Jade Moon (Celestial War Book 1) (5 page)

He laughed, genuinely interested. “Attack turkey?”

“Hell yeah, don’t laugh. The turkeys there have razor sharp spurs, like little stiletto blades. They are beautiful, blue and green feathers like a cross between a turkey and a peacock. One of those lovely things decided that our village was in her territory. You’d have to check outside before leaving your house, make sure she wasn’t stalking nearby. The damn turkey once chased me all the way from our house to the center of the village. It was embarrassing.” I began to suspect that running from a turkey was perhaps not the best story I could have told.

But Raf really seemed to be hanging on every word. “Harper, I’m going to tell you this again, your experiences make you a million times more interesting than the rest of the people here. I mean, lots of kids spend summers in Paris or on some expensive safari, but you’re like Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft or something.”

I laughed nervously and was glad when Mrs. Wattana arrived with a tray piled high with food.

The smell triggered a full stomach grumble and I realized that, with all the suspension and such, I hadn’t had any lunch. Raf patiently explained each of the dishes as I tentatively tried them. Turned out that Thai food is delicious, sweet and spicy and full of new flavors. For the rest of the meal we laughed and talked. I wondered at the possibility that, just maybe, I had a friend. A tiny part of my heart hoped he might be even more. Alright, it was a huge chunk of my heart that hoped for more.

After we finished, Raf tried to pay but Mrs. Wattana wouldn’t take any money from him. With a round of goodbye hugs, we set off into the dark night.

“I’ll walk you home.”

I didn’t argue. Yet again I hadn’t called mom and she would be freaking out. I was hoping she wouldn’t kill me in front of Raf.

We walked in silence and I enjoyed the winter air. The only seasons in Belize were rainy and dry. Though I was chilled to the bone, the sky was incredibly clear. Light pollution obscured the full extent of the stars, but the night sky was a midnight blue shade I’d never seen before. The crescent moon peaking over the tall elms looked like a Christmas card, like the impending holiday season was a real thing infusing the air with cheer.

When we got to my door, I unlocked it but then paused before pulling it open. “Thanks Raf. This was the most fun I’ve had since I left Belize.” I smiled and stood, trying not to look too expectant. I really, really wanted him to kiss me.

He shuffled from foot to foot, looking straight up at the sky. We stood like that for a painful minute then he finally looked back down. “Thanks for not ratting me out today.”

“What? Of course. Why would I have done that?”

“Well, didn’t you wonder if I’d trashed the library? I was there at school last night.”

My mouth fell open. That honestly hadn’t occurred to me at all. “Did you?” I asked bluntly.

“No, of course not. But thanks for not suspecting me.” He smiled, stood there.

No kiss appeared incoming. I contemplated kissing him. The only thing that stopped me was the way we’d just met. If he was thinking about killing himself, he probably didn’t need a new girlfriend.

“Want to come up and prevent my mom from killing me?”

“Heh,” he let out a laugh, “when you put it that way, then of course I’d love to.”

Reluctantly, I pulled open the door. The sound must have alerted her because my mom appeared at the top of the stairs. Fluffy pink robe wrapped around her. Gaunt face pulled into a frantic grimace. None of her vivacious beauty in evidence. “Harper Luciana Dae! Where on earth have you been?”

Then she noticed Raf who was trying to smile though we were both involuntarily withering under her furious glare.

“Mom, this is Rafael. He’s a new friend…” my voice squeaked. I was really going to have to work on that.

“Rafael,” she repeated.

Her face paled. I thought she was going to faint out cold and tumble down the stairs. Raf must have thought so as well because he pushed past me, arms out to catch her. She recoiled from his hands as though he held hot pokers.

She took a full step back and he screeched to a stop midway up the stairs.

A long, awkward silence stretched out. Mom stared at Raf like he was dripping the black ichor of death. Raf looked around, trying not to make eye contact with the ghastly pale, fuzzy pink robe wearing woman looking at him like he was evil incarnate. I flushed well beyond mortification and right into ‘please shoot me’ red.

Finally I managed to say, “Thanks for walking me home, Raf.”

Saying his name gave him an out and he grunted something that sounded like, “No problem,”as he ran past me out the door.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs trying to calm down before confronting my mom. She was worried and, yeah, I hadn’t called, but she had just embarrassed me in front of sweet, sexy, Raf. Ideally my future boyfriend but, if nothing else, at least my friend.

About to say something full of snark, I looked up at her. She was suddenly taller, wider. Her entire presence grew and radiated pure power, as though she could shatter the universe merely by throwing her arms wide and shouting a command. Then, she spoke. I swear the words spread out into the air and flowed toward me like ripples in a pond. “Come inside. Now,” said demon mom.

I didn’t even give a millisecond of thought to refusing.

Birthday Present

Once inside, she seemed to return to normal mom. Which was good, because demon mom was really, really scary.

She slammed the door and I jumped. “Mom?”

She sat down hard in the crusty lazy-boy and put her face down into her hands.

“Mom?” I asked again.

When she looked up at me she seemed defeated. The exact opposite of the growling woman who had just ordered me inside. “Harper, you just have no idea how much danger you’re in. Please don’t do this to me again. I can’t deal with the fear that you’re gone forever.”

I felt like a small fleck of crap on an an elephant’s ass. No, even elephant poop had more dignity than I did in that moment. I hadn’t even thought to call her. To be honest, I really expected her to be mad not terrified, but it was fear I saw on her face now.

“Mom I’m really sorry.” I went and knelt next to her, taking her hands into mine. They were like ice. Her lips looked blue. “Mom, you need a blanket. Hang on.”

I ran, grabbed the patchy quilt off the bed and put it gently over her.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t think…” I just hadn’t thought about her at all.

She licked her dry lips and looked at me with eyes shining with tears. I sort of wished she would yell at me because then I might not have felt like the absolute worst human being alive. Anger would have made me nice and righteous, but she was so scared and that just made me feel like a terrible daughter.

“Harper, you just don’t understand.”

“Then tell me mom. If there is really someone after us, I need to know.”

She nodded in the faint lamp light. A curl of hair fell across her face making her look much younger. “I can see it’s time.”

Despite the guilt pulling on every atom of my being, I felt a flash of excitement. Of course I had always wondered. Why did we run to Belize? Why did dad leave us? Why did we come to the most noxious place in the known universe, Great Fall, Virginia? I’d pestered her a lot when I was young, but eventually just gave up.

“Your birthday isn’t for a few days, but consider this your birthday present from me. The truth.”

I didn’t say anything, afraid she might change her mind.

She took a long breath in and rubbed her hands over her face as though working up to something.

“Some of what I say is going to sound crazy, Harper.”

I laughed. “Mom, I’m pretty used to you sounding crazy.”

I meant it as a joke but mom winced. Way to go, Harper.

“I am sorry about that, little Wren. I hate the thought that my own daughter wonders if I’ve lost my mind.”

“Most of the time I don’t…I mean, I don’t mom. I mean, there are…”

“Just let me talk.” She put her hands over mine. They still felt chilled but at least her face didn’t look blue any more.

“To be honest I don’t know much, but I know the basics. And I know enough to be genuinely afraid of the people after me.

“When I was young, only a few years older than you are, I started running with a bad crowd. We’d just moved to Washington D.C. Lois and Frank dragged me here when I was sixteen.“ Mom looked at me, “Sounds familiar, right?”

She always referred to her adoptive parents by their first names. Lois and Frank died before I was born, but they’d raised mom since she was seven or eight. I knew better than to ask about the years before that.

Mom continued, “The group I met were all slightly older than me. They were children of the rich and powerful, politicians, CEOs, white house staffers. Kids of privilege. Oh, they seemed so smart and worldly.” She looked wistful, enough to make her look like a young woman for just a moment. “We would meet in these little bohemian salons to drink way too much wine while discussing Sarte and Camus. They started bringing me out with them every night to their underground bars hidden among the alleyways of D.C. It all felt very European, sophisticated. They had endless money. Everything I didn’t have.

“They also made me feel needed. After I spent a few months with them, they confided in me that they did much more than just drink and talk philosophy.”

Mom let out a sharp laugh. “It seems crazy saying it out loud, but they were the world’s most prolific antiquities thieves. I mean, I’d never even heard of such a thing, but they were using their money and connections to quietly steal some of the most famous artifacts from the most famous museums.”

“They stole from museums?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“And you went along with it?” I was genuinely shocked. Mom was one of the most ethically stringent people I’d ever met. She always did the right thing, no matter the cost. It was annoying as hell.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but I wanted to be part of everything they did. I was so stupid. Or young I guess. Plus it never really felt like stealing, it was all so civilized.” She whirled a curl around her finger, a nervous habit I rarely saw.

I put my hand over hers, stopping her.

She continued, “When I graduated high school, I went to art school for a little while.”

“What?” I’d never seen mom show any interest in art, let alone art school.

“Yeah, I’m quite good.” A glimmer of pride shone through her discomfort. “But what I had a real talent for was reproductions. At the time I thought it was a coincidence, but looking back I see they befriended me in the first place because of my talent. They needed a forger. Someone who could produce perfect likenesses of things they stole. I would forge the object then we would fly on a private jet to some European city. One of them would bribe a guard. We would sneak in, replace the object with the forgery, then sneak away. No alarms were ever raised. It was…thrilling.”

Mom looked so chagrinned I squeezed her hand in support.

“The experts never seemed to notice that they were suddenly looking at a fake. Gods forgive me, but I took pride in being so good.” Mom let out another breathy laugh, “I sure fooled them all. We took exactly seventeen things while I was with them. Including the Venus of Willendorf and the famous bust of Nefertiti.”

“Wow, mom…”

“Please just be quiet, Harper, I just want to get the story out. Part of the reason I’ve never told you all this is because I am so ashamed about what I’ve done.”

She looked at me with a pleading look. I gave her a quick kiss.

“Thank you, Harper.” She paused. “I began to question what we were doing. We were stealing millions, maybe billions of dollars of antiquities. Even worse was when we started stealing things that seemed religiously significant. Nefertiti is one thing, but the last thing we stole was a sculpture from a tiny Mexican museum. It was a beautiful artifact. A white, mother of pearl moon with a rabbit etched in it. Slightly bigger than my palm, the moon was surrounded by interlocking rings that slid together almost like a celtic knot. Each disk was carved from the most beautiful green jade, engraved with Mayan glyphs telling the story of Ix Chel, the Maya moon goddess. Reproducing it took months of work. To get it right, I made several trips to the museum to see it first hand. While there, I met a local Maya shaman who seemed to be guarding it. The third time I came, he told me the tale of Ix Chel and how she captured Clever Rabbit. He also told me how important the Jade Moon was to them.

“Stealing it just felt so wrong that I finally spoke up.”

Mom’s eyes teared up.

“That’s when I realized the kind of people I had been so enamored by. They laughed at me, jeered and taunted, and then they threatened me. They showed me photos of me holding stolen objects. Even worse, they threatened Lois and Frank.

“They said I was a necessity, made it clear they never really liked me, just needed me along.”

She shook her head. “I was so foolish. They made me go in to steal it, told me they would kill me if I didn’t come back out with the real Jade Moon. I overheard them talking about how they needed the relic for something important. By then I was so scared of them, I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t let them have the real Moon. So, I made two fake jade disks, one for the forgery that I left in the museum, and one that I traded for the real jade disk. I pocketed the real jade disk and gave them the real Jade Moon, but with a single fake disk.”

Mom’s voice dropped to a husky whisper. “It obviously really screwed up their plans. They were furious that the Jade Moon wasn’t working but they had no idea why. They didn’t have any idea that part of it was forged.”

“Working how? What did they want it to do?”

“I have no idea, Harper. Something…magical I assume. They kept talking about activating it, but never explained anything to me. But after that is when I decided I had to get away. Which is when I met your dad.”

“Dad?”

Mom smiled with a whole new look on her face. Radiant. “He was so dashing, Harper. He offered to help me escape. Though neither of us were fully prepared for what happened next.

“To understand why, you need to understand the big picture.” She lapsed into silence and I tried to wait it out.

Eventually I couldn’t stand it. “What’s the big picture, mom?”

“This is where it starts to sound really crazy. Stay with me… There are two ancient, warring factions in the world. They have existed since the dawn of mankind, waging a secret war.”

Mom stopped to see my reaction. Though my eye brows were up, I kept my face passive, trying not to look like my mom had just said something totally insane. Which of course she had.

“I know how it sounds.”

“So, there are two factions? What, the Crips and Bloods? Team werewolf and team vampire?”

“You joke, but yes, something like that. The two sides are those who draw power from the sun and those who draw power from the moon.”

“Sun and moon….okay.” I drew out the last word to avoid having to say anything else.

“I know how it sounds but yes, sun versus moon worshipers. Although that’s not even totally accurate. Hear me out.”

“I’m listening, Mom.” I did listen, while also trying to figure out if I needed to call some kind of social services to get her counseling or maybe even medication.

“The world is composed of two primal forces. These two forces are counterparts to each other, pulling against each other. Growth and decay, stability and change, light and dark. We need them both, and they need to struggle against each other for the universe to maintain balance. To simplify things, these two forces are affiliated with the sun and the moon.

“Think about the history of world religion.”

That made me sit up, remembering Mr. Silver’s book on that exact subject.

“In every religion there is a god or deity affiliated with the sun and moon. The ancient Greeks had Helios and Selene. The Egyptians, Amun and Khonsu. The sun and moon represent the two primal powers that all human beings acknowledge govern our lives.”

“The Roman gods Luna and Sol, Incan Inti and Mama Kila,” I chimed in.

“Exactly, but, according to your dad, it’s the balance between the two that really matters. As long as the two factions have roughly equal power, the world is safe. But when either side gains too much power, bad things happen.”

“So, neither side is good or evil?” I asked.

“The way your dad explained it was that neither one is inherently bad. That the Solares, the sun worshipers, believe in law and order, rules, steady growth, life. The moon worshiping Lunates are all about chaos and darkness, blood, death, and violent change. But, they need each other. Can’t have day without night and so on.”

“How can you worship death and not be evil?”

“I honestly don’t know Harper. Your dad insisted it wasn’t that simple. He described it as a forest. You know, if you prevent forest fires from burning naturally, things get overgrown, clogged with underbrush. Then, when a fire starts, it is out of control and does way more damage than it would have if we’d just let it burn occasionally. Sometimes we need the sacrifice of destruction for rebirth and renewal. After a natural forest fire, the little green plants that where choking under the brush have a chance to push up toward the sun and eventually become a tree. Cycles of life and death, day and night.”

“What about now? There’s not two cults controlling the world, mom.” I tried to keep the skepticism out of my voice. Pretty sure I failed.

“That’s right. They’ve gone underground, though the Solares have slowly moved into a position of dominance. But, for five hundred years the war has been quiet, sort of a stand off. Now they all work from behind the scenes. Secret societies, hidden agendas, slowly taking over world government, global economic power structures. Think about the secret societies we know about. Opus Dei, the Illuminates, the Masons, they are all Solaris. The Skull and Bones at Yale, worship death, have blood rites. They are Lunates.”

“So the people you got mixed up with were Lunates? And where did dad fit in all this?”

“You father is a…Warrior of the Sun.”

I let that sink in. When you don’t have a father around, you spend a lot of time imagining who they really are. I mean, I had some vague, fractured memories of my father, but that didn’t stop me from imagining he was some super-secret prince that would one day come for me. Or maybe he was super-rich and would realize what a mistake he made leaving mom and me behind. I wanted to believe my dad was some cool sun warrior so much it hurt. But I couldn’t let myself, because it was just too far over the line. Plus, my dad disappeared ten years before and no one had heard from him since. If he really did love us, then he had to be dead. Why else wouldn’t he come for me?

Mom seemed to understand what I was thinking because she pulled me forward until we were face to face. “Listen to me. You father had to leave to protect us. He loves you and wishes he could be here. And he really is a Sun Warrior.”

I was used to her talking about him as if he were alive and would be coming back any day so I let it go. “Alright, mom. Why did we end up running to Belize?”

“After your dad offered to help hide me from them, we came here to Waterford. This was a Solaris stronghold. The whole town was basically run by and for the Solaris and he felt they would never aggress on me here. We were safe for many years. Your father and I fell in love. We had you. It was a time of such joy.” Mom’s voice cracked. “But then, they found me, told me to come back, that they needed me to forge something. They said, if I didn’t come back, they would punished me for leaving. We braced for an attack that never came. Or not the way we expected.”