The Mortal Heart (5 page)

Leaving Lila Jane was the hardest thing Macon had ever done. Still, it wasn’t enough. Silas was unpredictable and Hunting was sadistic. Macon’s breaking up with the girl he loved might not be enough for them.

If they go after Jane, she won’t be able to protect herself.

But Silas and Hunting weren’t the only threats. One day soon, he could be dangerous, too.

The only thing he cared about now was finding a way to keep Lila Jane safe—and there was only one person who could help him.

A powerful Diviner, a Caster capable of predicting the future. A woman with voodoo roots, who lived in the heart of Louisiana and knew the heart of an Incubus.

His mother.

And she will understand.

Macon’s parents had fallen deeply in love when Silas was away at college in New Orleans. And like Macon, his father had fallen in love with his mother before the Transformation. Before Abraham had convinced Silas a relationship with a Light Caster was an abomination against their kind.

It had taken Abraham years to tear Macon’s mother and father apart. By that time, he and Hunting and Leah were born. His mother had been forced to use her powers as a Diviner to escape Silas’ rage and his uncontrollable urge to feed. She had fled to New Orleans with Leah. Silas would never have let her take his sons.

His mother was the only one Macon could turn to now. The only one who would understand that he had fallen in love with a Mortal. The greatest act of sacrilege against his kind, the Blood Incubus.

The Demon Soldier.

Macon hadn’t told his mother he was coming, but she would be expecting him. He climbed up from the Tunnels into the sweet heat of a New Orleans summer night. Fireflies blinked in the darkness, and the smell of magnolias was overpowering. She was waiting for him on the porch, in an old wooden rocking chair, tatting lace. It had been a long time.

“Mamma, I need your help.”

She put down her needle and hoop, rising from the chair. “I know. Everything’s ready,
cher
.”

There was only one thing powerful enough to stop an Incubus, aside from one of its own kind.

An Arclight.

They were considered medieval devices, weapons created to control and imprison the most powerful of the Harmers, the Incubus. Macon had never seen one. There were very few left, and they were almost impossible to find.

But his mother had one, and he needed it.

Macon followed her into the kitchen. His mother opened a small cabinet that served as an altar to the spirits. She unwrapped a small wooden box, with Niadic script, the ancient Caster language, around the perimeter:

The One who seeks it shall find it.

The house of the Unholy.

The key to the Truth.

“Your father gave this to me before the Transformation. It was passed down in the Ravenwood family for generations. Your granddaddy claimed it belonged to Grandfather Abraham himself, and I believe it did. It’s marked by his hatred and bigotry.”

She opened the box, revealing the ebony sphere. Macon could feel the energy, even without touching it—the grisly possibility of an eternity within its glistening walls.

“Macon, you must understand. Once an Incubus is trapped inside the Arclight, there is no way out from within. You must be released. If you give this to someone, you have to be sure with all certainty that you can trust them, because you will be putting more than your life in their hands. You will be giving them a thousand lives; that’s what an eternity would feel like in there.”

She held the box higher so he could see it, as if he could imagine the confines just by looking at it.

“I understand, Mamma. I can trust Jane. She’s the most honest and principled person I’ve ever met, and she loves me. Despite what I am.”

Arelia touched Macon’s cheek. “There is nothing wrong with who you are,
cher
. If there were, it would be my fault. I doomed you to this fate.”

Macon bent down and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mamma. None of this is your fault. It’s his.”

His father. Silas Ravenwood.

Possibly a greater threat to Jane than he was, a slave to the doctrine of the first Ravenwood Blood Incubus. Abraham.

“It’s not his fault, Macon. You don’t know what your grandfather was like. How he bullied your father into believing his twisted brand of superiority—that Mortals were beneath Casters and Incubuses alike, simply a source of blood to satisfy their lust. Your father was indoctrinated, like his father before him.”

Macon didn’t care. He had stopped feeling sorry for his father long ago, stopped wondering what it was about Silas his mother could have loved.

“Tell me how to use it.” Macon reached out tentatively. “Can I touch it?”

“Yes. The person who touches you with it must have intent, and even then it’s harmless without the
Carmen Defixionis
.”

His mother removed a small pouch—a gris-gris bag, the strongest protection voodoo could offer—from the door of the cellar and disappeared down the dark stairs. When she returned, she carried something wrapped in a dusty piece of burlap. She laid it on the table and unwrapped it.

The
Responsum
.

It was written in Niadic. Literally translated, it meant “the Answer.”

It contained all the laws that governed his kind.

It was the oldest of books. There were only a few copies in the world. His mother turned the brittle pages carefully, until she reached the right one.

“Carcer.”

The Prison.

The sketch of the Arclight looked exactly like the one resting in the velvet-lined box, sitting on his mother’s kitchen table next to her uneaten étouffée.

“How does it work?”

“It’s rather simple. A person need only touch the Arclight and the Incubus they wish to imprison at the same moment and speak the
Carmen Defixionis
. The Arclight will do the rest.”

“Is the
Carmen Defixionis
in the book?”

“No, it’s much too powerful to be trusted to the written word. You must learn the
Carmen
from someone who knows it, and commit it to memory.” She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone might be listening. Then she whispered the words that could condemn him to an eternity of misery.

“Comprehende, Liga, Cruci Fige.”

Capture, Cage, and Crucify.

Arelia closed the lid of the box and handed it to Macon. “Be careful. In the Arc there is power, and in the power there is Night.”

Macon kissed her forehead. “I promise.”

He turned to leave, but his mother’s voice called him back. “You’ll need this. Give it to her, too—if she’s really someone you trust.” She scrawled several lines on a piece of parchment.

“What’s this?”

“The only key to that door.” She gestured to the box tucked under his arm. “The only way someone can ever get you back out.”

It was the thing Macon wanted least and most—to see Lila Jane one last time. It had been weeks since he’d seen her, unless you counted the nights he had followed her home from the library, watching her from a distance, wishing he could touch her.

Knowing he couldn’t.

Not now, not when the Transformation was so close. But she was here in his subterranean chamber now, even though he’d told her to stay away. “Jane, you have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

She walked slowly across the room to where he was standing. “Don’t you understand? I can’t stay away.”

“I know.” He drew her into him and kissed her, one last time.

Macon took something out of a small box in the back of his closet. He put the object in Lila Jane’s hand, closing her fingers around it. It was round and smooth, a perfect sphere. He closed his hand around hers, his voice grave. “I can’t protect you after the Transformation, not when the one thing that poses the greatest threat to your safety is me.” Macon looked down at their hands, gently cradling the object he had hidden so carefully. “If something happens, and you’re in danger… use this.”

Lila Jane opened her hand. The sphere was black and opalescent, like a pearl. But as she watched, the sphere began to change and glow. She could feel the buzz of tiny vibrations emanating from it. “What is it?”

Macon stepped back, as if he didn’t want to touch the orb now that it had come to life. “It’s an Arclight.”

“What is it for?”

“If the time comes when I become a danger to you, you’ll be defenseless. There’s no way you will be able to kill me or hurt me. Only another Incubus can do that.”

Lila Jane’s eyes clouded over. Her voice was a whisper. “I could never hurt you.”

Macon reached out and touched her face tenderly. “I know, but even if you wanted to, it would be impossible. A Mortal cannot kill an Incubus. That’s why you need the Arclight. It’s the only thing that can contain my kind. The only way you would be able to stop me if—”

“What do you mean,
contain
?”

Macon turned away. “It’s like a cage, Jane. The only cage that can hold us.”

Lila Jane looked down at the dark orb glowing in her palm. Now that she knew what it was, it felt like it was burning a hole in her hand and her heart. She dropped it on his desk, and it rolled across the tabletop, its glow fading to black. “You think I’m going to imprison you in that thing like an animal?”

“I’ll be worse than an animal.”

Tears ran down Lila Jane’s face and over her lips. She grabbed Macon’s arm, forcing him to face her. “How long would you be in there?”

“Most likely, forever.”

She shook her head. “I won’t do it. I would never condemn you to that.”

It looked as if tears were welling up in Macon’s eyes, even though Jane knew it was impossible. He had no tears to shed, yet she swore she could see them glistening. “If something happened to you, if I hurt you, you would be condemning me to a fate, an eternity, far worse than anything I would find in here.” Macon picked up the Arclight and held it up between them. “If the time comes and you have to use it, you have to promise me you will.”

Lila Jane choked back her tears, her voice shaking. “I don’t know if I—”

Macon rested his forehead against hers. “Promise me, Janie. If you love me, promise me.”

Lila Jane buried her face in his cool neck. She took a deep breath. “I promise.”

It happened within weeks of the last time he spoke to her.

Macon felt it immediately when his shoulder snapped—the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no longer hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs, like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rocks tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground.

The Transformation.

From this moment forth, he would not be able to walk among Mortals in the daylight. The sun would singe the flesh from his body. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the urge to feed on the blood of Mortals. He was one of them now—another Blood Incubus in the long line of killers on the Ravenwood Family Tree.

A predator walking among his prey, waiting to feed.

Jane
—

“
In the Light there is Dark, and in the Dark there is Light
,” Lila Jane Evers translated, for the thousandth time. She was still holding the translucent scrap of parchment, still no thicker than onionskin, between her fingertips. “
Licentia in Lux Lucis.
Freedom in Light.” She looked up at Marian. “Freedom from what?”

Lila Jane sat back in her hard wooden chair—at her customary table for one (though with Marian’s chair now shoved up against hers)—in the rare documents reading room of the Perkins Library, as she did every night.

Lila Jane was obsessed. At least she was aware of it.

And Marian doesn’t point it out that often.

Lila Jane straightened one curling edge of the parchment with her white-gloved hand.

It’s all I have left of him.

She smoothed the scrap of paper in her hand. “There has to be more to it than words on a page.”

“What’s wrong with words on a page? They’re our specialty, Lila.” Marian smiled. She didn’t call her best friend Janie anymore.

Not even Jane.

Marian couldn’t make this easier or take away the pain; no one could do that. But she
could
make sure her best friend didn’t have to face it alone.

Lila Jane took off her white gloves. “It’s not just any Cast. There has to be a reason I found it. A reason it brought us together.” She didn’t say his name.

She couldn’t.

“
In the Dark there is Light
? You think that’s about the two of you?” Marian asked.

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” Lila Jane asked. “But if we were so different that we could never be together, why didn’t it feel that way? Why did he feel like my kindred spirit? Like a part of my soul?”

Every word was agony.

“A Ravenwood and an Evers? I wonder…” Marian shook her head. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now.”

Don’t you understand? I have to.

Lila Jane looked at her friend. “I want to go back to the library, Mare. I want to know what you know. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I’ve started down a road that has no end, and I can’t stop now. Not even if I wanted to.”

Marian pulled off her gloves. “It’s a dangerous road, Lila.”

“Macon said you were a Keeper. I want to be like you.”

“Lila—”

“It’s my choice. You said it was always my choice,” Lila Jane said, reaching to take Marian’s hand in her own.

“It is.”

“I feel like it’s more than that, Mare. I feel like it’s my destiny.” Lila Jane squeezed her best friend’s hand. “And you know I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”

She looked at Marian with huge, heavy eyes.

They were the kind of eyes that wanted to see the truth, and nothing less.

Thirty years later and hundreds of miles away, Lila Evers Wate’s only son stared up at Marian with those same eyes.

He clutched Marian’s hand, with Lila Jane’s mother-of-pearl watch strapped to her slender wrist. Listening as intently as his mother always had.

Marian couldn’t find her voice.

He’s so much like his mother. But he’s more than just Lila Jane’s son. He’s her destiny now.
She closed her eyes.
You’re not done yet, Janie, but you’re close. I can feel the road’s end. Just a bit farther, I promise.

It was a promise Marian could make because she knew something no one else in Gatlin County did.

Destiny wasn’t finished with this boy and his mother.

Not yet, Janie.

Not yet.