Chapter Seventeen
Icame back to myself in the garden room, on the floor, staring up at the clock hanging beside Cecil’s workstation.
What happened?
I vaguely recalled a nightmarish, jerky sort of movement through space and time, but when I reached for the memory, pain iced through my brain, and I cried out.
I rolled onto my side and came face-to-face with a horror show.
Everything was dead.
Dead, dead, dead.
My chest crushed my ribs, my throat ached. I wanted to cry, wanted to climb on the roof of the garden room and scream at the top of my lungs.
The rosemary was dried up like a Christmas tree in February; crispy brown needles covered the ground.
The mint plant in the old dresser that had taken to bullying the marigolds with its spidery runners had withdrawn back into its drawer.
The marigolds were gone, the dill was wilted, sage mottled yellow, basil withered, and the thyme I’d tried so hard to grow, first starting it in a little pot in the kitchen and then moving it out here to be replanted, had shriveled back to its roots and lay on the soil in a brown little fist.
The fennel was as dead as the rest, as was Cecil’s string-of-pearls plant, which was devastating, but nothing prepared me for the sight of my beloved lavender.
Dry branches poked like gnarled, grasping fingers from the planter that had, only hours before, been a lush, fragrant bush embellished with fragrant purple ornaments. Dead buds littered the tile floor like macabre confetti.
I reached for the elemental part of me, but there was nothing. No spark of magic. Not even a wisp. My witch was gone.
The demon had severed our connection.
“Why?” I cried out.
Your earth magic was too weak to protect our people.
A single spike of lavender lay on the foot of the chaise lounge. Besides me, it was the only living thing in the room. I reached out to it, dry-mouthed and hopeful.
My left hand was covered in blood. Half my middle finger had been chewed off, the tips of my index and ring fingers were raw and oozing. Deep claw marks marred my arms and legs. Every inch of my body hurt—and yet, based on the damage I could see, not nearly as badly as it should.
Because you let me in. I am protecting us.
I flashed back to last night, to the last thing I remembered clearly. The demon’s words:
Let me protect them. Let me in.
And mine:
Yes.
I’d said yes to the demon, and she’d taken over.
Images played in my head like a movie on a screen. Fast-forward glimpses of scenes from a horror flick, with Demon Betty as the lead actress.
“I’m going home to call Ronan and tell him what’s going on,” I lied to Ida. “Lock your doors and stay inside.”
“You’ll only be in the way,” I told my partners, shooing them out of the garden room. “Go inside the house. Leave me alone.”
More images, more flashes of memory, more horror:
An hour before sunrise, the sun still clawing its way to the horizon. A house—Floyd’s house.
A concrete room spanning half the square footage of the upper part of the house. Three cells tucked against the far wall. A wooden desk with a single lamp.
A wolf.
“Your skin, your eyes, your disgusting face.” Floyd backed up a step, stole a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I was right all along. You really are an evil bitch.”
“Where is Rory?” My voice rang like a gong, the sound reverberating off the bony surface of my skull and rattling my teeth.
“As if you don’t know, you lying whore.” Floyd’s lips curled, revealing wolf teeth like curved knives.
Yellow canines sank into his lower lip and drew blood.
He didn’t appear to notice. “You and my bastard son took her. You conjured some spell with your dirty magic and ripped her away from her family.”
Angry wolf sounds—guttural growls, vicious snarls—surged from one of the cells. Floyd wasn’t in here alone.
A confusion of sight, sound, and scent.
Muscled, furred bodies fired like torpedoes. Snorting, snarling, snapping. Hungry. Yellow teeth. Brown and gray fur. Eyes like sodium vapor lamps at the dark end of a cavern.
Eight alpha wolves sped toward me, desperate to tear me apart to appease their clay-footed wolf god—who was nowhere to be seen. The slavering beasts were so close the heat of their breath brought condensation to the surface of my exposed skin.
The wolf nearest me snapped at my face, nipping my cheek. Blood dribbled down my face and soaked into my black shirt.
I didn’t move. Not to jerk away from the wolf’s cruel teeth or his hideous breath. I just stared into his glowing eyes. I stared until he whimpered, until the golden orbs burst in their sockets. Stared, stared, stared until the wolf sank to the floor, dead.
Teeth sank into my arm, scraping bone.
I stared into the next wolf’s eyes.
Melting, whimpering, falling.
Another jockeyed forward. Then two together.
Melting. Whimpering. Falling.
When they were all dead, I rose, hobbled to the last cell on chewed feet that barely held my weight.
“Rory?”
I yanked my blood-encrusted hand to my chest and held it there to curb the temptation to reach for the lavender spike again.
Because I wanted to. More than anything, I wanted to scoop up that piece of lavender and roll it between my chewed fingers, hold it to my nose, draw its calming scent into my lungs.
Obliterate the odors of blood and death and chase away the demon who lived inside me.
But I didn’t deserve it.
I backed away from the lavender on throbbing hands and aching knees and crashed into my workstation.
The trinkets I’d placed above it bobbled and bounced.
A bottle of dried tea leaves rolled onto the floor.
The small antique mirror—one of Mom’s—I’d hung at eye level swished from side to side.
I used my stool to hoist myself to my feet and stilled it.
My reflection—her reflection stared back at me. The coldest fires of Hades crackled in my eyes. I was an angel from the darkest side of the spectrum. I was a ghoul in a Halloween mask that I could never remove. I was Bloody Mary in grayscale.
Floyd had been right. I really was an evil bitch.
We protected the people we love.
“You severed my connection to my elemental magic, to my witch side. That’s why everything in here is dead.” Tears poured down my cheeks. “That’s why I can’t feel her anymore. I can’t feel me.”
My demon side seemed genuinely distressed. We protected our people.
“Look what you’ve done,” I cried. “My witch, my magic, my plants—all gone.”
You let me in.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I took a second to catch my breath. “Please. Just go away.”
The demon ignored me. She lurked beneath my skin, like an infection.
“I said, go away!” I loosed a scream that emanated from the deepest trenches of my psyche, drew back my mutilated hand, and punched Mom’s mirror.
It flew off the wall and shattered against the hard tile floor, chunks of glass and slivers of wood from the frame and backing landing among the detritus of lifeless herbs and flowers.
Fury swept through me like a firestorm in dry brush, and I snatched up the thyme planter.
Upended it on top of the mirror. Siete Saguaro soil covered every reflective shard.
A snippet of conversation played cruelly in my brain:
“It is tempting to strip yourself of emotion, is it not?” Sexton asked. “To consider how best to proceed using only logic? Simple. Clean.”
“No second-guessing,” I said.
“There are no mistakes when you have no moral qualms. There is only acceptable incidental destruction.”
“Collateral damage,” I whispered.
My garden room had been collateral damage.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, palms and shins smarting. A sob tore out of my chest—ripped from the center of me. I cried in desperate, silent gasps, unable to catch my breath.
Numbness flowed up my legs and spread through my chest, anesthetizing me. She was still here, still in control.
You said you wanted this.
“Go away, and take your apathy with you.” The words grated against the inside of my throat. “I am entitled to my pain. I earned it.”
It was an order, a command, something the demon understood. The cold numbness faded, and hot pain rushed in. Every inch of me hurt. Every centimeter.
And I deserved it.
I wept.
Deep beneath the garden room floor, the soil wept with me.
When I surfaced next, I was sprawled on my back on the cold tile floor. Something cool touched the skin on my ankle, and my pain lessened.
Fennel purred in my ear.
Cecil peeled back one of my eyelids and frowned directly into my eye.
I blinked his hand away and stared up at the man standing above me. Ronan. He’d shifted to hybrid, but in the closest form to human. Anyone else might not have realized he wasn’t one hundred percent human, but I knew him.
“Betty.” Ronan breathed my name like a prayer. The way he spoke, barely moving his lips, made me think he hadn’t meant for me to hear him.
“Where’s Rory?” I tried to sit up but my injured arm gave out, and I crashed back down. “Is she here?”
“Goddess, your hands. Your throat.” He scowled down at my partners then roared, “Heal her right godsdamn now.”
Fennel dropped a charm into Ronan’s hand and head-bumped his arm. Cecil slid down the side of my face and went to stand beside him.
“Don’t yell at them. It’s not their fault,” I sobbed. “Yell at me.”
“Oh, I plan to.” He tightened his fingers around the charm. “What were you thinking, Betty? What the absolute fuck were you thinking going in there alone? You could have been killed.”
“Where’s Rory?” I asked, my throat clogged with tears. “Did I find her?”
His eyes flashed gold before returning to their normal hazel. He took a deep, deliberate breath. “You’re badly hurt and need to heal. Let me help you put this on. I can’t stand seeing you in pain.”
“Ronan? Where’s Rory?”
He shook his head sadly. “We haven’t found her.”
The words were a punch to the gut, driving the air from my lungs and doubling me over in pain.
I’d done this for nothing. All the destruction, pain, and death.
For nothing.
His fingers were warm and gentle as he placed the charm around my neck. For all his immense strength, there was something fragile about him when he smiled down at me afterward, hazel eyes red-rimmed and glistening.
“I let my demon side take control,” I whispered, as the heal charm took effect with a low-grade burning sensation that permeated my entire body. I was glad to have it, even though it would take hours to completely heal my wounds. Possibly days.
Ronan nodded, smoothed a strand of hair out of my face. “Been there, bonita.”
“I meant literally.” I flinched as a tear trickled from the corner of my eye and puddled in a raw spot above my ear. “She severed my connection to my earth witch and dragged me into the darkness.”
“Sometimes we have to sink into the darkness to do what must be done. I know that as well as anyone.”
“I was so angry, so scared for everyone,” I said. “Filled with vengeance.”
“Because of Trey,” Ronan said, his voice cracking on the young wolf’s name. “Because you believed that what had happened to him was going to happen to Rory if you didn’t do something.”
“Not only Rory.” My voice rose with panic. “Everyone. I was so afraid that my magic wasn’t strong enough. I gave her complete control.”
“And what did she do that was so bad?” he asked.
Rip out their eyeballs and boil their brains. “Killed Floyd’s wolves.” I shuddered. “I killed them in a terrible, terrible way.”
“Good.”
I blinked up at him.
“I hope they suffered. I hope they’re still suffering.” His jaw clenched, and a vein pulsed in his temple. “Don’t you dare feel bad—not for one single death. The things those monsters did for Floyd were unspeakable. You only have to look at Hartman to see what they were capable of.”
“Mason?”
I hobbled to the last cell on chewed feet that barely held my weight and entered through the unlocked door.
Mason Hartman was pinned to the wall, head hanging, chin to upper sternum. Silver chains crisscrossed his chest, wrapped around his throat and wrists and ankles. Molten silver dripped from his shoulders, down his naked body, to the floor. His feet rested in a shallow pool of it.
I freed him, and he collapsed … then pushed painfully to his feet.
“Tried to stop him. Tried to,” His breath stuttered, “save them.” His gaze raked over my face, eyes widening. “If you’re looking for Hell, demon, it’s in the next cell over.”
I looked.
Mason was right. Everything in there was dead.