Beautiful Darkness
Chapter One
Luna
I untwisted the metal coat
hanger with trembling hands, ignoring the complaint from my broken thumbs, and I
fashioned the hanger into the weapon of my choice, except, I wasn’t sure if
this was my choice. I thought it was, before I rushed into the bathroom before
sunset.
I had heard about a girl in
school, several years back, who had gotten pregnant. She used a coat hanger to
abort. I thought it was the cruelest, sickest thing anyone could have ever done.
And I had known some sick and cruel things in my life.
But here I was, in a dark
bathroom, driven by desperation, grief, turmoil into this very sick and cruel
moment.
I could see his face. His copper
eyes were full of lust. I could feel his body, the weight, the pain, as he took
from me. I could smell the earth beneath me, around me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but it
wouldn’t go away. It never went away. I doubted it would ever go away. Tears
gathered behind my closed eyes and anger swirled in my heart.
Rune had left a part of himself
within me, a life I could not bear to bring into this world, an evil I could
not bear giving birth to.
Sorrow rocked in my shoulders.
I could feel Rune’s lips on
mine. I could hear his heavy breathing, his guttural growls that rolled in his
throat as he brought himself to pleasure.
My eyes flashed open and my
determination was fierce.
I had to kill
it.
As long as it lived inside of
me, I would have to relive this pain.
“She,”
I whispered. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “Guenevere said it’s a she.”
I dropped the coat hanger and
slid down the wall, curling my knees up to my chin. I fought the urge to succumb
to the icy hot sorrow that rolled in me like an ocean.
“It is a she!”
I reminded myself. I could not forget this. This was important to remember. The
child inside of me was a she. And
she was a living being.
“And it wasn’t her fault,” I
whispered to the darkness around me.
A hard knock on the bathroom
door made me jump. I had forgotten Bane and Hex and Izzy were there. They were
gathered around a bonfire when I had left them to come inside and puke my guts
out. The puking had released the pent-up resentment, which unleashed
itself upon me with such fervor
that it slammed into my anger’s hiding spot, and so-on and so-forth, and so here
I found myself, riding the wake of my emotions.
“Are you ill, My Lady
Moon?”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it.
Yes, I was ill, and guess whose fault it was? Barron
Lanchester’s.
I thought about this for a
moment. Then it dawned on me.
It wasn’t
his fault.
All those years of my life, I
blamed Barron for the infestation of demons.
“My Lady,” Bane’s voice came
through the door.
It wasn’t Barron’s fault,
although it was him who tortured me for 17 years.
“Luna.”
It was the demon’s
fault.
“Open the door, or I will have
to open it for you.”
And it was Bane’s fault. Bane
murdered my father. He murdered Kaneesis and King Trentis and he put Jade
through living hell. Through some very twisted chains of events, this was just
as much Bane’s fault as it was anyone else’s that I was here, sitting on the
floor in my dark bathroom, contemplating the sickest, cruelest act ever known
to me.
“I am coming through this door,”
Bane warned.
“Addy will be home soon, I don’t
want to have to explain how my bathroom door got broken. Just go away, Bane. I
don’t wanna see you,” I said.
I couldn’t believe I told him I
would marry him. Yes, I was sick. But was I really
sick enough to want to marry an evil, blood-sucking murderer?
“I warned you,” Bane said. And
immediately following the sound of his voice, Bane came through the door. One
shove, one step, and he and his gargantuan body came into the bathroom. Wood
splintered and splattered, shredding away from the threshold in a violent,
explosive burst. I shielded my face with an arm. Sooner than I had expected,
Bane squatted down before me. He took my shoulders in his hands. Light from my
bedroom spilled onto his face. A blue-black obsidian color fringed his
blood-red eyes. Long locks of jet-black hair framed his beautiful face. My
heart quickened. I was supposed to have stopped trying to un-love him and right
now that was easy, washed in all of his glorious splendor, drenched in all his
awesomeness.
“You tempt me to drop my
protective barrier that I may see inside your mind once again,” he said with a
heat in his tone. “I need to know what is going on with you, My Moon. I have
spent seventeen years inside your thoughts and now I am forced into
deprivation.” Bane’s grip on my shoulders tightened in the flare of his passion.
“Tell me, I command you.”
“Really? You command me?” I
thought about this for a second. Then I giggled. I wasn’t sure exactly what was
so funny, but it didn’t matter, really. It just felt good to
giggle.
Bane pulled me up off the
bathroom floor, using my shoulders. He pressed me against the wall behind me,
which made another little bout of giggles escape me.
“If I let down my wall, Lucifer
may enter in, and you will regret that,” Bane said.
I clamped my lips together to
keep from laughing anymore.
“Tell me. What has driven you to
the floor in sorrow?”
“Will you kiss me? ‘Cuz I really
like it when you do that,” I said. I think my request took him aback because he
fell silent for a few moments. Then his lips came down on mine. He took my
mouth like a wild savage. Like a demon. And he kissed me hard, crushing the
back of my head into the wall behind me.
But it was over all too soon. It
was a quick kiss, but it still left me with the realization of why I wanted it;
Bane was an excellent kisser, and his kisses had the magical properties needed
in order to drink away the world, leaving only him and me and the connection of
our bodies.
And it royally sucked when the
kiss had to end and the world came crashing down on me.
I dropped my chin, feeling the
weight of my world press upon me. If I did not release, just a smidgen, then I
was going to implode.
“It’s a she,”
I whispered. My hands automatically went to my abdomen. Bane was silent. I knew
he knew what I was talking about, even without his ability to eavesdrop on my
thoughts. For the first time I wondered what he thought about this, me carrying
his brother’s baby. But I wondered now. And despite my roller-coaster feelings
for Bane, I cared. I cared what he thought and how he felt. I spent my entire
life loving Bane. This kind of love could not easily be denied.
Bane used his finger to lift my
chin. Light washed my face. But even in the dark, Bane could see my
imperfections, the scar across my cheek, the fresh gashes in my face from when
Sean had flogged me. But he looked at me without seeing how marred I was. Bane
had a connection to me long before I was even born. He did not love me for what
was outside my flesh. He loved me for what was beneath, which almost made me
giggle again. Only a demon could love a monster-infested girl like
me.
“And she will be beautiful,”
Bane said. His face was shadowed but I did not need to see his eyes to know that
he was telling me the truth. “And she will be strong and courageous. Intractable
and vivacious. She will be an anomaly. Just like you, My Moon.”
It was the first time I wondered
what the baby would be like outside my womb, here in the real world. It was
hard enough to accept her presence inside of me. I couldn’t get past that long
enough to think further ahead. And I didn’t want to. Not now. Not
ever.
“It’s part of Rune,” I said,
trying to drop my chin to hide my shame, but Bane kept my chin pinned where he
wanted it.
“She,”
he corrected. “She is part of you, as well. You will grow to love her. To
protect her. Just you wait and see.”
“But I—”
Bane touched his finger to my
lip. With his other hand still gripping my shoulder, he drew me into his arms
and wrapped me in hard, stone-like muscle.
I wanted to melt into his warm
flesh. I wanted him to absorb me, just like I had always wanted. Except, it was
the cocoon of his wings I longed for. And they were gone now. I still wasn’t
sure why. He still hadn’t told me what happened while he was in Italy with
Lilith, nor had he yet explained how he was here in Burling and no longer
Lilith’s and Aradia’s prisoner. But none of that mattered now, though. All I
cared about was trying to figure out how to soak into him. My demon.
My everything.
****
Chapter Two
Sean
With Rune’s presence within him,
it had only taken him three days to heal. His Little One was in serious trouble
for what she had done to him. Priest Hylander’s rage was nearly impossible to
contain. Roman would pay, too, for what he had done.
Priest Hylander was packed,
almost out the door when he got the call.
“Priest Hylander,” Aradia’s
voice came through the receiver sounding cold and impatient. “I am calling an
emergency meeting of The Elders. We will be gathering at the Sleepy Hallow
Estates in two days. It is mandatory that you be there.”
“What is going on, Aradia?”
Priest Hylander demanded. There was once a time when The Coven’s matters came
first in his life. But now Luna Lanchester came first. The Coven came second.
“Bane has escaped. He murdered
Lilith and Osiris. Set is traveling with me. Nephthys is traveling alone. She
will be there before I am, I am sure of it. Nephthys is not happy. She is quite
anxious to get to Sleepy Hallow. We will be there tomorrow night. There is much
to discuss before the council meets the following Friday in Idaho.”
Priest Hylander was certain he’d
make the Sleepy Hallow meeting, but certainly not the one in Idaho.
“I am on my way, Aradia,” he
said, impatiently. He had a plane to catch. Aradia was wasting his time.
“Very good. Merry part, Priest
Hylander,” Aradia said. Priest Hylander could hear the respectful bow in her
voice. He hung the receiver on the wall and headed out the
door.
“First,
we see Ashmodai,” Rune’s voice filled Priest Hylander’s
mind.
“No. Luna first,” Sean insisted,
as he tossed his bag into the back seat of his silver Cadillac. He got behind
the wheel. “Then Roman.”
“Taking care of Bane
will eliminate that annoying barrier that keeps me from Luna’s thoughts. You do
wish to have access again, do you not? And you can not tell me that his
incessant intervening is not utterly
annoying!”
Priest Hylander did not respond.
He started the engine, cranking his wrist a little harder than he needed to. He
was certain his anger was mostly caused from the information he had acquired in
Rune’s bottomless pit of memories.
“Why?” Sean yelled, slamming the
palm of his hand into the steering wheel. “Why!”
“You
already know the answer to that question, Priest. Luna is mine, not yours. Did
I not tell you that I would be the one to spawn the next Lanchester?” Rune
said, smugly.
Priest Hylander took a long,
deep breath, trying to control himself. It was difficult. He couldn’t remember
ever having been this mad before.
Deep in the belly of the Crooked
Creek Mines, Rune had taken his Little One. And now she was carrying Rune’s
child.
“Oh, yes! Took from
her, I did. I took like a savage and gave like the demon I am. Little One was
magnificent, Priest! Take a look into that particular piece of memory, and you
will find there are no words to describe the amount of pleasure Little One is
capable of giving.”
Priest Hylander shoved the door
open, pushing out of the car as if pushing away from what Rune was saying. He
spun around and drove his fist into the rear fender. It crumpled deeply beneath
his knuckles.
“Damn you!” He threw his fist
into the fender again. It rippled upon contact.
Rune’s laughter snaked through
his thoughts, provoking Priest Hylander.
“Damn you, Rune!” he raked his
fingers through his long dark hair, fighting for control. Then he got back
behind the wheel and drove off, sending rocks and gravel spitting up from the
back tires. His heart was pounding. His adrenaline was rushing.
While Rune’s laughter went on
and on, Priest Hylander tucked a certain piece of information deep down into
that place he constructed long ago, where Rune could not reach. A place
protected by his darkest, most potent magic: My Little One will not carry Rune’s
child full term. There is not a power, not a magic, not a demon strong enough to
keep me from seeing to it that Rune’s child is not born into this
world.
****
Luna
I untwisted the metal coat
hanger with trembling hands, ignoring the complaint from my broken thumbs, and I
fashioned the hanger into the weapon of my choice, except, I wasn’t sure if
this was my choice. I thought it was, before I rushed into the bathroom before
sunset.
I had heard about a girl in
school, several years back, who had gotten pregnant. She used a coat hanger to
abort. I thought it was the cruelest, sickest thing anyone could have ever done.
And I had known some sick and cruel things in my life.
But here I was, in a dark
bathroom, driven by desperation, grief, turmoil into this very sick and cruel
moment.
I could see his face. His copper
eyes were full of lust. I could feel his body, the weight, the pain, as he took
from me. I could smell the earth beneath me, around me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but it
wouldn’t go away. It never went away. I doubted it would ever go away. Tears
gathered behind my closed eyes and anger swirled in my heart.
Rune had left a part of himself
within me, a life I could not bear to bring into this world, an evil I could
not bear giving birth to.
Sorrow rocked in my shoulders.
I could feel Rune’s lips on
mine. I could hear his heavy breathing, his guttural growls that rolled in his
throat as he brought himself to pleasure.
My eyes flashed open and my
determination was fierce.
I had to kill
it.
As long as it lived inside of
me, I would have to relive this pain.
“She,”
I whispered. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “Guenevere said it’s a she.”
I dropped the coat hanger and
slid down the wall, curling my knees up to my chin. I fought the urge to succumb
to the icy hot sorrow that rolled in me like an ocean.
“It is a she!”
I reminded myself. I could not forget this. This was important to remember. The
child inside of me was a she. And
she was a living being.
“And it wasn’t her fault,” I
whispered to the darkness around me.
A hard knock on the bathroom
door made me jump. I had forgotten Bane and Hex and Izzy were there. They were
gathered around a bonfire when I had left them to come inside and puke my guts
out. The puking had released the pent-up resentment, which unleashed
itself upon me with such fervor
that it slammed into my anger’s hiding spot, and so-on and so-forth, and so here
I found myself, riding the wake of my emotions.
“Are you ill, My Lady
Moon?”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it.
Yes, I was ill, and guess whose fault it was? Barron
Lanchester’s.
I thought about this for a
moment. Then it dawned on me.
It wasn’t
his fault.
All those years of my life, I
blamed Barron for the infestation of demons.
“My Lady,” Bane’s voice came
through the door.
It wasn’t Barron’s fault,
although it was him who tortured me for 17 years.
“Luna.”
It was the demon’s
fault.
“Open the door, or I will have
to open it for you.”
And it was Bane’s fault. Bane
murdered my father. He murdered Kaneesis and King Trentis and he put Jade
through living hell. Through some very twisted chains of events, this was just
as much Bane’s fault as it was anyone else’s that I was here, sitting on the
floor in my dark bathroom, contemplating the sickest, cruelest act ever known
to me.
“I am coming through this door,”
Bane warned.
“Addy will be home soon, I don’t
want to have to explain how my bathroom door got broken. Just go away, Bane. I
don’t wanna see you,” I said.
I couldn’t believe I told him I
would marry him. Yes, I was sick. But was I really
sick enough to want to marry an evil, blood-sucking murderer?
“I warned you,” Bane said. And
immediately following the sound of his voice, Bane came through the door. One
shove, one step, and he and his gargantuan body came into the bathroom. Wood
splintered and splattered, shredding away from the threshold in a violent,
explosive burst. I shielded my face with an arm. Sooner than I had expected,
Bane squatted down before me. He took my shoulders in his hands. Light from my
bedroom spilled onto his face. A blue-black obsidian color fringed his
blood-red eyes. Long locks of jet-black hair framed his beautiful face. My
heart quickened. I was supposed to have stopped trying to un-love him and right
now that was easy, washed in all of his glorious splendor, drenched in all his
awesomeness.
“You tempt me to drop my
protective barrier that I may see inside your mind once again,” he said with a
heat in his tone. “I need to know what is going on with you, My Moon. I have
spent seventeen years inside your thoughts and now I am forced into
deprivation.” Bane’s grip on my shoulders tightened in the flare of his passion.
“Tell me, I command you.”
“Really? You command me?” I
thought about this for a second. Then I giggled. I wasn’t sure exactly what was
so funny, but it didn’t matter, really. It just felt good to
giggle.
Bane pulled me up off the
bathroom floor, using my shoulders. He pressed me against the wall behind me,
which made another little bout of giggles escape me.
“If I let down my wall, Lucifer
may enter in, and you will regret that,” Bane said.
I clamped my lips together to
keep from laughing anymore.
“Tell me. What has driven you to
the floor in sorrow?”
“Will you kiss me? ‘Cuz I really
like it when you do that,” I said. I think my request took him aback because he
fell silent for a few moments. Then his lips came down on mine. He took my
mouth like a wild savage. Like a demon. And he kissed me hard, crushing the
back of my head into the wall behind me.
But it was over all too soon. It
was a quick kiss, but it still left me with the realization of why I wanted it;
Bane was an excellent kisser, and his kisses had the magical properties needed
in order to drink away the world, leaving only him and me and the connection of
our bodies.
And it royally sucked when the
kiss had to end and the world came crashing down on me.
I dropped my chin, feeling the
weight of my world press upon me. If I did not release, just a smidgen, then I
was going to implode.
“It’s a she,”
I whispered. My hands automatically went to my abdomen. Bane was silent. I knew
he knew what I was talking about, even without his ability to eavesdrop on my
thoughts. For the first time I wondered what he thought about this, me carrying
his brother’s baby. But I wondered now. And despite my roller-coaster feelings
for Bane, I cared. I cared what he thought and how he felt. I spent my entire
life loving Bane. This kind of love could not easily be denied.
Bane used his finger to lift my
chin. Light washed my face. But even in the dark, Bane could see my
imperfections, the scar across my cheek, the fresh gashes in my face from when
Sean had flogged me. But he looked at me without seeing how marred I was. Bane
had a connection to me long before I was even born. He did not love me for what
was outside my flesh. He loved me for what was beneath, which almost made me
giggle again. Only a demon could love a monster-infested girl like
me.
“And she will be beautiful,”
Bane said. His face was shadowed but I did not need to see his eyes to know that
he was telling me the truth. “And she will be strong and courageous. Intractable
and vivacious. She will be an anomaly. Just like you, My Moon.”
It was the first time I wondered
what the baby would be like outside my womb, here in the real world. It was
hard enough to accept her presence inside of me. I couldn’t get past that long
enough to think further ahead. And I didn’t want to. Not now. Not
ever.
“It’s part of Rune,” I said,
trying to drop my chin to hide my shame, but Bane kept my chin pinned where he
wanted it.
“She,”
he corrected. “She is part of you, as well. You will grow to love her. To
protect her. Just you wait and see.”
“But I—”
Bane touched his finger to my
lip. With his other hand still gripping my shoulder, he drew me into his arms
and wrapped me in hard, stone-like muscle.
I wanted to melt into his warm
flesh. I wanted him to absorb me, just like I had always wanted. Except, it was
the cocoon of his wings I longed for. And they were gone now. I still wasn’t
sure why. He still hadn’t told me what happened while he was in Italy with
Lilith, nor had he yet explained how he was here in Burling and no longer
Lilith’s and Aradia’s prisoner. But none of that mattered now, though. All I
cared about was trying to figure out how to soak into him. My demon.
My everything.
****
Chapter Two
Sean
With Rune’s presence within him,
it had only taken him three days to heal. His Little One was in serious trouble
for what she had done to him. Priest Hylander’s rage was nearly impossible to
contain. Roman would pay, too, for what he had done.
Priest Hylander was packed,
almost out the door when he got the call.
“Priest Hylander,” Aradia’s
voice came through the receiver sounding cold and impatient. “I am calling an
emergency meeting of The Elders. We will be gathering at the Sleepy Hallow
Estates in two days. It is mandatory that you be there.”
“What is going on, Aradia?”
Priest Hylander demanded. There was once a time when The Coven’s matters came
first in his life. But now Luna Lanchester came first. The Coven came second.
“Bane has escaped. He murdered
Lilith and Osiris. Set is traveling with me. Nephthys is traveling alone. She
will be there before I am, I am sure of it. Nephthys is not happy. She is quite
anxious to get to Sleepy Hallow. We will be there tomorrow night. There is much
to discuss before the council meets the following Friday in Idaho.”
Priest Hylander was certain he’d
make the Sleepy Hallow meeting, but certainly not the one in Idaho.
“I am on my way, Aradia,” he
said, impatiently. He had a plane to catch. Aradia was wasting his time.
“Very good. Merry part, Priest
Hylander,” Aradia said. Priest Hylander could hear the respectful bow in her
voice. He hung the receiver on the wall and headed out the
door.
“First,
we see Ashmodai,” Rune’s voice filled Priest Hylander’s
mind.
“No. Luna first,” Sean insisted,
as he tossed his bag into the back seat of his silver Cadillac. He got behind
the wheel. “Then Roman.”
“Taking care of Bane
will eliminate that annoying barrier that keeps me from Luna’s thoughts. You do
wish to have access again, do you not? And you can not tell me that his
incessant intervening is not utterly
annoying!”
Priest Hylander did not respond.
He started the engine, cranking his wrist a little harder than he needed to. He
was certain his anger was mostly caused from the information he had acquired in
Rune’s bottomless pit of memories.
“Why?” Sean yelled, slamming the
palm of his hand into the steering wheel. “Why!”
“You
already know the answer to that question, Priest. Luna is mine, not yours. Did
I not tell you that I would be the one to spawn the next Lanchester?” Rune
said, smugly.
Priest Hylander took a long,
deep breath, trying to control himself. It was difficult. He couldn’t remember
ever having been this mad before.
Deep in the belly of the Crooked
Creek Mines, Rune had taken his Little One. And now she was carrying Rune’s
child.
“Oh, yes! Took from
her, I did. I took like a savage and gave like the demon I am. Little One was
magnificent, Priest! Take a look into that particular piece of memory, and you
will find there are no words to describe the amount of pleasure Little One is
capable of giving.”
Priest Hylander shoved the door
open, pushing out of the car as if pushing away from what Rune was saying. He
spun around and drove his fist into the rear fender. It crumpled deeply beneath
his knuckles.
“Damn you!” He threw his fist
into the fender again. It rippled upon contact.
Rune’s laughter snaked through
his thoughts, provoking Priest Hylander.
“Damn you, Rune!” he raked his
fingers through his long dark hair, fighting for control. Then he got back
behind the wheel and drove off, sending rocks and gravel spitting up from the
back tires. His heart was pounding. His adrenaline was rushing.
While Rune’s laughter went on
and on, Priest Hylander tucked a certain piece of information deep down into
that place he constructed long ago, where Rune could not reach. A place
protected by his darkest, most potent magic: My Little One will not carry Rune’s
child full term. There is not a power, not a magic, not a demon strong enough to
keep me from seeing to it that Rune’s child is not born into this
world.
****