Chapter Forty-One
FORTY-ONE
MAVEN
I stare at her, not trusting my sight. This can’t be happening. I’m dreaming again, that’s all. I’m in a fantasy of my own making, a nightmare of my mind’s design.
My sweet aunt is not standing over me with a ceremonial knife used in ritual killings.
Except maybe she is, because she says, “You look surprised. That’s to be expected. You left Solstice too soon to be initiated on your eighteenth birthday, but we’re going to remedy that tonight. You’ve missed out on so much fun!”
She gestures with the knife toward Ezra, as limp as a fish on his rock. “Thank you for him, by the way. You know how I adore younger men.”
I try to speak but can’t. My tongue isn’t working. My body isn’t working right, either. When I attempt to lift my head, my nerves don’t send the message to my brain.
“Try not to fight it, darling. Immobilus spells have a nasty way of fighting back.”
She draws the blade across her open palm. Blood wells up to fill the cut. Dabbing at it with her forefingers, she delicately draws a mark on my brow, then my cheeks and chin. She looks at my throat and grimaces.
“Did Father O’Brian give you this silly little trinket? How ridiculous.”
With a flick of the knife, she slices the rosary off my neck, tossing it aside like a piece of trash. I hear it land on the cavern floor with a musical little jangle of wood and metal on bone.
“Now, I’m sure you have questions. We can’t get to them all tonight, of course, but where would you like me to start?”
She examines my tortured eyes for a moment, then nods.
“Bea. Yes, of course. She’s perfectly fine, darling.
Tucked into her bed, sleeping like a baby.
Brewed her a cup of my special tea. She’ll be out for hours.
Such a lovely child. You’ve done a wonderful job with her.
Though I must admit, I was hurt to discover you lied about her age.
She’s so small, it makes sense she might pass as nine instead of eleven, but I had my suspicions.
A simple revelare aetatem spell gave me the truth.
I never thought that one would come in handy, but I’m pleased to say it did. ”
Her green eyes harden with anger. “I was even more hurt that you lied about her paternity. A Croft, of all things.”
She retches as if she’s about to vomit, then smiles.
“But we’ll let bygones be bygones, because the mating of a witch and a demon produces a child of incredible power. When Bea comes of age, she’ll be the most gifted witch our line has seen since Megaera.”
Though my body is immobilized, my heart is still beating. It pumps blood through my veins at such a furious pace, I’m sweating and lightheaded, gasping for breath.
“Yes, I can see you have questions about her, too. She was the one who cast the original curse on the Crofts, you know. Once a month for seven days straight, all the males in that family turn into monsters at night. Demons, werewolves, every type of goblin and ghoul. Even a giant, carnivorous plant in one case! Brilliant how she made the curse mimic a woman’s cycle.
Personally, I think she should’ve gone further and made it happen every single night in retaliation for what they did to her, but that’s just me. ”
She chuckles. “It’s hilarious how they’re still trying to find a cure, but there isn’t one. No matter how many experiments they run on animals that have evolved to transform their shape or manipulate their environments for survival, the Croft bloodline is cursed for good.”
She pauses to thoughtfully dab more blood on the pulse point in the hollow of my throat.
“Which brings me to your mother. She’d gone to the Crofts’ church to try to break Megaera’s spell.
She was always too softhearted, poor darling.
Righting a wrong, she called it. Though I must admit, she was clever enough to try at midnight on a full moon on the winter equinox, because that confluence packs a powerful magical punch, but a caster’s final spell before death can’t be reversed. ”
She chuckles. “Like the one Mother cast on Elijah Croft. For the rest of his days, anywhere on Earth that man goes, he’ll be attacked by ravens. Petty but poetic.”
Righting a wrong.
So that’s what my mother was doing that snowy December night. She didn’t hate the Crofts like the rest of our family did. She wanted to help them.
And I never told her about Ronan. I kept him a secret because I thought she’d hate me for loving him. I thought she’d never look at me the same way again.
Hot tears leak from the corners of my eyes.
Davina exclaims, “Oh, darling, don’t cry yet! Wait until I tell you that it was me who made sure your silly softhearted mother wouldn’t try anything so stupid again.”
Realizing what she means, I stare at her in dawning horror.
She leans close to my face and hisses, “Take that under advisement, May. We don’t go behind each other’s backs in this family. If you ever think about doing something stupid like betraying us, just think about your daughter. She could suffer a tragic slip and fall, too.”
Burning rage erupts inside me. I glare at her, dying to wrap my hands around her neck, but I’m impotent, trapped inside in my useless body.
She pats me gently on the cheek. “Though you were right about how all the Blackthorn women die by accident, clever girl. Dark magic always exacts a price. When Megaera put that blood curse on the Crofts, it took a little something from her lineage, too. A tithe, if you will. Like all of us, your mother would’ve befallen a tragic accident eventually. I just hurried things along.”
She turns away. Slipping the robe from her shoulders, she lets it fall to the ground. It slithers off her body and pools in silky folds atop a heap of bones. She’s nude but completely at ease in her skin, stretching her arms overhead and sighing in contentment.
Her body is firm and youthful, with no signs of sagging or loss of tone a woman of her age might normally have.
An unnatural youthfulness gained through unnatural means.
Reaching Ezra on the altar, she stands looking down at him, then trails her fingertips up the inside of his bare thigh. He stirs, straining against the chains at his wrists, moaning and trying to open his eyes.
“Hush, sweet boy,” she croons, gazing lovingly at his flaccid penis.
She bends over and takes it into her mouth.
She suckles him until he’s fully erect, flexing his hips and groaning, his shaft slick with her saliva, his thigh muscles taut.
The sound of unseen drums starts up, their beat low and rhythmic.
Then soft chanting begins in a language I don’t understand.
I can’t move my head to see behind or to the other side of me, so I don’t know if there are people there, or if the cave itself has come alive, aroused by the scene on the altar.
Davina straightens. She wraps her hand around Ezra’s stiff cock and continues to stroke it. He mindlessly fucks his hips into her slick palm, rolling his head from side to side, his moans growing louder.
The chanting and drumbeats grow louder, too, until it sounds as if all the noise is coming from inside my own skull.
Davina’s words cut through the noise like a knife.
“I see you’re all doom and gloom at the moment, darling, but there are many benefits to our loyalty.
For one thing, we don’t die. Well, our human forms die, but after seven days, we return in animal form to wait until the master is strong enough to rise again, and we’ll be restored to our former glory. ”
I think of the black clouds of ravens always circling the skies of Solstice. I think of the red fox, white cat, and blue morpho butterfly, all so strangely intelligent.
I think of all the empty Blackthorn graves at Pinecrest, and my grandmother’s strangely well-preserved, disappearing corpse, and how Bea dreamt of being a big black dog.
Is that what she’ll be reincarnated as?
If I were able to laugh, it would be the crazed one again. I can feel my sanity slipping away from me, like water spiraling down a drain.
This isn’t happening.
And if it is, I’d rather be nuts.
Still stroking Ezra’s hard cock, Davina murmurs, “It won’t be long now. The master is almost ready. We’ve been very diligent in our sacrificial offerings over the generations. His power has almost peaked. Then he’ll rise and claim his queen to rule beside him.”
She glances up at me, her smile sly. “Can you guess who that might be? I’ll give you a hint, darling: it’s a certain little girl who looks younger than she is.”
No! This isn’t happening! This can’t be happening! It’s all a terrible dream! Wake up, Maven! WAKE UP!
Davina climbs atop the altar and lowers herself onto Ezra’s dick. His eyes roll back in ecstasy. She starts to grind against him, riding him hard, her ample breasts bouncing. She tips her head back and closes her eyes.
“Dimensional travel spells, time manipulation spells, memory erasure spells that make people forget someone ever existed … it’s all within your reach, darling. Even death itself doesn’t have dominion over you. I can’t wait to teach you everything. There’s so much you need to learn.”
Luce’s voice echoes inside my mind.
“The head of our Entomology Department is Oliver Underwood. I don’t know anyone named May Blackthorn.”
I feel sick. We were erased, Ezra and I, along with all the missing people whose bones carpet the floor of this cave. Erased from memory as if we never existed at all.
The air is growing hotter. Sweat drips down my neck. The bonfire in the center of the cave flares up with a roar, showering sparks into the air that billow up to the shadowy ceiling and are swallowed by darkness.
Two more figures in black robes come into my view, moving slowly toward the altar.
Ezra’s husky grunts of pleasure mingle with Davina’s lusty moans. They both seem close to climax, writhing together atop the stone, their coupling growing more frantic.
One of the figures in black places a small bowl near Ezra’s head, its wood surface carved with mystical sigils. The other stands near his waist, waiting unmoving until Davina stiffens and cries out.
In a whipcrack-fast movement, the figure standing near Ezra’s waist snatches up the knife Davina laid on the stone when she mounted him and draws it across his throat.
Bright red arterial blood spurts from his neck, arcing elegantly into the bowl the other figure holds up to catch it.
Ezra jerks, making sickening gurgling noises. Davina continues to fuck him as he bleeds out, riding him until his body stops jerking and he falls completely still.
Panting, she opens her eyes and gazes down at his lifeless body.
The blood that missed the bowl snakes down the side of the stone altar in gleaming red streams. The chanting continues. The drums keep up their steady, droning beat.
Davina swings her leg over him and dismounts, then shakes out her hair. One of the robed figures unshackles Ezra’s lifeless body and shoves it over the side of the altar. It lands on the ground with a dull thud. Then Davina climbs on top of the altar again, lying on her back and spreading her legs.
The robed figure approaches her, standing between her spread thighs. It reaches down and probes her pussy with thin, pale fingers, thrusting them inside her, making her moan.
Davina lifts her arms overhead. The other figure in black traces marks onto her breasts and torso with Ezra’s blood, then sets the bowl aside and chains Davina’s wrists to the altar so her breasts jut toward the sky.
When the figure between Davina’s legs removes his fingers and replaces it with his cock, his cowl slides off his head, revealing thin white wisps of hair floating on a pale skull.
It’s Q.
Shackling Davina’s wrists so she can be ritually fucked by him is Esme.
I try to scream again. The effort is fruitless. I have to lie there helplessly and watch them rut to a groaning climax, then Esme switches places with Davina and takes her turn.
With sickening clarity, I understand it will be my turn next.
My “initiation” is coming.
The drums beat. The chanting continues. Smoke from the roaring fire billows out in ever-growing waves until I’m coughing from it, it’s so thick.
Under the voices and the drums, I hear someone calling my name. It’s very distant, very faint, but I hear it, and my pulse surges.
I’d know that voice anywhere, even in the inky blackness at the bottom of the sea.
You never forget your first love.
The bonfire is growing out of control, choking the cave with plumes of acrid black smoke. Something has gone wrong, because Esme and Davina have begun screaming. Then, from directly above, a pulse of hot air beats against my face. A shower of glowing embers surrounds me.
My enormous obsidian demon appears through the billowing smoke like a vengeful angel, beautiful and terrible, his fangs bared, his icy eyes ablaze with fury, the markings on his wrists and ankles glowing with hellfire.
With a deafening roar and a powerful swipe of his claws, he breaks the chains binding me to the rock. He lifts me and catapults us into the air, his giant wings beating furiously.
We fly.
The smoke clears.
I can breathe again.
Cradled in the safety of his burning embrace, my cheek resting against the expanse of his hard, leathery chest, I let myself slip away into the waiting, welcoming darkness.