Wolf Moon Rising (60 page)

Lara Parker

blotted out the moonlight as it squeezed into the narrow space.

Jackie felt David’s hand grab hers as growls rumbled through

the corridor. Tendrils of fear slithered through her body, and

her heart beat so loudly it seemed to come from inside her ears.

Th

ey took off running, bashing against the walls. “Wait,”

David cried. “We have to feel around for the painting.”

“It’s not here,” Jackie said. “It was too long ago. It’s gone.”

“We can’t keep going. We’ll be trapped here with no way

out,” cried Carolyn.

“But we can’t go back!” David said. “It’s like a cave under

the house. It must open to the outside somewhere.” Behind

them, they could hear the werewolf ’s ragged breathing. David

shook the fl ashlight but it fl ickered, then died

Th

e darkness deepened, smelling of decay, thick and overly

moist, like the inside of a culvert, and Jackie thrust her hands out in front of her, thinking at any second she would touch something dead, or worse, reach the end of the corridor with no way

to escape. Th

eir shoes made slopping sounds as if they were

trudging through mud, the air grew stale, and their breaths be-

came more labored.

And still the beast came after them, its breathing hoarse

and its growls echoing as it thrust itself forward, stopping at

times as if it, too, were confused by the darkness. Jackie felt her teeth clench and enormous dread clamped her chest like a vise.

Th

ey were going to die an agonizing death, and there was noth-

ing they could do. Her heart breaking, she would hear David’s

fi nal shrieks of pain, then Carolyn’s, and fi nally her own. Th

e

werewolf was an unfeeling brute without understanding, with

no control over its murderous nature, and she was not powerful

enough to stop it.

Jackie could feel her pulse in her ears, and she strained her

eyes to make out another turn, but the shadowy air folded in on

itself and her hands plunged deeper into the darkness.

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All at once the walls widened and, from the echoing of

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their footsteps she could sense they had entered a small open

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space of some kind. Th

ey came together, holding one another,

and listened. Behind them in the corridor the beast’s breathing

was a rasping wheeze, like a rusty hinge. She could smell its

stagnant breath and the odor of fresh excrement.

“Where are we?” Carolyn whimpered. “What shall we do?

David? We can’t see anything!”

David was close to Jackie now, his arm around her shoulder

and his mouth beside her ear. Oddly, for the fi rst time, she felt

the scratch of his new beard, and a wave of tenderness left her

weak.

“Jackie,” he breathed. “We need light. Can you give us

light?”

She trembled and shook her head, “How?”

He pressed his lips closer to her ear and his breath warmed

her. “Th

ink of what you can do,” he whispered. “You are a

witch.”

She shook her head. “No. No more.”

“What do you mean?” he whispered. “Help us.”

“I— I can’t . . .” Like the pages of a book come unbound,

the moments of her life fl ew apart and were scattered in the

wind of her mind. She struggled to grasp where she was, what

was expected of her, what she needed to do to remain sane. But

she was drowning in the whirl pool of her past lives.

“But, Jackie, you are magical. Don’t you remember how we

fl ew?”

She thought of that night when they escaped the Klan. How

had she done that? And she had restored the painting, even

though it had been only for a moment. Angelique had not helped

her. No, she had done that! It had been Angelique who had

stood in her way, making her ill, making her fearful. But An-

gelique was gone and she was alone.

Her heart fl uttered in her breast. She moved further into the

room, her hands stretched out in front of her, and she searched

within the darkness of her own mind for her magic. Was it still

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there? Something about the earth, the stones, the sea that lay

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Lara Parker

beneath the cliff s, the rush of the tide beneath Widow’s Hill,

roused a memory of what she had been before. She shivered and

looked down. Fire glowed in the tips of her fi ngers.

She heard David say again, “Jackie, you are the only one

who can save us. Don’t you know what you are?”

Hot tears sprang to her eyes. Her breath came in bursts.

Her arms and then her hands grew numb and began to vibrate.

She pulled away from David and began to circle slowly and to

rise in the darkness. Her ears were buzzing and her hair twisted

on her scalp when she lifted. A bolt of electricity fl ared through her, hissed out of her bones like children’s sparklers, and pierced the darkness.

A dozen candles atop an iron candelabra burst into fl ame.

“Yes!” David wrapped his arms around her.

Th

ey were in a small room with rounded stone walls, and

there, leaning against the wall, was the painting. Glimmering

under its dust was Quentin’s likeness, hollow- eyed but intact,

the thick sideburns, the cleft chin, the magnifi cent eyebrows,

and the swatch of lustrous black hair.

Th

e three stood dumbfounded, staring, and David leaned

over and brushed the dust away. Jackie, still trembling, whis-

pered, “What do you think? Will it work?”

At that moment the beast’s growl reverberated through the

walls and Jackie could see the red eyes shining in the dark cor-

ridor like pinpoints of fi re. Enraged by the constricted tunnel, it struggled, pawing at the air.

“David!”

David grabbed the painting and lifted it, but the werewolf

only writhed and wrenched itself further out into the room. Th

e

portrait did not seem to lesson its rage.

“Jackie.” David whispered. “Th

e painting isn’t working.” He

looked her in desperation. “It’s because it isn’t signed. Th

e paint er

told me . . . do you think you . . . do you think you can you paint

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his name there?”

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She shook her head. How?

“Try.”

Quivering with determination, she leaned in and took a breath.

Her mind was clear and a silver stream of confi dence fl owed into

her body. A shiver of sparks traveled through the bones of her fi ngers as she spun a beam of light, and she scrawled— as if she were holding a paintbrush—charles delaware tate in the air. She

watched in awe as the signature magically appeared at the corner

of the canvas.

Th

e painting was vibrating in David’s hands. Jackie could feel

Carolyn behind her, clinging to her shoulders. As they both froze

and waited for the portrait to come to life. Th

ere was a long mo-

ment while she stood shaking, listening to the beast pant. Th

en

the werewolf’s breaths grew shallower, and the growls diminished;

there was a long rasping groan, and an incredulous sigh— a sigh as

of a man reprieved from the scaff old, or pulled nearly drowned

from the sea— as Quentin staggered into the room.

Th

e painting shuddered and the werewolf convulsed. A

dark substance, fl esh but also smoke, was sucked into the canvas

with a rush of fur and shadow. And the grisly visage of the wolf

man radiated on the surface, then sank into the paint. Flashing

and darkening, Quentin fell forward and collapsed— human

once again.

Carolyn lifted up a groggy head and said, “Is it gone?”

“Yes,” Jackie said in a soft voice. “I think it’s gone.”

Warily, David crept over to Quentin, whose head lay on his

arm. Inching closer, David propped the painting against the

wall beside the reclining man and leaned down.

“It worked,” said David softly. “Quentin? Th

e painting broke

the spell.”

“It stole the curse,” Jackie whispered. “You’re free.”

But Quentin still did not speak and only lay moaning, his

face hidden. Th

en Jackie looked at the canvas and frowned. “It’s

not like the other one,” she said in a soft voice, and David

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Lara Parker

remembered what the paint er had told him. He slipped an arm

around her, and pulled her back.

“Yes,” he said. “Th

is painting is diff erent. Th

e eyes are closed.”

Quentin sat up on the fl oor uttering long watery sighs, his

hands over his face. Th

e painting beside him glowed, and Jackie

could see the eyes were painted shut as if the man in the paint-

ing was sleeping, a vague smile playing upon his lips.

She moved forward to take his hand. “Quentin?”

Something was wrong. Quentin did not stand but crawled

across the fl oor with his head lowered as though he were search-

ing for a dropped coin. Jackie reached down to help him, but

Quentin’s fi ngers groped at the darkness.

“My eyes,” he whispered. “I can’t see!” He was turning his

head this way and that and staring feebly up at the candles fl ick-

ering in the gloom as if to draw light from those magical fl ames.

Grinding his fi sts into his sockets, Quentin swayed, and

then pulled his hands away, opening his fi ngers. Th

ey glistened

with red. Jackie gasped, “No . . . oh, no.”

Quentin turned to her. Crimson irises shone within his

youthful features. Slowly, painfully, he turned his face toward

David and said, “I am saved. I am saved from the curse, but it

does me no good.” He reached up and touched his cheek. “Is

this my face? Th

e face I shall never see? Will I ever see anything

in this world again that is not stained with blood?”

David walked over and said kindly, “Quentin. You don’t

know— it may take a moment—” But Jackie reached for his arm

and pulled him back.

“Look, David,” she whispered. “Look at the portrait. It’s

coming to life.”

Th

ey both stared at the painting in amazement. Th

e closed

eyelashes were fl uttering, and they lifted slowly, almost imper-

ceptibly.

And then the eyes opened.

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And stared out with all the malevolence of the beast. Th

ey

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were a venomous crimson, but there was something else: the

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pupils were thickly clouded with scarlet. Captured on the canvas

was Quentin’s handsome face in all its vibrant perfection, but the

eyes were the bloodred eyes of the wolf.

It was the paint er’s fi nal gift.

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T w e n t y - s e v e n

But how can we let a young girl stay all alone in the Old

House,” Elizabeth was saying, her voice tinged with sad-

ness. As she looked back from the drawing room window, the

colored light from the stained glass played across her lovely

features and caught fi re in her emerald earrings. “I’m sure her

mother will return soon, and then she can go back home.”

David looked around at the damage. Th

ere was shattered

glass on the fl oor, and the crimson velvet of the sofa was slashed, exposing the batting. Roger paced in front of the fi replace, elegant as usual in a dark suit and brocade waistcoat, his hands

clamped behind his back and his head bent forward. Th

e world

outside the window was still blanketed in white, but the fl icker-

ing sunlight inside the room seemed to predict, even in Febru-

ary, an early spring.

“Elizabeth, your misguided compassion will only inspire

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more diffi

culties,” he said with his usual impatience, then

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glanced toward the closed doors and lowered his voice. “I insist

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that we discuss this another time when Jacqueline is not waiting

in the foyer within earshot.”

Lingering outside the drawing room, Barnabas stood in the

shadows near the settee beneath the stair. Jackie was perched

there, still wearing her bedraggled coat and her torn jeans, and

she turned her pale eyes up to him as the conversation drifted out

through the wooden doors.

“Roger, why must you always be so obstinate?” said Eliza-

beth. “I’m simply saying I think we should let her move in here

for the time being, where she will be safe.”

“After what has happened? Just look at this room! Surely

you will allow things to settle down fi rst.”

“Settle down? What do you mean?”

Roger’s ire was developing. “Listen to me, Elizabeth. You