Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (37 page)

It would be, but I let them go as I
had seen their thoughts and what I gleaned brought a fresh wave of
anger. As I watched them depart I realised I would have to do
something I had never done before.

“
What happened?” I snapped
when I got beside Samuel in the cart and we moved off, my mind
still on those men and what I had discovered.

“
Oh, it be nothing, Mr
Avery.” His hands were shaking. “Most people in town just been
riled up lately ‘cause some white mens got killed not too far from
here. It be making people in this town pretty upset and quick to
fly off the handle over nothing. It’ll blow over like it always
does, sooner or later, Mr Avery. It ain’t nothing to worry
about.”

“
Well, until then, stay
away from town. Either Luna or I will see to whatever needs to be
done in town.”

His eyes had widened when I mentioned
Luna going into town in his place.

“
Oh, no, Mr Avery,” he
said quickly. “Hiding just be making things worse. Them boys know
now to leave me be. That Bernard Fortier sho’ got a fright when you
showed up.” He managed a shaky chuckle. “Thank you, Mr
Avery.”

I told Luna what I saw in the minds of
those men the moment I returned.

“
They’re planning revenge
attacks? Over the deaths of those men who were chasing that group
we helped?” she asked, outwardly calm. But intense fury raged
beneath the surface.

For once her anger did not make me ill
at ease, for it was extremely close to what I felt. And in my anger
I completely missed what Samuel had omitted, that the dead white
men at the centre of the unrest were the same group who had
attacked the Negroes we rescued.

“
Yes. Tonight.”

We were silent. I eventually came to
sit before her and took her hands in mine.

“
I can no longer stand by
and do nothing, Luna.”

“
Avery, if we
openly—”

“
Luna, for years I
observed the evil all around me and only intervened occasionally,
in little ways. If I had actively tried to put a stop to what I saw
around me, I could have prevented what they did to you.
I—”

She shot to her feet and moved to the
window, her back to me. “Avery, this isn’t about what Master Henry
and his son did.”

“
But it is. I have ignored
too much for too long. I want us to stand up to them tonight and
let them know they cannot continue to abuse Negroes so long as we
are in their midst.”

She was silent for the longest moment,
then came and sat opposite me. She kissed me lightly on the
cheek.

“
All right. We make a
stand. Tonight.”

***

I did not sleep at all that day. First
of all, I asked Samuel to board up the windows of the
mansion.

“
Is something going on, Mr
Avery?”

I shook my head, leaving him looking
bewildered as I left him and went back into town to find out as
much as I could about what they were planning. I returned to the
mansion extremely unhappy. The scale of the attacks was much larger
than I had expected and there were people from neighbouring areas
arriving to join them. This took away an option I had considered,
that we manipulate them mentally and either make them forget their
plans or make them believe they had changed their minds. But with
this many people involved, and such high emotions behind it, mental
control would be extremely unreliable. The most I could do was
plant a hidden command in the minds of those Negroes I came across
during my brief visit to town, telling them to make their way to
the mansion that evening, and that they should all try and be off
the streets long before the sun set.

Luna was quiet for most of that day,
her mind closed to me, as had increasingly become the norm over the
past few years. The Morrisons did what we told them without
question, and I realised how much they had come to trust us. They
gathered food and water and took them to the cellar. When people
began arriving that evening, they still did not ask any questions,
just made sure everyone was comfortable as could be in the
cellar.

When it grew dark, we waited for
another hour to see if anyone else would arrive, then we boarded up
the doors leading into the mansion.

I stared at Luna for a long moment.
“Do you think they will be safe?”

“
I’ll know if they’re in
danger,” she replied.

I held out my hand.
“Ready?”

She took my hand and nodded. I kissed
her tenderly on the lips. Then she pulled me with her into the
ether and we were in town.

We materialised, unnoticed, in the
Negro part of town to the sound of rough shouts and screams from
more than one source. To the left of us, a house stood burning and
farther down the street, people were being dragged out of their
homes to be savaged and beaten.

A man was being beaten a few yards
from us in front of his home. Two white men were dragging a woman
out of the house. One of the men tore at the front of her dress and
threw her to the ground.

When the men attacking the terrified
man on the ground found themselves flung away from him with no
visible explanation, they stood staring at each other in
bewilderment. I moved to place myself between the men and the Negro
man on the floor. When one of his attackers came forward, I shoved
him again with my telekinetic power, knocking him off of his
feet.

He went crashing to the ground where
he remained, staring at me wide-eyed.

Go home
, I said, speaking into their minds.

They all gave a start. The man I had
knocked to the ground scrambled to his feet. Not taking their eyes
off of me, they started backing away before they turned and broke
into a run.

A woman screamed behind me, and I
remembered the one I’d seen dragged out of her house. I whirled
around to see Luna already there. She had one of the attackers by
the wrist. The gun he had in that hand, which was aimed at my back,
clattered to the ground. He sank to his knees, a scream caught in
his throat. I heard bones snap like twigs as Luna crushed his
wrist. His companion lunged at her.

I grabbed his shirt and tossed him. He
hit the ground hard. His face was a mask of pain and fear when he
pulled himself to his feet. Luna let the other man go. Groaning, he
staggered to his friend. They helped steady one another and limped
away.

“
Are you all right?” I
said to the Negro man on the ground as Luna helped the woman to her
feet.

He nodded, gratitude in his eyes
drowning out his confusion. “Good. Take your wife and go to the
Wilkins’ house. Tell everyone you meet to go there.”

He nodded and went to his wife. He
took her hand and they ran into the night, dodging other Negroes
and the whites chasing them.

We had agreed we would not kill
anyone, only use our abilities to bring the violence to an end. But
there were still only two of us. We moved through the town,
intervening in beatings, cutting one man down from a tree just as
he began to lose consciousness. We overpowered some of the mob
physically, others we commanded mentally to go home. There was no
time to deal with the wounded, only take them out of sight before
we moved on, telling those we came across to make their way to Mr
Wilkin’s home, a doctor many of the Negroes went to for help, or to
intervene in disputes with other whites. The message was passed
on.

Most women fled their homes and hid in
swamps when news of the attacks reached them. We found as many as
we could and rescued them from the snake-infested swamps, taking
them to the doctor’s house. During that long night, my heart
clenched in misery whenever I heard screams and cries for help from
miles away, unable to do anything for them, and I wondered if
intervening had helped at all.

We were exhausted, but the early hours
of that morning saw us at Mr Wilkin’s, where a large mob of armed
whites were headed. We were standing in front of the house, hand in
hand when they advanced. The large mob was a frightening sight even
for the two of us. Many of these men had seen us display our
supernatural abilities and that was what made them come to a stop
some distance from us and the house. They milled about,
hesitant.

The man Luna disarmed earlier held his
wrist in front of him, clearly still in pain. He glared at Luna,
envisioning what they would do to her when they got their hands on
her.

She gave a cold smile, replaying the
incident back to him and the unnatural strength she used to disarm
him. His eyes widened in terror.

Then one man made to move toward us. I
pushed him back with my telekinetic power and he staggered back
into the crowd. Fear washed through them like a breeze rippling
through dense woodland.

He frowned as he glanced at those
around him, his hands shaking, his breathing nowhere near as steady
as it had been. After a few moments he turned around and pushed his
way through the crowd. A few more followed him. Eventually they all
turned around and disappeared into the night and the street was
left silent and empty once more.

But there was still more to be done
and so we moved on, hearing cries for help long after dawn lit the
world in gold. It was midmorning before we were able to return to
the mansion.

Things remained tense in town,
although there was no sign of the unrest that had been prevalent in
the weeks leading up to that night of violence. I visited
regularly, reading the minds of those around me. Most of them
couldn’t remember seeing us display our abilities; whether they
buried the memory deliberately was hard to tell. The others that
could remember were angry, but too terrified to be a problem. They
did not know what we were, and even if they did, they did not know
of a witch as powerful as Mama had been, so there was no need for
us to be concerned. And as a consequence of our intervention,
things generally improved for the Negroes in that town.

The townspeople did not know of a
witch powerful enough to pose a threat to us, but there was one who
knew of us.

One evening, when Luna had gone on one
of her solitary walks, she summoned me with two words.

Come alone.

I was surprised when I heard her in my
mind, for this witch was not someone I ever expected to hear from.
But I put my book down and went immediately.

When I got to her home, I stood
outside it for a long moment, staring at the house and the changes
that had been made to it. More rooms had been added at the back and
it had been painted white. There was also a white fence around it
now.

The front door opened not long after I
arrived and she appeared in the doorway. I walked up to her, joy in
my heart.

She was still exceptionally beautiful,
even though she was almost ninety-one years old by this time. Her
caramel-coloured skin was marred with few wrinkles and she still
had a full head of white, wavy hair which was in two French plaits,
the way she had worn it since she was a little girl. Unlike most of
the elderly I had come across, she stood tall and straight before
me, and it would not have been hard to believe she was thirty years
younger than she actually was.

“
Lina. It really is such a
pleasure to see you again after so long. Like Luna, you have grown
more beautiful with age.”

Although her manner appeared aloof,
she allowed herself a small smile.

“
Can I come inside?” I
asked.

The smile became slightly
colder.

“
You don’t need my
permission to come in this here house. See for
yourself.”

I did and was surprised I was able to
enter. “How is this so?”

She led me to the living room, the
same one I had materialised in so many times during those years
away from Luna, wishing the shoes I saw drying near the fire were
my shoes, and the man sleeping beside her was me. All of that was
so long ago.

“
The same way you was able
to enter Luna’s cabin all them years ago. It seems none of my
mama’s descendants has any protection against you.”

“
Well, know this, Lina.
You will never have a reason to need protection from
me.”

“
I suppose that’s true,
‘cause magic like that don’t lie. But an open door works both ways
and there ain’t no easy way to shut it once it’s been opened. So
you ain’t got no protection from her, neither. Something that
should scare you a whole lot more than you realise.”

I laughed, for she must have been
joking. But she stared at me gravely. The laughter soon trailed
away.

“
Why do I get the feeling
you did not call me here for a social visit?” Her gaze became much
sadder.

“
Sit down, Mr Wentworth.”
I sat down as she moved to a table in the centre of the room.
“Grandma used to talk of you eating like us humans, which I ain’t
never heard of before in all my years. But I made you some
tea.”

She placed it before me. I was briefly
reminded of my first ever visit to Mama Akosua’s home and felt a
tinge of sadness. It had been years since I had seen her spirit at
the lake and I missed her terribly.