Blood Moon (Book Three - The Ravenscliff Series) (15 page)

“Give us answers!” Roxanne lifted her voice. “Speak to us!”

A sudden thud of wind slapped against the windows. Devon opened his eyes. The day had darkened. Trees were swaying fiercely. A storm looked ready to break.

“There is one at this table who is not himself,” Roxanne said. “Speak to us, spirit within the body of Alexander Muir! Tell us who you are, and why you are here!”

Laughter.

Alexander had started to laugh again in that low, demented, obscene way.

“Share with us the humor,” Roxanne said, addressing Alexander now directly. “Let us in on the joke.”

“You expect me to be frightened of you, don’t you, Island Witch Woman?” Alexander said, but the voice was deep, gravelly, not his own. “I know what you are, and from where you come, but still I am not frightened. I sit in your presence unafraid.”

“I mean not to frighten you,” Roxanne said, lapsing deeper into her Jamaican accent. “I mean only to get answers.”

“Answers? Why would I give you answers?”

“Because we are commanding it. Because we have brought you out, made you speak. Because among us there is power far greater than any you possess.”

“You think so?” It was Alexander’s turn to squeeze Devon’s hand. “Surely you do not mean this boy Nightwing to my left? He is terrified of me. Aren’t you, Devon?”

“I don’t know who you are,” Devon answered, “but I can tell you that whoever you are, I am not afraid.”

“Oh, no? Then why do you tremble in my presence? Why do you still wake up at night sweating in terror, remembering the time I brought you with me to my grave?”

“Oh my God!” Natalie blurted out. “It
is
the Madman!”

“Hush,” Roxanne commanded. “We are not afraid of you here. Our circle is bound by commitment, by friendship, by strength. Not by fear. So tell us why you have returned, Jackson Muir.”

“And
how
,” Devon managed to say, desperately trying to stop his heart from racing in his chest. The Madman would be able to smell his fear. Surely he could already feel the sweat in Devon’s palm.

“There is one who seeks me and has summoned me.” Alexander’s lips moved, but it was the Madman’s voice. “I
will
live again. I will have my revenge on all of you, and I will control Ravenscliff and its portal into the world of the demons.”

“Not if we have anything to say about it,” Rolfe barked. “We’ve stopped you before, Jackson. We can do it again.”

Laughter erupted from the boy’s mouth. “Is that you, Montaigne? Would you like to say hello to your father? He’s here, with me—in the Hell Hole!” Alexander threw his head back and laughed again.

Rolfe made a move to lunge at him, but Roxanne stopped him. “Do not break the circle!”

“All of you will die,” the Madman rasped. “And the last to go will be our brave young sorcerer here, who will see all the others go before him.”

“I wouldn’t get cocky yet, Apostate,” Devon snarled.

But the Madman had moved on to taunt someone else. “The sun is getting low, Marcus.” Alexander’s head had turned so that the eyes of Jackson Muir could gaze at the teenager. “Don’t you have a rendezvous with the moon?”

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked, terrified.

Laughter again, hideous and gloating.

“What do I have to do with all this?” Marcus screamed, standing up, dropping the hands of Natalie and Cecily. It broke the power of the séance. The candle in the middle of the table snuffed itself out, and Alexander fell into an icy silence.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus was saying, near tears. “It’s just that—the sun is going down. And I’m starting to remember—remember what happens to me!”

Roxanne had put the lights back on. Rolfe took Marcus by the shoulders and led him over to a chair. The teen sat, his face in his hands.

“Tell us,” Rolfe said. “What do you remember?”

“The beast,” Marcus said. “It makes me—it makes me do things—”

Devon knelt in front of his friend. “What kinds of things?”

Marcus suddenly removed his hands from his face and looked at Devon wildly. “You’ve got to protect me, Devon! You can’t let it happen again!”

“I will. I’ll get you another star pendant …”

“It won’t work. I’ll tear it off when the moon comes up. I know I will.”

“Easy, man,” Devon said.

He sat back on his haunches, completely at a loss. The full weight of the séance’s revelations hit him. So they
were
dealing with the Madman again. The thought terrified Devon, as Jackson so rightly assumed. But he couldn’t let that fear overwhelm him. He had to concentrate. The Madman said that someone was summoning him, trying to bring him back. Who? And why? And what did Jackson Muir have to do with the beast?

“Jackson knew McNutt,” Rolfe said, as if reading Devon’s mind. “Perhaps he had control over him. Might Jackson be using the beast to help him break out of the Hell Hole somehow?”

“Look,” Cecily said, pushing her way to the front of the group. “We can’t just stand around here wringing our hands over Jackson Muir.” She pointed over at their friend, trembling his chair. “Marcus is clearly in a meltdown, and who knows what will happen to him when the moon comes out. And has anybody bothered to look over at Alexander?”

Their heads all turned. The boy hadn’t moved from the table. He sat as if frozen, his eyes staring into nothingness.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” muttered Bjorn, attending to the child. “What
will
Mrs. Crandall say? How do I explain
this
to her?”

“Better this state of unconsciousness than active possession,” Roxanne said, feeling Alexander’s forehead. “Take him back to Ravenscliff. He will sleep undisturbed through the night.”

Bjorn was only too happy to comply.

“But what about me?” Marcus asked after they had gone. “The sun is setting.”

Indeed it was, casting long, shimmering streaks of gold and red across the waves as it emerged from the dissipating storm clouds. Marcus had broken out into a sweat.

“The beast is going to come for me,” he cried. “Just like last time!”

“What happens when the beast comes?” Rolfe asked him. “What can you remember?”

“Just that it … appears,” Marcus stammered.

“We have plenty of silver to protect you,” Rolfe told him.

“You mean it appeared to you?” Devon asked.

“It overtakes me …” Marcus said.

“Not this time it won’t,” Devon told him, reaching into his pocket to withdraw a piece of white chalk that hadn’t been there ten seconds before. “Sorry, Rolfe, but I’m going to have to write on your floor.”

Rolfe made a quizzical face. “Write on my floor?”

“It’s just chalk. It’ll wash off.” Devon got down on his hands and knees and began drawing a white line across the old dark wood. The line extended several feet, then Devon turned back to continue it at a forty-five-degree angle. He worked his way all around Marcus, who was still sitting, trembling in the chair.

“I get it, dude,” D.J. said, watching intently as Devon drew on the floor. “You’re making a star!”

“Yes, a pentagram,” Devon said, “and Marcus will be contained within it.”

“Brilliant,” Rolfe observed, folding his arms across his chest and beaming down at Devon with obvious pride.

“The pentagram is a symbol of safety and protection,” Devon said, his star diagram complete. He stood. “Marcus will be safe so long as he stays within it.”

“But what about us?” Cecily asked. “If the beast is on its way here …”

“There go my windows again,” Rolfe grumbled.

“We’ll be okay,” Devon assured them. “My intuition tells me it will be different this time. And I’ll make us all silver armor if need be.”

The sun was gone. The room fell into the stunned pink afterglow that followed sunsets. It lasted only a few moments, and then the shadows began to deepen into dark blues and grays. Roxanne switched on a lamp.

“I remember something else,” Marcus said, calmer now.

“What’s that?” Rolfe asked him.

“The pain. It’s about to begin again. In fact—” He grimaced. “It’s here.”

“What kind of pain?” Roxanne asked, rushing up suddenly.

But Marcus couldn’t answer. He began to writhe in his chair, his body twisting first one way, then another. Outside, low and bright over the water, the full moon had appeared.

“May the angels watch over us,” Roxanne breathed in horror. “Why did we not realize it sooner?”

“We’ve got to help him,” Natalie called out, hurrying toward Marcus. “Look at him! It’s like he’s having a heart attack!”

Roxanne stopped her from crossing the boundary of the pentagram. “Keep back,” she said, her voice small and terrified. “Keep back and pray.”

Devon watched as Marcus continued to contort, his face expressing horrible, searing pain. He knocked over the chair he was sitting on but managed to stay on his feet, his hands covering his face—

His hands!

“No!” Devon screamed.

Marcus’s hands were suddenly covered with hair.

His whole body was changing—twisting, growing, lengthening. His clothes tore away under his transformation. When he moved his hands—rather, his claws—from his face, Marcus was no longer a teenaged boy, but a snarling, savage creature with a snout full of fangs—

Cecily screamed.

“It’s him!” D.J. shouted. “Marcus is the beast!”

The thing now stood before them, growling and salivating. It prepared to lunge but found it could not, contained by the pentagram on the floor. It let out a long and furious howl.

“Marcus,” Devon said, stunned and horrified. “It was
you
. Not McNutt …”

It all made sense now: Marcus’s scratches and bruises, his parents’ horror. Had they witnessed such a transformation? Probably not, as Marcus would leave his room before anything happened. But they clearly knew
something
was happening to their son. Something terrible, something unspeakable …

“How? Why?” Devon stood as close to the pentagram as he dared. The beast lashed out him, its bear-like paw making an arc through the air but missing Devon’s face by about six inches. Devon didn’t flinch. He just kept staring at the creature. “I knew I saw something familiar in your eyes … Oh, Marcus, I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll find out why this happening to you, and I’ll put an end to it. I promise!”

Rolfe was clearly disturbed that the teens had witnessed such a thing. Natalie was sobbing uncontrollably. D.J. just stood there, staring blankly at the snarling, furious beast that once was his friend. Cecily was trying, absurdly, to soothe the creature, talking to it as if Marcus might be able to hear her somehow.

“Just be calm, sit tight,” she said, her voice barely audible over the beast’s roars. “It will be over soon enough when the sun comes up again …”

“Let’s all go upstairs,” Rolfe said. “You can’t do anything for him now. The pentagram will keep him—and everyone else in Misery Point—safe for tonight.”

“I’ll stay and keep watch,” Roxanne said. “Oh, that poor, poor child trapped inside that brute’s body …”

The beast tried again to jump free of the pentagram but could not. It hunched down, angry and frustrated, and howled at the ceiling. Yellow saliva spilled from its mouth.

Natalie allowed Rolfe to lead her upstairs. D.J. moved away gradually, walking backward as he kept his eyes on the snarling, snapping creature. Cecily placed her hand on Devon’s shoulder.

“Rolfe’s right,” she said. “There’s nothing more we can do for him right now. At least this time he’s safe.”

“I’ve got to find out why this is happening,” Devon said. “I can’t just stand here and wait for the sun to rise.”

“But what can you do? If it’s Jackson Muir who’s behind this—”

“I beat him once, I can do it again.” Devon pulled his eyes away from the beast to look at Cecily. “The room in the West Wing with all the books. Maybe there will be an answer there.”

Cecily shuddered. “You mean the room with the portal into the Hell Hole? But you’ve never been able to get inside there, Devon. Some force won’t allow you in.”

“I suspect that’s changed,” Devon said. “When I physically broke through the secret room in the basement I seemed to have broken whatever mystical barriers your grandmother had set up within the house—barriers that were designed to keep me from discovering answers. I’ll wager that if I wanted to, right now, I could disappear and reappear in that room in the West Wing.”

Cecily smiled. “You know, I’m sure you could. You’re one-hundredth generation from Sargon the Great, after all.”

Devon returned the smile. How wonderful it was to smile at Cecily again.

“Tell the others I’ve gone,” he said. He turned around to look at the beast once more. “If you can hear me, Marcus, I’m going to find out how to end whatever sorcery has done this to you. I’ll find out and then change you back into yourself again. I promise you! I’ll be back!”

“Godspeed, Devon March,” whispered Roxanne.

“Be careful,” Cecily echoed, looking up into his eyes.

With that, Devon disappeared from the room.

When he looked around, he saw he had been right; he was in West Wing, standing outside the door to the secret room. This wing of the old house had been abandoned and boarded up for more than thirty years—ever since Jackson Muir and his wife, Emily, had died, in fact. Devon was standing in what had been Emily’s upstairs parlor. Here she received visitors who had come to welcome her to Ravenscliff. She had been an innocent young wife then, unaware of her husband’s nefarious sorcery. No one had known what Jackson had planned. His brother Randolph, the Master of Ravenscliff, might have suspected, but when Jackson had come back to Ravenscliff after many years away, everyone had given him the benefit of the doubt. His dark days were over, he promised. He had repented.

How wrong they were to trust him—as poor Emily would find out.

The only remnant of the room’s faded glory was the broken, dusty chandelier that hung overhead. Rusted picture wires scarred the walls. Dust an inch thick collected on the few antique tables strewn about. Devon could feel Emily’s ghost here, somewhere in the dark, shuttered room, watching him. But it was not this room Devon had come to explore. It was the one that led off it, a small, windowless chamber that contained the great house’s deepest secret.

The Hell Hole.

Devon expected the door to the inner room to be locked, but it wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t even closed tightly. Someone had been here, he observed, and with his Nightwing eyes he could see the dust had been disturbed on the floor inside. Footprints.

So many books on the shelves within. Devon scanned their spines briefly, wondering if any of them contained the answer to Marcus’s predicament. Rolfe had copies of some of them, but not nearly all; this was the sorcery library of the magnificent Horatio Muir. Aeons of Nightwing history and heritage were contained within this room.

Devon opened his palm to reveal his orb of magic light, shedding a helpful glow through the darkness. He turned it toward one wall, where a portrait hung—a portrait of a teenaged boy who looked identical to Devon, except that he was dressed in the clothes of an earlier time, perhaps fifty years earlier or more. “One more clue to my past,” Devon whispered, “if only I could figure it out.”

He turned, aiming the light toward the other end of the room. He made out the bolted metal door. The portal into the realm of the demons. The Hell Hole.

“The reason Ravenscliff was built,” Devon whispered, finding comfort in the sound of his voice in this horrible yet fascinating place. “To contain the largest Hell Hole in the Western hemisphere. To seal it off forever.”

That had been Horatio Muir’s attempt, but his renegade son Jackson had succeeded in wresting it open, gaining mastery over the demons within for his power-hungry ambition. And he had taken Alexander down there with him, into the stinking bowels of hell—until Devon had plunged inside himself to rescue the boy and seal the Madman inside.

“But now he’s struggling to get free,” Devon said louder. “Someone is helping him …”

“Hello, Devon.”

He spun around.

“Clarissa!” he called out.

She stood there smiling. She looked less crazy than she had before.

“I knew you’d come here,” she said. “I knew this was our destiny, to meet again, here, in this room.”

“Why?” he asked, angry at himself for not being on high alert. He should have felt her arrival, sensed her presence. A well-trained sorcerer should never be taken by surprise. He pushed away his pique at himself and concentrated on the situation at hand. “What are you doing here, Clarissa? This isn’t your first time here, is it?”

“No. I’ve come here several times to stare at that door.”

Mrs. Crandall had predicted that she would try to open it. “Don’t you know the evil that lives behind that door?” Devon asked, approaching her. “You’ve got to stay away from here.”

“I don’t know about evil,” Clarissa said, and she did seem more rational now. “I just sense the power that awaits me. Both of us, Devon. You and I. Our destiny lives behind that door.”

“No. That’s the Madman talking, Clarissa. He’s influencing you. You’re the one who’s been summoning him, haven’t you? Trying to bring him back!”

She looked over into Devon’s eyes. “Our destiny, Devon …”

“No! Our destiny is to keep that door securely sealed! The Madman has gotten inside your head! That’s why Greta Muir kept you safely behind the walls of her sorcery. She knew if you were set free Jackson Muir would get to you. And he
has
!”

Clarissa smiled indulgently, as if he were just a child. “Why do you take their side, Devon? Did Greta Muir or her children, Amanda or Edward, ever tell you the truth about anything? Haven’t they, instead, stood in your way whenever you have attempted to discover your heritage?”

Devon didn’t reply.

“Don’t you
want
answers, Devon?” Clarissa asked. “Don’t you
want
to know who you are?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But that answer will have to wait. Tonight I’m looking for only one thing. The answer that will help my friend Marcus.”

“The one who turns into the beast?”

“So you
know
! Tell me what you know!”

Clarissa smiled. “I can’t give you any answers. The answers you seek are somewhere else.”

“I suppose you mean behind that door,” Devon said bitterly. “You’re tempting me to open the Hell Hole and then promising me that I’ll get all the answers I seek. Maybe I would learn the secrets of my past if I opened the portal. But I’d also unleash the demons onto the world—demons controlled by the power-mad Jackson Muir!”

“The Hell Hole can wait,” Clarissa said, impatient with his attitude. “The answers you seek aren’t there, Devon.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “Then where are they?”

“They’re in the past.”

“The
past
?”

She smiled. “Come now, Devon. I’ve had even less training in my sorcery than you have, but surely you know about the past.”

He studied her. She seemed to be enjoying this game with him. And what was it about her face? It changed, shifted, never looking quite the same. One moment she was worn and old, far older than she should be if indeed she was a contemporary of Rolfe and Mrs. Crandall. But then the next moment she was a young girl, no older than Devon. Sometimes Clarissa’s eyes were blue, sometimes green, sometimes brown. Sometimes her skin seemed to glow, sometimes it seemed like faded parchment. But always her hair was white, long and luminescent.

“Which past?” Devon asked her. “Whose past?”

But she was fading away, dissolving into the dust that swirled through the room.

“The past, Devon,” she said. “The answers are in the past …”

“Wait, you can’t just say that and then just disappear!”

“The past, Devon,” she said.

“Wait! What do you mean?”

But she was gone.

The answers were in the
past
? A lot of good they were doing there, since Devon was in the present. And what did Clarissa know anyway? She might have had powers, but by her own admission she was even more of a novice than Devon.

But she
had
been communicating with the Madman …

Devon glanced back at the Hell Hole and could feel the scurrying and scratching of the demons within. He could hear their pleas:

Let us out.

Set us free.

Oh, master, we could give you such power …

He turned away in disgust. There were no answers here.

And suddenly Devon knew Clarissa was right.

The answers are in the past.

The beast had existed in Misery Point more than thirty years ago, on the same Halloween that also saw Jackson Muir’s black magic engulfing Ravenscliff. There
was
a connection. That much was now obvious. But how could the knowledge of that past help Marcus now?

“The past has only raised more questions,” Devon said out loud, striding out of the inner room into Emily Muir’s old parlor.

He’d go downstairs. He’d confront Mrs. Crandall for the one-thousandth time. He’d tell her what had happened and demand she tell him what she knew—if anything. He’d ask her about the past. He’d scare her if he had to, by revealing Alexander’s possession and the fact that their séance had revealed the Madman was trying to return …

He opened the door into the corridor, a corridor that he knew would lead to a secret passageway back into the main part of the house.

But there was no corridor when he opened the door.

There was only a staircase leading down.

Devon made a little sound in surprise. He knew what it was.

It was the Staircase Into Time!