Chapter Twenty-Five #2
I wasn’t sure what I hoped to find when I opened my eyes again but standing over me, growling with menace, was the last thing I could’ve imagined.
The wolf prowled through the smoke and even with my vision impaired, I could see the size of it, feel the power emanating from its enormous body. It was a Were. Somehow, though the moon was four days past full, I was being hunted by a Were.
‘You can’t be real?’ I croaked, pulling up the hem of my shirt to swipe at my eyes. ‘It isn’t possible.’
The wolf responded with a snarl that came from deep within its belly.
It was very real and entirely possible and I had willingly walked right into their ambush.
The henbane leached out of the smoke and into my body, filling my head with silver spirals as it lolled from side to side on my shoulders.
Between the agony of the trees and the despair of the moss, I was overwhelmed.
The siren song of the ocean was beginning to sound beautiful as the henbane seeped into my blood, burning me from the inside out.
I stretched out one hand and began to inch my way towards the water, but my arms buckled under my own weight.
I didn’t even have the strength I needed to drown myself.
Pacing in a figure of eight, the wolf circled me and then the bonfire, watching us both closely.
It was a blur, grey and white, with flashes of red and yellow, teeth and eyes and tongue.
I knew it must be a trick of my sore, raw eyes, but for a moment, it looked like there were two wolves, one standing beside the other.
As my eyes rolled back in my skull I looked up at the sky, all the stars blacked out to me, and wondered how it would feel to finally see my parents again.
One small moment of peace amid all the pain.
The wolf howled up at the same sky but for what?
To brag? To scare me? As if I was any kind of threat to it now.
Curled up in the sand, I couldn’t be less dangerous.
I couldn’t call my ancestors, I couldn’t speak any ancient curses or summon the elements or even think. I couldn’t feel my magic at all.
‘Please don’t hurt my friends,’ I begged as the wolf, or wolves, advanced, keeping their forelegs close to the ground, heads lowered and ready to strike.
With a growl that could never be mistaken for a promise, a claw swiped at me, a test blow.
I felt my skin split under my shirt but there wasn’t any pain.
At least it wouldn’t hurt too much, I told myself, at least the burning oaks could offer me that much.
The wolf was on top of me and the first spittle from its gaping maw dropped onto my forehead, warm like a kiss.
With my eyes closed, I prepared myself to join the rest of the Bell witches in the world beyond this but, as I held my breath and waited, the savage clash of its jaws never came.
But the lightning did.
Using every ounce of strength left in me, I forced my eyes open, the world still smeared with henbane, and saw the clouds, a moody grey instead of the malevolent black from only moments ago.
Then the beach lit up with a split second of ghostly white light, the sand, sea and sky all the same colour.
Single, solitary raindrops turned into something more insistent, the bonfire hissed, spitting at me and the wolf.
When it looked away, turning its head upwards as though it was as surprised by the rain as I was, I grabbed at one of the chunks of quartz and broke the sacred circle.
The fire leapt out of confinement and lunged at the wolf, punishment for the violent act against nature.
The flames licked at its side, and I heard a yowling sound, watching it drop to the sand, the smell of singed fur joining immolated wood.
The fire shrank back as the rain kept coming, a shower turning into a storm, turning into a torrential nightmare, the heavens opening with the most unholy downpour I had ever seen.
Torrents of water fell from the sky, washing out my eyes, my mouth, the wound on my back.
I exhaled long, hard breaths, pushing out the henbane and breathing in the energy of the storm, bathing in its offering.
My clothes were nothing but wet rags, clinging to my body as I crawled, one inch at a time and always waiting for the wolf to strike, over to the edge of the ring of quartz and malachite.
Swiping through the downpour, I pushed the stones out of sequence, breaking up the circle and quelling the fire.
‘Emily! Emily?!’
Strong arms wrapped around me and I leaned into a solid chest.
‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ Jackson whispered over and over as he crashed to the wet sand beside me. ‘You’re good, I’ve got you.’
‘Run.’ I panted into his neck, offering no protest when he picked me up from the ground. ‘There’s a wolf.’
He pulled me closer, his head on a swivel.
‘I don’t see it?’ he said after a moment. ‘Did you get it?’
‘No. It nearly got me.’
My body was cold but my blood was warm as it ran down my back, staining Jackson’s shirt. I was too weak from the henbane and malachite to try to heal myself.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, holding me like a piece of fragile glass, about to break.
‘Where’s Wyn? Is he OK?’
‘He ran right out after you. You didn’t see him?’
I tried to shake my head but my neck was too stiff.
‘And Lydia?’
‘Right over there.’
He pointed off beyond the edge of the ocean, a familiar silhouette staring out to sea. ‘Props on putting out the fire, but jeez, Em, did you have to flood the entire island?’
‘I’m not doing this,’ I told him, my hair plastered to my head, the rain stinging my eyes as I clung to him, feet slowly moving one in front of the other.
‘Good old Mother Nature then. Her timing never misses.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I said in a whisper. ‘Look.’
I slipped out of Jackson’s arms, still leaning back against his chest to stay upright, and turned towards the ocean.
Wiping the water from my face as best I could, I squinted at the silhouette of the girl I thought I knew, arms raised to the sky as the storm crashed around her.
She turned to face me, her brown eyes were golden, sparking like the lightning itself as she brought down the saltwater storm, and when she lowered her arms, lightning bolts danced on her palms.
‘What the hell …’ Jackson whispered, now leaning on me as much as I was leaning on him. The rain stopped, the skies cleared, the silhouette came into focus.
‘There you are.’
Wyn almost knocked Jackson off his feet when he rushed me, swooping in from the other side of the bonfire’s skeleton, but I pushed him away, all my attention on the swirl of magic at the water’s edge.
You won’t be alone much longer.
I hadn’t caused the storm, Lydia had.
Because Lydia was a witch.