Beautiful Darkness

No One's Son

The door itself wasn't that unusual.

Neither was the Doorwell leading up to it, or the curving passage we had followed to find our way here. Twist after turn through corridors built from crumbling rocks and dirt and splintering wood. This is what tunnels were supposed to feel like -- damp and dark and tight. It was almost like the day Link and I followed a stray dog into one of the runoff tunnels in Summerville.

I guess the strangest thing was how ordinary everything seemed, now that we had figured out the secret to the map. Following it was the easy part.

Until now.

"That's it. It has to be." Liv looked up from the map. I stared past her to where a wooden staircase led up to streaks of light, forming the outline of a door in the darkness.

"You sure?"

She nodded and slid the map into her pocket.

"Then let's see what's out there." I climbed the steps to the door.

"Not so fast, Short Straw. What do you think is on the other side of that door?" Ridley was stalling. She looked as nervous as I felt.

Liv studied the door. "According to the legends, old magic, neither Light or Dark."

Ridley shook her head. "You have no idea what you're talking about, Keeper. Old magic is wild. It's infinite. Chaos in its purest form. Not exactly the combination for a happy ending to your little quest."

I moved closer to the door. Liv and Link were right behind me. "Come on, Rid. You want to help Lena or not?" Link's voice echoed off the walls.

"I was just saying ..." I could hear the fear in Ridley's voice. I tried not to think about the last time she sounded this scared, when she faced Sarafine in the woods.

I pushed the door and it creaked, the worn wood bending and straining. Another try and it would open. We would be there, wherever there was. The Great Barrier.

I wasn't scared. I don't know why. But I wasn't thinking about entering a magical universe when I forced the door open. I was thinking about home. The wooden panel wasn't all that different from the Outer Door we found at the fairgrounds, under the Tunnel of Love. Maybe it was a sign -- something from the beginning reappearing at the end. I wondered if it was a good omen or a bad one.

It didn't matter what was on the other side of the door. Lena was waiting. She needed me, whether she knew it or not.

There was no turning back.

I leaned against the panel, and it swung open. The crack of light opened into a blinding field of white.

I stepped into the harsh light, the darkness behind me now. I could barely see the steps below me. I breathed in the air, heavy with salt and sour with brine.

Loca silentia. Now I understood. The moment we emerged from the darkness of the Tunnels into the broad, flat reflection of the water, there was only light and silence.

Slowly, my eyes began to adjust. We were on what looked like a rocky Lowcountry beach, covered in a spread of gray and white oyster shells, framed by an uneven row of palmettos. A splintered wooden walkway stretched along the perimeter of the shoreline facing the islands. We stood there now, the four of us, listening to what should have been the waves or the wind or even a gull in the sky. But the silence was so thick, it stopped us in our tracks.

The scene was perfectly ordinary and incredibly surreal, as vivid as any dream. The colors were too bright, the light too light. And in the far shadows beyond the shore, the dark was too dark. But everything was somehow beautiful here. Even the darkness. It was how the moment felt that silenced us. Magic was unfolding between us, encircling us like a rope, tying us to one another.

As I started toward the walkway, the rounded shores of the Sea Islands emerged in the distance. Beyond that was only dense, flat fog. Tufts of swamp grass rose from the water to form long, shallow banks rising in and out of the coastal mud. Along the beach, weathered wooden docks stretched out into the unbroken blue water until they disappeared into the black deep. The docks faded down the coast like weathered wooden fingers. Bridges to nowhere.

I looked up at the sky. Not a star in sight. Liv looked down at the selenometer whirring on her wrist, and tapped it. "None of these numbers mean anything anymore. We're on our own now." She unfastened her watch and slid it into her pocket.

"Guess so."

"What now?" Link bent to pick up a shell with his good arm and chucked it into the distance. The water swallowed it without a sound. Ridley stood next to him, streaks of pink hair whipping in the wind. On the far edge of the dock in front of us, the flag of South Carolina -- with the silhouette of a palmetto and a crescent moon on a field of midnight blue -- looked like a Caster flag as it fluttered from a spindly flagpole. When I looked at the flag more closely, I realized it had changed. This one had a seven-pointed star in the sky, next to the familiar crescent moon and palmetto silhouette. The Southern Star, right there on the flag, as if it had fallen out of the sky.

If this really was the seam where the Mortal and the magical touched, there was no sign of it here. I don't know what I was hoping for. All I had now were one too many stars on the state flag and a feeling of magic as thick as the salt in the air.

I joined the others at the far edge of the walkway. The wind had picked up, and the flag was whipping around the pole. It didn't make a sound.

Liv consulted the folded map. "If we're in the right place, it has to be between that island, beyond the buoy, and where we're standing."

"I think we're in the right place." I was sure of it.

"How do you know?"

"Remember that Southern Star you were telling me about?" I pointed to the flag. "Think about it. If you followed the star the whole way here, the star on the flag is exactly what you would be looking for. Some kind of sign you're at the right spot."

"Of course. The seven-pointed star." She examined the flag, touching the fabric as if she was allowing herself to believe it for the very first time.

There wasn't time for that. I knew we had to keep moving. "So what are we even looking for? Land? Or something man-made?"

"You mean this isn't it?" Link looked disappointed and shoved his garden shears back into his belt.

"I think we still have to cross over the water. It makes sense, really. Like crossing the river Styx to get to Hades." Liv flattened the map against her palm. "According to the map, we're looking for some kind of connector that will take us across the water to the Great Barrier itself. Like a sandbar or a bridge." She held the vellum over the map, and we all looked.

Link took them out of her hands. "Yeah, I see it. Kinda cool." He flipped the vellum up and down across the map. "Now you see it, now you don't." He dropped the map, and it fluttered into a mess of pages on the sand.

Liv bent to pick it up. "Careful with that! Are you completely mental?"

"You mean, like a genius?" Sometimes there was no point in Link and Liv talking at all. Liv pocketed Aunt Prue's map, and we started walking again.

Ridley picked up Lucille Ball. She hadn't said much since we left the Tunnels. Maybe now that she had been declawed, she preferred Lucille's company. Or maybe she was scared. She probably knew better than the rest of us the dangers that lay ahead.

I could feel the Arclight burning in my pocket. My heart began to pound, and my head began to spin.

What was it doing to me? Since we crossed over into the no man's land the map called Loca silentia, the light had stopped illuminating our path and started illuminating the past. Macon's past. It had become a conduit for the visions, a direct line I couldn't control. The visions were coming intermittently, interrupting the present with fragmented bits and pieces of Macon's past.

An old palmetto frond snapped loudly under one of Ridley's shoes. Then something else, and I felt myself slipping away --

Macon could feel it immediately when his shoulder snapped -- the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no longer hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs, like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rocks tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground.

The Transformation.

From this moment forth, he would not be able to walk among Mortals in the daylight. The sun would singe the flesh from his body. He wouldn't be able to ignore the urge to feed on the blood of Mortals. He was one of them now -- another Blood Incubus in the long line of killers on the Ravenwood Family Tree. A predator walking among his prey, waiting to feed.

I was back again, as suddenly as I had gone.

I stumbled toward Liv, my head reeling. "We've got to get going. Things are getting out of control."

"What things?"

"The Arclight -- the things in my head," I said, unable to explain it any better than that.

She nodded. "I thought it might get bad for you. I wasn't sure if a Wayward would react more strongly to an intensely powerful place, being as sensitive to the pull of certain Casters as you are. I mean, if you really are ..." If I really was a Wayward. She didn't have to say it.

"So you're saying you finally believe the Great Barrier is real?"

"No. Unless ..." She pointed out past the farthest dock on the horizon, where the skinniest, most splintered dock extended past the others, so far that we couldn't see where it ended, except that it disappeared into fog. "That could be the bridge we're looking for."

"Not much of a bridge." Link looked skeptical.

"Only one way to find out." I walked ahead of them.

As we picked our way across rotting boards and oyster shells, I found myself slipping over and over. I was there, and I wasn't. In and out. One minute, I could hear Ridley's and Link's voices echoing as they bickered. The next, the fog blurred around the edges, and I was pulled back into visions of Macon's past. I knew there was something I was supposed to gain from the visions, but they were coming so quickly now it was impossible to figure out.

I thought about Amma. She would have said, "Everythin' means somethin'." I tried to imagine what she would have said next.

P. O. R. T. E. N. D. Seven down. As in, you be sure to pay attention to the what now, Ethan Wate, because that's gonna point the way to the what's next.

She was right, as usual -- everything did mean something, didn't it? All the changes in Lena would have added up to the truth, if I had been able to see it. Even now, I tried to piece together my glimpses of the visions, to find the story they were trying to tell.

I didn't have time, though, because as we reached the bridge, I felt another surge, the walkway started to sway, and Ridley's and Link's voices faded --

The room was dark, but Macon didn't need light to see. The shelves were lined with books, as he had imagined they would be. Volumes on every aspect of American history, particularly the wars that had shaped this country -- the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Macon ran his fingers over the leather spines. These books were of no use to him now.

This was a different kind of war. A war among the Casters, waged within his own family.

He could hear footsteps above, the sound of the crescent key fitting into the lock. The door creaked, a slice of light escaping as the hatch in the ceiling opened. He wanted to reach out, offer his hand to help her down, but he didn't dare.

It had been years since he had seen or touched her.

They had only met in letters and between the covers of the books she left for him in the Tunnels. But he hadn't seen her or heard her voice in all that time. Marian had made sure of that. She stepped through the door cut into the ceiling, the light spilling into the room. Macon's breath caught in his throat. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Her shiny brown hair was held away from her face by a pair of red reading glasses. She smiled.

"Jane." He hadn't said her name aloud in such a long time. It was like a song.

"No one's called me that since ..." She looked down. "I use Lila now."

"Of course, I knew that."

Lila was visibly nervous, her voice shaky. "I'm sorry I had to come, but this was the only way." She avoided his eyes. It was too painful to look at him. "What I have to tell you -- it's not something I could leave for you in the study, and I couldn't risk sending a message through the Tunnels."

Macon had a small study in the Tunnels, a reprieve from the self-induced exile of his solitary life in Gatlin. Sometimes Lila pressed messages between the pages of the books she left for him. The messages were never personal. They always related to her research in the

Lunae Libri

-- possible answers to the questions they were both asking.

"It's good to see you." Macon took a step forward, and Lila stiffened. He looked hurt. "It's safe. I can control the urges now."

"It's not that. I -- I shouldn't be here. I told Mitchell I was working late in the archive. I don't like to lie to him." Of course. She felt guilty. She was still as honest as Macon remembered.

"We are in an archive."

"Semantics, Macon."

Macon drew a heavy breath at the sound of his name from her lips. "What is so important that you would risk coming to me, Lila?"

"I've found something your father kept from you."

Macon's black eyes darkened at the mention of his father. "I haven't seen my father in years. Not since --" He didn't want to say what he was thinking. He hadn't seen his father since Silas had manipulated Macon into letting Lila go. Silas and his twisted views, his bigotry against Mortals and Casters alike. But Macon didn't mention any of that. He didn't want to make it harder for her. "The Transformation."

"There is something you need to know." Lila dropped her voice, as if what she was about to say could only be spoken in whispers. "Abraham is alive."

Macon and Lila didn't have time to react. There was a whirring sound, and a figure materialized in the darkness.

"Bravo. She really is much smarter than I had anticipated. Lila, is it?" Abraham was clapping loudly. "A tactical error on my part, but one your sister can correct easily enough. Wouldn't you agree, Macon?"

Macon's eyes narrowed. "Sarafine is not my sister."

Abraham adjusted his string tie. With his white beard and Sunday suit, he looked more like Colonel Sanders than what he was -- a killer.

"There's no need to be nasty. Sarafine is your father's daughter, after all. It's a shame you two can't get along." Abraham walked casually toward Macon. "You know, I always hoped we would have a chance to meet. I'm sure once we talk, you'll understand your place in the Order of Things."

"I know my place. I made my choice and Bound myself to the Light long ago."

Abraham laughed loudly. "As if such a thing were even possible. You're a Dark creature by nature, an Incubus. This ridiculous alliance with the Light Casters, defending Mortals -- it's inane. You belong with us, with your family." Abraham looked at Lila. "And for what? A Mortal woman you can never be with? One who is married to another man?"

Lila knew it wasn't true. Macon hadn't made his choice solely because of her, but she knew she was part of the reason. She faced Abraham, mustering all the courage she possessed. "We're going to find a way to end all that. Casters and Mortals should be able to do more than just coexist."

Abraham's expression changed. His face darkened, and he no longer looked like an aging Southern gentleman. He looked sinister and evil as he smiled at Macon. "Your father and Hunting -- we hoped you would join us. I warned Hunting that brothers are often a disappointment. As are sons."

Macon turned his head sharply, his face changing to mirror Abraham's. "I am no one's son."

"At any rate, I can't have you or this woman interfering with our plans. It's unfortunate, really. You turned your back on your family because you loved this filthy Mortal, and yet she will die because you dragged her into this." Abraham vanished, materializing in front of Lila. "Oh, well." He opened his mouth, baring his gleaming canines.

Lila covered her head with her arms and screamed, waiting for the bite that never came. Macon materialized between them. Lila felt the weight of his body as it slammed into hers, throwing her backward. "Lila, run!"

For a second she was paralyzed, as the two of them thrashed at each other. The sound was violent, as if the earth was tearing itself apart. Lila watched as Macon threw Abraham to the ground, his guttural cries ripping through the air. Then she ran.

The sky swirled around me slowly, like someone hit REWIND. Liv must have been talking to me, because I could see her mouth forming words, but I couldn't make them out. I closed my eyes again.

Abraham had killed my mother. She may have died by Sarafine's hand, but it was Abraham who ordered it. I was sure of it.

"Ethan? Can you hear me?" Liv's voice was frantic.

"I'm okay." I pushed myself up slowly. All three of them were staring down at me, and Lucille was sitting on my chest.

I was sprawled out on the rotting walkway. "Give it to me." Liv was trying to pry the Arclight out of my hands. "It's acting as some kind of metaphysical channel. You can't control it."

I didn't let go. It was a channel I couldn't afford to close.

"At least tell me what happened. Who was it now? Abraham or Sarafine?" Liv put her hand on my shoulder to steady me.

"It's fine. I don't want to talk about it."

Link stared down at me. "You okay, man?"

I blinked a few times. It was as if I was underwater, watching them through ripples. "I'm fine."

Ridley stood up a few feet away, wiping her hands on her skirt. "Famous last words."

Liv picked up her backpack and stood staring at the end of the almost endless dock. I pulled myself up next to her.

"This is it." I looked at Liv. "I can feel it."

I shivered. That's when I noticed she was shaking, too.