Read devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place for Free Online Page B

Four
    Trashed by the Past
     
    Alas our lady’s family tree, is filled with spoiled fruit,
    Its branches sport some deadly thorns and much bad news to boot.
     
    I was in the cavern again, below the dubious Diablo’s tomb. The air was murky and thick, filled with a wet, gray fog that swelled into my mouth and nostrils and seemed to consume my air. My footsteps in the dank, murky space were muffled and slow. My chest heaved with the effort to breathe.
    A sense of danger kept me moving forward, although I didn’t know where I was going. My skin prickled under a feeling that something lurked unseen in the opaque air of that cavern. I imagined I heard a harsh, guttural breath here, a warning cough there. Once I thought I saw the outline of some shadowy creature hovering near, quivering with dark intent. My skin prickled with unease. I tried to walk more quickly.
    I was several steps into the dark, nighttime forest before I even realized I’d finally broken free of the cavern.
    A fat moon hung high over the trees. Bats skittered and dived above my head. The trees swayed softly in a building breeze. A bank of stringy gray clouds moved toward the moon, threatening to plunge the softly lit woods into heavy dark.
    I took a deep breath, reveling in the clean soft air and started forward again. I moved through the dense forest with one eye cast on the moon for direction. I still didn’t know where I was going but I was much more comfortable going there.
    The trees suddenly flowed away and I was standing in a small clearing. A beam of light from the moon shot directly into that clearing and illuminated a figure standing there.
    The woman was tall and handsome. She stood still and straight, long arms hanging straight down at her sides. She wore shimmering silver robes, which were tied at the waist with a string of black pearls, a pentagram dangled at the end of the pearl belt.
    Her hair was long and straight, of a red so deep and dark it looked black in that soft, nocturnal light. As I strained to see her face the clouds finally caught up with the moon and danced across it, leaving behind a patchwork of delicately fluttering light.
    Her features were obscured but her voice I recognized all too well. Despite the fact that I hadn’t heard it in almost twenty years.
    “Blessed be, Astra.”
    In my dream state I didn’t jolt in surprise as I recognized her. My dream self acted as if it had been just last week, or even that morning since we’d last spoken. “Aunt Deirdre. How are you?”
    The woman tilted her shadowed face and raised her hands, palms up, toward me. In the palm of each was a pentagram tattoo. The robe slipped away from delicate wrists, the flesh white and unblemished, except for a teardrop marking on her left wrist that reminded me suspiciously of the daemon hickey on my neck. As she began to speak she lowered her arms to her sides again.
    “I am sorry to disturb your sleep, niece. My coming will be difficult for you as it has been for me. Unfortunately I am drawn by events that occur outside your sphere and felt compelled to warn you.”
    The clouds finally moved on, allowing the fat, yellow moon to beam down into the clearing again. It touched the figure before me and flowed around her but somehow didn’t show me her face.
    “What events, Aunt?”
    “I have no time to tell all, niece. Know only this, your mother stands at the dark center of an evil vortex. Her intentions are not clear as yet but her actions have thrown suspicion against her. I am here to warn you away from her. She is working against your best interests and you must spurn her.”
    I frowned and started to move toward my aunt. She didn’t appear to move but the distance between us never changed. “I haven’t spoken to my mother in three years. I don’t know what she’s doing or how it could possibly affect me.”
    My aunt lowered her head in acquiescence, her long auburn hair falling across her shadowed face. “I know you believe that your