“What did you do?” Samantha whispered.
“Don’t you mean ‘what did we do’?” Eleven asked.
“No. No! I’m not you. I didn’t do whatever you just did.”
“You’ll have a hard time proving that to anyone, including yourself,” Ten said.
“We warned you,” Five said.
“We tried to stop you,” Six added.
“You’ve gone too far,” Seven accused.
“What’s happening?” Samantha demanded.
And then Samantha was opening her eyes. It was still night outside. She could see the moon from where she was lying. The witches were gone. She couldn’t feel their presence anymore.
She blinked slowly as she sat up. She could hear the crunching of glass all around her, and her hands where they pressed against the ground were being gouged by a dozen tiny shards. She struggled to her feet, broken glass falling to the ground around her. She cautiously shook out her clothes.
She could feel dozens of pieces of glass embedded in her skin. She passed her hands slowly over each arm, willing the glass to the surface. She stepped forward, more glass crunching under her feet.
She should get out of there. With the witches gone, she was free to leave. She walked half a dozen more steps and then stopped abruptly as she saw a figure slumped on the ground to her right.
Her heart began to pound. She crept forward cautiously, wondering if a poor security guard had gotten caught in the crossfire. At last she could clearly see the body, and her heart stopped for a moment.
It was the second witch who had been stalking her. The man lay dead, eyes frozen in a blank look of terror. There was blood everywhere, and it took her a moment to realize that the man’s chest looked like it had exploded outward. His intestines were all around him on the floor. Someone had literally caused his internal organs to explode out of his body.
No, not someone, me. I did this, she realized. And there, on the wall behind the body was the proof. She had burned her coven’s symbol into the wall above the body.
I am as God. That was what the ancient lettering meant.
She fell to her knees and vomited. This had been Eleven’s doing, and it was all her fault. She should have listened to the younger girls. They had warned her not to open more doors. But she had ignored them and had let the monsters walk free, and one of them had taken over her mind, done all this carnage while she was unconscious.
She forced herself to get up. She had to see if she had killed Giselle as well. If she had, maybe all of this could be over.
They both deserve to die, a voice inside her head whispered. It’s no different from the witches you killed in Salem. You have to take care of this coven like you took care of that one.
She had no proof that the entire coven was engaged in whatever evil Giselle was doing, at least of their own knowledge and free will. There had been one murder, not several with the promise of more. It wasn’t like Salem.
But they’re causing the earthquakes and risking the lives of countless people in doing so, she argued with herself.
She hunted for a few minutes but couldn’t find another body. Giselle must have escaped.
She returned to the first body. She very carefully scorched the wall to obliterate her coven’s symbol. Finished, she headed for the parking lot, determined to get out of there as fast as she could.
Once on the road, the full impact of what had happened hit her and she shivered with anguish. There was still glass in her legs and torso. She even felt a few pieces in her face. She didn’t take the time to stop and remove them. She just wanted to get home as fast as she could so she could get into a hot shower and try to wash off the horrors of the night.
She reached for her phone. She wanted to talk to Anthony, needed to talk to him. He would understand. He would help her. Her hand froze, though, before she could call him.
Her eleven-year-old self had had blood on her athame when she first came out of her door. Given what she had accomplished while in control of Samantha’s body, she was now convinced it had been human blood. Had her eleven-year-old self been involved with the human sacrifices her old coven had performed?
A sob escaped her. Was it possible in some cruel trick of fate that she might even be the witch who killed Anthony’s mother?
She started screaming at the top of her lungs and punching the steering wheel. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true. But even if she hadn’t done it, she’d clearly been capable of it. She’d probably been there when it happened.
She could feel memories beginning to wake in her mind, crowding forward. “No!” she screamed, rejecting them. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to remember. For her own sanity, she couldn’t.
“Anthony, I’m so sorry,” she heard herself sobbing over and over.
She couldn’t talk to him. Not until she could do it without fear and guilt. If she had killed his mother, she’d never be able to look him in the eye again.
Tears came, and she let them fall freely even though they partly blinded her. She didn’t care. Part of her struggled with the belief that if she got killed on the windy road she had to drive, she deserved it for everything she had done.
With my luck, I’d be fine and whoever was in the other car would be hurt, she finally thought. With that thought foremost in her mind, she wiped her eyes and forced herself to slow down. She had no control of the past, but she could control the here and now.
When she finally made it back into the city, she breathed a sigh of relief. Minutes later, she exited the freeway. She was ten minutes to home.
Her phone rang. Given the time of night, she was sure it had to be Anthony. She couldn’t answer, but she checked anyway. It wasn’t Anthony. It was Robin.
“Hello?”
“Samantha? There was an intruder in my house.” Robin’s voice was fearful.
“Hang up and call nine-one-one,” she said.
“I can’t. I’m scared. He was . . . like us.”
“He’s gone now? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Is your aunt there?”
“No. She left to pick up some of her prescriptions at the pharmacy hours ago, and she hasn’t come back. She’s not answering her phone.”
“Do you know how to make a protection spell?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Samantha pulled a U and headed for the freeway. “Listen, I’m on my way right now, but it’s going to take a while to get there.”
“Please hurry,” Robin whimpered.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can. If he comes back, I want you to make a circle on the ground around yourself and stay inside it no matter what happens. You have to make the circle with your blood, and it has to be complete, no gaps. If you do that, nothing outside the circle can touch you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, I’ll do that, but please come.”
“I will. I promise. Keep your phone on you and call me if anything else happens.”
Samantha hung up and pounded her steering wheel in frustration. If only Robin had called while she was still down there. There was nothing that could be done about that, though.
She briefly thought about pulling her police light out from underneath her seat. But driving with it on for that far would attract attention, and if any other officers wanted to assist her then she was stuck explaining why she hadn’t just sent local cops to Robin’s house.
She needed to get there a lot faster than the speed limit would allow. In her heart she knew there was only one solution. Keeping her left hand on the wheel, she reached down with her right and unclipped her detective’s shield from her belt. She held it up. She could feel the power building up in her body, electrifying, exhilarating. A bit of sympathetic magic was what was needed here, and the badge would have to do as a symbol of police officers. Normally, this kind of
magic was done with candles or dolls, but in a pinch, you could make a lot of things work.
“I name thee every police officer between me and Robin’s house,” she said, feeling energy flowing from her fingers into the badge.
“You will not see this car and you will not see me.”
She placed the badge in the glove compartment, where it would be in the dark and out of her line of sight.
She wrapped both hands around the wheel as she took the ramp onto the freeway. She was intensely grateful that it was late and there was little traffic to worry about. Bay Area traffic during the busy hours of the day could easily double and sometimes even triple a person’s drive time.
As soon as she had merged onto the freeway, she slid over to the left-hand lane and then floored it.
The car leaped forward with a surge of power. Adrenaline began to pump through her as the speedometer climbed above one hundred. Cars in front of her scattered without her even having to flash her high beams at them. The rush she was getting from the speed was incredible, but fear was riding alongside as well. It was taking all of her concentration to make sure that she didn’t hit any bad patches of road that could cause her problems.
She turned on her high beams, needing to see farther down the road because of the speed at which she was traveling. In the headlights a minute later, she saw the bumper of a police cruiser. She came screaming up behind him and then had to change lanes to pass him.
As she flashed by, neither officer in the car even glanced her way. A few seconds later and she was in front of them. She checked her rearview mirror, where the car was rapidly becoming a dot.
Her magic had worked. Satisfaction flooded her at the realization.
Don’t be too proud of yourself, she cautioned.
There was a loud bang as the car jerked hard. She gritted her teeth as she struggled to regain control. A moment later the car straightened out. She’d hit a pothole. Samantha realized she was lucky to have kept control of the car. She was also lucky she hadn’t taken out the tires or the rims, from the feel of things.
Steady; focus.
At last the cities fell behind and she hit the road curving through the mountains. She took one curve, and the car began to fishtail wildly. As soon as she had straightened out again, she cut her speed. She would be no help to Robin if she was splattered along the highway.
At last she came to the turnoff, and she wound upward until she arrived at the house. She parked, opened the door, and as she stepped out of the car, a wave of wrongness hit her. The hair all over her body stood on end.
She raced up to the front door. It was locked. “Robin!” she called, pounding on the door.
There was no answer.
Samantha grabbed the doorknob again and willed it to open. The door flew open, and she leaped inside as it slammed shut again behind her.
“Robin!”
She didn’t see her in the kitchen and she made her way toward the back of the house.
“Robin! Where are you?”
As she came into sight of Winona’s office, Samantha froze.
Robin was standing just inside the room, her back to Samantha, facing the window. Her back was straight and stiff, her arms were bent, her hands out of Samantha’s line of sight. The girl was barefoot.
“Robin?” Samantha called as she moved closer.
Robin didn’t move, staying perfectly still as though she were a statue.
And a horrible thought occurred to Samantha. Maybe the girl had been killed and petrified just like her mother.
She walked closer, scanning the area for signs of anyone else. There was no one, just the girl standing with her back to her.
“Robin?” Samantha asked as she reached her. She placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Robin jerked, then turned around. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. Her face looked slack.
“Robin, what’s the matter?”
Fire exploded in Samantha’s body. She looked down and saw a knife protruding from her stomach. Blood was starting to gush, coating Samantha’s shirt, the knife, and Robin’s hand where it gripped the hilt.
15
Samantha fell backward, slamming to the floor with enough force to jar every bone in her body. Robin staggered but kept her feet, still holding the knife. Samantha pressed a shaking hand to the bloody wound in her abdomen.
I’m dying, killed by a child I’m supposed to be helping, she realized. Around her everything became clearer. Colors looked sharper, brighter. Her vision telescoped, and she could see the tiny imperfections in the wood grain of the floor. She could hear the blood pumping out of her body, smell its metallic tang in the air.
She was going to die if she couldn’t start knitting her body together immediately. But she could see Robin getting ready to attack again.
Need to form the circle. So much blood.
There was more than enough blood to form the circle, but her muscles were seizing up. She touched her stomach with her hand and then began to smear the blood on the wood.
Robin bent over her, and she kicked out at the girl, catching her in the knee. Robin staggered backward before falling.
Samantha struggled to move, to sit up, so she could stretch and complete the circle, but her body wouldn’t respond. She tried to reach out with her mind, will the blood to run in a circle around her, but her thoughts were scattering, fading into oblivion.
I need help. God, save me! she prayed.
And in the next breath, she knew what to do. She brought her hands close together, and a moment later Freaky appeared. The kitten gazed at her with wide eyes.
“Circle of blood,” she whispered.
The kitten rolled from her chest onto her stomach, coating its black fur with her blood. Then it jumped off and onto the floor and began to drag itself around her, wiping her blood onto the ground.
She couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. She didn’t know if Freaky would be able to finish the circle before Robin stabbed her again. If she didn’t focus and start to heal herself, though, it would be a moot question.
Everything seemed to go black for a moment. Then, slowly, she could feel warmth spreading throughout her body, burning like fire as it reached her stomach. She could feel the wood floor beneath her. The wood had once been a living thing, and some of the energy was still trapped in the lumber. She pulled it into herself. She could feel blood vessels begin to mend.
A sandpaper tongue licked her cheek. Freaky.
A moment later, she felt the air shimmer around her. Robin had tried to attack the circle, but the circle held. Freaky had protected her.
Muscle began to knit itself back together, pain knifing through her as it did so. She screamed in agony as toxins raced through her system. She rolled onto her side so that she could vomit.
Outside the circle, Robin kept attacking again and again like a mindless automaton. The circle did its job, holding true. Freaky scampered up onto her head and sat perched there. She could hear him hissing, and tiny claws pricked her scalp.
She finally was able to open her eyes again. Where everything had been so sharp and clear before, now it was hazy, her vision obscured by her own pain and exhaustion as she worked to heal herself. Robin was throwing herself at the energy barrier. Each time she did so, Freaky hissed.
Samantha struggled to keep her eyes open.
“Robin, you’ve got to stop,” she whispered.
It was pointless. The girl had been mesmerized. It was no mean feat for one witch to do that to another with power. It usually required elaborate preparations and was always best done when hair or blood of the victim was used in the spell. Samantha wouldn’t be able to break that mesmerism until she could exit the circle.
Samantha’s wounds were continuing to heal, but not nearly fast enough. And then memories of what had been done to her and the others a few months before
in a Salem graveyard came flooding back to her.
The circle kept others out, but it did not have to keep her in. She moved her hand slowly, hoping that Robin wouldn’t notice. She put her index finger just over the side of the circle and pressed it to the ground.
The wooden floors had given all the energy they could, but the girl who was standing on them had not. Robin was barefoot, making it that much easier. Samantha pulled energy as hard as she could, sucking it out of Robin, through the floor, and into herself.
It worked, and Samantha pulled the energy as hard as she could, her damaged body starving for it.
Robin yelped and tried to jump back, but Samantha was in control now. She pulled with everything she had, and the increased energy sent her healing abilities into overdrive. Moments later, she was sitting up even as Robin tumbled to the ground.
I have to release her or I will kill her.
Samantha forced herself to let go and yanked her hand safely back inside the circle. Robin was on the floor next to her, just outside the circle, head twisted her direction, rage burning in her eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” Samantha heard herself saying, even though she knew the girl was in no position to be able to hear it.
“I’m going to kill you,” Robin whispered.
“Not today.”
Freaky was still standing guard, hissing at Robin. He had hopped down off of Samantha’s head, and he was bouncing around the circle, his back arched high.
Samantha sat up slowly. She wasn’t finished healing, but neither was she on the verge of death anymore. Robin’s eyes were glazing over. The spell was losing its potency, its hold on her diminishing. Still, it would be a few hours before it was gone completely.
Samantha coiled all her muscles. Robin still held the athame, and she was going to have to move swiftly to free the girl before she could attack again. Robin closed her eyes, her breathing labored.
Samantha lunged and slammed her hands onto either side of Robin’s head. She sent waves of electricity flooding through. “Burn out the thoughts that are not hers,” Samantha commanded.