Blood Moon (Book Three - The Ravenscliff Series)

• Blood Moon
  
• Copyright
  
• Halloween
  
• Inside the Walls
  
• The Beast
  
• A Birthday Surprise
  
• Dead Man’s Hand
  
• Blood on the Moon
  
• A Kidnapping
  
• A Terrible Transformation
  
• The Staircase Into Time
  
• The Prodigal Son
  
• A Terrible Discovery
  
• A Month of Omens
  
• The Birth of the Beast
  
• Descent Into Hell
  
• The Graveyard
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Connect with Diversion Books
  

Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright © 2013 by Geoffrey Huntington
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email
[email protected]
.

First Diversion Books edition October 2013
ISBN:
978-1-62681-075-4

Nearly 30 years ago

The old crones down in the village liked to say that if you made your way out to the farthest crag of Devil’s Rock on a stormy, windy night, you could hear the screams of all those who had lost their lives over the centuries to the furious sea below.

On this night, the young man feared, one more death would be added to the legends.

He ran after the woman, desperate to stop her and bring her back to Ravenscliff. Otherwise, he knew the Madman would enact his revenge.
The Madman
—the name Jackson Muir was called down in the village, the word that was whispered in fear in the servants’ quarters of the great house.
The Madman.

That is what he is.

And he will destroy us all.

But Ogden McNutt would not accept that. He wasn’t willing to accept the idea of destruction, not yet. There was still time. Perhaps he could avert the fate that had been predicted for them, prevent the cataclysm that loomed over everyone at Ravenscliff. If he could prevent the woman from reaching the cliffs, if he could bring her safely back to the dark mansion atop the hill, perhaps all of what they feared could still be avoided.

“Emily!” Ogden shouted into the wind. “Emily!”

He could see her ahead of him, in her long flowing white gown, heading toward Devil’s Rock. Above them a large full moon struggled to break out from the dark clouds that raced against its face as thunder grumbled on the horizon.

“Emily!”

She did not pause, but the young man was gaining on her. He could hear her now: her sobs, her tortured breathing. She had run from the house after finding Jackson, her husband, in the arms of that servant girl—that strange, bewitching creature with the piercing dark eyes and shining black hair. Ogden had witnessed the scene—and in Emily’s fair golden face, he had seen something twist, something shatter, as if suddenly, in a glance, she had understood every last nuance of the Madman’s evil. She turned and ran.

“Go after her,” said Montaigne—the man who had first brought Ogden to this place, who had promised him Knowledge of the ancient arts, who had offered him an apprenticeship with the Guardians. “Bring her back here.”

She mustn’t be allowed to get near Devil’s Rock
, Ogden told himself over and over as he ran, remembering the prediction of doom.
I must stop her! I must reach her in time!

But she was already there, standing at the precipice, her long white dress billowing around her, when Ogden finally reached her. He staggered as he caught his breath, yet still managed to grab the beautiful young woman’s arm, just as both were leaning over the edge, staring down into the angry sea crashing below.

“Emily,” Ogden said, “you must come back with me!”

She spun on him, eyes wild.

“Back to Ravenscliff? Back to
him
? Are you as mad as he? Why would I go back, knowing what he has planned for all of us?”

“Please, Emily, you must come away from here—”

She pulled out of his grasp, stronger in her fury than Ogden could ever have imagined. How different she was now, how changed from the sweet, innocent, demure girl who had first come to Ravenscliff.

“Are you one of his minions?” Emily’s eyes were furious, accusing. “Is that it, Ogden? You and Montaigne—”

“No, Emily, we want to stop him! And we can, if you just come away with me!”

She laughed bitterly. “Stop him? You are a fool. All of you are fools if you think you can stop him now. Ravenscliff will be his—and the Hell Hole beneath it too!”

“No, we can stop him!”

“Look!” She pointed up at the sky just as the first flash of lightning illuminated the night. “See what I have witnessed! Look and see!”

Ogden lifted his eyes to the sky as a loud roar of thunder shook the very rocks on which they stood. And there, as if projected against the clouds by some enormous magic lantern, was the vision that so terrified Emily. From a hole in the sky crawled the creatures of the Hell Hole, eager, slobbering, rancid, malicious demons hell-bent on taking over the world.

“They will become us,” Emily cried. “Those filthy, hideous things! They will become us and we will become them!”

Ogden’s gaze was riveted to the sky. The demons crawled out of their hole on top of each other like roaches, scrambling across the firmament for as far as the eye could see. Hairy things and scaly ones, too—creatures made of human bone and animal skin—beasts with leathery wings and monsters with eight legs. Most of them were stupid, lumbering brutes, but among them Ogden could discern smiling, crafty devils, too, their malevolent intelligence shining from their eyes.

“That is the world he will bring,” Emily said. “That is his plan.”

From the distance there suddenly came a voice—the voice of the Madman himself, calling to his wife.

Emily turned toward the sound, her lovely blue eyes staring into the night. The Madman called her name again.

“That is his plan,” Emily said, calm now as the vision in the sky faded and Ogden returned his eyes to her. “But not for me.”

And before he could stop her, she threw herself from the cliff, her scream fading as she plunged into the night.

“Emily!” Ogden shouted after her.

“Emily!” echoed the voice of Jackson Muir, suddenly emerging from the darkness in a flash of lightning, stepping onto Devil’s Rock.

Ogden began to tremble. “I … I tried—”

The Madman rushed to the edge, peering over the side. From below, the sound of the waves against the rocks reached their ears.

“I tried to stop her,” Ogden said, shaking terribly now.

The Madman turned to face him. There was rage in his eyes, but shock, too, and grief, terrible grief. For all his powers, he could not bring her back—at least, not to live as she once did. Ogden watched in fear and fascination as a terrible dilemma surged through the Madman’s being. Jackson threw his hands out in front of him, gesturing toward the cliff, as if his sorcery might compel his beloved wife to rise from the waves. But then he pulled his hands back, clamping them over his face, and he sobbed.

Making Emily rise might well have been possible, but she would have been broken—in spirit as well as in body. A great Nightwing sorcerer Jackson Muir might be, but he knew he could not bring his beloved wife back to a life of innocence and purity. Worse: he could not make her love him again.

And for that, Ogden knew, someone would have to pay.

“I tried,” he stammered, backing away from Jackson. “I tried to stop her.”

“And you failed,” growled the Madman, his dark eyes flashing.

He spread his arms wide and let out a scream that rivaled the thunder in its power. Indeed, the storm seemed to abate, its fury summoned into the body of the sorcerer on the cliff. Jackson Muir had always been tall and imposing, but now he seemed even more so, as if he stood not six feet but sixteen. His white teeth glowed in the dark, and his eyes blazed red.

“You will pay, Ogden McNutt! You will pay for failing to save my wife!”

“No, let him be,” came the voice of another man.

It was Montaigne, having finally reached Devil’s Rock himself.

“He is my apprentice, Jackson. I will punish him. Leave him to me.”

“You dare instruct a Sorcerer of the Nightwing?” The Madman’s eyes burned holes in the night as he threw his gaze at the newcomer. “You, a Guardian, meant only to serve me?”

“And to
teach
you,” Montaigne said, defying his anger. “A Nightwing does not use his power for revenge.”

Jackson Muir laughed. “But you forget, Montaigne. What was it that my brother called me? A renegade? An
Apostate
?” He laughed again, returning his red eyes to Ogden. “Run, little rabbit! Give me some sport!”

So Ogden ran. It was futile, he knew, but run he did anyway, giving in to the basic human instinct for survival. He ran into the dark night, away from the cliff, into the woods. He blundered into a bramble of thorns, tripped over a log, fell into a puddle of mud. But he kept on, running deeper into the thickness of trees and gathering of shadows. Above him he caught glimpses of the moon, full and gold, appearing now and again in the spaces between branches, a solemn, watchful eye.

He came to rest finally, embracing a tree as a child might its mother’s breast. He understood this was the end, that there was no escaping the Madman—but even still, hope found its way to the surface. Might Montaigne have stopped him? Might he have persuaded Jackson to let Ogden go free?

It was quiet. No sound at all except for the distant crash of the surf. Ogden thought of his darling Georgianne.

“A precious little child, isn’t she?”

The voice cut him to the quick. Ogden turned, and there, standing not two feet away, was the Madman.

“Do anything you want to me,” Ogden said, “but don’t harm Georgianne.”

Jackson Muir smiled. “Step out into the moonlight, Ogden McNutt.”

Ogden hesitated just a moment, but then did as he was commanded. It was useless to disobey, to try to fight him now.

“Look up at the moon,” the Madman told him. “Look upon its face. See there your torment, my young fool. See your penalty for failing to save my wife.”

Ogden lifted his eyes to the shining orb. It was a moon of blood, dripping from the sky.

And suddenly Ogden began to itch. A terrible, burning sensation all over his body. He looked down at his hands and saw the reason why.

Hair
—sprouting all over. His hands, his arms, under his clothes. He felt his face. There, too. Thick, bristly hair.

Then pain set in. Excruciating, ripping pain. Ogden’s body twisted, contorted. His jaw was pulled, stretched out of shape. He saw his mouth thrust forward, transforming into the snout of an animal. In his mouth his teeth grew long and sharp, cutting his tongue.

Ogden McNutt fell to his knees. He could no longer stand. His shoulder blades shifted and expanded. The pain overpowered him. But when he went to scream, it was not a sound that he recognized.

It was the cry of a beast.

And then there was nothing. No pain, no thought.

Just the craving to drink warm blood.

Devon March swung the sledgehammer over his head and brought it crashing down into the wall.

“Whoever you are,” he called, “we’re about to finally meet!”

At last. The answer he’d been after for months. Just who lived behind this wall? Who was it that called his name, who seemed to hold the answer to the mystery of his past?

A woman
, Devon thought, from the sound of her cries.

He had first heard her when she’d been kept in the tower of Ravenscliff, when he’d seen a light up there that was routinely denied by everyone else. Then he had seen her moved down here, to this sealed-off room in the basement with no door. And despite his powers—despite all the sorcery that was his birthright as part of the Order of the Sorcerers of the Nightwing—Devon had never been able to penetrate the wall.

That was why he’d had to resort to the sledgehammer.

The plaster crumbled easily under its weight. Devon lifted the hammer over his head and swung again. He broke through this time. He’d smashed a hole into the room.

“Back up,” he called to whomever lived inside. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

But she was silent now. A moment ago she had been sobbing, and she had called him by his name.

Her
name, however, remained a mystery despite the fact that Devon’s Nightwing intuition—he used to call it the Voice—had told him that he knew her name already.

But what could that name be?

Once more Devon swung the sledgehammer over his head. One more blow and he would have a hole large enough to crawl through, even if he had to break more of the drywall with his hands. He readied himself to hit the plaster with his mightiest blow yet.

But all of a sudden he couldn’t move his hands. The sledgehammer remained immobile over his head.

“You mustn’t try,” came a voice. “Please, please stop!”

Devon knew the voice. It belonged to Bjorn Forkbeard, the caretaker of Ravenscliff, a little gnome who was almost seven hundred years old. Devon twisted himself around and saw that Bjorn, standing on a wooden box, was holding the sledgehammer in place with his stubby but very strong hands.

“Let go, Bjorn!” Devon shouted.

“No, Master Devon! I was brought here to Ravenscliff to guard that room, and guard it I shall!”

Devon relented, loosening up on his grip on the hammer. Bjorn let go as well, jumping down from his box. Devon allowed the sledgehammer to fall to the concrete floor of the basement with a loud clang.

“So, it’s just as I suspected,” Devon said. “That
was
the reason Mrs. Crandall brought you here. To guard whoever it was she kept in the tower — and then had moved down here!”

“Well,” said the little man, shrugging, “that and other reasons. Ravenscliff
did
need a caretaker, you know. And I’m a pretty good chief cook and bottlewasher, as you can attest yourself!”

Bjorn tried to laugh as he looked up at Devon, but the teen sorcerer refused to crack a smile. When he had first came to Ravenscliff, Bjorn had inspired a deep distrust within Devon. He had been unable to determine just whose side Bjorn was on, whether the gnome was good or bad. Too many things had happened in this house for Devon to trust
anybody
on first meeting.

But in the subsequent battle with Isobel—the renegade Nightwing witch from the fifteenth century—Bjorn had shown his true colors, and Devon now considered him an ally. He knew Bjorn was loyal, as all the gnomes were to the sorcerers of theNightwing. Yet, ally or not, it was clear that the wily Bjorn still had a few secrets he’d been keeping from Devon.

“Who’s behind that wall, Bjorn? And why am I not supposed to know?”

Devon lorded over the little man, who stood no taller than three and half feet. His skin was very pink, and his hair was white and unruly. A short beard forked in two under his chin. Hence his name.

“Answer me, Bjorn!” Devon poked his finger at the gnome’s chest. “We’ve been through enough together now that the time for secrets is over!”

Bjorn’s struggle with his loyalties betrayed itself on his flat pink face. “Ah, but I have
told
you, Master Devon. I may have been hired as her keeper, but I have never known her name—nor her history.”

“Well,” Devon said, turning back toward the wall, “we’re about to find out.”

“Mrs. Crandall will be furious,” Bjorn warned him.

Devon smirked. “I’ve long stopped worrying about Mrs. Crandall’s fury.”

Whether that was completely true or not, it sounded good, Devon thought. He was tired of living under Mrs. Crandall’s thumb. After all, he was the one -hundredth generation of Nightwing since the order’s founder, Sargon the Great, and momentous things had been destined for him. It was about time he found out what they were—and he wasn’t going to let Amanda Muir Crandall stand in his way any longer.

He reached into the hole in the wall and began breaking apart the plaster with his hands.

Ever since last fall, when he’d come to Ravenscliff to live, Devon had searched for the answers to his past. He’d grown up the son of Ted March, an ordinary auto mechanic—or so Devon had thought. But as his father had lain dying, he’d told Devon that he had been adopted. Not a word about who his real parents were, just the revelation that he was being sent to live with a family Devon had never heard of before: the Muirs. Losing Dad—who was the best father any kid could ever ask for—was hard enough, but to be sent away from his home, his school, and his friends made it ten times more difficult for Devon. A few days after the funeral, Dad’s lawyer had placed Devon on a bus and sent him off to a windswept village on the rocky coast of Maine. The place was called Misery Point. Arriving in a raging thunderstorm, Devon had quickly grasped how the town had gotten its name.

Since then, Devon had lived in the mysterious dark house atop the cliff, and bit by bit, he had uncovered clues about who—and
what
—he was. For Devon had never been an ordinary boy. Since he was a toddler, he’d had supernatural powers: being able to levitate his dog, for example, or turn all the desks around in his classroom with just the merest thought. Dad had never explained why he had such powers, only that they were to be used for good. Neither did he explain the presence of the
demons
—those filthy, hideous beasts that lived in Devon’s closet and periodically attempted to drag him down into the putrid chasm Dad called their Hell Hole. “You are stronger than they are,” Dad had always told him. “Remember that, Devon. You are
stronger
.”

Yeah, I’m stronger, all right
, Devon thought now.
I’ve proven that. I’ve been down a Hell Hole and emerged again to speak of it.
Few people, even Nightwing, could make that claim.

Learning that he was a Sorcerer of the Nightwing had been the biggest revelation in Devon’s fifteen years of life. He’d discovered that his father had been no simple auto mechanic, that he was, instead, a centuries-old Guardian who had raised and taught generations of Nightwing. Why, then, had he never told Devon the truth of his heritage?

The teenager had been forced to learn that on his own, with the help of Rolfe Montaigne—the sworn enemy of the Muir family who was, nonetheless, the son of a Guardian himself and who was, even now, trying to uncover as much as he could from his father’s books to help Devon understand why Ted March had sent him to Ravenscliff.

Yet the answer to that question, Devon suspected, lay not in any book—but here, behind this wall.

Devon
, the woman’s voice had called to him many times.
It is you! You have found me!

And now
,
Devon thought,
I have found her.

“Hello?” he shouted through the hole in the wall, his voice echoing. “I’m coming through. Show yourself! Where are you?”

“Be careful, my young Nightwing master,” Bjorn cautioned him from behind.

Devon took a deep breath. It was dark behind the wall. And still. As if no one was there, or ever was.

“Don’t go quiet on me now,” Devon called again. “After all these months of crying and calling my name.”

He swung one leg over the broken drywall and pulled himself through the hole.

The dim candlelight from the cellar coming through the hole was not enough to illuminate the dark space behind the wall. Devon cupped his right hand and snapped his fingers. Instantly a glowing ball of white light appeared in his hand. He smiled to himself. When his Nightwing powers worked so effortlessly like this, it pleased him to no end. Sometimes they didn’t work. But he was learning to master the powers that had once seemed so unruly and unpredictable.

He glanced around the room. The ball of light in his hand allowed him to see his surroundings very well. There was a bed, recently slept in, and a small table with a tray of dirty dishes sitting on top of it. Devon examined it: a bowl of soup, half eaten. Bread crumbs were scattered across a plate. And beside the plate, a worn, leather-bound book. Picking it up and bringing it close to the light, Devon looked at the cover. It read
Prayers and Meditations
. Opening to the front page, he read a signature in faded blue ink:
Emily Day Muir
.

“Emily Muir?” Devon asked out loud.

He’d seen the ghost of Emily Muir several times since coming to Ravenscliff, a pitiful spirit that had haunted the great house for more than thirty years now. Who would be reading her prayerbook—and why?

Devon turned around, looking back toward the hole. Bjorn was peering through it with anxious blue eyes.

“Someone is being kept prisoner in here,” Devon said. “Who is it, Mr. Jailer? And why does she have Emily Muir’s prayerbook?”

“I told you, Devon. I have never known her name.”

“Then where is she now? How did she get out of here?”

The gnome moved away from the hole, wringing his little hands.

Devon looked around some more. An armoire with one door open. Clothes hung from hangers inside. Robes. And long sheathlike dresses.

“This is inhuman,” Devon muttered. “Keeping someone in here like this.”

But she was gone. Clearly there was another way in—and out.

“How did you bring her food?” Devon shouted back over his shoulder to Bjorn. But there was no answer forthcoming. The gnome was clearly torn between loyalty to Devon and service to his employer, Mrs. Crandall.

Then the teenager spotted something in the far corner of the room. A shadow. An outline of something.

He approached, holding the ball of light beside his face so he could see.

It was a door. A sliding panel that led from this room into another.

He slid the panel as far as it would move and stuck his face inside to get a good look around. It was completely dark. He moved the ball of light in closer.

And suddenly, revealed by the light, Devon saw a face, just inches from his own.

The face of a wild-eyed, crazy-haired woman, laughing silently at him.

“Whoa!” Devon gasped, taking one step backward.

Now the woman’s laughter was heard. She seemed terribly amused that Devon had found her, as if they’d been playing a game of hide-and-seek. She cackled hysterically, then turned and darted off into the darkness behind her.

For a moment Devon was too shocked to follow. But once he’d shaken off his daze, he held the light out in front of him so he could see where she’d gone. He observed that the panel led not into another room but to a staircase, and he caught a glimpse of the woman’s feet as she scurried up the steps. Her footsteps faded out as she climbed upward into the house.

“Don’t follow her,” came Bjorn’s voice.

Devon looked over his shoulder. The gnome was leaning through the hole, distraught.

“Do you think I’ve come this far to just let her go?” Devon’s voice was loud and insistent. “Bjorn, that woman knew my name! She clearly knows who I am!”

“She is mad,” Bjorn warned him. “Insane. You can see it in her eyes.”

That much was true. That face—it had been terrifying. Devon couldn’t tell if the woman was twenty or ninety. Long white hair…pale skin…bulging eyes…that maniacal laugh. Crazy she certainly was, and probably dangerous.

But his Nightwing intuition was telling him to pursue her. Danger there might be, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He was Nightwing. One-hundredth generation and all that.

“Mrs. Crandall will be furious,” Bjorn reminded him.

Devon turned and scowled at the gnome. “If it’s your job you’re worried about, Bjorn, I can’t help you there.” He looked back up the secret staircase that led somewhere into the great house. “This is just something I have to do.”

“Oh, do be careful, my young friend,” Bjorn fretted, his voice trembling.

“Look,” Devon said, “in the last few months I’ve handled two renegade Nightwing and assorted demons of all shapes and sizes. I think I can handle one crazy lady.”

But this one crazy lady seemed to know something that none of the others had.

She knew who Devon was, and where he came from.

Yes, he could handle her, Devon thought—but could he handle what she
knew
?

Somehow
, his intuition told him,
what I am about to learn will change my life.