The First Male (31 page)

As the snow continued to fall in hard, fast flakes from the black sky, Addie felt a sudden chill, like a stabbing pain at the base of her spine that caused her body to jolt. She tried to cry out, but had no voice. Her pain was sharp, like a warning. Her intuition suddenly overwhelmed her senses in ways she hadn't felt in years. Something wasn't right. The atmosphere was charged with power unlike she had ever felt. Immediately, her mind raced toward Eli and Rebecca. Could her feelings be related to them? She focused her energies and quickly dismissed that thought. What she felt now was different. This power was feral—unchained—much different than the contained evil she always felt from them.

She focused again to try to find the source of this awesome power and shuddered when the stabbing pain returned, threefold; the pain was acute. Then, she knew. Something wasn't coming for her; something had arrived. Her day of reckoning, at long last.

She had waited so very long for this moment and now that it was upon her, she wasn't sure how to react. She bore the mark of shame for this abomination, wearing it like a scarlet letter. Her shame had burned in her soul for twenty years. She had relived her mistakes over and over again every day for two decades, cursing her naivete and her arrogance. All of this was her fault. All of it. From her own womb, the first Thibodeaux male in seven generations had been born, much to her horror and the horror of her sister-clan. Many generations ago, the women of the clan had cast a powerful spell to prevent the male chromosome from taking
root in their bloodline, effectively preventing the birth of a male from any woman whose veins pulsed with even the most infinitesimal drop of Thibodeaux blood. As powerful as the sister-clan was, and had always been, it was not infallible. Their magic was not foolproof; nature had its own power and the shadows had many tricks.

Prior to that ill-fated night twenty years ago, it had been 372 years since the last first male born of a first male had been conceived. The destroyer of worlds could only be born on a winter solstice—the shortest day of the year—underneath a full crimson moon caused by a lunar eclipse. The last time a lunar eclipse occurred on a winter solstice was in 1638. Back then, the Thibodeaux sister-clan pooled their power and burned the vessel carrying the child long before he had a chance to take his first breath, beating back the rising darkness, expelling it from the world and entombing it in the Shadowland . . . until now.

From the beginning, it was ordained that any male born unto any Thibodeaux woman would be anointed with blood and put to immediate death by fire, his ashes scattered across hallowed ground.

When Addie discovered life growing in her womb, she called her sister-clan and they blessed the belly to supplement the ancient spell cast by their ancestors.

But, something went wrong.

For a split second—just a split second—Addie lost concentration when the spell had demanded complete focus. In that millisecond, a shadow swept across her mind. She denied to herself that she had seen it, fooling herself into believing it was her imagination, a product of her nerves. Deep down in a place in her soul, she knew what she had seen and the possibility of what it meant. Yet, she remained silent, foolishly believing their power was enough
to beat back the shadows, hoping the ancient spell and the blessing ritual her sister-clan had performed would bless her child and prevent the unthinkable.

She had been wrong.

During the pregnancy, the shadows were able to cloak the gender of the child, even from Addie, tricking her into believing she would welcome the next generation of Thibodeaux witches into the world.

When her child, Thomas Thibodeaux, was born at 3:33 in the morning on December 21, 1956, the horrifying screeching of the sister-clan echoed throughout the hospital, short-circuiting machines and plunging the entire hospital into complete darkness. His birth into the world immediately weakened the clan, albeit temporarily.

In the darkness, the sister-clan felt the shadows skulking. The shadows tore through the umbilical cord still attached to Addie in a brazen attempt to claim the child who would father their master—The One.

The sister-clan grabbed hands and united their power, hoping to expel the shadows. Their weakened force stunned, but did not stop, the darkness from seizing the child and vanishing into the black.

But Addie would not surrender her child to them. She simply could not. If they escaped with the child, it would set the stage for the entire world to burn. While clasping the hands of her sister-clan, in a frenzied exhibition of raw power, she reached into the dark and snatched the child away. She had not had enough strength to kill the child or to bring it back to the hospital; she could not risk that. She had just enough strength, on that darkened night, to create a portal and to rip the child from their arms. She flung it without direction into the vast and empty blackness; the
child spun aimlessly into the wild night. Where it would land, she did not know; but, neither would the shadows.

The sister-clan and the shadows spent years trying to find her child,
The Father
. Their powers tore through the earth, wreaking havoc as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornados. The light and the dark clashed fiercely and left a trail of destruction all over the globe; from Asian tsunamis to Haitian earthquakes; from Californian wildfires to European blizzards; their powers met on a great battlefield, all in search of
The Father
. He had to be found.

To the shadows, he was a blessing that would help free them from an eternal underworld; his seed would bring forth The One and when he reigned, they would be free to walk the earth in their various and hideous forms. They would bring endless torment and destruction to mankind and plunge the world into a darkness yet unknown.

To the sister-clan,
The Father
had to be destroyed before he could impregnate a woman—a vessel—who would give birth to The One. The birth of The One would be a nightmare that defied imagination. His reign of terror would be marked by rivers of blood and plagues of epic proportion. He would have unmatched power.

Somewhere on the earth, in the flesh,
The Father
walked. He could be a fisherman in Tanzania or a student in Belarus or a diplomat's son in New York; he could be a Mexican farmer or a Moroccan soccer player; he could be anything and anywhere.

Addie had one advantage over the shadows: this child was flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood; his blood pulsed with the magic of the sister-clan, although he had no real power of his own; his power was singular—he was used to bring forth The One. But, they were united. Occasionally, especially in the depths of night, she would feel him; his presence seemed to hover over
her like a gray mist over a cool lake. At inconvenient times, she would feel what he felt. She had awakened many a night over-wrought with emotion, emotion she knew did not belong to her. She felt him. She felt his desires and his longings. She felt his happiness, his joy. Many nights she felt his burning lust; a lust so strong that it made her moist, saturating her empty bed with her sweet nectar. She felt his pleasure and his pain and his anger and his sadness, too. His rage, his burning rage, sometimes consumed her.

When she felt him, it never lasted long enough for her to pinpoint his location, but the feelings lingered long enough to give her direction. There were a few times over the years in which she thought she had found him, but each time she was mistaken. She could not give up the search. She was resolute. She had to find him before his seed could take root. She had to prevent the coming apocalypse.

Then, on his twenty-first birthday, Addie felt her child in a way she had never before. The feeling was so strong that it knocked her down as she stood in the kitchen. She collapsed to the hard floor, dropping the plate of berries and herbs which constituted her diet (her body needed to remain pure.) The plate exploded on the floor, spraying colorful food across the span of the room. She knew where he was. She could see his face clearly for the very first time; the bond between mother and child was not easily broken. Immediately, she and her sister-clan set out to dispatch her one and only son; if the father dies, the son can never be born. She had to right her wrong from so long ago. It would be her sacrifice to the world.

Through the conjuring of the sister-clan, on a Los Angeles freeway on a very ordinary day, a car crash ended the life of Thomas Thibodeaux. Addie ensured that his death was quick; not painless,
just quick. The sisters made certain that his body was consumed by fire. Addie gathered his ashes and scattered them across sanctified ground, saving a few ashes in a crystal bottle for herself that she would hide from the world.

The Father had been destroyed; but, they could not be sure if he had begat a child, so the sister-clan continued to search and to cast locating spells. The Seer of the clan could not see anything beyond the death of Thomas and the clan rejoiced.

Addie remained uncertain.

In the flicker of time before the semi-tractor trailer ended the life of her child, she thought she felt something. It was enough to give her pause, in spite of the assurances from the Seer. She wouldn't be fooled twice.

Over the years, Addie continued to seek, using her power to break through veiled walls that divided light and dark. She looked in mirrors between life and death. She peered into places forbidden to her; she had no other choice.

Addie's feelings were validated when she felt the impending birth. The pain she felt was as real as the pain she felt when Thomas had been born. She did not have time to summon the sister-clan. Instead, she cast a locating spell and propelled herself hurriedly through space to the woman whose womb contained the destroyer of worlds.

Addie stole the woman from her house in the dead of night. The woman was waiting for her family to take her to the hospital. When Addie appeared out of nothing, the woman screamed, trying to alert her family, but by the time they made their way upstairs to the bedroom, the room was empty; Addie and the woman were gone. Addie took her to the shack her grandmother had lived in before her death. Her grandmother had had consecrated this place deep in the swamp. Addie hoped to gain power from
this ground, which was hallowed by the bones of her mother, her mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother. This place was the ceremonial burial ground of her ancestors, made fertile by generations of their blood.

When Addie had a chance to examine the woman, her worst fear had come to pass—the child was near. The first male born of the Thibodeaux clan could be burned to ash; the first male born of the first male—and his mother—could be destroyed by fire only if they were consumed by flame before the breaking of the woman's water. If Addie burned the woman and the child this close to his birth, her power and his power might combine and be set loose into the world in a living flame that would incinerate everything in its path. No method made from man would be able to extinguish it and any effort she put forth to quench the flame would be futile. She could not risk it. Once the child took his first breath, he'd become immortal, and her power would not be able to destroy him. Her only option was to bind his powers and to pray.

C
HAPTER
21

W
hen Simon walked through the doors of Hollytree Convalescent Center, with Franklin following closely behind, he instantly felt a charge in the air that almost caused him to double over. The air was alive, aflame with an energy that penetrated his flesh and bore deeply into his bones. It was sticky sweet and felt like molasses filling his lungs. The more he inhaled, the more he struggled to breath. A violent cough dug deeply into his chest, forcing him to grab onto Franklin's shoulder to steady himself as the world spun around his head. Even though his feet were planted firmly onto the floor, he felt airy, as if he was floating above everyone and when he looked down, everything seemed fluid and malleable, as if he could bend the entire world to his will.

The bustling area—full of nurses, other staff, and visitors—was bathed in an effervescent yellow haze that gave the room an ethereal appearance. As Simon gazed slowly around the room, he inhaled, pulling life into his flaring nostrils; realizing with sudden acuteness that he knew and could feel the emotions of every single person that he saw. He felt their happiness and their sadness; their pain and their pleasure; their worry and relief. He knew their failures and their triumphs and he could feel every sickness that ailed every patient in the facility. He even knew those patients who would not survive the long night. What he felt now was the
same feeling that overwhelmed him when he went to visit the doctor, only amplified several times. This time, however, he wasn't sickened by feelings. Now, he felt strong, almost omnipotent.

Then, he felt the familiar dark rising within his soul, evidenced by a fiery bubbling in his belly. His mouth filled with the taste of something foul, rancid. Forcefully, he swallowed back the taste, but not before a small stream of black spittle oozed from the corner of his mouth. Quickly, Simon wiped it away before anyone could notice.