Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
My skin starts to hum as I rise, my hair lashing at my face, and in the distance a clap of thunder startles us both.
“You must not have heard me,” I growl. “Where. Is. Fiona?!”
The loathsome monster leaps forward, but this time I don’t run. I lift my chin and hold out my hand, ready for them.
When they crash into me, I hiss, digging my nails into their forearms hard enough to draw blood.
They’re stronger than I expected, and they lift me in the air before bringing me crashing back down, knocking the wind out of me. I claw uselessly at the power in my core, winding it around my arms, coating my skin with it.
They straddle my chest as they pull something from beneath their cloak.
Moonlight glints off the blade, just like it did in my dream. I can almost smell the smoke. Can almost hear the chanting. Can almost see the lined face of the old woman before she pushed me into another dimension.
“Shh,” they coo, pinning my struggling arms with their knees. “This is only going to hurt a little.”
I squirm and fight. I squeeze my eyes shut and call the magic to myself over and over. I cough against the pressure of their weight against my chest. I’m going to suffocate like this if I can’t buck them off me.
“You’re making this harder than it needs to be,” they grunt. “It didn’t have to be this way.”
Somehow I’m able to slip my arms from beneath their legs, and I strike them. I lash against their chest. I reach for the hood, attempting to expose them, desperate to look my killer in their evil, beastly eyes, but my arms are too weak.
My chest burns. I know the end is near.
“Please,” I beg, even though it disgusts me. But the words barely make a sound. There’s no air in my lungs to push past my vocal cords.
“Use your magic,” they hiss, fighting until they’ve pinned me once more. “Why aren’t you using your magic?”
I’m trying, I want to cry.
Why isn’t it working?
My lips move even though no sound will come out.
Please.
I am going to die.
Maybe it’s the trauma of the moment, the dull emptiness inside me, the realization that it was always going to end like this, but I turn my eyes to the sky.
There she is—Polaris, the guiding light. Glistening above us. Watching. Leading everyone in the world, it seems, but me.
Do something, I scream at her. Save me!
The stars are supposed to be some intrinsic part of me, some ancient blessing, some source of my power, so where are they when I need them most?
Behind the figure, movement catches my eye, the edges of my vision nearly black.
A savior?
Finally, finally, the stars have answered me?
But no, when the image comes into focus, I’m certain.
There is no savior here.
Dotted among the bushes—skirts that brush the ground. Faces of sinew and tattered tendon. Bones where flesh and blood should be. Twelve corpse-like ghouls peering at me from half-corporeal forms, flickering in and out.
From them flows an ether, shimmering like oil slick through the air, coating me and the space that gaps my body and my attacker.
“I’m sorry,” the cloak growls.
And then there’s a sharp slash against my arm.
I buck from the pain, my shoulder blades scraping against the ground. Something wet pools in my hand.
My thoughts are impossible to grasp. My arms have gone limp at my sides.
How long has it been? Merely seconds? Minutes? Time stretches like putty, malleable. Unstable.
Curious, these apparitions. It seems they want me dead.
Lightning flashes against the night sky, clouds rippling in a way that defies what’s natural.
Bizarre, I think, as I realize that my clothes, my face, my hair are all damp, the fog around us thickening, gathering in slithering tendrils, wetting us down to the bone, the monster’s cloak clinging to their skin.
“I don’t understand,” they mutter from above me. They’re twisting a lid onto a long vial filled with ruby liquid.
This whole time I’ve thought that my connection to the Lee Valley Witches was familial. In the depths of me I considered it an honor to descend from them. I felt a duty to uncover the truth about what happened to the burned school.
But that’s the thing about people. About love and duty and obligation. It’s a lesson I should have learned twelve years ago.
You can’t trust anyone. Not even your own family. Because they always leave. Always.
And it turns out there might be something worse than leaving.
Leaving me to die.
I don’t know how they’re doing it, but these dead witches are suppressing my magic. Whatever power is tingeing the air with the sharp scent of a freshly struck match, it doesn’t belong to me. At least, not quite.
Stars explode like fireworks in my mind. I can feel my power—whatever little bit of it still simmering at my core—slipping away.
When the world finally fades, I hear my name from a distance.
The pressure leaves my chest.
A choked gasp, and the echo of retreating feet.
In the end, I am all alone. There is no light. No tunnel. No warm embrace of peace.
Only sorrow. Regret. And the still-simmering rage, stoked by the fact that wherever I am, Gigi isn’t here to welcome me.
Like I said.
Everybody leaves.