Possession-Blood Ties 2 (41 page)

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after I turned her.

“That’s why I didn’t want to fall back into this life. This was supposed to be my second chance.”

The similarity between his words and Nathan’s was jarring.

“It still can be,” I insisted, but I wasn’t speaking only to him. “You can have anything you want. You just have to get through this.”

“The ritual Bella mentioned, it made me think…” His words died on his lips. “It was a foolish thought.”

“Tell me.” I liked the human Cyrus, and I wanted to encourage him. Maybe it was a comparison exercise. If he could survive all this, I could survive what lay ahead of me. Stranger things had happened.

“If making peace is all Nathan has to do to be well, maybe I should look into it myself.”

Cyrus laughed. “But, no. I have too much to atone for.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to try.” If anything, it would steer him away from another fall. Despite his pretty words of apology and lament, he was still dangerously unstable. He might want to make amends, but he’d likely fall to evil again like an alcoholic falling off the wagon. As long as he was making a conscious effort to avoid his old ways, I would sleep easier during the day.

“I suppose you’re right.” He smiled, an expression meant more for himself than for me, and ran a hand through his hair. “Or maybe I’m agreeing out of exhaustion.”

I rose and made a sweeping gesture of invitation toward the bed. “Please, make yourself at home. I’m going to sit up with Nathan.”

As I turned to leave the room, Cyrus caught my wrist. I let him pull me in. Hooking his normal, human fingers, which seemed so out of place on him under my chin, he tilted my face up. “I wasn’t using you.”

“I know.” I rose on tiptoe and kissed him chastely on the side of the mouth, the way an old friend would.

It wouldn’t hurt to let him believe that of himself, that he hadn’t merely used me to satisfy some need. But as I sat beside Nathan’s sleeping form through the long night, I knew why Cyrus and I had done what we’d done.

We were lonely, and we were punishing ourselves for it.
25

The Heart’s Filthy Lesson

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke to the gentle touch of Bella’s hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head and saw Nathan. He was awake, but clearly drugged. I’d pulled a chair to his bedside just hours before. When I’d finally collapsed from exhaustion, I’d rested my head on the bed next to him. Now, my back ached and a cold sheen of drool coated my cheek. “Good morning.”

“We must talk,” she said humorlessly. “About the ritual.”

I didn’t think we’d talk about the weather, but now wasn’t the time for sarcastic quips.

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

She led me to the kitchen, where Max and Cyrus waited. The former handed me a mug of blood and the latter rose to offer me his chair. I waved for him to sit, and turned to Bella.

“Okay, give me the gory details.”

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The basic form of the ritual sounded simple enough. Despite his unreliable state, Bella insisted Nathan not be given another sedative. It would ensure he could become conscious during the ritual and reap the full benefits. But since he was still crazed, Max would stand in for him, a proxy or a magical power of attorney, I supposed, as Nathan wasn’t truly able to give his consent. The whole thing seemed oddly democratic for a magic ritual. Of course, my notion of “magic” came from various sensational news reports about witches, and David Copperfield specials. The combination created a strange picture in my mind of Max wearing a hooded robe and waving burning herbs while Bella sawed me in half. I shook the scene away and tried to concentrate on Bella’s instructions. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice I’d drifted. “You will be fully conscious of what is happening around you, but you will not be able to control your physical or astral bodies. Once you get there, it will be important that you do not panic.”

“Get where? Where am I going?” I hadn’t realized bilocation or astral travel or any of the other mind-numbingly boring topics that interested Nathan would be involved, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to actually do any of those things. Bella hesitated, looking at Max and Cyrus before saying, “You will be going to the night Marianne died.”

I waved a dismissive hand in the air and made a plosive sound like a slow leak. “No problem. I’ve been there before.”

“But you didn’t see it through her eyes,” Cyrus interjected quietly. “Are you sure you can do this? Are you ready to know what it’s like to have Nolen kill you?”

Though Cyrus’s words sent a shock of horror down my spine, I forced myself to project an illusion of bravery. “Will everyone stop looking like you’re preparing for my funeral? I can handle it.”

Max looked at Bella, one hand over his mouth as if trying to hold in the words he couldn’t help but say. “I think we should slow down and think about this a little more.”

“No!” I stamped my foot. “Would everyone stop treating me like I’m so damn fragile? If it’s going to fix Nathan, let’s get it over with!”

I don’t know why it took a total, public hissy fit to kick my compatriots into gear every time a monumental task was ahead of us, but it was starting to get on my nerves. Of course, that wasn’t fair of me. They probably weren’t as used to harrowing escapes and heart-pounding adventures as I was. It made me feel worldly and a little proud when I looked at it that way, though I would gladly trade it for a few consecutive years of boredom.

Bella explained the rest of the process to me without sensitivity or second-guessing my ability to participate, and for that I was very grateful. The more she talked, the more I doubted, and the last thing I needed was for them to offer me another out clause. At midnight, Max, Bella and I filed down the hall to the bedroom. Cyrus hung back, and when I asked him what he would do during the ritual, he shrugged and said, “Take a nap?”

“I did not think it would be wise to include him, considering he was involved in…well.”

Bella cleared her throat and smoothed her shirtfront, then placed her palm flat against the door. “Are we all ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Max said, rolling his head to one side and cracking his neck. “How about you, Carrie?”

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I took a deep breath. I was about to surrender my body completely to a long dead and possibly pissed off ghost-woman, whose husband I had been sleeping with for the past two years. “Let’s do it.”

Bella pushed open the door and motioned for us to be quiet. Nathan still slept soundly, and I prayed he would continue. We couldn’t afford to have anything go wrong. As she had instructed us to do earlier, Max and I took our places: him at Nathan’s bedside, myself kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed. She walked the perimeter of an irregular circle from one side of the bed to the other, pouring white sand from a clay jug as she did so. The circle broke where it intersected the bed, so she poured the line right over the pillows, as though it were perfectly normal to dump two good handfuls of dirt into someone’s bed.

Between the four corners of the room she placed four candles. In the little space left within the circle she paced, fanning the smoke from a burning bushel of herbs with a long, brown feather. Then, in a quiet voice that was much less impressive than the mighty shouts of the wizards in the movies, she said simply, “I consecrate this space, seeking only to do good within it.”

Max’s skeptical gaze met mine, and I pushed back a twinge of unease. This felt too much like a twee game, something a young hippie girl with a guitar would do to invoke a muse. She’s the only one who’s come up with a solution, I reminded myself sternly. At each of the candles, she mumbled an incantation asking the spirits of each direction to lend their power to our “circle.” When the candles were lit and the circle consecrated, she handed a thick, white candle to Max and another to me.

“Hold his hand,” she instructed Max. Then she drew a single quartz point from her pocket and held it over her head. “Badb, Anubis, Hades, Lucifer, Kephas, and all the keepers of the underworld and afterlife in your many names, join us now in this circle.”

She brought her arm down in a fast arc, kneeling so the crystal connected with the ground. The candle flames flickered, throwing eerie shadows on the walls. It must have been a trick of the light, but I could have sworn I saw the shape of a jackal’s head grow into the shadows of the corner, a raven flicker across the ceiling. My throat went dry. While I’d been busy reassuring everyone I was up to the task at hand, I suppose I hadn’t really thought about how serious things were.

This is for Nathan, I reminded myself, looking away from the shadowy shapes that seemed to grow and multiply as we stood helplessly beneath them.

“Bella…” Max’s voice was a hoarse whisper in the silence of the room. But it wasn’t silence. A strange, humming tension filled the air, dousing the circle with loud, soundless noise.

Bella raised a hand to motion for quiet, then began to murmur words of thanks to each entity she’d called forth. Badb, a crone goddess. Anubis, a death god. Hades, lord of the dead. Lucifer, God’s fallen. Satan, if I remembered my Catholic upbringing correctly. I couldn’t see how he would be on our side, if the stories were true. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I tried to reason with myself that I shouldn’t fear the beings she’d invited in. For all intents and purposes, I was dead myself. Still, I couldn’t ignore the malevolent cloud that seemed to surround me. I imagined a million fingers of darkness closing around my throat, crushing my windpipe, severing arteries. I imagined Cyrus’s claws slitting my throat in the hospital morgue six months earlier. And I wanted to run.

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Max appeared uncomfortable, as well. He clenched his shoulders as if he wanted to rub the back of his neck, but couldn’t, as both his hands were occupied. Nathan began to stir, one long leg sliding from beneath the sheets to drape over the side of the bed. He mumbled something, his voice gaining volume as his struggles continued. Only when he was thrashing and shouting did I recognize what he said. It was the prayer to the Archangel Michael.

“How are they gonna like that?” Max whispered, as though the deities surrounding us wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“He is crazed,” Bella reminded Max, or maybe the spirits. “He does not mean to offend.”

She raised her voice over Nathan’s fervent prayer. “We humbly beg the release of the soul of Marianne Galbraith, soul-bound through the sacrament of marriage to this man.”

A chill knife went through my heart at her words. Soul bound. It seemed so much stronger than blood tied. If my heart was destroyed, there would be nothing left binding me to Nathan. Marianne had been gone for years, but her bond with him was still strong enough to control his mind. Strong enough to call her back from the dead. When it came down to it, my bond with Nathan could decompose. A human soul…that was eternal. I wanted to vomit.

“I need Nathan’s consent now,” Bella reminded Max.

He sputtered and looked at me, then at his friend writhing in panic on the bed. “Bella, I don’t know about this. Carrie doesn’t look so good—”

“You are here to give consent on his behalf. That is your only function in this circle. If you cannot do this, you should leave!” Bella snapped. Her eyes were hard and furious, but her hands trembled. She was afraid.

Her fear intensified my own.

Max swallowed and looked to me. I wanted to communicate with him somehow, but I didn’t know whether I wanted him to stop this or continue. Something paralyzed me. I wondered if Marianne was already inside of me, if that’s why I couldn’t think clearly or even move my limbs, or if it was just crippling fear and sadness. Like a judge’s gavel falling after the pronouncement of a sentence, Max cleared his throat and whispered, “Yes.”

With a warning noise and a flinty look, Bella stepped forward and lit Max’s candle. Then, turning to me, she asked for my permission, as well. Only now could I find my voice. But when I opened my mouth, I didn’t tell them I’d changed my mind, that this wasn’t the way. I opened my mouth and issued a calm, “Yes.”

And then it was out of my hands. Bella lit my candle, but instead of stepping back to her place, she gripped my wrist and raised the crystal point above her head again. “Keepers of the afterworld, return now the soul of Marianne Galbraith to this circle.”

Bella’s eyes closed. Her hand burned where it gripped my wrist. Her entire body seemed to vibrate power.

I kept inhaling huge quantities of air, like a drowning person anticipating being claimed by the waves. It would have helped if I could have known what was happening, but this was, conveniently, the part Bella had left out. The air buzzed with even more tension, if that were possible. As Nathan fervently shouted the Lord’s Prayer, I sent up one of my own. When the wait seemed interminable, when it looked as though we had failed, Marianne’s soul entered the circle. I could pinpoint the exact moment her spirit arrived. Nathan’s

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madness subsided for a moment, then returned as a fierce panic. His body arched from the bed like the string of a drawn bow, and he screamed, the most pitiable sound of pain and fear I’d ever heard. He was terrified he’d hurt her. I couldn’t help but remember the way he’d pinned me to the floor in the shop, threatened me with a chunk of broken glass. He hadn’t been afraid to hurt me.

Max was visibly shaken. He clasped Nathan’s wrist and turned wide, frightened eyes to Bella. “We have to stop this!”

“Marianne Galbraith,” Bella shouted over Nathan’s voice. “Take this empty vessel and do with her what you will!”