14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
LUCA
Sage’s hands shook and I reached over to take one in mine.
“What did you do?” I demanded.
Hazel wiped her face and met my eyes with her hard stare. “What we had to. As I said, my mother’s coven was one of the strongest in the area. Even with only seven witches we were stronger than covens that were far larger. But there were purists who could see that my mother used unconventional means to preserve her life and they were not quiet about their distaste for her methods. More than that, there were covens who were jealous of our power. One on one, they weren’t much of a concern and mom wasn’t someone who flaunted her power, so while others coveted what she had, she wasn’t widely hated.
“That changed just after Sage was born. A large coven in the area brought in a new High Priest with an eye for power. They called themselves The Dark Moon Coven and the priest intended to create a hierarchy of covens in the city, all of which answered to him. His name was Mars Argent and he was unusually powerful for a witch. At least as powerful as mom, maybe more. Some speculated that he had mages in his bloodlines, but if he did, he hid that power from everyone.
“Many of the smaller covens saw an opportunity to align with his strength and they joined willingly, but there were plenty who didn’t like the idea. Mars seemed especially interested in my mother and sought her out specifically, but she refused him. She told the other covens they were free to do as they pleased, but she would not recognize any other coven’s authority over us.”
“He tried to force the others into submission?” I guessed.
“Not at first,” my mother said. “It took him a few years, but he managed to convince them and one by one, most of the covens in the area fell in line. Eventually, Mars amassed enough power to be a threat. We still refused to be one of the covens who answered to him, but we also never challenged him directly. As long as they left us alone, we let them do what they wanted.
“Once a month, our coven met in the wilds to hold ceremonies out in nature under the moon. Sage was three at the time and these were safe rituals that simply thanked the earth and the goddess for their protection, so we always brought him along. Our coven adored Sage. Every one of our witches was like an aunt to him, passing on wisdom and slipping him treats. Those ceremonies were more like family gatherings than anything else.
“Except out in the open under the cover of dark was the perfect place for an attack. We had mom’s demon on our side, but we had no idea that the Dark Moon Priest had been using dark magic to increase his power. With the help of all the covens he controlled, two of our witches died that night. Both mom and her demon were severely injured, I was hurt, and Sage was…”
Hazel’s haunted eyes found Sage and he sucked in a breath.
“Your injuries shocked some sense into the attacking covens, and a lot of them backed off when they realized they’d all but killed an innocent child. Witches believe what they put out comes back to them and they went from honoring the earth and goddesses in simple nature based rituals to attacking a toddler with a violent power they shouldn’t have. Many of them panicked and ran away and we used the confusion to get back to the house, but it was too late. It was clear you weren’t going to make it and no healer could change that.”
Hazel’s eyes met mine. “Vampires obviously weren’t an option. Even if Sage wasn't far too young to be turned, witches and vampires don’t get along. They are a unique race with roots not in nature, but in dark magic. Long ago many covens took up the job of protecting the humans in their villages from vampires, and it became another responsibility we passed down through the generations. As a result, most witches came to see them as unnatural and hold some level of animosity towards them. Ironic really, considering what we were willing to do.”
“Mom,” Sage croaked. “What did you do?”
“Your grandmother was too injured to do the spell herself, so I had to take the lead. That’s why the ancestors punished me instead of her, but I didn’t care. All she could do was bleed all over the circle while she told me what to do.
“She rarely used dark magic, but that didn't mean she didn't know it. She was constantly seeking out knowledge and spent her life studying all magic, good and bad. Of course she left nothing out. Like I said, too curious for her own good.
“I think she originally intended to use the spell on herself if the need came, but she knew a way to save someone close to death. We just never imagined we would ever have to use it on you.
“When we separated her demon from her, none of us expected her to survive the night. But mom had lived a lot of years and if we were going to save someone it was no question that it should be you. Simply binding the demon to you would never have worked. For one thing, you couldn’t have controlled it. But it was also near death and the only way to save you both and give you a chance was to let it use your body to survive and in turn you would use it to live.”
“How is that possible?” Sage argued. “Demons have physical bodies. Did you yank its soul out to possess me?”
“In most cases, it probably wouldn’t have worked unless we did. There are only a few kinds of demons even capable of possession as far as we know, but mom’s demon was a shadow demon. It spent most of its life in an incorporeal form. I rarely even saw it, but it was always by her side. She treated it like a familiar that lived in the shadows and they were together for decades. Until she gave it to you to save your life.”
Sage looked horrified by this, but a lot of things were starting to make sense.
“Things changed after that. A ritual that reverses death is an act against nature and we were punished by our ancestors and rejected by nature. The remaining witches in our coven lost our magic, and many other witches that participated in the attack experienced the same fate. Witches can get away with minor uses of dark magic, but crossing the line has consequences. Anyone who tried to break away and return to their old ways found their magic had abandoned them. Their only option was to keep using dark magic, and while many accepted their fate and focused on raising the next generation of witches, there were some who stayed with the Dark Moon Priest and continued to go down that dark path.”
Sage looked horrified. “You trapped a demon inside me? I’ve been torturing this thing for nearly twenty-five years without even knowing it?”
“You saved its life too,” she argued.
“Did I? It can’t live at all while it’s trapped! How do we get it out?”
“Sage, that spell wasn’t created with any kind of exit plan. It is sealed within your body and ripping it out at this point could kill you both. I will tell you this, I was a fairly strong witch when I was young, but my power never compared to your grandmother’s.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I couldn’t have controlled a demon. I performed that spell, not her. If the demon wanted to kill me, it probably could have.”
“You said it was severely injured and on the verge of death,” he snapped.
Hazel nodded. “But it wasn’t dead, and it didn’t fight me when it could have.”
“That means nothing. We stole its life to save mine.”
“Its life was over if we didn’t.”
Sage dropped his face into his hands and was quiet for a long moment before he finally straightened again. “Where is the Dark Moon Coven now?”
“They lost most of their witches after that night. It took a long time for you and your grandmother to recover, but eventually you both did. Since she didn’t perform the spell, she was one of the few witches who kept her magic, though she’d lost the demon keeping her young and she began to age quickly. Many of the covens fell apart, ours included, but mom gathered up a few strays who were especially concerned about Mars’s ability to rebuild and they drove him out of Eastbend. I wasn’t there, but I know Mars was injured and I got the impression that most of his followers didn’t make it.
“Mom worried that Mars would eventually retaliate so she never formed a new coven for fear it would put them in danger. He’d always been interested in her and her demon. She’d harnessed a power that most witches could never touch, and he wanted it for himself.
“According to the witches who abandoned him, he’d tried binding a demon on his own over and over, but he never succeeded and he got more than one witch killed in the process. Maybe that was the thing that set him on the path to dark magic in the first place, we don’t know for sure. The only thing we knew was that his obsession with mom and our coven was something he was willing to kill for. So she sent us away.
“We had no magic and were nothing but vulnerabilities for him to exploit should he ever come seeking revenge. She always worried that he was biding his time and building enough power to come back to take what he wanted, but it didn’t happen. After a few years we figured it was safe enough to let you visit, and since you didn’t seem to remember anything, we made sure it stayed that way. Nothing that happened was your fault and you deserved a happy and carefree childhood. It would have been impossible to completely hide that your grandmother was a witch, she was well known and anyone in Eastbend could have slipped up and told you one day. Finding out would have sent you searching for power you didn’t have, so I raised you to think I’d walked away from magic because it’s dangerous, hoping you would stay away. But of course you never listen to your mother.”
Sage was quiet for so long that I searched for something to say that would make everything better, but there were no such words. The day I opened my eyes with a terrifying darkness inside me that I couldn’t completely control, knowing my life should have ended instead, there was nothing anyone could have said to make it better. I didn’t want to die, that wasn’t it. But I didn’t know how to live like that either.
I never thought I’d think so, but I was actually lucky. Silas had been there from the very beginning for me. He’d guided me through my transition and taught me everything I needed to know to navigate my new life. I couldn’t say I’d never slipped up, the constant hunger had overwhelmed me more than once, but Silas had taught me enough to keep anything serious from happening.
Sage never had any such help. It wasn’t technically him who’d killed those hunters, but I could tell it still weighed on him that the demon had taken over to do it. And then there was the guilt he felt about sacrificing both the demon and his grandmother to save his own life. Rosemary lived a long life, but who knew how much longer she might have lived if she hadn’t lost her demon that day.
Sage was never good at concealing his emotions when they got away from him. Maybe with humans he managed fine, but for the rest of us, his scent and his body language gave everything away. And he was struggling under the weight of his mother’s confession. I reached for his hand again, not knowing what else to do, but I’d barely touched him when he yanked it away again.
“I need some air,” he muttered, giving neither of us a chance to stop him before to took off out the door.
When I stood to go after him, his mother grabbed my sleeve to stop me. “It’s the middle of the day and he doesn’t need another reason to grieve right now. Stay here, I’ll go find him.”
Sage had been there for me time after time, and once again I couldn’t manage to do the same.