Chapter 32 This is Where We Rise #4
It was power, yes, but it was heavy and she realized Astra couldn't get it out quickly.
She wasn't waiting, she was gathering.
Tilly looked behind her and saw her coven, a link of women holding onto each other.
"I need more!" she yelled.
Freida stepped up, dropping her sign to the ground, and grabbed Carol's hand in a firm grasp as she held out her other for someone else to take.
Tilly could feel a sudden rush, smooth and quick fill her. She looked to Bess.
"I need you to try and pull on Margaret's power, use me. Try to awaken it."
"I don't know how," she said in a small voice. The teen rarely looked or sounded small, unsure. And Tilly understood that feeling all too well.
"Do not feed that voice. Any doubt, push it aside. I need you to know that you can do this, link your hand with mine. Jen, take hold of Bess," she called over her shoulder.
"Shut the fuck up!" Astra growled. She was strung tight, trying to siphon the darkness into her.
Bess and Jen did not hesitate and that rush of power overwhelmed Tilly until she gasped,.Crystal's eyes flashed open as her hands raised and something white sparked from both hands.
A scream drew all of their attention as they watched Astra fall to her knees. She quickly rallied and raised both hands to the sky, that darkness swirling then falling into her.
Tilly could feel Astra's power finally fill, the sludge of darkness had gathered enough that she knew they didn't have much time.
She could feel Astra's anger and power drunkenness, but something else was there, and Tilly knew it well. An old friend of hers that she sometimes forgot made friends with others.
Fear.
Anxiety.
It tasted the same in Astra as it did inside of herself.
It smelled the same.
It felt like being hidden and wanting something but not being allowed to have it.
It felt like an overstimulation of impossibility.
It felt like loneliness underneath the guise of company.
It was imagination being projected on the walls of her heart, the shadowed images taking over truth and reality until it was all that she could feel.
She understood that anxiety tried to cloak itself as fear, pretending it was serving its host with threats to protect it; but anxiety is just made-up threats.
And she knew that. Tilly had rebuilt her life around discerning the difference between the fear of real threats and the imaginations painted by anxiety hoping to hold her captive.
Anxiety was no friend; it was a living creature.
And she knew what she had to do. She thought back to that moment in the woods before fireworks and pie and Theo's beautiful strength. She'd touched Astra and something had happened. She could see Astra's mind and feel what was inside of her.
"Can you get up?" she whispered to Crystal, her words quick as her eyes were trained on Astra collecting enough power to probably end one or a few of them in moments. But she couldn't reach her.
Astra got up from her knees, shaky, her eyes starting to go white in a glossy film. She was possessed by this darkness she had learned to harness.
She wasn't going to be able to get Crystal up. She barely got Crystal slumped against her legs, her eyes just slightly opened.
Astra looked the image of a powerful priestess, magic dark and wicked coursing through her. She could feel it building, the ink of it now writhing through her veins and showing like roots through her pale skin.
Jen cursed. They were going to die.
Tilly tried to push whatever magic they had all gathered together, but it felt like it was stuck inside of her, bottlenecked and she needed Crystal to get it out.
Just as Astra laughed, lowering her hands outstretched toward them, the women froze.
Until something dropped heavily from the sky, knocking Astra in the head in a violent snap, making her falter and fall once again to her knees in a sickening crack of cartilage against the concrete with a scream.
A caw joined her scream of pain and black wings swooped down, claws outstretched toward her dark head that she batted at with one arm, the other trying to keep a hold on the dark magic still lightly trickling into her.
"Goddammit, get off of me!" she screeched.
Portia flew up and then swooped back down, her talons grabbing clumps of Astra's hair and pulling until they ripped from her scalp, wrenching another scream from her.
Without hesitation Tilly threw herself forward onto the pavement, keeping one hand linked in Crystals as her other wrapped around Astra's ankle.
She kicked trying to dislodge her but Tilly pulled all of Astra's emotions and fears now swelling and overtaking the feeling of power. And then she told it to grow.
She used words her own anxiety had mastered over the years.
You're not enough.
You can't do this.
Then the words morphed on their own, tailoring themselves to Astra's particular brand of fear.
You don't have any real power. Real power would never choose you.
That's why you choose dark magic, because the pure kind passed you by.
You're not strong enough.
You will never be a witch of any value.
She used anxiety against her until it was the only thing inside of Astra, choking out her other thoughts, and pushing out the dark magic.
Until it went from pouring into her, sparking inside of her, down to a trickle.
A drip drip drip.
And then nothing.
The faucet was shut off.
The cloud above her looked like a black hole, sparkling and catching bursts of electricity, but with nowhere to go.
Astra was cowering, her arms wrapped around her and Tilly watched in horror as she rocked herself back and forth, murmuring words they could not decipher, blood dripping onto her face from the patches of dark hair ripped out by Portia.
People were whispering until the whispers turned loud.
The women stood up, Jen and Bess helping Crystal stand, her frame weak but her eyes fully open and they looked at each other, checking for damage or pain.
And then they looked at the crowd of women that wore triumph like ball gowns. They were smiling, holding up signs made to speak on their behalf into a world that threatened them.
Cora smiled wide as Jen hugged her and Kelsea; as she pulled Tilly's head into her chest which was beating wildly.
She felt tired but she also felt the coursing emotions of elation and triumph.
"Are you okay?" Bess asked Crystal who was staring at her hands which no longer looked frail. They were slender and strong. She fisted them then spread out her fingers slowly a few times until she laughed.
"Yes, darling. I'm okay. We're all okay," she said as she looked around with shining eyes at these women.
These women, who had come together to eat black magic cake. To talk about their hearts and their woes, their failures and their victories together. These were the women who made time for each other in a world that would hope they'd be too busy.
They carved out rooms for each other inside of themselves, which took a kind of sacrifice and honesty that most people don't learn until too late in life.
She looked at these women as they talked, and laughed, as they held both disbelief and faith in their eyes. Freida stood next to Tilly like a sentry.
Bess wouldn't let go of Crystal, but still stood protectively over Margaret who sat on the ground mute, but otherwise okay, no longer bound.
Astra, Esther, and Beatrice were taken into custody, following where Rob had been dragged to minutes ago. Tilly searched for Theo but didn't see his head above the crowd.
Taylor was the one to cuff Margaret Lowell, nodding to Eloise with a wink.
The Lost Souls Coven watched them silently be cuffed, silently be walked out of the crowd.
And the ones who came to the city center, with signs trying to tell them how little they were worth, most of them left; quick eyes cast down in shame.
But there were some, just enough, who stepped over the line and joined them as they celebrated.
Businesses were opened and within an hour a street festival was in full swing.
Food and drinks were passed around, music was playing from somewhere, people brought out games and passed around black flowers that looked beautifully alive, even in their gothic state.
Crystal smiled as she looked up at the sky, that black cloud swirling with nothing to do and she raised her hands, summoned a magic that hadn't graced her bones in too long, and when she whispered her thanks to the ancient witchcraft, it curled around her like an old friend.
Her smile widened as she released it into the sky and the darkness dispersed in a series of fireworks, bringing back the blue backdrop but still leaving behind bursts of light and magic.
Cotton ball clouds so white and pure filled with gold, purple and pink light, the ethereal sky creating a beautifully dramatic stage for the party.
They won.
And they would probably have to fight again. There would be another person who wanted control, someone who looked at the coven and saw women who should be taught a lesson.
But for now, they would drench themselves in the joy of being free and simply...being.