I straightened my back, righted my body to face her, clenched my hands into tight balls, and let my Power fill me with warmth. I thought of Aaron, of Damien and Frank, thought of Collette and all the witches that were depending on me. The pressure came down hard, like an iron weight descending upon a wooden plank balancing between two stones. But I couldn’t crack. Not now.
Linezka came at me fast, her body shimmering like a mirage under a hot sun. Her knife sliced through the air in front of me, and I pulled away from it, letting instinct take over and guide my movements. Again, the knife came down, and again, and again, and each time it cut through empty space or strands of my copper hair.
Then, when I felt the moment was right, I dug my foot into the ground, pulled as much of my Power into my right hand as I could, and hit her with a ball of invisible energy that sent her slamming into a marble column. Her back hit the marble first, then her head, and the column cracked with the force of the impact.
I could only hear my heart now—Wh-whack!-Wh-whack!-Wh-whack!—and the steady hiss of air being pushed out of my nostrils with every heave of my chest.
Linezka blinked, and then peeled herself off the column. Behind her head, where the impact had cracked the marble, was a trickle of blood. She felt the back of her head with her hand, smiled, and brought her eyes to bear on me. I felt like a deer in a hunter’s scope; fully aware of the danger about to hit, but frozen and unable to react to it.
“Not bad, Amber Lee,” she said, “Maybe I won’t kill you yet. I haven’t been tested in years, and you may prove to be a good distraction. At the very least, you’ll be a conversation starter.”
“Fuck you,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’ve tried to have me killed before and failed, and you’re failing again now. You can’t win. I have Fate on my side.”
“Fate?” she said, laughing like I had just told a hilarious joke. “My dear, Fate isn’t a hand one should fear to bite; it’s a string, and strings can be cut.”
She came at me with the knife again, her mouth opening wide—wider than any mouth should—her lips peeling back to reveal wickedly sharp teeth. I moved to the left, twirling out of the way of her first blow, then the second. My movements were fluid, guided by an instinct I hadn’t possessed until I came here, to this place. Never in my life had I moved so quickly and gracefully, never had my calves and thighs been so strong and nimble, but being nimble wasn’t enough. Linezka was tireless, and I wasn’t.
The bite of the blade was like being cut with a knife of ice… cold and numb until hot blood came spilling out of the wound. Pain came after; pain like I had never before felt. I had been stabbed in the past, but this wasn’t the same. It was like the blade wanted to make me feel pain, like the blade was somehow capable of wanting. A scream fell out of me and filled the church, echoing into the darkest corners and most carefully hidden rooms. A stain was appearing on my thigh, growing and growing around the straight-line wound Linezka’s knife had opened on my skin.
Blackness was coming now. I could see it riding piggyback on the pulses of pain shooting out from my leg and searching for every single nerve in my body. But I couldn’t let her win. If she won, everyone here would die. And yet I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but press my hands down on the gash in my leg and react. Feel. Scream. Cry.
“See?” Linezka’s voice came as sharp as a razor. “Everything can be cut down; even the Red Witch.”
Get up.
A whisper, this time. Was it instinct, or something else? I wasn’t sure anymore. I blinked. Around me the church had fallen still. Collette’s powerful Necromancy had the hooded men under control, and Luther was circling around with his shadow blade still clutched tightly in his hand. But I couldn’t see Carolina or Regina anymore, and that worried me. But the worry distracted my mind from the pain and I was able to rise to my feet, one leg shaking.
Linezka cocked her head to the side, spied Luther, waved at him, and then she turned to me again. Her wide-set eyes blinked across, like a lizard’s eyes, I thought, and then, Moon Fire.
The first thought was mine, but the second thought was… also mine. Yes, I was sure that it was this… instinct I now had. Or maybe I had always had it and just not known about it until now. There was little time to think, and my leg was bleeding and throbbing. I wiped blood off my face with the back of my hand.
“Magick may be able to cut the string of Fate,” I said, “But the sword of Magick cuts both ways… witch.”
A grin spread across her face as if she had just been issued a challenge she was only too happy to accept. But when she saw the silvery light burst out from the palms of my hands her brow furrowed, then her face twisted into a grimace, then finally it morphed into an angry scowl. She came at me again and brought the knife down in an arc over my head. My bare hand came up, palm to the sky, and when the knife impacted my skin, the metal snapped and shattered.
Linezka swallowed, froze, and I reached for her face with my other hand which was now ablaze with Holy, silvery light; the light of the Goddess. The Moon Fire. And her skin sizzled, blackened, and crackled at my touch. Burning. Then she thrust her hands out toward me and cupped my cheeks with her palms. A ripping, sick pain shot through me as dark Magick came pouring out of her hands. I could feel the eye, that devil’s eye, blinking against my face, wriggling, writhing, and in a moment of unguided panic, I grabbed a fistful of Linezka’s hair and pulled hard.
A shock wave exploded between us sending me hurtling in one direction and her in the other. Dazed, I struggled to turn around, onto my back to see where she was, but she was gone and so were her men.
My body was trembling now, and the blackness I had been fighting so hard to keep at bay came crashing down on me in waves. I thought I could hear voices, maybe Luther looking for Carolina, Helena and the others. Or maybe it was Collette, yelling to me from across the way, looking for my battered and hurt body in the mess of shattered pews and splintered wood. But I couldn’t quite make out what anyone was saying and soon enough their voices all seemed to blend into each other. All I could think of as I laid on the ground on my side, with my hot cheek against the cold stone floor, was that I had a bit of her hair in my hand.
And that we had just damaged a beautiful old building.
CHAPTER 25
Aaron Cooper couldn’t often keep up with the conversations which often took place between the witches in his house. It wasn’t that things went over Aaron’s head or that he couldn’t understand the concepts, but they just spoke so God-damned quickly sometimes working on the assumption everyone understood exactly what they were talking about, it was hard for him to keep up. And he didn’t like falling behind.
In the pack it was the Omega that fell behind; and Aaron wasn’t the Omega—of course he wasn’t—but he was starting to feel like it.
They had set out into the woods behind the house about fifteen minutes ago, walking at a steady pace. The sky was lead above them and the woods were dark and smelled like wet earth. Each leaf, each branch, seemed to be dripping with autumn moisture, every droplet of water further cooling the breeze nibbling at their faces. Goodbye summer, Aaron thought.
Frank was trailing behind. Damien was only a few steps ahead of him, hands in pockets, seemingly lost in thought. Aaron took a few long strides and walked up next to him.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Hm?” Damien turned his head slightly.
“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
“It’s nothing,” Damien said, but he was lying. His body gave him away; avoidance lived in the way his eyes shifted away from Aaron’s, in the way he licked his lips, and in the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Now isn’t the time to be keeping shit from me,” Aaron said, “You guys keep things to yourselves all the time, and on any other day that’d be okay, but I need you at your best right now so if you’ve got something bottled up in there you go ahead and spit it out, understand?”
Damien’s A
dam’s apple worked up and down, hesitant, uncomfortable. “It’s… this whole thing. What Frank said about the Dark Fire, it’s all just bringing up some uncomfortable memories.”
“What kind of memories?”
“That’s right… I’ve never told you.”
“Told me what?”
“When I was a kid I lived in this… compound. It was like a prison, only my jailors were my parents, and they were—”
“I know what a compound is.”
He remembered hearing about one a few years ago; somewhere up in Utah a polygamous compound, where men married more than one woman, had been infiltrated by… Feds? He couldn’t remember. Anyway, they all lived separate from the rest of their community, choosing to voluntarily cage themselves away from a world that didn’t accept their prohibited practices. Interbreeding and inbreeding and in… marrying… until the authorities came and shut the place down. It was a huge thing.
Damien nodded. “Anyway, this was a witch compound. Witches married other witches, practiced their magick freely, and didn’t often communicate with the outside world. They would only go out whenever they wanted to play games with the locals.”
“Play games? What kind of games?”
“I don’t know if you want to hear about them. These witches did some real terrible things to the humans around them, let’s just put it like that.”
Aaron nodded, agreeing silently that he probably didn’t want to know. The details would probably go over his head anyway. “So, what exactly got you thinking about them?” he asked.
“When Frank… when he said about the Dark Fire. I wasn’t expecting to hear that word ever again. It took me by surprise.”
“Dark Fire,” Aaron echoed, “I don’t think I need to ask you to tell me what the Dark Fire is, do I?”
Damien shook his head. “It’s… not quite a ‘thing’, not quite an ‘it’, and not quite a ‘fire’ either. It’s all three of those things. Alive and not, intelligent and not, there and not. It burns you on the outside when it touches you, but also burns you on the inside. So even if you manage to survive the physical wounds, your mind stays damaged.”
“Shit. That sounds fucked up.”
“That’s not the fucked up part,” he said. “The fucked up part is that of all the witches I have ever heard about, of all the stories in books I’ve ever read, I’ve only rarely come across the Dark Fire...”
“The witches in your compound.”
Damien nodded.
Silence fell between them like a wedge. They watched the hot air blow out of their mouths in small puffs as they walked quietly onwards. A squirrel crossed their paths and hurried up a tree and, distantly, the flutter of bird wings reached their ears.
“Damien,” Aaron said, “I want to know what’s going on in your head. Seems to me like you’ve pieced something together and I need you to tell me what it is. Do you think you can do that?”
Damien’s lips pressed into a thin line. For a second Aaron thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he nodded. “My family—my extended family—they burned witches at the stake with Dark Fire.”
“Christ,” Aaron said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then licked his lips.
“Men, women, children, they would all burn. And they’d make us watch.”
Aaron put a hesitant hand on Damien’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.”
Damien looked at him now. “But there’s more than that… the High Magus, the one who decided who would burn and who wouldn’t, he and his inner circle, his coven… they worshipped a dark mistress.”
Aaron’s heartrate began to quicken. His entire body seemed to be warming up as if he were in the grips of a rising fever. It didn’t take an academic to figure out where Damien’s head was at right now.
“You don’t think…” Aaron started to say, “I mean, what are the odds that—”
“I don’t know,” Damien said, “I hadn’t considered it until now, but it makes sense doesn’t it?”
“Nothing about this makes sense to me.”
“Maybe I’m just making something out of nothing. But maybe I’m not. Maybe my family is involved somehow; maybe that’s why they killed Lily and Joanna, why they tracked them down even long after we fled the compound. Because she told them to.”
“Damien, that’s a pretty big ball and chain to be holding onto. Why haven’t you said any of this sooner?”
“I… don’t know. Guess I’m just not good at talking about stuff.”
Aaron craned his neck over his shoulder. Frank was within earshot and probably running things through in his head too. His face was grave; stone cold and pensive. Yep, that’s his thinking face, Aaron thought.
“Maybe you’re right,” Aaron said, “But that just means we have more knowledge to defend ourselves with, right? Isn’t that what you guys are always saying? Knowledge is power?”
“Not in this case,” Frank put in.
“You aren’t helping.”
“I’m not meant to help. I’m here to make sure our thoughts are on the right track. Now if Damien here thinks his family is somehow in league with that crazy bitch, then we have to consider it. This woman’s influence is widespread, that much we know, so the fact of their potential involvement isn’t impossibility; not by a long shot.”
“I really don’t want that to be true,” Damien said. He took his hands out of his pockets and ran them through his hair. “If they’re involved, then I could be involved too. I could be a part of this.”
“Don’t say that,” Aaron said.
“You don’t understand.” The convoy stopped. Damien took a couple of long strides until he was in front of Aaron and Frank, and looking at both. His breath was coming out hot and heavy now. “Lily came here, of all places. Here, to where Amber lived. Then she died, and so did her girlfriend. Both witches. Then I show up and the Sheriff tries to kill Amber too but Amber gets him first. So far so good, right? Only I stick around in Raven’s Glen, meaning that if I’m being spied on, then I’m a conduit to Amber and the way this bitch can get her demon here without raising an alarm. What if they can manipulate me somehow? What if they can use me to get to Amber? I have their blood running through my veins. ”
Aaron felt the warmth of anger fill his throat and then travel to his cheeks. He clenched his jaw tightly, grinding his teeth. “Enough,” he finally said, his voice ripping through the woods. He marched up to Damien, placed both hands on his shoulders this time, and said “You’re a good guy, Damien. Like us. You might be right about your family’s involvement, but that doesn’t mean shit for you. Understand?”
His face was pale, his remarkable hazel eyes now cold and dull.
“You aren’t your family. You’re Damien Colt. Amber’s brother in magick. You’re one of us, and no matter what’s happened in the past, we’ve got your back.”
Damien nodded now. He took a deep breath in, held it, and then let it go. By the time the air left Damien’s lungs Frank had joined them.
“He’s right,” Frank said, “You’re one of us.”
“Thanks,” Damien said, “I’m sorry. I’m just not good at letting things out.”
“Maybe you should learn to start,” Frank said, “You think I became this tornado of raging self-confidence by keeping shit locked up?”
“You’re right.”
Aaron nodded, patted Damien on the shoulders, turned him around, and shoved him to keep walking. The silence returned, but it was a comfortable silence. With the weight lifted off Damien’s shoulders everyone else was able to step into the woods a little more lightly, and Aaron was able to remind himself that he was the Alpha here after all. Because a good Alpha doesn’t just bark and growl at his pack-mates, he also nurtures them. He wants them to be okay.
“Here,” Damien said finally as they arrived into a clearing.
The ground was covered in a blanket of wet, brown leaves. The air here was ripe with the smell of the earth and everything in it, from the worms to the seedlings,
to the animal crap. Somewhere in the trees, a Raven was cawing.
Aaron dipped his shoulder and let the bag he had slung over his back fall to the ground, but he caught it on his foot before it hit the wet leaves. He couldn’t remember if it was waterproof, but then he figured it probably was and let it slip off his foot and finish its journey to the bed of leaves.
“Anything special about this place?” Aaron asked.
Damien took a deep breath of crisp, cool, autumn air, exhaled, and said “They’ll come here. It’s hard to make them appear anywhere else, but they seem to like the woods.”
“The Whispers?”
He nodded, reached for the pack at Aaron’s feet, and began to produce a set of candles, a lighter, and an empty bowl.
“Those candles won’t catch,” Frank said. A cigarette was poking lazily out of the corner of his mouth. He had been trying to light it, but had so far only succeeded in sending the clicking sound his lighter was making into the woods.
“Don’t,” Aaron said, “Not here.”
“Relax, I’m sure the birds won’t mind.”
“I will.”
The full weight of Aaron’s hot werewolf stare came down on Frank like a bag of bricks. Frank took the cigarette from his mouth and stuffed it back into the packet.
“I’m not doing it because you told me to,” he said after a moment.
Damien looked up from the ground and cocked an eyebrow.
“I’m not!” Frank repeated. “I just happen to like a man with a firm hand.”
Aaron’s lips curled into a smile. He didn’t much mind Frank’s brand of wit any more. In fact, he thought his younger self may have benefited from a friend like Frank. Someone to set him straight, ironically. Then the wind picked up and ruffled the tips of his blond hair, and on the back of it he smelt… smelt…
“Aaron, help me with this please,” Damien said from the floor.
When Aaron squatted Damien handed him the lighter. “Put it away,” he said, “I won’t need it. But make a cup around the candle and keep the wind out.”