“The same,” she replied. “The important thing is that you all are here now.” She turned to Ava. “I’m very glad you’ve come finally, and it is nice to meet you. I hope you’ll understand, though, when I say that I hope I don’t see you again until this is all over.”
“What?” Ava exclaimed, floored.
“Now that I’ve met you, I can confirm that everyone is right about you,” Grace said. “You definitely are the one. That makes you very…potent…and, it’s very difficult for me to be around you.”
“I don’t understand,” Ava said. “What does everyone think about me? Why is it hard to be around me? Potent? I don’t get it.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Come, sit down by the fire. Sean, will you make me a cup of tea? It’s all there by the microwave. The amaranth tea, please?”
Ava watched in amazement as Sean hurried to make the tea for Grace, and she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of unwarranted jealousy. Obviously Grace knew Robert, Declan, and Sean. She had probably known them all their lives, but, for some reason, Ava felt a surge of jealousy at the thought that they cared anything for Grace, even as friends. Ava knew she had no right to feel that way, but she had to admit that was the unshakable emotion that filled her chest with rushing heartbeats.
“Amaranth tea helps keep the dead at bay,” Grace explained, seating herself in the easy chair closest to the fire and closing her eyes for a moment. “It can be used for calling the spirits of the dead, but it can also be used to shield oneself from the dead, especially the spirits of the evil dead.
“And you believe that?” Ava asked coldly, unable to keep from raising her academic hackles in a bitchy, catty challenge.
“No,” Grace replied, looking at her steadily with those eyes the color of rain clouds. “I know it.”
Ava let the cynicism radiate off her, and she noticed that Robert and Declan inhaled sharply and shifted uncomfortably in their seats on either side of her on the couch. Wait, could they sense that? Could they…did they smell that on her?
“Grace is trying to help you,” Robert said, the tension in his voice reverberating in every nerve in Ava’s body.
“I’m still waiting for this famous explanation,” Ava snapped, unable to contain the anger that suddenly welled up in her. Her eyes burned with heat, and she ground her teeth together. She felt nasty and mad and hot.
Grace stared at her, her eyes widening slightly. She sat perfectly still in her chair, even after Sean set the mug with the steaming, fragrant tea beside her. Slowly, she lifted the mug to her perfect lips and sipped a little bit. As she swallowed, she seemed to relax slightly, frowning and touching her tapered fingers to her temples.
Ava felt her lip curling disdainfully at this charade, her anger surging at the thought that Robert, Declan, and Sean were gullible enough to fall for this sweet act.
“Stop it!”
Ava was slammed back against the sofa as if she had been slapped by the sound of Grace’s voice. Her ears burned as if they were on fire, and a deep sigh was forced out of her chest, her breath coming out in a scorching puff of air.
She inhaled shakily, the scent of amaranth filling her nostrils with its gentle aroma. Her body felt cool and limp, and she lay against the back of the couch as her heartbeat slowed back to a normal rhythm.
“Ava!” Robert exclaimed, gathering her in his arms, crushing her to him. “Are you all right?”
“What happened?” Declan asked harshly. He turned to Grace. “What the hell just happened?”
“That’s exactly it,” Grace replied wearily, covering her face with her hands as Sean rubbed her shoulders. “Hell just happened. The evil dead tried to get through Ava.”
“Possession?” Robert snapped, and Ava looked up to see the fury snapping like a live wire in his golden eyes.
She suddenly understood what had just occurred, and she began to shake uncontrollably. Robert’s arms tightened like steel bands around her, and Declan held her hands in his, gently rubbing them and soothing them.
Sean went back to the microwave and returned quickly with another cup of amaranth tea that he held to Ava’s lips. The taste and the fragrance soothed her, muting the panic in her mind.
“Ava Bell,” Grace said quietly, “it’s time you learn about yourself.”
Ava could only stare helplessly at the other woman.
“Your mother did not die of epileptic psychosis when you were fifteen,” Grace continued, holding Ava’s gaze with unforgiving firmness. “She was killed by demonic possession. She was never supposed to leave the boundaries of Blue Moon, and as a result, she became the only case of Blue Moon demonic possession carrying beyond our town borders.”
“My…mother?” Ava whispered between dry lips, unable to comprehend fully what Grace was saying.
“Your mother, Evelyn Bell, died trying to save you from your destiny,” Grace continued sadly. “It couldn’t be done, though. You can’t be saved.”
Ava lost the feeling of Robert’s arms and Declan’s hands. She lost all sense of connection with her physical body as her mind reeled with terror at Grace’s words.
“Your bloodline goes back to the earliest days of Blue Moon, Ava Bell,” Grace said slowly. “Did you know that Eve Barrows’s maiden name was Bell?”
“You mean…” Ava’s voice died out in her dried up throat. “Are you trying to say I’m descended from Eve Barrows?”
Grace smiled wanly and pressed her fingers to her temples again, hissing out a breath.
“No,” she said weakly. “Not from Eve. From her sister Eliza and her sister’s lover, Ezra Barrows.”
Chapter 18
“What? No! What do you mean?” Declan, Sean, and Robert all exclaimed, even though Ava could do nothing but stare numbly at Grace.
“No one has ever heard of that,” Sean said, looking down at the blonde woman leaning tiredly back in her chair.
“That’s because it was a secret to be kept by the Lorekeeper and to be told only to a Barrows woman,” Grace replied. “Evelyn Bell knew it. She knew the whole story, but she had dismissed it as something she’d never have to deal with. That all changed after the three of you were born.”
“How’s that?” Sean demanded.
“Blue Moon had been slowly dying out as a town for decades,” Grace said. “Nobody new in town ever stayed for long. Something always scared them away. Only the old families remained, and once in a while a new family ended up staying when they had the misfortune of bearing a son within Blue Moon’s borders.”
“Why does that matter?” Ava asked.
“Because of the death bequest of Ezra Barrows upon Aristide Molineaux and Blue Moon,” Grace explained. “Ezra’s shade placed the gift and curse upon Blue Moon that all sons born on this soil would have the ability to protect the town from the demons his wife had summoned through her black magic. It’s unclear exactly how Ezra’s shade managed to do this and why it turned out that all the sons of Blue Moon would become werewolves, but I think I’ve come up with a plausible hypothesis. For thousands of years prior to the arrival of the white man, the Native Americans of the region had viewed the wolf as one of the strongest totems and symbols of all that was powerful in nature. If Ezra’s ghost was somehow able to summon and manipulate the energy and spiritual forces around him, I believe that he may have drawn the wolf totem from the spiritual world to the physical world.”
Grace drew in a long breath and sighed it out before continuing. “The Molineaux have always been the alphas of the wolves of Blue Moon, but none of them has ever been strong enough to drive the demons away, though all of them have tried. Aristide Molineaux predicted that it would take the combined strength of three Molineaux brothers, fighting together like the Holy Trinity—a nod to Aristide’s Catholic roots—to banish the demons back to hell. He also said that it would take a Barrows woman to avenge a Bell’s crime.”
Ava felt an uncomfortable twinge in the back of her mind, like an echo of something she already knew but couldn’t have known
. She shifted nervously in Robert’s arms, trying to force herself to listen as an academic rather than as a…a…Barrows woman.
“So, where does that bring me to?” Grace asked after a moment’s pause, in which she had rubbed her face.
“Me,” Sean said, trying to grin, but there were too many shadows in his eyes.
“Right,” Grace replied with a ghost of a smile. “So, when you were born, the town knew that they had the trinity now, the three wolves strong enough to face down the demons. All that was needed to set the town free from the curse, the demons, and the cage of its borders was the Barrows woman.”
“Wait,” Ava interrupted. “The cage of its borders?”
“Part of the curse of the werewolves is that no man born of Blue Moon can be away from its soil from sundown to sunup,” Grace said.
“What?” Ava exclaimed. “You mean no man born here can ever leave here?”
“During the day, yes. But, they must all be within Blue Moon’s borders by nightfall, and they can’t leave again until sunrise. They’re bound to the earth here.”
“Wait, what happens if they’re not back by sunset?” Ava asked, her heart pounding as she dreaded the answer.
“They die,” Grace replied simply, her face a mask of steely grief.
Ava looked at Robert, Declan, and Sean in turn, meeting their saddened, withdrawn expressions, and a great wave of pity and love rushed through her, washing her clean of all doubts and fears.
She loved these men, these sad, noble men who served a cruel curse without complaint. Trapped by fate, isolated from the world, haunted by evil, these men struggled valiantly to protect those they cared about. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know them for more than a few days. It didn’t matter that somehow, she had fallen in love with all three of them. It didn’t matter that everything she had ever believed and thought she understood had been turned on its head. In that moment, she knew that love was the only thing that mattered. Love was the only thing worth fighting for, and whatever she’d have to do or fight to help the men she loved, she’d do without question or hesitation.
“Evelyn Bell came to my mother after Sean was born,” Grace said softly. “She was terrified. She was only fifteen at the time, just about seven years older than Robert. It wasn’t out of the question that she would be the Barrows woman who would have to stand with the Molineaux wolf brothers and fight the demons. Even worse, if she wasn’t the one, then her daughter would be. Six months later, Evelyn ran away, down to Portland. Two years later, when Evelyn had just turned eighteen, her daughter Ava Bell was born.”
Ava could only stare at Grace, listening as the horror of her family’s history was slowly unfurled before her in a panoply of tragedies.
“It’s no coincidence that you’re here,” Grace said. “It’s no coincidence that you feel drawn to Robert, Declan, and Sean. This was meant to be. This must be.”
Silence fell thick and heavy upon them, and the weight of centuries seemed to crowd her thoughts, leaving only room enough for a straight and narrow path leading into shadow.
“Tell us more about Ezra and Eliza,” Robert said finally. “I still can’t believe it.”
Grace sipped her tea and gestured for Ava to do the same. Hurriedly, Ava gulped the tea down, feeling the clean, sweet perfume of the herbal tea sweep through her soul.
“Ezra Barrows was very handsome,” Grace said, looking off into the distance, as if she was recalling something she could actually see. “He was full of energy and purpose. Though he didn’t come from a wealthy family, the Barrows were respected and respectable, and Ezra was determined to make good on the promise of a promised land. He was a talented carpenter, and he had earned and saved enough to buy himself a farm. Nothing big, but it was enough to support him and a family he could see himself soon having. He built White Farm with tremendous love, thinking of Eliza Bell as the woman who would grace his home and bless his life.”
“Eliza loved Ezra just as much. Her parents had no objection to her marrying, despite the fact her older sister, Eve, remained unwed. Eve and Eliza were beautiful, and records from the time describe them as having deep brown eyes and brown hair, only Eliza’s had an unusual grayish cast to hers, making her by far the more striking of the two sisters.”
Ava flinched as Declan reached out to touch her hair. She froze in place, unable to look anywhere but at Grace. She couldn’t bring herself to look down and see the waves of slate gray–streaked brown hair curled around her shoulders. She felt Declan lift a lock of her hair and press it to his lips. Dizziness swept her, and she dug her nails into Robert’s arms to keep from fainting.
“Eve couldn’t stand the thought of being an old maid,” Grace said slowly. “She was consumed by jealousy for everything that Eliza had—her beauty, her goodness, the way people loved her and gravitated to her. Eve also envied the natural spiritual talents that Eliza seemed to have. At a young age, Eliza had shown evidence of being a healer, curing people just with her touch. She had a way with all animals, taming even the wolves that came out of the forests and having the bears and foxes do her bidding. Eve began to experiment, trying to discover and tap any psychic abilities within herself. She soon found that she did indeed have talents. However, she was the mirror image of Eliza, reversed in so many ways. Where Eliza’s talents were for good, Eve’s were for darkness.”
Grace’s expression became pained. “Where Eliza healed, Eve could hurt. Where Eliza tamed, Eve drove wild. Where Eliza commanded kindness, Eve promised forth evil. It didn’t take long for Eve to use her newfound abilities to bring about the ruin of Eliza and Ezra’s happiness. Eve cast a spell upon Ezra so that he turned to her, forgetting that Eliza even existed. In his eyes now, Eve outshone Eliza like the sun hid the moon. Eve and Ezra were married.”
Was it her imagination, or had the sun disappeared behind the clouds? Ava glanced out the window at the gloom that had suddenly swooped down from the sky.
“Fickle Eve soon grew tired of her triumph, and she grew tired of Ezra,” Grace said, her voice growing strained. “But, there was nowhere to go and nothing more to strive for now that she had vanquished her sister and punished her sister’s lover for not loving her first. Into the vacuum of boredom crept voices that promised new worlds of conquest, wealth, power, adulation…anything her heart desired if only she would find a way to open this world to Them.”
The word chilled Ava, and she shivered as if a cold blast of air had just blown through her. For a long, horrified moment, she watched as her breath came out in a frosty puff. She warmed up again half a second later, and she wondered if she had just been imagining things. None of the others seemed to have noticed anything. She must have been hallucinating from all the stress.
“As Eve grew more obsessed with the voices and their promises, she grew careless in maintaining her hold over Ezra,” Grace said. “The spell on him eventually wore off, and he realized what had happened. Devastated and infuriated, he went to Eliza and explained everything. Eliza, who at first had been heartbroken at what had seemed like the ultimate willing betrayal by her lover, quickly saw the truth of his words about Eve. Joyfully reunited in their hearts and minds, Ezra and Eliza were still trapped by Eve’s machinations. If they proclaimed the truth in order to free Ezra by divorce, they would have to accuse Eliza’s sister of witchcraft, practically guaranteeing that she would be put to death. Not only that, but an accusation of witchcraft would ruin Eliza’s family and possibly redound to Eliza as well.”
“There was nothing they could do. Legally. Months stretched to years. Eve became secretive and withdrawn, spending more and more time wandering the woods that covered the stretch of land between White Farm and the Molineaux estate. Eliza grew sad and distant in her own way, the knowledge that Ezra loved her no longer enough to fill her empty life. Ezra told Eliza that he would lie awake at night, frustrated and hating Eve. In the darkest hours, voices would whisper his name and suggest things with knives and ropes, things that could set him free of Eve
. He prayed fervently for God’s protection, but the voices only grew stronger. Alarmed, Eliza made him a conjure packet, a small leather pouch with protective herbs, that would protect him from evil spirits. She had learned this spell from the famed Tituba in Salem, where she and her family had come from originally. The protective sachet seemed to ease the voices that troubled Ezra, but they could not protect him the very real, human threat of Eve.”
The wind had picked up outside, and Ava watched dead leaves fly by the windows as she listened, spellbound by Grace’s tale.
“Ezra and Eliza had found they could no longer deny their need to be together, and in the last few weeks of his life, they consummated their love. Soon enough, Eliza discovered that she was pregnant with Ezra’s child. She was frantic with fear. She said nothing to Ezra, and she quietly began to make plans to leave Blue Moon. There was no way she could stay there, unwed, and bear a child that everyone would know was Ezra Barrows’s bairn. It wasn’t the thought of scandal or shame that drove her, though. It was the knowledge that Eve’s jealousy would be reawakened by the discovery of Ezra’s true feelings and his infidelity, and Eliza worried that Eve would seek revenge against him. So, for the sake of the man she loved, she ran away, forsaking everyone and everything to live in hiding and secret somewhere far from her home.”
When had the fire gotten so low? Ava couldn’t help noticing that somehow, the healthy, hungry blaze of a few minutes ago had dwindled to dying coals far too quickly. A puff of wind gusted down the chimney and swirled the hot ashes in the hearth, making Ava’s heart jump.
“Eliza’s sacrifice was all for nothing in the end,” Grace said, pausing to wipe away the tears that were teetering on her lids, threatening to spill over. “Eve found out that Eliza was with child, and she knew that it was Ezra’s. Her jealousy, dormant since the triumph of her marriage, flared up into a brutal, all-consuming, white-hot inferno. No one will ever know exactly what happened on that cold November night that Ezra Barrows died. We do know that he died without a final good-bye to his beloved Eliza, and that he died never knowing that she carried his unborn babe. Eve claimed he had died of an apoplectic attack, and that she had buried him herself in the woods. His grave has never been found.”
Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 13