Chapter 31
Isabel West stood on the cliff top gazing down over the black freezing waters of the lake. Her deep whiskey-colored eyes latched onto the tiny pinprick of light in the distance, the lake house, her childhood home, and now the home of her daughter.
The brutal wind whipped her long dark hair back from her face and set it writhing in the turbulent air like Medusa’s serpents. The single white lock at her temple blazed incandescent in the moonlight and highlighted the scar marring her beautiful face.
She wrapped her dark, heavy cloak around her tighter, ignoring the biting cold and the sting of snowflakes as they swirled around her.
Over the howl and shriek of the wind, the whispering began, beckoning, cajoling, a call to her blood. She may not have the power of her husband or her child, but she was still a West. She felt the restless shift and throb of magic beneath her feet as it writhed and briefly flared.
She understood it, understood the deep, dark secret of the town. Even now, she could hear it hammering like a furious heartbeat below the ground.
Hester had been the only other one who’d known the secrets of the land they’d made their home upon. It hadn’t been an accident that Hester and her sister Bridget had chosen this precise location to found the town of Mercy, or why they’d filled it with witches and people of magical descent.
Her mouth curved into a slow smile as she closed her eyes and tilted her head, listening as the dark whisper crawled over her skin like a lover’s caress.
“Isabel.” The voice intruded, breaking her thoughts for a moment so that the whispering settled into a dull muted hiss in the background. The voice was deep, a kind of unpleasant, wet gurgle. She turned slowly, her gaze landing on the strange, mismatched creature standing obediently behind her.
Her appraising gaze swept over his naked body, and the red glow beneath his skin had all but disappeared. He stood now as nothing more than a flesh and blood man, although he was far from it, carved up and stitched together with thick black stitches, making him look like Frankenstein’s monster.
Her eyes met his as they burned black, filled with hate and fury. “What have you done to me, whore?” he rasped.
“Nathaniel,” she tutted slowly. “Is that any way to speak to the person who freed you?”
“Freed?” he hissed. “You simply exchanged one prison for another.”
For a second, his skin mottled and shimmered, small bumps appearing and disappearing as if something writhed beneath his skin, desperate to tear its way out. It was true, she smiled. While he was trapped in that body, he was bound to her.
“You didn’t really think I was just going to turn you loose, did you?” she asked. “Do I look stupid?”
“I’m going to gut you slowly when I get out of this body,” he warned quietly.
“No, you’re not,” she replied calmly. “You’re not going to do anything but what I tell you to do.”
“And why would I do that?” He glared at her with shiny beetle-like eyes.
“Because I know what you want.” She stepped closer to him. “What you’ve always wanted.”
He growled low in his throat and lunged for her. His fingers curled into claws, but as he got within a foot of her, he was repelled and pushed back, his bare feet leaving gouges in the snow, as if she were protected by some kind of shield.
“You can’t hurt me, Nathaniel.” She dusted the snow off her shoulder nonchalantly. “You’ll only wear yourself out trying so don’t bother. Why don’t we just skip ahead to the interesting part?”
He growled again.
She stared at him.
“I want Infernum.”
His peeling lips stretched into an obscene smile. “You don’t know where it is, do you?”
“Hester hid it,” Isabel replied. “And you are going to help me find it.”
“Why would she hide it from her own bloodline?” Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Isabel snapped, and he realized he’d touched a nerve.
“I knew her. Even when she was young, she was an incredibly powerful witch.” Nathaniel breathed in deeply as if he were sampling her scent upon the air.
“You have nowhere near the kind of magic she possessed,” he gloated.
“Poor, lame little witch. Is that why Hester hid it from you? She knew you were defective, weak… too weak to protect it from me.”
Isabel’s jaw tightened. “You think you can take it from me?” Isabel replied coolly. “It’s mine, my birthright, and you are going to help me find it. Don’t even think about trying to betray me and keep it for yourself. It was meant for a West and will only answer to my bloodline.”
“We’ll just see about that.” He glared at her.
“Yes, we will.” She stared back. “However, in return for your service, I am willing to make a trade.”
“A trade?” His beady black eyes shrewd.
“That’s right.” Isabel smiled coldly. “In return for helping me find Infernum, I will give you the one thing you want above all else.”
“I want Infernum above all else,” he growled impatiently.
“Now that’s just not true, is it?” she replied. “What if I were to give you back your brother?”
“My brother?” Nathaniel repeated, his eyes narrowing on her appraisingly.
“That’s right. I know where he is being held deep in the darkest pit of Hades. You can’t reach him, but with Infernum I can.”
Nathaniel stared at her.
“Do we have a deal?” Isabel asked. “Or if you prefer, I can shove you headfirst back into the devil’s trap?”
“We have a deal,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.
“Good.” Isabel smiled in satisfaction.
“Take me to Hester’s bones.” Nathaniel flexed his claw-like fingers. “I will rip her soul back from the Underworld and wring Infernum’s location from her.”
“I can’t,” Isabel replied slowly.
“What?”
“I can’t take you to her bones,” she answered. “No one knows where she’s buried.”
“Clever, clever little witch.” Nathaniel clucked with reluctant admiration. “Without her bones we cannot locate her soul and compel it to return.”
“We can’t.” Isabel smiled coolly as she turned to look back out over the black waters of the lake. “But I know someone who can.”
The story continues in book 2, The Ferryman.