Revenant (32 page)

“You
don’t believe Gage can do
it, do you?
You
don’t believe he can release Luke from hell?”

Her
eyes were full of sadness when they met mine.
“He’s
been stringing me on for so long…
I should have never trusted him. I
swear
I never thought he would hurt you.
I didn’t know why he wanted you. I didn’t know his plans. I didn’t know he
would go this far.” She squeezed my hand. “The ritual is during the witching
hour
—you just have to survive until then.
Just keep up the act, and we can get out.”

“
All
of us?” I asked.

She
nodded. “I’ll make sure Wendy and Dean are there. When we leave, they’ll leave
with us.” She was quiet for a moment, though her lips still moved. I strained
to hear and then realized she was counting the pins in my dress. “…ten, eleven,
twelve…” She counted up to fifteen a couple of times and then started to sing, “
Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a
needle in my eye.”
She gave me another odd smile, then tilted her head and
looked off into the distance.

I
watched her in silence. All my hopes for escape were now resting on the shoulders
of a woman who wasn’t quite sane.

* * *

After the fitting, I
returned to Gage’s room. I choked down the bowl of soup they brought for lunch,
conscious that I needed to keep my strength up for whatever was going to happen
tonight. I picked up a roll and took a bite, but dropped it and spun around
when I realized someone was standing behind me.

“You must be feeling better. There’s color in
your face.” It was Gage. He reached out and caressed my cheek.

I was too stunned to react. Apparently he
wasn’t worried about cursing our marriage. My plan to keep him away hadn’t
worked.

He dropped his hand and gave me a wide smile,
then walked over and sat down on the bed. He motioned for me to join him.

Here
we go
, I thought, bracing myself. On stiff limbs, I dragged my
feet across the room.

Gage patted the bed beside him. “How are you
feeling today, my love? Why so quiet?”

I tried for a smile, but I couldn’t pull it
off. Instead, I quickly sat down. His hand reached out and covered mine.

“I’m feeling…better.” Everything inside me
screamed to run from the room. Looking down at the floor, I said, “I’m just nervous
about the party tonight.” I tried to remember that I was supposed to be some
half-wit in love with Gage.
There’s no
way I’m going to pull this off. How on earth can I pretend to be in love with this
madman?

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed the back.
“There’s nothing to be
worried about
. All
the arrangements are taken
care of
.
Everything should go off without a hitch. I heard you look ravishing in your
new dress.”

I
was
right
—people
are
reporting back to him about my activities
.
“
It’s
a beautiful dress,” I said, still
not able to meet his eyes. Every fiber in my being wanted to pull my hand out
of his grasp, but I forced myself to stay perfectly still.

“I’m glad you like it.”

Before I knew what was happening, he reached
out and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me toward him. Suddenly I was looking
into Gage’s eyes. My heart skipped a beat, and a warm feeling coursed through
my body.
He is so incredibly handsome.

His finger came
up
and twisted a piece of my hair. “I think you should wear your
hair up tonight. Maybe with some flowers? Roses?”

I felt myself returning his smile. A part of
me fought to understand what was going on. I wasn’t entirely in control of my
body or my mind. I was smiling. I was nodding. I was gazing at him, and
feelings of desire raced through me. When he leaned in and kissed me, I
couldn’t stop myself—I kissed him back.

When he finally broke away from me, he said, “Sonja
will come and help you get ready before the party. Until then, I want you to
rest. I don’t want you tired before the festivities begin.”

I smiled at him again.
He cares about me so much. He’s such a kind and gentle man.

He gave me another kiss, this one longer. I wrapped
my arms around his neck.
Oh Goddess, make
it stop.
Inside my head, a voice was screaming
at me
to stop, to run, to slug him in the face, to push him off the
bed, to do
anything
else.
Yet I
did none of those things. Instead, I
kissed him back. When we finally broke apart, he gave me a smile and slowly got
off the bed.

In a breathless voice, I said, “I love you.”

“Soon, my love. Soon we will be together.”
And then he was gone.

And all those warm, fuzzy, confusing-as-hell
feelings left with him.

* * *

Mildred walked into the
room carrying a bundle of red roses later that evening. “He wanted you to have
these for your hair.”

I rushed toward her, panicked. “I thought you
cured me of his spell! He came in here, and I let him touch me. I was saying
things—doing things.” I shuddered. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

Her eyes filled with concern. “The spell was
powerful. I was hoping the potion I gave you would break it and make you
completely free of his influence…”

“Well, it didn’t.” I wiped my hand across my
mouth and tried to block out the image of his face inches from mine, the
feeling of his hands all over me. I truly felt like I would be sick. “As soon
as I looked into his eyes, it was like something took over. I had no control
over what I was doing.”

She walked over and put the roses on the bed.
“I was hoping you were completely free, but I knew there was a chance it might
not work.” She turned back toward me. “I’ve never dealt with
this type of
magic
before
. I’m
sorry
—I
should have warned you, but I didn’t want you to worry.”

“From now on, I want to know
everything
you know. I don’t want to
be kept
in the dark. Do you understand?”

She nodded and gave me an odd look. After a
long silence, she said quietly, “So I should tell you everything I know about
demons?”

What
does Mildred know about demons? And why didn’t she tell me before now
?
The old feelings of mistrust began to fill me. I took a seat on the bed and
looked up at her expectantly. “Tell me everything.”

She
waved her hands in the air, immediately launching into an elaborate explanation.
“A demon isn’t just a beast with horns like you see in movies. They’re dark
souls that have gathered other dark souls to them. With each soul they consume,
they become more powerful.” She stopped and looked around the room suspiciously,
then leaned in and whispered,
“You know, it’s
called Legion because there are a lot of them and because many evil spirits compose
it. What’s not generally known is that the personality of the original dark
soul is still intact inside each demon.”
She frowned and clasped both
hands in front of her. “Every demon started as a dark mage—a
mage
willing to do whatever evil was necessary
to gain the darkest power. That original hunger for power still drives it.”

“In
hell, it’s a hive mind working in concert with the greater evil that rules
there—together they are Legion. But when they cross over to our plane of
existence, the chains are cut, and each demons is free to think and seek the
power it craves for itself.”

She
stopped and looked at me, her eyes bright. “The demons exist solely to gather
more power for themselves.
To rule and spread
evil and chaos across our world.
The more evil they create, the more
dark souls they have to feed their appetites. They feed solely so they can
increase their power.”

She
was waving her hands in the air wildly again. “One demon may work with another.
A group may work together. They do form alliances with each other, but they’re
just as likely to betray each other as help each other. They tend to act alone.
But one demon alone is vulnerable.” Her words petered off and she stood there,
motionless, looking off into the distance.

My
mind was reeling with all the information she had just spouted. But one
sentence rang loudly in my head—
one
demon alone is vulnerable.
“Do you know how to kill them?” I held my
breath, waiting for her answer.

“Those
that hunted the creatures kept to themselves. Demon hunters. They kept their
magic secret.”

I
got off the bed and made my way across the room until I was standing in front
of her. “And there are no demon hunters around anymore?”

She
gave me an odd grin. “So they say.”

Why
couldn’t she just answer a question without being cryptic? Could I believe
anything she’d just said, or was it the ranting of an insane mind? I reached
out and grabbed her hand. “Mildred, how do you know so much about the demons?”

Her
eyes met mine and she gave me a knowing look. “Back when the demons roamed the
earth, quite a bit was known about them.”

“You
found this information in books?” If there were books with information about demons,
there had to be something on how to kill them.

“No,
most of the books were destroyed years ago.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “Don’t
blame them, child—they were scared. They feared someone would use any
knowledge of the creatures to bring them back.” She leaned closer. “But I don’t
need books. I know about the creatures because…I was there.”

“You
were where?” I asked. She’d looked sane for most of the conversation, but now
her eyes were taking on that wild shine I had seen many times in the asylum.

She
looked around the room as if she thought we would be disturbed at any second.

Would
we be? How long did we have before Gage showed back up?

“When
they roamed this plane before, I was there. I saw them with my own eyes.” The
crazy words
were said
with sincerity, but
it was impossible.

“How
could you have been there? The demons were around a hundred years ago.” Mildred
was an old woman, but she wasn’t
that
old. If I had to guess, I would say she was in her seventies.

She
let go of my hand and backed away with her hands in the air. A look of panic
filled her eyes. “My kind doesn’t age like yours. There aren’t many of us left,
and if Gage ever finds out what I am, he’ll make sure there is one less of us
around.”

I
wondered if this time her mind had truly snapped for good. “What do you mean by
‘your kind’?” There was no wild look in her eyes. She looked calm, and for the
moment at least, sane. “Who are you, really?” When she didn’t answer, I raised
my voice. “How can you expect me to trust you, if you keep lying—”

She
lurched forward and grabbed both my hands. “I didn’t lie to you. I just…didn’t
tell you everything. I
did
have a
daughter who died. That part was true. And the asylum… Well, it’s hard being on
this earth so long. You never get used to the ones you love dying while you
still go
on
. I was
left
all alone to deal with whatever the universe threw my way,
and sometimes it got to be too much.” A look of confusion filled her eyes. “I’ve
had episodes when things get a bit difficult for me and sometimes I find myself
in one of those
places
.” I knew she
was referring to the asylum. She squeezed my hands so hard, my fingers turned
white.

She
paused for a moment, staring into the distance. “My mother, Boudica, was the
last druid witch queen. She went to war because of what the Romans did to us.
That war took the lives of so many of my kind—only a few of us survived.
It’s always been hard for our kind to reproduce. But I was lucky—I had a
child. The Roman Legionnaire who raped me left me a gift, a recompense to pay
for his sin. I had
the
last child of
our kind… Bodmall. She was perfect, beautiful…but I couldn’t protect her.”
Mildred fingers tightened and she squeezed my hands so hard my fingers turned
white again. “She
was taken
away from me,
and now she is gone.” The wild look was back. “I’m over two thousand years old,
child.”

I
pulled my hands out of hers and turned away. “Mildred, you’re talking crazy.
You want me to believe you’re the descendent of some druid witch? That you’re
two thousand years old?” Was it truly possible? Had she
really
walked the earth that long? Or was this just the ravings of
a disturbed mind?

“My
kind has always tried to keep themselves hidden. Songs have
been sung
about
us
and
stories have been passed down through the ages, but who believes
fairy tales and folklore?
Colina, I swear to
you, I’m telling you the truth. I swear on my daughter’s soul.”

“If
you knew I was coming and you could foresee what was going to happen, why did
you let Andrew die?”