Chapter Seven
Wynter woke with a groan and blinked hard a few times. A purple night sky streaked with thick clouds came into focus, and she became aware that she was indignantly splayed out in the grass.
The back of her head throbbed a little, which could no doubt be courtesy of her hitting the ground when she passed out. One side of her face burned in a way that told her Kali’s mark was now visible—at least temporarily.
No other part of Wynter’s body hurt, so she didn’t think she’d been injured when her monster took over. Thankfully, that was usually the case.
She didn’t always fall unconscious when the entity withdrew. Sometimes she simply “jolted”
back to herself. Maybe it was dependent on how long her monster was in control, or maybe it was dependent on Wynter’s physical condition at the time—she really had no clue.
Sitting upright, she took in the scene with a grimace. There was a lot of blood. It discolored the soil, dotted the blades of grass, and left slashing marks on the trees. All that was left of the witches were the occasional chewed limb, half a torso, and a severed head.
Lovely. And not an uncommon sight in such instances.
Her monster had a tendency to eat its enemies alive when it attacked. And it gave few fucks about what kind of mess it left in its wake. Which was when Anabel’s special evidence-ridding brews came in handy. They were stronger and more fast-acting than any bleach.
Wynter took stock of herself as she stood. No wounds, just as she’d suspected. But there was plenty of crimson splatter on her clothes and skin. Also some bits of flesh and guts.
Her scalp was wet and itchy. She didn’t need to reach up and touch her hair to know that it was streaked with blood. Awesome.
Her head whipped to the side as she sensed people bearing down on her. Her coven, she quickly realized.
“Are you okay?”
asked Delilah.
Wynter grunted. “Never better.”
“It took us a few minutes to realize you’d been taken,”
said Anabel. “We just thought we’d lost you somewhere in the maze. We tracked you this far, but then we heard your monster when we got close. We decided to stay out of the way and let it take care of business.”
“Good call,”
said Wynter, cricking her neck.
Settling her hands on her hips, Anabel sighed. “You know, you all really need to listen to me when I say that death stalks us. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp, people.”
She raked her gaze over Wynter. “Do you have any of my healing potions with you?”
“Yes, but none of this blood is mine.”
Wynter looked at what was left of the bodies. “They didn’t hurt me. They knocked me out with sleeping dust.”
Honestly, she was kind of insulted that they’d thought it would be enough to incapacitate her for longer than a few minutes. But then, they’d insisted on believing that she was simply a good ole regular witch. That was their mistake, and she supposed she should be glad they’d made it. Not that they would have otherwise gotten her to Aeon. Neither Wynter nor her monster would have allowed that.
Xavier circled their remains. “I recognize that head. It’s the Oasis Coven, huh?”
“Yup.”
Wynter scratched at her sticky scalp, and a small meaty blob plopped to the ground. Nice. “Kyra grabbed me while I was in the maze. She blew powder in my face before I had the chance to react. I went out like a light. I don’t think I was out for long, because I wasn’t far from all the activity when I woke up to find that I was being dragged off by Missy. They had a car waiting outside the tunnel, apparently.”
“So they were in cahoots with Demetria?”
asked Delilah.
“No, it seemed that they wanted to avenge her death.”
Humming to herself, Hattie began pulling fragments of bone and brain matter out of Wynter’s hair as casually as if they were blades of grass. “They meant to hand you over to Adam, I’m guessing,”
said Hattie.
Wynter nodded. “That was their idiotic plan.”
The old woman sneered at the dismembered corpses. “Then they deserved what they got.”
Anabel pulled out a vial. “Here, let me clean your clothes.”
She splashed the vial’s contents over Wynter’s tee and jeans. The blood gradually faded like, well, magick. The blonde’s nose wrinkled. “I can’t pour it over your hair unless you want it bleached white.”
“Thanks, but no,”
said Wynter.
“If it helps,”
began Xavier, “a lot of people have poured fake blood on themselves for the street party, so I don’t think you’ll stand out too much when we’re walking home.”
Wynter didn’t care if she stood out, because this would be an occasion when she wouldn’t hide what she’d been forced to do. But she did care that she hadn’t been able to quite simply enjoy an evening out with her coven. It had been going so well up until that point.
Delilah blew out a breath. “Your man is gonna be pissed when he hears about this, Wyn.”
Totally. “And no doubt disappointed that he wasn’t able to administer some punishment himself.”
She truly hoped that Cain wouldn’t start to again argue that she needed guards, because he really wouldn’t like it when she refused to back down on this.
Folding his arms in a petulant manner, Xavier glanced at the corpses again and sighed. “Your monster never leaves me anything to play with. I could have had so much fun reanimating the bodies and sending ’em running after people. It probably would have been a while before anyone realized that the witches were actually dead and not just acting scary for the street party.”
Anabel gaped at him. “You’re really thinking about how you were deprived of fun right now? Wynter was almost kidnapped, you tool.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time. Probably won’t be the last.”
Wynter snickered. “I really wish I could say you were wrong.”
Anabel huffed at him and held out another vial. “Here. Make yourself useful and clean the scene.”
“No,”
Wynter objected, closing her hand around the vial before Xavier could take it. “People need to see what happens to anyone who fucks with a revenant. They need to understand that I am a revenant.”
“This will definitely make that clear, so all right,”
said Anabel. “What do we do with your monster’s leftovers? Leave them here?”
Wynter touched the edge of her incisor with her tongue. “I have a better idea than that.”
*
Pausing in his pacing, Cain blinked at his consort. “You . . . you all you played catch with Missy’s severed head near the bonfire?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Well, it caught people’s attention.”
He’d bet. Bodiless heads tended to do that.
“And it delivered a message that they needed to hear loud and clear.”
She went to drop onto the leather desk chair but then hesitated, scrunching up her face as she looked at the blood matting her long hair. “I don’t think people thought that it was a real head at first, what with the street party being a Halloween celebration and all. But then a lycan came over to mess with Xavier, who promptly tossed the head at him. The dude spat out a seriously loud curse when he caught it. Kind of squeamish, for a lycan. Don’t you think?”
Cain ground his teeth. He didn’t care about lycans. He cared that people—worse, his own people—had dared try to deliver Wynter to a man who likely meant to put her through a shitload of pain for cursing his land.
When she’d walked into his ledger room looking like she’d had her head dunked into a pool of blood, Cain had pushed out of his desk chair so fast he’d sent it skidding backwards. He’d seen her in this state enough times to conclude that she must have been forced to free her monster to save herself. And when he’d heard what exactly went down tonight, he’d almost lost his mind.
Yes, he’d known something like this might happen. But there was intellectually knowing that someone could target her, and there was hearing that people had actually attempted to take from him the one person he needed.
Until Wynter waltzed into his world, it had been a long time since Cain felt anything deeply. Even the strongest emotions lost some of their impact when you’d lived so many years that you’d experienced them over and over and over. It was inescapable, really.
But having Wynter in his life . . . Everything seemed so much more vivid nowadays. Hence the rage pumping through his veins, hot and thick like lava. His creature was equally furious.
“Afterwards, we threw all the body parts on the bonfire.”
Her nose wrinkled. “We later regretted it, though, because it made quite a stench. I forgot how much I hate the smell of burning flesh.”
“How exactly does one forget that?”
She shot him a sour look. “I know what I did was pretty gruesome, okay, but I had to make a statement.”
“I’m not angry about what you did. I’m angry that the Oasis Coven dared touch you.”
He was also a little pissed that none of the witches were alive for him to punish. He’d owned rights to their souls, which meant he could have subjected them to an overload of pain that would have threatened to fracture their sanity. That would have gone a long way to making him feel better.
“Yeah, join the club.”
Cain scrubbed a hand over his face. “I should have exiled them after you killed Demetria. I shouldn’t have allowed them to stay.”
“Why? They gave you every indication that they were ashamed of what she did and that they had no intention of seeking vengeance for her death.”
She scratched at her bloody scalp and then eyed her red fingernails with distaste. “Honestly, I don’t think the coven would ever have so much as touched me if Adam hadn’t offered that bounty. They considered it a risk worth taking.”
“And, despite what you did tonight, there may still be others who feel the same. It would be better for you to have a few guards until—”
“No.”
Feeling his nostrils flare, Cain forced his back teeth to unlock. “I won’t take chances with your life.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to, so I suspected you’d start with this again. But everything I said last night still applies. Also, consider this: No one will try to kill me. Adam wants me alive. Besides, being immortal now, I’m not so easy to kill anyway. And it’s not like I’d permanently stay dead.”
“We’ve already covered that we can’t be sure that there won’t be a time when you don’t come back.”
“Cain, you won’t get your way here. I won’t agree to have guards. And be honest, you’re suggesting this out of anger, not good sense.”
“Of course I’m fucking angry. Did you expect anything different?”
“Nope. But you’re not a stupid man. You know I have to deal with this matter on my own, just as you know you wouldn’t truly trust any guard to not at some point betray me—we’ve been over this already. We both agreed it made sense for me to handle this my way.”
Cain inwardly cursed. His monster wasn’t annoyed with her. It believed she could take care of herself and it agreed that she needed to make it clear to one and all that she was not easy prey.
“I learned a few things tonight,”
she said. “I overheard a little conversation between Missy, Vera, and Kyra. It seems that your speech did a good job of convincing people to back you. Allegedly, most do. Just the same, most believe that Adam wouldn’t truly offer any of his promised rewards and, in any case, they fear you too much to cross you.”
Cain’s hirelings had made that very same assessment.
“Don’t let what happened tonight make you suddenly feel that there are threats to me everywhere. Yes, there will still be some people who are so tempted by the thought of becoming a millionaire that they’ll take their chances. But most people won’t. Most are behind you. And we both know that I can take down any who come for me.”
He rubbed at his nape. He couldn’t even claim she was being overconfident. Not when she was a being that could kill literally anything—including an Ancient. “You could have at least let one of the witches live so I could get my own message across.”
Her lips twitched. “I totally knew you were gonna complain about that. If it had been me who personally dealt with them, I would have kept one of the bitches alive for you. But my monster was behind the wheel, and it pretty much does whatever it wants.”
Cain grunted. “I’ve noticed.”
He let out a long sigh. Rage still held him in a tight grip, but it was no longer hot and wild. It was cold. Logical. Controlled. “You and your coven really played catch with Missy’s severed head?”
“While singing ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’.”
He felt one corner of his mouth cant up for the briefest moment. “And whose idea was it?”
“Mine, of course. The best ideas are always mine. The craziest? Usually Delilah’s, though Xavier contributes his fair share of insane suggestions.”
Cain gave a slow shake of the head. Wynter never did what he expected her to do, but he found that he liked that. “I’m almost sorry I missed it. Other things required my attention, as you know.”
“Shit, I forgot to ask, did you have any luck waking Abaddon?”
“No, but we’ll keep trying. It’s all we can do.”
“I truly think your efforts will eventually pay off.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Wynter didn’t see how seven beings so unbelievably powerful wouldn’t manage to bring another Ancient out of their Resting state. But she understood why it might be difficult, given how long Abaddon had been under. Snapping people out of comas wasn’t something that people just did.
“You’ll wake him up, and then you’ll get out of this damn cage, and then you’ll kill Adam and all will be well.”
She cocked her head. “What will you do with your freedom?”
“Travel a little. You’ll go with me, of course.”
She hiked up an imperious brow. “Is that so? You know, you could try asking rather than telling.”
She doubted he’d do it all that often, though. He was a person used to being in charge and dishing out orders, and he’d been that way for an exceptionally long time. Someone like that didn’t suddenly just change. He did usually make an effort to tone his highhandedness down for her, which she appreciated. It was likely the best she could hope for.
“But that would give you the chance to refuse, and I want you with me,”
Cain told her. “I don’t want to be away from you. And you wouldn’t want me to go alone in any case, so let’s not pretend differently.”
Rather than concede he was right, she gave him a haughty sniff. “Where is it you want to go?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
He merely wanted to get a taste of freedom, she understood. He wanted to prove to himself that he wasn’t imprisoned anymore; that he could go where he pleased, when he pleased, however he pleased. “But you intend to come back here?”
“Yes. This place was supposed to be strictly a cage, but myself and the other Ancients made it into a home. I’m proud of that. I don’t wish to build another for myself. I’m content to live here. I simply want the walls of the prison gone.”
“Good. This place is a refuge for a lot of people, including me and my coven. I like living here.”
She didn’t want to move. Nor did she want her coven to leave here—this was likely the safest place for a bunch of insane fugitives such as them. And it would be no easy thing to get them to leave that cottage anyway. Plus, they’d likely blow it up before they’d let anyone else have it. “Do you think the other Ancients will also travel?”
“Probably, though we won’t all do so at once. Devil’s Cradle needs to be protected, so I suspect there will always be at least four Ancients here at one time. We don’t want others thinking that it’s up for the taking.”
She snorted. “I doubt you have to worry about people thinking to take over the place or anything.”
On the way to Devil’s Cradle, she’d questioned many of the people she’d come across about the Ancients. All had demonstrated a healthy dose of fear when they spoke of them.
“Probably not,”
said Cain. “But it’s still best to take precautions.”
That she could agree with. “I’m sorry you didn’t manage to wake Abaddon.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so easy. I just hope it doesn’t prove to be impossible. The other Ancients and I have had two things on our mind for an eternally long time—vengeance and freedom. We’re so close to finally gaining both. If everything fell apart now, I don’t think they would all mentally cope.
“I think it would be too much for some, particularly Ishtar. They’d snap, and another Ancient would have to kill them. It would be sad if, after we’ve managed to stick together for so long, we suddenly turned on each other as the Aeons had always meant for us to do.”
It would be a sad ending for sure. And it would not only mean that the Aeons had won after all, it would mean that the Ancients had held out this long for nothing. Worse, it could even mean that Cain and Seth turned on each other. The thought made her stomach twist.
Cain had already killed one of his brothers—there was no love lost between him and Abel, no, but finding yourself in a position where you had to kill your own sibling or die was still nothing other than plain shitty. He cared for Seth, though. To lose their closeness would destroy something in Cain for certain. And as she took in his expression, she could sense that he was imagining just how hard it would be. “I’d come hug you but I’m all gross right now.”
A hint of warmth slid into his eyes. He held out his hand. “Shower. Then I need to fuck you; remind myself that you’re safe and well here with me.”
She smiled and slipped her hand into his. “Best plan ever.”