Blood Roots

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

  Slowly she pulled the sheet away from his chest.

  The sight of his wound made her want to cry.

  She bent her head low.

  He stirred only slightly as she pressed her lips against him.

  His blood was salty, metallic on her tongue, and as she tenderly kissed his chest, she ran her fingertips over him, the width and the length of him, his shoulders, his stomach, his ribs and his hips. In wonder, she felt his first slow stirrings of passion, passion rousing beneath her touch, and as she moved her lips over him, her hands over him, he moaned softly, his body stretching in innocent sleep. She kissed his neck, his cheeks, his lips, oh Jesse, Jesse, and suddenly she wanted to see him, all of him, to look at him and know him and memorize every curve and angle of his body. Slowly and carefully she worked, so he wouldn’t wake up, and when she finally had his clothes off, she gazed down at him with a slow intake of breath, his beautiful body, soft and strong and hard, lying there just for her, her eyes, her hands, her lips, for her and her alone …

  Jesse … let me look—let me touch—

  He moved beneath her, a flicker of pleasure, of pain, of confused helplessness, just an instant upon his face, and she could feel his gentleness and his strength, throbbing together as she held him, and his yearning and his hesitance and his surrender.

  She stretched herself tightly against him.

  She could still feel him trembling.

  She kissed his lips, and they moved softly, smiling, saying her name.

  30

  SHE COULD HEAR RAIN falling on the roof.

  Groggily, Olivia opened her eyes and turned over in bed. Wind lashed at the outside walls and whined shrilly through the cracks of the building, and she sat up in alarm.

  Jesse was standing in the doorway watching her.

  “What time is it?” Olivia mumbled.

  “Five.”

  “In the morning?”

  He gave a slow nod.

  “It’s so dark,” she said, shivering a little as a clap of thunder shook the church.

  “It’s storming again.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling, then let them settle back on her face.

  “How long have you been watching me?” she asked him, wishing he wouldn’t.

  “When did you take my clothes?” he returned, and in spite of his obvious dismay, she thought he might have blushed a little.

  Olivia didn’t answer right away. She straightened her skirt and blouse and ran one hand back through her hair. She felt wrinkled and damp and grubby, and the heat hung in the air like a sponge.

  “You took them off yourself,” she said quietly. “I woke up, and you’d taken them off.”

  He looked puzzled, not wholly convinced.

  “You were a gentleman,” she added. “Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But something happened last night,” Jesse said, and Olivia glanced up in surprise, as if she had slipped back into a dream. Strange … she remembered the whole long night as an endless succession of eerie settings and scenes, yet now that it was morning, everything had run together in a muddy blur.

  “I … I’m not sure what you mean,” she said truthfully.

  Jesse hesitated. His white shirt was stained with blood, and it hung open a little, but she couldn’t really see his chest wound.

  He stared straight at her, his eyes solemn. “The dreams you were having … don’t you remember them?”

  And then, in a jumbled rush, bits and pieces came back to her, like stills from a macabre movie, characters, dialogue, colors, sensations, all of them swirling together through her head, exploding together in her brain.

  “I remember something,” she said carefully, “mostly nightmares.”

  “Yes.” His lips barely moved. “Always the nightmares.”

  “But …” She thought about it for a long moment. “They had something to do with this place, I think … with Devereaux House. People were in it that I knew.” She stared up at him, frowning. “How do you know about my dreams? Did I talk in my sleep? Did I wake you up?”

  “Devereaux House … has a way with dreams.”

  “I believe you were in it,” Olivia said haltingly, her brow furrowed in deep thought. Something … something … just beyond the reach of memory. “I believe Skyler might have been in it, too … Yoly maybe … or Mathilde …”

  “Were you in it?” he asked, and she looked at him in surprise.

  “I don’t think so. Should I have been?”

  He held her eyes for several seconds. Uncomfortably, she looked away and ran her hands over the tumbled covers of the bed.

  “You told me once that you wished you knew the past of Devereaux House,” Jesse said. “That you wished you knew some of its secrets.”

  Reluctantly she raised her eyes, her expression faintly troubled. Her mind felt peculiarly empty, as if it had firmly shut the doorway to all recollections.

  “But you did know it last night,” Jesse went on. “Secrets and history both. Think, Olivia. Think hard.”

  She glanced at him uneasily and then away. She lifted her hair off her shoulders and fanned herself with her hand.

  “It’s hot in here,” she said. “I feel like I can’t breathe.”

  He walked over and stood looking down at her small, anxious face, and he slid his fingers beneath her chin and forced her gently to look at him. “Olivia … the dreams …”

  “You were dreaming, too,” she said, almost defensively, and she turned her head out of his grasp. “And you were restless—in a lot of pain.” She frowned at him. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you were running a fever last night. And if you had a fever, you were probably delirious, but that didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “You have to leave here,” Jesse said solemnly. “You have to leave this place today. As quickly as you can.”

  “Why? What are you talking about—”

  “You were scared when you came here yesterday, don’t you remember that? You were scared and upset because you didn’t understand things that were happening at Devereaux House.” He stopped … took a deep breath. “I told you once, things don’t have to be seen to be real. Well, believe me,” he said, and this time his eyes looked fully and ominously into her face. “Believe me. They are very real.”

  Olivia was standing up now, moving away from him toward the wall. “You’re not making any sense—”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.” Jesse’s voice rose. “It doesn’t make any sense at all, but you’ve got to trust me. You’ve got to leave here. You’re in danger if you stay.”

  My house … my home … Grandmother …

  “Leave here?” Olivia said shakily.

  Yesterday she would have … she might have … she’d been so shaken, so shocked … but now, in the morning, here with Jesse, his shy, beautiful body, the innocent bed they had shared, here in the church, here where yesterday seemed very far away, she was almost sure now that trying to kill Skyler hadn’t been real, that finding Helen hadn’t been real, that yesterday itself had only been like one of last night’s dreams that she could scarcely remember.

  “Leave here and never come back?” I belong here but you don’t … you should leave … Yoly and Skyler and Mathilde should leave, I’m the one who should stay at Devereaux House … just Grandmother and me …

  “You dreamed my dreams, Olivia. Don’t you see?” Jesse’s voice tightened. “Everything that went through my head last night went into yours. We shared everything. Every thought … every feeling.”

  Olivia stared back at him. “I don’t understand …”

  “Please.” Jesse gazed earnestly into her face, and Olivia felt a cold chill work its way up her spine.

  “Jesse … what are you trying to say to me?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he moved across the room and stopped in front of her. He pulled his shirt open. She gazed in horror at his chest.

  The wound was gone. His chest was smooth and tan, with no sign of torn
flesh anywhere.

  Olivia backed away from him, felt the wall hard against her, blocking her escape.

  “Jesse, what is going on!” she cried.

  “You kissed me last night, didn’t you?” he said softly, one hand lingering at the opening of his shirt. “You kissed me right here, and you fell asleep, with your head on my chest—”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know! What does that have to do with anything!”

  “You kissed me and you shared my dreams, Olivia. There’s only one way you could ever have done that.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re confusing me, and you’re scaring me! I thought you were different—”

  I can’t be different. His voice rose. “I don’t have a choice, Olivia—”

  “I thought you were different, but you’re as crazy as all the others! What are you doing—”

  Without warning Jesse grabbed her, pinning her shoulders to the wall. His body pressed tight against hers. She could feel his heart racing, his body trembling, and the look he gave her was frightening.

  “You think it will be a welcome homecoming,” Jesse said between clenched teeth, and as she looked into his eyes, her heart began to freeze within her. “Well, I promise you. It … will … not.”

  “Let go of me, Jesse, let go!”

  “When you face them, then you’ll know,” he said, leaning down closer, his eyes pleading into hers. “The dreams, Olivia—think of the dreams—”

  “No!” Olivia screamed. “I can’t remember!”

  She ran past him out of the church and through the dripping woods. She could hear him calling after her, running after her, and she frantically tried to remember where she’d left the boat. She deliberately veered off the path and ducked beneath a low overhang of tangled brush, and she heard him curse as he ran right into it. It slowed him down just long enough for her to get away. She looked back as she rowed to the opposite shore, and she could see him standing on the bank in the rain, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, gazing after her with a look of pure anguish.

  The dreams … think of the dreams …

  She ran back to the house, knowing in her heart that she was running from something, yet not knowing what. Knowing somehow that Jesse was right, yet not knowing how he was right.

  The dreams …

  But they had been just ordinary dreams, hadn’t they? Woven from fragments of deep subconscious things, things that made no sense, bits and pieces of fears and memories and suspicions, people whose faces she might have recognized or might not. Devereaux House. All the dreams had something to do with Devereaux House.

  But that’s because I’m here now. Because I’ve always wanted to be here.

  And Skyler had been in the dreams and Jesse had been there and Mathilde and Yoly …

  And some woman … some beautiful woman screaming and begging beside her lovers on the floor.

  Strong magic …

  Olivia remembered something about magic, and she pushed it impatiently from her mind. There was no such thing as magic, she told herself bitterly, no such thing as love, as happiness, as family …

  I’m family. I’m Devereaux. I belong. They don’t. I’ll make them all leave.

  She saw the house rising up ahead of her through the downpour like a bad omen. She thought of Skyler and Mathilde and Helen, of Jesse’s warning, and she thought, very calmly, I will take a torch and I will burn Helen’s body in the stairwell, I will give her a death with dignity, and I will burn this whole place down and everyone who is in it, and then there will be no more dreams and no one to scare me away …

  She stopped on the back veranda. She would go to the kitchen at once and take a smoldering log from the fire, but she would be careful to save Miss Rose first, because Miss Rose was old and feeble anyway and not likely to be any trouble.

  She lifted her head into the rain, a strange sensation rippling just under her skin. She could feel something—a sense of urgency in the air—something palpable and tragic and transitory. And as she stood there uncertainly, waiting for the feeling to identify itself to her, Yoly came out the back door.

  “What’s happened?” Olivia’s voice was dull, and her eyes squinted through warm wet streams that gushed from the eaves above. She saw Yoly’s split-second appraisal of her, and she heard the tightness of Yoly’s voice.

  “It’s Miss Rose. She’s havin’ one of her spells.”

  “Spells? What does that mean? Is she dying?” Olivia grabbed Yoly’s arm, but the woman only gave her a sad stare and hurried off. “Is she dying?” Olivia said again to the house, to the rain, should I tell her now …

  Her mind did a jolting flashback. She saw her stepfather sprawled in the garden, legs kicking weakly, blood gushing out … and Mama staring at her from the attic floor, lying there in her own sticky mess …

  Dying …

  She saw the cemetery, tombs rotted away and forgotten … she smelled the foul stagnant air—she saw Skyler ripping brown vines from broken crosses on nameless graves …

  Dying …

  She saw the inside of her mind, the cold dark places, the hidden stairwell, the mausoleum, the attic cluttered with long-ago memories … Devereaux House …

  Dying …

  Olivia went into the downstairs hall and looked around to make sure she was alone.

  She turned the latch on Miss Rose’s door and slipped inside.

  31

  MISS ROSE LOOKED MORE frail and shrunken than ever, lying there in her oversized bed. The lilac flow of netting cast a sickly pall over her drained face, and the draperies hung somberly around her as though she already rested on her catafalque.

  Olivia shut the door softly behind her and stared hard at the shriveled face upon the pillow. Miss Rose didn’t even seem to be breathing.

  “Miss Rose?” Olivia whispered. Grandmother … it’s me …

  The eyes remained shut. Olivia gazed at the soft purple nightgown until she finally saw the slight rise and fall of Miss Rose’s chest.

  “Miss Rose?” she whispered again.

  For one moment the head shifted slightly, the eyes struggling to open. A faint sigh escaped her lips, and Olivia strained to hear.

  “Olivia …”

  Olivia felt her heart stop. A strange trembling crawled through her soul.

  Miss Rose moaned again. “Olivia …”

  Olivia stood there, unable to move. She saw Miss Rose try to lift one arm … saw it drop back uselessly upon the covers …

  And then Miss Rose wept.

  A hopeless, empty sound.

  “No … don’t cry,” Olivia murmured, and she started toward her, but there were footsteps out in the hallway, and she froze beside the bed.

  Miss Rose’s hand plucked restlessly at the covers. The footsteps paused just outside the bedroom, and the doorknob began to turn. Olivia spun around, looking for a place to hide. She saw the large trunk sitting against the opposite wall and just had time to climb in and lower the lid before Skyler came into the room.

  There was a latch on the upper part of the trunk. As it came down and caught against the bottom ledge, it left a sliver of space, about half an inch high, for Olivia to see through.

  Skyler went straight to Miss Rose’s bedside and stood for a long while, looking down at her, saying nothing. His hair hung down over his eyes, and his cheeks were smudged with dirt. Very slowly he slid one arm along the covers and lifted her hand in his.

  “How are you?” he said softly. “Should I get Jesse?”

  There was no response. She lay so still … so white …

  Skyler closed his eyes for another long moment. He pressed her hand against his heart and held it there.

  “What can we do?” he whispered. “There must be something … just tell me.”

  “Olivia …”

  “What?” he murmured. He leaned in closer and put his ear close to her lips. “Who do you want?”

  “My daughter … Olivia …”

  Skyler smil
ed sadly, shaking his head. “Catherine,” he corrected her. “Catherine … not Olivia.”

  Catherine … Mama’s name …

  This time the eyelids fluttered open. Miss Rose stared at Skyler as if trying to bring him into focus.

  “My daughter …”

  “Catherine,” he corrected again gently. “Olivia’s the new girl. The one who just came.”

  “Oh … of course.” Miss Rose managed a feeble smile, as if distantly amused at her own mistake. “I knew that, of course. I feel so … confused this morning.”

  “The new girl.” Skyler nodded, one eyebrow lifting. “The one who keeps snooping and asking questions. So what do you think I should do, Miss Rose?” he asked with forced humor. “Cut out her tongue so she can’t tell on the Devereauxs? Or just eat her all at once and have it over with?”

  Through the crack in the trunk, the room seemed to sway wildly. Olivia felt a numbness … a cold, vague numbness throbbing through her, and as she tried noiselessly to shift positions, she realized the strange feeling was coming from the inside of her thigh.

  She worked her hand down … fingered the bruised flesh …

  Her skin felt cold … as her soul felt suddenly cold …

  Skyler’s comments hung in her mind, meanings too horrible, too impossible even to consider.

  “Jesse’s being a gentleman, as usual,” he went on casually. “But as you know, I’ve never had that kind of … patience.”

  Miss Rose shook her head at him scoldingly. Skyler gave a nasty grin, but it was unconvincing, tempered with deep worry.

  “Bad child,” she whispered. A faint laugh flittered through her throat, and Skyler clutched her hand tighter. “Are you going to behave yourself when I’m gone? No.” She shook her head, smiling weakly. “Probably not.”

  Skyler’s smile was strained. His eyes glistened, but there was no amusement in them now.

  “We won’t talk about that. We won’t talk about you being gone …”

  “But we have to talk about it. I’m dying, Skyler. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  His shoulders jerked … his jaw clenched, almost angrily. A muscle tightened slowly along one cheek.