Chapter 23
23
I was dreaming about my mother, seeing flashes of my childhood memories. In the first one, I was a small child, playing with wooden puzzles on the floor in my mother’s study. Dust danced in the sunlight pouring through the window above my mother’s desk as I played while she worked. The day was bright and peaceful, filling me with warmth and joy. At one point, I looked up from the puzzle and found my mother hunched over her desk. Her gaze was cast down, and she was saying words I didn’t understand. They sounded beautiful but foreign, and I didn’t think I’d ever heard them before. My mother was saying them repeatedly in almost a singsong tone, and I tilted my head to the side as I listened, lulled by the musical lilt of her voice.
After a while, she stopped saying the strange words. Briefly closing her eyes, she rubbed the back of her neck with a long exhale. She then rose to her feet and picked something up from the desk before stepping away from it. I watched her lower to her knees on the floor, not far from where I was sitting. She pried one of the floorboards out and placed the object she’d grabbed from the desk inside before jamming the board back into place. Once she made sure the board was seamlessly fused with the rest, she rose to her feet and came over to me.
“Come here, baby girl.” She smiled, reaching for me. “Your father will be home soon.”
The next thing I knew, I was in her arms, engulfed in her rosewater scent and her warmth. I could feel her unconditional love for me pouring out of her, and I squeezed her tight, basking in it. I couldn’t hold on to her for long as the memory began to dissipate, receding into my subconscious.
Another memory surfaced. I was older in it, coming home early one day after school. I walked through the empty house until I reached my mother’s study. She was saying the strange words again, over and over, but stopped abruptly when I pushed open the study door. She leaned over the desk as if hiding something from my view as she smiled at me.
“You’re home early,” she said. “Go start the fire in the hearth. You can help me make dinner. I’ll be right there.”
I smiled back and turned to leave. On my way to the kitchen, I thought it was odd my mother hadn’t risen up from her desk to hug me as she usually did when I got home.
My brows knitted as the memory faded, and another one took its place. It was just my mother’s face, her hazel eyes staring at me.
“Wake up, Sophie,” she urged, her tone worried. “Wake up!”
My eyes flew open, and it took a few seconds for my vision to adjust to the darkness. I was still on the floor, propped against the wall, but Henry’s cool presence wasn’t by my side. Shadowy figures surrounded me, towering over me where I sat. I sucked in a sharp breath when I saw their pale faces that were an eerie contrast to the pitch-black of the room. Dark Witches surrounded me. I didn’t have time to react as one of them muttered a spell, and I slipped into unconsciousness.
When my eyes fluttered open, I was lying flat on my back, staring up at the stone ceiling. It took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at. There was a mural on the ceiling, etched into the rough, beige stone. It depicted a monster with scaly black skin and dark, bottomless eyes. Two horns protruded from the creature’s head, and its mouth was gaping, revealing two rows of long, sharp teeth.
Sheer terror climbed and swelled with the realization of where I was slowly sinking in.
“You are awake,” I heard a voice to my left.
Bolting upright, I whipped my head in the direction of where the sound had come from.
A Dark Witch stood there, garbed in a hooded, black cloak and wreathed in wafting shadows. The churning tendrils pulsed around her as if they were a part of her, and she was a part of them. They licked her body and her face, which was a ghastly pale shade and marbled with black veins slithering under her skin.
“Welcome to the Shadow Temple,” the witch said, her black eyes fixed on me. Her voice…I’d never heard such a sound before. It was an eerie mix between a hiss and a whisper.
I took a sweeping glance around the large, circular chamber illuminated by hundreds of thick, waxy candles. Looking down and around me, I realized I sat on top of a slab of stone—a sacrificial altar. A shudder rolled through me as tiny bumps erupted all over my skin.
“I am Antaris, the head priestess,” the witch introduced herself. “You can get off the altar. We just put you on there until you woke up,” she explained.
My heart pounding, I slid off the cool stone, standing on legs I didn’t feel. Forcing myself to breathe, I stared at the priestess before my gaze stretched to the back of the chamber, where I could make out shadowy forms of other witches.
“Sophie Devereaux,” Antaris hissed, and I returned my gaze to her pale face. “Daughter of Eloise, granddaughter of Celine,” she paused. “Great granddaughter of Josephine.”
Disbelief surged through me as my breath hitched. My great-grandmother’s name was Josephine? That could not be a coincidence. Was the amulet named after her?
The dream I’d had before the witches had taken me rose to the surface, triggered by Antaris’s words. It had been a kaleidoscope of memories about my mother…working on the Tear. She hadn’t been searching for it; she’d been creating it as I’d been growing up. The power of three. The power of three generations of White Witches. My grandmother, my mother, and me.
“Where is Henry?” I asked, my throat dry and scratchy.
Terror shot through me at the thought that they’d killed him. Panic threatened, but I shut it down, refusing to give in to it until I knew for sure he was dead.
“The vampire fled the moment we came for you,” the priestess replied.
Relief washed over me that Henry was alive, but it was short-lived as my heart dropped with shock and disappointment. The Lord had promised to keep me safe but had fled the moment the Dark Witches had come for me. I should have known better than to trust a vampire. In the end, Henry was just like the rest of them. I shook my head as my eyes burned with tears. I’d been so foolish.
“Fitting you would be working with a Duval, just like your mother and grandmother did,” Antaris went on.
My brows flew up at her words. I knew about my mother working with Vincent, but my grandmother? Was my grandmother the one who’d started creating the amulet, and then my mother had finished it?
“We knew your grandmother was trying to create an amulet that could destroy us,” Antaris said, confirming what I’d just pieced together. “But when we took her, we could not find it.”
“You took my grandmother?” I rasped, a lump rising in my throat.
My grandmother had died years before I’d been born, and my mother had never told me what had happened to her.
Antaris nodded.
“We wanted to turn her. To have her join our ranks in servitude to Xanthus,” the priestess said, reverently lifting her eyes to the mural on the ceiling. “But she refused, killing herself before the transformation was complete.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn’t know my grandmother, but what Antaris had just told me made Celine my hero. She’d chosen death over turning Dark. She’d sacrificed her life so she wouldn’t lose her soul and join the Dark Witches. I should be thinking about doing the same thing—sacrificing myself before the Dark Witches could use me to activate the Tear.
It’s too late, I realized with a sinking heart. I should have done that before they’d gotten their hands on me. Even if I killed myself now, they would still have my body and a way to activate the Tear and use it against the clans.
My hand flew up to my chest, but the amulet was no longer around my neck. It was in Antaris’s hand as she approached me, gliding through the chamber much like a vampire.
“We did not know your grandmother worked with Vincent Duval,” Antaris said, and my eyes widened. “She had given him the amulet before we stole her away, and your mother finished it years later,” she explained. “Do you think the vampire knew they were working on a weapon that could kill his kind?” Antaris asked, cocking her head to the side, the movement jerky and unnatural. “What a treat it was when Vincent showed up here, looking for your mother,” she hissed, her mouth stretching in a deranged smile that revealed two rows of sharp, pointy teeth, reminding me of Xanthus depicted above us on the ceiling. “His death was slow and painful. And now it is time to kill them all and take what belongs to us.”
“Humans do not belong to you,” I seethed, my face contorting in rage.
“You are right,” Antaris said, “They belong to Xanthus.”
Fast as a viper, she lashed out, grabbing my forearm right above the scar from the Ravager attack. Her claws dug into my skin as she brought her other hand up and sliced my wrist open with one deadly sharp nail. A shocked gasp left me as my blood welled and began dripping on the stone floor. Antaris didn’t waste any time, placing the Tear under my wrist. I watched in horror as several drops of my blood splashed on the pale-blue crystal in the middle of the amulet. Deep sorrow filled my heart. I’d failed. I should have activated the Tear in the Forest last night and destroyed the Dark Witches. I’d hesitated, and now all would be lost.
Seconds turned into minutes as the priestess and I stared down at the amulet in her hand. It was now covered in my blood, and Antaris dropped my arm, lifting the Tear to her face. The moment she let go of me, I clamped my hand on my wrist, cradling it to my chest. My gaze was fastened on the amulet in the witch’s hand as I held my breath. Several more minutes passed. Nothing happened. Relief blossomed in my chest, and a startled laugh almost left me. My blood didn’t work. Then, a thought occurred to me, and my relief crumbled, quickly replaced by dread. If my blood didn’t activate the Tear, that meant the witches couldn’t use it to destroy the clans. But that also meant I couldn’t use it against the witches.
Panic sank its claws into me as I realized something else. Since the witches didn’t need my blood, they could now turn me into one of them. I wouldn’t let them, I thought with resolve. I would not go down without a fight. I would kill myself rather than become one of the Dark ones.
Antaris made a sound deep in her throat that raised the tiny hairs on my body. She brought the amulet mere inches from her face, narrowing her eyes and staring at it intently. It looked as if she were trying to will the Tear to activate with her mind. When it didn’t, her features mottled and twisted with rage. Her eyes were two oily pools of blackness as she looked at me, curling her clawed fingers around the amulet and lowering her hand down by her side.
“Your blood does not activate the amulet,” she hissed. “But worry not, you will still serve Xanthus by becoming one of his devout followers.”
No, I won’t, I thought to myself, frantically looking around the chamber for something I could use to end my life. I wasn’t delusional to think I could escape this place.
Suddenly, the heavy door to the Temple flew off the hinges, and screams of pain filled the large space. I could make out two robed figures moving through the chamber with the speed my eyes couldn’t track, taking out the witches one by one.
Antaris’s black, fathomless eyes grew big, and she opened her mouth unnaturally wide, releasing a high-pitched wail. The next thing happened too fast but also as if in slow motion. The priestess drew her arm back and struck, sinking her claws into my chest. With wide eyes, I watched the dark magic crackle down her arm and into me, filling my chest with burning pain that spread to my entire body. Screams of agony tore through the Temple, and it took me a moment to realize they were coming from me. A deafening roar came from my right as one of the hooded figures rushed Antaris. With a screech, the witch let go of me and swept out of the room in a whirl of dark shadows.
I was on fire. My body burned from the inside out, and the next breath I took scorched my throat. I went to crumple to the floor, but two strong arms held me up. I found myself staring at Henry. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream as the flames that no one else could see burned me alive from the inside.
“You’ll be okay,” Henry said, his voice hoarse.
No, I won’t. Not this time, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make a sound, lost in the excruciating pain as it consumed me, shortening each breath I took.
“It’s not looking good,” came a familiar voice from my left. A second later, Isabelle’s face came into view next to Henry. “She is going to need your blood and lots of it,” she said, her gaze landing on my chest where it felt like a gaping hole had opened up, its edges smoking as it slowly expanded, burning my skin and flesh, eating up my entire body.
“Then I will give her what she needs,” Henry replied, scooping me into his arms.
My eyes fluttered closed, and I felt weightless, finally giving in to the never-ending pain.