Magic Unborn - Red Moon

Chapter 2

2

“Who are you?” Lorcan asked the woman.

“I am the one you were in love with. She was just a convenient replacement.”

“What?”

“All the time you were looking at me at the riverbank, you think I didn’t know? You were watching me from the bush. You were there for me. Remember? It was me that you wanted. You were going to build me a castle.”

Lorcan stared at the woman for a long moment, then nodded. “It was you, my childhood fantasy. All those years, I was in love with you . . .” Lorcan whispered as he gazed at the woman.

The woman teared up. “You remember?”

“Yes, of course.” He tried to walk toward her but failed. He raised his arms to reach out to her, to embrace her. But his body didn’t cooperate. “I remember,” he said. “Let me hold you again.”

The woman smiled and waved her hand.

Lorcan felt as if a thousand tons of heavy air had been lifted from him. His body and his mind worked again, and the thought that instantly crossed his mind was rage. It gathered inside him. “Never ever call Orla names!” He grunted out the words and glared at the woman, a wave of electric current shooting from his eyes. It struck the woman, lifting her off the ground and throwing her rolling onto the wet grass. “No one can replace her.”

Lorcan charged at the woman, hauling her up. “Who are you, and what do you want from me?” But his hands gripped a pile of clothes. The woman had vanished like smoke. A wedge of icy air hit him from behind. Lorcan fell, rolling on the ground. Behind him stood a woman who looked the same as the woman he’d just attacked—he recognised her eyes—but this time, she was twenty feet tall, and her face was ancient, marked with scars and veins. She raised sharp claws and made a sweeping gesture. Lorcan’s body was swiped off the grass, spun up in the air, and smashed down in the middle of the river like a rag doll.

From beneath the icy water, he saw the woman smirk. Her arm reached out, keeping Lorcan submerged. He knew shooting an electric wave from under the water wasn’t wise. He kicked hard but couldn’t free himself. He was running out of air when the woman started laughing. Lorcan reached for his gun and found it had slipped out and sunk to the bottom of the river.

Then the woman pulled him up to the surface. “You could have lived happily forever after with your b***h Orla out there. Why bring her back and take what’s mine?”

Lorcan gasped for air. “I came back to visit my family. It has nothing to do with Orla. She doesn’t care what’s yours.”

The woman let out a demonic laugh. “You fool. You think she follows you back here for love? Do you know who she is? Do you know what she would become in two weeks?” The woman dunked him in the water and pulled him back up again.

“I know who she is . . .” He gasped for more air.

“You know nothing. In two weeks, I will get what I want. If only she hadn’t shown her face.”

“I’ll take her out of here. There’s nothing here that we want.”

“It’s too late. They’ll never let her leave this time.” She brushed her bony fingers across his face. “What a pity! I thought I could have a taste of you. See what all the fuss was about. See what it’s like to have the man she’d left everything for.”

“She didn’t leave here because of me. She left because she didn’t want to be surrounded by people like you.”

The woman laughed. “She will have to live with it now. Or should I say, die with it now!”

“If you want to kill me, do it. She wouldn’t have come back if not for me.”

“You’d die for her. How sweet! Let’s do it.”

Lorcan tried to yank her hands from around his neck, but they were clenched as tight as a vice.

“Were you really the girl at the riverbank?”

“You can’t play the same trick on me twice, Lorcan. But yes, I was.” Then she plunged his head under the water again. This time, it was for a very long time. He struggled for a while, and then he let go. He let his mind and his body flow free with the current. He hung on to nothing.

She pulled him up again. “She thinks she’s protected here. Big mistake. She’ll die painfully. And you’ll have to help me to do that . . .”

Lorcan opened his eyes and shot the electric wave at the woman as soon as she lifted him out of the water. She screamed and released him. He swam to the riverbank while the woman burned like a torch.

As soon as he hit the riverbank, he ran as fast as he could. The woman whirled around and swung her arms. A wedge of icy air rushed over her, and the fire died out. Lorcan charged ahead. A few more feet and he would reach the bush and find a place to hide. But the woman clawed at him from behind with arms that had stretched out at him like two snakes. Blood spurted from his back as he fell to the ground. The woman flipped him around. She’s going to gut me, Lorcan thought.

“I’ll skin you and show whatever’s left of you to the b***h Orla. See if she can handle this. See if she bursts into flame. No one is going to take what’s mine.”

The woman raised her talons. Lorcan used what energy he had left to shoot out the electric currents, but they died out like pitiful sparks before they reached her. Her claws came at him menacingly.

Suddenly the haunting sound of a lullaby wafted out from the other side of the bush. It was his mother’s lullaby.

The woman screamed, “No!”

The song hovered in the air, and the soothing melody kept coming. The woman yelled again, “No! Stop!” She covered her ears with her hands and spun around. But it didn’t seem to help. Her body burst into flames again. This time, the fire was stronger and harsher. She raced into the woods, her haunting moans trailing behind her as she ran.

The bush returned to its eerie quietness. Lorcan thought he heard the woods sigh. Blood poured from the wound from his back and weakened him by the second. He needed to pass out in order to heal his wounds, but it wasn’t wise to do it here. If wild animals, creatures from hell, or that mysterious woman came back while he was lying somewhere in a ditch shivering from fever, it would be the end of him.

He pulled himself up to his feet and darted in the direction of the place he had once called home. Trees and the darkness surrounded him, disorienting him. He kept running, and the pounding of his heart cause even more blood to gush from his wounds. He had run this very route with his mother once when he was six. He had killed for the very first time here to protect his mother. He couldn’t see much, but the haunting lullaby guided him. He followed the song. The music floated on the wind, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

He didn’t mean to throw a tantrum whenever his mother sang this lullaby. He actually enjoyed it, but he thought a boy shouldn’t like a lullaby. Or at least so he thought when he was six. She had stopped singing it for a long time. So many things had happened between that time and now, and he had stopped talking to his mother. The words of the lullaby came to mind, and suddenly he began to mumble the lyrics under its breath. The song of a little lost boy finding his way home.

He hadn’t been a little boy when he’d left. He hadn’t been lost. He loved his parents, and he knew he had their unconditional love. But something in him told him that he didn’t belong in the peaceful Irish countryside. And then he’d found Orla. It was like finding his other half. And he knew then where his life was meant to be.

It was Orla who stood between him and his parents. He had never told her he’d chosen her over his family because it was a wound that had never healed in his soul, and there was no point in her carrying the baggage.

But now it seemed he had lost from both ends.

Just before the last drop of energy drained out of him, he saw the gate of his family’s mansion. The door swung open before he reached it, and once inside, he fell into the arms of his parents and his sister.

He had made it home.