We were gathered in my back yard, which was quiet save for the whispering breeze and the chorus of light chirping being volunteered by the local swallows. The sky was lead, the morning sun knowable only as a patch of lightly colored clouds in an otherwise dark mantle. It could have started to rain at any moment, but it hadn’t yet.
The four of us—Damien, Aaron, Frank, and I—were gathered around a headstone made of black marble. Inscribed upon it in beautiful silver calligraphy were the words ‘Collette Picarde – memento mori, ma cherie.’ Simple. Exquisite. Serene.
Aaron, Damien, and Frank were standing in black suits that had been pre-rented for them for the day. I was wearing one of Collette’s black gowns with a lacy bodice and a flowing black skirt. It seemed as if, the morning-after Collette’s death, everything had happened in fast-forward, and we had been brought to this point in time on the back of a powerful current none of us had any control over.
It started with a call early in the morning for Amber Lee. I had gotten up and asked who it was. The lady on the other side had told me she was calling on behalf of Collette Picarde, and that we had three suits to pick up. A few minutes later another call had come in; this one from UPS, to let me know that a delivery driver was on his way with a couple of packages for us.
I sent Aaron out to collect the suits and waited at home for the UPS guy to arrive. When he showed up, he presented me with a large box and a smaller one. I signed for them and then opened the large box—which weighed a ton—and found Collette’s headstone inside. By the time the tears stopped coming, I couldn’t think of doing anything else besides making a space for the headstone at the foot of the sycamore in my back yard. There would be no coffin and no grave, but at least we had her ashes; and I knew what we were going to do with them.
When Aaron had found me in the back yard I was up to my elbows in dirt. Damien and Frank too. Together we had planted Collette’s headstone, but we had done something else too. We had planted her ashes in the dirt along with the seeds of what I hoped would one day become another tree and grow to be just as tall as the one I already had.
“I’ve been through a great many things in my short life,” I said, as the four of us stood over the marble headstone in our best attire. “But I’ve never had to bury a sister before. Because that’s what Collette and I had become in our short time together. Sisters. Twins. Two halves of the same being. Our halves had called each other from across the gulf, and we had found one another to form a whole… but now I feel like a half again. She… she…”
Aaron looked like he was about to touch me, but I threw my hand up and halted him. “She knew,” I said, “By the virtue of what she was, she had known what was going to happen to her last night. That’s why we’re all standing here now. She knew when she was going to die, and she chose to make sure we didn’t have to work anything out after she… after she left. Because that’s the kind of person she was.”
Frank, Damien, and Aaron nodded in unison.
A long pause fell over us. Thunder rolled in the distance, but it was no more than a weak grumble.
“When we got home from Berlin,” I said, “She wanted to hurry back here. She… she took a while to get dressed and when she came down I noticed something about her was different. She said she had left me some things. When I got home I found all her stuff on my bed; her dresses, her books, her jewelry and even her favorite necklace. Because she had anticipated that we would find it in her room and feel like shit, but also because when a witch gifts something to another witch, it becomes a part of her. I could have kept some of her things, but it wouldn’t have had the same spiritual significance.” A smile swept across my face. “She thought about everything. Did you know she was a hundred and thirty-nine years old?"
“Wow,” Damien’s voice came out of him like a long breath.
“I think she knew what was coming. I think she had known for a long time, and she had been preparing for it. I think she was trying to find a way to get me ready for the difficult task I would have when she was gone.”
“Preparing you? How?”
“Do you know what else she left me along with all her stuff? She left me her book of shadows.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed into thin lines. Damien’s eyebrow rose into an arch.
“Collette’s magick was strong,” I said, “Her power was almost as strong as our enemy’s. And she had told me a long time ago that I was capable of absorbing many powers into my own soul—that it was like putty. Malleable. She was teaching me her Magick but she was being careful about it, and whenever she went to teach me something she would always fish out a spell from her Book of Shadows… and now she’s given the book to me because she wants me to use it.”
“Malleable is one thing,” Frank said, “But you’re talking about injecting yourself with Shadow magick. We don’t even know what becoming a werewolf is going to do to you. Shouldn’t we tread carefully?”
“That’s what Collette would have said. But I’m not a normal werewolf, am I? I can still feel the Power burning within me, only now it burns hotter and stronger.”
“So… now what do we do?” Damien asked.
I turned around, knelt by the headstone, and stroked the marble with my fingertips. “Memento mori, ma cherie. I love you, my sweet Collette.” I brushed my lips lightly against marble and let the tears come. I wouldn’t stop them. Not now. I let them fall as they came, dripping onto the headstone one at a time until there was enough to form a puddle. And in that puddle, an image was starting to form.
Collette was there, standing right behind me, shimmering with the Goddess' light; and she was happy. I stood up, wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, sniffed away the emotion, and said, “We have to make another trip.”
Damien was quiet for a moment. Pensive. “Where to” he asked.
“Last time I checked,” I said, “My father wasn’t a werewolf… but my mother was a witch. I have questions for her.”
He nodded, satisfied.
“Frank?” I asked.
He looked up at the sky, then looked back down at me, smiled, and said, “Are you kidding me? I smell drama coming on. I’m in.”
I turned to Aaron, placed my hands on his shoulders, and slid them up to his face. “Are you with me?”
A breeze caught the tips of Aaron’s blonde hair and made them shiver. He smiled. “To the end,” he said.
“Let’s hope the end is a long way away.”
He nodded and we went inside. There, on the kitchen table, was the second UPS box I hadn’t yet opened. Frank grabbed a knife, sliced the tape off, and picked it open. From inside he produced a bright green bottle of Absinthe and a note.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“It says… don’t forget to drink to ze dead. She even spelled it with a Z, look.”
My eyes welled with tears again, but they were happy tears this time. “I’ll grab the cups,” I said.
TO BE CONTINUED…
DEVIL'S WITCH
Amber Lee Series, Book 5
By Katerina Martinez
DEVIL'S WITCH
Amber Lee Series, Book 5
Copyright © 2017 by Lee Dignam & Katerina Martinez. All rights reserved. Cover uses images © 2016 Shutterstock.
Published by Supernal Publishing
***
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or tell your friends about this serial to help spread the word!
Thank you for supporting my work.
Prologue
PROLOGUE
I haven’t seen the sun in weeks. Haven’t felt the moon on my cheeks or the wind in my hair, haven’t heard the voice of my friends. This place of silence and darkness I inhabit is like a pris
on; a tomb of my own crafting. I thought I could embrace the wolf at first, use it as a weapon to fight the growing darkness inside of me. Then when things got too bad I thought I could hide from it, find what was left of my inner light and wrap it around myself before… before it was too late.
But the truth is I still smell her everywhere, and I’m dangerous as long as she lingers.
Chapter One
Aaron Cooper woke up alone. He reached to find Amber with the slow, sludgy panic of bad dreams but then it hit him; Amber wasn’t here.
Sighing, he wiped the sleep from his face with his hand and ran his fingers through his hair. It had gotten long, and his scruffy beard was coming out fighting too. He hadn’t noticed the stubble on his cheeks or the thickness of his hair until now, though it had been three weeks since he last did anything to trim the growth.
He dragged himself to the window, picking his phone up from the bedside table as he went, and stared out into the dark grave of the morning. It was bitterly cold, even indoors. First snow had fallen during the night. Above the line of trees, the sky was already starting to pale with morning light. Beneath them, though, all was dark.
05:13.
It was early. Aaron had barely gotten three hours of sleep. He wondered how many Amber had been allowed tonight. Not many, probably. Amber didn’t sleep much these nights. When she did get some sleep, Aaron slept. When she needed to eat, Aaron would hunt for fresh game and toss raw cutlets into the cellar, and then he would wait to hear her rouse and attack the piece of meat like an animal. Raw. Primal. Hungry. Aaron’s salivary glands started to work and his stomach let out a grumble, but he heard something else underneath the grumble.
No. Not underneath it, but alongside it.
He turned on his heel and faced the bedroom door. It was shut. All was still and quiet save for the raucous chorus of rowdy crows outside. But that was odd too because until a moment ago they had been still. It was as if something had caused them to stir. Amber? Has she gotten out? Fear entered his heart and drew the calmness out. Tension wormed its way into his muscles and he edged toward the door, one silent step after another, reaching for the knob with an outstretched hand.
The metal was cold as ice against his warm palm. He turned it, pulled, and the door croaked open like some fat toad stretching its voice out. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the sounds this old cabin made, but staying out here—in the middle of the woods—was better than being in town with all those people around.
When the door opened, he pushed himself into the corridor and scanned left and right, but was met with silence. Silence and dawn-light in the Eastern facing window. He wanted to call her name, but he decided against it. If Amber had made the sound he had just heard then it meant she had somehow gotten out… and he would need the element of surprise if he wanted to guarantee his own survival.
Careful not to make a sound on the old wooden floorboards, Aaron stalked across the short hallway connecting the bedroom and the kitchen. He could smell the dead fire in the air—the soot, the wood—and could feel the way the very atmosphere seemed to be charged; charged and cold. It was like walking into a fridge possessing its own static current.
Then, he heard another noise; footfalls, three of them in quick succession.
That was all the encouragement Aaron needed. In three hard strides he was in the kitchen, then in the living room, and then in the second bedroom. Nothing. He heard the footsteps again and turned, heart pounding in his chest, his arms, his throat, hot anger swelling up inside. Another few strides and he was back in the hall, but this time he could hear someone running ahead of him, toward his bedroom.
Aaron closed the gap, breathing hard, and made it to the bedroom door in time to watch it slam shut with intent.
“Amber!” he said, but it wasn’t Amber. Whoever it was that had just gone into his room didn’t have a scent; there was only the cold.
He charged the door, pulled on the knob, and opened it expecting resistance but finding none. The room was quiet, but it felt like there were millions of tiny shards of ice in the air, cutting his flesh and causing it to prickle. “Who’s in here?” he said with enough authority in his tone to mask the pinch of panic gripping the back of his throat.
Almost in response, the adjoining bathroom door creaked open slightly—just enough for him to hear the movement.
Aaron took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart and crossed the room. He pushed the door open all the way and watched it swing wide before hitting the door stop. The room was empty. Dead. Silent. The skin around the nape of his neck tightened as if reacting to the brush of a cold hand, and when his eyes went to the reflective cabinet door… he saw only himself.
First light shining through the bedroom window broke the spell and Aaron released the breath he had held in his lungs. The lingering cold on his skin remained like an unseen presence, but whatever charge the atmosphere held until now was gone, leaving Aaron to wonder what the fuck had just happened. Of course, Aaron wasn’t naïve enough to dismiss what he had just experienced as some kind of trick of the mind brought on by sleep deprivation, but it was enough to make him need to sit down on the bed.
And in that dark, quiet space where he was alone with his thoughts, doubts crept in.
Amber would have known what to do. She would have had the right idea or the right spell to find out whether something had really just happened or if Aaron was going insane. She would have been able to center him and calm his nerves like she always did. In truth, Aaron had found himself succumbing to the wolf a lot more ever since Amber was taken out of commission. It wasn’t a bad thing, not out here, but every second he spent wearing the wolf’s skin was a second he didn’t spend here, guarding Amber’s prison.
A sudden knocking on the front door set his back upright again.
Aaron stood up, stepped into his slippers, and made the short walk across the cabin. Morning light snuck into the cabin in shafts of pale blue light; it was like there were little holes everywhere for the sun to get through, as if the walls were made of Swiss cheese.
The smell of man swam up to him as he swept into the living room. Two males, both familiar. Aaron took a series of short breaths to drive out the last of the panic he had felt only a few moments ago and opened the door to Damien and Frank. He wasn’t expecting to see them—not yet, anyway—but there they were; pale in the cheek, red in the nose, and a sight for sore eyes.
Aaron regarded them both warily. Frank’s head tilted up, eyebrow inquisitorially arched. “Aren’t you going to let us in?”
Before Aaron could step aside Frank was already sweeping into the room, rubbing his hands together like he was hoping to make a fire. Damien followed, and a whiff of scarred skin and old blood came in like a shadow at his back. Hasn’t he healed yet? Aaron thought as he closed the door to keep the cold out.
“You’re earlier than I thought you’d be,” Aaron said.
“We drove all night,” replied Frank.
Damien sat down on the sofa, wincing from the movement. His eyes were on the door to the cellar, just beyond the kitchen arch, and his body was poised to jump at the first sign of movement, but he said nothing.
“Did you find it?” Aaron asked.
“We found it,” Frank said, “How’s the patient? She still cranky?”
Taking a deep breath, Aaron sat down on the sofa next to Damien and exhaled. “She’s gotten worse,” he said.
“Worse? How?”
A pregnant pause hung in the air. There were so many ways Aaron could have described Amber’s condition, so many details he could go into, but this wasn’t the time for details. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think she goes days without falling back into her human skin.”
“Is that even possible? I mean, you can’t sleep in another form can you?”
“I didn’t say she slept.”
Frank sat on the armchair, ran his hands through his white-blonde hair, and then rubbed his cheeks to bring the warmth out. “And the ward
s? Are they holding?”
“The house hasn’t burnt down, so… I’d say so.”
“That’s something.”
“They won’t last forever,” Damien said. “The wards weren’t meant to be in place for so long… they won’t hold much longer. I can feel her power even now, slipping through the cracks in our magick.”
Aaron didn’t need to ask Damien to explain. It was like a container filling with water; eventually the pressure would cause the container to crack, and soon after those cracks would tear open allowing the magick to spill out—or in this case in. Amber was in no state to control her magick. That’s why they needed to put wards in place to begin with. If they fail…
“They can’t fail,” Aaron said, “Not before we’re able to fix her. Tell me what you were able to find.”
“Right,” Frank said. He stood up, opened the bag he had slung over his shoulder, and placed it on the coffee table in front of Aaron. The contents sounded heavy and solid. Aaron’s hands went for the zipper, but Frank slapped them away. “Did I tell you to open it?” Frank asked.
Aaron glowered and his cheeks flushed with warm blood.
“You can growl all you want,” Frank said, “But if your grubby paws reach into that bag you risk releasing seven hundred years of hatred, malice, and suffering into this quiet little cabin in the woods, and that’s a movie I don’t want to watch again no matter how many Hemsworth’s are in it.”
“What the fuck is in the bag?” Aaron asked, his voice rising. “What did you bring here?”
“A reliquary,” Damien said. “It’s a…”
“Prison.” Frank finished Damien’s thought. “But it’s not Fort Knox; this thing is delicate, and in the wrong hands it’s even more dangerous than she-Hulk down there.”
“We don’t need more nasty shit up here, Frank,” Aaron said, “I thought you knew that.”