Chapter 35
S eeing the look on Tony’s face when he answered the door was a moment Kyla would relive over and over again, for the rest of time.
His pink cheeks literally drained to a ghostly white, his green eyes filling with fear and trepidation as she smiled back at him. As she stared at him, not saying a word, she watched with nothing but sheer satisfaction as his aura turned from a multitude of colours to a wishy-washy grey.
“Well, hello,” she said. “Long time, no see.”
He opened his mouth, but no words were spoken, almost as if he were choking on his own thoughts.
Appearing behind him, Anna-Rose peered over her husband’s left shoulder, standing a good six feet back from the door. Her piercing blue eyes paled to a dull, watery grey, the sheet white colour of her porcelain skin stood out against the dark shadows around her eyes.
Kyla grinned. Her mother knew exactly what was going to happen next. She knew her time was up. “Hello, mother,” she said, almost spitting the word out of her mouth. “How lovely to see you looking so...dreadful.”
Anna-Rose dropped her eye contact and stared at the floor, not sure what exactly to say.
Before Kyla could say anything more, a young girl with long black hair skipped up behind Tony and peered around his side. With her fair skin, brilliant blue eyes, and red pouty lips, she could have easily been named Snow White and no one would have questioned it.
“Hi,” she said, smiling at Kyla. “I’m Lina. Who are you?”
Kyla looked down at her half-sister and smiled. “I’m Kyla. Nice to meet you. How old are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m ten,” Lina replied, giving Kyla a proud smile.
“Don’t you talk to her,” Tony said, his voice sounding nothing but weak and feeble. “Whatever you wanted to achieve today isn’t going to happen. Go away. You’re not welcome here.”
Kyla took her eyes from her younger sibling and fixed Tony with a steely glare. Cocking her head to one side, she asked, “And how old would our child be now, Tony? Do you remember that?”
Tony pressed his lips together and shuffled backwards a step. “That is the past, Kyla. You have no business bringing that here.”
Kyla ignored him and looked down at Lina again. “Did your daddy ever tell you how he tried to murder your brother or sister?”
Lina frowned, her dark eyebrows furrowing together as confusion and horror spread through her eyes. “Mummy...” she said, her voice shaking. “What is she saying?”
Anna-Rose lifted her eyes from the floor and stared at her daughter. The second her eyes locked with Kyla’s, Kyla’s mind flooded with her mother’s voice.
Please don’t hurt the girls. Please, they are innocent in all of this. Please, Kyla, for the love of God, don’t hurt them.
Kyla narrowed her eyes at her mother. “God himself couldn’t help you even if he was stood right here.”
Tony shoved the door, trying to close it in Kyla’s face. Kyla stuck her foot over the threshold, keeping her eyes on Tony’s as the door bounced back off her shoe.
Tony moved forwards a step in an attempt to close the door again, this time piling all his weight against it.
Don’t you dare move, Kyla thought as she stared at him, not even blinking.
The air filled with a deep rumble followed by splintering wood. Seconds later, thick brown vines ripped through the floor of the house, their pointed ends snaking around Tony’s legs, coiling around him with dark menace.
“Mummy!” Lina cried, running to Anna-Rose and throwing her arms around her waist.
She started screaming and crying, tears streaming down her face, streaks of snot falling from her nose as she gasped for breath in between her pitiful sobs.
Kyla rolled her eyes, stepped into the house, and closed the door behind her. “Stop that noise,” she said, staring at Lina. “Before I make you.”
“You don’t have any control whatsoever, do you?” Anna-Rose asked, her voice quiet.
“What’s that old saying? ‘Like mother, like daughter’?”
“You don’t understand,” Anna-Rose replied, her eyes washing over with water. “They’ll use you, Kyla. All for nothing but their own gain.”
Kyla facepalmed herself and then gave her mother a sadistic smile. “Well, fuck me if this really doesn’t sound familiar. Talking about yourself in the third person really isn’t healthy, Mother.”
Anna-Rose let out a high-pitched scream that could have easily shattered Kyla’s head if it were made of glass. “Shut up about me and him. This is nothing to do with that. I’m talking about the witches. The highest, most powerful order of them all. They need an elemental’s power to achieve their aim, Kyla. Centuries have passed without any elemental giving in to the dark side, but if you do this, you’re nothing but a lamb to the slaughter.”
Kyla narrowed her eyes as her curiosity won over. “What are you talking about?”
“The Helios Coven. Did Gran tell you anything about them?”
Kyla stalled for a second, wondering why her gran wouldn’t have mentioned this if it was so important. “No.”
“They are the crème de la crème of witches, Kyla. Except, none of them ever have been an elemental. Not one. But they are at the top of their game. Everyone thinks they’re all dead but they’re not, they’re very much alive, Kyla. All they need is the power of an elemental to regain their leader. She is not a nice person and not someone you want to be responsible for bringing back to life.”
Kyla frowned as she took in her mother’s words. “If it was that bad and that drastic, Gran would have told me. I don’t believe you. It’s just more lies to stall what’s about to happen.”
Anna-Rose shook her head. “No, Kyla. I know what’s going to happen and I know nothing will stop that. But that doesn't mean I can’t pass on what I know. Gran wouldn’t have said anything to you because she doesn’t believe they’re still around. To her, they’re not a risk.”
“And if they are a risk, what have they got to do with me?”
“Elemental witches are granted their powers because they’re not susceptible to particular persuasions or manipulations, they are their own free spirits. God himself knows you are definitely the definition of that. But, if an elemental is tempted to do bad things driven from ill feeling, this could make them vulnerable to being kneaded in certain directions because their free spirit is compromised by negative emotions.”
“For someone that wanted nothing to do with magic and the supernatural, you seem to know a hell of a lot about it. That only begs the question of how much of this is bullshit?”
“It’s not bullshit, Kyla. I’m trying to help you. Just because I never practiced magic, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of rules and laws. Your gran brought me up in this world don’t forget.”
Kyla let out a sigh. “I’m afraid it’s too little too late and I don’t believe you. I think I’m more than enough of my own person to decide when, where, and how to use my powers. No one can manipulate me differently.”
Anna-Rose reached out and grabbed Kyla’s forearm, digging her nails in to the point of fetching blood. “You’re not getting it,” she said, all but hissing. “You’re not in control. All you have to do as an elemental is think something and it happens. That’s why you must have complete control at all times. You leave one gap, the smallest of gaps in your mind, and they’re in. Then that’s it. You’re done for.” She dropped her hands from Kyla’s arm and gestured at Tony. The mud brown vines had worked their way around his entire body, even covering his mouth. “You are clearly not in control.”
“Maybe I like it,” Kyla replied. “I want things to happen just from thought alone. Go with the flow, see what happens.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t know my limits if I don’t push myself.”
“This isn’t maths or running on track. This is the fate of the world, Kyla. If they get what they want, that’s it—the New World Order is going to be happening faster than you can say your own name.”
“Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. It’s hardly as if the world is a marvellous place as it is, is it?”
Anna-Rose sighed and ran her hands through her shoulder length strawberry blonde hair. “Just promise me you’ll bear in mind what I said.”
“I’m promising you nothing.”
Anna-Rose turned and walked into the living room, Lina still clinging to her side. Kyla followed, glancing around the bland, cream coloured room. Various family pictures hung on the walls and cute ornaments were dotted about on shelves.
Kyla watched her mother collapse into a brown coloured leather chair and seemed to deflate, as if all the life had been pushed from her. She stared into the distance, fixated on nothing in particular but clearly lost in her own thoughts.
“Liiiiiinnnnaaaaa...”
The chirpy, giggly voice of a young girl floated through the air, singing her sister’s name repeatedly. Kyla turned her head towards the doorway and waited for the child to appear. Right on cue, a small girl with sunshine coloured hair, porcelain skin, and piercing blue eyes appeared. With her little blue dress, she really did resemble a miniature Alice in Wonderland.
As soon as she saw Kyla, she stopped dead. When she turned her attention to her left, to see her father covered in earthy vines that had broken through the floor, she let out a piercing scream.
“Arana, come here, sweetheart,” Anna-Rose said, leaning forwards in her chair and holding her hand out.
Arana ran for her mother, sobs and heaving cries taking control of her little body.
Kyla looked at Tony, staring him straight in the eye. “You’ve got a miniature Snow White and a miniature Alice in Wonderland,” she said. “I wonder what ours would have looked like. Cinderella, maybe? Or maybe Aurora? Or perhaps she’d have had my trademark red hair and been a miniature Ariel or Merida?” Kyla sighed. “But we’ll never know, will we?”
Arana, now sat on her mother’s lap, stopped her cries long enough to ask, “Who is she?”
Kyla, upon hearing that, turned her attention to her younger sister and walked over to her. “Hello, sweetie. I’m your older sister, Kyla. It’s lovely to meet you.”
“You never told me you were my older sister,” Lina said, narrowing her eyes at Kyla and sticking her hands on her hips with a defiant tilt to her chin. “I think you’re lying.”
Kyla raised an eyebrow. “My, you’ve certainly got some sass. I think we could get along just fine.”
“I don’t like liars so no, we won’t.”
“That must mean that you don’t like your mummy or your daddy then, sweetheart, because they are both liars. Very big, very bad liars.”
“No, they’re not. You’re lying,” Lina replied, shouting, and stamping her foot for effect.
A gargled noise cut through the exchange, taking Kyla’s attention. Tony’s eyes had glazed over with a hardened stare, anger and hatred oozing from them. Spit rolled down his chin from where he’d tried to talk through the grip of the vine.
“I can’t quite hear you,” Kyla said, tapping her right ear. “Have you got something to say?”
Tony strained against the vines, grunting at the effort of trying to wriggle free. The more he struggled, the tighter they held him.
Kyla looked back at her mother who cradled Arana against her chest, resting her chin on top of her daughter’s head, gazing off into space.
She never held me like that , she thought to herself, a spike of jealousy hitting her square in the heart and spreading through her veins like poison.
The creaking of the vines curling around a struggling Tony took Kyla’s attention back to him. In a moment of spontaneity, she decided she wanted to hear what he had to say, more curiosity than anything. With a carefree flick of her wrist, the vine around his mouth slithered free, scraping its rough surface against his flesh. Dots of blood sprang to the surface and trickled down his skin, hypnotising Kyla instantly.
Her heart raced to new speeds, pumping adrenaline through her veins at the sight of spilling Tony’s blood—just like he did hers. As Kyla realised he was finally feeling pain at her hands, just like she did at his, a strange sense of relief seemed to lift itself from her soul but at the same time, urged her to do more. To avenge herself and then some.
Tony needed to know the depths of the excruciating agony he’d left her in. He needed to linger in the bottomless abyss of gloom that she’d been left to live in, alone.
But he wasn’t the only guilty party.
Anna-Rose needed to experience all of that too.