Blue Moon

by J. A. Belfield

  Sean’s face distorted. His shoulders braced. A fresh gasp broke free as the contortion spread lower.

  “No!” I flew forward, reaching for him.

  His head whipped up. His glazed stare searched the room. For a single second, our gazes connected as though he’d heard me.

  “Jem?” His brow creased despite the attacking contortion.

  “Sean.” His name breathed from me on a sob even as an invisible force tugged on my soul.

  “Stay away.” The words arrived as a desperate plea before control slipped from him and, barely supported by limbs already weak, his body plunged into deformation.

  Yanked from my subconscious, the final sight I took back with me was the terror in his eyes—the last sounds, the wild growls and snarls of his suffering.

  The violence of my awakening hurled my body from the sofa and landed me on all fours. My chest heaved as tension bunched my muscles into rigid balls. Long, low growls vacated my vocal chords, and tingling buzzed through me like a high voltage battery.

  Connor rolled off the other sofa, crouched before me. “Jem?”

  My spurts of breath came too fast.

  “Nathan!” he boomed toward the stairs, his hands taking my face as he turned back, his eyes drawing me in.

  I fixed on his kind and worried expression, saw from the corner of my eye when Nathan darted into the room, closely followed by the others.

  Nathan dropped to his knees beside Connor. “What happened?”

  “It was her dream, I think,” Connor said. “She was snarling before she’d even surfaced.”

  “Jem?”

  My gaze flitted to Nathan, back to Connor.

  “Look at me.” Connor shifted aside to allow him to move in, and Nathan took my face as Connor had. “Breathe. Long, deep breaths . . .”

  His words brought awareness of my near hyperventilation. I listened to his coaxing, let his quiet murmurs guide my breaths to a safer speed. As my heart rate slowed, I realised moisture coated my cheeks from tears I couldn’t recall shedding.

  “What did you see?” Nathan asked.

  “Sean.” My voice sounded like a whimper. “They’re hurting him, Nate.”

  His stare intensified. “Did you see him?”

  I nodded, lifting a shaking hand to wipe the liquid before it could mar my vision further. “They’ve done something to him. He …he can’t control his changes. He looks …his body …it’s wrong. Something’s wrong with the changes.”

  “This is good,” Jess said to my right.

  I whirled on her, teeth exposed. “How the hell can this be good? What is wrong with you?”

  Her palms came up. “No, no, I don’t mean what you saw is good. I meant you’ve obviously broken through whatever barrier was blocking your connection. That’s good—your progress is good.” Her hands remained raised until I settled back onto my knees. “So …how did you do it? Did you do something different this time?”

  I looked from her to Nathan. “I wasn’t concentrating on the boys. Before I fell asleep, it was Marianne I was thinking about.”

  “So, it was Marianne you connected with?” he asked.

  “Initially.” I nodded. “She was upstairs in a house.”

  “Where?”

  “I …don’t know.” I groaned in frustration at my lack of information, rubbing at my face still wet from tears. “I only saw the inside of the house. Marianne was locking a door upstairs, and then she went down—to the kitchen.”

  Ethan moved from the doorway to sit on my vacated sofa. “You saw all of this, Jem?”

  I nodded at him. “Stephanie was in the kitchen.” I looked back to Nathan. “I think they’ve put the boys to sleep.”

  “What kind of sleep?” Jess asked.

  I brushed my hands over my head as I recalled their conversation. “When Stephanie asked Marianne how the boys were, Marianne told her they were dead to the world.”

  Jess gave a slow nod as though I’d confirmed something for her. “They’ve put them in a death sleep.”

  I stared at her as did Nathan beside me.

  Her eyebrow lifted. “Like sleeping beauty?”

  My brow creased. “That’s a fairy tale, Jess.”

  “Yes, but like all good myths, there’s also some truth to those stories, too.” She waved her hand. “Forget it. What else did they say?”

  “They spoke about one of them—Sean—about how they couldn’t understand why he’d woken. They said they only just got him downstairs in time.”

  “Downstairs?” Nathan asked.

  “In the cellar. Caged. Like a bloody animal.” Sprayed spit punctuated each syllable.

  “What else did you see?” Jess tapped her fingers against her chin.

  I shrugged.

  “You said he couldn’t control himself—his changes?” she said.

  Jaw tight, I nodded.

  “So, did you see anything else in the cellar? Any . . .”—she waved a hand—“plants, for instance?”

  My head tilted at the reminder of the flowers that had seemed so out of place in the chamber. “Yes.”

  “Describe them.” She knelt down to my level. “What did they look like?”

  I blinked for a second. “Green, spiky leaves, yellow flowers.”

  “Wolfsbane,” said Jess and Nathan together.

  I turned to Nathan. “What’s that?”

  “It’s …poisonous to werewolves.”

  “And,” Jess added, “according to folklore, when confronted by a werewolf, all a witch has to do is expose them to wolfsbane, and the wolf will convert back to human form.”

  “He wasn’t just changing to human. He looked like he was changing out of one form and straight back into another before he had the chance to recover. His change didn’t even fully complete before he started again.”

  Jess shrugged. “I’d imagine if it can make them return to their human body from wolf, it could also have the opposite effect if they’re human.”

  “How much was there?” Nathan asked.

  “The cellar was full of it. They’d put it right across the front of the bars he was behind and inside the cage, as well.”

  Eyes widening, Nathan looked to Jess. “He can’t have been down there that long. We couldn’t cope with that for more than—” His words cut off as he caught my horrified expression, but my pulse had already quickened.

  “I can try again. Try and connect to Sean this time—”

  “If they’ve somehow been blocking you, I’m not sure it will work,” Jess said.

  “What if the only reason I’ve not been able to get through is because they’ve been unconscious? Sean’s awake, so—”

  “I don’t think—”

  “He felt me there, Jess,” I said.

  “That’s not possible.” Her eyes held sadness. “Not if it was Marianne you were focused on.”

  “He knew I was there.” My hand fisted against my knee. “When I called out, he made eye contact with me . . .”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “He spoke my name. And . . .”—I glanced at Nathan—“he told me to stay away.”

  Silence captured the room until Jess broke into it. “Just how strong is this connection you have with Sean?”

  “Beyond boundaries,” Nathan said. “A one-off—like nothing else ever archived.”

  “That’s quite the understatement, Dad,” Ethan muttered.

  27

  For the next few hours, returning to sleep became my obsession. Each time I tried to switch off, turmoil stole entrance and filled my head with images of the torture inflicted upon my mate. Thanks to that, my hands refused to unclench, my jaw to slacken, and my eyes to remain still behind lids I forced shut.

&n
bsp; By lunchtime, I gave up and took up a new bout of pacing. After my hour spent ignoring Nathan’s suggestions to calm down and rest, and snubbing Beth’s urges to eat, Connor returned from his house with Jess and Ethan in tow.

  Jess waved the acquired picture beneath my nose. One glance of the inanimate image of the witch made my teeth grind.

  “Come on,” Jess said. “You need to do this binding.”

  Upstairs in our bedroom, Jess rummaged around in the depths of her case before emerging with an armful of items.

  As she laid them out between us on the bed, I took in each one: a small, round mirror, black glove, a reel of what looked like garden twine, black pepper and a plastic measuring spoon.

  “Ready?” Jess asked.

  I blew out a breath, flexed my fingers a little. “How do you know this will even work?”

  “Did the other things I told you to do work?”

  I shrugged.

  “Was Ethan’s protection effective when you came across the witches?”

  I nodded.

  “So, you know I’m not spinning you yarns here to make you feel better?”

  I gave another small nod.

  “Good. Let’s start.” She pointed to the bed between us. “You’re going to measure three teaspoons of pepper into the glove.”

  Tipping powder into a glove that looked as though it belonged on the hand of a drag queen seemed a bit silly, but I kept my mouth shut and obeyed.

  Once I’d done it, she said, “Now, take the picture of Marianne and place it face down on the mirror . . .”

  We both turned at a knock on the door.

  Ethan stepped inside but paused. “Mind if I come in?”

  I shook my head, focusing back on my spell as he moved across and perched on the window ledge. My lip did a little more curling when I picked up the photograph.

  “Face down,” Jess said as if I’d forgotten already.

  I did as instructed.

  She told me to position the glove on top of the photograph and mirror and passed me the twine. “Now, Jem, you need to secure the items together at the same time as repeating these words . . .”

  I absorbed the verse before murmuring the incantation I prayed would work. “I bind you, Marianne, from doing harm.” I looped the string around the bundle. “Everything you say to me, and everything you do, bounces off me three times and sticks itself to you.”

  “Again,” Jess whispered.

  “. . .Everything you say to me, and everything you do, bounces off me three times and sticks itself to you.”

  Jess urged me to say it again, folding her last finger to indicate it as the final one. By the time I’d finished, the twine almost covered the items.

  Jess tugged one of my pillowcases off, tossing my exposed pillow back down. “Put the package inside.” She passed it to me, and I did as requested. “Now, which exit is used the most?”

  I glanced at Ethan. “The back door,” we both said.

  Jess pointed to my bundle. “If you hide that somewhere close to the back door, the ritual is complete.”

  When I trudged downstairs and into the kitchen, the three mature heads lifted. As Nathan’s mouth opened, I waved the folded pillowcase, tugged open the drawer nearest the back door and manoeuvred it beneath everything else in there.

  “Done.” I slid the drawer shut and ran my fingers through my tangled mass of hair. It hadn’t been brushed since Beth had insisted on providing a little grooming on Monday, right after I’d taken my last shower. “Okay …time to sleep.”

  • • •

  No need to travel. No need to search. I simply imagined myself beside my mate and arrived there. The second I did, Sean’s eyes sought me out, pinpointed my spectre position and connected, as we always did.

  Desperation descended as I watched him. He looked even gaunter than on my previous visit. Each of his changes appeared to end farther from completion. The sounds of distress that grunted past his lips had become constant.

  I slept for longer to prolong my time with him. In the hope of easing his pain, I threw effort into attempts to control his changes on his behalf. After numerous failures, I could only guess the physical distance between us was too great.

  Unable to do more, I stood guard over him. At least that way I’d know of further witch visits, their ill-treatment of him, and keep an eye on his deterioration.

  I spent most of my sleep time pacing his bars. He glanced up every so often as though he’d caught the hint of me still there. Each time he did, he gave the same warning. ‘Stay away’.

  What did he expect me to do? Leave? He must have realised I’d come for him as soon as I had his location.

  When I eventually woke, the room lay in darkness. My eyes flicked side to side as I thought back through for important details of my dream. If there had been any signs of their whereabouts, I’d missed them. Maybe I’d been too attached to Sean to concentrate on anything else. I only knew, when I hauled my weary head in search of the others, I had nothing new to report.

  • • •

  The spoon hit the side of the empty bowl with a high-pitched ding. I hadn’t even wanted the bloody stew, but Beth’s force-feeding had gotten a little out of hand, and I’d given in just to keep my lips intact.

  “Happy now?” I didn’t await her answer before scraping back my chair and trudging upstairs.

  Jess rested against my headboard, pillows wadded around her, as I entered our room. Between scanning some kind of spell-looking book, she sent me a rapid glance.

  I padded across the carpet with little noise, but my climb onto the bed and the sprawled flop of my body jostling her earned me another glance.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  When she lifted her book again, I stared at the ceiling above.

  Jess seemed as much in the mood for talking as I did. Quiet descended for minutes before she lowered her book a little. “Jem, what are you going to do with the witches once you find them?” Her tentative tone told me she’d been waiting to ask. “Do you have some sort of plan in mind?”

  Fixated on a stain on the ceiling, I nodded.

  She waited a beat. “Well, what is it?”

  “I go in. I find the boys, locate the witches.” My voice sounded robotic. “Get the boys out, hopefully undetected. Then I deal with the ones who dared take my Sean from me.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘I’s. How do you expect to achieve all of this alone?”

  I twisted my head toward her. “I won’t be alone.”

  She heaved out a sigh. “I thought for a minute you had no intention of taking Ethan.”

  Ethan …what?

  “You know he plans to go with you anyway, right? He’s been tailing you around the house.” Her brows lifted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  I frowned.

  “So …if not Ethan…who?”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Me?”

  “I need you. If what you said about this wolfsbane plant is true, you’re the only one who can shift it for me. I’ll look for the boys, and you can clear the way to Sean so I can come down and take him out of there. Then, you can protect the boys whilst I deal with the witches. That done”—I shrugged my shoulders against the duvet—“we bring the boys home, you can try and break their spells, and I’ll grab Ethan for clean-up duty.”

  “Clean-up duty?”

  “Yes, Jess. That kind of mess can’t be left lying around for somebody to stumble on by mistake. We have to clean up after ourselves.”

  “You don’t plan to let any of them live, do you?”

  Studying her, I wondered if I was asking too much. “If you were me, and you had a soul mate you’d been bound to for eternity—one you’d spent three lifetimes with—an
d it felt like a part of you died whenever he wasn’t within reach, and some stupid little witches took him, with the intention of raping him just to create some bloody half-breed . . .” I took a steadying breath. “What would you do, Jess?”

  “When you put it like that . . .” She shrugged. “If it were me, and they’d taken my soul mate …I’d rip out their fucking throats.”

  I kept my gaze on her, hoping she meant her words, and they hadn’t been spoken under duress in an attempt to show false bravado.

  Her stare never wavered. “To choose to be with a person for that length of time—I mean, to willingly do that? You must have been hopelessly in love with each other. I’ve never met anyone who made me want to be with them for one lifetime, let alone numerous ones.” She gave a small smile. “You’ve been blessed, Jem. That kind of commitment is worth fighting for.”

  As I accepted her sincerity, I relaxed back against the softness beneath my head and relocated the ceiling stain. “Nathan wouldn’t allow them to live, anyway. They know too much. They’re obviously insane—no way he’d sanction them walking away. I’m going to be in enough trouble for racing off to deal with it alone. I’ll be in even more trouble if I don’t tie off loose ends and finish the job properly.”

  The tiny patter of rain hit the glass of the window—a delicate timpani of nature’s beat. I tuned into it, closing my eyes to enjoy the calming sounds for moments before I disturbed the peace. “If it’s going to be too much for you, Jess—if you don’t think you can handle it—you should say. I won’t be angry with you. I’ll understand.”

  I gave her time to answer. When she didn’t, I opened my eyes.

  Her scrutiny held the compassion naturally instilled into an older sibling. Very slowly, she nodded her head. “I’m in. Now, go sleep.” She shoved at my legs, nudging me to the edge of the mattress. “Find him so we can bring him home.”

  28

  I fell asleep on the sofa, as I had each time since Christmas Day, and visited Sean, who looked less healthy and more distressed than ever. When my mind told me I would soon wake up, with nothing less than sheer determination, I willed my body to leave via a different route.

  On my first attempt, I sprung back into the cellar as though enclosed in an impenetrable bubble that I’d stretched out of shape. With teeth gritted and a ‘float’ up to the wall on my third try, I found myself outside in the grounds.