by Ramona Wray
And that’s how I, Lillian Marie Crane, gained instant and unexpectedly deep insight into the subject of demonic possession. Yep, I could’ve easily explained the phenomenon because it was pretty much how I felt. My mind screamed, No! J’s boyfriend! Hands off, you tramp! My body was happy, happy, happy and eager for more. My mouth still wouldn’t speak for me. And my instinct warned in increasingly fortissimo bawls that this was still Lucian and whatever was happening had to be wrong on many, many levels. My inner voice, the twenty-first-century one, shouted, Run! Only, of course, I couldn’t; I was trapped.
“I love you!” Lucian told past-me.
“I love you, too, William, but … Elizabeth ... We cannot … we mustn’t…” My mouth spoke on its own.
He shook me by the shoulders. “Do not … Please, I beg of you! I cannot live —”
“I cannot, either!”
The kissing resumed, now even fiercer because of the new, raw, desperate edge attached to it. There were no blue tendrils, nothing pulling me to him the way it did in the real world. And that only shocked me more, because, even without them, when his mouth left mine something inside me broke.
Fortunately, since I was seriously freaking out, the scene around me disintegrated again. When the mist around me subsided, I realized that the next episode was set to take place in the woods. By then, it’d become pretty clear to me what the storyline was. Two girls, one boy, a world of possibilities? Not even close! More like two sisters, one boy, the perfect formula for a tragic, disastrous outcome. Tristan and Iseult. Romeo and Juliet. Cathy and Heathcliff. It seemed to me that, more often than not, star-crossed lovers had a real knack for ending up dead. So, was this it? Was I about to … die?
More importantly, how did Ryder fit in with it?
Past-me and Lucian were talking, but I chose not to dwell on how terrible that made me feel. My insides were torn apart by emotions I prayed never to know again, in this time or any other. Past-Lily loved him with an incontrollable, all-consuming, honest-to-God passion. But she also loved her sister just as dearly. Being caught in between was pure agony for her, and me, since I was trapped in the same body; it left her, and me, bleeding on the inside. If this was what love was all about, then I was suddenly grateful for the boyfriend-less status I had enjoyed before Ryder. Because I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out one by one with pincers than live through what past-me was living now. Who knew love could be so destructive?
“She knows!” past-Lily sobbed. “I know full well she does. Oh, William, we shall both be damned for what we have done!”
“Damned? Why should we be damned for falling in love, Katherine? It wasn’t our plan, and it certainly lacked all malicious intent, you know that.”
He tried pulling me into his arms, but my body dodged it. His beautiful face grimaced in pain and his hurt was my own.
“I shall not feel regretful, Katherine, I shan’t! We are but lucky and blessed for having found each other. We belong together, my heart!”
Eventually, he managed to get his arms around me, lightly kissing my forehead and murmuring soothingly until I stopped fighting. Our closeness started to feel right somehow, even familiar in some respects. We simply fit together, although we shouldn’t have, and I, the twenty-first century Lily Crane, didn’t want us to. And then, from the pile of sweet nothings he whispered to me, trying to calm me down, I plucked something I’d heard before.
He said, “Girl with hair of fire and eyes filled with spring …”
And that’s when all turned hazy. Ryder’s words coming from Lucian’s mouth blurred the line between them and drowned my own perception, until there was no distinction to be made. Nothing but lips and skin. No room for guilt, no conscience, nothing but a sweet, numbing need.
My lips, I, kissed him and it felt good, familiar, something I’d done before. What was the point in questioning it?
There were signs announcing her arrival and they turned my body colder than a corpse. Steadily she came and I sensed every step of her nearing: the air becoming hotter, the leaves and branches trembling, the daylight cowering behind tree trunks. Still, I almost collapsed when I first spotted J. Lucian pushed me behind him, as if I were some dainty little thing in need of protection. Was I? From my own sister?
“You snake!” J shouted. “And you, Katherine, my beloved sister. You, my own flesh and blood. Damn you! Damn you both to hell!”
She turned her eyes to the sky, and at last I understood why past-me was so scared. This J-from-the-past person wasn’t a simple girl. She was powerful. Powerful in a way I couldn’t quite remember and yet feared more than anything in the world.
“By the blood of my ancestors, O, ye vengeful halflings and elementary spirits, I call upon thee! I seek retribution! Blood, to be paid in blood, a hundredfold. Hear my plea! A curse. A curse upon them both!” she shouted.
“No!” past-Lily yelled.
My body broke into a run, but it was too late. Around me, the forest came to life. The trees and the ground stretched and groaned, thirsting for the reward she had promised. Sense wriggled into my mind in bits and pieces. J was a witch; she commanded enough power to wipe out half the world … my blood … I was going to die.
“Elizabeth, what have you done, sister?” past-me yelled.
There was no answer. I stumbled and fell just as the skies above me opened in a magnificent display of lightning bolts and thunder claps, at the center of which stood ... Ryder.
Almost too beautiful to look at and bathed in blinding silver light, he descended from high above, riding the lighting. A second, two … he struck.
I died.
Chapter: Fifteen
It was such a relief to find myself back in the twenty-first century, alive and in the middle of the familiar decor of my own room, even if I was still holding Lucian’s hand. The contact made me shudder, so I pulled free of him and stepped away, focusing on concealing the really embarrassing gasping sounds that showed exactly how freaked out I was. “I’m sorry.” “What was that?” I rasped, my voice like pebbles scratching metal. “How did you do that?”
I wanted to be strong and poised to fight him and everything I’d seen, but my legs shook horribly. So I plopped down on the nearest chair and clamped my hands together in my lap. My head rang as if a million vibrating cells huddled together in my cerebrum. When Ryder had talked to me about hurting the people you love, I just assumed he was referring to breaking my heart, not cutting it out of my chest! No, this wasn’t really happening. It was a mistake … lies … something —
“You can normally see into a person’s past, can you not?” “Not like this, I can’t. This was another lifetime. And I wasn’t just watching it, I was actually there. How did you do that?” He let out an exasperated grating sound and made a gesture to move closer. When I instantly recoiled, he stopped, his expression edged with hurt.
“You still don’t trust me? Not even after what you’ve seen?”
“But that’s just it! I don’t know what I saw.”
Groaning again, he said, “You looked into your own past, Katherine. I don’t know how I’m able to take you there, though I do have some theories. I think we’re ...” he hesitated, “intertwined. That’s how I can control whether or not my touch causes you pain. Why I can show you the things you don’t remember anymore. And it’s also how I can feel and soothe the chill inside you.
Our lives, our destinies, are intertwined.”
I frowned. “Intertwined?”
He nodded, and now, for the first time, I noticed the dark-bluish circles under his eyes. He looked so drained! Images of what I’d seen in the past, fragments of how it felt to be held by him peaked on top of present-day reality and something writhed in my chest. I reminded myself that, despite the reassuring things I’d recently discovered at his house, I didn’t trust Lucian. That, especially after witnessing the fight between him and Ryder in the afternoon, I had absolutely no reason to believe one word coming out of his mouth. I chanted it in the back o
f my head like a litany and hoped it would be enough to keep me from losing my way.
“Four hundred years ago, we fell in love,” he said softly. “We were meant to be together. Soul mates!” he added fiercely, blue eyes glimmering like those of a Siberian husky. “I think because of that I can take you back in time. That and the hex, of course.”
“Hex? What hex?”
He eyed me uneasily.
“I was supposed to marry your sister,” he sighed, staring at the ceiling. “We didn’t mean for it to happen, didn’t intentionally set out to hurt Elizabeth. Not to mention that I, for one, had no idea she was a witch. When she found us out, she conjured up a monster.”
“Ryder,” I whispered, remembering him descending from the sky. Remembering his killing blow.
My torment, my relief, my curse, my blessing. That’s how he’d described me once. But what did it mean?
“Your sister used her magic like a homing device when she called on him. And she loaded you with the essence of her power. Each time you come back, so does her magic. Basically, she painted a fluorescent bull’s-eye on you. So the hunter can always find you, because he’s drawn to the power that summoned him in the first place. The magic, which is now yours to wield, calls out to him … so he can hunt you again. So I can watch you die. Again and again, the way your sister wanted it. This is the hex.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but only air fizzled in the back of my throat. My body was an anesthetized hollow, I couldn’t feel where I started and where I ended anymore. I couldn’t even hear my own heart beating; was I dead already?
Shoulders hunched, face drawn, Lucian was an echo of my own unrecognizable self. He had a haunted look in his eye, and not a trace of his usual contempt seemed to have survived his confession. Only sometimes when he would stare at me across a crowd had he seemed as tender. Never as lost, though. I could tell he would have liked to come closer, but didn’t want to scare me again. The weirdest thing was that I couldn’t decide if that made me happy or sad.
“What do you mean, I come back?” I asked eventually.
He tensed, but his eyes grew warm like the summer skies.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he breathed softly. “You just do. Roughly once every century. You came back first at the end of the eighteenth-century, then in 1898, and again, now.”
Was this real? Impossible to say at this point. But feeling was creeping back into me. The ringing in my ears hurt in a very non-dream-like way, which seemed to indicate that I was fully awake. Lucian standing only three steps away felt real enough, too, in a vaguely unsettling and confusing manner. But the rest of it?
How could I have been so wrong about Ryder? How could something that felt so good be, in fact, so wrong? Unless it wasn’t; unless Lucian was lying. But how did he take me back into the past, then? Maybe the images I’d seen, what he wanted me to think was my past, were actually fake. But ... how?
Only one answer fit the bill. Magic. Maybe Lucian was a sorcerer? He didn’t feel like one to me.
Was he actually telling the truth?
On and on I spun around in circles in my mind until I was dizzy and spent. Which one of them was the liar? Who was I? What was the truth? Was I about to die? If so, and if Ryder really was my intended hangman, how come he hadn’t tried to hurt me yet? God only knows I’d given him plenty of chances to go for it.
It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.
“Why can’t he talk about it? I mean, he tried to tell me who you were and he kind of choked on it.”
He smiled, but it was sad and lifeless.
“There are many limitations to what he can and cannot do because being part of the mortal sphere isn’t a natural phenomenon to him. You see, the hex only summons him here just long enough to do his job. Only long enough to take your life, after which he’s supposed to return home. But his home world is such a nasty place no one in his right mind would ever willingly choose to live in it. So he’s found a way to avoid that. A little taste of your power, before you die, is all he needs to remain in the human world even when he’s not hunting you. Live here permanently. One taste of your power gives him enough leverage to hang on and play house with the mortals for another hundred plus years.
Until you come back again. Point being, since it’s been a while since he’s tasted
your power, I think he’s weaker.”
He paused, looking thoughtful for a moment or two.
“If that’s even the case,” he drawled. “He could just be playing tricks on you or on your mind. He can be a very cruel creature, the halfling.”
The word didn’t sound familiar. “Halfling?”
Lucian smiled again. “Yes. Half-angel, half-mortal.”
I choked and coughed violently. Angel? Actual angel? Halo-of-light, knee-high-gladiator-sandals-wearing, harp-playing … angel? Because in my mind, all angels played the harp and walked around on downy white clouds sporting knee-high gladiator sandals. Or Birkenstocks; occasionally, some of them donned Birkenstocks.
“Can I sit down?” he asked.
Wrapped up in dumb amazement, I nodded absently. After gracefully sinking into a chair, he proceeded to quote the Bible for me, something that only proved once again how nuts my life was.
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”
“Genesis,” I replied automatically.
Nodding, Lucian said, “That’s right. Genesis six, verses one and two. It tells of a special class of angels, called watchers, who were sent into the world to do just what their name implies. Watch.”
I had the overwhelming need to hear my own voice. Maybe to convince myself that I was actually here, alive and hearing all this. My brain pulsed like a supercharged electric circuit. My neurons smoldered; a short circuit was imminent!
So I whispered, “But they didn’t just watch.”
Yep, it really was my voice; I discreetly pinched myself on the arm, too, just in case. The burst of pain confirmed that this was all real and happening right now.
Lucian shrugged, a curiously amused look passing over his chiseled face. He raked his fingers through the cropped hair, growing slightly more at ease. I, on the other hand, couldn’t relax an iota.
“No, they didn’t, in fact. The way you and I fell in love, even though we weren’t supposed to, so did the watchers. They fell for the beautiful mortal women. Even worse, they then taught them all kind of things they weren’t allowed to share. Astronomy, botany, magic, the arts that mortals were forbidden from messing with.”
He paused, glancing at the back of his hands, as if checking the state of his nails. There was something very graceful about his hands. Or was it that skin of his, perfect, smooth, and petal-soft-looking?
“What’s more, by mating with them, the angels gave these women some extraordinary skills.”
Of their own volition, my eyelids fluttered closed. “Magical skills,” I choked out.
“Correct. That’s how the first witches came to be in the world. Of course, the process was a bit more complicated than that. Not all women were as strong or as naturally gifted. Some died, others went insane, some conceived.”
“The halflings.”
Again he nodded. “Yes. Legends claim that they were giants and monsters and that God asked the archangel Michael to pursue and capture them. That they were locked away in a mystical prison, there to await their judgment day and be thrown into hell. But ...” he heaved a sigh and gave me a direct, overwhelmingly intense look, “not all the offspring were monsters. The strongest women, those most talented magically, gave birth to these halflings. Human, almost ordinary-looking on the outside, but blessed with their father’s powers inside. Cold, detached, fearsome beings. Unlike the rest of their kin, unlike the monsters, the halflings committed no sins warranting their imprisonment. So they were allowed to
roam free, in a manner of speaking.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. “You mean, they live among us?”
He shook his head and smiled at the unexpected alarm in my tone. “Not exactly. Since they had a foot in each world because of their ancestry, they were tasked with guiding the souls of the dead between realms. Basically, they became trapped between heaven and earth, able to see into both but unable to be part of either.”
“Cruel,” I whispered, without thinking.
“Not the best of fates,” he agreed gloomily.
I cleared my parched throat and went back to frowning. “I don’t get it. If he’s supposed to be trapped between worlds, how come he’s here? And why hasn’t he made his move yet?”
“One of those few women who birthed the halflings was particularly magical. Very gifted and therefore very powerful. Because of it, her power didn’t die with her but was preserved and inherited by some female descendants in her bloodline.” He gulped breath. “This particular bloodline has authority over the halflings. Some of the women descending from this line can summon and even bind halflings to the mortal domain for long periods of time.”
I may have been half-mad with what my ears were hearing, but slow, I was not.
“You’re talking about my bloodline, aren’t you?” I asked, sounding too tired to even break down. “Which means that my sister, she … oh no! My powers … I … she …”
With my head wobbling on my shoulders as if my neck couldn’t support it, I fought the pieces falling into place, stubbornly denying the sense they made.
“I’m sorry,” he soothed. “Elizabeth, your sister, inherited a large and rare amount of power, even for your kin. And instead of setting it free, by either passing it on to a daughter or by … well, dying, she encased it all in you. While the hex lives on, so does her power. Undiluted by time, untouched by external factors, fearsomely pure. When she called on the halfling, your blood was already brimming with her magic. And she used it, she used your blood, to root him to this world.