Blood Moon | Harry Styles

Part 5: All Hallows' Eve

When you wake, it's with a grogginess and confusion that leaves you unable to move for minutes that inch by. When you open your eyes there's an ache in the back of your skull. It's still dark, still night.

You can't bite back the pained groan that surfaces as you try to sit up. Your limbs feel thick and heavy and all of your blood rushes to your head at the same time.

The first thing that comes to mind is the face of the stranger, still haunting the forefront of your memories. You peer around the room but find it empty. Your second thought is Harry. Tea. Drugged tea and muttered apologies.

The pentagram is gone, as are the items once scattered around its perimeter. You find that the candles around the room have been extinguished again. But it's not pitch black. There's a glow about the air—red and eerie. So strange that at first you think it's just an after-effect of the tea, but it remains when your brain begins to clear. It's the moon.

The house is quiet along with the dark. There's no hint of Harry or even of Nicks. Your feet settle on the wooden floorboards, where the spilled tea and mug fragments have been cleaned up. It takes you a moment to stand and when you do it's dizzying.

You're torn between anger and mere confusion. What is going on? Why would Harry drug you? What is his spell? And more immediately, where is he?

Your legs carry you with all the weight of anchors. You first reach the stairs to the second floor. The narrow stairwell is dark, holding even less light than the living room. There's no noise. Harry wouldn't be sleeping, you decide, and move on toward the hall which leads to the kitchen.

You stop, freeze against the wall as a heavy gust of wind beats against the side of the cottage. The frame of the building creaks and groans against the pressure. A fresh smattering of clouds follow the wind, shadowing the moon, and the reddish glow fades into darkness.

You have to steel yourself to keep moving. But when you reach the corner, in the mouth of the kitchen, you pause again. Across the table, past the doorway, in the short yard which meets the woods, Harry stands with his back toward you. There are candles—your candles—spaced out on the ground in front of him, burning with that steady Hellfire.

A breeze blows through again, ruffling Harry's jacket. It spills through the open kitchen door and reaches your bare legs. You shiver. But the wind has also ruffled the pages of a book laid out on the table. The book.

Harry keeps his back to the house. You think that you can hear the distant sound of his voice, but you have no clue what he's saying. Your heart pounding erratically, you inch into the kitchen, around the corner of the table. The you from just a few weeks ago would have escaped at her first chance. You're too invested at this point. Even if Harry isn't who he's said he is. He hasn't paid you and so the least you can do is fuck up his spell that's important enough to drug you.

When you reach the book at the other end of the table there's a moment of intense hesitation. "It'll burn the eyes right outta your skull." Harry's words play through your sore head over and over again in his voice, like a little devil sitting on your shoulder. But there's only so long that you can hold yourself back and eventually you take the risk, leaning forward over the table and lowering your eyes to the pages of the book.

It doesn't take long for you to release your nerves. When your brain hasn't turned to mush and your eyes haven't begun to melt like ice cream on a summer day, you focus on the Latin scrawled across the pages. Thick pages. Leathery and dry. You shiver to think what they're made of.

The top of the righthand page reads like a manual. And there's that word. "Gaudens." Orgasm.

You skim through this upper portion, frown deepening with every word as it vividly describes the setup for the pentagram where you and Harry had sex. But your eyes slow when you reach the next section. "Ritus."