Banishing the Dark
Page 81

A small laugh bubbled from her mouth. “You have no idea how to wield this power.”
“And you do?”
“Darling, I know things about your powers you couldn’t fathom.” She lifted her chin to the mirror. “In your head, you are still that little girl in there. Naive. Submissive. And only breathing because I’ve allowed you to live. Would you like me to show you the fruits this ability can yield?”
“I don’t need any more magical instruction from you, thank you.”
“Oh, I’m done teaching. And I’m done waiting. I’m ready to take the reins now.”
“And you really believe I’m so submissive that I’m just going to allow you to slip inside my body without a fight?”
A slow smile spread across her face, cracking the dried blood on her skin. “Ma petite lune, you already have.”
I snorted, ready to hurl a retort, but there was something about the absolute confidence on her face. It tripped me up. Made me doubt.
“Use your brain, Sélène,” she said in a low voice. “How do you think I am here with you? We are not flesh. We are observing a moment in time constructed of memories. Your memories. You opened the door and guided me through.”
Was that true? Was this just a piecemeal reconstruction of a series of memories? The first time I’d experienced this, when I saw Dare talking to my parents back at the cabin in California, was that a dormant memory, something my parents had hidden with magick but not stripped away completely?
“Dare,” my mother mumbled. “I couldn’t be happier that you burned that devil up.”
All my muscles turned to stone.
My mother’s smile widened. “Surprised? Yes, I can read your thoughts. I can see all of you now. Aren’t you listening? You invited me inside. We are sharing the same body. You, me, and that monstrous child growing in your belly.”
Oh . . . God.
“Three souls cannot inhabit one body,” my mother said. “Let me show you what power looks likes when the person wielding it knows what she is doing.”
The white walls melted like spring snow. Floorboards fell away. Nighttime swirled around us, and the musty scent of my childhood home in Florida was replaced by damp earth and trees and the mineral scent of red ochre chalk.
Trees. Night. A clearing. A rocky hill in the distance.
Panic shot through me as cool night air chilled my skin. I tried to move, but my hands and ankles were strapped to a post. The metal of a sacrificial oracular bowl cooled the bottoms of my bare feet, waiting to catch my blood.
Bound in Balboa Park. Last September. We were back where my parents had tried to sacrifice me and steal my power. The worst night of my life. Only it was just the two of us here now in the dark. No elemental creatures bound in the great circle before me. No Frater Blue. No father.
“Victoire!” My mother’s laughter echoed off the rocky hill as she spun in a circle with her arms outstretched, face tilted up to a full moon.
I struggled against my bonds as hysteria blotted out reason. Rope bit into my wrists and made my fingers tingle. I tried to rock the post and the heavy oracular bowl and only managed to draw my mother’s attention. She halted her swirling dance and stalked toward me.
“This is how you wield power,” she said, getting in my face. “You are in my memories now.”
But it wasn’t a memory—not exactly. Things were missing. I wasn’t naked and covered in a red veil. The ritual circle wasn’t charged.
“Why do I need protection?” my mother answered, reading my thoughts. “Your devil lover isn’t coming to save you this time. After I kill your soul, I will take control of your reptile body and lay waste to him with fire, exactly as you destroyed Dare. Then I will use magick to snuff out the life of your child.”
I snarled and strained to bite her cheek, but she jerked out of my reach, laughing.
This wasn’t actually happening, no matter how real it felt. I had to get control of myself and think. But how could I, when she was listening to my thoughts?
“Not just your thoughts,” she said. “I see everything. All your mistakes. All your fears. And all your weaknesses. Your friends and so-called family, the mundane life you’ve cobbled together from the scraps I left you and the misplaced loyalty you’ve given away freely. I see it all, Sélène.”
Unbidden images of Lon and Jupe popped into my head. I tried to shake them away, but it was impossible. My thoughts were tangled, tripping on her words. But when she sighed and closed her eyes with a look of deep satisfaction settling on her face, I remembered Lon telling me how to keep him out of my thoughts when he was transmutated.
If we were really inside my body, then why was I giving her control?
My mother’s eyes snapped open.
I immediately put up a barrier in my head.
“Go on,” she said, “if that makes you feel better. I don’t need your memories.”
“Are you sure? Because it seems pretty barren out here. Why did you choose not to remember Dad?”
“Alexander is dead. He was weak, and I am strong.”
An oblong shape glinted on the ground between us. She stooped to pick it up and showed it to me: the ceremonial dagger she’d tried to use on me the first time I’d been tied up here. The blade gleamed in the moonlight beneath the white of her smile.
“That’s not how I see it,” I said, ignoring the fear gnashing at the edges of my thoughts.