The Bonds of Blood (17 page)

With each rotation of the spoon,
torturous screams filled the air. Angelica and Jovian shivered
again. Slowly they moved forward, step by step, as if moving
through sludge. Their legs seemed unwilling to go forward, and they
had to urge themselves.

“What do the Neferis’ want with the
Baba Yaga?” the shadow asked.

“We wish for you to halt the winds that
assail our home,” Jovian said, his voice a mere quiver. Somehow,
the large figure behind the cauldron had heard him over the
shrieks.

“Ah, you wish a favor from the Baba
Yaga then?”

“We wish for you to undo what you have
done,” Angelica added.

“Hmm.” The wicked voice laughed, a
piercing cackle, and the blue flames rose higher, as if fed by that
cackle, shooting up around the pot haphazardly. The cries inside
screeched louder, and with more desperation as the flames
completely engulfed the cauldron, rendering it all but invisible.
The two youths hid their eyes from the intense light. Angelica
suddenly realized why the house was so large. As the flames roared
upward, she saw that the form behind it completely filled the back
part of the house. “Undo what the Baba Yaga has done,
eh?”

“Yes,” Jovian said, afraid for his very
life. As the flames weakened, they uncovered their eyes and saw
that it was not a shadow in which the hunched figure stood, but
instead it was a long black robe.

A few strands of white hair hung limply
from the hood of the robe, and all that could be seen within was a
pair of beady eyes. Its gray hands continued to stir the bubbling
mixture.

Suddenly the being threw back the hood
of her robe and stared at them with two, piercing black eyes. Her
face was a series of lines and lumps, all pitted and dark, like the
flesh had been charred. Baba Yaga smiled, a great smile that seemed
to split her face, and inside teeth like broken glass shined blue
in the now dim light. Long white hair spilled around her shoulders,
thin but substantial. The two of them were captivated by her pale
hair—indeed, it was some of the most beautiful hair they had ever
seen. As the hair fell around her, the tips dipped into the
cauldron.

“The winds,” she wheezed, “were
necessary.”

“Why were they necessary?” Jovian
asked.

“Because I have information to impart
on you. But we must work quickly because you have not much time
left. There are many questions you want to ask, but I cannot answer
all of them, so I won’t. There is one question above all that you
want answered. I will only answer one.”

“Where is Amber being taken?” Jovian
didn’t miss a beat.

“The Lunimara.” Baba Yaga’s voice was
distant, vacant.

“What is that?” Jovian asked, becoming
lightheaded. His stomach lurched, and everything around him spun
into a wild vertigo, stretching his mind and body.

“The Mirror of the Moon,” the crone
answered.

“How do we get there?” Angelica slowly
sunk to her knees, too tired and dizzy to support her own weight.
The floor offered the only reprieve. She suspected Jovian was
feeling the same way, for just then he fell heavily to his knees,
his arms clasped tight around his body, fighting off a cold they
had not felt before in the home of Baba Yaga.

“Grace will know. Now we must hurry,
for there is little time left. The longer you are here, the harder
it is to restore you to your former state, and the closer you come
to actual death.” Her voice indicated that she was truly worried
for them. “The Baba Yaga takes the souls of the damned; it is them
she hates, not righteous people.”

For the first time Baba Yaga stepped
around the cauldron, leaving it with the spoon still inside, so
that the blue flames licked up the side and charred the wooden
spoon more so. Her footfalls were heavy, causing the whole house to
creak as she walked to them. The black robe hissed around her
ankles as she neared.

Baba Yaga reached each hand into the
opposite opening of her robes, and pulled out two sage green orbs.
She knelt before Angelica and Jovian, and they were not surprised
to see that even now she towered above them.

“For the righteous shall scourge the
earth …” she said mysteriously, and the verse sounded somehow
familiar to them. “Here,” Baba Yaga said handing them both an
orb.

“What is it?” they asked, feeling
themselves sinking further into blackness.

“It is the Will to do that which must
to be done. Use it wisely, for it is a powerful thing; you will
know when the time is right to use it. Until then it should be
nurtured, cultivated, and trained.” She bent down and lovingly
kissed them both on the forehead, and they were stunned to feel her
lips warm, full of love and life.

“Will you stop the winds?” Jovian
asked, feeling himself become more abstract.

“Yes, the Baba Yaga would not have
placed them on your home unless they were completely necessary, and
this is what they were intended for.” She proffered the orbs up to
them, and as Angelica and Jovian took the glowing balls into their
hands, they felt themselves slowly changing, becoming less
real.

They tried to speak to the old crone,
but they could not. She was becoming blurred, and they tried to
focus on Baba Yaga’s face so that they could look once more on the
loving woman they had at one time thought to be so
malicious.

“Do not fight it,” her voice creaked
through the gathering darkness, and before they knew it, they were
being whisked back through the dark, oily atmosphere.

Jovian, Angelica, come—you
are alarmingly late. This could be very dangerous. When you come,
the first thing I want you both to do is take a healthy drink of
water to help neutralize the poison.
Aramaiti’s familiar voice came to them, and they felt
themselves being sped through the darkness.

There was no time to answer her, for
just then there was a great impact, and they both came crashing
back to their physical forms, in their separate rooms, cold and
shivering where they had fallen.

Angelica quickly gathered the cup of
water from her bed stand, gulping several long pulls from it,
draining the silver chalice.

In another room, Jovian looked
frantically about him. The water that would save his life now
soaked into the wooden floor around his head.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

_T
he floor was
uncharacteristically cold
beneath Joya’s
feet as she turned through the door leading from the parlor into
the entryway. She was not surprised to find the air and atmosphere
of the room much like Amber’s room had been.

There was a strange foreboding around
the area, thick, and most likely a product of the yellow tint that
polluted the air. Joya paused in the doorway, not afraid but
anxious to see what had happened here. She waited for the visions
to start.

Nothing happened.

Try the
door
, the now familiar voice of the book
said.

Joya looked down at the book and
hesitantly stepped into the entryway without protest. Still nothing
happened, so she heeded the book’s advice and walked to the
door.

The wind howled violently outside, and
she shivered as if caught up in the gusts of that horrid
storm.

The sound of thunder split the night,
and Joya jumped as she came crashing back from her thoughts. Her
nerves were so tightly strung that any strange noise was likely to
send her into fits. Stopping for a moment, she closed her eyes and
took a deep breath, willing calmness through her veins.

It helped little, but Joya continued
her trek toward the door. Her footfalls seemed heavy to her as she
walked with purpose, though it was far beyond her what that purpose
really was. The book rested coldly in her hands.

The door stood before her, hard,
unyielding, and tinged by that foretelling yellow glow, speaking of
significant events that transpired in the very spot that she now
found herself walking.

A tingling sensation overtook her body
as she reached the door.

As her hand neared the doorknob, the
tingling seemed to concentrate itself there, curling around her
fingers, and stabbing into her palm. She tried to scream, but the
pain of the energy surrounding the door froze the ability to cry
out.

Like a piece of metal drawn to a
lodestone, Joya’s hand was drawn to the handle of the door. There
was a thundering sound when her palm met the metal, and she felt
the painful tingling suddenly slam through her, forcing itself
against her, infringing on her mind, and pushing so much of the
alien power through her that Joya’s back arched.

With a muted scream, she dropped the
book.

There was a swift separation as if mind
and body had been wrenched apart.

Suddenly the pain left her, and Joya
could only feel a breeze, light and insignificant on her
face.

She stood solid, firm, and unyielding.
Joya opened her eyes to a robed figure standing before her. Slowly,
yet intently, the man reached deep into his robes and pulled out
the horrible hand that she had seen only moments before in the
memory of her sister’s room.

He held the hand up, pointing it at
her. His free hand moved up in front of the instrument, and the
candle suddenly roared to life. At first the flame started black,
and then slowly color spilled into it, and the fire began to
flicker red. Finally it roared a bright, yet horrible,
orange.

The man took a deep breath, and then
spoke in rote: “Hand of dark Glory, spare not a one. Sleep as if in
death ‘till morning’s sun. If one should wake, and upon the hand
they peer, hold them fast, enslave them, frozen in
fear.”

The strange incantation made Joya want
to shiver, but she was so firm and solid that her body could not
respond. She tried moving her hand to rub her arms, for Joya had
suddenly felt a cold chill creep over her, but as she tried to
raise her hands she realized they were held fast, glued to her
side.

A strange, languid power spread through
her, and deep inside Joya felt something click. She did not only
hear the metallic click; strangely she felt it too.

A curious awareness came to Joya just
then, and she understood that there was a completely different
reason for feeling so unmoving. Now the dark-haired Neferis girl
understood that she was no longer Joya, or even a being close to
Joya. She was not human as she had been before in the memories; she
was instead a substance of wood and metal.

Joya Neferis was the door and she was
now seeing what the door had witnessed.

It was a startling sensation for her.
But with all of this being thrust upon her—seeing through the eyes
of so many people this night and now a door, something she had
never before thought had a consciousness—she wondered how she could
have been so ignorant.

Joya,
concentrate
, the wicked voice called to
her, snapping her back to the present, or rather past,
happenings.

She felt herself being opened, and she
was aware of the inside of the house, and then she was pushed
closed again. Something clicked, and now she realized that it was
the door latch being lifted and secured back in place.

Silence. Nothing but silence for
several eternal moments.

Then suddenly she felt a presence at
her back, and Joya at first thought it was just herself holding
onto the door while having this vision. But the force that she felt
was not at all her own.

It was the man and Amber coming to
leave.

The door swung open again, and she
watched the robed figure hurriedly push Amber out of the house and
into the still night. Amber appeared lifeless, and she stood
doll-like waiting for the man to instruct her next on what to
do.

Amber’s hair hung limp, unmoving. Joya
suddenly understood how the man was able to leave the house with
Amber. The winds had stopped for the man; somehow he controlled
them.

Joya thought she saw the flicker of a
thick necklace around the man’s neck deep within the hood. But it
could not be a necklace, for serpentine green eyes stared back at
her. Yes, the familiar green orbs she remembered. The eyes were
insubstantial, like that of a ghost, yet they were somehow
connected to the abductor. Linked to the white man she had dueled
with.

Joya now understood that the winds had
started because of the power lingering around this man. A
conversation sparked in her memory … between her and Amber. Yes
Amber had spoken of the winds of change, and how she had felt them
…

Amber somehow knew this was going to
happen. In some way her sister had known in part the events of this
exact night.

As all of this understanding came to
her; the green eyes seemed to intensify, sharply displeased with
her, as if they knew she would be seeing this.

Take her,
the voice boomed, and Joya knew instantly that it
was the man from before, the same ivory man she faced in the
hall.

The robed figure threw out his hand,
and Joya felt excruciating pain slam through her. Dark mist
slithered up from the ground, snaking its way around the house.
Before long, a black globe completely encompassed the whole
plantation.