His feet collided with stone as he landed back on the ground and a tremor went through his legs, up his hips and ribcage. He flung his hand out, bracing himself against the cold wall to keep his balance, sucked in a quick breath. He grimaced. The smell of old rainwater, dirty rags and formaldehyde filled his lungs. He ran the back of his hand over his burning eyes to clear them. His fingertips were wet where he had pressed them against the mossy stone to support himself. Wet stone – that was another part of the pungent odor he’d grown accustomed to.
He stood in the antechamber; only two candles dispersed the darkness. They had burned down to mere stumps and their flames were flickering uneasily in the shifting air his arrival had caused. The gray bricks were blackened where the candles had burned too brightly and brownish-green where mold and moss had taken habitat. The floor where he had landed was smooth. It was curious that he always arrived in exactly the same place no matter how far he’d travelled. His feet had left low indentations in the rock, had rubbed it smooth.
He stepped out of the pentagram that had been chiseled into the stone and walked up to the arched wooden door. Tiny holes littered the oak where wood worms had carved out their tunnels. The magical barriers didn’t seem to mind their presence; maybe they were too inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Darko drew his Atlame from the sheath around his calf. He pushed the blade into the wood where a doorknob or a lock should have been and it went through it like flesh, glowing blue. The candle flames died with a crackle and the scent of smoke carried over to Darko. He sighed. That happened if you didn’t replace the candles frequently. Too much magical exposure always snuffed them out.
His eyes were drawn back to what was in front of him when the edges of the door started glowing bright blue and a second later the magical lock clicked. With the sound like a vacuum being released, the door opened an inch and warm air pressed against Darko. The moment he pushed open the door completely, a cacophony of thud-thuds washed over him like a tidal wave. It was like this every time he entered the lab. He wondered how the Master could stand it. He’d go insane if he had to spend more than a couple of hours here, not to mention find sleep at night. But maybe the Master had found a way to forgo sleep.
The heart in Darko’s pocket seemed to pulsate even harder. Every beat of it pressed the warm organ against his upper thigh. He could almost feel its slick touch through the fabric of his pants and coat.
Master Valentine was bent over his workbench and turned when Darko entered. He was dressed in a gray linen tunic and pants of the same material. His skin matched the color of his clothes. His feet were bare. He didn’t seem to mind the rough stone floor or the pieces of broken vials and puddles of spilled potion all over it. He hadn’t left the lab since he’d found Darko in the Melaten cemetery more than two years ago. The number of hearts had gotten too big that he could have taken them with him; he was bound to this room like the hearts to him. Darko didn’t know how old the Master was; he guessed around eighty judging his appearance, but he knew better than anyone how deceiving it was.
Master Valentine’s eyes zoomed in on Darko’s coat pocket as if he could see through the fabric straight to the pulsating organ below. He couldn’t possibly have heard it over the noise in the room. Darko’s eyes brushed over the jars stacked on the shelves; they covered almost every inch of the walls, their stained boards crooked in the center, straining under the weight of the jars. There were hundreds of them in the spacious lab and every jar harbored a beating heart in a clear liquid. If Darko concentrated hard enough, he could see the magical strands connecting the hearts to the Master. Only a few of them were bright as a ray of sunshine; the majority had dulled, some even blackened and withered, and with them the corresponding heart. They didn’t last as long as they used to. When Darko had first started working for the Master the strands had conserved their life energy for months; now they were lucky if it lasted a couple of weeks.
Darko removed the satchel from his pocket and handed it to Master Valentine. Then Darko took off his coat. Sweat was trickling down between his shoulder blades. It was hot in the lab – as hot as the inside of that man’s body had felt when Darko had plunged his hand into his chest to extract the heart. And it wasn’t really surprising that the lab was body warm considering how many pulsating, squirming, living body organs were crowding the shelves. It was a bit like being in a massive organism.
Master Valentine pulled the heart out and clutched it in his vein-y, pale hand, watching it with penetrating intensity as it contracted and expanded. Thud. Thud.
Darko glanced at the door that had closed behind him. He wiped sweat off his forehead where a few strands of his black hair stuck to his skin.
“Again?” The Master asked in a tight voice. His eyes were narrowed at Darko. Cataract tinged his Master’s pupils gray. “You need to forget about your useless qualms. A pure heart harbors much more energy than the heart of the scum you always pursue.”
Darko lowered his head an inch. “Scum is easier to come by. There’s so much of it roaming the streets.” It was a half-truth, and Master Valentine knew it, but his time was running out; he couldn’t risk losing Darko.
The Master’s grayish-blue eyes didn’t stray from Darko. They seemed to skin off every layer of his protective walls, straight to the core of who – of what he was.
Darko took a step back, not caring if it was admittance of his weakness. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Master Valentine turned, leaving Darko to stare at his back. The thin fabric of his tunic stuck to it, so his ribs and the sharp angles of his shoulders shone through. Just like sleep, intake of food seemed inconsequential to his existence. Darko wasn’t sure if it meant he was being dismissed but he didn’t dare leave – yet.
Master Valentine moved purposefully toward his workbench and set the heart down on the scratched and burned wooden surface. The heart twitched and lifted from the table. Darko jerked, half expecting the heart to topple to the ground. The Master didn’t seem to share his worries. He removed a few items from the drawers below the worktable before he put the heart into an empty jar. He picked up a long vial and slowly poured the clear liquid over the heart, whispering Latin incantations under his breath. A glowing strand shimmered to existence between the heart and the Master’s chest. He didn’t stop pouring until the heart was completely covered and had sucked in enough liquid to fill it completely. Then he put a lid on the jar and moved toward the shelf at the back. A bare bedframe with a stained mattress was wedged between it and another shelf.
Darko’s eyes flitted to the door once more. The Master was in a strange mood today. The Master shifted two jars and put the newest heart between them. Finally he turned around to Darko.
“This heart won’t last long. Soon you’ll have to hunt again.”
Darko had expected nothing else.
“We both know my powers are waning. This can’t hold out much longer.” He made a sweeping gesture around the room. “This Litha is our last chance.”
“You don’t know that. You’re strong, Master.”
“I am strong but this is beyond what I’m capable of, what any mage is capable of. This Litha, Darko. We can’t fail.”
“We still haven’t found the medium.”
“Thanks to the Brotherhood our search could be over soon,” he said. “Depraved brood, all of them.” The words were like acid pouring from his cracked lips.
Darko didn’t understand. “The Brotherhood, but how?”
“Oh, not intentionally.” Master Valentine let out hoarse laughter. He pulled out a laptop from below his pillow. The device looked alien in the lab. An image was frozen on the screen: the face of a girl, amber eyes unblinking and determined, black hair pulled back tightly. He had never seen her before, and he didn’t know why his Master thought she was the one, but his Master was seldom wrong. “Find out if she’s what we need. And be quick. We only get one chance. The sacrifice has to be pure. It has to be willing. Don’t f
ail.”
Summer Solstice was still more than four months away. Darko wouldn’t fail.
“I won’t,” Darko promised with a bow.
Chapter 3
Nela struggled into a sitting position. No hint of light peeked through the curtains. Once again she’d woken before sunrise. Though woken wasn’t quite the right term. She’d been lying awake for hours.
She untangled herself from her sweat-drenched blankets, swung her legs out of bed and rubbed her eyes. There was no use in trying to get more rest. She’d been having trouble sleeping for weeks, ever since she was blessed – even the word left a bitter taste in her mouth - with the markings of the Brotherhood.
It felt as if the restrained magic was burning under her skin, right under her tattoo. It had been getting worse. Slowly she straightened, trying to ignore the discomfort in her back. She lifted her shirt and twisted until she could see the tattoo in the small mirror. Dark red – real blood, the blood of another witch was now part of her. She shivered. It was almost ironic that someone else’s magic was binding her own. At least the markings had stopped bleeding. The first few days after the Binding, she’d had to change her shirts at least every other hour.
The tingling in her skin didn’t disappear. She was a witch and her magic wanted out, but she couldn’t release it. Only thinking about it, the tattoo on her back began to burn fiercely as if someone was touching fire to her skin. It seemed as if no matter what she did she was burning either way. Maybe it would get better with time. Her parents rarely showed signs of being in pain. They seemed to have mastered the art of suppressing their magic, or maybe they were particularly good at hiding their true feelings. Nela couldn’t imagine they weren’t thinking about magic anymore. How could they?
A new jab of pain went through her. Her back arched in response and she let her shirt slip back down even though it felt like rubbing sandpaper over an open wound. She tried to think of something else, of anything else. Thankfully her stomach took that moment to let out a growl. She would have to make herself an early breakfast.
The burning receded until all that was left was a dull throbbing. There was nothing she could do against that, nothing that wouldn’t lead to more pain. She put on her favorite pink robe with fluffy sheep all over it and walked into the corridor, but stopped in her tracks at the sight of light coming from downstairs. The clock on the wall said it was three am and she could hear her father’s snores coming from the white bedroom door to her left. It wasn’t a surprise that he was asleep, after all he always left the house early to head to work in their family’s company. Having your own business or working for others of your kind was really the only way for witches to find work.
Nela left the snores of her father behind and headed down the staircase, suddenly feeling worried. Why was her mother awake?
Candles perched on the last step and there were more on the floor flanking the walls, giving off a gentle light. The living room, too, was illuminated by at least a dozen candles. Nela reached for one of the candles but her fingers met an invisible barrier, a protection charm. The blinds were drawn for good reason. Her heart sped up and her tattoo flared with pain. Someone had worked magic on them. Not making a noise, Nela followed the smell of freshly baked bread into the kitchen.
Her mother was cutting a flat round bread into pieces, humming softly. Bannock bread. Nela had seen it on old family photos. Just like magic, their traditions and Sabbaths had been banned by the treaty. She loved browsing through the family albums; it was her only way to meet her mother’s parents. They’d committed suicide before she was even born, a fate they shared with many witches who snapped under the pressure of being forbidden to do magic.
On the table and the countertops candles were glowing; they were simple white candles, bare of pentagrams or spells. Ordinary candles. Maybe there wasn’t a place left where witches could buy their traditional candles. A small straw puppet was lying on the table in the middle. It was an old oak table, a family heirloom, and the only piece of furniture Nela and her parents had taken with them when they’d moved from Massachusetts to Cologne. Nela couldn’t remember much from the time before; she’d been only five when they’d moved. But she knew that the table had been part of their family for centuries, with the only difference that its legs hadn’t been smooth in the past, but they’d been bound by the law to remove the witch symbols, including their family crest.
Nela knew why her mother was baking Bannock bread and putting up candles everywhere. Today was the second day of February. A witch Sabbath.
“Imbolc,” Nela whispered, and her mother whirled around, eyes wide. Her long blond hair – Nela had always envied her for it; she’d inherited her father’s dark-brown curls - was a complete mess, strands sticking out as if she’d been hit by electricity. But that wasn’t what drew Nela’s attention. It was the fear in her mother’s dark blue eyes. Was she afraid of Nela? For a moment neither of them said anything.
“You scared me,” her mother said quietly. There was a sense of nervousness on her face.
“You’re celebrating Imbolc,” Nela repeated. Her mother paled but didn’t deny it. Imbolc was one of the eight annual witches’s Sabbaths, and it was forbidden by the Brotherhood to celebrate them. Anything that connected them to who they were – what they were – was forbidden to them. When her mother didn’t speak up, just kept staring at her, Nela continued, “All the candles, they’re symbolizing the light, right? As a way of celebrating that the days are becoming longer now that spring is nearing.” Her mother’s eyes looked impossibly dark in the flickering candlelight as if her pupil and iris had merged.
“And the straw puppet is for protection,” Nela whispered.
“How do you know?”
“I remember the bedtime stories you always told me when I was younger. I loved hearing you talk about our traditions.”
“You remember? I thought you were too young when I stopped.”
“I remember everything,” Nela said. It were her favorite memories. “And I overheard you and dad talk about it sometimes.”
Her mother went to the cast iron pan with the bannock bread, picked up a knife and cut the bread into pieces; her fingers were unsteady. “Bannock bread is supposed to be cooked over open fire,” she said in a careful tone like she still wasn’t sure she should talk about it. She didn’t need to explain her words. Nela knew there was no way her mother could have made a fire in the garden and baked bread over it, on Imbolc no less. The Brotherhood would have been on their doorstep in no time.
Her mother handed a wedge of the bread to Nela. The fear had disappeared from her eyes, but every move spoke of hesitation. “I thought I would have to eat it alone.”
Nela took a bite of the bread, half expecting her tattoo to burn as punishment but except for the constant low throbbing in her back there was no reaction. Her mother had put raisins into the bread to add sweetness to the barley dough. It was warm and soft, and tasted delicious, but even more important, it seemed to soothe some of the nervous magical energy under Nela’s skin. This was part of who they were, part of their history, and yet they had to do it behind closed curtains hidden away from the Brotherhood. They ate a couple more wedges in silence, then her mother picked up the remaining bread and the straw puppet. “Are you sure you’re full?”
Nela nodded, a frown drawing her brows down as she watched her mother walk into the living room. Nela followed her slowly. A fire was burning in the fireplace, the flames throwing shadows on her mother’s face; she stood very close to the fire, staring down at the tray with the puppet and the remaining bread. There was a deep sadness in her expression. Nela slowly moved closer and touched her shoulder. Her mother jumped slightly and quickly threw the puppet and the bread into the fire, and watched them burn while Nela watched only her mother and the way she seemed to slightly deflate as the symbols of Imbolc turned to ashes. Shouldn’t her father have shared this with them?
Her mother bent down and lifted a small bucket with sand before do
using the fire with it. Then she blew out the two candles sitting on the cupboard to the left. “You should go back to sleep. You have to get up in two hours.”
“What about you?”
“I--” her mother began, then sighed. “I’ll have to clean this up. Please get some rest.” Nela wanted to protest but she could tell from the look on her mother’s face that it was better to drop the matter.
Her mother walked back into the kitchen and started extinguishing the candles there too. Nela hovered in the doorway, unwilling to give up their shared moment of their heritage. Soon the smoke rising up from the wicks filled the air. Would her father smell it up in the bedroom? Her mother must have thought the same, because her worried gaze darted toward the staircase. Nela wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what. Eventually she turned around.
“Don’t tell your father,” her mother said before Nela left the kitchen.
***
When Nela came down two hours later, the sun was up and the kitchen bore no trace of their Imbolc celebration. Not even the hint of smoke reached Nela’s nose. Her father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. He glanced up and gave her a strained smile but quickly looked back down at the article he had been reading, his expression tightening. His brown eyes reflected worry. Had he noticed their Imbolc celebrations after all? But he would have tried to talk to her about it if that was the case.
Her mother stood at the stove, hair pulled up in her usual loose ponytail. She was holding a spatula in hand and pancakes were baking in the pan, but she wasn’t paying attention to them. Her eyes were directed at the small television on the counter, a crease between her blond brows.