Bound in Black

by Juliette Cross

  Once more, I set my attention on my mother and dared to step closer. Trembling from the second I saw her, I touched my fingers to the medal around my neck, the one she had given me, and prayed for the strength to endure this trial. One of us must die. This was impossible. The world asked too much of me.

  “Mom?”

  She stopped watching the sky and looked at me. “Why do you call me that?”

  Bamal had wiped me from her memory. Another stab to the heart.

  “Because…you are my mother.”

  A frown puckered her brow, and I nearly collapsed. This same look of concentration on her face when she painted in her studio was seared in my memory.

  “I am no one’s mother.” Though her expression was passive, my VS detected a vibration of dark power radiating outward. “I am my lord’s queen.”

  I glanced toward Bamal. He could hear nothing, but the scowl on his face told me he didn’t like whatever he saw.

  “You may not remember. But once, you were my mother.”

  Curious eyes followed me as I stepped closer. I still held my katana, though it was useless. The will I’d had to kill Bamal’s Vessel vanished the second I saw who she was.

  “I would watch you in your studio. You painted the most beautiful things. Always bright colors.”

  Her gaze left mine to watch the sky once more, apparently deeming me no threat. A rising wind whipped through the ring, lifting her golden hair. The wispy clouds rolled above us, revealing the silvery orb between patches of darkness. The shadow of the earth eclipsing the moon grew greater, dividing the moon in half.

  Sun and Moon, eye to eye; immortals await one battle cry. For within each heart of Moon and Sun, lies key to rule over all and one.

  I was the Moon. My mother was the Sun. I’d never understood this cryptic aspect of the prophecy, believing it to be something to do with the eclipse. It was us—my mother and me.

  “You painted this one painting of the day I was born. You stood in the window, cradling me close in a white blanket with the midnight sky beyond. Dad hung it in the house. Your husband…he loved you. He never loved another.”

  Her gaze dropped from the sky again. “Love?”

  “Yes.” I opened my VS, letting it slide outside my body, holding the memory that had always made me strongest when casting any spell. The one where my mother—the woman standing before me as a stranger—held me in her arms with such affection and read nighttime stories with such love in her heart that I knew she’d loved me, no matter that I’d lived with the weight of her suicide all my life.

  But it hadn’t been suicide. It was a sacrifice.

  “I know who you are,” she said, voice steady, gaze hard. “You are the enemy. The one to take from me my lord. I will not allow this to happen.”

  “Please remember.” This was much harder than pulling Jude from the abyss of Lethe. She had been under Bamal’s hand for a decade. “My favorite was Dr. Seuss.”

  I called my VS, commanding it to obey my will in a way I’d never asked it before. At first, it would not come. The pain of seeing my mother smothered my thoughts. I closed my eyes and found the memory that had been the one to give me the control over my power.

  When the familiar heat pulsed through my body, I opened my eyes. The glow of my skin brightened until the light filled the circle and my memory came to life. There, in transparent form in shades of gray and white, stood my childhood bedroom, and my mother sitting on the bed, one arm around my ten-year-old self. Propped on my belly was a book. My memory mother smiled sweetly and crooned the singsong words. “Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive that is you-er than you.” She touched my nose, and I giggled. The visible memory washed away in an ethereal cloud, but the sound of my childish laughter remained.

  “This is a trick of the mind,” she said, though her voice shook. “My lord warned me you would do something like this.”

  “He is not your lord. At least, he wasn’t always so. You had a family, a husband who loved you more than anything in this world.”

  With a wave of my hand, I called the power of Light forward again and revealed a second vision, the one I cherished most. My dad twirled my mother in his arms in the kitchen, singing an Elvis Presley song. He crooned, “But I…can’t…help…falling in love with you.” My mother tossed her head back, golden locks swinging. This time when the memory faded into ether, her lip trembled.

  “That isn’t real,” she said with less confidence than before.

  A guttural roar raised our attention to the sky. A great black dragon beat its wings, soaring closer. Its silhouette against the half-eclipsed moon raised chills on my skin. It swooped closer till I could see it carried something, someone in its claws. A rush of wind filled the ring when the beast hovered over us and dropped its quarry toward the stone slab.

  “No!” I screamed, not wanting her to fall to her death.

  My mother thrust out an arm, and a black mist caught Mindy before her body hit the rock. She floated gently onto her feet right inside the ring of stones. Barefoot, wearing jeans and a New Orleans Saints sweatshirt—apparently what she was wearing when Damas had taken her, Mindy walked, zombie-like, to the stone slab, never even glancing my way, and lay down on her back.

  “She mustn’t die until the appointed time,” said my mother. “We will wait until the Blood Moon is full.”

  I was right. Damas had taken her to use as the prophecy’s sacrifice. I was ready for this, though anger seethed through me just the same. But Mindy didn’t even try to get up and escape. Her head lolled to the side like she was drugged. Swirling black clouded her irises. I’d seen this before—the girls in Gorham’s club House of Hades, the ones who’d been infected with demon essence to control their will. Damas apparently had given Mindy to Bamal to prepare as a willing sacrifice.

  “Your tricks and visions will not fool me,” my mother said. “My lord warned me of you.”

  “Your lord is a liar.” Fury swelled inside me. “He erased Dad and me from your memory. But I know…I know in your heart, you must remember.”

  The shadow of the earth had nearly enveloped the moon above us. Only a sliver of white remained, the red-tinged eclipse swallowing the globe whole.

  My mother slipped from under her cloak a black-boned dagger and raised it above Mindy, who passively awaited her fate.

  “No!” I dropped my katana and leapt across the stone slab. I grabbed hold of my mother’s wrist, and we tumbled to the ground.

  Her blue eyes transformed, darkening to bloody red. She opened her mouth and released a black mist, which snaked into a web of tendrils, wrapped my wrists and pulled me off her. She rolled to her feet, losing her red cloak, dressed in full black tights and shirt beneath.

  “Flamma intus!” I commanded.

  A pulse of white splintered the black web, releasing me from the bonds. I jerked to my feet.

  Catlike, my mother circled the slab, the black-boned dagger still in hand. “She must die. You know the prophecy.”

  “I won’t let you hurt her.”

  “Then you offer yourself as the sacrifice? Blood must pool under darkened sky or all will perish. You will. So will she. And anyone else you love on this earth. All of us will perish and be lost unless the sacrifice is made.”

  I glanced over her shoulder, seeing but not hearing the jeers of Flamma from the other side. Demons screamed their taunts, but I could hear nothing. Jude remained solid and still, watching with his broadsword in his fist.

  I couldn’t sacrifice myself, because it was no longer just me at risk. There was my unborn child, even now a warm reminder deep within my womb as my VS flooded my veins. I couldn’t kill myself without killing the life within me.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t sacrifice myself.”

  “Then she must—”

  “Do you know why I won’t sacrifice myself?” I cut her off.

  “Because you are not brave enough.”

  “No, Mom.”

  She n
arrowed her eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

  I circled the stone. Mindy still lay there, helpless and oblivious to her fate.

  “You are my mother. Your blood courses through my veins. Bamal doesn’t understand that a mother’s love is stronger than any spell of darkness he cast upon you.”

  She stopped circling. “Enough. I will do as my lord commands.” My real mother was buried deep in the dark, having been under Bamal’s control so long. She’d been conditioned by fear of her lord and master and forgotten the truth of who she was.

  She raised her dagger high and sliced toward Mindy’s chest. I launched myself toward her again. The dagger embedded in my shoulder as we rolled to the ground once more. A vibration resounded outside our protected shell. I rolled my head sideways to see a myriad of fanged demons roaring outside the circle. I couldn’t hear anything.

  My mother tried to raise herself, but I clutched her by the wrist and forced her back to my side. With the other hand, I pulled the dagger from my shoulder and tossed it to the ground. My VS pooled around the wound, blocking Bamal’s poison from seeping into my body. I touched my fingers to the gash and jerked my mother’s arm forward, wiping a streak of blood on her pale wrist.

  “This is my blood…and yours. Can’t you feel it?”

  My VS rose from within me, singing with a vibrancy I’d not felt before.

  “No,” she cried, her crimson eyes bleaching pale blue. Her gaze shot upward once more, panic filling her small frame. “The Blood Moon is full. It must be now…or we all perish. My lord will be angry.”

  “Mother!” I screamed. “Come to me. I am blood of your blood.”

  Her trembling hand came out to touch the blood streaking her skin.

  I spoke not to her but to the power swelling in my core. “Flame within, if you have ever been mine, show her what is true and divine.”

  Closing my eyes, I shot like an arrow a stream of images laced with the power of Light straight to my mother’s heart. Making s’mores by the fire with Mom and Dad…riding a bike for the first time…watching her paint from the stool in her studio…dressing up for Halloween, both of us smiling for Dad when he took the picture…blowing out candles on my seventh birthday while she laughed and kissed my cheek: “May all your wishes come true, princess.” A swirl of dark, then Mom standing on the rail of the Mississippi Bridge. A bystander yelled, “Lady, don’t do this. It’s not worth it.” My mother’s haunted face turned to the camera, the gusting wind lifting her hair in golden streams around her delicate face. She replied, “Yes. They are,” and disappeared over the edge.

  I yanked us from the memory. Her woeful gaze held me, though she said nothing at all. I took her hand and placed it on my belly. “Your grandchild grows here. Your blood…and mine. I cannot sacrifice myself. And I can’t let you kill my best friend.”

  My vision blurred from the amping of power building to a boiling point and from the tears pooling in my eyes.

  “But there must be a sacrifice,” she said. “Genevieve.”

  I sobbed at the sound of my name on her lips. “Mom. There must be another way. There must be.”

  I hated the whole world at this moment when there was no way out, no way around a fucking prophecy that demanded death to unleash heaven and hell on humanity.

  She lifted her hand to my cheek and smiled. “Shhhh…don’t cry, princess.” With a lightning-swift move, she grabbed the dagger from the grassy ground and plunged it into her heart.

  “No!” I shrieked.

  She fell onto her back. I pulled her into my lap and grabbed the handle of the dagger, but she stopped me, her hand over mine, our blood mingling.

  “No, daughter… I tried to sacrifice myself once…and failed.” She coughed. A line of red poured from the corner of her mouth.

  “You didn’t fail, Mom. You saved us. I’m safe. I’m alive.”

  “Your father,” she said, desperate eyes searching mine.

  “Yes. He’s okay. He loves you still. So much, Mom.”

  “And I him.” Her mouth quivered into a smile, scarlet staining her teeth. “My lord kept him from me, from my thoughts. He took me away from you both…but now…you’ve brought me back again.” She coughed. A thicker stream pooled from her mouth and the heart wound.

  “Mom, don’t talk.”

  She smiled, and I saw there in my arms the mother who’d cradled me a hundred times, wishing the bad dreams away, singing me to sleep with the greatest love in her eyes—unconditional and eternal and pure.

  She reached up and touched her fingers to my cheek. “Today you are you. That is truer than true,” she whispered.

  Her eyes rolled heavenward. The moon slipped out of the earth’s shadow, the sun’s light casting the lunar orb in a radiant glow, as if the sun were letting her go. I grabbed my medal and jerked, breaking the chain.

  “Look, Mom. Remember?”

  Glazed and content, no longer filled with fear or malice, her gaze landed on the medal I held above her. “Yes.” She smiled, and my heart crumbled. “It keeps…” She stilled. Her head turned and eyes closed. She was gone.

  “It keeps the dragons away,” I whispered.

  I curled the medal into her hand and pressed my lips to her forehead, my heart aching for her sacrifice. Greater than her death, she had sacrificed a decade under the tyrannical, sadistic hand of Prince Bamal.

  I let my head fall back and screamed till my voice shook the heavens. The shadow of the earth slipped off the tip of the moon and faded into the night. A violent storm of clouds rushed over the moor. Outside the ring, I could see the grappling bodies of Flamma. Lightning streaked with a crackle, splintering the sky. A shaft bolted from the sky and struck me with Flamma fire, then vanished.

  A new burn flooded my body, like a waterfall of light pouring into every cell till I thought I would burst. When the flood subsided, I found myself still alone in the ring with my mother’s lifeless body. The protective veil was gone. The soul eaters waited for their repast, watching the battlefield. While lightning flashed and thunder rolled, a powerful gale swept over the snow-covered moor, whipping it up in stinging blasts.

  Before I could even lift myself off my knees, Prince Bamal was there, swinging a sword over my head. I ducked out of his strike zone and scooped the hilt of my katana in hand. As he twisted, I clutched him by the throat and froze him with the new power tingling to my fingertips.

  “No more, Bamal. Your time is done.”

  Fear skittered behind red eyes. He hissed and bared razor-sharp teeth as his beast rose through the mask of beauty. I stuck him straight through with my blade, my face close to his, fearless of his devil’s grimace. I could whisper the command of destruction, obliterate him into smoky ash and charred bones.

  But I had other plans. He shook and writhed, trying to wiggle off my blade, desperate to pull away.

  “Be still,” I commanded, and he was. By my will alone, he obeyed. “Acherontis pabulum.”

  “No!” shouted the once-fearsome demon lord who’d preyed on my mother and made her a slave.

  “Yes,” I said with quiet finality.

  The ghastly reaper with a black death’s head and crimson eyes whispered into the ring.

  “A demon prince to pay my debt, Acheron.”

  The unnatural creature nodded and opened his arms. I retracted my blade from the Bamal’s guts and ordered, “Go to him.”

  Without hesitation yet screaming defiance the whole way, the great demon prince walked into the arms of Acheron, who opened his yawning mouth and fed on him head-first. I’d not seen Acheron feed like this on the last demon, but perhaps a prince was one to be savored.

  Some creature snorted and grunted behind me. I spun to see that one-horned, ugly spawn that had attacked Jude and me in his courtyard once. Three more the same as him charged into the ring for me. I held out one hand and pulsed once, my VS severing them in half as if with a laser. Their top halves, chest up, spun like tops away from their torsos and running legs, all crumpling into
flailing piles.

  Another darted in, going for Mindy, who still lay there, unmoving.

  “No!”

  I barreled toward her only to stop when Xander leapt forward, slicing off the creature’s head with a swift and graceful swing. Xander sheathed his sword and leaned over the slab of stone where Mindy lay still and quiet.

  “I’ve got her,” he said, giving me a nod before sifting Mindy to safety somewhere.

  I walked out of the standing stones, fully awakened. Electric fire poured through flesh, blood and bones. Kat was right. I felt the change in my bones…like falling in love.

  My love.

  From the elevation where the standing stones stood, I scanned the horde of angels and demons among clanging swords and grappling bodies, seeking out Jude. Mira swooped over the mass, diving and scratching with her powerful talons where she could. Dragon fire lit up a distant skirmish. A flash of a graceful fighter with platinum ponytail swinging alongside the figure of George I knew so well. They fought a dragon together. Perhaps there was hope for those two after all. The soul eaters gorged on the wounded, those too helpless to flee. Phlegethon raised his fiery hammer above his horned head and let it fall, crushing the skulls of two fallen demons at once. I turned away, my stomach queasy at the sight of him scooping up the crushed remains in his clawed hand.

  Dorian battled Bamal’s man, Gorham, to my left. And just beyond was Jude, engaged with Bellock. I took one step beyond the stones to find Razor standing his ground with a line of twenty demons behind him—some humanesque, some monsters—standing tall with swords drawn.