Burning for You (Blackwater) (31 page)

“Ursula, I’m sorry for bringing all
of this to light,” Jack says, apologizing as though he were the one who did
everything wrong, when it was my sister and my mother’s daughter that cheated
on him.  “I had to go somewhere and tell someone.  I think you and Leah are the
only ones who can help.”

“Heidi is with Gabe now,” my mother
says quietly.  “Leah, we have to go to them.  We have to get that baby.”

“Mother, what do you see?” I ask
her.  “What’s going on?”

“They’re going to run,” she says. 
Her eyes are glazed.  “We have to catch them now, or they’ll run.”  She breaks
from her trance and stares at me with her ice blue eyes filled with tears. 
“Gabe is Heidi’s catalyst.”

“What?  How?” I ask.  I look to
Jack, wondering if he even knows what she means, but he looks confused, though
hanging on her every word.

“Gabe reaped the ankle band,” my
mother says.  “He is the only person who could remove a craft like that without
the fire elemental.”

“What does that mean?” Jack asks. 
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“She means he was able to undo
whatever craft was contained in the ankle band to get the baby out of the
hospital,” I say.  “I’m wondering how he managed to walk out of the hospital. 
Even if there were sirens, Gabe wouldn’t have heard them.”

“Gabe walked out with that baby,”
my mother says.  “I’m sure of it.”

I nod.  “I believe you,” I say.  “There
was the nurse locked in the closet and drugged, too,” I recall.  “But what do
we do about it?”

“We go to the Order,” she says,
standing suddenly.  “We have to go, now, before it’s too late and that baby is
gone forever.”  She looks over at me, and I haven’t moved a muscle.  “We need
to go now!”

“Okay,” I say, scrambling to my
feet.  “Jack, do you want to come with us?”

“No,” my mother says.  “They’ll
kill him.  You need to stay here, Jack.”

“Theo is supposed to come over
soon,” I say to neither one of them in particular.  “Jack, when he comes, tell
him where we are.  Where are we going, anyway?” I ask my mother.  “Where is the
Order?”

She smirks.  “The Methodist
church,” she says.  “Think about it.”

I drive like a sixteen year old who
just got a license.  My mother and I head directly for the Methodist church
that I’d passed many times in my life, but never really gave much thought to
its existence until now.  Witch trials four centuries ago were conducted by
Methodists, and it makes all too much sense that the Order would take up in the
very same place that their ancestors gathered together to decide eradicate
Blackwater of witchcraft.  Blackwater United Methodist Church stands lonely on
the corner of Dextro and Amethyst, and while it’s the largest church in
Blackwater with the largest congregation, I’ve never been inside.  It’s a
simple white brick building with a tall steeple and stained glass windows that
are visible from the front.  My mother and I pull in to the parking lot, which
has a few cars peppered through the lot, including Gabe’s white BMW with the
smashed window.  I wonder if they brought the baby over in the yellow car seat
with the broken glass scattered around.  It doesn’t seem safe, but I’m pretty
sure that broken glass is the least of my worries with this baby.  From the
moment I set foot on the lot, I know Heidi is here.

Inside the church appears to be a
single room with pews enough to seat six hundred people, though I’m pretty sure
that no more than two hundred attend on a regular basis.  The pews have a few
people I don’t recognize scattered around, but no one pays my mother and I any
attention as we enter.  Jesus Christ on the cross greets us as we go in.  I
never really liked seeing that image.  Jesus always looks so pathetic and
malnourished to me, and I really would just like to offer him a sandwich.  His
eyes are always rolled up so he looks a bit like a zombie.

One of the people in the pews
stands and turns, and my breath falls short when I see it’s Gabe.  He does have
a keen sense, because it’s as though he knows we’re here.  His yellow eyes glow
as he casts them our way, and I feel my mother shrink back.  I grab her arm to
keep her from turning and leaving me here with Gabe alone.  He strolls up to us
and smiles, twisting his face into a look so horrifying, I begin to shake.  “I
assume you want to see Heidi,” he says quietly in his strange voice.  I have no
recollection of him walking over to us, and now he’s right here, face to face. 
I now know why his voice has the unusual tone and accent, and I wonder how he
learned to speak so well to the point where I didn’t know he was deaf until
Theo told me.  “You can follow me.”  He turns and we follow him down the aisle,
approaching zombie Jesus and going to a small door on the left of the front of
the church.  Gabe opens the door to reveal a long and twisting wooden staircase
leading down.  He keeps walking, and I grab my mother’s hand and start to
follow him.  Pictures line the spiraled wall as we plunge below.  The first one
I see is of a woman tied to a cross and burning, with snakes slithering away at
her feet.  Early witch trials in Blackwater, I note.  The next picture is a man
bound and suspended over Blackwater Lake by solemn people dressed in black,
apparently about to be drowned.  The third one is a body, covered with a sheet
and hanging from a rope by their neck tied to the center of a cross.  The last
painting is a hand coming out of a grave with a stake marking it.  I feel sick
just looking at that one.  Burning and drowning seem like tame deaths compared
to being buried alive.  Perhaps I can relate to burning and drowning because of
my own elementals. 

“Do you like the artwork?” Gabe
asks me, glancing back with a cruel smile.  “My father painted those.”

                “Disgusting,” I tell him.  He shrugs.

                “It’s history,” he says.  “You Coven have
your history, and we Order have ours.”

                “Gabe,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder
so he will face me.  “Why did you choose the Order?  You could have been
welcomed into the Coven.  You have powers.  It’s unusual, but you are part
Coven.”

                “The Order didn’t reject me like my own mother
did,” he replies flatly.  “My mother is Lisette Lavanne, and to the Coven, that
means everything.  She cast me out before I could even taste her milk.  She
would have left me to die, but my father saved me.  For that, I owe the Order
everything, and will always use my ability to craft for their advantage.”

                “But you’re not one of them,” I say softly. 
“Just like Heidi isn’t one of them.  I can’t believe she would choose to do
something so hateful toward someone who is her friend, like Eleanor.  I can’t believe
she would do this to her own husband.  Mother and I are another story.  Heidi
was always threatened by us, and she’s always wanted….”  I trail off, because I
don’t really know what Heidi wants, or has ever wanted.  Did she ever express
the desire to be anything to me when we were growing up?  Was I too selfish and
wrapped up in myself to care what Heidi ever felt or wanted?  I stop talking
and Gabe turns to continue down what seems to be a never ending spiral.  My
mother has been absolutely quiet, as though she’s anticipating something.  I’m
dizzy, and I realize that the stairs are turning us in circles, but we are
finally at the bottom.  The floors are stone and the walls are grey, giving the
basement of Blackwater United a dungeon quality.  Mostly it appears to be a
large empty room, with a large wooden table in the center and ancient looking
high backed chairs surrounding it.  There are three doors on either side of the
table, and one at the head.  Gabe goes directly to the one at the head, and I
hear soft singing from behind the door.  No words, just humming.  “Heidi,” I
whisper.

                Gabe stops in front of the door.  “You don’t
seem to have a very good idea of what your sister wants.  But the Order does. 
The Order has given her what she wants and what she needs so very badly.  Her
own family, who is Coven, doesn’t seem to have a clue.  So remember that, dear
Leah, when you step through that door and see what the Order has given your
sister who has been left completely ignored and alone for so long by her own
people, just as I have.  She and I belong together.”  He opens the door and I
gasp.

                Heidi sits in a rocking chair in the center
of the room.  She wears a white gown and her hair is long and loose around her
shoulders.  She looks far younger than her thirty-one years, like a child.  In
her arms is Eleanor and Drew’s baby boy, his soft blonde hair an angelic puff
around his head, framing his perfectly shaped skull like a halo.  Heidi doesn’t
even look up when we walk in.  She is lost in rapture for the infant.  Her eyes
show it.  Her arms cradle the baby boy, who appears healthy, and she strokes
the infant’s legs, cheeks, hands and belly.  Her humming continues.  “Heidi,” I
say softly, going to her and kneeling beside her.  “Heidi!” I say more loudly when
she doesn’t respond.  I look helplessly at my mother, who stands at the
entrance of the room looking horrified at Heidi’s trance-like state.  Something
is so wrong with this picture.

                “Shhhhh,” Heidi says to me.  “You’ll wake
him.”

                The baby sleeps on, though, and Heidi turns
slightly away from me and continues to coo and hum.  “What’s wrong with her?” I
ask, turning to Gabe.  “What did you do to her?”  He smiles and shrugs and I
turn back to Heidi.  “Heidi, listen to me,” I say.  “Eleanor needs her baby
back.  This is not your baby.  You can’t keep this baby.”

                “Of course it’s my baby,” Heidi says.  “I
gave him life.  He’s mine.”

                “What the hell is she talking about?” I ask Gabe. 
He smiles and says nothing, infuriating me.  “Heidi, you did not give birth to
him.  You were never pregnant.  You supposedly went through the adoption
process, even though I highly doubt any of that was legal.  Eleanor gave birth
to him and he was taken from the hospital.  He’s not yours.  You and Gabe stole
this baby, and he needs to go back to his mother.  Jack knows, I know, and
Mother knows, Heidi.  You can’t keep this up.  Someone will find out and put
you in jail.”  My mind shifts to Bill Cousineau, and it dawns on me that
perhaps he’s been in on the kidnapping from the beginning.  All of his threats
against me today about the Order taking over all seem to point to the idea that
I’m completely helpless in this game.  “Oh god,” I say aloud when it all hits
me.  Gabe’s connections, the Order running the police department, everything is
starting to fall into place.

                “He’s mine!” Heidi shouts.  The baby’s eyes
snap open and he begins to cry.  Heidi sits up and begins to pace the room like
an animal, soothing him against her shoulder, bouncing him and walking.  “I
gave birth to him, and he’s mine,” she continues. “This is my baby.  How dare
you come in here and tell me he’s not mine?”

                “Heidi,” I say calmly, feeling the fury
start to churn inside of me.  “You are not this baby’s mother.  You didn’t give
birth.  If you’re his natural mother, then you’d have milk to feed him.  You
don’t have milk.”

                Heidi whirls around, ice blue eyes glaring. 
“Don’t have milk?” she repeats.  She tears the shoulder of her gown away,
exposing a swollen white breast and squeezes it.  Miraculously, milk dribbles
down from her darkened nipple.  “What do you call that?”

                I start to back away slowly, feeling the ice
in her gaze, and not understanding what I’m seeing.  “What did you do to her, Gabe?”
I whisper.  “What the hell is going on?”

                “Get out!” Heidi screams.  The baby is at
her breast now, sucking hungrily on Heidi’s milk.  “Leave me and my son in
peace.  I don’t want to see you again, Leah.  You either, Mother,” she spits. 
“You two take everything I love, but you will not take my son.  You took our
father’s love, you got all of the power, but you will not get J.J.”

“What did you do to her?” I turn
and shriek at Gabe, pushing at his chest with my hands.  “This is not my
sister.  You’ve brainwashed her!”  I feel my head start to throb the minute I
touch him.  “Stop that!”

                “Don’t yell at me,” he tells me calmly.  “I
gave your sister something she wanted very badly.  Something she could never
have done without my help.”

                “Maybe you should have tried knocking her up
the old fashioned way,” I snap.  “Or were you born without a dick?”  The fury
inside of me is bubbling over, I can feel it.  I can’t hold back any longer. 
Head pain be damned, I leap at Gabe, trying to claw at him and then scream from
the pain.  He pushes me away and I’m thrown against the stone floor, clutching
my temples in agony.

                “You don’t touch me,” he mutters softly. 
“No one touches me.”  I stare at him, wondering what the hell is going through
his brain right now.  “Get up,” he commands.  “You’ve found what you were
looking for.  Now leave, before I take your craft.  And I won’t stop at that,
I’ll take your life.”

                “Someone will find out about this,” I tell
him, picking myself up off the floor.  “The adoption can’t be legal.”

“It’s completely legal,” Gabe
assures me.  “Now get out of here.  You and your mother have seen what you came
to see.  You know the truth, but you won’t be able to change anything.  Bill
Cousineau will do anything for me.  I practically pay his salary.  He’ll come
after you for killing that trash husband of yours.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I say.

“No, perhaps you didn’t,” Gabe
replies.  “But he was still trash, and I’m sure you’re not completely innocent. 
You’ve bewitched my brothers to the point where they would die for you.  You
come back to town and start going through my brothers like a whore in heat. 
You’re trash Leah.  You’re the offspring of two opposing powers and you’re
nothing.  Your craft is weak.  It’s not even worth reaping you because I don’t
even feel threatened by you.”