Strega (Strega Series) (30 page)

"Spells and rituals have no effect on this demon," Luci whispered in dread. "We could not be facing a worse demon."

Luci was incapable of fear, I thought. She was always so poised, so strong, like nothing could touch her. But she stared straight ahead, as white as a ghost, possessed by her thoughts.

"As the centuries have passed, no one has maintained the purity of mind to tell of an encounter with her," she finally said. "But whispers still abound in my homeland. The blackness that descends upon a human soul, that creeps in and delivers a poison for which there is no antidote. Over the years, she has fallen deeper into the shadows. Many have forgotten her. Your own books fail to capture her darkness in its entirety. But in my home, she is feared by those who know of her powers, who know that she has only grown stronger with time. Those in my homeland, the homeland of our ancestors, know of immortal Invidia's scourge upon our people."

She finally turned to me and grasped my hand.

"Jay, how do you know this name?"

"I knew her once..." I began to say.

"In another life?" Luci concluded knowingly.

"Yes."

"What did you see? Tell me," she demanded.

"She killed me," I said bluntly.

Ruth and Celia gasped in horror, but Luci's expression plummeted to the darkest depths of despair.

"She is a Strega," I continued. "But her father was a demon. She turned on her sisters, and my mother, to stop a prophecy."

"The Triune," Luci confirmed.

"Yes," I said.

Celia pointed to the adjacent page.

"The Triune."

Luci responded without even looking at the book.

"The key to destroying Invidia."

Ruth read the familiar lines aloud.

TRIUNE

The fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. The chosen one among Strega, infused ages ago with the complete triad of Dianic powers—precognition, acceleration, and translucence—to defeat an unyielding evil that threatens all humankind, and that only she has the power to vanquish. Until her destiny is fulfilled, she will be reborn to earth as the great prophecy has foretold.

"These two entries are paired for a reason," Luci said to Ruth and Celia. "Even if this reason is not clear to you. A tragedy...so much knowledge lost. Invidia is the evil the Triune is destined to defeat."

Luci's eyes were fixed on me. She stood up and made her way out to the fire. Without a word, we followed her. She pulled an old leather-bound book into her lap. One that had survived many more years than Ruth's or Mom's.

"Every family has their own version of the book," Ruth said when she noticed I was staring at Luci's volume. "Your mother's book was passed to her by your grandmother. Now it is yours. Our books have been compiled over centuries, modified and updated with new entries and information by all that possess it. As we evolve and learn, so do our enemies. Luci's book is written in Italian. Ours, in English. The originals, Etruscan."

Luci flipped through her book to an image I'd seen before, though not in Mom's book. It was the athame Mr. Whitmore had drawn. An athame he'd seen in an early book, written in Etruscan.

"The blade of the Triune," Luci said, turning her book to us. "There is only one. And it is the only weapon that can kill Invidia."

Ruth and Celia stared at the drawing in awe, but I couldn't understand why. It looked no different from our own blades. Mine looked exactly like it.

"Jay, let me see your blade," Luci commanded.

I pulled out my blade and handed it to her obediently. Seeing it alongside the image, I still saw no difference. The symbols were the same. When I looked up, Ruth and Celia were staring at my blade, speechless.

"What?" I asked ignorantly.

"The mark of the Triune blade is in its three runes," Luci said.

Ruth and Celia pulled out their blades and held them out for me to see. Each was marked not with three, but with one solitary rune. On Ruth's, the Algiz rune. On Celia's, the Uruz rune.

"This is why she wants you," Luci concluded in amazement as she held her own blade out beside Ruth's and Celia's. There on its handle was the solitary Ansuz rune.

"The blade has returned to you in this life. You have been reborn to us. To end this war. Jay, mia cara...you are the Triune."

When I was seven, on the night the dreams first started, I awoke to a violent storm raging outside my window. Strong winds and rain whipped against the glass as I searched my surroundings for a trace of familiarity to cling to. Then I saw Mom's face.

"Jay," she whispered gently, sitting beside me on my bed. "Bad dream?"

I nodded. She smoothed my damp hair back and wiped the sweat from my forehead, and I rested against her shoulder as she pulled me close.

"You know, it was on a stormy night like this that I went into labor with you," she said, trying to distract me from my fears. It was the first time the dream had come. She didn't yet suspect that it was my emerging power, and that what I saw was real. But she soon would. That night though, she smiled and began to tell me the story of my birth once again.

"It was June, and a violent storm tore across the coast. It followed weeks of unending storms with relentless thunder and lightning, rain and wind. I went into labor in the dark hours of night. On our way to the hospital, Dad dodged fallen trees, dangling wires, and battled strong winds, navigating the back roads to the hospital. But the streets were completely blocked by fallen debris. Soon we were forced to turn back.

"I labored all night in bed while Dad did everything he could to make me comfortable. Rain pounded against the windows as I faded in and out of sleep. As each hour passed, the pain intensified and I grew more and more delirious from exhaustion. Your Dad sat by my side and I held onto him, praying that you'd arrive safely, and soon.

"In the early hours of morning, an amazing thing happened. The sun rose in a clear, serene sky. It was the first time we had seen the sun in weeks. My eyes absorbed this light that I had been deprived of and craved for so long. Lying in my bed, though weak and in the worst throes of pain, I suddenly felt a new peace. After the violence and chaos of the night, a sense of calm washed over me. It was the summer solstice, the longest, brightest day of the year. And on this special day, the sun finally chased away the darkness.

"Soon you came. My miracle. Just moments before you were born, the sky grew dark again. At first, I thought the storm hadn't truly passed. But then Dad saw it. He pointed to the window, and we watched the moon cross the path of the sun. In that moment, I knew the universe was welcoming you. On that summer solstice day, during that solar eclipse, you were born, my sweet girl. It was a truly magical day.

"And as I heard your first cries, and held you for the first time, a beautiful blue jay perched herself on the windowsill, and basked in the warm sunlight. She too had endured the long stretch of gray darkness. She faced the light, savoring this treasure that had come with the dawn. Then she spread her beautiful blue wings, speckled white and black, and flew into the light. As I held you close, your name came to me. Alainn Jay.
Alainn
, the word for beautiful in Gram's Celtic homeland, and what she used to call you when you were still in my belly. And
Jay
, for the beautiful herald that had come with the sun and welcomed you into this world.

"That night as we held you in our arms, the glorious sun finally set, and the most amazing shower of light poured down from the heavens. Meteors shot through the sky in divine celebration, as if the gods themselves were reveling in your birth."

My mother loved to tell me this story, and she did often. To her, the magical events surrounding my birth were just pure serendipity. A fortuitous gift from the cosmos. She and Gram never knew that it was much more than this. When she told me the story that night, I didn't know it was the last time I'd ever hear it.

Luci asked what I knew of my birth, and as if my mother's voice was whispering it to me once again, I recalled every last detail.

Under a summer solstice sky, when the sun and moon rise together under a shower of heavenly light, to welcome a thrice blessed child...

Luci recited the words of the prophecy in disbelief. She looked at me as if she was witnessing a miracle, and placed the blade back into my hands with reverence.

I remembered the night I was followed home from work, just before the blade appeared to me in my dream. A fire burned in my legs as I tore through the streets to Ruth's house, desperate to escape what was coming for me. I'd never moved so fast. And then the night Invidia came for me at Gram's house. She hovered so close to me, but then just drifted away like she couldn't see me, right after I'd wished to shrink into nothingness and disappear. At Celia's shop, I relied on Ruth's power to cloak me from the Cynan, and again in the forest to escape Shaun. But this power was within me, too. Though still new and unreliable, translucence and acceleration had already begun to emerge in me.

Invidia's precognition was not the only thing that alerted her to my birth seventeen years ago, I suddenly realized. In my vision, she stood in her darkened hovel and stared out into the night sky. She recognized the signs of the prophecy. The solstice. The eclipse. The meteor shower. She was waiting for it. She knew it would come. And when it did, she knew the Triune had been reborn. I was the only threat against her, so she ordered the Cerberus to eliminate me. But they failed. And all those years after they killed Mom and Dad, while Invidia waited for the Cynan to find me, she kept my blade. A constant, torturous reminder that her only rival, the only one that could defeat her, still lived.

I remembered the first time I saw the image of the Triune. In Mom's closet, her book was open to the page. She knew something was different about my blade. I wondered how close she was to figuring out the truth before they killed her.

"We are children of the gods. Daughters of Diana," Luci said as I stared at the blade in my hands. "We each have a destiny to fulfill. The heavens ensure it. And so you were reborn to this earth, and will be until it is done."

In another life so long ago, when my mother escaped Falerii, she did not know that she was already pregnant with me. It was my power, from the womb, that sent her the powerful vision of my destined rival Invidia, revealing her true demonic nature. Until then, Invidia's Strega blood had masked her dark lineage from my mother and her sisters. When the evil within her finally emerged, it was too late to stop her. My mother believed that the prophecy had died with her sisters. And Invidia believed she had thwarted Diana's divine plan. On the day of my birth, neither was attentive to the signs. But when my powers finally began to emerge, Invidia sensed it. She hunted me down and killed me in that life, just as she was determined to do in this one.

My mother's destiny became tethered to mine in that life, and she returned to me in this one
—to help me finish what I started. She died trying to protect me. I wasn't going to let it be in vain.

Luci took my hand and led me back to the tent.

"If you are going to defeat Invidia, there is much you need to learn."

Luci made another batch of the potion for caccia ombra. Ruth arranged the pillows. Celia lit candles. I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to face more painful truths. But I had to. I needed to prepare, to know everything there was to know, if I was going to face my dreaded adversary and win.

I sat beside Vince and cradled his face in my hand.

"You know him," Luci said softly, and with certainty. "From another life..."

I nodded, and my eyes glazed over with tears.

"He protected me then, too. Invidia killed him. She knew I loved him...and she made me watch him die."

I was going back to see it all again, and I dreaded it. As I stared at his body, battered and broken, so close to death again, the weight of my responsibility was crushing. If I didn't defeat Invidia, I would endure it all again in this life.

As I stroked his hair, his body relaxed and his breathing slowed. The dim candlelight flickered behind me, and the glowing flames cast their tall shadows on the thin tent walls. Ruth, Celia, and Luci were curiously quiet. I turned to them, and realized they'd gone. When I turned back, Vince was sitting up, staring at me. He reached for my face and held me in awe. His touch was like water to the dry, scorched desert. His eyes filled with light, and I couldn't look away. In them, I finally recognized the power of the gods. And before I could seize him in my arms, hold him so tight and finally quench my ages-old longing, it swept me away.

Lightning bolts showered the earth. Plumes of fire swallowed forests. From the heavens, nine of them descended.
Dii Novensiles
. The lightning gods. And they unleashed their unspeakable wrath.

Never before had they left their hidden realm in the heavens. None had ever been seen by humans before. Except one. Aule.

Hearing of Diana's visions of darkness, and of her divine plan to send the Triune to her daughters on earth, the god Aule allied with her. Of the nine lightning gods, he was the only one that did. He knew of Diana's love for humans, and of their fragility. Though he had never been among mortals, he was captivated by them and longed to prevent their slaughter. And though it was forbidden, one day he descended to earth in secret.