Gavin fills his own plate with a pile of eggs and bacon. “I talked to her last night with Mack when I asked about Chrissa. Damien agreed to give up his position as protector over Chrissa so he could be out there in the wilds helping Evangeline.”
I can’t help but think of Jezi and Weldon, and the real reason Damien wants to leave.
“She’s doing well, if you can believe it,” Gavin continues as he looks up, his eyes calmer, clearer. “Although a lot of the werewolves didn’t initially agree with her order, after Bael died, it sort of nulled any pact they had with the demons and made it a bit easier for her to bring them to their knees and submit.”
“I knew Momma could do it,” Chrissa says as she sits and puts a pancake on her plate. She tops it with chocolate chips and a heaping amount of syrup, and then grabs a fork. “She’s a great alpha.”
Gavin nods with her and swallows a bite before saying, “She’s going to be out there for a while, moving from pack to pack, trying to strengthen and unite the wolves under one pack. Though it’s a very ambitious plan, I think she just might pull it off.”
“She will,” Chrissa says through a mouth full of pancake.
Everyone smiles at her. Silence moves around the table, circling around as we fill our bellies and exchange satisfied expressions.
“Have you… heard anything about Charlie?” Gavin asks after his plate is cleared and he’s leaned back in his chair, rubbing his stomach.
Jaxen’s grip tightens on his fork. He finishes chewing, and then sets it down. “No. You?” he asks, looking up at him.
Gavin shakes his head. “Do you think he managed?”
Jaxen gives a slight shrug. “I’d like to think so. He is, after all, our dad.”
Gavin lets out a short, pained chuckle. “There is that.”
Jaxen pushes back from the table, the chair scraping against the wood floor. “I need to finish getting ready.”
“I can grab the dishes before I head out,” I volunteer. Chrissa finishes her last bite and starts piling plates and silverware up with me. It takes us no time to put away what’s left of the food and load the dishwasher.
Jaxen meets me back in the living room after his shower. Together, we head out. My mind races with a million possibilities as we step into the morning chill. Wondering about Jezi and Weldon, and how Damien is dealing. Thinking about Evangeline in the woods and how she’s faring. But mostly about Charlie and what we’re going to hear when we report to the war room to go over the latest updates.
It surprises me that comets aren’t falling from the skies and hurricanes aren’t ripping through the air, knowing right below our feet that there’s a war going on that will determine how the rest of this plays out.
We handed all our hope to a demon.
Jaxen doesn’t say much on the way there. His thoughts are so heavy I feel like they’re visible, bearing down on his shoulders like weights.
The war room is full by the time we make it there. The Divine are standing near Mack, backs to the large screen brought in that show images from Charlie’s camera. There are demons coming in and out of the room I was once kept in when Bael captured me long ago. He must be sitting, because they’re standing over him as they approach him, bowing their heads before they walk away.
“It worked,” Mack says, face stuck in shock as if he still can’t believe it himself. “The latest report we got from a demon contact on the street is that all Darkyns have vanished from the Underground. We are trying to locate their whereabouts, but their magic is strong, shielding them from us.”
I look to Jaxen, who’s staring at the screen with a mixture of relief and fear on his face.
“This is working out almost too easily,” Weldon says from the corner of the room, standing next to Jezi.
Mack shoots a look in his direction. “Easy or not, we’ll take the win. Mourdyn is no longer where we can’t touch him. All we have to do is locate him, and then we can finish this.”
I feel the burn of all the eyes in the room focusing on me. I will finish this is what he meant to say. What they’re all saying with their probing, curious gazes.
There’s a long moment of silence, and then Mack claps his hands together. “All right, everyone. We have jobs to do. We celebrate this victory when the war is over. Get back to it.” He shoos everyone out as chattered mumbling fills every corner of the room.
“Meet me in his office,” Alesteria says, hooking an eyebrow at me. I nod, and she smiles before following Wistar out of the room.
“Guess I knew what I was doing after all,” Weldon says smugly as he falls in line behind us as we shuffle out of the room.
I roll my eyes.
“What? You’re not going to tell me ‘good job’? ‘Thanks, Weldon. You’re amazing, Weldon’?”
Jezi elbows him in the side. “How about ‘you’re awfully smug, Weldon’?”
Weldon touches his chin and looks up in thought. “Mmm… nope. Not where I was going with that.” He crooks his arm around Jezi.
“You kissed and made up?” Jaxen asks, looking between them as we stop in front of an elevator.
Jezi places her hand on Weldon’s chest, lovingly looking up at him. “He finally took his head out of his ass.”
“So romantically put,” Weldon says, smirking.
After the elevator dings and Jaxen and Jezi leave, we make our way to Mourdyn’s office and find Alesteria already nose deep in a journal. She waves us in without a word, and we each find where we left off the day before. We’re like blind mice running through a maze of thoughts. Running into walls. Backing up and taking new turns toward the exit… the answer.
I easily find myself back in the middle of his words, reading about his experiments and the crippling memories of his father that make me want to hug my own. His childhood was a collection of scars. Of backhanded bruises and pernicious words. Of silenced tears that watered a dark seed deep within him, slowly spreading it roots. His nights were spent studying the bible, forced to pray for redemption for the evil inside him his father told him his magic was.
All he knew was confusion and pain. Fear had become his invisible friend, taking him by the hand, guiding him from one decision to the next. Fear was the muscles he didn’t have to defend himself… the strength in his mind he could call upon. It warped him into something twisted. Changed him into a boy who didn’t believe in heroes or saviors, but in the villains who used their minds to best them.
Hours drift by me like a slow fog I can’t seem to find myself out of. Filled with words, though none of them joining together the way I want them to. None of them speak about the dream I had about the boy, until one sentence reaches out from the page and grabs a hold of my throat, squeezing the breath from me.
There was a boy I once knew. A boy I killed.
I sit straight in my seat, waving my hand like a crazy person to get their attention because words are failing me. My heart has taken a hammer to my ribcage. My brain has taken a vacation from my lips. They look up, eyes going wide the moment they see my frantic state, and then they move in behind me, peering over my shoulder.
“Read it,” Alesteria says on the edge of a breath.
So, I do.
His face is still so vivid in my mind. Eyes wide with panic as his body went over the edge of the well. Sometimes, I wake up covered in sweat, dreaming I was that boy and he was the one who shoved me. And sometimes, it isn’t him, but his mother, Sanura, who’s pushing me into the well, cursing me to a slow, painful death.
I almost wish she had.
I had to make a statement. I had to show her I wasn’t playing games. She knew things about magic that I didn’t. She had a wealth of knowledge I needed because my father deprived me of my birthright when my mother died, blaming her death on me and our magic. He said we were the devil’s creation, and that I needed to repent for my sins.
But Sanura knew better.
So, I killed her boy. I took his life and threatened the lives of her other sons, because she kne
w I could if I wanted to. She was the help. I was the master’s son.
And I liked having that kind of power over her.
When she finally agreed to teach me, she told me my soul was scarred because of my actions. She said murder takes the magic within you and twists it into dark magic. I felt it the first time I used it after killing that boy. The taste of licorice and iron on my tongue. The feeling of shadows swimming in my soul. It was captivating. Enticing.
It was she and she was me.
Together, we conquered unthinkable acts of magic. With my science and her knowledge in magic most witches turned away from, we envisioned a world unshackled by the chains of good and evil. We drew up plans for a machine capable of stripping power like the flesh we filleted off Hunter’s bones.
And we had only scratched the surface.
That is why I must continue my work until I can find a way to bring her back to this plane without bargaining with a demon. Even Bael has a price I’m not willing to pay. But if I could only find her in the Dwelling where she hides from me, then maybe I could obtain the spell needed to conjure her spirit back to life. Maybe she would finally confide where she hid her Grimoire. Maybe we could continue our plans and cover this world in a shadow that feeds us and does away with hunters indefinitely.
If only she would see me. Forgive me.
But she, too, I killed.
Another scar to wear upon my soul.
A scar I will regret until my last breath.
I close the journal, mouth open, staring out into the distance. Mind spinning, grasping, trying to find something to hold onto. Something other than the images of horror he’s painted with the brush stroke of his words. The dream was real. I think I might be sick. Think I might cry or scream, or punch through this earth until I find him and do to him what he did to that boy.
“You were right,” Alesteria says, blindly walking to the white board. It’s like his words have removed the oxygen from the room. Snipped out the sunlight peeking in from the blinds. She picks up the marker, uncaps it, and rights a name across the middle, circling it when she’s done.
Sanura.
“This is his weakness,” she says, turning back to me. Her gaze is firm. Settled in the truth that has found a home in her mind.
“But she’s dead,” I point out, questions hanging off the edges of my eyebrows, slanting them.
She doesn’t miss a beat. Her eyes pulse with revelation. “So were you. I brought you back, didn’t I?”
She waits, letting it sink in. She did. I look down to my hands, to the power streaming through my blood. Could I… do the same?
Weldon leans back on the desk, rubbing the edge of his jaw. “Please don’t tell me you think you’re going to bring her back and it’s going to end the war. This isn’t some Patrick Swayze movie where ghosts become heroes. We’re talking about a vindictive, not to mention very old, spirit.”
Alesteria’s eyes cut over to his. “No. But I know Faye has a gift of invoking, and, if she can invoke her spirit and talk to her, then maybe we could learn enough about Mourdyn to give her an edge over him when the time comes. If he wants that Grimoire, then he will stop at nothing to find it. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let him reunite with her.”
“Then why don’t you make Cecilia do it? You’re the Divine. Why force her?” Weldon prompts in my defense, not willing to lie down and take it.
Alesteria looks away, a flicker of regret in her eyes. She grips the back of the chair, gaze probing through the slits of the blinds. “Don’t you think we would if we could? We told you already… our magic is tied up in the city. Every drop. And even if we could… Cecilia’s strength doesn’t rest in invoking, but in divinity. It’s going to take a powerful witch with the gift of invoking to accomplish this. A witch with the power of both.”
A protest sits in the back of my throat, muted by the thoughts mugging my rationality. I don’t think I want to invoke a spirit such as Sanura’s. A spirit bathed in blood magic. I barely have a handle on my witch side to begin with. This is out of my league. This is charting new territory.
“Faye?” Alesteria says gently, quietly. She leans forward on her elbows, eyes carefully watching mine as if she is handling a spooked animal.
I blink through the daze, mouth still hanging open as my words prepare to jump from my lips. “We don’t know who she is or how she’ll act.” I blink again, my gaze coming into focus. “He couldn’t even find her in the Dwelling. What makes you think I can?”
She hangs her head as my words set out the roadblock I had intended. I think she curses under her breath. She’s struggling with it just as much as I am as she rocks back and forth in thought, until she finally stops, moments later, and turns to the filing cabinet. She digs and digs, taking folder after folder out, dropping them on the table beside her with a hard smack.
“What are you looking for?” I ask, welcoming any kind of distraction that will erase the dream from my mind.
“I remember seeing her name in here before.” She pauses, throwing a weighted look over her shoulder. “Back before Mourdyn was put down.” She turns, going back to digging, and adds, “There was a few times I sneaked in here when he was out, curious to know what he spent all his time doing. That’s initially how I discovered his plans to hurt my kind and went to the others.”
“Oh, the things monogamy makes you do,” Weldon mutters from his planted spot on the desk. “Even the baddest chicks feel the itch to snoop.”
I don’t think Alesteria heard him because she continues, “I remember finding a file he kept on her once, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through it, because the moment I saw her face and remembered who she was, I knew it wasn’t something I would ever come back from.” She stops, places her palm against her cheek as her eyes pray over the files on the table, and then opens the second drawer. “It has to be in here somewhere.”
I feel Weldon’s eyes on me as he enters my mind. This isn’t a good idea. Whoever this chick is, one thing is for certain… if she was ever tied to Mourdyn, then she is nothing but trouble.
I know, I say back, wishing for once that every day didn’t bring a new batch of problems to worry over.
“Here it is!” Alesteria says a second later, flipping through the file as she walks it over to us. Her picture spills onto the table. It’s been handled so many times I can barely make out any details other than her dark skin and a pair of soulless eyes peering up out of the picture, almost as if staring in to my soul.
“She’s a looker,” Weldon retorts with a small eye roll.
“He did his research,” Alesteria says as her eyes devour page after page within the folder. “He used a good friend of ours, Norman Evenmire, a well-known psychic within the community before this Coven was built, to look into Sanura’s past. He said she came from a very powerful line of witches from a small tribe in Africa. There’s loads of information here about the type of magic they used. Things I don’t even think Primevals have even touched on. Reincarnation. Controlling minds. Sacrificial torture as a way to bless the harvest. They could even reanimate bodies in times of war.” A visible shudder works its way down her spine as her gaze pauses over the words. “The gods they worship would give you nightmares.”
“And you want to send Faye in there after her?” Weldon asks as if she’s lost her mind. He shakes his head.
Alesteria winces at his remark, almost as if she agrees. It takes her a second to find her spot on the page. “She was separated from them after their village was attacked by a band of hunters,” Alesteria continues, “which is how she was captured and brought overseas. Even the magical world had their own misgivings, buying and selling their own kind.
“In our world, the new world known for burning witches at the stake, he said she knew very early on that practicing magic was a sure way to get herself killed, so she refrained from using it as much as possible. She gave herself to a human man in return for protection from her master, Mourdyn’s father, and sired three boys.” r />
She stops, eyes still skimming over the words as if she’s trying to choose which are needed and which aren’t.
“He tried to invoke her using many different witches, even those he kept in the correctional facility for torture, but nothing brought her out of hiding within the Dwelling.” Her words are a sparse whisper, almost as if by not speaking it, then maybe it would hide some of the truth. “He tortured our own for his own gains. Not even blood magic brought her out.”
“Then I think that settles it,” Weldon says, standing up from the table. “If she’s the hiding type, then why bother sending Faye in?”
“Maybe she just wanted to hide from him,” Alesteria says, her words slow and thoughtful, like the dots she laid out are finally beginning to connect. “She was betrayed not only by hunters, but also by her own kind. He killed her. No side was more evil than the other. Maybe she sees that now. Or maybe she could see it, if only someone would try to convince her.”
“And then what? She plays a game of hopscotch with Faye and they become best friends?” Weldon tosses out there, the tension in his words transparent on his face.
She looks up, the ratification in her eyes intense enough to knock the defiance right from Weldon’s face. “No. But there’s something in her Grimoire he wants. And if he finds it, or he finds her before we do, then we might find ourselves in a war we aren’t ready for.”
The grim deliverance of her words is like slits to my Achilles heel, forcing me still. Demanding I take it all in without the option of running. She’s right. We need to get to her before he does. If he hasn’t already.
I grab my fear by the throat and choke it until it’s no more.
I know she’s watching me, waiting to see how I’ll respond. I find her eyes and tell her all she needs to know in one look. She nods as we make a silent pact about a man who has brought the two of us together in this life.
“How will I do it? I need something of hers,” I say, surprised by the cool reserve of my tone.