Chapter Fifty-Four
The sky is black velvet and stars twinkle like stolen diamonds when we return to William’s home, hand in hand. My hand in his feels like that safety, that security he promised when we first met. Safety and security I swore I didn’t need.
We’re sneaking into this lavish house, and Pax’s eyes gleam. “We did it,” he says, his hand squeezing mine. “We actually got away with it, didn’t we?” It’s delicious and devilish.
William’s voice sneaks to us from down the hall: “Pax? Stella? In here, please?”
There’s an edge to his voice that makes the hairs on my neck stand on end.
The lights are dimmed, and the fireplace from the library throws looming, leaping shadows down the hall. We turn the corner and my breath is stolen:
Reverend Jenkins. Here. And he holds a large knife against Nirav’s neck. Light flashes off the blade like lightning, and my wrath is just as immediate.
Bile splashes up my throat. Every muscle clenches. Red washes my vision. The Dark Trio crawls out of the fire, expanding, filling this whole room with smoke and ash. Nirav!
Pax growls.
Elizabeth, William’s staff member who has looked down her nose at us since our arrival, crosses her arms. “That’s her, innit, Reverend? That’s the witch. I recognized her right away.”
William strains to make his voice heard through the fear he shares with Nirav. “Do not hurt that boy.”
Reverend Jenkins grumbles, “I don’t want the boy. You’re the one I want, Lady Rose. I need you to turn yourself in. You sinner. You thief. You are brimming with evil.”
The names pelt me like stones. I am these things, am I not?
It kills me to see the terror in Nirav’s wild eyes.
My vision blurs, and under the blade of the knife, there instead is Daisy.
Daisy! Writhing, struggling to wrench free.
I see her, but it’s not really her, I know this.
Her face—it’s blank. No eyes, no mouth—just a terrifying illusion, a blur of horror.
Sickness and rage wash over me. I blink, shake my head. It’s Nirav, there, struggling to save himself. It’s my family—my new family—and I won’t let this happen again.
I won’t let my actions hurt Nirav the way my actions hurt Daisy.
My vision deepens to the color of blood. “I’ll go with you,” I hear my voice snarl. “Take me instead.” I hold my hands up and step toward this vile man. It’s as if I’m watching this happen through another person’s eyes, my panic has taken over so completely.
The Dark Trio slithers toward me, around me, heckling, spitting.
They’ve been so quiet these last few hours.
I thought, perhaps, they’d had enough of me after their reign of terror during the séance, after I refused to kill Max Blanck at their urging.
But they’re here. He’s here, Asomoday. I smell rot; they reek of dread.
Three heads, three slimy, slithering voices, harmonizing as one.
Sssssstellllaaaa! You’ve managed to endanger yet another loveddd onnnneee…
The person under the knife. It’s Nirav. It’s Daisy. Either way, it’s my heart.
“You sorceress. You conjurer. You witch,” Reverend Jenkins hurls names at me while keeping his blade trained on Nirav. He is frothing at the mouth, his spittle flying. Each insult cuts me, blisters me, burns me.
Empowers me. I am those things.
I take another step forward. I am seething now, my breath slow hisses.
Reverend Jenkins’s slitted eyes dart between me, Pax, and William, trying to calculate how to release Nirav and contain me instead.
The air is electrified, as though lightning is about to strike.
Elizabeth rushes forward, reaches to grab my wrist.
Asomoday is there instead. She cannot see what I see: She has grabbed the hoof of this beast. It roars at her, the air in this room pulsing, compressing, ripping our eardrums.
She wails in pain and withdraws her hand. Her palm is raw, blistered. “Witch!” she wails, falling to her knees. I am both amused and sickened, this touch like fire. It wasn’t mine, was it? A glass decanter nearby explodes from my wrath. The Dark Legion’s wrath?
I cannot tell where one ends and the next begins.
Nirav—my sweet, lovely, silent Nirav—screams. Screams! He has never made as much as a single squeak in my presence. To hear him scream wrenches my heart in two. I growl and the candles lining the mantel melt, drooping in seconds as though in an oven. Their light disappears into smoke.
I control none of this. Elizabeth’s burn, the exploding glass, the melting candles—this is the Dark Legion, and I’m both terrified and empowered.
The Trio laughs a throaty rumble, and the remaining lights flicker, extinguish.
The fire in the fireplace flares. My eyesight floods; I squint through hot, red anguish. Sweat drips in my eyes.
Reverend Jenkins panics, realizing he cannot simply drag a woman made of fire and flame from this house. He flicks his knife in anger, and it slices Nirav clean to his collarbone.
I see Nirav’s blood, and rage consumes me. I couldn’t save Daisy, but I can save Nirav. My vision darkens, darkens…
Pax bellows and tackles Jenkins.
They tussle.
The knife slides directly at my feet, almost as if a dark force pushed it right to me.
I snatch it up.
I seethe.
Red.
Pain.
Strength.
When my eyesight clears, I see I have Jenkins pushed against the leather-paneled wall, my arm on his windpipe, his knife blade at his gut.
The Dark Trio looms behind me, and they surge power and disgust through me. You can do this, Stella.
I heave.
You have the strength and the power to end this man’s life.
I seethe.
You can gut him.
I froth.
He hurt your loved one. He hurt Nirav. End him!
There is nothing here but me, this knife, and my hunger.
My ears pulse with my heartbeat.
I inhale, readying myself to plunge this knife into flesh.
I smell urine. Reverend Jenkins has pissed himself.
I didn’t kill Blanck when I could’ve. I didn’t kill him, and then I discovered he profited from Daisy’s death. Look at what that sonofabitch got away with. I should’ve killed him. I can kill Jenkins.
“Stella!” I hear, and it’s like sound through a tunnel. “Stella, don’t. Come back, Stella.”
He calls you a witch. He says you’re a scourge. He says you’re demented and ill.
And he’s doing that, now. Reverend Jenkins, with a knife blade poised to gut him, hisses those exact words at me. Taunting me.
I am five, and I feel my body surge with fury. Meanness overtakes me. Power pulses through me like a drug. I am so scared of what I might do. The name I called before is on the tip of my tongue, Asomoday.
“You told me you know about evil, Stella,” the voice through the tunnel says. Pax?
No. Don’t listen to him. Say my name. I will take over.
“We fight injustice together.
“You said you won’t be a trapped soul, Stella.
“You wouldn’t let me kill. And I won’t let you.”
I’m shaking, ill with adrenaline.
This man hurt Nirav.
This man hurt Daisy. By terrorizing me, intimidating me, insulting me: He and his fellow zealots ultimately killed my sister.
I tighten my grip on the knife, readying my plunge.
“Evil witch,” he hisses.
I am a witch. But I am not evil. “I am not evil.” I am not.
And then, then, I hear her:
Look at them, Stella.
My throat closes, but I choke out, “Daisy?!” My tears are immediate.
I look over my shoulder. I sense her there, but I cannot see her. I CANNOT SEE HER. I almost collapse.
Don’t look at me!
Turn around.
Look at THEM.
You have to look at them, Stella.
Look at the Dark Trio.
“I can’t! I don’t want to be lost! I can’t look at them, Daisy!”
My eyes focus. I get a flash of the fear in Reverend Jenkins’s eyes. The hatred. The Dark Trio is THERE, in his soul. I squeeze my eyes shut.
You have to look at them, Stella.
See them.
Acknowledge their suffering.
You can’t keep hiding from them.
You have to SEE them.
“I want to see you,” I sob.
I’m not who you need to face.
Pax is here, too, whispering in my ear with urgency:
“I need you, Stella.
“We need you, Stella.
“Stella?”
Rose?
“Rose?
“Rose, come back.”
Rose, I love you.
“Rose, I love you.”
And I’m here now, I’m back, and I’m weak but I’m strong, and I look Reverend Jenkins in the eye, and I look at the Dark Trio with their hollow eyes and their wormy writhing skin, and I see they are twisted and vile, here to hurt and inflict pain.
I see they have not always been this way, that they are disconnected from Source, they are deeply entangled in their wounds; their trauma has a pulse.
And I see another aching soul here: five-year-old me, small, scared, full of wrath and rage. I see Rose.
“I see your pain,” I say. To Them. To him. To her. To me.
“I see your suffering.
“I see your trauma.
“You can still choose the light.
“I forgive you.”
I drop the knife.