‘You little fool,’ Catherine hissed, stumbling in her rush to get behind the altar. ‘You’ve trapped us in here with a male Were in its first phase? That’s not your boy anymore, it’s an animal! It doesn’t recognize you, all it knows is how badly it wants to kill you.’
‘Better him than you.’ I held my hands out in front of me, the moss that had freed Wyn wrapping around my body. ‘If he kills me, at least this is all over.’
Wyn the wolf reared back, his claws scuffling against the smooth marble, struggling to gain purchase. His fur was golden but his eyes were the same, green and grey, the same colour as the Spanish moss. He might not recognize me but I would have known him anywhere. My Wyn was still in there.
Hiding behind the altar, Catherine scrabbled for something to defend herself with but Wyn wasn’t concerned with her. He stood facing me, his lip curled up to reveal the threat of his razor-sharp teeth as he deliberated his next move.
‘Wyn,’ I said, clear but kind. ‘It’s me, Em.’
He replied with uncertain growls, still getting to grips with his transformation, feeling his way around his new body.
‘You’re not going to hurt me,’ I told him, taking one very small and careful step closer. ‘And I’m going to get you out of here.’
‘No,’ Catherine said, suddenly right behind him. ‘You’re not.’
Everything that happened next was a blur.
I saw the dagger in her hand but there wasn’t enough time to react. The blade came down fast, sinking into Wyn’s shoulder, right up to the hilt. He howled, a soul-splitting sound, andreared back on his hind legs, knocking me to the ground with his left front paw and giving my grandmother the opportunity she needed.
‘Catherine, no!’
I screamed as she lunged at him, holding the silver pin in her other hand and driving it deep into his chest. He careened backwards, howling with fear and confusion, then crashed into the row of pews, leaving nothing more than splinters. Then he was still. Breathing, just barely, but completely still. I tried to go to him but I couldn’t move, my strength ebbing away somehow. I looked down to see the front of my shirt sliced open, a strange new feeling pulsing through my body, hot then cold. It wasn’t just Ashley’s blood that stained my shirt anymore. Four clean gashes opened up my belly and painted me ruby red.
‘Emily,’ Catherine gasped, lurching towards me with absolute terror in her eyes. ‘Emily, no.’
‘He didn’t mean to,’ I said, woozy and lightheaded as I grasped my mom’s locket.
‘We’ve got to stop the bleeding,’ my grandmother rambled as my eyes fluttered open and closed. ‘You cannot die. Let me think, stay with me, just let me think.’
But it was difficult to make promises as the edges of my vision began to blur, my blood almost black against the white marble of the floor. Catherine scurried around, gathering piles of moss from the ground to staunch the blood flowing from my stomach, but as soon as it registered her touch, the moss withered away to dust. In a daze, I watched her scuttle back to the altar, searching through the objects and herbs, tears pouring down her face, while she searched for something that might help.
‘We can do it together if we concentrate,’ she said, nodding her head as she gathered the supplies. ‘You did it for Ashley, we can do it for you.’
‘This isn’t the same, you can’t stop it.’ My words were losing shape as the light dimmed. I thought it would take longer to bleed out. I was wrong.
‘Not alone but we can together. You are a Bell witch, Emily, and you are too strong to be killed by some wolf.’
‘A knife can be a weapon or a tool,’ I croaked with Catherine back by my side. ‘You thought Wyn was a tool but you made him a weapon.’
She carried on regardless, tearing strips of fabric from the bottom of her dress and wrapping them tightly around my middle. ‘Not like this, it’s not going to end like this,’ she muttered, holding my chin in her hand and forcing me to look at her. ‘There is one last thing we can try. Whatever it takes to keep the blessing alive.’
Leaving my side just long enough to crawl over to Wyn, she reached across his trembling, prone wolf-form. Her pin had already dislodged itself, sparkling on the floor in a pool of his blood, and the sound he made when she wrenched the dagger out of his shoulder cracked a hole in the marble at the entrance of the chapel.
‘Taking someone’s life is easier when you don’t have to look them in the eye,’ she confessed, returning to me with the dagger in her hand. ‘Maybe if I give you mine, you’ll be able to forgive me someday.’
‘Catherine, don’t,’ I begged, understanding what she meant only when it was too late.
‘We ask those who came before us to bring her into the blessing,’ screamed my grandmother, demanding the attention of our ancestors. ‘As whole as the moon, she will Become.’
She wiped the silver blade on her skirt then held it out in front of me, determination on her face as she slashed her own palm with only the slightest intake of breath, and when she pressed her hand to my stomach, mixing her blood with mine,I felt the fire reignite inside me. The final step in the ceremony. The sudden spark caught onto every fibre of my being and ignited. All the things I’d glimpsed through the open door at my Wilcuma poured into me, all the knowledge, all the history, all the magic. Every Bell witch who had ever lived, everything they’d ever experienced, now existed in me.
The Becoming was complete.
But Catherine wasn’t done.
‘Take from me,’ she ordered, making another deeper cut in her hand. This time I could tell that it hurt. ‘What is needed is offered freely. Take from me.Dreahnian.’
My blood ran white hot, lava flowing through me like I was the earth’s core, molten metal made flesh, but it was too much, too strong. The dried Spanish moss on the floor of the chapel began to smoulder before bursting into black flames with white hearts. The fire raced along the ground, searching for an escape. I looked around, Catherine broken and bloody, the wolf, the black candles. This was it. The beginning of the end.
