me.
There I stood in the ankle deep snow, Julian just behind me as we gazed upon my future. Our future together. The promise and hope for a better tomorrow. How the chilly fingers of night caught at the edge of my gown, flapping it like bats wings in the air.
Julian’s pride beaming from his face as he gazed, not upon the weathered gingerbread home, but me. As he took in my reaction, an indulgent smile upon his face, love so clearly evident in his eyes.
I began to remember what I’d forgotten. The step I took out of the circle of his arms, the lengthening of the shadows by my feet. The way a funnel of blackness separated away from the night and took on a form familiar.
Billy, dressed as he’d last been, his dark face cloaked with evil intent as he lifted his hand toward me.
My scream and then a sound that ricocheted like a bullet in the air. But there’d been no gun and no bullets, just the darkness slicing through the air and striking my beloved Julian through his heart.
He dropped to his knees, gasping and reaching out for me.
Then that darkness turned toward me, and I couldn’t run, couldn’t even move.
“How?” I’d croaked, knowing it was great evil staring down upon me.
It smiled through Kline’s face as it whispered, “Boom,” and dropped me like an anvil falling from the sky. Pain the likes of which I’d never known exploded through the back of my skull as I reached out to the man who’d vowed to protect me from ever knowing pain or hurt again.
He couldn’t have known I was cursed. Couldn’t have known that by simply pledging himself to me he’d spelled his own doom. Billy’s destruction was without mercy.
That shadow yanked on me, trying to suck me into its dark void.
I didn’t remember any of this.
I watched as Julian’s door—a strong steel blue—appeared before his soul. A door marked with the seal of his pack, a wolf’s head over a heart-shaped thorn. Watched as Julian’s soul turned toward mine.
I closed my eyes, not
fighting the darkness. Feeling that in some small way I deserved the judgment, the agony of it too.
But Julian had vowed to me in life that he would never let harm befall me and with a shudder, he ran away from the peace on the other side of that doorway and toward me.
He shifted into a beast, ripping and clawing at the shadowy veil trying to suck me into it. The darkness fought back, but Julian fought harder.
He freed me. But in so doing had permanently cursed himself. The darkness demanded a price, and it stole it from my Jules, stripping him of any ability to reason and think as a man. Dooming him to an afterlife of animalistic aggression and moon fever.
I cried out, agonized by the truth that had unfolded. A truth I’d forgotten.
The darkness had left us then, content to remain within the woods. So long as I remained eternally unhappy, it would not harm me. But then Dante had come into my world, turning it from shades of gray to one vibrant with color again. And that old evil had stirred, going after the thing I cared for most.
How could I have been so stupid? How could I have forgotten the price I’d paid, that Julian had paid?
The darkness hovered before me, a thick waiting cloud of hate and fury. I looked at it, knowing now it was sentient and could hurt me. It’d taken everything from me once. And it wanted nothing more than to do it again.
I was no longer trapped in the memory of the past, I stood in the in-between, the sliver of realm betwixt life and death. The night was heavy and pregnant with moonlight. My haunted home looked like a lonely sentinel upon the hill.
Snow covered the grounds, just as it had the night Julian and I died. The icy chill of winter enveloped me. Holly bushes now nothing but dead leaves and twigs swayed in the icy winds, sounding like dried bones rubbing together, as the perpetual night raged on.
The darkness took on form. Staring back at me through Billy’s black eyes. But I needed to stop calling it Billy. Billy had been my name for the man I’d thought I’d loved and who’d loved me back. This thing, this tower of black, was a monster. Evil. And a blight to me and all I’d ever cared for.
I swallowed hard, waiting for it to hurt me. Wound me. Kill me all over again.
It grinned, showcasing a row of fanged silver teeth. “I’ve taken it all from you, Annabelle, but I would gladly take more.”
“Why? Why are you doing this to me? Kline is dead, his vendetta against me should also be dead.”
It laughed, and the sound was chilling and cutting. “You think this is over? I’ve tasted the sweetness of your fears, and I want more. I want it all. You cannot escape me. I won’t let you. The time for your reckoning has come. And you will be the sweetest prize of all.”
It came at me, fangs and claws exposed. Madness twisting it into a horrific image of rotted, peeling zombie-like disease. I screamed, not knowing what I could do to stop this. To end this.
“Enough!” Hyacinth’s voice ripped through my terror.
The darkness paused, frozen in a veil of glittering gold power. Face contorted with its hunger to feed.
Suddenly I remembered why I was here. Why I’d come. I looked at the faces around me, looking only for one.
Dante’s eyes shone with tears and shame burned up my throat. Now he knew it all. And he would despise me for it.
“Banish it, Annabelle.” Zinnia, who I’d not noticed standing just to the right of Dante, piped up.
“How?” I sobbed as I glanced at Julian, down on all fours and howling out with moon fever.
He’d been so strong for so long. I’d cursed him, just as I had everything else I’d touched. I was a terrible person. Even in death. Maybe I should let the darkness take me, maybe it would be the merciful thing to do. To pay for all I’d done.
“Ye must let go of the guilt.”
Hyacinth’s words made me tremble, and I shook my head. “What?”
Zinnia placed a hand on her aunt’s shoulder and turned to me. “That is how you rid yourself of this haunting. Let it go. Know it wasn’t your fault. None of this. Not Julian’s fate. Not what you did that night. None of it was your fault. He was deranged. Mad. Do not take that guilt upon yourself any longer. Let it go.”
I clutched my fingers together and wet my lips. “And what happens if I do?”
Hyacinth flicked her wrist, and I gasped as not one but two doors suddenly appeared.
One steely blue bearing the image of a regal wolf surrounded by a heart shaped thorn, and the other was a woven masterpiece of brambles and thorns interlaced with rose blooms the size of my hand.
I gasped, tears filling my eyes as I instantly recognized whose door that was.
Hope, joy, and shock overcame me, and my knees trembled.
“My...mine?”
Hyacinth smiled warmly, and I wasn’t even stunned because the flood of peace and of desire to move on had completely overwhelmed me. I rose up on the balls of my toes and reached for it, fingertips tingling with the desperate need to pass through.
“Of course it’s yers, Spook,” Hyacinth said in a gentle tone of voice. “After all the years of pain and torment ye’ve put yerself through, ye’ve earned it. All that’s left is to take your power back.”
Hard as it was, I tore my gaze away from my redemption and the second my eyes alighted on the tower of swirling shadows, I remembered it all.
The pain. The agony. The absolute guilt of what I’d been forced to do. All the choices I’d made in life that had led me here, to this very moment in time.
“Let it go, lassie,” Hyacinth’s voice was like a warm hug, pulling me away from the hurt. “Focus on who ye are right now, girly. Ye’ve grown into a fine woman, ye have. I may not say it often, but it’s been a pleasure knowing ya. Seeing how ye’ve grown. Let it go...”
I trembled as I stared down the hate. The physical personification of what Kline had done to me, how his own vengeance had carved something so deeply awful to torment me.
Kline’s face smiled back at me, terrible fangs gleaming like wet blades.
I ground my jaw. “Go away.” My words were soft, but strong.
He growled, shaking his head like a dog who’d caught wind of an offending odor.
My heart fluttered realizing this really was working.
My lips tipped into a grin as I clenched my fists hard to my side. “Go away,” I said more insistently.
It hissed. “You cannot survive without your guilt. It’s who you are now. Don’t listen to her. She’s a liar, and she knows it. You need me, Annabelle. Need me to protect you from those who’d seek to do you harm. We’re friends you and I.”
Its words were insidious, rolling like a snake’s sibilance, making me shiver. Making me doubt myself.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare listen to that piece of crap.” It wasn’t Hyacinth, or Zinnia, or even Blue who clipped out those words, but the deep timbre of Dante’s smooth voice.
I twirled, gasping, because in all of the fuss I’d forgotten him. How could I ever forget him? My hands trembled.
“Dante, you...you’re still here.” I cringed at the sound of such agonized hope in my voice. The darkness was right. I was weak when it came to the opposite sex. I always had been.
His handsome face looked at me with such solemnity and a flood of love that I couldn’t remember what it was I meant to say next. How could he still look at me like that, after everything he’d seen? I glanced down at my feet, shame making my head feel heavy.
“Don’t you dare do that,” he said softly, speaking to me as though it were only him and I. Like no one else existed now but us.
“What?”
“Don’t you dare think for one moment that I could ever see you as anything but awe-inspiring. Now that I know who you really are, the difficult choices you were forced to make, Annabelle,” his voice cracked, “don’t let that demon make you believe that you are anything other than...wonderful.”
I gasped. “You think I’m wonderful?”
His smile looked sad. “I know you are. And you deser
ve to go. Hold your head high, and be proud of yourself.”
“But you—”
His grin didn’t reach his eyes. “Like I said, Casper, I’m a survivor. I’ll always land on my feet. And I’ll never regret knowing you. I don’t think a day will go by when I won’t think about you. What Would Casper Do?”
I laughed even as my throat squeezed tight with the heavy press of sadness.
“I’ll never forget you either, Dante. And I’ll see you someday, right?”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” He shrugged. “What’s a couple more decades anyway, right?”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the sight of his eyes shimmering in the darkness. Why had the magick been so cruel to bring him here? Why bring him here at all when none of this could have worked between us?
But he was right too; the memories we’d made, even in the short amount of time we’d had would last me through several more years. I would wait for him. I could wait for him.
With a final nod at Dante, I turned back to the darkness. It just stood there, stripped of most of its power now as it eyed me with cruel intent. I squared my shoulders.
“You have no hold over me anymore. Go back to your Hell and leave my friends alone!”
A raging rush of wind plowed through the betwixt, bowing the trunks of ancient trees stripped bare of leaves. The darkness howled, scrabbling with claws hooked into the rocky soil as it fought not to be vanquished.
I was free. I inhaled and felt the weight of so much darkness and pain that’d nearly choked the very life out of me leave in an instant. Wonder filled my spirit, and I beamed at the light that shone like a beacon from the doors.
I gasped, seeing a figure standing before Julian’s door. Tall and extremely muscular, the figure looked at me with love and joy shining in his dark eyes. Tears rolled unchecked down my face, but these weren’t tears of sorrow, but of joy. Incandescent happiness.
The face that I’d grown to love so well broke out into a blinding smile. Julian rubbed at his bearded cheek, his crooked nose looking almost regal on him now.
Holly, Curses, and Hauntings (Blue Moon Bay, #2) Page 15