Heart of darkness, p.20
Heart of Darkness, page 20
part #8 of Dark Secrets Series
“No kidding.” She laughed, raising her brows to express that sentiment. “So, did they ever tell you about the mischief I got up to in my early days—before I was resurrected?”
“No.” I shuffled a little closer, grinning. “But please, do tell.”
“That potion, I got a few people with it.”
“Oooh, I love a bit of gossip.” I closed my hands together on the table. “Who?”
“You wouldn’t have met them, but I got one of your mother’s House officials—Margret. Put her with the butler.”
I laughed hard. “Oh my god, classic! I love it.”
“I also got Falcon.”
“Who with?” I leaned a little closer, knowing, from the look on her face, that this was juicy.
She couldn’t say it without cracking up. She was laughing so hard that she folded her head down on the table and slapped it a few times. “Mike,” she coughed, but I barely heard it.
“Did you just say Mike?” I stood slightly to lean over and tap her. “For real? Mike and Falcon?”
“Yes.” Morg looked up, her face bright red with hilarity.
“Oh my god, but Mike isn’t bisexual—”
“I know. He couldn’t walk for a week!”
I folded down to laugh into the table then, trying to keep my voice low in the empty library, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t laugh quietly while trying to picture Uncle Mike and Falcon butt-humping!
“Don’t ever tell them you know though. They will take that to their graves,” she warned. “Well, Mike will. Falcon wouldn’t care.”
“Was he hot for Uncle Mike? Is that why you did it?”
“No. I did it to get back at Mike. He… we were really close once, and he just turned on me. I was hurt, so I hurt him.”
“Argh,” I scoffed. “You sound like me.”
“I think you and I are a lot alike,” she noted, smiling at me in a way that drew me into her circle of friendship. “Wanna know who else I got?”
“Who?” My eyes widened with interest.
“Okay, so this one was an accident. And I do actually feel bad for it. I meant for Falcon to share that bottle with me, so we could… you know.” She popped her index finger in and out of a circle on her other hand.
“What happened to morals?” I teased.
She shrugged. “I don’t care much for them. But Elias does, that’s why I won’t let you do it to him. But… Falcon drank the bottle with Elora.”
“My sister?”
She nodded.
“Did they…?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my gosh!” I covered my mouth, all the blood rushing to my face as I laughed. “So is that why he left? Because he used to be a part of the family, you know. She still refers to him as her uncle—”
“No, he left because he was still in love with your mother after she broke the First Woman’s Curse.”
I nodded, taking that in.
“And then,” she added, “after a few years running the New England set, he started operating solely out of Loslilian.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. So why… I mean, why did he live there?”
“He’d started to get close to someone there.”
“Who? Lily?”
“No.” She smirked. “Jason.”
“For real?”
“He never had a relationship with him. He just stayed close, you know. Sort of became a good friend.”
“I never knew that.”
“Jason keeps their friendship close to his heart, I think,” she said. “Not many people actually know about it unless they lived at Loslilian then. But those two sat in the study every night and shared whiskey and deep conversation.”
“In what way? Like… friends, or…”
“I think Jason’s a bit like Falcon.”
“Bisexual?”
“That’s not what Falcon is. I mean, by today’s standards, yeah, you might call it that. But sexuality is really more of a spectrum than an either or either. And it’s just that Falcon loves outside of gender or race. He doesn’t ‘see’ it, if you know what I mean.”
“Like, he doesn’t necessarily check guys out, or turn his head at a cute one, but he can fall in love with the person, even if they’re a guy?”
“Exactly.”
“And Jason’s the same?”
“Not sure, since I never asked him. And it doesn’t feel right to place labels on people in order to fit them into our box, but I know Jason hasn’t had a problem blood-sharing with other guys, so I have to wonder which side of the fence he sits on.”
“Hm… damn. Do they have sex when they share blood?”
“Who?”
“Guys, in general.”
“Yeah. They do. And I’ve been with Jason and done that stuff too.”
“Really? You and Jase?”
“Yeah. Pretty much everyone in the immortal world has been with everyone else after a few hundred years. It’s actually very normal.”
“Even guys with guys?”
“It’s a long eternity. You gotta try new things.”
“And you and Jason did it with a guy?”
She nodded, shrugging.
I looked up at the window and the gray sky, picturing that for a moment before I felt sick thinking about my beloved uncle naked. “Do you think Elias has been with a guy before?”
“Nope. Straight as ruler, that one.” She laughed.
“What about my dad?”
“Okay, so maybe not all guys do that stuff. But I know your mom and dad shared blood with Jason once—a blood threesome.”
“Did they have sex?”
“No.”
“What about Falcon? Did he ever get with mom?”
“No.”
“Did he ever have sex with Uncle Jase?”
She hesitated way too long, her face tight and her lips pressed into a hard line. “Jason… when it comes to things like sex these days, especially with guys… it’s complicated for him now. I think, had he not been abducted and raped—”
“He was raped!”
“A long time ago.”
“By a man?”
“Yes, a very sick, very twisted man. They extracted his semen to use in a spell, and the man took advantage of Jason’s captivity many, many times over.”
I covered my mouth, looking around for something to throw up in.
“So, after that, I think Jase found it hard. Before it, he’d actually talked to Falcon about a blood threesome. But… after it, he was never the same,” she told me. “I think being around Falcon, thinking about that stuff with him, it brought back too many memories. ’Cause I don’t think Jason is bisexual, per se, but I think maybe he loved Falcon for a while, and yet the abuse he suffered kind of ruined that for them.”
“Wow. I had no idea.” My eyes landed on her. “How do you know all this?”
“I stole Jason’s journals.” She smirked, leaning a little closer. “Wanna read ’em?”
“Yes!” I sat taller, shrinking then. “But… isn’t that a little invasive? I mean, he’s my uncle. Do I really wanna know this stuff?”
“You tell me,” she challenged. And the truth was, I did. I wanted all the juice!
“Okay, give me the journals! I wanna read them.”
“I’ll have them sent over when I return home. Now”—she stood—“let’s find a ghost. I want you to bring one back and then touch a human. We’ll see how many it takes before your touch of death surfaces.”
My stomach did an uncomfortable flip and made my blood cold. “Morg, I can’t kill a human. It isn’t right.”
“It might not even happen. But we have to test it, Aubrey. We can’t just let you walk around with the power to kill at your hands.” She grabbed my wrist and tugged me along in a sisterly way. “Just think of Elias as you do it. Imagine if it was him.”
I groaned. “Argh. Fine. Let’s go find a ghost.”
“I’ll summon one. I have my kit.”
We walked across the room to a large wooden chest that had been left there, and she opened it, revealing a bunch of things like tarot cards, candles, salt, and other weird things.
“Go lock the doors,” she said. “We can’t have anyone entering while we do this, and I don’t want any of your resurrections escaping once we bring them back.”
“Why?”
“Because the kinds of ghosts that would linger here in this castle are not the kinds of people you want roaming around freely.”
“Oh.” Hesitantly, I locked all the doors around the room and came back to sit on the ground where Morgana had drawn a chalk pentagram and laid out five candles.
“Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t represent the devil.” She tapped the pentagram. “It’s a knot, for protection. All those religious nuts that get scared of these should actually be using them, because they’re one of the things that will ward off those evil spirits they fear.”
“I know.” I grabbed the matches and lit a candle, the smoky scent of burnt wood igniting my senses, reminding me of Christmas for a moment. “Elora and Ali are into all that witchy stuff.”
“It’s not just witchy stuff.” She laughed. “Anyone can use a pentagram. And Ali was once my apprentice, you know, before she was my father’s. I taught her most of that witchy stuff.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hm.” Morgana reached out for my hand then and I placed it in hers, straightening my spine and closing my eyes as she did the same. She started saying words in another language, and the mercury in the room dropped, the day going darker around us. I had to fight hard to resist the urge to open my eyes, sensing the many spirits around me. She’d said that I could see them when they slipped through the fissures, but it wasn’t often that I ever came across one. But from what I could feel right now, she either opened a whole heap more fissures, or she just shone a light down on my location, attracting them all like flies to Uncle Mike’s garden boots.
“Open your eyes very slowly,” she said in a quiet, calm voice.
Her hands pulled away and I felt her energy change as she stood. When I opened my eyes, several columns of wavering light flickered around the room. I couldn’t make out their form yet, until they were ready to reveal themselves to me, but I knew they were there.
“I didn’t realize you’d be able to bring so many through.”
“Stay here, okay,” she said, backing away. “And please don’t argue with me, or scream.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna bring in our test subject—”
“What!”
“Shhh.” She pushed her finger to her lips. “Don’t scare them off. They don’t know why they’re here.”
I glanced back as she opened the door nearby and wheeled a chair in with a man tied to it, a gag in his mouth.
“Morg, I can’t do this—”
“He’s a heinous human being,” she assured me. “He murdered his kids.”
“For real?” My eyes landed on the prisoner. He looked so ordinary. Just a chubby man in jeans and a shirt, with short brown hair and sweaty white skin.
“Yes. I bought him from the human faction. So don’t feel guilty if he dies. I’ll be killing him when we’re done either way—after I torture him for a bit.”
The man sobbed to himself, but I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. “How old were they? The kids. And do you have proof?”
Morgana sighed, digging out her phone as she walked over to me. After thumbing at it for a moment, she showed me the news report and the certificate for approval of brutal execution from the Drakarian Set, and I’d seen enough. “Okay. Fine. Let’s get started.”
Morgana stood back, offering me the floor, and I pushed my sleeves up. “I’m a conduit for the dead,” I announced to the ghosts. “You can walk into the living realm through me.”
One by one, each ghost came forward. It started with a giant blonde man, who’s dumb expression made him look like a toddler, and as I pulled him through, Morgana gasped loudly.
“What?”
“Stand in the corner!” she demanded with a sharp, pointed finger, and the big man-baby moved over and huddled against the door.
“Why are you being so mean to him?” I asked.
“If you knew who he was, you’d be mean too.” She gave him a vehement glare.
“Who was he?”
“Never mind. Here.” The chubby child-killer came across the floorboards on his rolling chair with a giant push from Morgana, and when I touched him, nothing happened.
I looked at my aunt, confused. “He didn’t die.”
“Okay, pull another ghost free.”
Holding my hand in spirit form and emerging as a human, shocked and crying, another ghost stepped into life, followed by another and another, and I touched the human to see if he’d die between each one, repeating it all six more times before I looked at Morgana again.
“Nothing. He’s not dead yet.”
“What’s the most you ever brought back?”
“Ten.”
“Including the malevolent spirit?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go to ten and see what happens,” she advised.
I brought back a few more, directing each one to stand with the others, and after number ten came through, I turned, pressed my hand to the killer and… nothing.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Morgana huffed. “It means your touch of death isn’t likely related to your ability to resurrect.”
“It’s not a consequence?”
“I don’t think so,” she mused, looking me over. “A defense-mechanism, maybe. How do you feel—after so many resurrections?”
“I’m fine,” I said, touching my stomach where it felt hollow. “I don’t usually get tired until a few hours after I bring them back.”
Morgana nodded. “So it may just hit you all at once?”
“It will. I’ve never done so many in one go before. I’m not sure what that will do.”
“Okay, go and rest.” She pointed off to the door, distracted by the mental list she was clearly making in her mind. “I’ll come up in a few hours and bring this jerk with me. See if exhaustion triggers the death touch.”
“Okay. What about them?” I nodded at the new humans.
“I’ll relocate them.” Her eyes scanned each face. “And feed some of them to a hungry vampire.”
“Why?” I laughed, but a few of the humans cried.
“Some of them deserve it. And Drake will be interested to know one certain person is alive again.”
“Okay.” I spun on my toe and walked away, hugging my sweater to my ribs to get warm in the sudden cool. “I’ll see ya later then.”
Elora
Uncle Mike handed me a coffee, passing one to Jules, as we both sat laughing and talking on the lounge in his cozy den. I loved this space, with the high white bookshelves all around the room, the fireplace and mantle with the picture frames of our lives, and the piano in the corner, where a lounge suite and two comfy armchairs watched on, making a home of the space. While this room held so many good memories, it also held one of my most painful ones—of the day my dad beat my mom out there in the courtyard—and yet it was still one of the only places on the planet that felt like home.
I’d spent so long living here since I was sixteen, falling in love with this house and with the lifestyle, that I could see why Jules was crushing so hard on it all. In the two months that had passed since she arrived, and with Jason now staying at my apartment, she was starting to come alive again. She smiled a lot, and the moments of sad reflection didn’t seem to last so long.
Uncle Mike was a big part of her moving on, but I think it also helped to know that a lot of it was outside of her control. All of it, really. Because I was more and more sure every time I saw life fail for Jason that things were working against him. And Jules felt the same. I think she was grateful that their life hadn’t gone too far along, making them think they could be happy, before crashing down. She could move past this, past a break-up, she was tough. And I was pretty sure she was crushing hard on Uncle Mike too. Maybe a rebound-guy thing, maybe not, but the energy between them was electric.
“So, on a more serious note,” I said to Jules, waiting until Mike left the room. “How are things now? Are you finding it hard without Jason?”
“Sometimes.” She nodded, sipping her coffee. “I thought we’d spend forever together, literally, so it’s been an adjustment. But…” Her eyes flicked off to a picture of Mike on the mantle. “I almost feel like… what if I was meant to meet Jason just so I could meet Mike?”
My heart lifted at the notion of it. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She wet her lips, frowning to herself. “I know that’s corny as fuck, but—”
“Sure that’s not just the grief talking?”
“Maybe. But… Jase and I weren’t together that long, really. I was a year without him, remember, without any memory of him. And when he came back into my life, it really wasn’t for that long. It was intense, but I never fell hard enough to want him at any cost, like Ara seemed to think I should.”
“My mother has a unique way of loving a person.”
Jules nodded. “I can’t love like that, you know—to be with them even if they don’t love me. I don’t know how she does it.”
“Does what?”
“Stays with David.”
“Why wouldn’t she? She loves him.”
“I know. But… have you ever thought her love with Jason is a bit more… intense?” she said.
“No,” I snapped a little, not meaning to. “To say that just means you haven’t been around her that much when she’s with my dad.”
“No, it’s more because… when I first saw Ara, it was at the university, and she took Jason by surprise,” she said. “And the connection I felt between them then was... like pure energy.”
I nodded. I’d felt that too, on and off over the years. It wasn’t always there but when it was, it was, by all definitions, very intense. “We all thought they’d just move on one day, but it’s since become apparent, over the last thirty-five years, that none of them ever will.”
“And what will that mean for Jason?”
“I don’t know. I asked my dad the other day what he thought would happen from here, now that it’s kind of clear that Jason will never be able to move on, and…” A dizzying wave of sadness rushed over me when I thought about that conversation.
