Binding the Shadows
Page 74
She pushed off the ground and stood, releasing my tail. I felt something cold in my hand and looked down. I was holding a knife. One that looked remarkably like the ceremonial dagger she’d used when she was slicing my breast, trying to sacrifice me to steal my moon powers.
“Your human form betrayed your father. Betrayed me,” she said. “But your true form inside cannot, because it is bound to me by ancient rules. We are connected, you and I. And that connection will only get stronger. It’s just a matter of time.”
Her eyes closed. She raised her hands to the sky. Foreign Æthyric words tumbled out of her mouth. Another spell.
I scrambled to move away, but it wasn’t soon enough. Heka hit me like a punch in the gut. My too-slow limbs felt like they were caught in syrup. Then her spoken chant ended and she spoke to me. “I command you to offer me a sacrifice. In payment for your father’s death, you will now kill who you love.”
I sat up in the dead grass, not by will, but by force. She was controlling me. I was a puppet, and the strings she pulled made me move toward Lon. I called his name, tried to warn him, but he still didn’t wake. Holding the dagger, I raised my arms high and aimed for his chest.
This couldn’t be happening. It was just a dream.
Wake up, wake up, wake up! I told myself.
And I did. The field fizzled away. My mother disappeared.
I was in Lon’s dark bedroom. Moonlight spilled across the sheets, illuminating the kitchen knife I held in my hands as I straddled Lon’s sleeping form.
Shock and horror held me frozen for several moments. This wasn’t a dream.
This was real.
Lon grunted when I jumped off him. Then he rolled to his side and fell back into sleep, utterly unaware of what I was doing.
I was in full Moonchild mode. Everything had a silvery tinge. I started to sever the connection, push it away, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the long dressing mirror standing next to the bed.
I gasped. Took a shaky step forward to get a better look.
It was me, naked. Me, but not me. My skin was covered in tiny, iridescent reptilian scales. Mostly black, I thought—it was hard to tell with the silver vision. A reticulated pattern began around my face, neck, and shoulders, where the black was interspersed with white and gray, and—I turned to peer over my shoulder—this eventually became black and white stripes on my back . . . and tail.
The tail seamlessly jutted out from my lower back and was a couple of inches in diameter. Black and white rings, all the way to the tip. It was now wrapped around my ankle, clinging to my leg, making me look like a dog with its tail tucked.
But that wasn’t the startling part. Nor was the silver eyes or the massive dancing silver halo. None of that shocked me. Lon had told me about those things.
He didn’t tell me about the horns.
Not spiraling. Not even two. A series of ridges began on my forehead, just above my eyes. They made a wide V shape there, increasing in size and length until they became black spines. A few inches above my hairline, the spines changed to black horns, gently curving backward like crests on a dragon. Three black, glossy horns flaring in neat little rows on each side of my head. The ones at the crown of my head were the longest—maybe two feet tall.
My hair stood out from my head, licking around the horns as my halo whorled like an angry storm cloud.
Terrified of my own reflection, I pushed the moon power away as fast as I could. The weight changed on my head as the horns retracted. Scales disappeared, as well as the tail.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I stood by the bed, a slow tremor wracking my body as I looked down at Lon. I could’ve killed him. Stabbed him while he slept. My fingers uncurled around the handle of the blade I’d forgotten I’d been holding. Not my mother’s ceremonial dagger, but a knife from Lon’s kitchen—one of his fancy, expensive knives. How the hell . . . had I sleepwalked? Did my mother orchestrate all this?
Her voice rang in my head, clear and strong, as if we’d actually spoken. And maybe we had. She said it was a place between the planes. I stared at the knife. My hand was shaking so badly, I nearly dropped it.
This was so bad. I’d never felt so out of control.
Chest heaving, pulse jittery, I backed away from the bed and headed to the bedroom door. I felt like an intruder in my own home. Lon’s home. Jupe’s home. Dear God, he was sleeping two doors away. What if he’d seen me . . . looking like that?
Worse: what if he wasn’t safe either?
Stifling a sob, I grabbed my robe off the back of the door and covered myself, quietly fleeing downstairs in the darkness. I headed straight for the kitchen, where Lon kept a small light over the sink constantly switched on like a nightlight. The magnetic strip that held his knives was attached to the wall nearby. Sure enough, a narrow space on the strip was blank, exactly the space where this one belonged. He kept them arranged in a specific order, which is why he’d known I’d taken the paring knife that night I called up Priya on Kar Yee’s roof.
I pressed the blade to the strip until it clicked. Nausea gripped my stomach. I barely had time to hunch over the sink before the vomiting began—once, twice. A third time. Weak and sick, I washed it down the drain and thrust my head under the tap to drink straight from the faucet. Rinsed my mouth out. Drank more. I didn’t understand why’d I’d be experiencing post-magick nausea. I hadn’t done any magick. Besides, the moon power didn’t make me sick like Heka-fueled magick did. Maybe it was my mother’s magick.
I waited until the nausea subsided, thinking of my reflection in the mirror.
“Your human form betrayed your father. Betrayed me,” she said. “But your true form inside cannot, because it is bound to me by ancient rules. We are connected, you and I. And that connection will only get stronger. It’s just a matter of time.”
Her eyes closed. She raised her hands to the sky. Foreign Æthyric words tumbled out of her mouth. Another spell.
I scrambled to move away, but it wasn’t soon enough. Heka hit me like a punch in the gut. My too-slow limbs felt like they were caught in syrup. Then her spoken chant ended and she spoke to me. “I command you to offer me a sacrifice. In payment for your father’s death, you will now kill who you love.”
I sat up in the dead grass, not by will, but by force. She was controlling me. I was a puppet, and the strings she pulled made me move toward Lon. I called his name, tried to warn him, but he still didn’t wake. Holding the dagger, I raised my arms high and aimed for his chest.
This couldn’t be happening. It was just a dream.
Wake up, wake up, wake up! I told myself.
And I did. The field fizzled away. My mother disappeared.
I was in Lon’s dark bedroom. Moonlight spilled across the sheets, illuminating the kitchen knife I held in my hands as I straddled Lon’s sleeping form.
Shock and horror held me frozen for several moments. This wasn’t a dream.
This was real.
Lon grunted when I jumped off him. Then he rolled to his side and fell back into sleep, utterly unaware of what I was doing.
I was in full Moonchild mode. Everything had a silvery tinge. I started to sever the connection, push it away, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the long dressing mirror standing next to the bed.
I gasped. Took a shaky step forward to get a better look.
It was me, naked. Me, but not me. My skin was covered in tiny, iridescent reptilian scales. Mostly black, I thought—it was hard to tell with the silver vision. A reticulated pattern began around my face, neck, and shoulders, where the black was interspersed with white and gray, and—I turned to peer over my shoulder—this eventually became black and white stripes on my back . . . and tail.
The tail seamlessly jutted out from my lower back and was a couple of inches in diameter. Black and white rings, all the way to the tip. It was now wrapped around my ankle, clinging to my leg, making me look like a dog with its tail tucked.
But that wasn’t the startling part. Nor was the silver eyes or the massive dancing silver halo. None of that shocked me. Lon had told me about those things.
He didn’t tell me about the horns.
Not spiraling. Not even two. A series of ridges began on my forehead, just above my eyes. They made a wide V shape there, increasing in size and length until they became black spines. A few inches above my hairline, the spines changed to black horns, gently curving backward like crests on a dragon. Three black, glossy horns flaring in neat little rows on each side of my head. The ones at the crown of my head were the longest—maybe two feet tall.
My hair stood out from my head, licking around the horns as my halo whorled like an angry storm cloud.
Terrified of my own reflection, I pushed the moon power away as fast as I could. The weight changed on my head as the horns retracted. Scales disappeared, as well as the tail.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I stood by the bed, a slow tremor wracking my body as I looked down at Lon. I could’ve killed him. Stabbed him while he slept. My fingers uncurled around the handle of the blade I’d forgotten I’d been holding. Not my mother’s ceremonial dagger, but a knife from Lon’s kitchen—one of his fancy, expensive knives. How the hell . . . had I sleepwalked? Did my mother orchestrate all this?
Her voice rang in my head, clear and strong, as if we’d actually spoken. And maybe we had. She said it was a place between the planes. I stared at the knife. My hand was shaking so badly, I nearly dropped it.
This was so bad. I’d never felt so out of control.
Chest heaving, pulse jittery, I backed away from the bed and headed to the bedroom door. I felt like an intruder in my own home. Lon’s home. Jupe’s home. Dear God, he was sleeping two doors away. What if he’d seen me . . . looking like that?
Worse: what if he wasn’t safe either?
Stifling a sob, I grabbed my robe off the back of the door and covered myself, quietly fleeing downstairs in the darkness. I headed straight for the kitchen, where Lon kept a small light over the sink constantly switched on like a nightlight. The magnetic strip that held his knives was attached to the wall nearby. Sure enough, a narrow space on the strip was blank, exactly the space where this one belonged. He kept them arranged in a specific order, which is why he’d known I’d taken the paring knife that night I called up Priya on Kar Yee’s roof.
I pressed the blade to the strip until it clicked. Nausea gripped my stomach. I barely had time to hunch over the sink before the vomiting began—once, twice. A third time. Weak and sick, I washed it down the drain and thrust my head under the tap to drink straight from the faucet. Rinsed my mouth out. Drank more. I didn’t understand why’d I’d be experiencing post-magick nausea. I hadn’t done any magick. Besides, the moon power didn’t make me sick like Heka-fueled magick did. Maybe it was my mother’s magick.
I waited until the nausea subsided, thinking of my reflection in the mirror.
