The Mortal Heart(14)

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.”