Initium (Nocte Trilogy #2.5)(11)

“There is no such thing as fate,” I tell her. “Your stories aren’t real, mother. The only thing that is real is us. Our babies, our lives. We determine what is real.”

She looks at me blackly and mutters under her breath. “You don’t even know what is real anymore, Olivia. That is the problem.”

I have to agree, but I don’t say it aloud. I don’t know what’s real anymore.

It’s this place.

It’s Whitley.

Or it’s my pregnancy.

Or it’s England.

Or it’s the air.

Or it’s my dreams.

I don’t know what it is. But I do know that my mind is deteriorating, and I’m floating, and the insanity is the sea, and I’m cast away in it, all alone and floating and sinking.

“I will not sink,” I tell myself as I wash my face, and as I do, my belly twinges and the pain is real. If nothing else is, the pain is.

The pain is.

The pain is.

I almost revel in it, and I do sink to my knees and experience it, focusing on it as it contracts to and fro, from my spine to my chest.

I moan, I keen, I float.

I hold my belly in my arms and sing to it.

I cry and rock,

I sigh and sink into the floor,

My cheek pressed against the stone.

The pain wracks me, it takes me, it breaks me.

I see the black beings, and they are circled around me, waiting Waiting

Waiting.

“No,” I screech, and I fling my arms far and wide. “No. You can’t have my baby and you can’t have me.”

They smile though, with fangs and blood, and I close my eyes, floating on my pain. Phillip is here now and he holds my hand and sings to me, his voice humming in my ear and it’s wordless and tuneless and he smells like the moon.

“Save me,” I tell him, I beg.

His eyes are black and soft, glistening like dark pearls and I want to stroke him.

“Save me, and I’ll save you,” he says and his hands are on my back, rubbing rubbing rubbing.

“Save our baby,” I beg and his words are confusing. “Whatever it takes.”

He stares at me, and his stare is sharp and jarring. “Whatever it takes?”

“Yes,” I scream as another pain wracks me, and rips me apart. “Yes.”

Phillip rocks me and rocks me and my mother comes and she blends in and out with the night, with reality, with my pain.

“We have to pay for the sins of our fathers,” she murmurs, and it’s something she’s told me many times before. “Think, Olivia. Think.”

But the pain,

The pain.

It dulls my thoughts, and all I can think of is it. The pain.

“Think,” she urges me again. “Who did the great Salome marry, Liv? You know this. Think on it. Think on it.”

The black seeps in from my eyelids and it turns red, and the words form in my mind, but I can’t read them, I can’t read them. I try and try.

I focus

And focus.

“Phillip,” I finally manage. “Salome married a Phillip.”

My mother sits back, satisfied. “Yes. She married a Phillip. Her uncle Phillip.”

I’m astounded and my pain ebbs and I can think for a moment.

“Not my Phillip,” I tell her. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” she asks. “Sons must pay for the sins of their fathers.”

The pain returns and I can’t think anymore, and all thoughts drift away. Phillip comes back, and he murmurs in my ear.

“My love, my Salome. It will be over soon.”

“I’m not Salome,” I tell him, and his eyes glimmer and shine. “I’m not Salome.”

“Aren’t you?” he asks simply and I clutch my stomach and it’s time, it’s time, it’s time. The pressure is too much to bear and my legs part and my stomach contracts contracts contracts.

I scream

And scream, and push

And push.

I feel my baby coming

Coming

Coming.

It claws its way into the world, sliding into the light, and I push it push it push it.

He cries a great sob when he enters this life, and I cry because he’s here, because I did it, because I don’t know what will happen now.

He lays on my breast and he looks up at me, and he’s bloody and red and his eyes are black black black as night.

Black as Phillip’s.

Phillip looks up at me, his hand on his baby’s breast, and he smiles.

“My Salome,” he croons, and the world goes black, because the pain

the pain

the pain broke me.





Chapter Nine





Once in a far away land and time, a man, Judas Iscariot, a betrayer of all men, dwelled. Judas had a friend, the savior of the world, and he betrayed the Savior with a kiss for a mere handful of silver. Thirty simple pieces was all it took for him to betray mankind. Guilt overcame Judas, and he killed himself, but not before his infamous betrayal.

Salome located one of the silver pieces and had it made into a ring, to symbolize her power to sway men, her power to do whatever she pleased, her power to even control death. She wore that ring until she died, and then it was passed to her son, and his son, and his son, and so on.