The Lebrus Stone (35 page)

"Calm down. He wanted to get closer to you, only he kept resisting, changing his mind about his pact."

"Pact?" So I was right about him resisting any spells by her. I was relieved, even if the churning in my stomach still made me want to violently vomit. Cray couldn't be my half cousin. I couldn't be carrying our second cousin. No. My head spun. I needed to lie down.

"He made a pact to make you his and join the coven," Gundulla said. "He was unaware he was expected to impregnate you and that you would become a sacrifice. When he did, he tried to keep his distance." She chuckled. "Only he couldn't resist such a pretty face, could he? He was putty in your hands. All I had to do was cast a simple spell with the stone to make him all the more eager to be with you.

"But you acted against it when you found out we were going to date."

"I had to play along, you imbecile."

My mask of calm faded and I snapped, charging for her. The door crashed open and Judith grabbed hold of me from behind.

Two more dragged me away from a cackling Gundulla and gagged me. I hadn't wanted to harm someone as much as I did in that moment, even if I wasn't pregnant. Her callous heart made me lose all control.

In my room, I wasn't tied to the bed. I was able to pull the gag away and curl up to scream in my pillow. I wanted to forget my entire life, but there was nowhere to hide from my mistakes. I had been taken into the arms of the one I probably shouldn't have shared such a bond with. Yet I did, and this rang truest above all else. He had been a piece of me that was always missing. Maybe because I missed the child I had once known. But maybe that's what Gundulla wanted me to think. What she said couldn't be true, it just couldn't. My hunch, once again, was telling me to wait for further proof. But now I wasn't sure when she was tampering with my thoughts.

I had to ask Cray if he knew about her assuming I was pregnant, if he had anything planned to get us out of this. But he was changing, changing in a way that was beyond my grasp or knowledge. Whatever was happening to him, he could still be the Cray I'd come to know and admire. He might help. Maybe he just didn't know how yet. Either way, I couldn't lie in wait to be rescued. Everyone was gone or dead. I had to find my own way out. I had to go back to being how I was before this trip. I had to get some guts.

~ * ~

"Rise and shine," someone said as something splashed on my face.

I squirmed. Small rays of sunlight stung my eyes. The windows were still boarded up, but it looked like tiny holes had been drilled into the wood.

A smile spread across my face, though at the same time, a burning sensation I suffered mostly during the day, scorched my throat and tongue. Judith dragged me by the scuff of my dress. I ended up on the floor.

"Put on your shoes," she ordered, bending down to force them on.

Since she was likely to be my only companion for however long I was stuck here, I needed her to be willing to speak to me. I needed to talk to someone to keep my sanity. I needed to take my mind off the strange craving taking over my mind and giving me the shakes. I realized now it was blood I wanted. Whether it was my own or someone else's, it didn't matter. I had to have it. A vein pulsed on the side of Judith's head. She caught me staring.

"Don't even think about feeding from me," she said, which meant she knew. Of course she did. She probably instigated the live feed I endured on my first night. Was I turning into those…beasts? Is that what they all wanted? If so, I ran the risk of harming myself and my so-called unborn baby. As usual, none of this was making much sense.

"Why are there holes in the boarded up windows?" I asked with a croak.

"We thought it was time you fed your skin. You're as pasty as a jelly roll."

It was the first time she had been humorous, even if it was dripping with sarcasm.

I tried not to complain as she crammed my other foot into my shoe, fastening the straps like I couldn't do it myself.

"Do you see the sun?" I asked. Her face was ghostly white.

"I have my moments."

"Are they enough?"

"Yes." She continued to torture my feet.

"Are you happy?"

"Is anyone?"

"Probably not."

Further details from last night came tumbling back. I had no way of running from it. I was expected to have my apparent half cousin's baby, the one who tried to devour me. And we were destined to pay for it. Taking deep breaths and shoving it to the back of my mind like everything else, was the only way I was going to cope and instigate a plan to get out of here.

"Do you have children, Judith?" I asked, forcing myself to speak and detach myself from my warring thoughts.

Hearing her name made her look up in surprise. A slight pink rose to her cheeks. "No."

"Why not?"

"He died."

"How?"

"Old age."

"Oh."

She blinked then gazed at my shoes, at the straps around my red ankles.

We both stared at them for a while until she stood, brushed down her jeans and ran a hand down her long pleated hair. "I'm to take you for your daily walks."

"I'm allowed to leave the house?" I should have been elated, but too much had happened for me to care all that much.

"For twenty minutes."

I wondered if I could find a way to escape.

"I will have to bind your hands first, keep you on a tight leash."

Any expectation of that vanished as she pulled out a rope from her back pocket and began tying intricate knots around my wrists. She attached the loop onto her belt, so that the rope extended from me to her. She pulled me to the doorway. Turning, she said, "It will be pointless screaming for help. No one will be around at this time to hear you, especially on the grounds of the manor." No one was around much at any time, I thought. Any small glimmer of hope was trampled on.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Six am."

I grew anxious to leave. The house was quiet as death, and I wanted to be free from its almost suffocating grasp, if even for a second.

Judith opened the front door and I breathed in the flower scented air, holding up my hands. Although the sky wasn't all that bright, it still stung my eyes.

"Watch your step," Judith said when I almost tripped. I could taste as well as smell tulips and freshly cut grass.

Leaves clung to the heels of my shoes as they sunk into the damp earth, slowing my step toward the gate of the cemetery I had visited on my second day here. We approached the many rows of those buried, each telling their story in less than ten words. I looked at Vander's tomb to the left. If he were alive and as courageous as I recalled from my visit to the past, he would have saved me with little effort. I had the urge to sit and talk to him.

Judith sat on a log and opened a basket of snacks. I sat beside her and tugged on the rope to test her weight. She really was heavier than she looked.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"More thirsty."

She opened a bottle of water and placed it in my hands. I drank greedily, wondering who else we were among, how and when they died, whether they could hear us as we spoke, read thoughts that ran through our minds.

I might come to know sooner than I thought.

It was strange to think that I was sitting next to a woman who was decades old. It was hard to believe she was possibly forever stuck this age. Yet I wondered why she hadn't chosen to be youthful like Gundulla. Why she chose to be middle-aged and less groomed.

"It's strange," I said to fill the silence.

"What?" Judith asked before biting into a beef sandwich.

I refused to answer her, until she glared at me.

"How we live to die," I said

She chewed on her sandwich for a while, possibly contemplating an answer. "Maybe we die to live."

I frowned. "Then what would be the point in living?"

No matter how much I wanted to give in and weep, she had me too intrigued not to ask. If nothing else, I had to make sense of their crazy mission, try and understand a fraction of it. Not that it really mattered, only my way to escape.

"I've yet to find out." She took another bite of her sandwich and threw it back into the plastic container.

I guess she had no way of knowing what I meant. She had never died. She was only going to continue the process, moving onto nowhere but here, a stagnant kind of sequence. She was never going to know how she began.

I was too curious to leave the conversation at that. "What's it like to know you will be living forever?"

She took a deep breath before responding. I wondered if it was difficult to discuss.

"It is quite fitting to my declaration to the coven."

"Do you declare it a wise choice?"

"The wisest."

"Then why do you seem so unfulfilled?"

"Because we are all waiting for the fulfillment to happen; soon, as you know."

I clenched my bottle of water; it cracked and spilled the drink onto the ground.

Judith patted my knees with a tissue, biting into an apple. "Oh, you're ruining that lovely nightie of yours."

I could see the thoughtful woman she must have been before she turned to the dark side. How she must have been a doting mother and wife.

"Judith?"

"Hm?" She continued to pat my legs.

"Would you allow anyone to kill your child?"

The patting continued. I touched her hand to make her stop. She didn't flinch as expected. Instead, she kept it in place. Her gaze looked haunted, as if she could see the spirits of those who lay around us, and they were telling her things she couldn't describe or keep to herself.

Her hand moved away and she stood to face the gravestone that remained partly intact. She had dragged me along. I read the scripture carved in the stone.

Jeremiah O'Hare

Beloved son, father and friend.

May he rest in eternal peace. With thy Lord. Thy shepherd. Thy savior.

"I could be beside my son," she said. "I could hold him again. Yet, I never will if you're not destroyed." She turned to me, her eyes red and moist. "I made my pact with the coven and I shall stay true to my word. We must remain immortal until the sacrifice of you and your child. After that, I can finally end. I cannot let this burden be for nothing."

"My child and me?" I asked, befuddled. "I thought it was just me."

"You are the last, the key as such to opening the portal to Shimmarian. The last mother must be destroyed along with the child to keep the portal open."

My breathing became labored, my stomach churned. Even though I was convinced I wasn't pregnant, I had to act shocked and keep up with the pretense, which wasn't hard when I thought about how far they intended to ruin my life and the child's that was supposed to be growing inside me. I wondered if Gundulla would find a way to make sure I was pregnant if she found out I wasn't.

Judith patted my face with a tissue; her eyes distant and cold. "Cray must be diminished, too, though when is not as important. Still, all three of you have the blood of Zangra. Gundulla will surely get what she wanted through the three of you."

"Does the last rite have to include three descendants?"

She smiled wickedly. I stepped away from her grasp and tripped on a stone.

"It wasn't necessary, no, but it has pleased Gundulla to have it so."

"H-how? How did this happen?" I asked, my heart still telling me they were lying about Cray and I being related.

"Your grandmother fell in love with a low life before her marriage to William. She gave away a daughter. That child grew up and become impregnated in her twenties. Gundulla made sure she would have a boy by casting a spell, obviously."

I fell back onto the fallen tree trunk. Bile rose to my throat.

Judith came closer. "That boy was taken and raised as Gundulla's son so she could coax him into doing as she requested once he met you." She looked at my stomach. "You know the rest."

"But she didn't know where I was?"

Judith laughed. "You stupid girl. She murdered your parents; she arranged the whole car accident. She had found them about a year before you were conceived. True, it took her a while to find them, but in time, she knew she could. The Lebrus stone always leads the way eventually."

She knew I was with Aunt Lorraine? Of course she did. She knew about Cray. My heart pumped too much blood to my head, my legs became unsteady, my ears rang.

"She allowed you to remain with your aunt for a while. She then created the fire to look like an accident. Gundulla made sure your aunt got you to safety before her death. She could have taken you in and raised you in some dungeon until you were the age we needed you to conceive, but that would have been too much hard work, too easy. She preferred to see you suffer a slow abandonment. She thought that would be a nice, added bonus."

No matter how much had happened this was the most sickening truth. She had planned every little detail of my life. She had ownership of my fate from birth.