Chapter Five

Tuesday, basket full of black,

How did you charm me –

with the hair of a mad wolf

From Charms for Love – Anonymous

Translated from the Romanian by Fiona Sampson

I could feel the grin, mad-capped and toothy, stretch across my face and somehow, I was loathe to stop it. I suddenly felt like a mad-hatter, late for an afternoon murder, yet delightfully filled with an abundance of Dark glee. I think, quite possibly, crimson tea and muscled fritters should have been scheduled; we could spear the heads of our enemies, set them afire—light up the night.

I caught a knowing look in Prism’s multi-colored, swirling eyes and knew my inner happy dance of self-awareness needed to be stifled. If not dousing the flame of Darkness, then there seemed a definite need to turn up the Light. There was business to attend to: a wayward family to rescue, a Werepanther and a Vampire to soothe, and one White Bitch with Teeth to pulverize.

“Care to share your wayward pleasures, Mistress?” Gimlit asked. His brow furrowed with his telltale concern for me, head tilting as he attempted to catch on to my inner delights.

“Sorry, Gim. Just thinking.”

“Darkness and death fill your thoughts. I see it dancing in the crimson pools of your eyes. Please, tell us.” He sheathed his sword, the obvious need for murder seeming to pass since there were no Death Stalkers or Others in the room worth mutilating. At least the urge being tampered for the moment. Hallows Eve was fast approaching. I was certain we’d have plenty of Witches, bitches, and Others to burn, but enough about my bubbling brou-ha-ha. Seems I needed to get the others up to my speed and explain my madness.

“Well, it’s a bit convoluted,” I said, looking from Gimlit to Jade and then to the others before my eyes met Prism’s once again. She turned towards Gimlit. His rich turquoise eyes seeming to bore a hole straight through her head as if he could pluck the information he sought from its source. Somehow knowing that my small bit of sinister happiness in this odd moment of Darkness was the Changeling’s doing.

She briefly nodded. It was the barest of movements; her long, shimmering, multi-faceted hair seemed to sigh. From that mere movement, it was as though the whole of my Ogre settled all at once. His large frame released a tenseness I hadn’t known he’d been holding until I watched it escape him like a breath of despair held too long in a chest filled with worry.

“It would seem,” he stated, looking at those gathered around us, their own tenseness and woes clinging to their lips like an off-pitch hum, “that you’ve the time and the audience.”

Uncertainty suddenly seemed to fill me. Was I about to do the right thing? What if, by showing them, sharing with them, I repulsed them? Turned them from me when I needed them most?

“Your path is before you, Rihker,” Prism quietly stated, picking my unspoken words from my mind. “Now, you must choose for yourself if you wish to walk it. Their journey will be for them to choose.”

I could feel Prism’s Light, ever so subtly, burning within her. Felt it, as though I could reach out through the stain of my Darkness and touch it. Hold it in my hands and garner strength from its warmth. Her Light burned brightly, for she was a kindred spirit with my own. Yet my Light was veiled in a cloak of inky Darkness. Shadowed by a Realm that I walked upon its ledges. Still, her words rang true in my mind. Settled in the pit of my soul like a foregone conclusion. An answer to a puzzle solved at the moment of my conception.

I couldn’t help but consider how the Prophets must have smiled at their own absurdity; their macabre and intricately masterful plan. I too was but a pawn in this well-crafted game. If I wished to survive and survive well, it was time I started accepting who I was. And to do so, those around me needed to know my truth.

I crawled slowly to my knees, my nakedness freely revealed. Taking the talon-like claws of Jade’s fingers in my hand, I turned them towards my flesh, watching with interest as Jet and Mercy visibly tensed. Unspoken words clung to Jet’s lips, terror visibly caught in her throat. The horrible need to stop me flashed across her eyes before passing into uncertainty and fear of the unknown. It was an uncertainty I’d never seen her express before as her fear rode her brow in rivulets of perspiration.

Mercy simply clung to the edge of a precipice. Teetered on its border and waited for the ground to give way. To consume her. The anger and hard-edged hatred that she normally wore like a shield of armor escaping her. She must have been feeling very weak indeed to not make some snide comment; her run-in with Modgav truly taking its toll.

Yet, somehow, despite that I could see and feel all of their misgivings, taste them on my tongue like sour candy or spoiled milk, I knew what I had to do. In spite of my own uncertainties and worries of the hours and days to come, I knew I had to share my Darkness with them. All of them. If I hoped for them to understand.

It meant I would have to re-walk my memory’s dark mile. Meant that if I ever hoped to have them stand beside me, to know my motives and to trust me with their lives, then I had to show them what I had lived through and how I had survived.

They would need to see where my pain had held me. Feel what purpose now drove me, and—so that they never blamed Jade for horrors he did not commit—realize that he was not responsible for dark wounds I would no longer hide. And instead, come to knew exactly who was. So, I did the only thing my instinct told me. The only thing I knew they would comprehend. It is the one thing every creature of the Other World understands: I shared my blood, my memories and my pain.

In a movement too quick for Jade or any of the others to react to, I took Jade’s clawed fingers, opened myself to my she-wolf, tore open the doorway to my Darkness, and slashed Jade’s razor-sharp claws across the scars of my belly, re-opening the wound that Modgav’s whip had caused all those years ago.

Jade’s horrified scream echoed my own, his arm tensing, steel-like, while he tried desperately to pull away. Surprisingly, his Werewolf was no match for the strength of my Darkness. Darkness combined with the strength of an Alpha female, the unmoving resolution of a Pixie, the determination of a human and beyond that, the glimmering of so much more. It was the more that tightened my stomach, caused me to release Jade’s hand, but it was too late. The floodgates of my memories were open, and all who stood in their wake felt the first dark wave in a mind-blowing rush.

Impossibly, the room filled a torrent of wind. The wind of my dark memories. It came on so quickly that it blew everyone who stood beside the bed back three steps before they garnered their balance, preparing for the next onslaught. Unexpectedly, my senses filled with the lush scent of fresh turned earth, the lingering haze of meadow; pine, elm and ash drenching me in their lavish fauna. The floral of moss and heather followed; new growth and fresh turned earth filling my mind and my soul.

I felt the pulse of the moon. The waning and waxing as it spiked through my blood and knew the precise moment the hackles of my she-wolf rose. The musk of fur, sandalwood, bayberry, and the subtle richness of flesh poured over me while the scents of those around me swarmed my senses.

It took everything I had not to shudder, to stagger from the overload. Vaguely I wondered if they too felt the world exploded with life. Smelled its brilliance as I did. One look into Mercy’s blazing eyes and I knew my answer. Her face paled, if that were even possible for a Vampire. Her shoulders grew rigid as she too struggled with her senses. And then, the taint of copper, the stain of old blood flowed over me like a cascading river, or a well of despair that forced my lids closed once more.

My nostrils flared, trying to catch its wayward course of direction. But, before my mind could latch on to the blood trail, the wind shifted, settled, the scent suddenly gone.

Once again I opened my eyes and this time my mind was filled with memories. Dark, morbid Goblin memories. All of them horrible.

The rush of measured gasps went round the room as each person gathered lived a new horror. My horrors. My past. I watched silently while they bore witness to my history, each one fighting the urge to change, to fight back, either for themselves or in my honor, I wasn’t sure which. Slowly the trudge through the murky depths of sludge and Darkness began to dissipate. Hearts seeming to steady. Breath finally beginning to slow before cantering to even breathing.

I stood, saying nothing, a mystic witness, while the Light and life visibly returned to each of them.

Mercy bowed her head in reverence.

“You’ve already my heart and soul,” Jade whispered, taking my hand in his. “And now I pledge thee my life.” He too then bowed before me.

Gimlit needed no words between us. His turquoise eyes blazed with love. Devotion. And yet he stated, “I have loved you from an infant child. Whether in the Light or in the Darkness, my sword and I go with you. Wherever you have need.”

I looked at Prism, standing stoically. A golden, mystical glow formed all around her; brilliant. A swirl of colors illuminated her, each one vivid and radiant like her name. I could feel the Light and love permeating from her while it flowed from her heart to mine. I didn’t understand what I had done to deserve the feelings emanating from her, but the peace that filled me made it all seem worthwhile.

Regally she knelt before me and I knew without words that whatever her pledge, it was no small affair. Softly, almost a hum of the very whisper of life, she spoke in a dialect I’d never known or heard spoken before and yet, I understood her every word. Each phrase and every syllable reverberated through my flesh. Danced on my bones and the vessels of my blood before it settled serenely like a lost piece of my soul.

“I have served Kings and Queens,” she softly stated. “Danced in the Darkness with Demons and laughed in the Light with Saints and Angels. All of this, a thousand years and more before your birth. I have walked the Shadow Lands, the Everafter and all of the possibilities in between.” She paused, each one of us clinging to her every word. My heart pulsed in my throat as I waited for her to continue. The very air around us seemed to pause in wait for her to continue.

“My people have ruled lands that have turned to dust thrice before the humans ever dreamed to walk this Realm. I have been enslaved by great enemies, captivated the Wild Mist and have too been held prisoner by the Goblin Horde until you released me. And today, Rihker Tennai of the Ivy Tenna-ai. Today I pledge thee my honor, my skill, and my life. With Deneau—Lady Justice of the Fey, The Chosen, with you, I follow The Way.”

With wild abandon, like a screech from the grave, a mad, violent shriek erupted from Jet, her sleek black body contorting as she fell to the carpet, writhing in what appeared to be excruciating pain. The violent disruption pretty much ended our little ceremony. Bringing reality crashing back.

The taint of old blood, Darkness and the singe of rotting flesh solidifying my prior thoughts of something not quite being right with those around me as distant memories stirred dark emotions.

Something evil had snaked its way into my personal sanctum. By the taste of the old blood, I had a pretty good idea just whose stench I was dealing with. The why behind it was another story all its own.

With all that had happened between our escape from the Land of Light, Maebe’s secret warnings and my flashback into Goblinvill Hell, I still hadn’t learned why Jirvel had set Jet free. Or what other unseen Darkness we were dealing with.

I had a pretty good idea we were about to find out.