Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (38 page)

“
I miss her
too.”

I paused with the cup to my lips. “You
can read my thoughts?”

“
No, unfortunately.” Again
that cold smile. “Only my grandmama had that kind of power. But I
didn’t call you here for small talk.

“
My Ebenezer died years
ago, God rest his soul, but I kept on living, for too long, and I
know it’s ‘cause there’s something I’m still needed on this Earth
to do. Once it’s done, then I can follow my Ebenezer home. No, I
ain’t called you here for a social visit. There’s something I need
to tell you.”

“
About Luna?”

“
Yes, but this is
something I has to show you, with my thoughts.”

I nodded, feeling a whisper of anxiety
for the first time.

She sat down and stared at me. “I’m
ready.”

The first thing I saw was Luna.
Instant apprehension gripped me when I saw where she
was.

She was walking toward the
slave quarters at our mansion. She came to a stop before she
reached the cabins and I was able to pick up the other things in
the vision, like her heightened state of emotions.

The fury that was usually
hidden deep beneath was free and it twisted, leapt and raged. A
prickle crept along my neck when I felt it, especially since
outwardly, she was still, her hands clasped loosely before her. The
focus of her thoughts and heightened emotions was Celesta and
that’s who she reached out to, waking the child. She then sent her
images and I looked on in dismay as the images reeled out, seeing
exactly what Celesta had seen.

The Morrisons’ old boss
was returning home late at night when his horse came to an abrupt
stop. Luna stood before the horse, staring up at him. She didn’t
give him a chance to speak, or even a moment to wonder what she was
doing there alone at night. She knocked him off his horse and
dragged him deep into the woods.

Alone in the woods with no
one to hear his screams, she beat him brutally. When he was lying
on the ground bloodied, her fist came down on his spine, and I
winced at the sound of his bones crunching. She didn’t want to kill
him. No, that was too easy for him. She wanted to make sure he
lived to suffer for a very long time.

Wide awake, Celesta’s
breathing was rapid as the images of what Luna had done to her old
boss suffused her mind. She sat rapt, seeing him being battered
like a doll, with only Luna to hear his cries for help between his
pleas for her to stop. When he lost consciousness, she revived him
and, to my growing disquiet, healed him so she could begin the
assault afresh.

When she finished showing
Celesta what she had done, she turned and slowly walked back to the
mansion where I was waiting. She took a few moments to steady
herself before she walked in to meet me. And, as oblivious as
always, I only noticed how radiant and beautiful she looked, and
that being apart from Luna, no matter how short the separation, was
always too long. I saw absolutely nothing amiss even though she was
quieter than usual.

The next thing Lina showed me was Luna
at a location I had never seen before.

She stood outside what
appeared to be a humble home surrounded by grasslands, watching the
front door as she manipulated and confused one of the minds within
so a woman went to the door believing a friend was outside who
desperately needed to enter. A few moments later, the door was
opened. Luna was inside the house in less than a second. The white
woman she lured to the door was impaled when Luna hit her, her fist
punching a hole through her chest and the door behind her. Luna
pulled her arm away from the door, the choking woman rising along
with the arm, and swung her arm to the side, throwing the woman off
her arm and across the room to crash into the fireplace. There were
three men in the house. In the time it took Luna to kill the
female, they only had time to get to their feet.

The first one screamed as
his private parts were crushed, just by the power of her thoughts.
It was reduced to a bloody pulp as he fell to his knees, bent
double and squealing in pain, blood soaking the front of his
trousers and spreading to his thighs. The second man was thrown
across the room headfirst. His skull was crushed and his neck
broken. The third man only had time to stagger back. She was upon
him, her fangs ripping into his neck. She crushed his arms in her
hold as she drank his blood. Then she let him fall to the ground to
bleed to death.

Screams alerted her to the
two children, who having been awakened by the commotion, came to
the living room doorway. Had she known there were children in that
house? I do not know. But mercifully, she killed them quickly and
painlessly.

Then she turned her
attention to the first man, a young man with blond hair and blue
eyes, whose private parts she had crushed. He was crying, dribbling
in pain. She knelt by his side. She intended to spend at least a
few hours with him and make sure he fully understood the meaning of
pain before he died.

What I had seen so far was bad enough,
but the last thing Lina showed me made the blood drain from my
face.

At first I only saw a
hand, a male hand. It shook violently as it came to hover over a
ropy dark, wet substance. Then I saw him fully. It was the Negro
slaveholder we came across shortly after Luna returned to me. He
was lying on his back, splattered with blood. His face was ashen
and he was struggling to breathe, forcing the air in and out of his
lungs. His trembling hands hovered over his own entrails which
spilled from what was left of his stomach. He locked gazes with the
person before him, a silent plea in his eyes. It went unanswered
and she moved away, leaving him to die slowly, and
painfully.

“
I think you’ve seen
enough,” Lina said.

I was completely silent for at least
fifteen minutes. She didn’t speak while I sat there, struggling to
come to terms with what she had shown me.

How did I feel? Broken in a way I
couldn’t even articulate.

“
How...how long? How long
has she been killing?”

“
I can’t be sure, ‘cause
it started slowly. But at least fifteen years.”

I could only stare at her.

“
So...so what I always
feared has come to pass. The entity from the chapel has a hold on
her.”

“
This ain’t no spirit!”
she spat. “This is all her. Ain’t nothing
controlling
her.”

I got to my feet without realising I
had risen, moving much faster than I intended to.

“
You think this is Luna?
Absurd! This is not Luna. Luna would never commit such...such
heinous acts of her own volition!”

I only realised how threatening my
stance must have appeared to her when I saw her move one hand to
her pocket. She made no reply, nor any move to escape me. She just
looked up at me with perfect equanimity.

Struggling to control my tortured
emotions, I got my chair, moving slowly, and pulled it forward so
it was a few feet from hers. I sat down and took the hand on her
lap in both of mine.

I spoke as calmly as I could in spite
of the whirlwind of confused and conflicting emotions.

“
Lina, you are Luna’s
child. You mean as much to me as my father’s and brother’s
children. You could use whatever you have in that pocket against
me, and I would never lift a hand against you in defence. You have
nothing to fear from me.”

After a few moments, she appeared
slightly embarrassed and pulled out a little ball of twisted
herbs.

“
What does it
do?”

“
It would’ve stopped you
from being able to move for a couple of minutes. And when you
stepped foot in this house, you was caught in a spell that means
you can’t leave unless I’m still alive to release you. It’s the
opposite of the magic that means you can’t step foot inside a home
unless you’re invited. So you would’ve been trapped here for
however long it took for you to die.”

I was speechless for a few
seconds.

“
I do not understand. Why
do you think I would ever harm you?”

She hardened again. “Well
now, Mr Wentworth, I know
you
wouldn’t. But I couldn’t be sure you’s coming
alone.”

It took a few moments for what she
said to sink in, and when it did, I carefully released her hand and
stood up, moving as far away from her as I could.

“
You think Luna,
your
mother
,
would harm you?”

“
My mother died a long
time ago, Mr Wentworth. That thing out there is a killer and there
ain’t much that kin stop it, so understand this. Ain’t no chapel
devil doing this. It’s Luna, and it has to stop.”

I was silent again as it dawned on me
that she thoroughly believed what she was saying.

“
She’s shed a lot of blood
over the years,” she continued, her tone milder, though there was a
band of steel around every word. “You saw the torture and the
cruelty behind them killings. It has to stop. I called you here
‘cause my grandmama believed in you. I’m giving you a month to make
her stop or I’ll kill her.”

“
You do not know what you
are saying. Luna is your mother.”

“
That thing going around
killing folks ain’t my mama.” She was silent for a long moment.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “You think I wants to
kill her? I don’t. So I’m giving you a chance. Make her stop, or I
will.”

I moved to the door and then paused,
turning to face her again.

“
I have clearly been blind
to much—very blind. And I may be wrong about a lot of things, but
of this I’m certain. Luna would never harm one of her
descendants.”

She gazed at me, that hard light in
her eyes.

I stepped into the night, completely
devastated. When I returned to the mansion, Luna was still not
back, something that immediately sent a chill through me now I knew
what she had been doing on those solitary jaunts of
hers.

I sat on my own in the drawing room
until around eleven, when Samuel came in to ask if I needed
anything done before he went to bed.

I shook my head. Noticing my grim
mood, he hung around for a few moments, seemingly unsure of whether
or not to ask what was wrong. Then he bade me goodnight and moved
to the door.

As he was leaving, I did something I
had never done before and spoke into his mind.

You should have told
me.

He inhaled sharply and came to a stop
by the door, his mind awhirl with thoughts. Questions, mainly. But
he knew exactly what I was talking about. What surprised me was
that he faced me again, his gaze calm and only mildly
apologetic.

“
Is you able to protect
us? Against her?”

I was silent and would have been
enraged at what his words signified about their perceptions of my
weakness, if I couldn’t see his thoughts and the simple reasoning
behind the words. When he first came to us for help, he had known I
would not harm them, but he had never put much faith in
Luna.

“
I ain’t gonna lie to you,
Mr Avery. I’s happy she be killing them mens. I’s happy she be able
to do what I’s wanting to do my whole life but too afraid to do.
Why shouldn’t one of us be able to get even for once?” He was quiet
for a few seconds. “You think that makes me evil?”

I wanted to say yes, but there was a
field of dead slaves that prevented me from uttering that
word.

“
The difference is she
isn’t one of you anymore. An evil man can easily be stopped with
force. But Luna cannot be stopped easily. What she’s doing isn’t
about the wrongs these men have done, it’s about the thrill of the
kill, and it’s a disease, one that’s starting to swallow the
goodness in her. Those moments of kindness and compassion she
showed with your daughter will be swallowed up and there will be
nothing left of the woman I love.”

He didn’t move but stared at me, the
gravity of my words weighing down on him. I rose then and went to
the chest where we kept some of our valuables. They all knew there
was a lot of money in that chest, but there had never been any need
for us to keep it locked. I took out a wad of money and handed it
to him.

“
Here. You’ll have to pack
quickly, packing only the essentials. I will take you to the church
in the next town. We are weaker during the day, but that does not
mean we are any less formidable. Father Butler is a good man. He
will either accompany you to New York, or find another white to do
so in order to make sure no trouble comes your way. This money
should be more than enough for you to establish yourselves. Father
Butler knows many people who will be able to help you. Please, make
sure Celesta continues her education; we would love to see her
become a teacher.”

He stared at the money in his hand in
disbelief before he gazed at me, tears in his eyes.

“
But why? Is it ‘cause
you’s mad at—”

I shook my head, halting him in mid
flow. “As you quite rightly indicated a few moments ago, Luna is
much stronger than I will ever be and it is only out of love that I
have been able to keep her darker side in check, or so I thought.
That may all change over the next few weeks, or even days, so it is
in your best interest to be as far away from this town as
possible.”