“Do you feel any different?” Harlan whispered.
“What?” Tom watched as Brother stripped Harlan of his life. A white stream flowed outward from Harlan’s body and into the silver blade. Following it was an aura of black tar—the curse. Yet, nothing was being taken from Tom. “What’s happening?” Tom demanded.
“A vampire by the name of Bijoux Darbonne once wrote a song, to be played on piano, called Blackheart Reprise,” Harlan said, lying very still, face down, as if he hadn’t heard Tom at all.
“Who was it? Who cursed me! You must know! I know you do! If it wasn’t you it had to have been one of the werewolves at the camp that night!” Tom raged, bewildered by the discovery that his brother had been telling the truth.
“The piece,” Harlan whispered, “ended with the words, ‘refrain, ad infinitum’, just after the last notes. The song was written to be played forever, to no end.”
Tom shook uncontrollably as tears of anger and remorse wet his eyes.
“You and I and every other immortal has tried to play it, some longer than others, but the song isn’t really meant to be played forever. It’s an instructional piece.”
Tom held his head in his hands, shut his eyes, and hoped it was all a bad dream.
“It’s meant to teach you how to know when to stop,” Harlan sputtered. “Look. I’ve taken my fingers off of the keys.” Weakly, he raised his hands.
Tom was horribly dizzy, and not because of injury. It was something more disorienting that disturbed him—the realization that he’d killed Harlan with no satisfying end. Why had his dreams compelled him to Barbados then? What purpose had he just served, if not to release himself from a curse he’d never asked to bear? Where and who was his true infector?
“Jack Darcy will know,” whispered Harlan, as if he’d read Tom’s mind.
“Jack Darcy?” Tom repeated. The name wasn’t awfully familiar.
“If you ever see our father again,” Harlan said, ignoring Tom again and speaking quietly through troubled breaths, “tell him I was not an evil man.”
Thomas stared silently down at his brother. “He’s alive?” His hands shook and his soul felt empty.
Harlan blinked slowly, his eyes looking around at a broken and burning world that was quickly slipping away from him.
Tom paced around the street, wrenching his hands through his hair.
Harlan’s eyes last fell on a bright light—Molly—as she stepped into view, but he did not recognize her or what she was.
“Do you see, Thomas?” he asked, “An angel comes for me.” Harlan’s eyes stopped moving. As his body became ash, a burst of light was drawn into Tom’s silver blade. The ring he’d worn—John Crowe’s second ring—bounced against the ground and was covered by white flowers and ashes before either Thomas or Molly noticed. The deep purple glow of the ring subsided.
Tom stood for scant minutes, but they passed like wet sand in an hourglass. Molly resisted speaking to him. Just as she opened her mouth, he spoke to her first. “Did you bring it as I asked?”
Molly gazed at him questioningly. “The silver bullet? Yes, I have it,” she answered, her brow furrowing. “I loaded it into La Flor, as you asked me to do.”
Tom studied her, his face soft and thoughtful despite his bruises. Taking one or two steps backward, he turned to face her directly and held both arms out at his sides. “Okay.”
Molly gazed at him blankly, her eyes hurt, confused, and worried.
“Go on.”
“W-what?”
“It’s all we have left to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I may not be freed of the curse, but you are still under its control. Rid yourself of it now, before it’s even begun. Let’s at least one of us be mortal again.” He stood tall, keeping his arms at his sides.
“No, Thomas. I c-can’t …”
“Molly.”
Tears poured from her eyes as Molly shook her head in defiance. “I won’t!” she cried angrily.
“Unless you want to carry the curse with you for the rest of your life, you will pull the trigger.”
“Then I will carry it!” she shouted, shutting her eyes.
“Shoot me.” His one uninjured eye remained fixed on hers. Tom removed his coat, tossing it aside. “Now, make it count.” The small golden locket hung loosely from his neck, swinging slightly with every fumble of his weak, wounded legs.
“I can’t do this. I’ll live a thousand accursed years before I shoot you.”
“Shoot now and live without it. You can’t kill me. I never died in the dream.” Tom closed his eyes momentarily, remembering the sequence of events. He’d seen Harlan die, the white flowers, but not the light, and he wanted to know what it meant, so he lied. “I can’t die, Molly.”
“No,” she said, refusing to obey.
Tom picked up one of his own pistols, cocked the hammer, and pointed it at Molly. His voice darkened. “Do it or I’ll kill you.” His eye showed frustration and insanity.
Molly opened her eyes in shock, afraid of the severity in his tone. She raised La Flor instinctively, and her finger touched the trigger. “You’re lying. You won’t do it! I know you won’t shoot!”
“Molly!” he barked, spit flying from his lips.
“No! You won’t do it!” She shut her eyes hard and shook her head, sobbing.
“Won’t I?” Thomas asked, finger on the trigger. His good eye was wild.
The instant Molly heard the boom of Tom’s pistol she screamed, and her finger pulled back the trigger of La Flor, failing to notice that Tom had dropped his wrist to shoot just to the left of her.
Tom’s feet went numb, then his legs. Slowly he looked down at the hole in his chest. The silver began spreading its cure. As his torso lost feeling, the sky turned up on its side. The ground rushed to his head, where the cold stone beat against it.
Molly cried in anquish, sinking to her knees, sobbing furiously into her hands. The black crescent mark on her shoulder faded and ran off her skin like water, forming a stream and flowing into La Flor, lying on the ground next to her and exhaling a puff of smoke. The inky trail vanished, and La Flor began to draw the life from Tom. His curse followed the white stream from his body, winding around it gracefully and snaking toward the soul well by Molly’s knees.
Tom felt weightless. The cold stone street was soft as a featherbed to his skin. He shut his eyes, feeling very sleepy and silent. The world pulled itself out from under him like a tablecloth, and then he was gone.
Shaw rushed toward Molly, gasping for breath, seeing Tom lying in the street, a small hole placed neatly in his chest. “Miss Bishop, we must go. The Coats just discovered our ship. We...must...go!” he persisted, tugging at her wrist.
“I’m staying,” Molly declared, snatching her hand away.
Shaw looked at Tom again, then back to Molly. His captain would have ordered him to allow the young woman to do as she pleased. It was not his choice to force her to come with the crew, even though his personal feelings urged him to bring her along. “Miss Bishop, I can protect you,” said Shaw, confidence in his eyes. Molly gave him a strange look, her attention snatched by some faint implication in his promise.
“I can’t be sure, Morgan.”
“But Thomas himself ordered me to act in his stead.”
Molly’s eyes searched his face for a moment before she turned her eyes away. “You should go, Morgan.” She refused to speak with Shaw any further, already far too occupied with the emotional damage done by Thomas’s death.
Unable to summon the gall to argue with her, Shaw conceded. “As you wish, Miss Bishop.” He hurried away but turned back for a moment, raising a hand in a farewell gesture before limping down the street toward the port.
Molly sat still for a moment, waiting until Shaw was gone. She weakly crawled over to Tom’s figure, her ring no longer glowing. She sobbed heavily, lying on the ground beside him and burying her face in his neck . It isn’t right. It isn’t his time, sh
e thought. How she hated Barbados! How she wished for Tom’s sake that he’d never met her! She felt as though her misfortune had ultimately caused things to happen the way they had, though it wasn’t true. Still, she was the unforetold end to Tom’s real curse that night. If she hadn’t been so frail, he would never have made the costly decision to infect her just to keep her alive long enough to reach Barbados.
How guilty she felt, that Thomas had been unable to cure himself, and his last act alive was to willingly die for her sake. He’d searched for his brother for years just to destroy the monster he’d become and the abomination Harlan was becoming. He’d failed to free himself, yet in one night Molly was easily cured and had never even begun to taste the kind of pain the curse had dealt Thomas for so long. She loved him. Didn’t she deserve to keep the man she had so dutifully cared for? Didn’t he, tried and tested, beaten and forsaken as he was, deserve to live and be loved? This wasn’t his time to leave her.
The small gold locket lay on his chest, bouncing gently with each of her sobs. It looked different. The surface shone in the dark in a way it did not normally shine. The seams glowed a hot orange like steel in a forge. Molly looked at it curiously through her tears. The locket’s glow was the purest white. It begged to be opened and was struggling to do so. One by one, tiny letters appeared in the same hot color as the seal. They began to cover the outside of the locket, forming a spell. The words were in Spanish and translated as: “Speak the name of the dead and surrender the life within.”
Molly held the locket in both her hands, close to her face. “Thomas?” The locket began to shine brighter and brighter in her hands as she opened it. The light filled the street, and a white flash illuminated the world around Molly. The entire city was bathed in it. The streets were vibrant and beautiful, the buildings soft and towering. The figure of an older man stepped forward. He looked like Tom, but aged. In the next second, the vision burst into a white stream and took Tom’s place in the soul well by Molly’s feet. Tom’s own life and curse were rejected and retreated back toward his dead body.
The light vanished. Tom felt as though the world had stretched its arms back to him, reached into him and pulled him back to life by his chest. He heard a faint voice. It was unfamiliar and eerie—the curse?
Tom smiled widely, lying face up in the street and gazing into the stunning dark eyes inches from his. With his old strength he threw his arms up and around Molly.
Her eyes teared up again in happiness, and she could find nothing to say that could express what she was feeling. Instead, she kissed Tom passionately. He returned her affection, holding her tightly and pressing his lips to hers, savoring their familiar, soft touch.
“I promised, didn’t I?” he said.
“Yes, you did.”
“After what’s happened, I find it hard to believe you would expect me to forget a promise.” He laughed. “It’s a long trip, you know.”
“To where?”
“London. Home.” Tom’s smile gradually flattened. Grateful as he was to have been saved, and to have saved Molly, too, in his own right, he hadn’t so quickly forgotten his brother Harlan.
“We’d better get started then.” Molly interrupted his thoughts. “Your crew is going to leave with the ship.”
“What if we miss it?” asked Tom.
“Then we borrow a ship,” suggested Molly.
“Good thinking.” He got to his feet, lingering on his thoughts.
“Shall we?” Molly touched his face and looked into his eyes but did not press him with questions.
“Yes, let’s go,” he said at last.
“What shall we do about a crew if we don’t catch up?” Molly asked.
“Borrow one,” he answered without a second thought. “What’s that?” Tom inquired, spying the golden Black Coat pendant hanging about Molly’s neck.
“It’s a trophy,” Molly stated proudly, fishing it from between her breasts. It was exquisitely ornate. The gold crest depicted a dead tree circumscribed by a creeping vine of ivy and set against a hilly background. A capital “B” was etched into the trunk of the tree. “I thought I’d keep it.”
As the Black Coats mourned their fallen patriarch and collected his clothes, one of the pale women who’d been haunting the banquet hall earlier that night discovered Harlan’s ring. She grinned greedily and slipped it on for a try, amazed by the beautifully cut gem set in its floral band. It was shaped like a woman’s face. Upon closer inspection, she noticed a swirling mist deep within the ring. It grew blacker and blacker. Disturbed by the apparent dark magic within the gem, the woman tried desperately to wrench it from her finger. She couldn’t. It shrank when she tried to remove it. The other Black Coats around her were all staring, watching the screaming woman as she fought with her finger. She began to hear a voice. It introduced itself as Maria Vasquez and told the young vampire that she would make a wonderful vessel. The woman began to claw at her face, trying to tear the demonic voice from her head. Slowly her thoughts became clouded. She couldn’t control her own actions. She felt as if she were being pushed from her own body, which rose and hovered about a foot off the ground.
The Black Coats backed away from the woman. A scream pierced the air as a black aura sprang from the woman’s chest and was drawn into the gem in the ring. Immediately after, a deep purple aura burst back out of the ring and into the body. The woman’s feet touched back down, and she looked upon the vampires around her with unnerving delight. She appeared to be the same as before, her wavy black hair having been tossed about a bit, but her eyes were different. The irises were a dull violet. The woman’s expression changed, and she looked ill. Pulling the ring from her finger, she sneered, clenching it in her fist and crushing it to dust with inhuman strength. A black aura exploded from between her fingers like fine sand, and another scream broke the silence. It echoed long, uncontested by any other sound.
“I must eat,” the woman muttered. When none replied, she shouted, “Now!”
The Black Coats backed away as she approached them. She seized one of the vampires by his arms and pulled him close.
“Your flesh is cold and dead!” she said in surprise. “I need a warm body! Bring me a mortal. No … bring as many as you can,” she instructed the trembling vampires, her lips drawing back into a savage smile.
Thomas’s smallest of trials at an end, he and Molly left Barbados, bound for London. For a time they would enjoy each other’s company and the peace of a long, slow voyage home. But as Thomas put it, people die only when they have nothing left to live for—when they no longer have a purpose. As this story stands, Thomas Crowe and Molly Bishop are quite alive. Does the reader believe in fate? Does the reader believe in purpose? I wonder these things myself. Perhaps we will know what to believe by this tale’s end, but we have much to attend to until then.
Geoffrey Mylus,
June 3, 1833
Lore
East and Eight
Chad T. Douglas
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I
A DARK AND TANGLED THREAD
II
ON THE SUN SIDE OF THE MOON
III
THE OCTOPUS
I
A Dark and Tangled Thread
Before people, before the animals and the forests, only three beings inhabited the world: Earth, the loud and dark-bodied; Sea, the beautiful and clear-eyed; Sky, the stoic and wild-haired. The three were one inseparable being, with three minds and three voices. Over time, the three grew tired of their joint existence, and Earth and Sky—each of whom were in love with Sea—argued about who should be allowed to marry her. Earth, who was young and clever, declared he would be better for her. Sky, old and strong, argued against this. Sea, unable to choose, decided that each would have to prove his love for her, and so the matter would be closed with a contest of affection.
One night while Earth slept, Sky went to Sea and said, “Look, Earth is more handsome than I only during the day, when the sky is blue and bright. But
he sleeps at night, and while he ignores you, I offer you the stars, the most beautiful part of me!”
Sea looked upon the stars with delight, enchanted by Sky’s gift. While Sky boasted, Earth awoke and waited for an opportunity. When Sky was not looking, Earth stole some of his wild hair and hid it away. The next day, Earth went to Sea and presented her with a child, made from Sky’s hair, which Earth called Wind. “Here,” he said, “I offer you a child whose love and affection I hope will be enough for you when I must sleep each night. Sky is foolish to think that pleasing you only half the day is enough. I cannot love you all day and all night, but our child we can share and love together always.”
The gift was enough to settle the contest, and Sea married Earth. Sky, broken-hearted, tried to separate himself from Earth and Sea, but Wind, the child made from Sky’s wild hair, kept him tethered to the world. This is why the land and the oceans forever touch and the sky sits high above, never coming down, while the wind inhabits the world between.
Geoffrey Mylus,
June 22, 1833
One summer night, six years before Thomas Crowe met Molly Bishop in Barbados, the Jaega people say, Wind was walking through the marsh, stepping lightly along the limbs of the trees when it saw something. Stopping and sitting high above the ground, it watched the shallows below. All the spirits and animals awoke from sleep and heard Panther crying furiously. Bright flashes ran across the crawling thunderheads out at sea. The things of the marsh retreated into the safety of the cypress-stump labyrinths. Something had been stolen from Panther, and Wind could feel it. When Thunder began hurling his war clubs to the earth, Wind leapt up from its place in the trees and scurried away.
“Manus magia.” Thomas spoke clearly and softly. The jades in his palms rose to levitate about an inch from his skin and lit up brightly. Ethereal-green veins crawled up his forearms to the elbows. He breathed quietly, forcibly suppressing iron-flavored coughs.
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