December Moon (The Raven Saga) (10 page)

Although Ben didn't want to leave her alone, he knew how stubborn she could be and so they said goodbye and he and Crystal drove off down the road towards his house at the other side of town.

Ten minutes later, after Lilly decided it was safe to start walking, she hoisted her bag onto her back and began a slow jaunt home. She preferred to walk whenever she could. She loved the fresh air and the smell of the autumn leaves.

Choosing a different route than usual, she headed towards the plot of land where she had broken her leg the year before. It belonged to her father. He had bought it intending to build a family home for his wife Serena and daughters Neleh and Lilly, before they had been murdered. But now the land had been left to become overgrown, the wood left to rot. To be forgotten until her father was hopefully found.

It had been over a year since his disappearance. And Lilly had still not given up hope. She vowed she would never give up. She would find him.

As she walked down that dirt track, she thought about the last time she had been there. She had inadvertently caused a large log to fall on top of her, trapping her beneath it while a storm brewed overheard. Falling unconscious, she had eventually woken up at the hospital. It was only later that she discovered she had been rescued by Sammy. He had risked his own skin to fly down and pick her up, carefully leaving her to be found by Ben outside his practice.

She shuddered at the thought. Without his help, Lilly could easily have died. She owed him her life, yet he looked upon her as though she'd saved his. If it wasn't for Lilly, he would still be trapped in the forest, thought of as a murderer. When that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Life had certainly changed for them both since then.

Lilly eyed the rotting logs and stared up at the fluffy white clouds in the blue sky, oblivious to the fact that she wasn't alone. There were eyes upon her.

She turned away from the logs and walked across the concrete base that had been created in readiness for the building of the house. Kneeling down, she stroked the dirty floor and wished that things could have been different.

A chill ran across her back and so she fastened her jacket and stood up. She decided to walk home along the water's edge so she headed in the same direction she had come. Crossing the main road and down towards the shore of the Pacific Ocean. And still, she did not sense that she was being followed.

It was one of her favourite spots. A handful of little beaches, scattered with huge pieces of driftwood. She climbed over one on to another and continued climbing until she reached the far side, where the little well-worn pathway led towards her aunt's house. She turned at a noise from the water, a plop, as a fish hopped out and back again. Turning back inland, she decided she would pop in to see if Rose had arrived back home yet.

She was greeted by Rose's cat, Scully. Purring at first, the cat's back soon arched and a low snarl escaped its mouth. Sensing danger, Lilly turned to look. Although she could see nothing, that meant little. Her senses were suddenly on full alert and that's when she noticed a faint metallic odour, the smell of blood. She dodged out of sight as quickly as possible, before running as fast as she could into the relative safety of Rose's cottage.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

December gripped her mother's hand tightly as the two carefully descended the steep steps that led into the basement. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she shivered as goosebumps suddenly appeared on her arms and the back of her neck. She sensed that they weren't alone. Moira tightened her grip on her daughter in a gentle squeeze of reassurance and December relaxed.

When they reached the bottom, Moira reached out and flicked a switch. The glow of an old fashioned lamp flickered on, revealing something rather unexpected.

The room was painted entirely in purple - floors, ceiling and walls. There was a small single bed, also painted purple with purple sheets and pillows. An ornate wooden wardrobe stood to the side of the bed and guess what? It had also been painted purple. But in the middle of the room stood a tall thin white table, and on top of it sat an old large book surrounded by white candles. Although the book was open, every few seconds the pages would turn as if someone was flipping them over. Just as December had felt when they first walked down those stairs, she sensed that they were not alone. It was a sensation that would ordinarily frighten the life out of her, but somehow, in the comfort of her mother's home, it felt all right, somehow.

Just as she was about to ask Moira about it, her mother turned to her and held a finger to her lips with a smile. December closed her mouth and waited. After a couple of seconds, she could hear whispers, they slowly became louder until she could understand the voices. The voices called out her name.
"December... December

Welcome home

Daughter of Moira

Grand-daughter of Ruby

Descendant of Constance, Fidelia, Genevieve, Theodosia, Millicent...."

And as quickly as the voices could be heard, they faded out to nothing.

Wide-eyed, December turned in wonder, speechless.

"They are the spirits of your ancestors. I can call upon them whenever I need them. But this time, they just wanted to welcome you home."

Still speechless, December was in shock. Since the weird events in the gym, she hadn't experienced anything quite like it. The mysterious voice in Battersea Park aside, that is.

Finally her vocal chords returned and December simply said, "thank you" to the empty room.

Moira smiled and encouraged December to sit down while she re-counted the tale of her mother, Ruby.

"Born to a great witch, my grandmother Constance, in 1949, Ruby was adored from day one. Her mother taught her everything she knew about the art from a very early age and then when she was older she was also encouraged to fit in with normal society. She went to college, studied to become a doctor and later got a job at a Massachusetts hospital, but she never stopped practising the art. Whenever she wasn't healing people, she was saving others from evil. In 1970, she met and married another doctor called Henry, a union that resulted in the birth of their beloved daughter - me! - five years later. My father sadly developed cancer and died in 1981, leaving Ruby a single working mother. Not that it was a problem, of course. She was fiercely independent and very, very smart. The problem arose when she was offered a better position the other side of America, in Seattle. She took it, more money and less hours was a no brainer at the time. But Seattle had something dark and foreboding lurking in its midst. Unbeknown to Ruby..."

"Oh get to the point, will you," said a woman's impatient voice from the shadows.

December jumped so far that she fell off the bed.

"Oh my dear, I'm so sorry, I certainly didn't mean to startle you, but your mother... honestly, she should have been an author the way she rattles off these long and rather boring stories. The whole point of the story was to tell young December here about who killed me. Are you going to get to the point or shall I?"

Moira stooped down and helped pull December up off the floor.

"Mother... must you scare your grand-daughter like that?"

"Well, I did apologise. I am sorry, my dear," said the voice out of nowhere.

"Mother... show yourself. December can hear you now, she may as well see you too."

The blurry image of a woman began to appear from behind the tall white table, slowly becoming a slender and glamorous looking figure with fiery red hair. A family trait.

Although the image remained somewhat translucent, December could easily make out the hazel green eyes and cheeky smile that was etched on her thin pale face.

"Here I am. Is that better, dear? Let me introduce myself. My name is Ruby and I'm your grandmother. I'd shake your hand and give you a hug but it's not really possible," and she demonstrated as her slender hand trailed through the air, straight through December's own.

Speechless yet again, she felt a cold chill and shivered.

"Mother please don't do that, it's actually really very cold when you try to touch us. December I'm sorry about my mother. I thought she was going to wait until you were more prepared until she revealed herself to you. Are you all right?"

December nodded mutely and tried to smile.

"Why don't I continue the story, dear?" said Ruby.

Not waiting for an answer, she carried on where her daughter had so rudely been interrupted.

"Seattle had its own coven of witches at the time. Not just any old coven, mind you. This was a particularly bad one, but they weren't really my problem. My problem was the fact that these witches summoned the magic of all kinds to the city. The hospital began to overflow with victims of all manner of attacks. Some people were savaged so badly that they were impossible to identify... many were attacked by werewolves, others by vampires. Some had just got in the middle of the age old fight between the wolves and the vamps. It became more and more difficult for me to hide the truth from the world. You see, I don't know if Moira has told you but we do have to keep so many things a secret, you know. If it got out that the world is full of supernatural beings, goodness knows what it would cause. Mass hysteria, for starters. Now, where was I? Oh yes, all those victims." She shook her head sadly, before continuing, "Well, there was a particularly bad egg tied up in all of this. He was a vampire. Hundreds and hundreds of years old, naturally. What was his name? Hm, let me think."

Moira and December stole a glance at each other as the glamorous dead lady began to think out loud, "Joseph? no, it wasn't that. Harold? Nope. Frederick? Nah. Hm?? Oliver? No... Oh I remember... Duran. His first name was Olivier but everybody called him Duran, for some reason. He was French. Very handsome, of course. Quite the charmer, too. But my goodness, quite the murderer. Dreadful, dreadful. Where was I? Ah, yes. Duran had committed all these murders in the city and on the outskirts too. Soon the killings calmed down a little and I assumed he had been killed or had left our shores. I was wrong, of course. The reason why it had all quietened down? Because he'd been busy with one of the witches. What was her name..."

"Mother... the name isn't important!" said Moira in an attempt to get her to continue.

"Well, I suppose not. It'll come to me. Anyway, Duran and whatsherface were creating their own little 'family'. They'd snatched a couple of adorable fourteen year old innocent-looking twin girls and a few other boys who were around eighteen, I believe. All were made to drink his blood and made into vampires. Soon the children were on a rampage and the place they'd chosen to have their fun? My hospital. I was on duty that night when I walked into one of the rooms. It was like hell on earth. There was blood everywhere. It was the girls I'd bumped into and I still remember their faces as I walked right in on them. The bloodlust was so intense, I've never seen anything quite like it. They pounced and tried to feed off me, naturally, but my witch's blood repelled them. I had no choice but to stop them and the only way I could stop them was to... was to... kill them," a look of complete horror washed over her face as she recalled the single event that eventually led to her own demise.

"I knew how to kill the vamps. I'm a witch, of course I know how to kill them. So I first grabbed the silver knife that I always used to carry in my doctor's coat - you should always carry a silver knife with you, you know, just in case - and I stabbed them both with it, just to subdue them, you understand. A single stab wound from a silver knife won't necessarily kill them. Then I found something larger (I won't go into all the gory details) and stabbed them both through the heart. Completely and utterly dead. But I wasn't cautious enough and just as I'd killed the second one, their 'brother' walked in and witnessed it all. He tried to attack me but it didn't work of course, because of my blood, etc. He escaped and ran to daddy I suppose. Duran. I knew they'd be after us so I rushed home as quick as I could and I whisked Moira away from there and ran. We travelled all across the States before he eventually found me a few years later. I dropped my guard. I thought I was safe and then BAM... he and his missus... I still can't quite remember her name... they got me. See?" she said as she almost proudly turned to reveal a massive scar that ran the length of her spine.

December shivered at the thought of the pain it must have caused.

"It wasn't just any old stab wound, of course. They'd poisoned the tip of the dagger to make it hurt. And it certainly did hurt. When Moira returned from college, she found me lying there in a pool of my own blood. Slowly dying a long, painful, drawn out death."

"Less of the theatrics mother, we get the picture," said Moira who was visibly uncomfortable at the most horrendous memory of her life.