Marked Anguish: CURSED, #3

By T.L. Manning

Hunted by the Vamphume, and the angry souls of those killed due to the curse. Delilah and her family are forced to use dark magic to survive.

Dark magic comes with a higher price, and the Grace women are about to find out you can't dabble in something you know nothing about without a loss. 

Waking up next to her Mother, Delilah must decide what is real, and what never was all along. In a race against the mortal clock, the Grace women each find themselves again. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.L. Manning
• Release date: Mar 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507045152

Book preview

Other works by

T.L. Manning

Cursed Series

1. Precious Anathema

2. Shadow Bane

Sea No Evil

Collection of four Novellas

1. Red Sky at Night

2. Wolf Moon’s Blue Hour

3. Black Haze over Aurora

4. Silver Laced Nightmares

The Night (1-4)

This Book is for

Everyone who ever had a dream someone

Laughed at.

For the Dreamers, the lovers, and the

Orange among the grey.

*

E and G

My reason for dreaming.

"This is no fairytale,

I can’t even call it a nightmare because at least those you can Wake from.

No,

This is darker than a nightmare; with the occasional fairy song, Or stolen kiss.

Yes maybe you made it through the other two books without a Sleepless night,

But consider this the only warning you will get from me.

This is as real as it gets,

This author is a nut to keep putting us through all of this,

And I want out!"

- Lukin

Ella...

Lukin no!

I thought I felt his hand grab my arm as I opened my eyes in my old room. My pictures were right where they were left, my old quilt lay across me. I blinked as second by second I was forgetting Freya, Emma, Selene, Xander, Eris, and even Lukin. By the time I heard her voice, it was as if I had never been without it.

Ella, honey, it’s Mom you need your medicine. Can I come in? I looked at my arm, needles and tubes everywhere.

I was sick, I was really sick. I looked at the bags of medicine being poured into me, and was suddenly cursed with all my old memories.

I had cancer, I was going to die,

And everything else

Was a dream...

CHAPTER ONE

Lukin

––––––––

Opening my eyes I heard horns blowing, and a large crowd had formed around me. I remembered everything: the spell, the chants, and grabbing Ella to pull her back. I had no time to think because I was pulled in instead. I thought that the spell was supposed to wipe my memory.  Maybe because I had not been chanting it didn’t work. I stood up from the middle of the road knowing that I had to run. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew where I wasn’t. I had to find her. I had to make this right and I wouldn’t stop until I did. I ran to the first person I saw.  I must have looked insane as I grabbed his arm, desperation dripping from my mouth.

Please tell me where I am, Sir. He looked me up and down and shook his head.

You are in Boston, now go find a hospital and get some help. He handed me a twenty dollar bill and walked away. Standing alone, I grasped at the money and decided the first thing I had to do was get my ass to the estate. I only hoped that she would find her way back to me.

So many lights and sounds around me, I had never seen anything like it before. I could only think of getting to Maine when I felt a pain in my chest. I sat down and tried to catch my breath. When I came back to this day I came back without magic, without the ageless hell, and every minute I spent away from the estate would age me. If I were not careful I would be dead before I stepped foot on the grounds of the estate. I must have sat in place for a half hour trying to decide what my next move would be when I looked up and saw the date on a large clock across the street. I had gone back almost a whole year. That meant that Ella was back home so hopefully she didn’t have her memory erased like Emma hoped for and we would both be on our way to the same place. I had to get out of the city and twenty dollars wouldn’t get me far, but a bus would get me closer. I started asking around and discovered I was within two blocks from the bus station.

I have twenty dollars, and need to go north, how far will this get me? The woman behind the counter smiled at me and typed something into her computer.

If you have seven more dollars, you could get to Portland, Maine. Do you have seven more dollars? I rolled my eyes, if I had seven dollars more I would have told her. I felt a tap on my shoulder and as I turned I felt my knees buckle. I knew who she was before she spoke, her perfect long hair, the way her eyes sparkled like the ocean, and that smile no mortal could forget, but the blank look on her face made everything clear. I was the only one who remembered anything.

I have seven dollars, I am going to Maine as well. You can repay me by doing something nice for someone else in honor of Temperance. I smiled and accepted the money, knowing that ultimately we would end up in the same place, but right now she didn’t know why she was being drawn to this place. As I held my ticket, I couldn’t help but stare at the beauty that sat across from me. So many questions came to mind: how could she have been affected by this spell, didn’t they all have power over us, power that made our own seem tiny by comparison?

One ticket to Portland, please. His voice made me cold inside, I looked up and felt my heart begin to race. I knew that voice. I had only heard it twice but that was enough. Balthazar was being drawn back to the estate as well. None of this made any sense to me. I could understand almost Tempest being here because she was on the same plain when the spell was cast, but if Balthazar was standing before me that could only mean that he was also on the grounds of the estate at the time, and that the angry souls Emma had killed were not the demons we were really running from at all. Emma knew, she had to know that the Vamphume were close to taking us all out, including her. Everything was making sense to me now, and as Balthazar sat next to me it was clear he had no memory of the past months either. The real question here was whether or not he still carried the Vamphume inside him or not. These two opposing sides, sitting directly across from one another made my hands damp with anxious energy. They kept looking at one another and shifting in their chairs. I could almost see Tempests’ hair stand on end every time they made eye contact, until a loud voice called our bus number. Once we were on the grounds everything could change, they could get all their memories back and kill us, or stay in the dark and give us time. I wasn’t sure I liked either outcome. I had this chance. I was going to friend them both and try with everything I had to form a bond that even their memories couldn’t fight.

I was one of the last people on the bus, and as I stepped on I realized that I had spent so much time focused on the two of them. I hadn’t seen what was right in front of me. Each seat was occupied by someone I recognized, all going to the same place, all without memory or cause as to why they had to go there. Good and evil shared seats with one another. Once sworn enemies chatted between seats, and as I sat beside Balthazar in the only open spot I took a deep breath. I had four hours to make this plan a reality. I had four hours to combine these forces, and unite them in the grey. There was no black and white anymore. One person seemed to be unaccountable though, walking up and down the aisle I recognized many immortals, but Xander was nowhere to be seen. This could only mean one thing, and the sooner my feet touched the grounds of the estate the better for all of us. I sat in my seat, anxious and afraid as my eyes closed, taking me back to the day that started round three with Emma.

*

It had been two weeks since we had left that horrible place behind and the monsters that lived inside it. Ella only left her room to glare at us on occasion, and once Eris thought she heard her hiss at us in the kitchen. She had not spoken a word since the field, kept her blinds closed from the light, and wore Xander’s old ratty T-shirt day in and day out. The air was becoming crisper in the mornings, signaling the first signs of fall, and as I saw my first red leaf I wondered how long she could keep this going.

Freya couldn’t take it and left early this morning in search of help.  I heard her in the study buying a round trip ticket to Louisiana and two one way tickets back for others. I had no idea they had family in the south, I hoped it was family anyway the last thing this bloody house needed was another dynamic messing everything up. Between the witches, the fairies, Eris the pixie, and of course the apparent pirate I had taken on, we were a hot mess in this house.

Tempest, Eris and Gwain had taken over the guest house. Ailen had taken Israel to the family camp in the north to help him deal with the loss of Xander and now that Freya had left it was just the aunts and I roaming the halls today. I found myself walking by her door a lot more as the days went on. Yesterday I tried to slip a note to her, but the flames from the fireplace lit up under her door a little too quickly for me to think she read it.  I would leave food and drinks for her outside the entrance at night but every morning I would wake and find them untouched. Eris had been teaching me everything she could about my new powers, like myself she had not changed back yet. We were quite a pair, a fairy witch and a pirate wizard wandering the field in the afternoon for my lesson. So far I had managed to set a patch of the field on fire, electrocuted poor Eris, and even made a seagull poop on my head, but that one could have been a coincidence. A streak of blue ran by me and I knew it had to be that time again.

Lukin are you coming? Eris was full of energy these days as she bounced through the parlor out the door for today’s lesson. I walked to the door and turned around to look up the stairs in case she was hiding just beyond the landing, I never wanted her to feel alone.

I won’t be long Poppet. Closing the door, one thing was becoming clearer to me. I had loved one woman for decades after I lost her, and as long as I lived Ella would be the only other woman I would ever love, even if she never loved me again because of what I had done.

You know what I am going to say, don’t you? Eris was standing with her arms crossed looking at me like a lost puppy.

Stop it alright! I know I could tell her the truth but what good would that do anyone else? She can direct her anger at me forever and I can live with it, but I would hate myself if she ever blamed you or the rest of the bloody freaking family. She put an arm around me and we began to walk to the open field.

You know that you are a huge part of this freaking family now right? She squeezed my shoulders and then fell to the ground and began rolling down the small hill that overlooked the great tree. Every day I had my lesson here and every day I wondered what it would take to open that back up and steal Xander back, even if he took everything from me, killed me, and laughed as I died.  I couldn’t help but wonder if that would make her happy.

I sat down in the tall grass next to where Eris had stopped rolling and as she caught her breath she pointed to the estate.

My mom says that when they were kids Freya wouldn’t allow them to come out here. She talked about a little girl that moved in nearby and seemed nice but was pure evil. My mom thinks that is why Freya still spends so much time inside. No one knows who the little girl was, but she did something horrible to Freya, so keep an eye out and let me know if you spot any sweet little girls around. She laughed as I pointed at her.

Found one! Eris and I had fun together, she was becoming more and more like a little sister, and since I had complete respect for her sexuality we didn’t have to worry about ever getting too close to one another.

Lukin do you think that Ella will ever recover from this? I sighed and looked at the clouds in the sky, thinking to myself that she may not but knowing that wasn’t what I had to say.

I think she is suffering a pain that we can’t understand, and someday it will make her stronger but for now it needs to make her weak so that she can feel that pain. It may not be today or even next week but she will come out stronger than ever before, that’s what I believe. That was not what I believed though, inside I held the fear that she may never find the strength inside her to come out of that dark place.

Enough of all this sadness, onto the lesson Lukin, get on your feet boy! I laughed and jumped to my feet for another day of getting the crap beaten out of me by a girl.

Ella...

Nurse Lillian is here to the rescue my dear. I sat up a little and everything inside me screamed out in pain. This was not uncommon given my diagnosis. After five medical trials failed we had given up, but this last one was more promising than the others and I agreed to have all my stem cells replaced. I made it about three days in, couldn’t speak due to the sores in my throat growing by the minute. My