Bound by the Moon (The Ancients Series Book 4)

by Christine M. Butler

  “Wait, when Jack died, he came to see us at his sending off. He was there, what if, could I?”

  “That was different. His soul had to travel from the other world to this one. It gave him time. You are already here, and once here, there is no return.” One of the wolves answered. I didn’t even look up to see which one this time.

  I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. That wasn’t entirely true. I knew my chances of coming back weren’t good. I wrote letters to Mikael, Willow, and my parents. I entrusted them with Serena before I left. There was one for her as well, and for Ashley. The most heartbreaking of them was the one to Sierra, because in it, I had to apologize for not bringing her baby back to her. She would be a mother who lost her child on that side, while I was the mother lost to her child on my side. If I ever thought life wasn’t fair, I was now beginning to understand that death was no different.

  “Mikael is going to hate me.” The words burst from me without a moment’s hesitation between the thought and the verbalization. “He didn’t want me to do this. He wanted me to wait. Now, I don’t get to see him again.”

  “You will see him again, when his time comes.” A wolf called out to me.

  “It’s not the same. He could live a few hundred years beyond now, what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime, while I wait?”

  “You make your peace with your decision to save others instead of yourself. Not that you would have been able to go back once you were here. We’re really sorry we couldn’t spare you our fate, Jessica. We had hopes that you would be the one to live a long and happy life. Almost all of us were cut down early in our lives. You were right, earlier, when you said people fear what they don’t know.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I looked up then, at all the souls who still dawdled around, and in the mix I thought I saw a familiar face or two. “Anna?” I called out.

  There she stood, my Aunt Anna Marie, the woman I had been named for. “Jessica,” her shy demeanor reminded me of the stories my mom would tell about her when she spoke of their childhood. “I hoped not to see you here for a very long time.”

  “That makes two of us.” I laughed.

  “That, you must get from your father. Your mom was always far too serious for humor in death.” Anna winked at me. A handsome man stood not too far behind my aunt. He never took his eyes off of her as she spoke to me about how my much she missed my mom.

  “You must be Lucas?” I asked as he came in closer.

  “I am.”

  “Oh, I suppose I lost all my manners when I died, or maybe when I was shunned by my pack.” Aunt Anna shrugged her shoulders. “This is my mate, Lucas. Lucas, this is my Niece, Jessica.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you already,” Lucas said as he took my hand and gently kissed the top of it. He tipped his head to indicate the white wolves, “they’ve kept us in the loop, mostly.”

  “Oh, no!” Anna cried out, after seeing baby Jack’s hand poke back out of the sling I still carried him in. “Not little Willow too?” A tear dropped down her colorless cheek, and I watched as the thick, fluid seemed to defy gravity and just hover there, high on her cheekbone as she reached out for that tiny little hand.

  “This is not Willow. My friend had a baby. He was taken by mistake. They thought they had my daughter. I came to get him back, for his mother, but… I couldn’t.”

  “You tried, and you are here with him. I am sure she will find some small comfort in knowing that he is with you, and will be taken care of until she meets him here one day.”

  “So, is this it? Is this all there is to the afterlife? A bunch of spirits hanging around in a giant cavern style waiting room?”

  Lucas laughed and teased Anna. “It’s good that she was named for you. She definitely sounds a lot like you.”

  “I suppose you’re half right. This is a waiting room, in a way. Those who are here are either stuck, because they can’t move beyond what has happened to them, or they are waiting on loved ones to make it here first. You could say we’re the ones with unfinished business.”

  “Really? So what are you waiting for then?”

  “To see your mom. I need her to know that I don’t blame her, and that I appreciate everything she did for me, before and after…” Her voice trailed off on a saddened note.

  “I understand, and she will too.” I looked at Lucas then, “so who are you waiting on then?”

  He smiled brightly at me, as if I should already know the answer to that question. “I am simply waiting on my love here to finish her business, so we can both move on together.”

  “So, I’ll be able to wait here for Mikael, and Willow?”

  “If you need to wait for them, then yes, you can.”

  “I do. I need their forgiveness.”

  “Oh, Jessica,” my aunt grabbed me up in a giant hug, careful of the baby that was still lodged against me, our bellies still touching through the sling.

  We were just letting go of one another when voices started to raise beyond us. There was another woman standing there chastising the white wolves, my ancestors. “What in the world is going on now?”

  Anna put her hand out on my shoulder. “Jessica, you might want to wait a moment. She’s not the friendliest of souls.”

  “Well, we’re all dead here, right? What harm can be done?”

  “Oh, you don’t want to know. Even souls can be punished. There are stories of heaven and hell, and well, purgatory right?” She waited for my nod of acknowledgment. “Well, sweetheart, we’re in what you might think of as purgatory. Souls have been known to disappear from here in one of two ways. They either move on, presumably to a better place. Or…” My Aunt Anna swallowed hard, not wanting to continue.

  “Or what?”

  “People, like that woman there, drag them kicking and screaming to another place.” I turned as the words left my aunt’s lips, and I saw that the other white wolves and the woman who had been arguing were now looking at me. None of them appeared happy about it, except the strange woman.

  “Well, that can’t be good.” I managed before the white wolves beckoned me over to them.

  ANOTHER WORLD

  “Jessica Marie St. Marks De’Lune.” The woman intoned as she looked me over. “What would you give to get a second chance at life with your mate, with your real child?” She looked down at the baby in my arms with disdain, but didn’t wait for me to answer. “Would you give up your soul in the end, if you knew you’d get a few hundred years with them?”

  This woman was dangling a big carrot on a stick in front of me. I would give up a lot to be with my family again. I would give up everything, although, I’d at least take a minute to process the loss of my own soul first. “Are you telling me you can grant such a request?”

  “Me? Heavens no. Why would I do that, even if I could?” She eyed me again, as if I were a much lower being. “I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s not play games here. You are a conundrum to me. On the one hand, you are responsible for my oldest daughter’s death. On the other, you seem to single-handedly be bringing my other girls together. I had hopes that they would be the first of the witch families to understand that a coven of familial witches was the strongest power source there is on Earth.” A particularly bright twinkle lit her eyes up from the inside-out as she spoke. “If someone were to, perhaps, tip them off to that… then maybe you wouldn’t have to carry the burden of being the only white wolf left. Maybe they could help make new species that would take the heat off of you, so to speak.” Her ambition washed off of her in waves. “You will do that, won’t you? I might be swayed then, to forgive you for Sophia.”

  “What is she talking about?” I asked of my white wolf ancestors.

  “She’s talking about a chance for you to go back.”

  “To go back?”

  “To live again, Jess.”

  “What? I thought you said there wasn’t a way for me to go back to the other side?” My ancestors looked pained as the woman beside them smiled, and anxious
ly awaited their explanation.

  “The devil is in the details, is it not, Kezia?” Aislynn tossed the accusation back at the woman in question. In order to gain access to the other side again, to return to the life you once knew, it requires great sacrifice. A dual sacrifice actually.

  “Why must everything require sacrifice? Isn’t that what got me into this mess to begin with? Seriously, I already sacrificed myself, and baby Jack, what more could the beings in charge possibly want from me?”

  “They want nothing from you.” Aislynn scoffed in my direction. It was the first time I heard her be less than kind to me.

  “Watch it Aislynn, dear, your true colors are showing.” Kezia laughed as she spoke. And while there was a cruel edge to her tone that was never present when Serena spoke, Kezia’s voice was almost indistinguishable from her daughter’s.

  “What do you mean they want nothing from me? How in the hell can I sacrifice what I don’t have to give? If they want nothing, then there’s no way to get back to my life.”

  “Oh, but there is, sweet child,” Kezia cooed. “It just won’t be you who does the sacrificing this time.”

  “I still don’t understand.” I looked back and forth between the two women, trying to figure out just how much crazy actually ran in my bloodline. Actually, I decided it was probably best not to know the answer to that particular question. I waited, instead, to hear what these two sacrifices would entail, but no one seemed willing to answer my question. Aislynn stood there, looking from one white wolf to the next, as if they were communicating silently among themselves. You would think, if that were the case, that I would be able to hear them too. After all, I was a white wolf in life, so now I should belong to the club or something since I was technically dead.

  CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PAST

  “The first sacrifice is ours to make, Jessica.” Aislynn referenced herself and the rest of my white wolf ancestors. “Nearly all of our line were born on the heels of another sacrificing herself for the next in line. We were only supposed to be born every 200 or so years, just like the witches. I think you can do the math as well as I can. There are almost twenty of us here, in our little ancestral pack. When a white wolf dies, it re-sets the clock, so to speak. Instead of just carrying on the gene until the 200 years have passed, a new white wolf is made on the heels of the last wolf’s breath. In other words, when you died, your daughter’s white wolf gene was activated. She will grow to be a white wolf, just as you are.”

  “I suppose she should have said, just as you were.” Kezia teased.

  “Willow…” my heart ached at the mention of my daughter, but I had to get to the bottom of this. “If I go back, will it be undone?”

  “We don’t know. None of us has ever gone back to find out. There is a reason we have never gone back, Jessica.” Her head dipped, as she hesitated telling me. “Our leaving this place, and living again, it is possible, but it comes with a price. As far as we know this can only be done once, and only under certain circumstances. Apparently, this one, had something to do with that little after-death fail safe.” Aislynn pointed at Kezia then, who actually giggled and made a little clapping gesture with her hands.

  If I didn’t know before that she was such a horrible person in life, I might have been amused by her antics. Baby Jack squirmed in my arms again, and I was honestly afraid that he would pull away enough to break out skin to skin contact we had going on. I stopped what I was doing, and held my question until after I situated Jack to ensure our skin stayed in contact. “I’m assuming my case meets all the specified criteria?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “And what about little Jack here? Will he be able to go with me?” Aislynn’s grim look was all I needed to know that it wouldn’t be possible. “What if I sent him in my place?”

  “You would send him back to die of starvation in a cavern long forgotten by all, but one ally, and who knows how many monsters?”

  “Layla is out there though. I haven’t been gone that long yet, she’ll still be there. Gabriel promised to keep her there for an hour. Surely, it’s been less than that.”

  “Time works differently in here, sweet wolf. Things have already come to pass out there while some of us stood around getting familiar with old family members.” Kezia tossed an accusatory glance over her shoulder at Anna and Lucas.

  “How much time has passed? There has to be a way to get him back to his mom. Can’t we contact Serena again, or Layla, and let them know?”

  “If we do what Kezia is proposing, we will not be able to communicate with the living world any longer. We will be released from that which binds us to this in-between place. Most of us will move on.” I’m not even sure which wolf spoke, because I was so stunned by the admission.

  “You won’t be able to guard the portal anymore? That’s what you guys did, right? You were the guardians of this side? Surely, you weren’t just hanging around to give free advice to the next white wolf in line.”

  One of the older wolves stepped forward then. “Truly, it is an honor to do so. We have watched each other grow, learn, love, and we’ve even shared in each other’s losses. We have actually, always served as guardian to the white wolf line. We’ve offered advice, and prayed that the next of us would do better than their predecessor. To answer your question though, yes, we are the guardians of this portal.”

  “Should we sacrifice that position to re-open the portal to send you through, it will take everything we are to get you back to the land of the living, and seal it shut again.” Aislynn offered before looking up at her Grandmother, Kezia. “Something else may try to slither through while it’s open, which is another reason we’ve never considered it.”

  “Is that child touching you?” Kezia asked casually, pointing to where baby Jack was, as if I had not been having another entirely different conversation with the white wolves already.

  “What?” I looked down, and noted that Baby Jack was indeed still skin to skin with me. “Oh, that. I asked Layla if there was a way to protect him, in case I had to cross over while holding onto him. She mentioned that maybe if we maintained skin on skin contact he would survive the trip over here since I was bound to the portal, and the contact would mean he was then linked to me.”

  “This is why you will succeed where these women have failed their line. You are brilliant, my dear.” Kezia clapped her hands together. “You remind me so much of me when I was younger. Not in looks, of course, the only one of my children to resemble me in any way physically was Angel.” The smile lingered on her face then. “Have you met her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, I imagine you will in the future. She was always so curious about her sister’s line of wolves, but I tried to keep the younger girls from the older ones before my untimely death. You know, Angel has the gift of creation too. The most rare of them all, just like me.”

  “Okay…” I wasn’t sure if Kezia was going to continue extolling one of her youngest daughter’s virtues to me, but I had more important things on my mind. “So, you’re saying that as long as the baby and I continue to touch, I should be able to take him with me, correct?”

  “I’m fairly certain he’ll live.”

  “Fairly certain? Seriously, fairly certain isn’t a good enough gamble when it comes to a baby!” My voice was raised, and Kezia tsked me for it.

  “Child, for all your smarts, it seems I congratulated your brilliance too soon.” Righteous indignation rolled off of her then. “The baby is already in the world of the dead, if it doesn’t work, you will at least have a body for the mother to lay to rest. If it does work, you will have a baby to give back to her. If you do not try, you both remain dead, on this side, for… oh… ever!”

  “Point taken.”

  “If you are successful, that baby may also become a key to opening the portal. He will have to be guarded well for all his living years.” Aislynn cautioned. “And we don’t know what kind of side effects being here will have caused for him. No one goes b
ack to the land of the living unscathed. That includes you too.”

  “Understood. So, in order to do this, the baby and I have to keep touching, and then what?”

  “Then we must sacrifice the ancestral line to open the portal, and to be able to seal it shut behind you.”

  “Okay, so when I get back will I still be able to communicate with you, if the portal is sealed shut. I mean the way we used to communicate in the dream world.”

  “Jessica, we already told you, expending the power it will take to re-open the portal long enough for you to pass through, and then shut it again, will take all the magic we have left. Our energies will dissipate, and most of us will move on to a new place. We will no longer be linked to you, our line, or the portal when it’s all said and done. Think of it as one of those pesky side-effects I was talking about. You do not go from being dead to alive without paying a hefty price. ”

  “I get that, I do. Who will guard the portal when you guys move on though?”

  “That is where the other sacrifice is needed, my sweet.” Kezia’s sugary tone was beginning to grate on my nerves.

  “Another soul has to offer themselves as your line’s permanent guardian spirit. Once you cross the threshold, both you and that baby will be keys to opening the lock on the Gateway to the Dead. When you are gone, your next in line will also be a key. We are unsure if it will linger that way with little Jack’s lineage.”

  “I would offer myself, but, I don’t see you as the little whipped dog following me on my excursions, so I have to pass this time.” Kezia offered. “Although, being released from this hellish place into your line’s servitude almost seems a fair trade. I once thought the earth itself was getting boring, but being locked here for so long has shown me the error of my ways.”