The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"Sleep, my darling," she said. "I love you. I love you with my whole soul."

Far far away he heard the sound of buttons on a phone. Her voice was so faint and the words ... what was she saying? She was talking to Aaron. Yes, Aaron ...

And when they lifted him, he said Aaron's name.

"You're going to Aaron, Michael," she whispered. "He's going to take care of you."

Not without you, Rowan, he tried to say, but he was sinking down again, and the car was moving, and he heard a man's voice: "You'll be OK, Mr. Curry. We're taking you to your friend. You just lie still back there. Dr. Mayfair said you're going to be fine."

Fine, fine, fine ...

Hirelings. You don't understand. She's a witch, and she's put me under a spell with her poison, the way Charlotte did it to Petyr, and she's told you a damnable lie.

Fifty-one

ONLY THE TREE was lighted, and the whole house slumbered in warm darkness, except for that soft wreath of light. The cold tapped at the glass but couldn't come inside.

She sat in the middle of the sofa, her legs crossed, her arms folded, staring down the length of the room at the long mirror, barely able to see the pale glow of the chandelier.

The hands of the grandfather clock moved slowly towards midnight.

And this was the night that meant so much to you, Michael. The night when you wanted us to be together. You couldn't be farther from me now if you were on the other side of the world. All such simple and graceful things are far from me, and it is like that Christmas Eve when Lemle took me through door after door into his darkened and secret laboratory. What have such horrors to do with you, my darling?

All her life, if her life was long or short, or almost over--all her life--she'd remember Michael's face when she slapped him; she'd remember the sound of his voice when he pleaded with her; she'd remember the look of shock when she'd jabbed the needle into his arm.

So why was there no emotion? Why only this emptiness and this shriveling stillness inside her? Her feet were bare, and the soft flannel nightgown hung loose around her, and the silky Chinese rug beneath her feet was warm. Yet she felt naked and isolated, as if nothing of warmth or comfort could ever touch her.

Something moved in the center of the room. All the limbs of the tree shivered, and the tiny silver bells gave off a faint barely perceptible music in the stillness. The tiny angels with their gilded wings danced on their long threads of gold.

A darkness was gathering and thickening.

"We are close to the hour, my beloved. To the time of my choosing."

"Ah, but you have a poet's soul," she said, listening to the faint echo of her own voice in this big room.

"My poetry I have learned from humans, beloved. From those who, for thousands of years, have loved this night of all nights."

"And now you mean to teach me science, for I don't know how to bring you across."

"Don't you? Haven't you always understood?"

She didn't answer. It seemed the film of her dreams thickened about her, images catching hold and then letting go, so that her coldness and her aloneness grew harder and more nearly unbearable.

The darkness grew denser. It collected itself into a shape, and in the swirling density, she thought she saw the outline of human bones. The bones appeared to be dancing, gathering themselves together, and then came the flesh over them, like the light from the tree pouring down over the skeleton, and the brilliant green eyes were suddenly peering at her from his face.

"The time is almost at hand, Rowan," he said.

In amazement she watched the lips moving. She saw the glimmer of his teeth. She realized she'd risen to her feet and she was standing very close to him, and the sheer beauty of his face stunned her. He looked down at her, his eyes darkening slightly, and the blond eyelashes golden in the light.

"It's nearly perfect," she whispered.

She touched his face, slowly, running her finger down the skin and stopping on the firmness of the jawbone. She placed her left hand very gently against his chest. She closed her eyes, listening to the heart beat. She could see the organ inside, or was it the replica of an organ? Shutting her eyes tighter she envisioned it, its arteries and valves, and the blood rushing through it, and coursing through the limbs.

"All you need to do is surrender!" She stood, staring at him, seeing his lips spread in a smile. "Let go," she said. "Don't you see, you've done it!"

"Have I?" he asked, the face working perfectly, the fine muscles flexing and releasing, the eyes growing narrow as the eyes of any human in their concentration. "You think this is a body? This is a replica! It's a sculpture, a statue. It's nothing, and you know it. You think you can lure me into this shell of minuscule lifeless particles so you can have me at your command? A robot? So that you can destroy me?"

"What are you saying?" She stepped backwards. "I can't help you. I don't know what you want of me."

"Where are you going, my darling?" he asked, eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. "You think you can flee from me? Look at the face of the clock, my beautiful Rowan. You know what I want. It is Christmas Eve, my darling. The witching hour is at hand, Rowan, when Christ was born into this world, when the Word was finally made flesh, and I would be born, too, my beautiful witch, I am done with waiting."

He lunged forward, his right hand locking on her shoulder, the other on her belly, a searing shimmer of warmth penetrating her, sickening her, even as he held her.

"Get away from me!" she whispered. "I can't do it." She called upon her anger and her will, eyes boring into those of the thing in front of her. "You can't make me do what I won't do!" she said. "And you can't do it without me."

"You know what I want and what I have always wanted. No more shells, Rowan, no more coarse illusions. The living flesh inside you. What other flesh in all the world is ready for me, plastic, and adaptable and swarming with millions upon millions of tiny cells which it will not use in its perfection, what other organism has grown to a thousand times its size in the first few weeks of its beginning, and is ready now to unfurl and lengthen and swell as my cells merge with it!"

"Get away from me. Get away from my child! You're a stupid, crazed thing. You won't touch my child! You won't touch me!" She was trembling as if her anger was too great to be contained; she could feel it boiling in her veins. Her feet were wet and slippery on the boards as she backed away, drawing on her anger, struggling to direct it against him.

"Did you think you could trick me, Rowan?" he said in that slow, patient, beautiful voice, his handsome image holding. "With your little performance before Aaron and Michael? Did you think. I couldn't see into the depths of your soul? I made your soul. I chose the genes that went into you. I chose your parents, I chose your ancestors, I bred you, Rowan. I know where flesh and mind meet in you. I know your strength as no one else knows it. And you have always known what I wanted of you. You knew when you read the history. You saw Lemle's fetus slumbering in that little bed of tubes and chemicals. You knew! You knew when you ran from the laboratory what your brilliance and courage could have done even then without me, without the knowledge that I waited for you, that I loved you, that I had the greatest gift to bestow on you. Myself, Rowan. You will help me, or that tiny simmering child will die when I go into it! And that you will never allow."

"God. God help me!" she whispered, her hands moving down over her belly, in a crisscross as if to ward off a blow, eyes fixed on him. Die, you son of a bitch, die!

The hands of the clock made their tiny click as they shifted, the little hand straight up in line with the big hand. And the first chime of the hour sounded.

"Christ is born, Rowan," he cried out, his voice huge as the image of

the man dissolved in a great boiling cloud of darkness, obscuring the clock, rising to the ceiling, turning in on itself like a funnel. She screamed, struggling backwards against the wall. A shock ran through the rafters, through the plaster. She could hear it like the roar of an earthquake.

"No, God, no!" In sheer panic, she screamed. She turned and ran through the parlor door into the hallway. She reached out for the knob of the front door. "God help me. Michael, Aaron!"

Somebody had to hear her screams. They were deafening in her own ears. They were ripping her apart.

But the rumbling grew louder. She felt his invisible hands on her shoulders. She was thrown forward, hard against the door, her hand slipping off the knob as she fell to her knees, pain shooting up her thighs. The darkness was rising all around her, the heat was rising.

"No, not my child, I'll destroy you, with my last breath, I'll destroy you." She turned in one last desperate fury, facing the darkness, spitting at it in hate, willing it to die, as the arms wound around her and dragged her down on the floor.

The back of her head scraped the wood of the door, and then banged against the floorboards, as her legs were wrenched forward. She was staring upwards, struggling to rise, her arms flailing, the darkness bubbling over her.

"Damn you, damn you in hell, Lasher, die. Die like that old woman! Die!" she screamed.

"Yes, Rowan, your child, and Michael's child!"

The voice surrounded her like the darkness and the heat. Her head was forced back again, slammed down again, and her arms pinned, wide and helpless.

"You my mother and Michael my father! It is the witching hour, Rowan. The clock is striking. I will be flesh. I will be born."

The darkness furled again, it coiled in upon itself and it shot downward. It shot into her, raping her, splitting her apart. Like a giant fist it shot upwards inside her womb, and her body convulsed as the pain caught her in a great lashing circle that she could see, shining bright, against her closed eyes.

The heat was unbearable. The pain came again, shock after shock of it, and she could feel the blood gushing out of her, and the water from her womb, gushing onto the floor.

"You've killed it, you damnable evil thing, you've killed my baby, damn you! God help me! God, take it back to hell!" Her hands knocked against the wall, struggled against the slimy wet floor. And the heat sickened her, caught her lungs now as she gasped for breath.