Legends of Astræa: Cupid's Arrow Book 1 (Legends of Astræa Series) Read online

  “I will bring you here to watch fireworks as many times as you’d like and have as many pretty dresses as you want,” he said.

  I would bet anything that he was making a supreme effort to convince me. I sighed. It all sounded perfect, wondrous. I just couldn’t get to jump and cry in excitement for the new-found happiness. Actually, I didn’t think I could experience that either—happiness.

  “Really?” I asked him, skeptical.

  “Sweet pea, you still don’t believe me, do you?” He arched his brow with a mischievous smirk for me. It was too good to be real.

  Why didn’t I believe one single word? When had I become this coldhearted, distrustful being? Ah—Mother Clarisse had warned me. Trust no one.

  I watched the dancers with pathological attention as they rotated in rhythm with the orchestral music playing the dark piece. The lullaby, that music, and darkness. I had lost my fight against darkness because of that blasted lullaby. It was wrong. And Ash had something to do with it. I couldn’t argue with my cold logic.

  “Those puritan nuns deserve not the world you will change. They deserve nothing, my sweet, sweet beautiful girl.” He had smartly changed his strategy. “You need my protection,” Ash said, trying to hold me in his arms again, but I jerked away from him. Without the baggage that emotions were, I was able to see clearer than I had ever seen before.

  His protection?

  Where was he when Mother Clarisse was crushed to death? She died protecting me, I realized that very moment. He was supposed to be my guardian angel, wasn’t he? I looked at him, really looked at him for the first time.

  He was beautiful.

  His otherworldly, golden luminescence showered the place. “Beautiful” was one of Mother Clarisse’s last words. I looked at the conservatory, at the glass in my hand, and my dress—all of it. A wonderful illusion. Then suddenly, I realized the Devil had been tempting me after all. He had in fact duped me, and for a while, I wanted to believe him.

  “Ash, you lied to me, why?”

  “We will have a grandiose birthday party in your honor with fireworks and pretty dresses for you, my sweet girl,” he continued to say. He wasn’t listening, or better put, he was ignoring my realization. “All you have to do is leave that horrible school and leave the rest to me.”

  “You killed Mother Clarisse…” The words came in a whisper. The glass of champagne slid from my hand, shattering into a million pieces on the floor. Music stopped.

  Abruptly, everything went dark again. The conservatory, the fireworks, the dress, the candles, and the lovely flowers were all gone. There was nothing left, except frigid cold air and dire dark gray around us.

  Apparently, my eyes had adjusted to the blackness, because I could see my ugly uniform and Ash, who for the very first time showed his real self to me—if that was even possible to say about someone as evil as him. He had no golden crystal eyes, no gold wings or talons, nor radiance, nor beauty. He stood there, covered with a deep red cloak that evoked the color of blood and a solid gold mask that covered his deceiving evil face completely. I could just see his dark, flat, black-like-onyx eyes which gave him away under the gold mask. He was angry—very angry. Things had not gone his way. Ha, we had that in common.

  Ironically, all I could feel was hate. I hated him. He had killed the one person that loved me. The numbness in my soul felt a force ripple from deep within in my core. The icy darkness that coated my soul fissured slowly. My gut insisted on it. Revenge. Then the fissure cracked into thousands of pieces and began to fall off. I watched them one by one at first, falling apart into dozens of pieces at a time.

  I could feel my hurt and a mixture of awe, anger, and fear. It was terrible, but I could feel again. It was Ash who was Mother Clarisse’s murderer. Anger.

  The impairment was no longer an encroachment. I could feel, and it was ravaging and direful. I realized then how much hurt I carried with me. I wanted to fall on my knees, dizzy with the profound understanding of damnation. But I gathered my will power and stood there, inactive but no longer insensible, glaring at him. I felt the worst type of hatred one could ever feel.

  ASH HAD KILLED HER.

  “Sweet pea—”

  My eyes dared him coldly.

  “I am the soul of darkness,” he said, as if that was his grandiose explanation or his petty excuse to murder.

  A dark mood set in, a deep desire of the different ways I imagined carrying out my vendetta against him. I could make Ash suffer, just like he made Mother Clarisse suffer. I imagined him crushed, then I thought it too easy for him. No, I wanted him to suffer long ways before he died. Terrible icy hatred flooded my being. Before destroying him, I wanted to humiliate him. I grinned at my fantasies and tilted my face before speaking.

  “You will not get away with this. I will find a way to kill you.” I used my most scathing tone possible. His cloak and mask became still. After that tense moment, it was hard to say what kind of reaction that was.

  “You will… what?” His voice pitched high in wonder as he hugged himself tight and broke into a cruel laughter. Then he was slapping his knees.

  I blew air from my nostrils and glared at him.

  “She thinks… that she can—what?” he repeated, spurring into more uncontained laughter.

  “I promise I will leave as soon as I can. And when I do, I will avenge Mother Clarisse.” It was an oath to myself.

  He shut off and sobered up. “That… isn’t soon enough, sweet pea.” He held my face to him with his gold talon-like fingernail, sending shivers through me like icicle shards and curdling the blood in my veins. “But when the day comes, you will know real terror,” he promised.

  /My reaction was instinctive. Power surged through me, electricity flowed through me, and I blustered it toward him. Amazingly enough, I felt better than I had in years.

  Coward. He vanished before it did anything to him.

  Alone in the silent dark, a willing host to all my unimaginable fears. At least it was not the kind of utter blackness that swallowed a person whole. It was instead a shadowy world, painted in grayscale, that suddenly surrounded me where just silent emptiness should have been.

  My glance caught a shadow’s movement within the darkness. I heard a chilling chuckle that sounded more like scratching on a chalkboard. I wanted to look. I almost needed to look. To see what sort of things were hidden in the dark. What sort of evil could conjure images of death and suffering in mirth. But something told me not to. That whatever was in the dark surrounding me and enclosing over me was better left unacknowledged. I didn’t like this dark limbo… too dark and not empty.

  TOO EVIL.

  Dark silhouettes rose from the murky depths of the pitch-black vicinity. Shadows. Many of them.

  One of them was closer than the rest. He was a creature of fractured light. Its edges randomly changed or stretched its shape like smoke and rotting flesh as it tried to form a body. I watched his eyes, horror stricken. They were like a piece of a pitch night, like someone had cut carefully and carved and peeled his eyes away, leaving a black void behind. I felt drawn to it. Swallowed by it.

  I wanted to scream, but these shadowed things seemed to have stolen my voice. I couldn’t speak nor move. I was not just stiffened with fright, I had been paralyzed.

  A skeletal hand, picked the diffused glow emanating from within me right out of me. It was pale green, bright though, like new spring growth. I watched him lick with his black, forked tongue, his hand covered with my luminescence as if it were honey. An instinctual understanding took over. This was my soul, or whatever was left after my encounter with Ash, and this disgusting creature was feasting on it. I gaped at it.

  The dark wound around me, and many other shadow monsters joined him. Except some of them had their amorphous jaws open as they feasted on my soul, pulling handfuls of it against my will. Others salivated, fighting for the right to take my light with their claws until they nearly wrapped my body. My mind was blank from the fear of it, mostly from them
swallowing my racing thoughts, coating my soul with black ice as they fed on me. I longed to forget and not feel my loss. The hurt or the pain.

  My soul divided in this fight.

  Part of me wanted this cold and consuming darkness…

  Chapter 12

  The other part didn’t.

  However, the battle within was an impossible vertical uphill wall. And I was losing the battle. The monsters’ jaws continued to chew the light emanating from my body. They looked like sharks launching against each other to win a piece of the prize. Me. It left me without a speck of hope, thought, or fire to fight them. I gave up for a microsecond.

  If you lose your faith, pray. Out of nowhere, Mother Clarisse’s words came like a whisper. Except, I didn’t remember how anymore. But I remembered how much I loved her and how much she loved me. How much I missed her.

  Unexpectedly, my mind became clear enough from my utter hatred for Ash. I had no desire for my very soul to be downtrodden and subjugated by this dreadful darkness. I knew then I could feel something other than hatred for Ash, who’d killed her. A squeaky whelp from one of the monsters gave me indication that I was on the right track. I fought the retaliation that I wanted against him—that I deserved. Instead, I held onto that love I had for her.

  Love. My luminescence glowed brighter with a glitter of silver.

  The monsters instantly forced back, repulsed and repelled by the glitter. However, I was still in that shadowy, murky world, and I didn’t know how to return to my body. The one not frozen in black ice. And I was going to die trying, because that is how it felt, crawling out of my dark abyss, no windows or doors to speak about.

  The seducing power that had escalated to be a tyrant within me, had to be abolished, or I was going to lose more than just a battle.

  I was about to lose my soul.

  The little reason and logic I had left stepped in. I was supposed to feel hurt for a reason, not suppress it.

  I looked for the most amazing and most terrible moments of my life. They played like an old bad movie. Gavril and I playing twister inside my little room. I remembered bringing a plate of meatballs and spaghetti to him on one of the coldest nights on record and the first time he uttered curses in front of me when he saw I had one single old blanket and we were under subzero temperatures, so he slept like a thick blanket of wolf fur to keep me from chattering all night. I had given my blankets to Sister Joana who was not feeling well that week. I remembered how Mother Clarisse knitted my red sweater while she made me read poetry to her on Saturdays. I felt grateful for those memories and how much I loved her.

  The rising pain from the memory of how I held her in my arms in her last moments before she died almost felt like a choking death in itself. I remembered the funeral, the Sisters’ scorn, Tiffany’s mockery, Gavril not helping me, and lastly knowing I was so freakish, my parents had abandoned me.

  Time reinitiated its unfair march. The full scale of emotional engagement returned—the choking hurt of knowing I was rejected, unloved, even feared by everyone in my world. And so did all my senses return under stressful attack—light, noise, the acrid smell of human fear.

  A scream split the air like a brutal fork of lighting, a long, desperate horror scream.

  Mine, my mind told me.

  My body collapsed on the floor. Everyone screamed, then there was blessed silence—a different kind of silence. It was the type where the rustle of feet and clothes and whispers in the dark weren’t as dreadful as when Ash had taken my soul captive.

  The fluctuating voltage of the dangling light bulbs above sourced disruptive electrical jolts. They dimmed rapidly and cast a crepuscular glow within the room before the lights went out inside the music hall.

  It could have been ages or seconds I stayed there quiescent with my trance-like gaze fixed on the vaulted ceiling as I broke away from inside my own deafening silence.

  Little by little, my mind allowed me to come back. It was nice to be back, even when my emotional hurt was no small thing to bear.

  My emotions were a storm inside of me, but it was a triumph that broke through the hot rush of shame that overwhelmed me. I felt tears begin to form in my eyes. I had lost control. I had let darkness take over. Mother Clarisse would have been disappointed. I hated myself so much more. I laid there feeling very regretful of my actions.

  “Is she dead?” Mr. Pratt’s voice broke a little. Well, a lot. He was pretty much freaked out. His voice felt outside my own self-contained box, far away. He kept a safe distance. Poor Mr. Pratt. I didn’t think he would ever recover from this. I felt sick to my stomach. I had scared the poor old man, someone who had been unfailingly kind to me.

  I blinked my tears away—a sign I was still alive.

  “Pray those demons be not the cause of another death.” How many more times was Sister Magdalene going to inculpate me for the death of Mother Clarisse?

  Of course, terrible guilt and shame filled me. I might not have physically caused her death, but Ash had murdered her because of me, because of my nightmares. I knew that much for sure. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been such a baby and hadn’t run to her for support after a nightmare, maybe she’d still be alive. I would have gladly exchanged places with Mother Clarisse. I would give up far more than that to be rid of the feeling that I was evil, possessed, and dangerous to the ones I loved the most.

  Sister Agatha stood behind me, wearing her usual mixture of contempt and disapproval on her face like Agatha Trunchbull, or “Sister Trunchbull” as the other girls had nicknamed her after the fictional movie character that looked like a ..Second World War Nazi warden. I closed my eyes for an instant, waiting for the inevitable—a punishment of some sort.

  “God forgive me for ever doubting you, Sisters. You were right. This poor child visibly needs our help,” Mother Superior said. I couldn’t see her. I knew she was looming somewhere behind my head. I could hear everyone’s voices, still distant but clear. I continued to fight the cold numbness in my body, refusing to think what measures Mother Superior was going to take now. When I opened my eyes again, the sight of Mother Superior and the Sisters became a blur of black and white shapes.

  “I’ve never heard of anyone glowing during a possession,” Tricia said, poking me with her bow. That is when my gaze reacted and traveled the length of me. My body glowed with luminescent electrical tendrils that danced up and down my arms. The light in the music hall was coming solely from my body.

  She was right. So far, I’ve never found documented evidence on anything I researched pertaining to such possessions or evil spirits. I had even looked into the dark arts without the knowledge of anyone at St. Mary’s just to find I had nothing I could relate to, nothing that would say where I came from or if I qualified as evil. Until now. Ash had just proven me wrong. He had taken my soul captive for a brief moment, and I had just proven everyone right. Evil was stalking me. No wonder no one wanted to assist me. They were afraid of touching me. I didn’t blame them.

  “Her eyes look very spooky,” Simone said. Her perfect nose hovered above my unresponsive body.

  “They look like quicksilver,” Tricia said. Great, just like the color of the effin swirling tattoos on my arm. Silently, I prayed my eyes would go back to my “freaky blue” color, as I heard Tiffany call them several times. Speaking of the devil, I heard Tiffany join the stage.

  “Horrible weirdo music,” she said, standing right next to Simone. Tiffany and the rest of the girls’ initial fear had quickly been replaced by their usual mocking despise.

  “Maybe she is an alien from another galaxy.” Leave it to Tricia and her sci-fi imagination. God, if I wasn’t so wrapped up in my own self-control, probably that alone would have had me in giggles.

  “Right.” Simone snorted at the idea, causing Lisa to say something.

  “She is probably having conniptions from the poorly performed music.” Lisa glared back at Simone, surely not realizing that poor Tricia was also implicated for being musically challenged. I was surprised
Lisa was standing up for Tricia. Sort of.

  Far in the distance, a wolf howled louder. I could just think of one wolf that would howl during daylight at a moment like this. Gavril. He sounded very sad, a sad lament—one meant for me alone.

  “Is that a wolf?” Tricia asked Lisa.

  Mr. Pratt cleared his voice. “It certainly sounds like a wolf.” Mr. Pratt’s voice quivered slightly as he agreed with Tricia. I was still on the floor, but at least I wasn’t as numb as before. My fingers moved a little at my will.

  “I didn’t know there were wolves on the island.” Simone’s voice was filled with apprehension. Not to anyone’s knowledge. The island had been free of wolves and bears for a long time. Gavril would come with his brother to deliver necessary groceries for the convent. Sometimes Gavril would stay up to a couple weeks on the island without the Sisters’ knowledge.

  The music hall was getting more and more somber, and for a moment I thought I was returning to the horrible darkness. I felt grateful when I could see Tiffany peeking from behind Sister Magdalene. My body’s greenish, odd luminesce was fading, but no one lifted me up from the floor. Mr. Tarbelli kneeled next to me, waiting patiently until it had gone away.

  “Miss Ailie, can you hear me?” He grabbed my left hand, unafraid of the unnatural light emanating from me, unlike everyone else that acted as if I was radioactive.

  I blinked back at him, since I was unable to speak or nod back at him. I was just not yet myself. I felt tears streaming on my face. Sister Greta, our head nurse, showed up with a gas lamp a moment later, illuminating the room. I guess this gave the Sisters the opportunity to say more.

  “I hope your tears are of repentance for all the evil you have caused.” Sister Agatha’s words were filled with utter scorn.

  Tiffany croaked her disgust, and her clique gasped at Sister Agatha’s words. I wished I could scream that those tears were of gratefulness. I had somehow survived the dark side. I had saved my soul from evil, from Ash. And my terrible sin had been my own anger, but I hadn’t hurt anyone.