Beautiful Darkness

Scars

There's somethin' I've got to tell you." Amma wrung her hands nervously. "It's about the night a the Sixteenth Moon, Lena's birthday." It took a second to realize she was talking to me. I was still staring into the center of the circle, where my mother had been a moment before.

This time, my mom wasn't sending me messages in books or the verses of a song. I had seen her.

"Tell da boy."

"Hush, Twyla." Arelia put her hand on her sister's arm.

"Lies. Lies are da place where darkness grows. You tell da boy. Tell him now."

"What are you talking about?" I looked from Twyla to Arelia. Amma shot them a look that Twyla answered with a shake of her beaded braids.

"Listen to me, Ethan Wate." Amma's voice was uneven and shaky. "You didn't fall from the top of the crypt, at least not the way we told you."

"What?" She wasn't making any sense. Why was she talking about Lena's birthday after I had just seen the ghost of my dead mother?

"You didn't fall, see?" she repeated.

"What are you talking about? Of course I fell. I woke up on the ground, flat on my back."

"That's not how you got there." Amma hesitated. "It was Lena's mamma. Sarafine stabbed you with a knife." Amma looked right into my eyes. "She killed you. You were dead, and we brought you back."

She killed you.

I repeated the words to myself, the pieces snapping together so fast I could barely make sense of them. Instead, they made sense of me --

the dream that wasn't a dream, but a memory of not breathing and not feeling and not thinking and not seeing --

the dirt and flames that carried my body away as my life flowed out --

"Ethan! You all right?" I could hear Amma, but she was far away, as far as she was that night when I was on the ground.

I could be in the ground now, like my mom and Macon.

I should be.

"Ethan?" Link was shaking me.

My body filled with sensations I couldn't control and didn't want to remember. Blood in my mouth, blood roaring into my ears --

"He's passing out." Liv was holding my head.

There had been pain and noise and something else. Voices. Shapes. People.

I had died.

I reached under my shirt, running my hand over the scar on my stomach. The scar from where Sarafine had stabbed me with a real knife. I barely noticed it anymore, but now it would be a constant reminder of the night I died. I remembered how Lena reacted when she saw it.

"You're still the same person, and Lena still loves you. Her love is the reason you're here now." Arelia's voice was gentle, knowing. I opened my eyes, letting the blur of shapes become people as I settled back into myself again.

My thoughts were so jumbled. Even now, nothing was making any sense. "What do you mean, her love is the reason I'm here now?"

Amma spoke quietly, and I had to strain to hear her. "Lena's the one who brought you back. I helped her, me and your mamma."

The words didn't fit together, so I tried unrolling them out again for myself. Lena and Amma brought me back from the dead, together. And together they had kept it from me until now. I rubbed the scar on my skin. It felt like the truth.

"Since when does Lena know how to raise the dead? If she did, don't you think she would've brought Macon back by now?"

Amma looked at me. I had never seen her so scared. "She didn't do it on her own. She used the Binding Spell from The Book a Moons. Binds death to life."

Lena had used The Book of Moons.

The Book that had cursed Genevieve and Lena's whole family for generations, Claiming all the children in Lena's family for Light or Dark on their sixteenth birthdays. The Book Genevieve had used to bring Ethan Carter Wate back from the dead for only a second -- an act she spent the rest of her life paying for.

I couldn't think. My mind started caving in on itself again, and I couldn't follow my own thoughts. Genevieve. Lena. The price.

"How could you?" I pushed myself away from them, out of their Circle of Sight. I'd seen enough.

"I didn't have a choice. She couldn't let you go." Amma looked at me, ashamed. "I couldn't either."

I scrambled to my feet, shaking my head. "It's a lie. She wouldn't do it." But I knew she would. They both would. It was exactly what they would have done. I knew, because I would've done it, too.

It didn't matter now.

In my whole life, I had never been so angry with Amma, or so disappointed. "You knew the Book wouldn't give anything without taking something in return. You told me that yourself."

"I know."

"Lena will have to pay a price for this, because of me. You both will." My head felt like it was going to split in half, or explode.

A renegade tear caught on Amma's cheek. She put two fingers on her forehead and closed her eyes, Amma's version of making the sign of the cross, a silent prayer. "She's payin' it right now."

I couldn't breathe.

Lena's eyes. The stunt at the fair. Running away with John Breed. The words found their way out, even as I tried to hold them in.

"She's going Dark because of me."

"If Lena's going Dark, it's not because a that Book. The Book made a different kinda trade." Amma stopped, as if she couldn't bear to tell me the rest.

"What kind of trade?"

"It gave one life but took another. We knew there'd be consequences." The words caught in her throat. "We just didn't know it would be Melchizedek."

Macon.

It couldn't be true.

It gave one life but took another. A different kind of trade.

My life for Macon's.

It all made sense. The way Lena had been acting the past few months. The way she had been pulling away from me, from everyone. The way she had been blaming herself for Macon's death.

It was true. She had killed him.

To save me.

I thought about her notebook and the Charmed page I'd found. What had the words said? Amma? Sarafine? Macon? The Book? It was the real story of that night. I remembered the poems written on her wall. Nobody the Dead and Nobody the Living. Two sides of the same coin. Macon and me.

Nothing green can stay. Months ago, I believed she'd gotten the Frost poem wrong. But of course, she hadn't. She was talking about herself.

I thought about how it seemed painful for her to look at me. No wonder she felt guilty. No wonder she ran. I wondered if she could ever stand to look at me again. Lena had done it all because of me. It wasn't her fault.

It was mine.

* * *

No one said anything. There was no turning back now, not for any of us. What Lena and Amma had done that night couldn't be undone. I shouldn't be here, but I was.

"It's da Order, and you can't stop da Order." Twyla closed her eyes, as if she could hear something I couldn't.

Amma pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her face. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I'm not sorry we did it. It was the only way."

"You don't understand. Lena thinks she's going Dark. She ran away with some kind of Dark Caster, or Incubus. She's in danger because of me."

"Nonsense. That girl did what she had to do because she loves you."

Arelia collected their offerings from the ground -- the bones, the sparrow, the moonstones.

"Nothing can make Lena go Dark, Ethan. She has to choose it."

"But she thinks she's Dark because she killed Macon. She thinks she's already chosen."

"But she hasn't," Liv said. She was standing a few feet away, to give us some privacy.

Link was sitting on an old stone bench, a few steps behind her. "Then we have to find her and tell her." He didn't act like he just found out that I'd died and been brought back to life. He acted like everything was the same. I went over and sat down on the bench next to Link.

Liv looked over at me. "Are you all right?"

Liv. I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own broken mess of a life. All because I thought Lena didn't love me anymore. But I was stupid, and I was wrong. Lena loved me so much, she was willing to risk everything to save me.

I had given up on Lena, after she had refused to give up on me. I owed her my life. It was as simple as that.

My fingers touched something carved into the edge of the bench. Words.

IN THE COOL, COOL, COOL

OF THE EVENING

It was the song that was playing at Ravenwood the first night I met Macon. The coincidence was too much, especially for a world with no coincidences. It had to be some kind of sign.

Sign of what? What I had done to Macon? I couldn't even think about how Lena must have felt, realizing she had lost him in my place. What if I had lost my mom that way? Would I have been able to look at Lena alive without seeing my mother dead?

"Just a minute." I pushed off the bench and took off down the path through the trees, the way we had come. I breathed the night air deep into my lungs, because I could still breathe. When I finally stopped running, I stared up at the stars and the sky.

Was Lena staring at the same sky, or one I could never see? Were our moons really so different?

I reached into my pocket for the Arclight, so it could show me how to find her, but it didn't. Instead, it showed me something else --

Macon had never been like his father, Silas, and they both knew it. He had always been more like his mother, Arelia. A powerful Light Caster, who his father had fallen deeply in love with while he was away at college in New Orleans. Not unlike the way he and Jane had met and fallen in love when he was studying at Duke. And like Macon, his father had fallen in love with his mother before the Transformation. Before his grandfather had convinced Silas a relationship with a Light Caster was an abomination against their kind.

It had taken Macon's grandfather years to tear his mother and father apart. By that time, he and Hunting and Leah were born. His mother had been forced to use her powers as a Diviner to escape Silas' rage and his uncontrollable urge to feed. She had fled to New Orleans with Leah. His father would never have let her take his sons.

His mother was the only one Macon could turn to now. The only one who would understand that he had fallen in love with a Mortal. The greatest act of sacrilege against his kind, the Blood Incubus.

The Demon Soldier.

Macon hadn't told his mother he was coming, but she would be expecting him. He climbed up from the Tunnels into the sweet heat of a New Orleans summer night. Fireflies blinked in the darkness, and the smell of magnolias was overpowering. She was waiting for him on the porch, tatting lace in an old wooden rocking chair. It had been a long time.

"Mamma, I need your help."

She put down her needle and hoop and rose from the chair. "I know. Everything's ready,

cher

."

There was only one thing powerful enough to stop an Incubus, aside from one of its own kind.

An Arclight.

They were considered medieval devices, weapons created to control and imprison the most powerful of the Harmers, the Incubus. Macon had never seen one before. There were very few left, and they were almost impossible to find.

But his mother had one, and he needed it.

Macon followed her into the kitchen. She opened a small cabinet that served as an altar to the spirits. She unwrapped a small wooden box with Niadic script, the ancient Caster language, around the perimeter.

THE ONE WHO SEEKS IT SHALL FIND

IT THE HOUSE OF THE UNHOLY

THE KEY TO THE TRUTH

"Your father gave this to me before the Transformation. It was passed down in the Ravenwood family for generations. Your granddaddy claimed it belonged to Abraham himself, and I believe it did. It's marked by his hatred and bigotry."

She opened the box, revealing the ebony sphere. Macon could feel the energy, even without touching it -- the grisly possibility of an eternity within its glistening walls.

"Macon, you must understand. Once an Incubus is trapped inside the Arclight, there is no way out from within. You must be released. If you give this to someone, you have to be sure with all certainty that you can trust them, because you will be putting more than your life in their hands. You will be giving them a thousand lives. That's what an eternity would feel like in there."

She held the box higher so he could see it, as if he could imagine the confines just by looking at it.

"I understand, Mamma. I can trust Jane. She's the most honest and principled person I've ever met, and she loves me. Despite what I am."

Arelia touched Macon's cheek. "There is nothing wrong with who you are,

cher

. If there were, it would be my fault. I doomed you to this fate."

Macon bent down and kissed her forehead. "I love you, Mamma. None of this is your fault. It's his."

His father.

Silas was possibly a greater threat to Jane than he was. His father was a slave to the doctrine of the first Ravenwood Blood Incubus. Abraham.

"It's not his fault, Macon. You don't know what your grandfather was like. How he bullied your father into believing his twisted brand of superiority -- that Mortals were beneath Casters and Incubuses alike, simply a source of blood to satisfy their lust. Your father was indoctrinated, like his father before him."

Macon didn't care. He stopped feeling sorry for his father long ago, stopped wondering what it was about Silas his mother could have loved.

"Tell me how to use it." Macon reached out tentatively. "Can I touch it?"

"Yes. The person who touches you with it must have intent, and even then it's harmless without the

Carmen Defixionis."

His mother removed a small pouch, a gris-gris bag, the strongest protection voodoo could offer, from the door of the cellar and disappeared down the dark stairs. When she returned, she was carrying something wrapped in a dusty piece of burlap. She laid it on the table and unwrapped it.

The

Responsum.

Literally translated, it meant "the Answer."

It was written in Niadic. It contained all the laws that governed his kind.

It was the oldest of books. There were only a few copies in the world. His mother turned the brittle pages carefully, until she reached the right one.

"Carcer."

The Prison.

The sketch of the Arclight looked exactly like the one resting in the velvet-lined box sitting on his mother's kitchen table, next to her uneaten etouffee.

"How does it work?"

"It's rather simple. A person need only touch the Arclight and the Incubus they wish to imprison and speak the

Carmen,

at the same moment. The Arclight will do the rest."

"Is the

Carmen

in the book?"

"No, it's much too powerful to be trusted to the written word. You must learn the

Carmen

from someone who knows it, and commit it to memory."

She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone might be listening. Then she whispered the words that could condemn him to an eternity of misery.

"Comprehende, Liga, Cruci Fige.

Capture, Cage, and Crucify."

Arelia closed the lid of the box and handed it to Macon. "Be careful. In the Arc there is power, and in the power there is Night."

Macon kissed her forehead. "I promise."

He turned to leave, but his mother's voice called him back. "You'll need this." She scrawled several lines on a piece of parchment.

"What's this?"

"The only key to that door." She gestured to the box tucked under his arm. "The only way to get you back out."

I opened my eyes. I was on my back in the dirt, staring up at the stars. The Arclight was Macon's, as Marian had said. I didn't know where he was, the Otherworld or some kind of Caster heaven. I didn't know why he was showing me all this, but if I had learned anything tonight, I knew everything happened for a reason.

I had to figure out the reason before it was too late.

We were still standing in Bonaventure Cemetery, although now we were near the entrance. I didn't bother to tell Amma I wasn't coming back with her. She seemed to know.

"We better take off." I hugged Amma.

She grabbed my hands and gave them a squeeze, hard. "One step at a time, Ethan Wate. Your mamma may say this is somethin' you hafta do, but I'll be watchin' every step a the way." I knew how hard it was for her to let me go, instead of grounding me and sending me straight to my room, for the rest of my life.

Things were as bad as they seemed. This was proof.

Arelia stepped forward and pressed something into my hand, a small doll like the ones Amma made. It was a voodoo charm. "I had faith in your mother, and I have faith in you, Ethan. This is my way of saying good luck, because this isn't going to be easy."

"The right thing and the easy thing are never the same." I repeated the words my mother had said to me a hundred times. I was channeling her, in my own way.

Twyla touched my cheek with her bony finger. "Da truth in both da worlds. Have to lose to gain. We're not here long, cher." It was a warning, almost like she knew something I didn't. After what I'd seen tonight, I was sure she did.

Amma threw her skinny arms around me in one last bone-crushing hug. "I'm gonna make you some luck, my way," she whispered, and turned to Link. "Wesley Jefferson Lincoln, you best come back in one piece, or I'll tell your mamma what you were doin' in my basement when you were nine years old, you hear me?"

Link smiled at the familiar threat. "Yes, ma'am."

Amma didn't say anything to Liv -- just a quick nod in her direction. It was her way of showing where her loyalties lay. Now that I knew what Lena had done for me, I had no doubt about how Amma felt about her.

Amma cleared her throat. "The guards are gone, but Twyla can't hold them off forever. You'd best get on."

I pushed open the wrought iron gate, with Link and Liv behind me.

I'm coming, L. Whether you want me to or not.