14
Iscream with impotent fury as she reaches for the knife she pulled out of her bag. But when no one storms into the church to stop this, when the fates refuse to intervene, I beg them to make it quick, to spare the shell of a witch any more suffering than she’s already been through. But then the screaming starts.
I look away, not able to stomach any more of the brutality. Rage curdles my blood, and I wish I could rip my ears off. Despite Brianne’s efforts to give up, her body takes over, forcing her to try and survive even though it’s clear she doesn’t stand a chance. Her soul is scarred and shattered beyond repair, and yet the demon-bitch draws the pain out and revels in the suffering.
Tears pour down my face as sounds and smells assault me. I beg the world to make it stop. I don’t know what I expected with all of her ranting and crazy delusions. I saw proof of how far she is willing to go branded all over her face, and yet my stupid ass didn’t see coming the inhuman savagery that’s happening right now. Light is sucked out of the room, and the screaming finally stops. I realize I’m huddled on the ground with my hands over my ears, crying and trying not to hear any more.
But the silence...the silence is almost worse.
I know what it means, and I hate myself for just sitting here and letting it happen. I didn’t fight hard enough, didn’t find the loophole, or attempt to talk Jamie out of what she was doing.
How did I get here?Oh right, I fucked up and now I’ll forever pay the price for my own stupidity.
Shadows coalesce menacingly all around me, rushing to the front of the church like they’re eager to be the first in line for something, but I don’t dare look to see what’s happening. A chanting murmur starts to build, the sound bouncing off the stone surfaces of the inside of this cursed church. Heat is stolen from my very bones, and then out of nowhere, in a flash of light and pain, something slams into me from behind.
I’m struck by a force powerful enough to bow my back and lift me off the ground as it fires through my every cell, destroying and rebuilding all that I am simultaneously. The pain is searing and overwhelming, and I’m incapable of breathing or screaming or even thinking the wordwhyorstop. Cold burns through me, and disembodied voices sound off from every direction around me. Images flash through my mind, faces I don’t recognize, readings I’ve never done. Bones. So many sacred bones turning to dust in my hands. Power reinforces my every atom. Then just as quickly as the power came to burn through everything I am with its frigid touch, it’s gone.
I fall back to the stone floor, my body cracking from the impact. I catch a glimpse of Elon as I go, staring at me wide-eyed and filled with horror and knowing. My labored breaths are a cloud of frost, puffing in and out with each inhale and subsequent exhale. My cheek is plastered to the dirty stone floor, and I’m reminded of another time I lay just like this. Only it was on the floor of my apartment right after I first sealed the bones to me. I thought it was my ancestors bitch-slapping my ungrateful ass, but now I know it was so much more than that.
Reverence and dread pool in my gut in equal measure. I can feel the strength of the now fortified branches of bone magic in my veins, but I can also feel the hungry gaze of the deranged psycho who wants to cleave it from my body.
A pained whimper escapes me, and I’m going to have to talk to my body about the noises it’s allowed to make in the face of danger. We really need to figure out far more intimidating and badass sounds to express when we’re in pain.
An excited squeal comes from somewhere behind me. “Oh, Elon, and here I was thinking it was going to be you. You cunning little coward. Typical of a Kendrick to claim to be top shit when really they’re the maggots feeding on the steamy piles.” Jamie laughs as though this news is the best she’s ever gotten. You’d think she just won a Powerball with the hooting and excitement she now exudes.
I’m still literally frozen in place and unable to see where Jamie is. I’m forced to wait for my body to thaw from the rush of power that just hit it, and I try very hard not to think about where all that power just came from. All this time, I’ve been wondering what the kidnapper wanted with both Soul Witches and Bone Witches. I hate that I know the answer to that question now. Brianne’s husband was a Soul Witch, and Jamie just used his heart and his blood to take Brianne’s magic. I’m sure the other missing Soul Witch’s heart and blood met the same fate. How many of them has she killed to destroy all the Bone Witches she has? I’m revolted by the knowledge that one witch’s blood makes the other witch’s magical violation possible, but what really makes me sick is that I can feel how much stronger I am because of it.
I don’t know how I’ll ever get rid of this feeling that’s whispering to me that I’m tainted inside, that I’m dirty because of what Jamie’s done. How can I live with this power, knowing what happened to the witches it was stolen from? Tears spill down my cheeks, and a sob starts in my chest.
Jamie’s laughter drowns out the sounds of my overwhelming sorrow, her mirth pouring salt in my fresh and painful wounds. “So you’re the one. You’re the source,” she purrs, viciously amused from somewhere above me. “I was convinced it’d be our Prince Kendrick, but no, he’s just an imposter, glass walking around like he’s a diamond.
My finger twitches involuntarily, signaling that the feeling in my extremities is coming back. I focus all my attention on the building inferno boiling through my soul.
“I should have known it was you. Why give it all to a glass Prince when a Queen was in our midst the whole time? The way your grandmother fought should have tipped me off, but now we know, don’t we, Lennox?” she declares, her voice closer to my ear than it was before.
Alarms are sounding off inside of my head, not from her sickening proximity, but from her words. This is the second time she’s referenced my grandmother, as if she were there when… I withdraw from the direction of my thoughts. No. That’s not possible. The necros said it was natural causes, this bitch is just trying to fuck with me, to get in my head.
“You know, come to think of it, she looked a little like this when I stood over her and watched her die,” Jamie tells me, and I close my eyes and try to block out her words.
She’s lying. There’s no way she was there, they would have sensed it.
“She had that same angry fire in her eyes, but her body just couldn’t keep up. She just laid there, clutching her chest and gasping for air, her eyes promising a vengeance that her body would never let her mete out. Getting old sucks.” She tsks, and I feel like someone is taking an ice pick to my heart.
Agony starts to burrow in my soul at her words. Truth seeps into the cracks and fractures she’s creating, and I want to turn it all off. I want to stop feeling. To not picture this heinous nightmare standing over my incredible, loving grandmother as her heart failed her.
A sob bubbles up out of my chest, but I silence it.
No, not just her heart...Ifailed her.
Jamie’s voice digs into me like razor wire, the joy she’s getting from this revelation like acid to my heart.
“Put a real wrench in my plan, I must say. If the old battle axe’s heart hadn’t given out, I’d already have what I wanted, what I’m owed, but no, I had to wait to see who the next in line would be. I almost took your cousin, you know, the prissy one with the pretty hair. When she showed up and took things from the apartment, Ialmostjumped the gun. Good thing she was complaining loudly about the unworthy piece of shit whodidget the bones, or I would have wasted my time killing them. It was still tempting though.”
My hand twitches involuntarily, and more and more with each passing second, I can feel the stone floor against my skin. Something is stabbing uncomfortably into my side, and I hope I’m lying on a bird skull fragment and not something worse like my broken ribs. I don’t feel pooling warmth around my torso or anything that would make me think I’m bleeding. I want to pull a deep breath into my lungs to test for injuries, but I don’t want to give away that I might be recovering faster than she expects. I just need her to keep talking.
“I almost had you. I was seconds away from following you into your store, but that one’s brother had to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.” I can’t see her, but I can feel her crouched over my prone body, and I can imagine she’s gesturing toward Elon as she talks about Rogan showing up at the shop that day.
He was right. I was next.
