He listened. The soft sound of careful footsteps broke the quiet. He searched the street. Then he saw her. She stepped down the sidewalk on the next block, the cello case in one hand, music books in the other, her beautiful face glowing in the distant streetlight. He felt her mind reaching into shadows, scanning the nightfall for danger.
He leaned back in the air and released his body, then blended into the darkness beneath the low-hanging branches of a tree. “I’m your only danger now,” he whispered.
Serena looked up, her eyes wary as she approached the next block. She crossed the street, her feet crunching over shards of glass, then stopped on the curb and looked at the broken streetlight. Finally she surveyed the night surrounding her.
Stanton skimmed over the jagged path of black shadows beneath the palm trees until he was over her head. Abruptly he slid back into himself and landed on his feet in front of her.
She gasped.
He let an indolent smile creep over his face and breathed in the sweet smell of her fear as his hand shot out and grabbed her before she could turn and run.
Soon you’ll have nothing to fear. He pushed the words into her mind and added a pledge of love to make her his for eternity.
Her eyes flashed back with a promise of her own. The warrior-goddess emerged. At first he thought she was going to battle him. He opened his mind with eager anticipation. He wanted her to fight.
Instead, she surprised him. She dropped her cello case. It thudded on the concrete and glass. Then she flung her books at him. He batted the books aside as she darted across the street. Her skirt flapped wildly about her legs and her shoes smacked hard on the pavement.
He ran after her, his heart excited by the chase. You can’t escape me, he whispered into her mind.
That’s what you think.
He loved her foolish bravery.
She ducked under a bougainvillea. Branches snapped back and thorns scraped her forehead. Then she turned into the yard of an empty house and disappeared.
Stupid mistake, he sighed, feeling the words penetrate her mind. He grinned and stalked slowly after her. There won’t be any pain, he promised. Only an eternity together. Come back to me.
He crept down the side of the vacant house into a backyard, overgrown with weeds and filled with wind-blown trash.
Her jagged breathing gave her away. She stood, a dark silhouette pressed against the trunk of a cottonwood tree. She was cornered in the yard. No place to go.
Sweet goddess, he traced across her mind. I’ve only come to seal our destiny. You shouldn’t feel so afraid of me. And yet her fear was what he enjoyed. He savored it.
Her moon amulet shot white light across the dark.
He eased through the weeds until he was at her side. When his hand reached to touch her, she jerked back, and without warning leaped toward the redwood fence. Her hands grabbed the top as her feet worked rapidly to scramble up, but before she could slide over he caught her arm and stopped her.
She trembled as he pressed her closer to him, then touched her chin and lifted her face. A cold sweat covered her skin and a fiery gleam burned in her eyes but she wasn’t preparing to fight or even read his thoughts. He felt disappointed. He didn’t want her easy surrender. She was stronger than that. He wanted the warrior for his bride.
He pressed into her mind and examined her thoughts, so open to him now, then caught an emotion that surprised him. She still cared for him.
“Then why didn’t you let me explain?” he asked in a hushed voice.
But before she could answer he found a stronger feeling. His heart pulsed with her ache. He felt how much what he had done to Maryann had hurt Serena.
He started to apologize but anger ripped through him. Then you should have let me explain.
Her head jerked back as if his sudden temper had caused her pain.
It was too late now. There was no turning from his plan. He started to go into her mind again.
“I didn’t trust you,” she answered defensively.
You will soon.
“How could I?” she spoke rapidly now as if she understood his intent. “Jimena finally told me what she saw in her premonitions.”
“So?” He didn’t want her explanation now, he wanted to take her to the other side.
“Jimena saw you recruiting someone in her first premonition. When that one came true, I assumed that the others would, too. That made it impossible to trust you.”
“You should have trusted me,” he answered. Again he entered her thoughts, but stopped. It wasn’t fear that he had sensed in her earlier, but nervousness. That baffled him. Before he could consider it more he caught something in the corner of his eye.
He spun around. Nothing was there. He listened for the approach of footsteps, but the only sounds were branches scraping against the vacant house and leaves rustling overhead.
“Stanton.” Serena touched his face softly, pulling him back to her.
“Do you sense anything?”
“Only the wind,” she answered. “It’s blowing papers around the yard.”
He followed her finger and saw a yellowed page from the Times rolling like a tumbleweed. He held his hand up to check the breeze. The night was still. He started to walk over to investigate.
“Stanton,” Serena called again, her voice more nervous than before.
He turned back to her but now he couldn’t erase the feeling that someone was watching them.
She tried to bring his attention back to her. “Cassandra found me.”
“I assumed she had.” He studied the corners of the yard, wondering if the Atrox was there watching him. The shadows seemed normal enough.
“She brought me to the club in Silver Lake so I could see the truth about you.” She stepped in front of him and tried to make him look at her.
“She set us up,” Stanton answered and pushed her hands away. He looked behind him.
“At first I wasn’t going to go, but I did and—” A sudden change of air made her stop.
Abruptly he was aware that someone was in the yard with them. And then he knew. A whirlwind rushed around him as Jimena, Vanessa, and Catty materialized beside Serena. Vanessa had shielded them with her power of invisibility.
“I’m sorry,” Serena whispered.
All four stared at him. For a moment he felt confused.
But then he realized that everything they had said at the bus stop had been to set their trap. That’s why Jimena had cautioned Catty not to speak or even think her doubts. They had suspected he might be near, trying to read their thoughts.
In a flash, their powers entwined tightly and struck with amazing force. He staggered back. A deep slow burn started inside his chest and spread outward to his arms and legs.
He tried to gather his strength, but before he could they sent another blast pushing back his power. This time he felt on fire. He understood that they weren’t trying to destroy him. They were trying to release him from his bondage to the Atrox.
But they didn’t understand that they could never release him. That was what he hadn’t told them that day on Olvera Street. He had been evil too long to be freed. A Follower as purely evil as he was could only be destroyed.
Their moon amulets lit the backyard with a white glow. They struck again. He could feel the light consume him. He had a strange awareness of something leaving his body and he became too weak to stand. He fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
He turned to look one last time in Serena’s eyes.
She glanced at him and immediately understood.
“Stop!” she screamed.
But it was too late.
“What is it?” Jimena asked.
“We’re destroying him!” Serena yelled as she knelt next to him.
“What do you mean?” Catty asked, rushing beside her.
Serena clutched his hand. He hoped she understood all the things he didn’t have time to tell her. He hadn’t wanted to harm her. He had only wanted to have her with him for etern
ity.
“I’m sorry,” he tried to say but the words failed him.
“Stay,” she cried softly. “Stay.”
“Did we kill him?” Vanessa asked, her voice breaking.
The pain became a white fire burning through him, consuming his evil. When it was finished there would be nothing left of him. He would be like Malcolm, dust and bone. But like Malcolm he didn’t feel afraid. He welcomed the peace that nothingness offered. It seemed blissful compared to the dark in which he had lived all these centuries.
I want this, he tried to tell Serena to ease the terrible sorrow he felt inside her. More than anything he wanted release from his enslavement.
Serena held his head on her lap. He could feel her pushing through his mind, trying to find a way to save him.
Catty leaned next to her. “Is he going to be okay?”
Serena shook her head.
“Maybe if I take him back in time—” Catty said.
“He only becomes our enemy then,” Jimena answered softly.
Stanton looked one last time into Serena’s eyes, then smiled, and drifted away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE FIERY POWER of the Daughters of the Moon still burned inside Stanton. Slowly, the unbearable pain gave way. He realized he was no longer in the backyard of a vacant house in Los Angeles. He tried to move to see where he was but hot pain spread through him and he sank back to the ground, his muscles too tired to hold the weight of his head. He wondered briefly if this was the nothingness of death, but instinct told him that something else was happening.
“You’re not dead, if that is what you are thinking,” a soft voice said to him from a distance.
“Hello?” he called out, his throat raw as if the top layers of tissues had been burned away. His eyes nervously searched the dark chamber in which he found himself. It seemed like a cave or a deep pit. The soft sound of water tumbling over rocks filled the air behind him.
Then a distant light appeared in the gloom and came steadily closer. He turned his head and watched the eerie glow. Before long, he made out the form of an old woman in a long black gown. She walked toward him carrying a lantern. The flame flickered as the lantern swayed from side to side, making her shadow jump and twist over the cavern walls.
“You’re far from dead,” she said, and set the lantern on a small outcropping of stone near the ground where he lay. Now his shadow joined hers.
“Where am I?” He wasn’t sure what he expected her to say but he feared her answer. Dread settled over him, working its way to the bone. He felt lost and alone.
“You don’t know?” She raised an eyebrow to a quizzical angle.
“I thought I was dead, but this doesn’t feel right.”
“How does death feel?” She laughed and her voice resonated in the hollow room, then she shook her head. “You’re saved.”
“Saved?” Stanton asked. “But I should have died.”
“You’re time isn’t up.” She stepped closer to him. Her long hair curled strangely around her body. Suddenly, he realized it wasn’t her hair. A large black snake coiled about her waist. It slithered over her shoulders, its tongue flicking the air. Yellow eyes studied Stanton.
“You’re—” he started to speak, but felt too stunned to continue. He raised himself up on one elbow, ignoring the dizzy feeling inside him, and studied her elegant face. He had heard rumors about the Dark Goddess, but he had never believed they were true. People once loved the Goddess of the Dark Moon and called upon her near the end of their time on earth to lead their soul through the passageway back to birth. But because the goddess was called upon only when people were dying, she became an omen of doom. Soon after people feared saying her name for fear of conjuring death.
“You’re the death-giver,” he whispered with awe.
“I prepare people for rebirth,” she protested.
“Then why am I here if I’m not dead?” he asked.
“Because I understand the difficulty in being part Follower and part human. You have suffered for it.”
Stanton smirked. “I haven’t been human for hundreds of years.”
“And yet you’re here. Why is that?” She gave him a derisive grin that matched his own. She spread her gown and settled beside him. “Is it possible that some part of you is still human? Maybe something inside you never surrendered to the Atrox? Perhaps the piece of soul still within you that yearns for love.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How can I still be here? I’m an Immortal. I should have been destroyed when the goddesses tried to release me.”
“You thought you were too evil to be brought back?” She took his hand. He felt comforted by her touch.
“Yes,” he answered. “I know I was too evil. You don’t understand what a Follower must do to receive the prize of Immortality.”
“You must have committed horrible atrocities,” she mused quietly.
He paused, remembering. “I have.”
She placed her warm hand over the exact place on his chest where the pressure of regret spread through him. “I understand human nature. I see the cause of all mistakes and failures.” She sighed. He sensed her compassion. “Some say I devour life, but I also cleanse people, so that, like the moon, they can be renewed.”
“You’re giving me a second chance?” he asked, and then he remembered Malcolm. “Malcolm prayed to you before he died. Had he come to you to be cleansed?”
She nodded. “Malcolm had come to me after he failed to please the Atrox. That’s when I see most of your kind—when they are terrified enough to consider extraordinary alternatives.”
Stanton tried to sit up but the pain rocked him back. “You’re the unthinkable thing that he did. He sought you out?”
“He knew the Atrox would terminate him for his failure, so he came to me, hoping to be purified and prepared for rebirth. But he had to pay a price. I made him prove his sincerity. I sent him on a mission to warn you.”
“You gave him the ring?”
She took a cloth from her pocket and pressed it over his eyes. It smelled of lavender. “I knew if you saw the ring you would believe whatever he told you.”
“He never finished telling me.” As Stanton breathed in the flowery scent his lungs felt soothed.
She stood and stepped away from him. “Malcolm succumbed more quickly than I had imagined. He never gave you the full message. I hadn’t seen that much evil in him, but then I tend to see the good in people, not the bad.” She sat beside him again and lifted his head to offer him water.
He drank and the water eased the burn in his throat. “What caused him to die?” Stanton asked when he finished drinking.
“The ring,” she answered.
“But how? The ring is for protection.”
She poured the remaining water across his forehead. Tiny rivulets ran into his eyes. “The ring can’t protect a Follower,” she explained. “It can only destroy him, because the ring consumes evil. As you witnessed, Malcolm was evil, but not completely. There was enough of him left for me to save, and, thankfully, you took his remains to a consecrated cemetery where the Atrox could never reach him.”
“How did you find my father’s ring?” Stanton asked.
“Your father gave it to me after he found it,” she explained. “He had hoped I could use it to free you, but you had already become an Immortal—”
Stanton held up his hand to stop her from saying more, knowing that by then he had been too evil to wear the ring.
“I knew the ring would grant Malcolm his desire for escape,” she continued. “And I also knew it was the only way you would believe his warning.”
Stanton thought back to the day his father had given him the ring.
“You were young then.” She removed the cloth from his eyes. “Far too young to understand the power that had been given to you when your father gave you the ring or you never would have lost it in your sleep. The ring could have protected you from the Atrox.”
Stanton laughe
d bitterly and pulled the ring from his pocket. He held it up to the light. “I can’t even wear it now.”
She took the ring, then slipped it on his finger. He gasped. There was no pain.
“But you can.” She smiled and stood. “You are free.”
He held his hand up and looked at the ring. The stone caught the flame in the lantern and sent its light across the cavern walls.
“Your bondage to the Atrox is broken but you must never take off the ring. It is your only protection.” She started to walk from him. “Rest now.”
“But the warning. Malcolm never finished telling me.”
“He was to warn you about Lambert.” She picked up the lantern. “He has been planning to overthrow the Atrox and I had to stop him.”
Her words surprised Stanton. “Why would you care? I would think you’d want Followers to destroy each other.”
“Things are in balance right now,” she cautioned. “And a war in the underworld could have consequences in the world of light. I needed you to stop Lambert before innocent people were harmed.”
“I don’t know how to stop him.” Stanton felt a tightness in his chest as his apprehension deepened. “I don’t have as much power as he does, especially now.”
“I think you already have stopped him,” she assured him. “He was using you to capture Serena. With Serena he thought he would have the power to overthrow the Atrox. Now he doesn’t have either of you.”
Her shadow bobbed over the cavern as she slowly walked away from him. The snake wrapped sinuously around her, its eyes on Stanton until the goddess disappeared into the dark.
As he closed his eyes, she whispered across his mind, You have much to do before your final rest. Your trials have only begun.
Stanton fell into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STANTON’S WAKING BREATH exploded into his lungs with jagged pain. He opened his eyes and struggled to breathe. Serena leaned over him. His head rested on her lap. She smiled. He had never seen her look so beautiful.