The Lebrus Stone (37 page)

"Of course, now, the portal to Shimmarian has been closed," he said. "Witches today still gather around it to pray for forgiveness so that they may once again secretly live among them."

"Why doesn't the stone just let you pass through?" I asked, intrigued, even though I probably shouldn't have been. I just wanted to hear the entire story.

He snickered. "The stone is very powerful, yet it also has its own rules we must abide by. The stone expects us to work hard for what we wish to achieve. I suppose the essence of Druviz Owal has a lesson to teach even those it considers lost and pitiful."

"Sounds fascinating," I said sarcastically. Elandra's story was right. A fresh tidal wave of guilt hit me, but I had to stay strong. I couldn't let the death of Elandra and her coven be in vain. "Where's Cray now? Take me to him." I was surprised at how well I was taking all this, surprised at how forthright I sounded.

"Downstairs in the dining room. I can take you to him if you are insistent. But…he doesn't know what he is. He believes your Fallion blood could be destroying him. He doesn't know I am his father. If you have any ounce of feelings left for him, you will help keep it that way."

He glared at me. But I shot up and hurried for the door.

His large hand barricaded it, being careful not to get too close. "You must also be prepared for what you are about to see."

Before he could speak again, I pushed by him and swung the door open and ran downstairs. The front door was locked. There were even three guards in front of it.

When I reached the dining room, it was dark, empty as usual and lit only by candles. Did they no longer switch lights on?

A circle of people in red robes with their hoods up were kneeling and muttering.

I scanned the room, hoping to find Cray.

It took a moment for me to realize he was the withered form lay motionless in the middle of the floor, bound in thick, heavy chains from his bare feet to his neck and arms.

I ran to his side and tried to loosen the chains. But they seemed attached to his body. I touched his face to check his temperature. He was ice cold. His skin was still the color of ash. It crumbled between my fingers.

Nobody did anything to help, just continued muttering.

"Do something!" I yelled, offering my wrist to Cray and forcing it into his mouth. But he wouldn't take it. He wouldn't try.

Where was Clias?

I pounded Cray's chest to revive him. It made no difference. I winced. His chest was like a steel plate that sliced at my palms.

I collapsed on top of him, knowing I might have lost the only person I had left.

Suddenly, he convulsed. I tried to hold him down. It only made him worse.

He gritted his teeth; his eyes were a complete shade of red. When he looked at me, they were just as Clias had warned me. Demonic.

But I couldn't leave him. Not when he was in so much agony. Something seemed to be ripping him apart from the inside. I could sense his pain, the rage and build up of cries that emitted from his mouth like a dying man slowly being punished for his sins.

"I'm here, Cray. I'm not leaving you."

I found myself kissing him. He managed to shake me off, struggled to open his mouth and speak. His eyes remained a glossy sheen of red that darkened to purple.

He snarled and I edged back. The sound was filled with too much hatred.

"C-Cray?"

This time he growled through long, pointy teeth. I reached for him. My hand shook every inch of the way. "I'm here for you, Cray. I don't care what you are."

He sniped at my hand. I grabbed where he had nipped me and watched him whip and lash about as he bit at thin air, determined to struggle free.

He wasn't human anymore, he was a demon on the outside, too, a monster that no longer remembered me.

Clias entered the room and grabbed Cray by the head, muttering something under his breath as he pressed his thumbs to the center of his head. Cray's withered limbs started to spasm, then become scarily still.

I sat back, unable to rationalize what was happening. It was all beyond belief, yet I was living a real and vivid nightmare I couldn't wake from. Death seemed the only escape.

" You see what he is?" Clias asked, still looking down at him.

"D-Does he need to feed?"

"Yes. If he doesn't, he will face death. The blood of a Fallion is very addictive, even small traces of it such as yours can make a Sha'lac delirious."

Judith had said it didn't matter when Cray died, as long as he did. Gundulla must have purposely made him feed from me to make him suffer a slow and painful end. What was I going to do? Did Cray even know all this?

A person from the circle stood and lowered their cloak.

I wasn't surprised to see it was Marsi.

She came to stand beside Clias and placed a hand on his shoulder, looking down at Cray in pity. I wanted to claw at her face, but lowered my head. She had too many on her side. I had no one, not even Cray.

"We are working on his release," she said. "His hunger for your essence could have cost you your life. We must stabilize him." The creatures that fed from me must have been Sha'lacs. Were there many on Earth? Roaming without our knowledge? Why did they all want to save Cray after allowing him to be tricked?

Marsi smiled at Clias as he took her hand and kissed it. "Clias, bring me the Lebrus stone."

He walked to the back of the room and returned with a solid black stone. It shone reflective images around the room; most of which too abstract to administer as an identifiable shape.

Marsi eased it from his grasp and held it above Cray who began to groan from deep in his throat. His whole body rippled with purple veins like roots of a tree. They sprouted all over his powdery white face.

Opening her hand, Marsi allowed the pointed end of the stone to balance itself within her palm. It gradually spun into a smog of gray. "You know of its power?" she said to no one in particular. I assumed she was referring to me.

"Enough to know it's dangerous in the hands of those who seek revenge," I said, unsure why.

"Rightly so," Clias said. "But in the hands of those who seek revenge, it can also bring great victory to many if the owners so choose. Even save a life you cherish."

Removing her hand from the stone, Marsi watched it spin into a solid white triangular shape. Inside it fluttered a fluorescent pink eye that dissolved into a light blue fluid that dripped onto Cray's chest.

It coated him like armor, encapsulated him with a heat that melted away his skin. I could see every artery connecting to his still heart. It had grown in size, filling his chest. His muscle tissue was visible; blood travelled through his thick blue veins that had split and torn to leak a greenish substance that evaporated his flesh like acid.

I covered my mouth and swallowed bile that had soured my tongue, closing my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, Marsi was standing in front of me, her hand pressed against the top of my head. Drowsily, I tried to speak.

"Rise," she ordered. I headed for Cray to stand beside his corroding bones, doing the actions without much thought.

Marsi stood opposite me, expressionless. "You can save him from his peril."

"How?"

"The answer you seek lies before you."

I didn't understand, but we were running out of time. Cray was altering from recognition, disappearing as we spoke. Yet I had no way of helping him, not without knowing how I held the key to his survival.

The reality of losing him had me searching for clues, ransacking my brain for a remedy to avoid his demise. But I wasn't fortunate enough to hold such knowledge.

"Why are you trying to save him if this is what Gundulla wants?" I asked them.

"He is still my son," Clias said. "He deserves a quicker death, and less prematurely."

"Then why not just kill him? Why not just let me turn him into a complete Sha'lac."

"He will become too strong as a Sha'lac," Marsi said. "You must keep healing him."

"Why?" I asked, confused.

"Admittedly, we need you to have a reason to go on other than the child," Clias said. "We need you to have hope in saving him as well as the child after it is born. Without your human hope, you could destroy yourself, and then, well, then all this will have been for nothing. We cannot risk that, even with this kind of magic from the stone at hand. It does not always help where needed. Often it is only when it feels ready to help teach us a lesson, or when we work hard to cross its barriers. Druviz Owal, even here, always tries to have the upper hand."

Why weren't they using magic to see if I was pregnant, I thought? Did they trust in Cray
that
much?

My hands were already fixed around the stone. It soaked through my arms, turning them as white as concrete.

My fingers pressed into its softening mold. I could feel the warmth within its pellicle and what I knew to be its main core.

I kneeled beside Cray and held the stone above him. He was struggling to remain conscious as his rib cage broke in half. I pierced the blunt end of the stone into his disappearing form.

There was no fear, only acceptance as I pressed it into him, determined to see his revival.

He gasped and rose from the ground, falling back down with a tap as his brown-turning eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Removing the stone, I watched his ribs click back into place. A regrowth of flesh and skin covered his once weak bones and his heart shrank to a normal size and beat to a steady pace.

His face glowed from the blood filling his cheeks.

I had helped him return. I gasped at my own power with the stone and held Cray to me. Tears streamed down the sides of his face, wetting his hair so that it glistened against the flickers of candlelight.

"See how slowly powerful you are becoming around the stone?" Clias said. "Do you see why you are to be vital to our mission?"

I nodded. Clias offered me his hand and brought me to my feet. He kissed my fingers, and for a moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of regret in his dark, stony eyes.

I asked to take care of Cray in his room. They weren't worried about me trying to feed him. He was too weak. Better, but not the same. Besides, he was mostly unconscious, and his teeth hadn't come through yet.

His skin was healthier, but colorless. His limbs were lifeless by his side. He also slipped into unconsciousness every so often, never quite understanding where he was or who was trying to nurse him back to health.

I had to understand he hadn't completely returned, but that he was in remission to do so. Patience was a virtue, and Cray needed plenty of it to come back.

And waiting was less difficult than watching him begin to disappear like he was about to earlier.

As for the chains, they weren't allowed to be removed until they were sure he was no longer a safety hazard. His strength had become multiple to its normal human rate, apparently.

One grip of his hand could kill me an instant if I wasn't careful in keeping my distance. So I mostly watched from afar, reading him anything I could get my hands on.

When he was asleep, I tried to massage his feet to bring back some circulation to his stone cold body. Though sometimes he burned with heat, other times he was frozen like a fossil found within a glacier.

His rise and fall in temperature was erratic and his ongoing symptoms were unpredictable. Yet much fewer than before, and with a lot less for him to deal with. Sometimes, for a few seconds, he screamed in his sleep, panted out of breath and begged to be finished, shot in the head or decapitated.

It hurt to see him suffer. It hurt to see the real want in his eyes to be destroyed and taken from the four walls of his agonizing wait. I realized that even if I told Gundulla I wasn't pregnant to save him, it wouldn't help. She would only coax us into sleeping together again to make it happen. And Cray would be back to being neglected by these people.

No, finding a way out was the only option. Besides, she was convinced I was carrying his child. With their know-how and magic, maybe it was true. If so, I had a few months to figure out how to escape.

When I was really desperate to get his attention, I sang to him, stroked his hair like a child till he fell into another state of dead sleep. I curled up next to him before it started all over again, circulating over and over until I became too tired to stay awake, speak, walk with the same regularity.

Feeding him became a mission within itself. Pouring liquidized food down his throat wasn't as easy as it sounded. Not when his mouth would involuntarily clamp closed so tight, I had to pry it open to blow liquid into his throat with an empty pen without choking him into another early grave.

I even turned down my daily walks to master his feedings. By the fifth day, I was allowed to loosen his chains and sponge bathe him from head to toe.

Luckily, he wasn't awake to see this happen. It would only have dented his pride. He wouldn't have taken it so well, which was why, for once, I was glad to see him detached from the world during those moments of personal invasion.

As for me, there was no one else's personal space I would have liked to intrude upon. His trim physique was something I never got bored of admiring, especially so up close. He wasn't my cousin, I kept reminding myself to feel less weird about it. He wasn't. I had to believe it was all a part of the game.

It was during one of these moments that I noticed a slight bump protruding from his chest, in the shape of a square rather than a diamond. The area was extremely smooth and supple. Had it always been there and I hadn't noticed? Was it because he had fed from me? Had I somehow transferred my mark onto him? Did all Sha'Lacs have them? It couldn't be because we were related, could it?

I was in the middle of inspecting our strange similarity to see if it revived him in some way, when I sensed someone staring. A cough echoed in the room.

"Are you quite finished?" Judith inquired, turned away.

I was still straddling Cray as I tried to recover from my initial embarrassment. After wriggling out of my position, I got off the bed, folded the damp cloth and held it to my lips. It still hot from the dampness of his skin.

"Yes," I mumbled.

"Good. Follow me." She headed out of the door without further discussion. I headed in the same direction, looking back at Cray who was half naked. The sight of him so peaceful and handsome had me wishing he was awake and able to kiss me like I often found myself wanting to during the past few days in the privilege of his presence. Sad and perhaps odd, but true.

"Are you coming?" Judith bellowed.

I flinched out of my thoughts and headed out of the door and closed it quietly, then followed Judith up the flight of stairs and down the hall to the green door. I blanched. I didn't want to face the room Vander may have killed himself in. But I didn't have a say. Judith opened the door and pushed me inside. The room was dark. It was only when Judith lit a tall candle that I saw someone curled into a ball in the corner. A plate of uneaten food was on the floor beside a glass of water. The person's clothing was scuffed and dirty, and their reddish hair was bunched up around a lowered head, hugging a bunched up sheet.

"Jess?"

I rushed toward her and lifted her head to be certain.

Her cheeks were sunken with dehydration, her lips dry and cracked.

Her eyes were ringed red but free from tears. The swell of them proved they had long been shed and emptied before I arrived.

"Jess. Are you alright? Did they hurt you?" I checked.

Her mouth hung open, yet she didn't speak, She just looked at me blankly as she moaned something. I had to lean in to listen.

"Murr…murr…" she choked, and coughed hysterically into the sleeve of her shirt. The back of her head was bleeding from a tiny gash.

It burned my throat, but I managed to control the urges as I took out a piece of tissue from my pocket and dabbed at the wound. She winced and pushed me away.

"You're hurt, Jess. Let me help." I turned to ask Judith something, but she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her and locking it.

The candle was left burning on a small table. Hopefully, it was going to last long enough to get a coherent answer out of Jess.

"Jess, you have to eat." I sat beside her, picked up a slice of malted bread and tore a piece to place it to her mouth.

She shrugged it away.

"Please, Jess."

"No!" She pushed herself up against the wall and stumbled to the other side of the room, wrapping the sheet around her.

I dropped the bread and went to her.

"No," she lashed, backing away. "Go away. Get!" She fell to her knees. Saliva drooled from her mouth as she continued to scream.

"I'm just as trapped as you are, Jess. I need you," I confessed.

The pitch of her cries deepened to a tired drone. Her forehead pressed against the floorboards.

I stepped closer carefully and stroked her back.

"We have to stick together, Jess. Find a way out of here," I whispered.

She peered up with eyes moist. "Hh…h haahm scared." She sobbed.

I held her. "I know. So am I." I tried not to cry; she needed to see me coping, not falling apart. "Together we'll be alright. We'll make it out of here."

"How you so sure?"

I wasn't. I just knew one of us had to be. I just knew the words in the dark that had appeared in my bedroom had to be true, from someone not human, someone who cared.

"Because I won't let anything happen to you."

"They gone killed her, Crys. They killed Nanny. She'd been speakin' up too much." Her sobs became head pounding squeals that echoed throughout the room. Her grip tightened around me as I held her down, trying to suppress her screaming to a muffled hum into my lap.

I tried not to cry. One of us had to be strong. For all of us.

"What about the others, Jess? Elandra? Her coven?" I asked, afraid of her answer.

I had hoped Isobel had been lying about them being dead.

"I Dunno." She sniffed. "I just turned up here, tied to a bed."

Were the others tied to a bed somewhere in this house too?

The candle had melted half way. The wax dripped and dried like un-dissolved snow along the deep blue mat.

Sometimes I could hear a voice calling my name as I blinked away the presence forming within shadows against the light. Not Vander, but Arrious. I wasn't afraid. I wanted her to appear. I counted the seconds between each interval as Jess slept in my arms. Jess bristled, then nuzzled my stomach from time to time, until she jerked awake and glared at the doorway that was still locked.

"How 'bout you? You okay?" she finally asked.

"My priority is getting Cray better and taking care of you."

"What about you? Who be takin' care of you?"

"I'll be fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Thanks." I smirked.

"You don't look much alive. How you expectin' to cope all by yourself?"

"I'll find a way."

"Then you're braver than I thought." She stared at me pityingly.

"That makes two of us." I said, looking away.

"You know, I wish I could be like you." She laid her head back on my lap. "Fearless n all." She yawned, and closed her eyes. I wanted to laugh at the overstatement.

Instead, I rested my head against the wall and waited to be captured into a beautiful dream where I
was
brave.

A soft haze of light entered the room from the doorway; a figure stood unmoving.

"Stand. Both of you," Judith ordered. "You're needed downstairs."

~ * ~

Although I wasn't allowed to see Jess, I wasn't all that concerned. To be honest, I had a feeling she was right where she wanted to be: against Gal's pert pecs and held responsible for his everlasting love.

It was him she ran to when we reached downstairs for one of the coven meetings. But I didn't mind. Jess needed the strength of a man at a time when she was at her most vulnerable. Even if Gal was the woman who was keeping us captive.

I was returned to my room where I took a quick shower to wash my greasy hair. I was alone at last, and I tried to pry the wood from the window like my earlier attempts. But they wouldn't budge. There was nothing to use to help. Everything had been taken away.

Did the locals not wonder why the windows were boarded up? Did Gundulla cast a spell for them not to notice?

Tonight they told me I was allowed to roam the rest of the house. It was pointless, but I tried every door. As expected, they were locked.

Lethargically, I changed into a pair of khaki combats and my black tank top. the one Jared gave to me for my birthday and for helping him care for his wife.

It was now a little tighter around the waist, but it still signified a day in the sun, sipping sarsaparillas in the garden, listening to Jared lessen my worries with talks of his prognosis on Selma's outcome, and how his home cooked remedies might beat the doctor's cocktails.

The gift had been wrapped neatly into a creaseless parcel. That itself had knocked me for six. I was touched by how much care and attention to detail he had been put into to a single object that was intended solely for me.

Sure, I had received gifts in the past, but not like his, and from someone who taught me how to make the most of life.

"My, you are remarkably beautiful, Crystal."

It was Reverend Sinclair. He was glaring at me through the full length mirror I was standing in front of. How long he had been behind me, I didn't know.

The door was closed. Maybe locked. His appearance was unexpected. Had someone sent him? Where was Gundulla? Everyone else? Panic prickled my skin like splinters of glass. My breathing quickened as I prepared to scream.

"Such fine attributes for a fine young woman." He smiled jauntily with the empty compliment.

I refused to turn to him. His face in the mirror was enough to make my skin crawl.

I wondered if he was even a real Minister, if the town had been brainwashed into thinking he was eligible.

His hand came to rest on my shoulder, his breath was against my ear. My skin crawled and itched.

I was about to scream but he covered my mouth. I fell back against him as his arms encircled my waist and his fingers crept up my top and dug into my stomach. I groped and kicked for something to knock to the floor. I pulled at his hair, nose, the collar of his shirt, something to release his steel grip. Memories of what had happened not too long ago came flooding back full throttle. Hot tears automatically streamed down my face.

He ignored all my attempts to fight him, planting wet kisses down my neck as he continued to lift his hands higher up my top to reach my breasts. I closed my eyes and tried to remove the feeling of him roughly violating me. His tongue ran along my cheek.

With a muffled groan, he threw me onto the bed and pinned me down.

"I taste the rain, the storm, the thunderous call of your sins for repentance. I shall wash you," he whispered in my ear. His hand covered my mouth. My teeth cut into his palm. My throat burned. I resisted wanting to taste someone so vile. But my eyes rolled back from the scent of his blood driving into me. I craved the bitter and sweet flavors. My mouth watered. I automatically became aroused.