She gigged the mare onto the trail, but something black snapped under the mare’s nose, making her rear and lash out with her hooves. There was a raw curse as the mare came down and lunged forward with her battle training. Christabel lost her seat, and the mare bolted.
She couldn’t breathe for the few moments she might have used for escape, but by the time she could, he was already on her.
“You shame your father’s memory. Which of the savages is your lover?”
She twisted, but his strength was far beyond hers. She would not escape through brute force.
“I’ll not answer to you. You are not my father.” She glared into the preacher’s sneering face.
With an assurance that shook Christabel’s confidence, he said, “I’ll soon be your husband. But not until I’m sure you don’t carry a savage’s child.”
“I’ve lain with no man,” she shot back, understanding now what she hadn’t understood last winter, about how Eliza Albright had had a baby without a husband.
His gaze bored into hers until she wanted to scream from the intrusion. His glare became almost a smile. He gazed down at her body; her lacings had come untied in their struggle. “Then it’s the demon witch herself.” He buried his lips against her bare throat and she felt the hideous wetness of his tongue. “I shall enjoy driving her presence out of your body.”
“I would rather die first.” She meant it.
He laughed, seeming genuinely amused. “No, you’ll ask me to do it. You’ll beg.”
He helped her up and merely pushed her aside when she tried to strike him. When he turned his back, she couldn’t help herself, she leaped on him, clawing at his ears, his cheeks.
He cursed again and spun around so she lost her grip. He grabbed her by her hair, delivered a single blow to the side of her head, and left her sobbing on the path.
“Remember this,” he said, before he left, “You are my property, even now. You will beg to be my property.”
Never, she thought. Never.
When the mare came back a few minutes later, snuffling with concern, Christabel longed, with a truly physical ache, to go back to Rahdonee and run away. But that meant leaving her mother helpless, and that she just couldn’t do.
The cab driver didn’t even give Dina a funny look when she got out on deserted Fifty-fifth Street in front of a dark building. She told him not to wait and he gladly sped off into the night.
“Madness,” she muttered. Exhausted didn’t even begin to describe her physical state. She was spent from the stress of finishing the Goranson IPO. Seeing the high stakes pay off for the client and investors alike was an incredible high. She’d received her partnership, too, and the new stress of the position was already taking its toll. She was equally distressed because she had made a man like Goranson wealthy and hadn’t told investors what kind of creep she suspected he was.
But what did she know? That he was probably a sadist in the bedroom? That was a big so-what. She had acquaintances who practiced S/M and made no secret of it. They were nice people, too. But Goranson took sadistic pleasure in almost everything he did, just because he could. How was she supposed to put that in a prospectus? She hadn’t even been able to convince George Berkeley, and George trusted her.
Her fingers trembled as she punched in the alarm code. Who was she kidding? The business matters were stressful, yes, but she wasn’t here because of business.
Christabel—she was here because she loved Christa, because holding her, kissing her had liberated something inside Dina. Whatever that something was, it had become a steady, driving pulse when Christa had walked away. The pulse whispered, “Not again, not again.” It drew her here, and here she would get answers. Possibly more answers than she could handle.
“You were right, mom,” she muttered as she made her way to the sub-basement. “I ought to be really pissed off that you were right, but that would only work if I had a clue what you were right about. What is it I don’t know?”
Her voice echoed in the empty rooms, but she felt better for thinking about her mother. If she was indeed losing her mind, there were definitely worse things to have in her head, while she went bonker kitties than her mother’s implacable, immutable, quiet strength.
Goranson got his cash Tuesday morning and Jason Williams would get his bond to start work the same day. But for now, the tangled roots in the sub-basement were still curling through the wall. If anything, they were thicker than before.
It was not her imagination that they quivered when she turned on the light. She wondered why she wasn’t afraid now, then realized she had no control over her feet. They calmly took her down the steps, across the room.
Just as calmly, her body sat down next to the roots, using her light jacket to buffer some of the cold from the concrete. She watched herself get more comfortable, and from far away, she saw herself reach into the coil of roots and grasp them firmly.
A rhythmic beeping shook her from the sight of her still body. She blinked, and her mother was smiling gently at her.
“I have to tell you something before I go,” her mother said.
Dina did not want to be here, but she looked around and there was no sign of her body.
“You didn’t pay attention the first time, so I will tell you again.”
This was not her mother.
“We are all your mother. Lie on the bed with me. Let me hold you close.”
All at once she remembered the demon’s presence in her nightmares. It was close now, as if it lived in this room.
“As long as you are in my grasp, he cannot hurt you. But he grows stronger and we have little time.”
The heart monitor beeped a little faster as Dina nestled on the bed. She had no awareness of her body, or of her mother’s, but she was not floating. She was afraid, but then, through the acrid scent of hospital disinfectant, she smelled the faint sandalwood of her mother’s hair.
The simple happiness of childhood washed over her, and she knew she was safe.
“Listen carefully, this time. There is no need to grieve. I am gone. You know that. So listen.”
She listened to words she’d heard before. It was not so much her mother telling her again as it was her remembering much more clearly.
“You know that your heritage is a mixed one, and that it includes the blood of the first people, who only had a name for themselves after the second coming of the white men. But when the first white men found them they were few. Some stayed, some took wives, and you are their daughter. And the Great Mother blessed their daughters with gifts.”
I don’t believe any of this. Dina tried to stop remembering her mother’s warnings. But the words came anyway.
“For uncountable years there were several green-eyed children at any time in the lives of the first people. After they were driven from their home on this island, there was only one. And so it has been for these many hundreds of years as the people scattered to the winds and lost their name. Only one Green at a time. I was Green. When I am gone, you will be Green.”
She wanted to say this was superstitious nonsense, but her mother shushed her gently.
“You already know this. You already feel the guiding hand of the Great Mother. You see others in need and you speak to it. You reassure, you help.”
“No, mother, I don’t. That’s you. I’m not that good.”
“Child, you must listen. There is a debt and unfinished business. You must look to make the debt right, to finish what was left undone.”
“What is it? What am I supposed to do?”
“You will know when the time comes. I do not know what it is or I would tell you. What I know is that in my lifetime I was not called. I searched but did not find it.”
This wasn’t fair. Some voice from the past wanted to lay some sort of burden on her, and she already had all she could handle right now. She had come for answers, not more questions. “What about Christabel?”
Her mother’s gaze unfocused, then she said slowly, “That name is
the sound of bells to me, but I don’t know why. You should listen, though. I do know that she is part of this.”
“She doesn’t want my help.”
The gentle visage started to fade as an understanding smile curved her mother’s mouth. “What does that have to do with it?”
“She’s a grown woman. She’s made up her mind and who am I to try to change it?”
“You are Green. The one who will know what to do. Listen to your soul. Do you understand?”
“Yes. No.”
There was the tender stroke of her mother’s hand on her forehead, then the shock of cold stiffness in all of her joints.
She turned her head and studied the roots that had gently, almost lovingly, enclosed her hand. She was no longer afraid. Not really.
But you should be. Evil is strong.
She was out of her body again, this time looking at a clearing with deserted campfires and poles stuck in the ground, but no skins wrapped around them to make them homes. In the last glow of sunset they looked like abandoned stilts of the ancient gods Christabel had told her about. There were no people, and her eyes filled with tears.
She had turned to the river that would take her to the last waiting boat when the earth spat up the demon. He blocked her way and she screamed to the others to leave her.
She fought with the demon. She was not a half-woman, strangled by corsets and convention. She would defend herself to the death. She kept getting up when he knocked her down, using her teeth to escape him, her knowledge of his sensitive places to wound. The struggle took her beyond the trees, and she could see the boat only a few feet from shore, still hoping she would come.
She broke free and ran to the water. The river mud sucked at her feet, but she was going to make it. Sinhaya himself reached for her. The air split with the crack of musket fire, and Sinhaya fell back, his chest bleeding in several places.
The demon would kill them all, she realized. She pushed the boat out into the river, shouting for them to save themselves, and then turned to face the preacher, for he had come for her.
It was not his musket that aimed at her heart, but one of his victim’s. She caught the man’s wild gaze for a moment. Great Mother, I gave him aid when he asked it of me. Surely he will not—
When the blast came, she let the force of it push her back into the water, and she floated on the river, trying to assess how badly she was hurt and if she could guide her passage without the demon suspecting she was still alive. She prayed that the boat was safely gone.
Her vision wavered, and her head went under long enough that some water was forced into her lungs. She no longer cared if he thought she was dead, but she found that her arms wouldn’t pull her up. She was going to be swallowed by the river.
She turned her thoughts to the only thing that mattered now. Christabel.
Dina finally stirred. She was cold all the way through, and her butt had gone to sleep. She ran her hands over her skin, touched her face. She was alive, and not soaking wet. Alive, but completely empty, as if she had lived days in minutes.
There was more to know, but she extricated herself from the hold of the roots. Before she could do anything else, she needed to rest and to eat.
She knew what the debt was now, and the unfinished business. She had recognized the face of the demon.
There is more.
Dina’s vision blurred as she steadied herself. Food, energy—she had to have some or she wouldn’t be ready. The roots quivered and she resisted the call this time.
She didn’t need to understand anything about the past except how it affected the present. Right now she knew what she had to do: get Christa away from Leonard Goranson, even if she had to kidnap her to do it.
“They’re gone, and we’re saved!” Bitsy was radiant with the news.
Christabel’s heart sank at the thought of that quiet community no longer nestled in the woods. She examined the nearest market stall to hide her expression. “All gone?”
“Every last one of them. Reverend Gorony says the light in the sky will leave us now.”
“I’ve got to get something for supper.” The change of subject was fruitful, since Bitsy liked to show off knowing where the best bargains were. Ma wouldn’t eat much, but Christabel tried to get something down her at night before she gave into the numbing of the alcohol. Even the very valuable liquors Lord Berkeley had given her father—all the way from France, he had said—were nearly gone. Ma drank and drank. Pa would have understood right away if Christabel had told him she thought the preacher was evil. He’d have probably chopped something off the preacher if she’d told him he had touched her. She missed Pa, but she wasn’t sure that even he could save them from the kind of spell the preacher was weaving. It was as if the gods sported with them, as in the Greek tales, to find out what and who had power.
“The turkey’s fresh here.” Bitsy paused at a stall. “My ma said that I was to ask after your ma.”
“She’s still very sad,” Christabel said honestly. She wasn’t about to tell Bitsy that her mother wasn’t capable of comprehending what was happening in the town, nor what Christabel told her about the preacher’s behavior.
When Christabel had tried to tell her, Ma had barely surfaced from the depths of despair, saying, “He’s trying to save you from the devil. The devil took your father for my weakness. I forced him to bring that witch here.”
“She saved my life,” Christabel had answered. “He’s the one trying to take payment for it.”
Her mother hadn’t answered. Every hour she seemed to go farther and farther away.
Bitsy asked for a dressed duck while Christa contented herself with a packet of venison. She was aware of the cross look the butcher gave her and knew their bill was mounting. There was no means to pay him.
Bitsy finished haggling over the price of her duck and they walked together toward the market entrance. “You’ll let her know my ma was asking?”
“Of course.” Christabel wasn’t certain her mother would remember if she did, but she would pass on Goody Albright’s polite attentions. “Oh—what are they nailing up?”
Bitsy stood on tiptoe to peer at the long parchment that had just been hammered to the market entrance. “Says that all abandoned buildings and the land they’re on revert to the ownership of Lord Berkeley.”
“Like those Quaker properties?”
“Ssh. There’s more. The cost of clearing the land is to be borne by the owner who abandoned it.”
“That means none of them will come back to claim it.” Christabel stared at the notice, aghast at the wicked partnership in play. Sinhaya was right—the appetite for land was enormous. To take it, men only needed a leader who would stop at nothing. The omen in the sky was a warning from Rahdonee’s Sky God about these times of peril, but the evil was the preacher himself.
She came home from the market with the meager supper, her head full of worries. She set the latch to the door behind her and noticed that her mother hadn’t even opened the shutters. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she realized they were not alone.
His gaze was mocking and indecent. “They were not all gone when we got there last eve,” he said, without preamble.
It was a moment before she understood him.
Calmly, he filled her mother’s cup from a flask of his own. “We chased some of them into the river.”
He wanted her to ask. But she could not make herself do it. She set down her basket. “How can you give my mother alcohol? Demon alcohol, you call it.”
“I am doing God’s work,” he said silkily. “Can you say otherwise?”
“I’d scream it from the steps of the church if I thought anyone would listen.” In the basket was the knife she’d used to cut her hard cheese. Her fingers closed on it.
“My God-given power is beyond your comprehension. I am the instrument of his taking this new land to his bosom. The unbelievers shall not have this virgin land. It shall be the land of the strong.”
She ke
pt her grip on the knife, not liking his gaze on her body. “I’ve brought dinner,” she said to her mother.
Her mother drank from the cup and said nothing.
“You will be a beautiful bride, and on our wedding night you will know the power of God.”
“I told you I’d die first.”
“Your mother has consented to the marriage.”
She stared at her mother’s nearly unconscious form. “I’ll die before I’ll let you bed me.”
“Do you remember what I said?”
“The devil has truly rotted your mind.”
His expression made her shiver. He crossed the room in two slow steps. She gripped the knife, wondering if she dared use it. If he touched her, she would.
“You are more beautiful than the first day I remember looking at you.”
“You aren’t supposed to notice women. Aren’t we all the daughters of Eve, tempting you to evil?”
His voice was low, and he spoke so intently she found herself listening in spite of herself. “But, as you’ve pointed out, I have no need to fear evil or the devil himself.”
He seized her so suddenly that the basket clattered to the floor, and the knife with it. He looked at the knife and grinned. Holding her firmly, he stooped to pick it up.
He brought the point to her throat. “We will have an interesting marriage. But you won’t harm me. Look at me.”
She did, and it was her undoing. She felt the invasion of the feral red gleam and was helpless. Gazing into her eyes the whole while, he cut the ties on her gown and then the knife went through her underclothes to prick her stomach.
She was panting with terror, willing herself to blink, to faint, to somehow break the spell of his eyes.
“She touched you softly, didn’t she? She was gentle and sweet, wasn’t she?” His hands were inside her gown. “I shall make you forget that there is such a thing as a gentle touch.” He pinched the soft flesh on her ribs, then cupped one breast so tightly that tears came to her eyes.
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