It was early morning when I was jolted out of sleep by a bloodcurdling scream. I expected to find myself in bed, wooden shutters completely blotting out the sun and the room pitch black. But I was standing at the chapel, which was flooded with the crimson light of a dying day. I whirled around. Luna was kneeling at the altar, the image of her wavering and splitting in two. One face was bowed, its lips moving in silent prayer, the other was staring at me, contorted in pain and anguish. Intense anguish.
Avery. Avery.
It was gone and I was awake in the darkened bedroom.
“Luna.”
I was off the bed and to the wardrobe in less than a second, gripped with anguish. “Luna,” I said again, as if repeating the name would keep her among the land of the living.
Luna.
I dressed. I did not want to believe it was true, but the terror, the desolation was already creeping into my soul. I sank to my knees as it overwhelmed me.
I forced myself to my feet. I had to function long enough to confirm what I feared in my heart was true.
I ran downstairs and out of the mansion to my car.
I raced toward the chapel. The desolation and pain kept overwhelming me and twice on the journey I had to park the car and sit with my head in my hands in agony about the fact that the very thing I never believed would occur appeared to have happened.
I had been spared this long ago when old age should have claimed Luna’s life, and even then, I’d had decades to prepare for it. I did not know how I would be able to survive if she was taken away from me now. Somehow I managed to hold myself together for long enough to reach the place I promised myself I would never lay eyes on again in all my immortal life.
It was mid-afternoon when I stepped into the clearing. Body, mind, and soul were aflame as I stared at this place. It held so many tortured memories.
A moment later, he appeared at the chapel entrance.
He was exactly as Luna’s mind had revealed him to be. He was a tall, well built man. His hair was worn in a well-groomed afro, his complexion a burnished caramel. He appeared vain, even from this distance, and arrogant.
“I didn’t expect you to be here for quite a few days,” he said. “Luna will be pleased to see you. So just make me into a vampire and I’ll tell you where she is.”
I leapt into the ether and materialised a few yards from him.
“Do you think I wouldn’t know she’s dead? That you killed her?”
The arrogance wavered and he moved back into the cool darkness of the chapel. I could feel the presence of the entity reaching for me, much stronger than it had been when I rescued Mama Akosua from it.
“It was an accident,” Simon spat. “If she’d just done—”
I moved slowly into the chapel, something he hadn’t expected me to do. He held out his hands and backed away farther into the chapel.
“Wait now, hold on! I didn’t kill her. It was that damn thing. It tricked me!”
As he spoke an image from his mind rose up like a cobra. It lunged at me and I couldn’t speak, just stand there and stare at him.
Luna died at the back of the chapel. He wound a silver chain around her neck and suspended it from a hook nailed to the ceiling. He then hoisted her into the air, directly in the sun shining through the gap in the roof. Her hands and feet were tied together. It was as if I were standing just a few yards from her, yet she was completely and forever out of my reach and I couldn’t save her as blood flowed from an incision along her wrist. He stood before her, his lips and shirt covered with blood as he shouted at her.
“Tell me!” he roared. “Tell me how I can become a vampire!”
When he received no answer, her eyes rolling back into her head by now, he yanked on the chain, increasing the pressure to her neck.
That is when things moved out of his control with devastating speed. The chain became taut as if it had a life of its own. Then it tugged itself out of his hand and broke free from the hook attached to the wall. Like the tail of a scorpion, it lashed out and whipped itself across his face.
He leapt back, bringing his hand to his face as fear overrode the pain from the blow. At first he thought it was Luna controlling the chain, until it whipped through the air out of his reach and hoisted Luna higher into the air, winding tighter around her neck.
“No,” he murmured as he ran toward her.
She was only half-conscious but was still able to struggle as the chain cut into her neck. Below, Simon was in a panic and screaming her name as he jumped into the air trying to catch hold of her feet and pull her back down. But in the end, all he could do was move back in horror as the chain bit deeper into her neck, cutting through the flesh like a knife. Up until then she had shown no overt distress, her eyes closed, her face calm, almost serene, as if she had completely surrendered to the inevitable. But then intense anguish seized her and her beautiful face flamed with terror as her lips moved wordlessly.
Simon looked away as she was decapitated.
The tension went out of the air as she fell into a heap on the floor, her head rolling across the ground, stopping a few inches from his feet.
He ran out of the chapel and threw up outside in the stream, the water turning crimson as it was mainly her blood in his stomach. This increased the nausea and it was a while before he could stop.
The chapel was quiet when he re-entered it, as if the entity had gone to sleep. He took Luna’s remains outside and buried it. Then he pulled a jumper on over his bloodstained T-shirt. He didn’t want to stay at the chapel, but he knew I would find him before the sun set and that this was the only place he would ever be safe. The entity would not let him die. That had been their pact. He was supposed to force Luna to turn him into a vampire so the entity could live again through him. It would not let him die.
He was still talking, backing farther into the chapel, every word he uttered inflaming my anger and cheapening the loss I had suffered.
“You can’t kill me,” Simon was saying. “I’m the only one that can control it now.”
I closed the space between us in less than a second and placed one hand in the thick dark afro he was so proud of, the other on his neck. I tore his head off his neck and blood spewed from his headless corpse. I released him and stood staring down at his body twitching beneath me, the violence doing nothing to assuage the turmoil and grief.
It was a few moments before I noticed something strange was happening. It took a few seconds for his heart to stop beating and blood gushed violently from his neck, but instead of pooling on the floor, it was sinking into the ashen floorboards of the ancient chapel as if it were being consumed, lapped up by some grotesque unseen tongue. The presence around me seemed to surge with power and those fingers were upon me again, pulling at me and trying to draw me deeper into the chapel and its cold, dark stomach.
I backed away from Simon’s remains and out of the chapel. I could still see the image of Luna tied helplessly, struggling in vain as the chain bit into her neck, sinking deep into her flesh until...
I covered my eyes with my hands. But of course, I could not block out the image.
I turned and ran into the trees.
I do not recall the drive home. I only remember removing my shirt and wiping off as much of Simon’s blood as I could before I put on a spare set of clothing I kept in the car.
When I entered the mansion, Mallory ran out into the hallway. She glared at me.
Where were you? her mind screamed at me.
I could not speak. I could not even utter a meagre apology for forgetting to pick her up from school or even ask how she had gotten home. I swept past her and to my room, where I was finally able to give in to my grief.
She was dead. Luna was dead.