Revenant (34 page)

I watched in wonder as the honey-colored
moon began to change. A red haze slowly slid over its surface, covering it—turning
it into a blood-red moon. I shivered at the
dreadful omen.

It
continued shifting in color until it gave off a true, vibrant red.
Mist
slid across the ground, though it
looked like the earth was oozing thick blood
in the moonlight.
The mist slithered up the stairs
until it curled around our bodies. I felt goose bumps rise on my skin everywhere
it touched me.

I looked at the girl demon—she
was still shouting at the moon, but the fog surrounding her was darker, more
solid. It grew and turned from mist into a solid shadow. To my horror, the
shadow grew bigger and bigger behind her until it towered over her, morphing
into a shape that resembled a horned monster.

And then it disappeared.

The
circling people faded away from us—whatever role they were supposed to
play was done.
Gage rose to his feet and pulled me up
until I was standing next to him
.

In his hands was a necklace. He lifted
it into the air, and I watched a large tear-shaped red jewel twinkle in the candlelight.
It was bright in the moon’s red glow. Gage gently placed the necklace over my
head. I felt a warm, tingling sensation when the stone fell against my chest.

There
was a roar of voices shouting loudly as hands clapped in celebration.

Gage
leaned in and kissed me on the lips. Lips
that
were cold, like a serpent. The cold spread from that point of contact all the
way through me. But there was a part of me that relished the kiss…that felt
desire hum through me at Gage’s touch.

When
he pulled
away,
a wide smile lit his
face. His fingers came up and brushed against my cheek. “There, now you’re
finally mine. Now you are my wife.”

The
portion of me that was free from the spell cried out with shock and horror. But
another part of me was thrilled to finally be his, forever.

Gage pulled me down the altar steps, his arm
possessively wrapped around my waist. The wedding guests came up to congratulate
us, but he kept us moving purposefully through the crowd toward a building
across the square. Gage wasn’t rude—he was charming, greeting each guest
in turn—but he never stopped moving.

I looked back. The demon girl stood alone in
front of the altar, her doll clutched in one hand. As I watched, a look of
surprise crossed her face and she turned to the sky.

I followed her gaze to see that the moon had
lost its red haze—it was honey colored again. On the horizon, storm
clouds raced toward us. Already, wisps of cloud crossed the moon’s path and
blocked out the stars. The storm front was only moments away, and it had
appeared out of nowhere.

Gage pulled me tight against him and we began
to run toward a building on the side of the square.
The wind whipped past us fiercely,
the sky full of dark clouds now, and drops of rain hit my skin. The night had
turned from calm to chaotic in a matter of seconds.
Gage and I ducked into the building just as the rain began
to pelt us in earnest.

Wendy
was tied
to a chair in the middle of the
room. Jacob stood to the side, surrounded by two men. His right eye was swollen
shut and blood dripped down his face from a long red gash on his temple. Through
my haze, I lazily wondered why he didn’t wipe the blood away before noticing
his hands
were chained
together.

I
looked back and forth from Wendy to Jacob.
I vaguely remembered telling Jacob to take Wendy and run.
What had happened?
Somewhere deep inside I felt a wave of panic, but the emotion seemed so very
far away.
Swirling on the
surface of my mind were happiness and giddiness—they overwhelmed
everything else.

I heard a moan and my eyes swung back to
Wendy. A look of pure anguish filled her face as she struggled
against the ropes binding her to
the chair.
Jacob lurched toward her,
but one of the guards clubbed him hard with a forearm to the side of the head
and Jacob fell to his knees.

The
demon child appeared beside Wendy
,
laughed, and began to dance around her.

Wendy
seemed unaware of what was going on. Her eyes rolled back in her head and a
slew of words I didn’t understand
flew
from her mouth. Her body began to shake uncontrollably. When she looked at me
again, I knew even through my mental haze that she was not Wendy anymore.
Whatever was staring back at me was not human. It was something old, something
evil.

The demon girl stopped in front of Wendy, reached out, and
touched her forehead. At the contact, Wendy’s body immediately started to
convulse. Her arms and legs whipped up as far as they could against the
restraints. As I watched, the chair rose off the ground.
It floated with Wendy still in
it, her body twisting and turning as she screamed out obscenities. After a few
terrifying moments, the chair fell back to the floor with a loud
thump
, and Wendy became still.

Was
she still alive? I was still struggling to understand why she
was tied
to the chair and what was going on.

Wendy
raised her head and looked directly at me. Her eyes were white. There was no
color in them at all. A wicked laugh came out of her mouth, and green foam
spewed from between her lips.

Even
from behind the mental fog, my primitive survival instinct was pleading at me
to run and get as far away from this place as possible.

The
demon child moved away from Wendy and turned to Gage, seeming older and wiser
somehow. “Bring your bride. It’s time.”

Gage
turned and took my hand. “Darling, it’s time for you to use your magic.”

“It
is?” I asked dumbly, trying to clear my thoughts.
My magic?

He
squeezed my hand. “You must do this one thing for me, and then we can go off on
our honeymoon.”

My
eyes met his and love washed through me.
I’d never
felt so content.
Never so happy.

He is all that I want and need.

The world exploded.

A bolt of lightning struck a wall, blowing
chunks of burning shrapnel across the room. I
was
thrown
off my feet and slammed hard into the ground. After catching my
breath, I sat up and looked around the room.

The guards and Jacob, who stood nearest to
the point of impact, had flown through the air. Glass, chunks of wood, and
plaster
covered
their bodies.

The impact had thrown Wendy backward across
the room, too. She had slammed into the far wall, and the wooden chair had shattered,
dropping her to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

The demon girl, on the other hand, stood
unharmed, calmly plucking smoking debris from her robe.
She
turned and bent over the guards. I couldn’t see Jacob, but one of the guards
was a mangled corpse. The other lay twitching in the throes of death. The demon
girl reached down and dipped one finger into the blood seeping from an open
wound on the suffering guard. She raised
the
finger
to her mouth and licked it. A wide smile broke across her
face
and a shiver of revulsion sped down my
spine.

Gage slowly turned toward me. That was when I
saw that he had his hand wrapped around a jagged piece of timber sticking out
of his gut. “No!” I cried out and reached for him, but he waved me back. With a
grimace, he pulled hard on
the piece
of
wood until it finally jerked free with a gush of black blood. Gage staggered
for a moment, then caught himself. The flow of blood slowed, then stopped
completely, and the hole in his stomach began to close. Relief filled me. Gage
was healing himself. Gage would be all right.

He then turned and stared out through the
opening in the wall.

I could see the center of the square through
the smoking ruins. To my astonishment,
Mildred stood
there,
her
hands raised in the air. She wore a fancy gown—though it
was torn
—there were burn marks across her
shoulder, and I could see a deep, long, jagged cut on her skin. The bottom of her
gown was blackened and scorched as though she’d walked through fire.
The rain washed blood and ash across
her face and through her white hair in long streaks.
Lightning flashed
again in the near distance and white light shimmered around Mildred’s body as
if in response—she glowed like a lit candle in the night.

When Gage saw her, a slow smile spread across
his face.

Before
my eyes, Mildred disappeared. I looked around frantically. There was a voice
inside me crying out for Mildred’s help.

Just
as I looked away, she reappeared outside the building’s crumbled opening. “Let
her go,” Mildred commanded.

She
was looking directly at me, but I felt so confused. My thoughts were so
sluggish.
Who? Me?
I felt so
perplexed by the turn of events.
I don’t
want to go anywhere without Gage…

Gage’s smile turned cold and calculating. “Think
about what you’re doing, old woman. I’m not someone you want as an enemy.”

Mildred’s
hands rose into the air threateningly. “You think I’ll just stand by while you
let the legion loose?”

Gage
laughed out loud. “You think you can stop me?” He calmly turned and walked over
to the dying guard. Without any sympathy toward the moaning, gasping man at his
feet, he bent down, placed his hands into the growing pool of blood, and…the
blood began to disappear. I watched in astonishment. Somehow
, he
was drawing the blood
into
his hands, absorbing it into
himself.

The still-healing wound in his stomach flared
with red light, and I watched in confused wonder as the injury completely
disappeared, as if it had never existed.
When
he stood back up, his hands were covered in blood, which slid down his fingers
to drip to the floor. Then the dripping slowed and the blood began to stretch
and grow, morphing until Gage held a red blazing
sword in his hand. For a moment I wondered if any of this
was real. Was I hallucinating?

I looked over at Mildred. She was staring at
Gage with wide eyes. Whatever I was seeing, Mildred was seeing it, too. This
was real. Gage had just created a sword out of blood.

Gage began swinging the sword back and forth.
The air sparkled with red and orange light as it moved.

Mildred’s expression didn’t change. There was
no fear or insanity glowing in her eyes—she simply looked determined.

Without
warning, there was a loud crash and shouting. Mildred, Gage, and I turned toward
the source of the noise in unison.

Dean
burst through a section of the bramble bush, sliding to a stop in front of
Gage. His eyes followed the movement of the bloody sword, narrowing as Gage
smiled at his caution. He looked around for a weapon as people streamed out of
the buildings on either side of him. Without taking his eyes off Gage, he
walked sideways to where a long truss from the broken building laid on the
ground and stooped to pick it up.

Mildred
refocused her attention on Gage. “Maybe I can’t stop you, but I swear by
everything holy, I’ll die trying.” She disappeared again, only to
reappear at the edge of the bramble
bush.
I watched as she got down on her knees and pushed her hands into
the dirt below the
bush
. After a moment’s
pause, the ground began to shake and the bush began to grow. Its branches
reached out and headed toward Gage’s men. The ones closest to it screamed as
thorns pushed into their clothes and skin.

With
no reaction to the chaos, Gage headed outside with the demon child on his
heels. I started after him and found myself outside, standing in the rain by
his side. I tilted my head back and felt cool drops fall on my face. There was
fear inside me—but it
was centered
on Gage’s safety.

The red decorative spotlights glittered in
the rain, making the entire scene outside glow like a vivid sunset.
All the while, lightning bolts
streaked through the sky, hitting the ground and flinging bodies into the air.

Gage
lifted his free hand, conjuring a black cloud in the air before him. He waved
his hand and the cloud shot off, racing toward Mildred.

She
saw it coming, wrenched her hands out of the dirt, and a bolt of lightning
blasted inches from me. I felt an electric punch as the air around me came
alive. I screamed as I was thrown off my feet for the second time that evening and
smashed into the ground. My skin hummed—the hair on my arms and
neck
stood on end, tingling with energy.

I
lay on the ground, stunned. My whole body felt as though a truck had hit me. But…something
was different. When I got to my feet, I realized, finally, I could think.
Thoughts of Gage were still there, but all the love that had overwhelmed my
reason
was shoved
to the back of my mind.