One Hundred Candles [2] (16 page)

twenty-two

“We need to go back.”

I didn’t think Noah had heard me. He was talking on his cell phone while driving us away from my house. “I told you, there was an intruder,” he was saying. “He attacked two people. They’re hurt. No, I can’t stay on the line.”

He shut his phone and braced the steering wheel with both hands.

“We need to go back,” I repeated.

“The police are on their way. Paramedics, too.” He stopped at a red light, looked both ways, then drove straight through. “We can get on the highway and be in Charleston in a couple hours.”

“I’m not going to Charleston.”

“Charlotte, I know you’re in shock, but we need to get as far away as possible.”

Of course I was in shock. My brain simply could not process what I had witnessed. Marcus had raised his arms above his head and slammed the iron poker into Mom’s head. I heard a crack, followed by Mom’s choked gasp. Noah yanked me out the door and down the front steps. He shoved me into the passenger seat of Mom’s car and was peeling out of the driveway within seconds.

Find the safe haven.

Mom’s last words before that evil thing had attacked her. I knew she was telling me where to go, but I couldn’t think straight. A safe haven. The police? No, she would have said that. She would have told me exactly where to go, but she was afraid Marcus—the Watcher—would know it.

“Turn around,” I told Noah.

“I can’t do that.” He gripped the steering wheel. “We have to get on the highway.”

“No, we don’t. We’re not leading him to Charleston and Annalise. I know where my mom wanted us to go.”

Noah coasted to the shoulder of the road. He looked in his rearview mirror. “Tell me quick.”

“She wanted us to find a safe haven. And what’s the safest place in town?”

He nodded, screeched back into the road and turned at the next light. I hated myself for doing it, for leaving my parents in a pool of blood on the dining room floor, but it was what they had asked me to do. I had failed them too many times already. I had chosen not to give them a message that may have saved their lives. I didn’t tell them about any of Zelden’s calls. And now they had paid a price. They had received the ultimate punishment.

They couldn’t be dead, I told myself. It wasn’t possible. Marcus had no reason to kill them. And Zelden had survived an attack in New Zealand, so wasn’t it possible that my parents would survive, too? Dad had a pulse. But Mom…

No one could endure that kind of direct blow to the head. It was too much. The crack I’d heard—it was the worst sound in the world, a thousand times more terrifying than the voice that emanated from Marcus.

I wondered if it could be undone, somehow. Maybe there were rules about this. Maybe an injury brought on by the supernatural could also be cured by the supernatural. We would have to act fast, though.

Noah turned sharply into the familiar driveway. There were no lights on in Gwyn’s house, but Shane’s van was parked in front so that meant both he and Trisha were still there.

“I’ll get out first and make sure he didn’t follow us,” Noah said. I didn’t think Marcus could get very far without a vehicle. Of course, he had been lightning fast when he’d surprised us at the back door, but that had seemed to weaken him. It just hadn’t weakened him enough.

Noah came around to the passenger side and helped me out of the car. “I got you,” he said. I hadn’t been injured, but I felt wobbly, and I leaned against him as we walked up the steps of Gwyn’s front porch. He rang the doorbell, then tried the handle. It was locked.

“They have to be here,” he muttered. “Please be here.”

The door opened and Beth immediately ushered us inside. “Where are your parents?” she asked me, looking stricken. Noah shook his head and Beth locked the door behind us. “Charlotte, your dad called me a little while ago and told me about Marcus. Is everything okay?”

I was hopeful. “A little while ago? When?”

“About an hour.”

My optimism deflated. “Oh.” Marcus found us before we could leave the house.

“I’m sorry,” Beth said.

Trisha came running out of the dark living room and engulfed Noah in a hug.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He whispered something to her. She pulled back, then came over to me. Without a word, she hugged me, too. Shane enfolded me in his arms, then turned to the group. “I’m going over there,” he announced.

“No.” Noah shook his head. “I called the police. They’re on their way.”

“If that thing is still there, I’ll deal with it.” Shane stepped around us, but Noah grabbed his arm.

“Please,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do for them, and I think we need you here. It’s still after Charlotte.”

Shane looked at Noah for a moment, then at me. He nodded.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Noah asked. “Did you lose power, too?”

Beth led us into the kitchen, where several cabinets still lay on the unfinished floor and a dozen white candles had been lined up on the counter. “No. After Patrick called, we turned off the power intentionally,” she said. “The Watcher draws its strength from power sources. We’re trying to limit that strength so that when he gets here…”

“How do you know he’s going to find us?” I asked, my panic rising. Mom had sent us here to be safe. If we weren’t safe, what was the point?

“We need him to find you,” Beth said. “It’s the only way we can end this tonight. You could run, but he’ll eventually track you down. At least this way, we can protect you and have a solid chance of destroying it.”

“Can you do that?” Noah asked. “Can you really destroy him? Because he’s strong.” His voice got quieter. He had witnessed the same awful things I had. “Stronger than you might think.”

Beth lit another candle. They were the votives, I realized, from the night of Gwyn’s party. “I need you to describe him,” she said to me. “It will help us to be better prepared.”

“He’s limping,” I began. I wasn’t sure what kind of details she wanted, so I rattled off everything that occurred to me. “His eyes are black. Mom stabbed him in the back but it only slowed him down. And he says he’s not a demon.”

Beth stopped lighting the candles. “What does it claim to be?”

“Something worse.” The image of Dad curled up on the dining room floor flashed across my mind. It was immediately followed by my mother’s face, caught in surprise and pain, as the poker slammed into her head, and the cracking sound her skull made, a sound worse than any scream could ever be.

“Hey.” Noah enveloped my shoulders in his arms. Part of me wanted to sink into his chest and sob, but that would feel too much like giving in and accepting defeat. If I didn’t cry, they were still alive. I would fight for them, even if I wasn’t sure how, and I would discover a way to save them. It was not too late. It couldn’t be.

Lisa entered the kitchen cradling a large box. “Here it is,” she said to Beth. “Everything I could find.”

Beth began removing sticks of incense, stones and other New Age paraphernalia. “Good. Do you have the salt?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “You think you can sprinkle some salt and wave some sage and that’s going to keep this thing from ripping our heads off?” They didn’t understand. We needed weapons. Knives or swords or arrows. Something medieval, maybe, something we could shoot at the Watcher before it stepped foot inside the house.

“It’s added protection,” Lisa said. “It will help.”

“Not against this!” I yelled. “I told you, he’s not a demon. He can do whatever he wants.” I could see his black eyes and the way Mom’s head jerked back when she was hit. “And what he wants is to kill me.”

Beth put her hand on mine. “I will not allow that to happen, Charlotte.”

“Neither will I.” Shane sounded angry and determined. “You said we need extra protection, right? Tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”

Beth assigned everyone different jobs. Everyone except me.

“I need to you to focus,” she said gently as I sat down in a kitchen chair and she knelt in front of me. “I want you to picture something good in your mind, a happy moment.”

My first thought was the family dinner we’d shared in Charleston on our last night of vacation, the way Mom and Dad had clinked their wineglasses together. The image was immediately replaced with one of Mom and Dad lying on the blood-soaked carpet.

“You can still save them, right?” I asked Beth. She said nothing, but her eyes glistened with tears. Lisa walked in and began gathering more sage from the box. “You’ve read all the books,” I said to Lisa, my voice desperate. “You can help me. There’s got to be something that can undo all of this.”

Lisa looked to Beth, then back at me. “I’m sorry. I can help protect you, but that’s all. Nothing can erase—” She stopped, unwilling to say the word.

Beth stood up. “We will do what we can.”

“If we destroy the Watcher, if we send it back to wherever it came from, things will return to normal,” I said loudly. “I know it.”

I didn’t know it, but it was all I had, the only thing I could cling to so I wouldn’t fall into absolute despair. Beth and Lisa left the room. I stayed in the kitchen chair, gazing across the room. The foyer separated the kitchen from the living room, but the wide, arched doorways allowed me to see directly into both spaces. Harris was pouring a circle of salt on the living room floor while Noah pushed back furniture. Lisa talked softly to Beth in the foyer, sharing her worries about letting something evil back into the house and where they should send “the kids.” Beth said it was too late to leave, but suggested they use the attic. “I just blessed it,” she said. “They’ll be fine there.”

I looked around the kitchen for a working clock, but without power the LED numbers that were usually displayed on a stove or microwave weren’t there. I was looking up, hoping to spot a battery-operated clock on the wall, when Gwyn entered the room and I sat up, startled.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m supposed to finish lighting these.” She motioned to the candles on the counter. “I can do it in another room, though.”

“No, that’s okay.” I didn’t hate Gwyn. I didn’t feel anything for her or Harris. Their actions were insignificant now, and seemed to have happened in another lifetime.

“Beth called your sister,” Gwyn said. “I thought you should know. She’s driving up with her boyfriend.”

“Is there news about my parents?”

“Not that I know of. I called Avery a few minutes ago. She said she’d call me back if she heard anything.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and placed it on the counter.

“Thanks.” Avery had undoubtedly heard the sirens and seen the flashing police lights. She had probably worried, so it was good that Gwyn had called her, even if the news wasn’t positive.

“Charlotte, I am truly sorry. For everything. I know that doesn’t make it better.” Gwyn finished with the candles and carried some into the living room. While she was gone, her cell phone buzzed. I picked it up and saw that Avery was calling.

“Your dad is at the hospital,” she informed me.

“He’s alive?” I whispered.

“Yes. I’m going over there with my mom and Jared right now.” She was using her panic-mode voice, the tough, take-charge tone she got when there was a problem she was solving.

“And my mom?” I knew the answer, but I was hoping that there was some small, miraculous chance that I was wrong.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her and no one will tell me anything.” I heard the jingle of Avery’s car keys. “The police haven’t found the guy who did this. They’ve brought in dogs, but something’s wrong. The dogs are acting all weird.”

That’s because the dogs had been trained to track people, not demon-like entities, I wanted to say. I didn’t know how much Avery knew or how much time I had to tell her. All I knew was that I wanted her away from my house and our neighborhood. I needed to know that she was safe. If the Watcher was still nearby, he could take her as a hostage to use against me. I would not allow someone else to be hurt because of me. So much of what had happened in the past hour was my fault. If I had relayed Zelden’s message to my parents when we were in Charleston, none of this would be happening. I could feel the guilt burning inside of me, but I pushed it away. For now.

“Go to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“We’re thinking about you, Charlotte. Drive safe.”

I closed the phone, but not before checking the time. It was almost two in the morning. The glow of candlelight filled the living room, casting bobbing shadows on the walls. I waited for someone to tell me what I needed to do. I thought about my dad and how he was lying in the back of an ambulance at that moment, fighting to survive. I thought about Mom and tried to focus on her smile instead of her body being zipped into a heavy black bag. And then I thought about how I had to face the Watcher now or risk running from it forever.

“Charlotte, we need you in the circle,” Beth called. “It’s time.”

Outside, something howled, low and strong, and a dark shape passed by the window. My necklace buzzed and my heart raced and I knew he had found me. A second later, the front door came crashing across the foyer.

I stood up. The Watcher wanted to punish me, and he had.

Now it was my turn.

twenty-three

It didn’t see me at first. The Watcher dragged itself into the foyer, stumbling over the broken door. It saw the flickering candles, and turned for the living room, where everyone had gathered within the circle of salt. I was still in the kitchen, one foot frozen in the foyer. The Watcher’s back was to me, and I could see the jagged line of blood seeping through his shirt where Mom had stabbed its borrowed body. His shoulders were slumped, and his panting breath was the only noise in the room. The trip from my house to Gwyn’s must have sapped some of his energy. Hopefully the lack of electricity in the house would drain him even more.

Beth stood tall in front of everyone. Shane, Trisha, Noah and Lisa were behind her, surrounded by the white candles. I didn’t see Harris and Gwyn and figured that Lisa had sent them away, into the attic with strict instructions not to come downstairs.

The Watcher stopped a few feet in front of the circle of salt. It was a protected space, one that I should have been standing inside, but I felt better knowing that the people who mattered were there without me. There was less chance of anyone being hurt.

Beth began chanting something, but the Watcher laughed at her, a high-pitched, snarling noise that made me clench my fists with rage. “Those words hold no power over me.” His head moved from side to side. “Where is the girl?” he demanded.

I had a choice. I could run through the gaping hole where the front door had been and hope the others could slow the Watcher down. Or I could confront him and pray that when he was done with me it would finally be over, the monster would return to its lair and we would be left with some way to help my parents. I stepped forward.

“I’m right here.” My voice wasn’t as strong as I had hoped it would be. My necklace buzzed, and I closed my hand around it.

The Watcher turned slowly. He was weaker than he had been at my house, more sluggish. “Char—lotte.” He dragged my name out as if he was drunk, a gleeful smile on his dirty face. He barely resembled Marcus anymore. He looked centuries older, his skin wrinkled like old parchment.

Behind him, Beth instructed the others to think only positive thoughts. I knew I should be doing the same thing, but I didn’t have the mental strength. I wouldn’t be able to fight this thing with love or positive feelings. I had to rely on something else entirely.

It’s all about energy. My dad always said that. Positive, negative, good, bad. It was all just energy. As I stared into the black eyes of the Watcher, my hand clutching the amethyst around my neck, I knew we were locked in a battle of his energy versus mine. And what was my energy? What could I possibly possess that was more powerful than the thing making its way toward me?

I held my necklace even tighter, so tight that the jagged ends of the amethyst cut into the palm of my hand. I had seventeen years of life behind me. I had memories and experiences and successes and failures. I knew things. I knew that people could obsess about a person or a place so much that that person left something of themselves behind after they died. I knew that if you focused hard enough and long enough, you could tattoo a piece of your presence somewhere.

So that’s what I did. I focused as hard as I could on what I wanted. I wanted my friends and my family to be safe. I wanted the Watcher to go back to the horrible place it had emerged from. I wanted to defeat it, to destroy it, to show it that it had no power over me or my family.

I began chanting my own words. They weren’t Latin or Sanskrit or anything mystical. They were simply mine, in the purest form I could think of. My energy, funneled through my voice.

“You have already punished me,” I said. “You have shown me what I should not have seen.”

The grisly attack on my parents. No one should have to witness that.

“Your goal has been reached, and now you must go back.”

“I will never go back,” it hissed. The Watcher still struggled with his legs. He reached down with both arms to move them. I knew that even though his movement was limited, his physical strength might still be intact. I didn’t want to risk charging into him, only to be tossed across the room like a stone.

My hand hurt. Warm blood trickled from my palm down my arm, but still, I clutched the stone. It vibrated in my hand, and I felt like that gave me vigor, somehow, a little life to carry on.

“You have no right to be here,” I continued. “You have already punished me. There is nothing for you here. You must return.”

The Watcher groaned. I looked at him, hunched over only a few feet away from me. I saw Shane in the living room, his eyes wild as he debated running to my rescue. Then Noah broke the circle and ran for it. Trisha screamed, and the Watcher turned around, put out one hand and caught Noah by the neck. He lifted him off the ground effortlessly. “Interesting,” he growled, cocking his head to one side. Noah’s legs flailed, and he put his hands on the Watcher’s, trying to break the hold.

Shane dashed for the Watcher. “Let him go!” he yelled.

The Watcher held out his other arm, but Shane went right for Noah, threw both arms around his torso and pulled. It was an action the Watcher wasn’t anticipating. He flinched, and both Noah and Shane tumbled to the floor. Shane hauled a coughing Noah back to the circle, where Trisha held her son. Then Shane stood up and looked right at me.

I had never seen fear written on his face like that. I knew what he wanted to do, and I knew what would happen if he did. “Stay in the circle,” I pleaded. Beth spoke softly to him, but I knew I had mere seconds before Shane attempted to help me. If he did, his fate would match my father’s. “No,” I mouthed. The Watcher had turned around and was looking in my direction again.

The group continued to murmur things, words I suspected were descriptions of their happy memories, an outpouring of positive thinking in the wake of a negative being. Maybe it was having an effect. The Watcher was definitely having trouble, his panting more pronounced, his movements more labored. I felt a surge of hope—I could do this. I could win this battle.

“You pushed back the curtain too far,” it gasped.

“That was never my intention.” If I stretched my arm, I was sure I could touch his forehead. I held my ground, even though my every instinct was screaming at me to step back.

Instead, I looked into those black eyes one more time. Even in the dim candlelight, I could see something was different. There was a speck of soft white at the edges, a piece of the human Marcus trying to get through. It was still his body—and he was fighting for it.

My hand hurt, but still I squeezed. The buzzing of the amethyst had become a steady pulse, following the same rhythm as my beating heart. I knew then what I had to do. I concentrated on that rhythm, on the blood seeping over the stone. The Watcher took another wobbly step toward me.

“You have seen too much,” it wheezed.

I thought of the blood smeared across my living room. “You’re right,” I said. “I have. And you have taken too much.”

I yanked the necklace off and pushed the bloody stone as hard as I could into the Watcher’s chest. I pressed it into his ripped shirt, twisting my hand and grinding it into his flesh. He howled in agony, a sound that was half human and half beast and totally deafening. His hands thrashed toward me. I felt sharp fingernails slice through my arm, and even though it stung more than it should have, even though it felt like a hot knife had carved through my skin, I held on to that stone and kept forcing it into the Watcher’s chest, as close to his heart as I could get it.

I knew that, for all my skepticism, the amethyst had absorbed something of my energy. I thought of Dad’s theories, all of which involved someone leaving a part of themselves behind through sheer, desperate concentration. Inmates in solitary confinement left behind traces of their presence in ancient cells. Distressed widows left behind the sound of their pacing footsteps as they waited for dead husbands to return. And I had poured my worries and thoughts and reflections into the purple stone that had dangled from my neck for months. It had to be enough, I thought. The rock mixed with my blood, my life’s energy, had to create something more powerful than this stricken monster could handle.

The Watcher fell to his knees. Shane darted across the room and stood behind me, ready to pull me away. I continued to press the amethyst into the Watcher’s chest. He groaned and hissed and made deep, guttural sounds. My own legs were shaking with fear, but Shane was right there, ready to catch me if I fell.

“Punish,” the Watcher hissed. His black eyes were fading to gray. It was working. As the Watcher continued to thrash and howl at me, I heard another voice, smaller and more difficult to perceive.

“I tried to stop it.” It was a pitiful cry nearly buried beneath the Watcher’s voice, but coming from the same body. Marcus was trying to reclaim himself. The gray eyes began to turn white, and I knew the battle was almost over.

Finally, with one last wail, the body fell back. I was left there with the stone in my hand, my head swimming with dizzy exhaustion. I collapsed, too—into Shane’s arms, where I closed my eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.