Chapter Fifty-Five #3
I step onto a wooden bench and leap to the next, and the next, refusing to look over my shoulder.
Red figures charge toward me from all directions, shadows preceding them. The room dims, and the hiss of something dark chatters in my ears, argues with the whispers.
Faster than me, one shadow tendril snakes out and licks my arm. “Ah!” I yelp, nearly falling from the pew. The sizzling burn smokes like I’ve been lashed by fire, the skin turning white and red around the edges. “Fuck!”
I spin, around and around, watching as some of the cloaked figures flicker in and out. Red then gray. A person. A shadow shaped like a person. My mind whirs. What the hell am I supposed to do?
Then the sickening squelch of a blade lodged in flesh.
My stomach lurches as I turn.
When I see him, time stops.
Kai’s eyes are wide, his fingers interlocked around a gleaming black hilt in the center of his stomach. Blood pours out of him. He crumples to the ground.
At the edge of the room Lucas freezes, his eyes flickering from Kai to me and back again.
Something inside me cracks.
It grows and grows.
“Noooo!!” I scream, squeezing my eyes shut and opening my mouth as wide as it goes. The sound that comes out of me is not human. It is not animal. It is not something that should exist.
I run, lightning branching off me like static fingers searching for someone to zap. The shadows scramble back.
Dropping to my knees, I slide across the wood floor, skidding to a stop at his side. I pull his hands away and grab the knife, wincing as I yank it out, watching as the blood gushes in time with his heart.
Not like this. It’s not supposed to happen like this.
Somewhere in the distance Alastair yells about his plan. Berates someone or other.
A panicked scream.
Another body hits the floor.
I ignore it all as I close my eyes again, acting off pure instinct. Guided by hands I can’t see. Hands that have woven the fabric of my destiny.
Gathering the power in my fingertips, I press them against the wound. Tears stream down his face as he looks at me. It’s all there. Apologies. Memories. Sorrow. Fate.
How did we get here? What did we both do to deserve this life?
I cannot look into his eyes and see anything other than that little boy with a snotty face and a peculiar frown.
I don’t think. I can only pray. To god or the universe, the stars or my ancestors, twelve dead witches or the Mother herself.
Whatever I have left of my power, I give it to him.
Glowing, aster-pink light spreads from my fingers and mixes with something dark blue like billowing twilight from Kai’s core. Stunned, the shadows around us freeze.
I wait. Kai’s eyes are still glued to where his blood continues to spill.
Whatever I just tried to do—it didn’t work.
He shakes his head, acceptance flattening his features. Again.
No.
I rise on shaking legs and turn to face the hoods that surround me.
I pull for my magic. But it doesn’t come.
Maybe Kai was right. It’s all hopeless.
I’m too exhausted. Too green. Too useless.
I gave everything I had left to a dying boy.
It’s not right. None of this is right. This can’t be how it ends.
An unfathomable power in the wrong hands would be worse than death.
It would end the world as we know it.
As I reach inside myself one more time, I picture the witches surrounding us. I conjure the image of Nora, her disapproving eyes and frowning mouth. Of Gigi, of the new Twelve, I picture what the Mother must have looked like.
Help me, I urge. I beg. I cry.
At my core, something stirs.
Bordering the room, in flickering shades, are the ghosts of witches past.
I can’t hear the sneers of the hunters over the chanting in my head.
Across the room Nora’s chin dips just barely.
Her eyes don’t hold their familiar disappointment or doubt.
Instead they’re filled with something more akin to pride.
The lightest touch brushes my ankle.
I look down.
Kai peers up at me with juniper eyes, his fingers prodding his belly. Where a gaping, bleeding hole was a moment ago, there’s now just a slightly raised scar growing fainter by the second.
“What…,” I start, relief flooding me before—
Violet light erupts from me like an atomic blast, throwing my head and arms back as I’m propelled into the air.
Time slows.
I shoot upward into the vault of the ceiling.
From up here the Guardians look like blood splatters, their eyes wide as they watch in awe.
Something shifts inside me. What began as sparks and tingles has become a blazing fire.
I am infinite.
I am the girl born of fate and the fury of my ancestors.
I am the battle cry of the stars.
I am the one sent to set our magic free.
But… something’s not right.
It reaches inside my chest and pulls. Tugs an invisible string.
I follow the feeling with my eyes.
The violet light emanating from me stems from the meeting of two lines of power—magenta and indigo. Weaving together. Twisting into a knot. The hunter’s bind transforming into something new.
“What’s happening?!” someone yells from the ground.
My head is yanked back by an invisible hand.
My catalyst, I think in answer.
And then, I fall.