Strega (Strega Series) (28 page)

"On the count of three, I'm going to let go of your hand. Get in the car as fast as you can," she said, signaling to her hatchback parked along the curb just ahead of us. "Are you ready?"

I nodded. My palms sweat profusely as I prepared to let go of my only source of protection and run for my life.

"One...two...three!"

She threw the vial hard against the pavement and her hand slipped from mine.

"Go!" she whispered sharply through the resounding explosion, and ran for the driver's side door. I ran to the other side obediently. Smoke filled the street, masking her car. I struggled to find the handle with my shaking hands. My fingertips finally landed on it, and I yanked it and jumped in. We both slammed our doors hard behind us and simultaneously turned to inspect the backseat. Ruth stepped on the gas and tore down the dark road toward the outskirts of town.

"What was that?" I asked, opening the window and waving the last of the smoke from the car. The blast sounded all too familiar. I'd heard an explosion just like it the night my Mom and Dad were killed.

"Rue, and phosphorus," she told me. "And a little pyrite explosive. The phosphorus provides a quick smokescreen, just to ensure our getaway. But the dried rue, in a fine powder, permeates the air around us and blocks their ability to sense us. It's what I used on us inside, so they'd lose our scent. My power alone does not work on these demons. I can shield us from view, but they can still track us."

I reached for the rue-shaped cimaruta hanging around my neck as Luci's words came back to me.

The sacred rue plant, after which the amulet is named, is revered for its power to protect, to ward off evil, and has been used for this purpose since the time of our ancestors.

"I know this is a lot to take, Jay. It's too much, especially all at once. I wish it were different. I wish we had more time to explain it all to you."

Her face sunk as she said this, and she reached for my hand and grasped it tightly.

"Luci told you about our gifts?" She peered at me, waiting for confirmation. I nodded. "I called Celia as soon as we got off the phone this morning. She brought me back. I wanted to be here, to protect you."

As I suspected, Celia was Ruth's cosmic taxi. This thought repeated in my head several times. In dribs and drabs, these strange realities managed to sink in and never failed to blow my mind.

We navigated the narrow dirt roads into the woods where I remembered
camping as a kid, but we traveled deeper and farther in than I'd ever been.

"Luci and Celia went ahead, to a place where we can protect you, until you learn what you need to know. Unfortunately, I cannot reach them until we get there. I was waiting for you to awaken on your own before I took you. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt you and pull you back prematurely. But those bastards found us sooner than I expected."

The road continued on into darkness and I wondered what place so deep in the forest could be safe. Twisted branches reached out and scraped the car, and Ruth pushed through them. The only light beneath the thick foliage came from the frail beams of Ruth's headlights.

We couldn't call the police. We had vicious killers after us, but we couldn't rely on anyone else to protect us. We were alone. Fighting for our lives. Gram had written about this exact, frightening feeling, and I was beginning to understand it more than I wanted to. A different world had been opened up to me, one that not everybody had the eyes to see, and it was lawless.

Ahead in the distance, something appeared on the path. At first I thought it was a deer, but it was difficult to make out its shape beyond the interfering branches. As we got closer, I realized that it was no friendly forest creature. It was Shaun.

I shrieked at the sight of him. Ruth kept driving, stepping harder on the gas and tearing through the scraping branches straight toward him.

"I will hit him if I have to, Jay. Just be ready."

I braced myself for the impact, squinting my eyes and holding onto the door with one hand and the center console with the other. He was a demon, a heartless liar, but I still didn't want to witness the carnage that was about to unfold. Ruth was only feet away from him when suddenly the car stopped. A violent jolt threw us forward. When I opened my eyes, Shaun was standing in front of the car, holding his hand up toward it. Somehow, he was stopping it from moving forward. Ruth's foot was still on the gas and the wheels screeched as they spun against the dirt.

Ruth threw the car into reverse. She fixed her eyes on her rearview mirror as she tore backwards on the twisting, turning path. I kept my eyes on Shaun, watching with relief as the distance between us grew. But he lifted his hand again, and suddenly a loud, thunderous boom sounded behind us. The car shook violently. Ruth let out a desperate wail, and I turned to see that an enormous tree had fallen behind us. Before she could stop the car, we crashed into it.

Ruth climbed out of the car and reached for my hand, shouting for me to grab on and follow her. My door was blocked by an enormous branch. I climbed over the middle console toward her, but before I could grab her hand, Shaun stepped between us. He couldn't see Ruth. She'd already cloaked herself and was invisible to him. I was seconds away from that same protection, if only I'd grabbed her hand in time, but it was too late. I recoiled away from Shaun, desperate to find another way to escape, but there was no other way out. I was trapped. Shaun climbed in and pulled me from the car.

His touch was gentle and his eyes were kind, but he couldn't fool me anymore. I resisted him, knowing what he was. His arms locked around me and I struggled to break free, frantic to get away. I was scared. And I was really angry. He held my wrists as he pressed his whole body against mine, pinning me against the car.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Jay. I only want to help you," he whispered. "You have no idea what you're up against. I'm trying to protect you."

"I know what you are, Shaun," I whispered in terror, continuing to struggle beneath the weight of his body. "I saw you. You are a monster!"

"Jay, I'm not what you think I am!" he pleaded. "I know what it looks like, but you have to believe me."

"No I don't. You're a liar, Shaun. All you've ever done is lie to me. I don't trust a thing you're saying!"

"I know better than anyone what you're going through. I'm just like you, Jay. We both have supernatural abilities. Gifts. I know it's all new to you. And I didn't want to tell you the truth because I didn't want to scare you. Until you figured it out, I couldn't say anything. I would've freaked you out. All this time, they've been after you, and I've been protecting you from them. Making sure they didn't get to you. Think about it. If I really wanted to hurt you, don't you think I would have by now?"

He saw me hesitate and he continued.

"Look around you. You're alone," he said, signaling to the car that Ruth abandoned. "She's gone. Just wants to save herself. She doesn't care about you. Not like I do. You need me, Jay. I'm the only one that can protect you. You have to believe me."

"Where's the blade?" I asked plainly. I looked into his deceitful eyes and waited for his answer. "I know you have it, Shaun."

"Yes, I have it, Jay," he said, motioning behind him. It was tucked into the back of his pants again.

"Give it to me."

"I can't, Jay. You're in danger as long as you have it. You said it yourself. The blade is what they are after. You're only safe because I have it."

"I saw you, Shaun! At Celia's, with the rest of them. How dumb do you think I am?" I asked bitingly. "You're no different from them. I heard what she said to you. You're not here to save me. You're here to kill me."

"I would never hurt you, Jay. I love you." His voice cracked as he fought back tears. "They answer to me, all of them. When they've tried to hurt you, I've stopped them. But I answer to her. I have to make her believe that I am on her side. To earn her trust. It's the only way I can protect you from her," he said firmly. "This is why I wanted to take you away. It's not too late. We can still escape all this."

In Shaun's eyes, I saw what he saw. That he was my only protector. That I'd been abandoned. Ruth was gone. I was alone in the woods. They were coming for me, but he could keep me safe. He loved me.

His grip on me loosened as he leaned in to kiss me. He closed his eyes and lingered with his skin against mine. When he stepped back, he reached his hand out to me.

"Come with me, Jay. I will take you away, to a place where I can truly keep you safe."

I kept my eyes fixed on him, but in my periphery I saw what only I could see. Ruth stood close to me. She inched closer with her hand outstretched, waiting for me to grab it. In one quick motion, I reached for it. When my hand locked with hers, I disappeared from Shaun's sight. I reached around and pulled the athame from the waist of his pants, and Ruth and I took off. When we were several feet away, she threw a vial at his feet. As it shattered, the explosion was so strong that it knocked Shaun off his feet. It pushed against our backs and gave us a boost as we ran down the path away from him.

When I searched Shaun's eyes a moment earlier, I saw beyond the tiny glimmer of humanity that once drew me to him. For the first time, I saw beneath the surface. The bowels of his being departed from his facade with such ferocity that I wondered how the two could possibly coexist. There in his eyes, for the first time, I saw pure evil. What I'd seen at Celia's was nothing compared to it. I finally saw what made me hesitate with him all along, and it made me shudder.

When he kissed me, when his skin touched mine, the forceful hands of time pulled me back, and I saw everything unfold through his eyes. All that time with him, I'd been completely unaware that I was in the arms of death. His kiss was poison on my lips.

For years, Shaun hunted me. He came to Newburyport on that fancy boat, but not with his uncle as he'd said. Shaun came alone. The boat belonged to a middle-aged gentleman from a southern port. A man that Shaun had thrown into the Atlantic, far from shore, just after departing that charming port together two years earlier. Shaun had paid the man generously for a private charter, but made sure to recoup the money before he tore him apart and threw him overboard. I still had that man's business card somewhere, with Shaun's cell phone number scribbled on the back.

Shaun visited ports all along the coast searching for me. In each new place, he'd select a savory innocent to seduce and torture, just for sport. He'd lure them far from the eyes of the virtuous, and then tear them limb from limb as he basked in their screams and showered in their blood. When he came to Newburyport, he sniffed me out and then patiently waited for the rest of his plan to unfold.

The night Gram was killed, Shaun had taken me out on the water for dinner. He ensured that Gram was alone in the house before he sent his underlings for her. After they killed her, Shaun watched me grieve. He waited for my power to reemerge, hoping to confirm what he already suspected. If I was the one he sought, then by killing me, he would win Invidia's favor and rise further up the demonic ranks. If he failed, she'd kill him. He stole Gram's amulet, tried to destroy it, so that I would never discover its power to protect, to warn, against him.

Soon after Gram died, I started to sense demons coming for me. But in all that time, I never once suspected Shaun's true nature. Cynan were able to cloak themselves from Strega, mask their true nature from us so that we could not sense it. Only when they were overcome by their true desire, their hunger raging and their facades faltering, could we sense them. Despite their powerful evolution, there was one thing that could still reveal them to us. The cimaruta. Shaun was careful around me. He never faltered. But he knew that the cimaruta would be his undoing. Gram wore it the night she died. Her final journal entry haunted me again.

They are coming. I've heard the forewarning whispers. I'm afraid the henbane potion will not be enough.

Each time I was attacked, it was Shaun that had sent his demon underlings for me. On the way home from work, in the parking lot at school, on the beach. They had all come for me on Shaun's orders. And the night at the club, when I was arrested by my vision of Invidia and the vicious Cerberus on my tail, I didn't remember how I got home because I was unconscious. Shaun had tried to kill me. It was his claws I felt sink into my flesh and knock me to the ground unconscious. But Vince stopped him. It was Vince that brought me home that night. They were his footprints beside my bed. Vince was the reason I was still alive. From every single attack, from every single demon, Vince had protected me.

Shaun's failures infuriated Invidia, and so she came for me herself. At Gram's, she came to kill me. But once again, Vince drew down the fiery bolt that allowed my escape. I never saw him standing in the shadows.

Shaun sent the demons that killed Mr. Whitmore. They stole my blade from him, but they didn't get away. Vince tracked them down and annihilated them. He retrieved my blade and protected it until it fell into the grass at Ruth's, and my ignorance allowed Shaun to take it back.

From the very beginning, when I thought Vince was just a guy that stole my heart and then dropped me, he was there. Protecting me all along from this evil that was by my side, whispering poisonous lies.