Chapter 25 - Delilah
“Gwen! Gwen, can you hear me?!” I call out mentally to the younger woman as I see her walking through the market ahead of me.
We're in Oakland; I recognize the lighthouse in the distance from our visit there, but I've never been to the market.
Somehow, I'm stuck inside Gwen's mind, living out a memory of hers as she strolls through the market and picks up fruits and vegetables.
A sweet tune echoes around me, and I realize it's coming from Gwen's memory as she sings along to a song playing through her headphones. I faintly remember how I got here—I’d been pulled toward the dark magic surrounding Gwen in her kitchen, and I’d reached for her hand on the table, partly because I couldn’t control myself or my movements, but there was a part of my conscious mind that remained alert enough to attempt to get her out.
The only thing eerier than the darkness in her eyes was being swept into a mundane, lighthearted memory in which she’s going about her day without a care in the world.
Something feels off, and an unsettling shiver courses down my spine, straightening me out just in time to see a group of four beautiful, graceful women walking toward Gwen, seemingly oblivious to her existence as they chat and giggle.
My heart stops for a split second when one of the women shoves her shoulder into Gwen, knocking her fruit basket out of her hand. The basket crashes, fruits and vegetables tumbling out and rolling away, and Gwen flies into panic.
The group stops to help her, but then I notice the woman pulling out a red apple from her pocket and placing it on the top of the basket when they're done picking up the things that spilled out.
There’s a sinister glint in the woman’s green eyes as she joins her friends and they continue walking away.
Gwen glances over her shoulder and frowns at the women approaching me.
I try stopping them by standing in their way, their faces blurry as I try to note any physical features that will help me track them.
But they walk through me as if I’m not even there, reminding me that this is just a memory from Gwen’s mind.
A memory I wasn’t able to see before, probably because it wasn’t significant. Just then, Gwen reaches into her basket and pulls out the very same red, shining apple that the woman snuck in.
“Gwen! No! Don’t!” I race to her, panicking when she lifts the apple to her mouth. She takes a crackling bite, the sound cutting through the faint music playing in my ears, and I try to touch her, try to slap the apple out of her hand, but it's pointless when my hands go flying through her arms.
She chews on the bite of the fruit, her eyes turning from blue to black as that blackness fills the veins visible on her neck.
A thunderous, roaring laugh echoes all around us, but it appears I'm the only one who can hear it, and Gwen continues chewing the poisoned apple until her veins are pulsing with black energy.
She'd consumed the dark magic, and that's how it entered Scarborough. Discreetly. Stealthily. It was perfectly orchestrated in a way that would infiltrate the Shadow Fang Pack through me.
The ritual we conducted to prove Gwen’s innocence must have been how the dark magic infiltrated my mind in the first place.
I was the only one who employed my magic that night, dropped my guard low enough for the dark energy to creep in unnoticed.
I was the one who had my hands on Gwen that night to enter her mind, while something else entered mine.
The dark lord used an innocent girl to get to us; that's why Arianna's vision led us to Oakland, where we'd find Gwen.
The four women who bumped into Gwen must have been the same witches Arianna saw in her vision, helping the warlock cast a spell on Oakland.
This is what it was about.
The vision wasn't directly predicting the future, as if decisions are purposely being put off or made at the last moment, so that no vision can truly predict the future.
It's as if he knows our next moves, always one step ahead, and even now, the sinister laugh echoing around sounds like the warlock haunting Gwen's mind, haunting me, taunting us because he's always one step ahead.
Suddenly, Gwen and I are sprung out of the market, landing up in Scarborough, in the cottage where our bodies are stuck in trances at the kitchen table. I can see myself standing by her, holding her hand just the way I did before I was hauled into her mind, and that memory of hers in the market.
A dark shadow is cast behind her body, and I call out her name, trying to get her attention.
“Gwen! Gwen, can you hear me?!” I yell at her as she sits at the table, but the dark shadow lurking behind her morphs into an image of her, dark, ominous, frightening, snarling at me with blackened teeth.
As soon as I touch Gwen's physical hand, a black talon from the apparition of darkness grips my wrist, and I instantly fall to my knees, weakened by the dark force.
“Gwen, please! You have to fight it!” I plead with her, realizing that the dark energy has consumed her soul, and it's threatening to take mine.
It entered her body when she ate that apple, and now it's draining her light life force, turning her soul into a draining force of darkness that's stealing my light.
A talon wraps around my neck, cutting off my breathing as I'm dragged off my knees, lifted into the air, and facing Gwen's shadow.
“Please, Gwen! This isn't you! You have to fight it!” I choke when the talon grows tighter around my neck, a screech ripping through the air as the shadowy figure opens its mouth wide and seems to suck my life force from my eyes.
I'm growing weaker and weaker until a faint sigh escapes my lips, my vision blurring as if I'm about to black out. First, the dark force took my body, froze it in the kitchen, and now it's about to take my life force, and there's nothing I can do to control it.
It's taken over Gwen, and now that dark curse is about to take me. There's nothing I can do to stop it, no fight left in me, and I close my eyes, surrendering to this horrible fate.
“You have to fight it! Come on, D! Fight it!”
I gasp when I hear Hunter's voice faintly waft into my ears, snapping my eyes open as I feel his presence amid the darkness threatening to take me, as if he's in the cottage in the physical realm, even if I can't see him while I'm stuck in this supernatural one.
“Delilah! Please come back to me, baby! Please come back! I need you! I love you!”
Those very words pull me out of the plane I'm stuck in, overpowering the dark force and allowing me to escape, my soul zapped back into my physical body.
My vision reawakens in my body to find Hunter staring at me.
“Hunter!” I cry out, flinging my arms around him with a sigh of relief.
“Delilah! Thank Goddess!” Just as Hunter is about to tighten his arms around me, I notice the blinding white light penetrating through a cloud of thick black smoke curling from Gwen's frozen body.
“Delilah! We need you!” I hear my mother yell, and that's when I see her and Arianna pouring white magic into the room.
Without wasting time, I wield my own magic in my palms, then turn them at Gwen, mentally praying that we can fight the curse of the black magic and pull her out of the darkness.
With the combined powers of three witches, the black smoke morphs into the apparition I saw in Gwen's mind, screeching at me, a shrill cry ringing out as the darkness is overpowered by our light magic.
The dark energy disappears into thin air, a blip of white light flashing through the cottage just as my knees buckle under my weight. Using all my magic drained me, and I'm about to hit the ground when a pair of strong arms catches me.
“Delilah!”
“Hunter…” I whisper meekly, catching his scent before I take in his face with my eyes. My vision is blurry, a wave of exhaustion keeping me weak as Hunter pulls me closer to his chest.
I reach out and gently touch his cheek, my lips lifting with a smile as I ignore the ensuing chaos around us. I hear the rush of footsteps, the panic in concerned voices, but it all fades as I focus on Hunter.
His attention is pulled away when Arthur speaks to him about Gwen, asking what to do since she hasn't woken up yet. Hunter responds, “Take her to the healer immediately.”
When Hunter turns his attention back to me, I slide my hand from his cheek to the back of his head, pulling him toward me for a kiss.
“Thank you for bringing me back,” I whisper.
“I wouldn't have survived if I lost you tonight,” Hunter says with a pained voice.
“So, you meant what you said, then? You love me?”
Hunter raises his brows. “You heard me?”
“Loud and clear,” I giggle softly. “It's what brought me back. I've been waiting so long for you to say that.”
“Well, I meant it. I love you, Delilah. I was so scared—”
“Shh…” I press my finger to his lips. “I love you, too, Hunter. That's all that matters, and I'm just glad I get to tell you that now.”
Hunter appears stunned as he blinks in disbelief, so I muster up the last bit of strength I have left to pull him in for a firmer kiss. When we pull apart, I see the sincerity in Hunter's eyes and how he was genuinely afraid of losing me.
“I'm sorry,” he says as he pulls me to his chest. “I'm sorry that I ever pushed you away. It'll never happen again. I can never lose you.”
“I'm sorry too,” I whisper as I cling to him. “Can we go home now? I'm exhausted….”
Hunter chuckles lightly as he scoops me into his capable arms and lifts me. “Of course, m'lady,” he chirps. “After what you've been through tonight, I'm gonna run you a bath and make sure you get all the rest you need.”
“Ah…that sounds like a dream,” I sigh as I lean my head on his shoulder and he carries me out of the cottage. “But there's something that'd be even better than that.”
“Really? What could beat that?” Hunter asks as he carries me home, leaving the chaos behind us.
“If you joined me, of course,” I giggle sheepishly, wanting nothing more than to cling to this joy of finally admitting our love for each other, especially after being stuck in all that darkness tonight.
We're hardly in the clear, even if we defeated the dark energy tonight, and Gwen is still unconscious. But I won't allow myself to become consumed by dark energy, dark thoughts, or any sort of darkness that threatens to steal my joy.
Hunter is my light at the end of the tunnel, and Goddess knows I need some light right now.