Luna Foundation
Angel Island, California

To: Barbara Rayne
Herengracht 166
Amsterdam 1
Netherlands

Dearest Mama,

How long has it been since I've called you that? Forty years? The time you've feared and dreaded is at hand. I am sorry for the pain and grief I have caused you and will yet bring you. I wish that this letter's tone could be less dismal. It's difficult to make a final good-bye "upbeat". For the others, even Ingrid, I have tried to offer a bit of advice or warning, and to let them all know how much their love and friendship has meant to me, but for you, I have no advice to offer. Don't cringe when you read this. I am not being maudlin. To my shame, I've said it far too few times in my life. I love you dearly. You've been the best mother anyone could ever have, and you've been that under extraordinary circumstances.

I am sorry, but there are things that you have the right to know. I've tried over the past couple of years to call you, to write you, to tell you face to face, but I could never find the right words, nor the right moment. Some of it, you know already; some, no one knows, not even Ingrid, though she may have guessed. Share this with her if you wish. I think it will be an easier burden for you both if you bear it together. In one way or another it has been the millstone that has dragged me down to the depths for nearly my whole life. I'm not sure this will make sense. Sometimes it barely makes sense to me.

I told the Ruling Council as much as I could, or as little, if you prefer. I could not expect Alex and Nick to lie for me. I would never place their loyalty in such a moral dilemma.

When William gave his life to save mine, to save all our lives, he took from me and into himself the demon that had possessed me. I was weak. Even when I was possessed that time I shot myself, I was still trying to resist her control. However, when that demon of the sepulchre came to me, I was totally unable to defend myself. My soul came nigh unto welcoming it. Since then I have tried again and again to sift through what I felt; why I was so overwhelmed. What I felt was Father, or enough of him to recognize. It seemed soul called to soul, and I was lost.

Several years ago, when Ingrid and I first began to mend our fence, she told me that she had forgiven him for what he did to our family and that I, too, needed to free myself of him. However, the truth is that I never hated him. Even when I was angry and said horrible things to him for dragging me off to God knows where in search of things I didn't comprehend, all the while drilling me in Latin or history or some arcane trivia, a part of me always understood. The anger came from a child who wasn't getting his way. I wanted to be with him, but in a way like other boys could be with their fathers - at a soccer match or on a real holiday - but no matter what, I just wanted to be with him.

After Peru, I was furious with Dad for taking me to that hell hole to watch him die, but I was angrier at myself for having foreseen it, yet being unable to save him. Later it grew into a resentment toward him for predetermining my life and placing that ring in my hand, but he was right. When the time came, I was more than willing to take up the challenge. I wanted it with my whole heart. I wanted to be precept in San Francisco. I needed to be precept here. I wanted to be the youngest and best precept ever. I wanted to fight all those evils that he had fought. I wanted to destroy those monsters that had destroyed him. Back then, however, I didn't comprehend the price I would have to pay. I grieve for the loss of things that might have been, but I don't regret the choices made. Given the same circumstances, and that I am basically the same person, I'd make the same decisions even though they brought the same pain. What I do regret are the years of enmity between myself and William, and myself and Ingrid. Those were wasted years, for which I am sorry.

But I am straying. You know all of this. What you don't know is what I felt from that demon. Since Peru, I have wanted to believe in Dad as the Legacy precept who was obsessed with the sepulchres for the sake of knowledge. I've wanted to believe that he sought to learn their secrets to better defend the innocents of the world. I've wanted to believe he sought knowledge to defeat their occupants and their fellow Fallen Watchers. I've wanted to believe in the man who reached out to me and said, "Come on. Take my hand." I've wanted to believe that he was going to take me and himself far away from that horrible thing in that horrible place.

My greatest fear has been that in those final moments his soul fell to the Darkness, or, perhaps, at some point prior to that he had already lost the battle, but we never knew. Was he wanting me to leave that mine with him to return to the safety of Cuzco, or was he wanting me to join him in a quest for the power of the Darkside?

Ever since, the Darkside has used that fear against me. The demon has come again and again in the guise of Winston Rayne, calling me to join him. I've resisted except for that one time. William paid the ultimate price for my failure. I'd give my own soul to undo that. The demon must know this. My fear is that if Father truly fell, will I have the strength to resist, or shall I one day succumb to that obsession that I understood even as a child? Will I be seduced by his call to join him in power? Will I again become that little boy who simply wanted to be with his dad? Will I finally go to him?

Of late, an even blacker thought has plagued me. I reread "Le Morte d'Arthur" and have been minded of the legend of Merlin's birth - of how an incubus seduced a nun in hopes of begetting the Anti-Christ. Instead what he got was a man with powerful magic, a man with the "Sight", who fought his whole life to overcome his own darker half and, in the process, was able to do great good.

What if the demon was Father all along? What if Ingrid and I were demon spawned? Has she unwittingly saved herself by fleeing to the cloister? Could that be why I spent so much of my life collecting those damned boxes? Not to protect them or to ultimately destroy them as my rather illogical, best intentions convinced me, but merely for the purpose of bringing them all together to open the gate to hell. But for William, I would have done it.

Then there are all those who have suffered because of me: Father; Nick's father - I should have been with him; Laura and her baby; Alicia (and because of Alicia's loss, Randolph's life was devastated); Julia; Frank Carmack; Franklin Cross and his daughter; Arthur Middleton; Jane Witherspoon, Chris, Kristin and her brother, Ethan; Megan Torrance and Dr. Goddard; William and his family; even you and Ingrid, and all those others whom you know too well. You have all suffered either because you knew me, or because I cared about you, or because I failed you. Is my soul so tainted that it has borne the destruction of others like a plague-infected flea?

The rational part of my mind says that it does not matter that I recognized something of Father in that demon. The demon may have been acquainted sufficiently with Father to have replicated his "spirit," much the same as he duplicated his appearance. It also tells me that, even if Father fell either then or earlier, it matters not to me. I may be much like my father, but I am also much like my mother. Therefore, I am not him. My intellect tells me that this is all a Darkside trap for me. My heart assures me that it is of the "Light". Yet, that nagging whisper of fear asks me, "If he is in you, and you gave way once before, how can you not fall in the end?" I am not as strong as I pretend, Mother. I am worn out, emotionally, mentally, physically, but I go on for the others, for my friends and for the innocents. Sometimes the illusion of strength can work miracles - as El Cid's dead body tied to his horse led his army to victory at Valencia.

I pray that when you read this letter you will know for certain that, in the end, I did withstand the fears and the "call". If not, perhaps, I can take the battle to Satan's home ground. Perhaps, William is fighting there, waiting for me to back him up as we did so often once upon a time. Whatever may have happened, I loved you and I would never have wanted any other mother - nor any other father - nor can I honestly say that I would have wanted any other life.

There is a quote that has been fluttering around in my mind for days. I finally had to look it up. It was by Walter Lippmann. "The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on." I hope I have been such a leader. If I have, then it was all worth it.

Your loving son,

* Thanks to "LegacyLady" Sherri Smith for the Lippmann quote. Perfecto! ;-D.

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