Bonds of Darkness

by Joyce Ellen Armond

  He opened his eyes. The house looked back. In one of the second-story windows, a curtain twitched back into place. The coltish rebel part of his brain stopped kicking. Paul tucked his shirt under his belt and took a deep breath. After a hundred years he'd finally fallen in love—real love. And he was dependent on the efforts of the one woman whose love he'd rejected: Laurie Donne, the coven elder.

  After eight years of accusatory silence, Laurie had sent him a letter this spring. In it, she'd told him in blunt terms about the cancer and her impending death. In coy terms, she hinted about a second chance, a new plan to break the curse. He'd ignored the letter when it first arrived, but this morning changed everything.

  Reluctantly, Paul moved from the bright sunshine to the shadows of the deep porch. He touched the cold doorknob, and, like a plunge into icy water, he saw Laurie in his mind's eye. Laurie with one arm draped over her hip, the other splayed against her breasts, anger and humiliation contorting her face. Laurie had seen him drive up to the house. She'd seen him expose his skin to the sun. She knew he was here, and she knew something was up. So he didn't give her a chance to keep him waiting. Without a knock, he opened the door and walked into a billow of fragrant smoke. He recognized some of the incense elements: orange for raising energy, cinnamon for opening psychic portals.

  Paul breathed in the scents and tried to stitch together some kind of disguise for the new humming in his blood. He had to keep the secret of Kate deep in his heart. If Laurie knew that he'd fallen in love, her obsessive jealousy might overcome her dying wish to set things right. Besides, it was bad enough that Laurie knew about his crimes against Alina. He didn't want her judging him for Kate.

  Paul followed the incense through an arched doorway that should have led to a living room. In this house, there was no television, no sofa, no furniture at all. The floor was stripped, unpolished pine. The windows were painted over with the same white as the walls and ceiling.

  Paul paused at the edge of the doorway. He saw two of the four oak pillars that marked the cardinal points of the ritual space. On the one closest to the doorway, a blue candle burned. On the one against the far wall, a yellow candle burned. He could see the bench draped in white cloth that served as a working altar. A brass incense burner smoked there. A long knife with a pommel and guard spanned the white cloth. Laurie preferred to work with a wand, not a blade, so Paul knew that Vern was working in the circle.

  As expected, Vern stepped into view. His back was turned to Paul as he faced the yellow candle in the east. Skinny shoulders poked at the thin white cotton of his t-shirt. Denim covered his lanky legs. Ratty Nikes encased his feet.

  "Go in peace,” Vern murmured, snuffing out the yellow candle. He went to the red candle, a quarter turn around the circle. Paul moved to watch him snuff it, too. “Go in peace.” When he turned to the blue candle in the west, he saw Paul.

  If Vern ever grew out of his awkwardness and defensiveness, Paul knew, he would stop a few hearts. Behind the owlish glasses, he had wide brown eyes, lavishly lashed. Vern continued his ritual, snuffing the blue candle and sending away in peace whatever he'd called to guard the west quadrant. He went to the top of the circle, where the green candle was already out, then took an exaggerated counterclockwise step. Paul's over-sensitized skin felt the ripple of released energy.

  Vern left the circle and leaned in the door's frame, stuttering his feet to find his new center of balance. “You're here,” he said simply.

  Paul couldn't decide if he heard a positive or negative spin on those two words. “You have a big new plan?” He couldn't keep an edge of out his reply.

  "Laurie does.” Vern didn't meet his eyes. “Laurie has a plan."

  Not we. Whatever the plan was, Vern disapproved of it. Paul doubted he'd like it much either.

  Vern pushed his glasses up on his nose. “She thinks she has a way to find out the demon's name."

  Paul felt the demon stirring inside him, like a questing nose lifting to taste the wind. It knew that the key to breaking the curse was finding out its name. Paul couldn't tell if the thing wanted or feared it.

  "How?” Paul asked. After a hundred years of searching, the demon's name remained a mystery.

  Vern shook his head. “She wants to tell you herself. Come on."

  He pushed through the doorway past Paul and climbed the steps that led to the second floor. “She's pretty weak today. She hasn't gotten out of bed. I took her some tea and...” Vern paused on the fifth step, realizing that Paul hadn't followed.

  Kate might be enough to get him inside Laurie's house, but Paul still resisted going into her bedroom. Laurie's words, spoken in that room, still haunted him. I did it for us, Paul. I did it to free you, so we could finally be together!

  The small bedroom had overflowed with her humiliation, and his guilt, when he'd shouted his reply. I don't love you, I can't love you, I wouldn't love you if I could!

  Not the best day, even in a cursed life.

  "She asked you to bring me up there?” Paul asked.

  Vern looked down at his sneakers.

  "Did she tell you I wouldn't want to?"

  He shrugged, just a twitch of his bony shoulders.

  "Did she tell you why?"

  "She didn't really have to. I'm not stupid. I can figure things out.” Vern looked up, his eyes earnest behind the smudged lenses. “But does it really matter now?"

  Now that she's dying? Paul didn't know if it still mattered. Laurie had stunned him with her audacity, each time in that bedroom. The first time she'd been thirty-five. She'd surprised him, naked, her long blonde hair unbound and brushing her hips, confessing that she'd wanted him since they'd met. He'd explained, as kindly as he could, that seeing Alina dead by her own hand because he couldn't protect her had left him impotent. Back then it had been the truth. The second time had come almost twenty years later, after Laurie's reckless attempt to break the curse left an innocent young witch dead.

  Paul searched Vern's face, looking for clues. “How much has she really told you, and how much have you figured out on your own?"

  Vern pushed up his glasses. “I don't care what happened between you and Laurie.” With a furtive glance over his shoulder and up the stairs, he came back to stand near Paul. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “She didn't tell me about the spell with Gloria, but I found her notes. I've done more research, and I think she..."

  "Hello, Paul."

  Even the ravages of cancer hadn't stolen the smoke and whiskey from that voice. To Paul's awakened senses, it was like a cat's tongue on his ear.

  Vern jumped away. “I was bringing him up..."

  "...but he wouldn't come.” Laurie stood at the top of the stairs, her head wrapped in a smoke-gray scarf that matched her smoke-gray robe. “It's alright. We can talk in the kitchen."

  Laurie leaned on her cane and took one wobbling step onto the first stair. Vern raced up to wrap an arm around her, lend her his youth and strength.

  Guilt rose like bile in Paul's throat. It was one thing to read in a letter that someone was dying. To see it was another thing entirely. She looked like a lightning-struck tree, still standing because it had never learned how to fall.

  "I would have come up,” Paul said. “You didn't have to..."

  With Vern's help, Laurie's slippered feet reached the last stair. “No you wouldn't.” She pushed past him. “I'm dying, Paul. I don't have time for games anymore."

  Paul remembered the twitch of the second floor curtain. Nothing had changed. “If you didn't have time for games, you would have been waiting for me in the kitchen."

  Vern shot him a frown over his shoulder.

  Laurie shook her head. Her neck, always slender, looked too weak to keep her chin at its customary proud tilt. “Be useful,” she said. “Make tea."

  Be useful; Laurie's way of turning things around, reminding him that his curse was a drain upon her precious resources as she died. The idea of leaving, just leaving and not coming back, struck like an unexpected sla
p. He drained the anger into the ground, squeezed past Laurie and Vern, and reached the kitchen first to obediently make tea.

  By the time Laurie had managed her wobbling way down the hall, Paul had the kettle on the burner. As Vern settled her in the overstuffed chair by the breakfast nook's window, Paul spooned whole, dried leaves from a porcelain canister into the drawstring mesh bag. The leaves smelled sharp and balsamic, promising energy and a clear mind. The kettle whistled.

  "Don't forget to warm the pot first,” Laurie said, her tone condescending.

  Paul breathed deeply, drawing in the tea's scent. No matter what Laurie's provocations, he'd keep his mind clear and his buttons unpushed. For Kate.

  As Paul made the tea, Vern joined him at the kitchen's counter to slice apples and pears and the last of summer's fresh peaches. Laurie watched both of them with those stormy gray eyes, never missing anything, always managing to see things well hidden.

  Nervous, he took the offensive. “So you have a plan."

  Laurie smiled. A chill dripped down Paul's spine. “Pour me some tea."

  Pour it yourself. He thought but didn't say. Instead, he dutifully filled the first cup. A whim of compassion made him put a thick slice of peach on the saucer. What pleasures did Laurie have in the face of her impending death other than to enjoy her control over a man who'd broken her heart? Besides, she had not noticed the luminosity of Kate around him yet. Keeping her happy kept her from prying further.

  "That's some car that you're driving,” Laurie said. “Very nice. Very sharp."

  Paul set the teacup and peach in front of Laurie. “Have you been spying on me?” The idea made him shiver.

  Laurie covered Paul's hand with hers. Her flesh felt cold, as if she were already dead. “Where did you get the car, Paul?"

  Paul pulled his hand away and stood straight. The car had been delivered last year, during the relentless heat of August, with a single sentence fragment of a note ... “my compliments until autumn", and signed, “Yours, Sander Wald."

  "He sent it.” Laurie's disdainful sneer made her feelings clear. “Am I wrong?"

  When the car first arrived, Paul considered setting it on fire. But ever since the Model T, automobiles had captivated him. So he'd chosen to indulge. He fantasized about taking Kate into the city to dance and drink and eat until dawn. In his mind, he could see himself handing Kate out of the Mercedes, Kate dressed in slinky red and topped off with her impossible hair.

  "How does it ride?” Laurie asked in a light, innocent tone. “How fast can you go in it?"

  Paul turned away from her, and met Vern's face, full of pity. He looked away and busied himself pouring a second cup of tea.

  Laurie pressed on, relentless. “Did he let you pick the color?"

  "Why are you...?” The teapot's spout crashed into the cup. It tipped, sending a spray of steaming liquid across the counter. With shaking hands, Paul carefully set the pot down. “He didn't let me pick the color. He just sent it, uninvited."

  "Why do you think Sander sent you a beautiful, expensive car, Paul?"

  The question slid up Paul's neck like a snake. “Why does Sander do anything? He's a maniac.” An immortal maniac, Paul's eternal jailor. A man who didn't know how to forgive.

  Vern began mopping up spilled tea with a rag. Paul realized that he'd just been standing there, staring, as the amber liquid spread across the counter.

  "Did you even ask yourself why Sander would take the time and the money to provide you with something beautiful?” Laurie asked, her tone clearly relishing the question. “Something he knew that you would value and appreciate?"

  Paul made himself turn to face Laurie. “I don't wonder why he did it at all.” It was the truth. He already knew why. Like Kate, it was his secret to keep.

  "Sander's trying to woo you, Paul.” Laurie licked her lips, as if the words tasted sweet.

  Underneath Paul's heart, the demon thrashed against the bars of its prison. It was the only thing Paul felt. The moment Laurie's words traveled from her lips, through his ear and into his brain, his nerves grew a thick cotton coating.

  "That's absurd.” Paul heard his own voice as if from far away.

  "It is inevitable,” Laurie said. “I don't understand why I didn't anticipate it. Vern was the one who figured it out."

  Paul looked over his shoulder at Vern, who blushed and looked down. In a voice soft with compassion, he said, “It makes sense, Paul. Sander wanted to completely control Alina."

  Cold beads of sweat popped out on Paul's upper lip. His head filled with memories of his mother's harvest ball, a hundred years ago: the flinty scent of dry leaves, the flicker from the gas lights, the cool silk of Alina's harem girl costume under his fingers. He heard the echo of his own voice. How unfair to the other slave girls. They'd stand no chance against you.

  Paul turned away from Vern and Laurie both. He found himself standing by the kitchen doorway with no awareness of having moved there.

  "After a hundred years, even a man like Sander would feel loneliness,” Laurie said. “Sander's idea of love is complete control over another person. Who else but you would he turn to for that?"

  "Ridiculous.” Paul didn't feel his tongue moving in his mouth, or his lips shaping the sounds. “Obscene."

  "Truth.” Laurie's tone gloated. “Sander wants you, and, if you play along and let him think he has you, he might tell you the demon's name."

  The words rushed at Paul like a flock of angry crows. He ran. He heard Laurie calling after him, but he didn't bother to answer. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't catch his breath. His heart thumped unevenly. For an instant, when he threw open the back door, he thought he might pass out. Then the cotton around his nerves puffed into towering white clouds, wrapping him in a protective haze. He floated like a ghost from the porch to the car. The heat, he noticed distractedly, had gone out of the sun, and the birds had stopped singing. In the unnaturally muted world, Paul heard the hush-hush of the wind blowing and Sander's voice as if it played from a scratchy old gramophone.

  Sir, you will unhand my wife this instant. And his own voice in reply: But your wife has such lovely hands. I wouldn't chop them off for anything.

  Colors swirled around him. The Mercedes pulled out from the wagon-track drive and onto the paved rural road, kicking red, yellow, and orange leaves up into the air. The leaves spun like dancers in a waltz. He'd waltzed with Alina that night. One waltz was more than enough time to arrange a tryst. Would you meet me in three day's time, when the moon will rise full? The memory of Alina's Irish lilt threatened to melt his cloud-cotton cocoon. He'll be busy with his evil things, and I can get away.

  Under and around Alina's Irish lilt, Paul heard his mother's liquid French accent. Take care, mon cher. The man has notoriety. Kicked out of some Temple or Order or something on the continent.

  Paul had offered to paint Alina's portrait. He was a talented artist, though he used his skill to capture the essence of other men's wives. Rarely did the bored, caged beauties turn down his double appeal to their vanity. But Sander had declined, citing an endless string of busy days. Paul had protested. She is too precious not to be shared, Herr Wald. Come now. Let's strike a deal. You can have her during the day, and I'll have her at night.

  A horn blared, jerking Paul out of his memories. He found himself behind the wheel of the Mercedes, idling at an intersection. He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there. He drove the remaining few blocks to his house and pulled the Mercedes into the drive. The garden walls, both sanctuary and prison, closed around him. The small, wood frame house lay directly over the place where his mother's garden folly once stood like a huge cut amethyst set down amid the hollyhocks.

  Paul put both palms flat against the rough bark of the maple tree his mother planted. When he was forty-two, the tree had seen Alina, folded tightly in a black traveling cloak, step inside the stained glass panes of the garden folly to meet him. She'd seemed hesitant, and Paul had tried to ease her.

  You aren't
the only unhappy wife whisked away from your home and your family.

  Alina's face had turned to hard silver in the moonlight. I've no family. Sander Wald bought me in a London brothel. She'd unfastened her cloak. Paul remembered the metal clasp clanking against the floor. Underneath it, she was naked. Paul hadn't noticed her breasts or her hips or the line of her legs. He'd only seen the purple bruises on her chest and arms and stomach, the fading marks of fingers at her throat. For that one waltz with you, he did this to me. You are going to help me escape him.

  What answer could there be to a statement like that?

  But first, Paul Dumond, you are going to make love to me, because, for once, I want it to be something like love.

  Paul had her in his arms for less than five kisses before Sander tore her away from him. He grabbed her by the hair and put a pistol barrel against Paul's forehead. Alina fought her way free, ran to the back of the folly. But once the cold metal muzzle touched Paul's skin, he didn't move until Sander ordered him to his knees. The trigger had been inches from Paul's nose, filling it with the odor of bluing and oil and gunpowder.

  Alina's defiant shout echoed through Paul's head. I'm done and through with you, Sander. Done and through!

  Sander's reply had been as cold as the metal of the gun. You cannot be through with me until I am through with you. Which I am not. You will watch this one suffer and die, and then you will learn you can never, ever escape me.

  Shattering glass answered Sander's threat. Later Paul would know that Alina had broken one of the wine goblets he'd brought for their tryst and plunged the ragged edge into her throat. All he remembered was Sander's feral scream, and the pain as the gun smashed into his temple. The memory pain turned Paul's vision white, and he watched the rest of it unfold in the screen of his mind.

  When he crawled out of the cave of his throbbing head and opened his eyes, Paul found it was still night, and he was still in the garden folly. He tried to sit up, but his hands were tied behind him and his ankles were tied together. A cloth gag stretched his mouth.