Strong arms gathered me against a hard, familiar chest, and I rested my head against his shoulder as he carried me away, the darkness of sleep taking me the rest of the way under again.
My Dream Jacob had saved me from some terrible nightmare.
If only he were real.
***
When I woke the next morning, my head pounded like someone was tempering steel against it. The sunlight from the window glowed bright red through my eyelids, causing the pain to split across my forehead, so I tossed to my side and buried my face into the pillow with a groan. The movement made my shoulder blades ache, and my wrists were burning.
Before I could contemplate why, hasty footsteps pounded against the wood floor as someone ran into the room.
“Rose,” he…Jacob said urgently, and his voice made every hair on my arms stand on end. My mind scrambled to connect the dots but failed. How was he here, in this cloaked house in the woods meant for witches, so far from my old life?
I’d cracked.
Not trusting my ears, I rotated my head just far enough to peek up at my Jacob hallucination. He fell to his knees by my bed, reached out to fold me into him but hesitating, then rested a gentle hand on the small of my back. “Rose,” he breathed, his eyebrows drawing together with concern.
“Jacob?” I croaked, hopeful. Are you real?
His touch felt real, and the idea—the reality of it—was enough to undo me. He’d somehow found me. Tears welled, and had I not felt like I’d been beaten with wooden dowels I would have sprung up and wrapped my entire body around him.
He must have sensed my internal struggle because his weary eyes traveled up and down my body, assessing me. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been trampled by horses.” Shouldn’t I feel better after a warm meal and another night’s rest? At least my throat was marginally better.
His lips drew into a comforting smile that didn’t touch his eyes.
“How did you find me here?” I searched for Mable. For the others. How would they feel about his presence? If he was allowed inside, Mable must be somewhat tolerating it, at least.
But where was she? The house was quiet again. “Where’s Mable and the others?”
His smile faded, and something like anger with a hint of devastation washed over his features, but he quickly wiped it away. His jaw tightened as he contemplated how to respond.
“Jacob?”
“Let’s get you cleaned up first,” he finally said.
My lips parted to argue. I wanted to know how he found me and where everyone was, but before the words met the air between us, the girl with the silver hair, Elizabeth, popped her head in. “She awake?” Her eyes were pink and puffy.
Jacob nodded without taking his eyes off me.
“I’ll draw her a bath.”
Chapter Eight
Hybrid
Jacob escorted me to the other bedroom, walking patiently with me as I found my footing, and behind a curtained off section at the end was a washtub for bathing. Steam curled and danced from the surface. The scent of lavender oil filled the air.
“You okay by yourself?” he asked, helping me sit in a chair by the tub.
I blushed. As if he could help me undress. We weren’t married.
“I can get Elizabeth to help you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I whispered.
A kiss to the forehead and he was gone.
For a good minute, I sat and watched the steam curl, my mind blank. Emotions numb. Head still pounding. I didn’t know what the dream meant or how it was connected to my burning wrists and aching back, or even Mable’s absence, but apparently Jacob knew and would tell me soon. Maybe it had been a prophecy of some kind, the dream so lifelike it had manifested in actual burns and aches. That could be a witch thing, right? That I’d prophesized Jacob would find me and save me from some imminent danger, and that danger also included Mable and the others? And being tied to trees? Seemed logical…ish.
I couldn’t comprehend anything past that, so I shed my dirty rags and moved to step into the water. As I stood there waiting for the temperature to drop a bit so I could sink the rest of the way in, a reflection snagged my attention. A mirror hung beside the washtub and in it, a girl with matted hair, a dirty face, and wide, bloodshot eyes stared back at me. Purple and yellow marbled her neck from the noose.
My hand raised to my mouth in horror, a pink ring around the wrist.
Slowly, I turned away from my reflection and sank into the tub.
***
While I was dressing into a clean dress left on a nearby bed, Elizabeth came in and offered to rub some oils on my upper back and wrists. “It will help with the pain and keep you from getting an infection.”
“Thank you.”
Wait.
How did she know I had burns and an aching back? I silently offered my wrists over, certain I was making a face but not caring in the least. She must have seen my wrists while I was sleeping.
That was it. She’d seen the burns.
As she worked, I noticed she too had pink burns on her wrists, and my chest tightened.
The dream…
Or what I’d thought had been a prophetic dream, specific to me. Did she have one too? Or had it really happened? To all of us?
No.
Someone collecting me from my bed and tying me to a tree would have woken me, right? Unless I’d been drugged or something. But who would have done that?
Elizabeth took notice of the confusion playing across my features, her eyes still puffy with sleep. Or crying. Her hands stilled on my wrist, and she sighed. Her breath hitched as if she was debating saying something, but she quickly went back to working on my burns, leaving me to wonder. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything. What had happened to us last night?
I pressed my other hand against my stomach as if to keep my insides from falling out. I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or cry, or both. If the dream was real, it meant someone was trying to harm us. Yet again.
“We’ll be okay,” she finally said, though I could tell she didn’t quite know herself. Her hands moved to my hair, her fingers raking through to work out the snarls, and then she wove it into a loose braid.
“Thank you,” I said as she made her way back out.
***
Jacob was waiting for me in the living room with a mug of steaming tea. When he saw me clean and changed, his shoulders relaxed a little, though the distress on my face made him grimace. “Come,” he said grimly, waving to the rocking chair beside him.
The crown of Elizabeth’s blonde head shot past the window outside as she busied herself with some unknown task. Giving us privacy, I assumed.
Jacob offered the mug, but I dismissed it with a small shake of my head, so he set it down and slid his hand over mine. “You up for talking? We can sit in silence for a while if you like.”
I shook my head again. No…I wanted to know what had happened.
“A summary, or all of it?”
“All of it.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.” His words trailed into a long pause before he could bring himself to continue, and that, more than anything else has so far, made my stomach torque with dread. Jacob was a lot of things, but he was above all else a strong person. He had to be, with all his family had been through. But this…this news was somehow difficult for him to deliver. “The lady who had you rescued the other day from the gallows was Mable, and she was a witch. She’d collected all of you over a long period of time.”
Was Mable? Was a witch? As in past tense? Did that mean—
“According to the spell book she had with her last night, she needed your kind to perform…” he had to stop again. Swallowed.
I rested against my rocking chair, the hair on the back of my neck bristling. “Our kind?” I clarified. Aren’t we all the same kind?
“Yes, your kind. Not her kind.”
“I’m confused.”
“Rose,” he said, squeezing the
hand he clung to. “She needed your kind to perform a ritual. You’re not a witch. Never were.” His eyes softened at ‘never were’, and I immediately remembered our talk back at the jail cell, what he’d said to me the night before the trial – I know you. I know your heart. Not for one second did he believe the allegations. Yes, I was special, but a witch? He never conceived of it.
He knew me better than I knew myself.
But how could he explain my mysterious powers? “What about my gift of blooming flowers, then?” How could he explain that?
“You’re what’s called a hybrid.”
I tested the word. “Hybrid?”
“Yes, love. A hybrid. You’re half angel.”
Chapter Nine
Blood and Sacrifices
Half angel. A Naphil. The idea seemed impossible, but somewhere inside, a spark ignited. Angel…
I suppose it wasn’t any less believable than being a witch.
“That’s all we really know, though,” he said with an apologetic wince. “That, and a few other things.”
We? He must have meant the others. Judging by the fact I was the last one to wake, they must have had time to discuss some of this before I came to. And before any of us woke, Jacob had had time to study the spell book Mable had dogeared for the occasion.
“The spell book didn’t go into too much detail about your kind,” he continued. “But we do know the telltale sign is your aura. And your blood. They both have some special characteristics. And sometimes, your kind also will have powers like you do.” His jaw clenched. “They have to find you somehow, I guess.”
I looked down at my hands. Powers. Such things weren’t only reserved for witches. “Can the others bloom flowers too?” Did we all do the same thing? Different things?
“Not sure. I haven’t gotten that far with them yet.”
Hyrbids with powers, mistaken for witches.
Ironic.
She saved us from the gallows, only to use us for her own selfish reasons. “What does the ritual do?”
“Makes her immortal, apparently.” His words were like acid.
Silence lengthened between us, and judging by his pressed lips, the sudden, faraway look in his eyes, there was something else.
“Immortal?” I pried. “How would using us in a ritual help her be immortal?” Maybe part of our DNA that’s angel; an immortal being.
His hand withdrew from mine, then rubbed the tension from his neck as he contemplated how to say this. “There is one other thing about your kind.” He sighed, a long, heavy sound. “You’re immortal, too.”
I reeled, my head spinning at the revelation, or maybe it was still the aftereffects of whatever drugs Mable had used on us. How much had she given me? If I was the last one to wake, it must have been the rest of whatever she’d concocted.
It would explain the world’s worst headache. And the tinge of nausea.
His hand made its way back to mine to help ground me. “You won’t age past the age you are now. It has something to do with how much angel you have in you. You must be at least a fourth, or more.” His eyes squinted in thought. “Or was it an eighth…?”
I quickly changed the subject, shelving it for another time. My mind was too fragile at the moment to comprehend any more than that. “And Mable?” Did the awful excuse for a human—a witch—succeed in whatever she was using us for?
“She’s dead,” he said flatly. “I killed her.”
Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed it back down. “You killed her?” I then remembered my dream, or what I’d thought was a dream—everyone tied to trees. A woman face-down in the dirt. Mable.
I get it. It was a horrible thing for her to do, lying to us and drugging us for her own selfish reasons, and sure, she should have been punished for it. Imprisoned even. But killed? That seemed…
“Rose,” he said, his eyebrows pinching together with concern. I wasn’t fully grasping the gravity of the situation. “It was your blood she needed.”
I involuntarily searched my arms for cuts that weren’t there. “My blood?”
“And your hearts. She didn’t have the chance. By the time I found you she’d already cut three of the other hybrids’ arms to start draining them, but I stopped her before she got to you or could do anything else.”
Visions of spurting blood and hearts and sacrifices invaded my thoughts, and the bile rose again.
“You might be immortal, but there is at least one way to kill you that we know of, and she would have taken your lives if I hadn’t stopped her.”
Chapter Ten
A Second Chance
The house fell into heavy silence as my thoughts and emotions jammed together. Too many. Too many things had happened in the past weeks.
My best friend had turned on me. Liza had handed me over.
I’d been imprisoned, hanged, rescued, only to be given a false sense of hope before I was drugged and assaulted.
And apparently, I was immortal, though not one hundred percent immortal if a ritual could kill us. So, semi-immortal. Everyone has an Achilles heel. Draining our blood and cutting our hearts out must have been ours.
And certainly, burning us and chopping our heads off would kill us.
I stopped before I freaked myself out.
More. Freaked myself out more.
My gaze moved from the floor to Jacob, my expression blank. Numbness consumed me in a merciful wave, my mind’s way of protecting me from going into a full-blown meltdown.
Everyone, literally everyone, minus my own kind wanted me dead. Humans thought I was an abomination. Witches wanted my blood. My life.
When would I ever be safe?
“Rose?” Jacob said. I guess I’d been staring at him too long and wanted to make sure I hadn’t cracked.
Part of me wanted to go outside and think by myself for a while. Part of me wanted to go back to bed and scream into the pillow. Part of me wanted to chain myself to him forever. He was the only one in this world who cared about my safety.
So, I did the only thing that felt natural in that moment.
I crawled into his lap and cried.
***
“How did you do it?” I asked into the bend of his neck. My voice was small. Tears wetted his shirt from where I’d sobbed for a good half hour, possibly more. As a result, my bruised throat was now throbbing.
“Do what?” he said tenderly.
“Kill her?”
“Not important.” He didn’t want any more images to scar me.
I didn’t push the issue. “How did you find us here?”
“I followed the hounds.”
Elizabeth came in from outside and Mountain Boy, Roman, followed, bandages around his forearm. The arm Mable must have cut to start draining his blood for the ritual. They busied themselves in the bedrooms, Elizabeth in Mable’s, Roman in the other, then they quickly went back outside with piles of sheets to wash. Mable’s had to be dirty after I’d slept in them the past two nights.
Not that she was around anymore to care.
The door shut behind them with a soft thud, and Jacob pushed from the floor to rock us. “I followed the hounds,” he repeated. “When you disappeared from the gallows, the judge had our best Witch Hunters searching for you. I followed after them without them knowing.”
“And they couldn’t find me because of the spell Mable had over this place.”
He paused thoughtfully. “Makes sense…it was a spell. They kept leading us to an opening in the forest, this opening in the forest, and they’d sniff around and whine, but then shoot back off somewhere else. When I came back by myself last night, there was a house here.”
But who would have removed the spell? Mable would have wanted to remain hidden.
“But the house was empty,” he continued. “I saw a flickering light in the distance, so I followed it and found you and everyone else tied to trees.” He got quiet. “You know the rest.”
I did, but I was stuck on one important detail—the spell. I remembered
back to my reading material the night before. The cloaking spell. I’d read it aloud. Had I…?
“Jacob?” I whispered.
The rocking halted. “Yes?”
I leaned forward, looked him in his tired eyes. A smile played on my lips. “I think I may have been the one to uncover us.”
A confused look. “You?”
I pointed to the bookshelf. “I’d read the spell last night from one of her books. I wanted to read myself to sleep.”
His eyes flared in disbelief. “There was a book in your bed last night. You had no idea what it would do?”
“No.” Not really. Surely one had to wiggle their fingers or something to make it work. I never dreamt just reciting it would have done what it did.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry or both. What were the chances? What were the chances my fingers would have stopped on that specific spine? That when I’d settled into read, the pages would stop on that specific spell? That I’d read the spell aloud, uncovering this place right on time for Jacob to find us and save us from Mable?
The look on his face mirrored mine—a humored kind of horror. He then pulled me against him, and into my hair he said, “Rose.” It was a litany of sorts. A cry of relief to heavens. And it was then I knew it wasn’t some crazy coincidence. Some haphazard fluke. My heart…Jacob’s heart…knew the truth of why everything was timed the way it was.
Divine intervention.
Out love hadn’t been smited by God, after all.
I was meant to live. To be with the one my heart had called me to.
What man and his ignorance had tried to tear apart, God had mended back together.
We’d been given a second chance.
Chapter Eleven
New Normal
The afternoon air held a slight chill and as Jacob and I made our way to the log bench by a garden at the front of the house, I realized this was the first time I’d actually been outside here. Conscious, anyway. When I arrived, I was passed out. And when Mable had carried me outside last night, I was unconscious, or I guess drugged.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 118