Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(66)

Yeah, I still wasn’t all that sure how I felt about this enhanced ability of his. I’d only just become comfortable with the old ability. “How many others besides you are going to be transmutated?”

He slowed the car to turn into a small, unmarked road that I never would’ve spotted on my own. Bordered by beach cottages on one side, it wound along the side of the cliffs toward the ocean. “There are only thirteen of us in the club who can shift.”

“Does that make you one of the higher-ups?” I asked with a nervous smile.

An elongated strip of light from an oncoming car briefly lit up his face. His shoulders lifted slowly, then fell. “My father and his best friend started the Hellfire Club before I was born. Club rules strictly limit the number of members who can join the higher ranks and undergo the transmutation spell. Only thirteen knights at their Round Table, I guess you could say. They keep those thirteen seats filled, so the only way to get a seat is when a member either dies or is kicked out. That’s how I got mine—someone died.”

“What about Yvonne?”

“Same thing. The seats are highly prized, and there’s a long waiting list for them. Being the son of one of the founders moved me to the top of the list, and I pulled rank to get Yvonne inducted. On hindsight, that was a mistake.”

From the little he’d shared about her, I’d have to agree.

The road split. To the left were more beach cottages. To the right, a Dead End sign posted above a larger No Trespassing/Private Property sign. We turned right. The road dipped down and opened up into a large parking lot filled with cars. Lon drove to the front and parked in a space marked with the number 9; except for spaces 1 and 3, the remainder of the thirteen numbered parking spaces were already occupied.

Lon turned off the engine and sighed, slouching forward.

“Are you okay?”

He took the keys out of the engine and handed them to me. “Take these. If something happens, and you want to leave … I just don’t want you to be stuck. There’s only one taxi company in La Sirena and they won’t come out here.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me.”

He curved his hand around the parking brake. “Let’s just talk to Spooner about the talon and get out of there.”

I couldn’t agree more. I stashed my clutch in the glove compartment and exited the car. After setting the alarm, I stuck his keys in a small, hidden pocket in the side seam of my dress.

It was after 9:30 when we walked out of the parking lot through an arch cut into a sculpted wall of shrubbery, and down a stone sidewalk bordered with gas torches. The wind whipped off the ocean and cut right through my dress. It had to be ten degrees warmer inland in Morella than out here by the water. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the chill.

The beach narrowed and we continued walking through another archway, this time carved into a stone wall, and emerged into a circular patch of beach. A large bonfire burned in the middle. The sidewalk looped around in back of the bonfire and led to a grand set of dilapidated stairs that headed straight into the rocky cliff.

“A cave?” I murmured.

“A network of caves.”

At the top of the short set of stairs, I tapped my shoes to knock off sand that was clinging to my heels. We stood in front of a large set of thick wooden doors, each with a small round window covered by crosshatched iron bars.

Lon’s hands covered my shoulders. He rotated me around to face him and, without warning, kissed me. It was close-mouthed and insistent, much different from the way he’d kissed me before, and during the last second, it got strange.

Something had changed. His lips were on mine, but he wasn’t really kissing me anymore. I wanted to pull away, but I just … couldn’t. The air shuddered and a rush of crazy energy rushed around me like an army of a thousand soldiers galloping past. Then he released me with a disarming groan. I inhaled sharply.

When I opened my eyes, words left me. I stumbled backward in shock, mouth gaping open. He had transmutated.

It was still Lon. He’d hadn’t grown extra arms or a tail. But he’d changed. Drastically.

His eyes were different. They were more intense. Harder.

His halo had altered from a solid, steady glow around his head into a crown of dancing flames. The green was nearly gone, and the speckled gold moved and flickered, growing and shrinking. It formed an aureole of fiery light that flamed higher in the center and draped around his shoulders. The golden fire was almond shaped, like the halos of Tibetan and Persian deities that I’d seen in dozens of paintings and sculptures.

As dazzling as this was, it paled in comparison to the most radical alteration in his appearance. Just above his hair-line, two thick, spiraling horns jutted out from his head and looped backward over his ears. They were auburn brown, with the satiny finish of a fingernail, and ringed with ridges. Each horn was nearly a foot in diameter.

Transfixed, I blinked, both awed and frightened at the same time. I’d summoned demons from the Æthyr that looked similar to him—with the addition of a few scales or wings or hairy body parts—but they were always safely enclosed inside a binding triangle. To see something like that standing in front of me … to see Lon like that … It was intimidating, and, at the same time, astounding. I didn’t realize that I was clutching my hands together in front of my chest until he gently pried them away. My fingers were cramped, knuckles white.