Just before I opened my eyes the sound of shattering glass came from down stairs. I woke abruptly, tearing myself out of the dream to escape the pain. The noise made no sense to me because I still was not quite severed from the dream.
But then I realized there shouldn't have been any sound coming from down stairs.
I sat up quickly. Then I went very still, straining my ears to listen for any other sounds that may be coming from downstairs.
Someone was in my house.
It could have been Addy, but I doubted it. I had locked the door when I came in last night, so it couldn't have been Izzy. That left only Bane, or---
No, it wasn't Sean. Not this soon. I refused to believe that it was him.
Oh, but the ache! How wonderful it would be for him to put an end to this ache!
I would kill him. I would put an end to this ache and the mourning he inflicted upon me when he murdered my angel.
I crept to the box near the window, slipped my hand inside of it and pulled out my old, serrated-edged, Survival Knife. I held it in my hand with tightly closed fingers and moved slowly across my bedroom floor.
I would kill him without regret.
Slowly, I opened my bedroom door, hesitating only to looking out into the dark, lofty hall. There was no one there.
I would kill him and I would not hesitate in doing so.
I slipped out of my room, hesitating again to look in both directions. Again, there was no one there. I crept down the hall to the stairs and looked down into the living room. It was early morning. The sun had not yet risen over the mountains, so there were many shadows and silhouettes in the living room below. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, though. But I could feel a presence. Someone was definitely in my house, in my living room, hiding in one of the many shadows down there.
Oh, how I wanted it to be Sean!
My heart quickened. Squeezing the hilt a little tighter, I started slowly down the stairs, scanning three hundred and sixty degrees around me the whole way down. As soon as my bare feet touched the cool, stone floor of the living room, I heard a sniffle.
My eyes darted to a place on the floor next to the sofa. I could barely make out the silhouette of someone kneeling near the end-table, with shoulders hunched and head down. It was too dark to make out who it was, but it was far too small of a figure to belong to Bane or Sean. Not that either one of those beastly guys would have been on my living room floor weeping.
Although, I would have loved to have seen Sean there weeping. Weeping tears and weeping blood from the knife wound in his chest, after I buried the blade deep into his body.
"Addy?" Disappointed, I went to her quickly and clicked on the lamp. I set the knife down on the end table and squatted down in front of her. "Are you ok?" I brushed falls of soft, wavy hair away from her face. There were no bruises or black eyes on her face. There were only tears. Weird. I had only ever seen her cry like this when there were marks on her of some sort, after a good beating from Barron.
Addy threw her arms around me with such a force that it knocked me backward and almost made me tip over. Addy squeezed me in her embrace, her boney body rocked with silent sobs. It took me a second or two to get past this whole Addy-was-hugging-me thing. When I did, emotions started to trickle through me. I realized just how fragile and vulnerable Addy was. Human. She was only human, and humans made mistakes. She was a victim, too. I needed to accept these things. I needed to put aside the past and forget. Move on. Grow up.
In those few moments, I was no longer angry with Addy. And it felt so good. It felt so right.
I folded my arms around her, returning her embrace, and I held her tightly. A spasm of sobs shook Addy's body and she buried her face into my hair.
I had to be strong for her. Addy was lost, too. Addy was weak. She was not as strong as I was. I knew this now. Addy was not a Lanchester by blood. She was a Trentis, a descendent of pampered kings and queens who had other's, like the Lanchesters, do their fighting for them.
With the exception of Jade, of course. Jade was a fighter.
I would fight for Addy. Whatever it was that brought her to sobs in my arms, I would fight it for her.
"Addy, what is going on? What is wrong with you?" I asked. The phone in the kitchen began to ring, but both Addy and I ignored it.
Addy, seemingly reluctantly, uncurled herself from me, wiped her face and quickly stood. "I dropped my wine glass," she said. "Careful, Moonshine, there is glass everywhere." On her way to the kitchen for the broom and the dustpan, she picked up the phone. I heard her say hello, but it must have been too late. I heard her hang the receiver back up again.
I sat down on the couch and watched Addy sweep the glass up off the floor, trying to remember the last time she had called me Moonshine. This was hers, Barron's and Jade's nickname for me. When I was a little girl, she used to sing; you are my Moonshine, my only Moonshine. You make me happy when nights are grey. It always made me giggle because I knew those weren't the right lyrics to the song.
After finally returning the broom and dustpan, Addy sat down on the couch beside me. She went still, looking at me with sad, tired eyes. The phone in the kitchen started to ring again. In the back of my mind I was curious as to who would be calling at this early hour, but the look in Addy's expression had my full attention.
And I had hers. She ignored the phone this time. Addy took my hands and turned my wrists up, looking at the many deep scars on my arms. She stared at them, as if sooner or later she'd be able to find fresh signs of my suicidal tenancies. But this time, she'd have to look deeper than my flesh to find the fresh signs. They weren't visible to the naked eye. Still holding my hands, Addy looked at me. I swore she was looking right at them, staring at the bogeymen that were hiding in the dark corners of my mind. She could see them. I was certain of this.
"You know why you are like this, don't you?"
"My pathetic infatuation with ending my life? Let me guess, my father, right? Genetic coding? I could have told you that. Barron's to blame for a lot of pathetic malfunctions in my personality, like sparkly dead guys, sticky blackness and bogeymen," I said, bitterly. I could have kept going, but I was pretty sure Addy got the point.
"You're actually right, this time," she said. "As a matter of fact, all of the Lanchesters were like this. They were definitely a very unique breed of people. I wish you could have heard some of the wild and crazy stories your Grandmother Jade used to tell me when I was a little girl. They gave me nightmares for a long time, but I loved to hear them, none-the-less. The point I'm trying to make, though, is the strangeness on your father's side of the family. And believe me, strangeness is a nice, simple word to describe them. Well, your father was a sick man. You know that, I know, but what I'm trying to say is that---" she paused, trying to find the right words.
The phone kept ringing in the background.
"It was something deeper than his character or his personality that caused him to be sick, Luna. I thought when I first married him that he might have a multiple personality disorder of some kind. He agreed to see the best therapists and psychologists that money could buy, but no one ever found what I could see in him every day. No one could see the monsters like I could."
"The monsters?" This gave me the goose bumps. I always believed the monsters in me were the results of suppressing the painful and crazy experiences in my life, blaming Barron only because I could, because he was crazy too. But now Addy was telling me that I actually could blame Barron for the monsters.
But she was also confirming suspicions that I had had for a very long time. I knew in my heart when Barron had arguments with someone inside his head that he was actually conversing with the very same demons I felt within my own head, and that they were his demons, too. I thought about this for a second longer. This was not cool. If my monsters were not the results of suppression then that only meant---
"Real monsters, Luna," Addy said. And, yup, that pretty much summed up the un-cool stuff.
"I know this sou
nds crazy, but it's true. Something lived inside of him, and I swore I could see it peeking out at me through his eyes whenever it took control of him, and he'd get violent. The Barron I fell in love with was a sweet, passionate, caring man who would never, never, dream of hurting you or me, or anyone. Luna, it was not him who hurt you all those years, it was his monster. I never would have stayed with him if I hadn't believed that I could help him. I did not want to divorce him and leave him alone with whatever lived inside of him. I was scared for him. Really scared. More scared for him than I was for my self. I was more scared for him than I was for you. And he needed me," Addy said, choking on the last two words. Tears filled her eyes and she gulped at a sob that rose up and willed her to break down and cry.
"Luna, your daddy used to cry and cry, scream and torture himself over what he'd done to you. The ugliness he felt over it, the mourning he'd done, was just so incredibly sad. But, you see, Barron was trying to help you. He would have done anything to let the monsters out of you. He confessed that it was them telling him how to get them out of you."
I dropped my head, brushing the pad of my thumb over the rough scar in the palm of my hand. What Addy was saying was some powerful stuff. It stirred the anger in me. I could feel it churning like a stick in a hot bed of coals. But I couldn't help but wonder. What if she was right? What if my father had not been the one to hurt me all those years? What if it were the monsters within him? Then could I, would I, forgive him?
This was too much to absorb right now. This was way too much to take in and sort through. But there was already a part of me that knew for certain that I would. I could forgive him, because I understood what it was like to live with the monsters.
Oh, how big this was! How---
"Your father was found early this morning. I got the call and rushed back here, to see if you were all right."
"What call? Why wouldn't I be all right?" Ok, so that last question was kind of a stupid one.
Addy seemed to choke on more sobs. It took a lot of effort for her to collect herself. She wiped tears with her long, dainty fingers. "Because. . .I. . .I. . .I just don't know!" she cried. More tears flooded her eyes. They seemed to frustrate her now. She rubbed her cheeks almost angrily then she took my hands in hers and squeezed my fingers in her wet palms. "I think you are sick, too, Luna. I think this is why you get so violent and angry. You have monsters, too, I just know it! And yes, it's crazy, but it's true. Somehow there are demons inside of you. Demons! Real demons. I'm scared. I'm just so scared! And your grandmother's stories---"
I quickly gathered my mother into my arms and held her until she stopped weeping. "Addy," I wiped damp strands of hair away from her face. I wanted to assure her that she didn't have to be afraid for me. I wanted to tell her that I was going to be all right, that it was silly of her to believe that real demons could live inside of anyone, but I couldn't say these things. Addy had a legitimate reason to be afraid. And she was right to believe in the demons.
"Your father was found dead. Shot in the---" She swallowed whatever she was about to say.
The phone kept ringing and ringing.
"They say it was suicide, but they're wrong. They are wrong! He was murdered! Murdered by the demons!"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "That's crazy." But I knew perfectly well that it wasn't crazy.
This was just too much, too fast. I couldn't put any of it in its proper order. The hot coals of my anger spat little flames from them, and they were licking me from the inside. I was mad because Addy used such a lame excuse to let my father hurt me. I was mad because she loved him so entirely that I was neglected. I was mad because I knew her excuse was really the truth, mad because I loved Barron and wanted to forgive him, mad because he was gone now and I would never get that chance, mad because. . .because. . . there was more, so very much more that made me mad, but I couldn't think. I didn't want to think.
I wanted to walk.
I got up off the couch and walked out the door, like my body was on autopilot. It knew where I was going, but I did not. It had a destination, but I did not. Addy didn't say a word. She knew I got upset at random and unexplainable times. And she probably knew this about me, not because of all the time she had spent with me, getting to know me, but because of all the time she had spent with Barron, getting to know him.
The morning sun was now eating away at the dark, as I walked toward the forest. My many thoughts had crammed themselves together, creating one, whirling and fearsome funnel cloud. But I didn't care. I didn't want to know what was going on inside my head. I didn't want to make sense of it. I just wanted to walk, fast and far. I had to see Bane, but even that was not enough to convince me that I should stop walking, that I should put out the fire inside of me. No, the fire was good. The fire felt great. I would let it rage, for all I cared. It fed me somehow. It made me feel so alive in my otherwise dead and darkened inner world.
I walked at a brisk pace through the trees, vaguely aware of the sharp branches that were scratching my arms or the dry needles and sticks that were pricking and poking the bottoms of my feet. When I discovered what had actually been my destination all along, I stopped. I sat down on the boulder that jutted out over the lake. All that was ugly and dark inside me was stirring. Images from my past pulsed before my eyes, and I ground my teeth together, as if I could chew it all up and spit it all out. Biting back a scream of rage and turmoil, I curled my fingers into fists. Tears welled in my eyes, and I grew even angrier because of them.
I punched the rock beside my leg as hard as I could, crying out in rage. My knuckles cracked, bones shifted, but the pain was numbed by my raging emotions. What little I did feel felt good. It felt right. It fed something within me. Before my eyes, my mind flashed pictures of torment and anguish and pain. There had been so very much pain!
I drove my fist into the rock again and again. Bones splintered. Flesh opened up and blood beaded to the surface. But it wouldn't go away. The inner pain was still there.
Hungry to feel more, desperate to be free of it all, I shot to my feet and looked through my toes at the sharp, rugged cliff side below me. Merciful they were the rocks. I could hear them whispering promises of taking me away, ripping me from the skin that I was in so that I would be free once and for all.
I believed them, without a doubt. They would hold true to their promise.
And there was nothing and no one to stop me this time.
I felt a smile pierce through the pain. I felt it rise up, defying the laws of darkness's gravity, and it twitched in the corner of my mouth. Free, like I was about to be.
I took a deep, long breath of crisp, mountain air, and then closed my eyes for the very last time.
And then I jumped.
****
Chapter Forty-Five
Bane