Chapter 30 #2
I grab Rachel’s hand. Steel myself. “Don’t waste a shot, Rach. Hit hard, and dodge.”
“Hit hard and dodge. That’s the plan?”
“You got a better one?”
She shakes her head and squeezes my hand. Offers a tiny smile, a flame of hope in the darkness. “No, yours is solid. I like it.”
We take deep, steadying breaths. Clutch our makeshift weapons.
And then, we wait.
We wait and wait and fucking wait.
The men do not attack.
They do not follow through on their threats.
As far as I can tell, they haven’t even entered the cemetery.
“Why is it so quiet?” Rachel whispers.
I close my eyes. Try to pick up on anything, but… she’s right. The rain has stopped. The taunting has gone silent. We wait a few more minutes to be sure.
Nothing.
“Are they gone?” she asks. “Maybe the demons caught up and—”
Something sails over the hawthorns, a blur of flame and glass, crashing into the headstone next to us in a brilliant burst of orange and violet.
“Move!” I grab Kate, and we stumble out from behind our headstone just as another Molotov cocktail explodes on top of it.
The flames surge bright, chewing through Kate’s flowers, petals blackening and blistering. The fire doesn’t fizzle out, though. It intensifies, sliding like water over the headstones, undulating between bright orange and a dark, hypnotic purple.
“That’s no ordinary fire,” I say, my heart bottoming out.
Another bottle bursts, then two more. With each one comes an explosion of that strange, dark fire, blazing orange and violet. Endless, even on the soaked and sodden ground. It consumes the wet earth, racing toward the trees that have stood watch around this cemetery for hundreds of years.
We dodge another hit, scattering as acrid smoke clogs the air, the smell like burnt eggs and nail polish remover. It singes my nose, burns my eyes, turns my vision a hazy gray.
One more breath, and the fumes overtake me, setting my world to spinning.
It’s the worst fucking trip I’ve ever been on.
“Rachel!” I call out, my throat burning and raw. No answer. “Kate!”
Faintly, I hear Kate coughing, but she’s much father away than I thought.
“Kate! Where are you?” I listen again, stumbling, trying to follow the sound of her wheezing. “Rachel!”
“Here!” Rachel gasps, her dark shape coming into view.
I grab onto her hand like a lifeline, rubbing my eyes, desperately trying to make sense of the blur of shapes, the bright flashes, the smoke.
Kate coughs again, and we stumble onward.
I trip over something and go down hard, taking Rachel down with me, whacking my head on a headstone.
The pun writes itself, and my world spins in the other direction. Warm blood runs from a fresh gash in my head. Another bottle explodes beside me. Up ahead, all along the left edge of the cemetery, the hawthorn trees ignite, that otherworldly fire wavering like an aurora borealis.
They’re going to burn the trees. They’re going to burn everything to the fucking ground.
And then they’re going to burn us.
Forcing myself to my hands and knees, I grab Rachel’s arm, and together, we crawl, dragging ourselves over to Kate, where we finally collapse, coughing and choking, the smoke snuffing out the moon.
Again, that sky-splitting roar. Closer this time. Angry shouts. Someone calling for me. Merrick.
“Merrick!” I gasp, but my voice is raw, my throat like sandpaper. I can barely breathe.
I can feel my sisters beside me, hear the last of their wet, strangled breaths. I don’t know how much longer we have.
A dark shape moves in front of me. Legs. A person. A man.
“Your entire bloodline ends tonight,” he seethes.
I blink. Force myself to focus. To look this motherfucker in the eye.
Brendan drops the grimoire before me. In one hand, he holds a bottle stuffed with a rag, liquid sloshing around inside.
“Amber Hellfire,” he says with a smug little smirk. “Doesn’t affect the chosen vessels. But witches? Well. I suppose you don’t need me to read off the list of side effects.” He crouches down to leer at me. So close I could gouge out his remaining eye, if only I had the strength.
“Fuck… you,” I sputter.
“How’s your head, Dizzy? Guess the name was a bit prophetic after all.” He laughs. “Back then, I was just calling it like I saw it, but this? Pure poetry.”
He gets back to his feet. Makes a show of pulling out a Zippo, igniting the rag. He takes a few steps backward. Then, with a maniacal grin, he chucks the bottle at the grimoire.
The glass explodes, slicing our faces, our arms.
Flames surge bright, casting Brendan in wicked purple light, like a fiend from the darkest reaches of Hell.
The book hisses and pops, curling inward on itself, and I feel it—like a hot knife carving open my chest, spilling my guts.
Helpless, dizzy, broken, I watch as the last of our magic, the last of our connection to the ancestors, the last of our legacy burns.
Our magic is dying. My sisters and I lay crumpled on the ground, shattered, bleeding. Somewhere in the darkness, I tell myself I can still hear the demons—our demons. Merrick. Warren. Oliver. Medusa. Fighting the human monsters we unwittingly unleashed. Fighting for us.
But in the end, we’re all going to die anyway.