‘You have to stop, you have to let me go,’ I commanded, the fire spreading through the chapel with supernatural speed. ‘I can’t control it.’
Catherine shook her head. She collapsed to the ground at the side of me, no strength left to fight.
‘Then let it burn.’
‘If we burn, everything burns,’ I argued as the flames danced around us. I felt stronger but not strong enough. ‘If we don’t do something, it will destroy the city.’
‘Maybe it’s time.’ Catherine touched her bloody hand to my heart, staring into my eyes. ‘I’ve done terrible things to keep this magic alive and at what cost? Every time I think I’ve done enough, sacrificed enough, I have to give more. Your mother and father’s lives, Ashley’s freedom, my own blood, and now you? I can’t do this anymore. You were right, all things must end.’
‘But not yet.’
Another voice. Another person. Over Catherine’s shoulder, I saw the white-haired woman who had haunted me since I arrived in Savannah, only her hair wasn’t white anymore, it was bright red, and her eyes shone like emeralds. Behind her, a dozen or more women, all red-haired, all green-eyed, looked down at me with love.
‘It is time for a change but not an ending,’ the very first Emma Catherine Bell told my grandmother, pulling her from me as my bleeding slowed then stopped altogether. ‘You can let go. She is stronger than any of us.’
I pushed the makeshift bandages away from my stomach and saw the flesh knitting itself back together, just like the orchid. Choking on the rising smoke from the black fire as it raged on, I stared up at my ancestor.
‘Are you doing this?’ I asked. ‘Or am I?’
‘We do everything as one,’ she replied and the other women bowed their heads. ‘What’s more important is what you do next. What will you decide, Emily?’
The altar had already disappeared behind a cloud of smoke and my eyes were stinging, lungs screaming out for oxygen I could not find.
‘It’s not my decision if I don’t know how to stop it,’ I told her. ‘But I don’t want this.’
‘All you have to do is make the choice. Stop trying and know it is done.’ She paused and touched her hand to my face. ‘Find your peace.’
I knew what I had to do.
Rolling over, I winced as I crawled through the fire, the flames licking at me but leaving me unharmed as I made my way across the chapel floor. Wyn lay helpless, a heaving mound of blood and fur. I picked up one of his paws and brought it to my lips, the horror of the things I’d seen in my visionssnapping at the edges of my consciousness. All of the destruction and decay, me at the heart of it, Wyn and Catherine in the flames. But I didn’t have to accept someone else’s version of my destiny. Blind faith made Catherine equally strong and dangerous. I would not follow a path that no longer served us simply because someone who died centuries before I was born said I should. Wrapping my hand around wolf-Wyn’s sharp claws, I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, relaxing into the peace only he could give me.
Everything went quiet as I fell away into the nowhere space.
This time the vision was different. I was still surrounded by black flames on every side, Catherine was still bleeding on the altar. But this time, the wolf stood by my side and behind us there were dozens of other women, all of them vibrant with magic. What we were facing wasn’t clear yet but the message was that when the time came, I wouldn’t be alone.
Something soft and cold fluttered onto my face, bringing me back from the vision as it smothered the flames. Snow. It was snowing inside the chapel. As the wolf’s paw shifted back into Wyn’s hand, his fingers curled around mine and at once, the black fires burned out.
‘We weren’t able to speak freely before your Becoming,’ Emma Catherine Bell said as I fell on Wyn, pressing my lips to his forehead as he moaned, still not entirely conscious. ‘It will be easier now we’re connected.’
‘My visions,’ I replied, almost oblivious to the miracle falling from the ceiling, too busy watching Wyn. ‘All those things I saw. They could still happen?’
‘The prophecy has not come to pass,’ my ancestor confirmed. ‘Perhaps, at one time, what you saw could have been your Becoming but you changed that. You made a choice that set us on another path.’
‘A better one?’ I asked with hope.
‘A different one,’ she offered. ‘You will not be able to turn back from it now but we will be with you. Our actions are entwined, everything you do and everything we ever did now lives in you.’
All of her descendants stepped forward to surround Catherine as she turned her attention to my stunned and silent grandmother. ‘And it is with great sadness that we do this.’
They swarmed around Catherine until she was completely hidden from my view and the ground beneath us quaked with her fear. The scream that filled the chapel was as agonizing as anything that happened before or after. Then all her panic faded away. I couldn’t feel her anymore. When the spirits pulled away, my grandmother’s body lay on the floor, eyes closed and smiling.
‘Is she … gone?’ I asked the first Bell witch as the others moved to line the walls of the chapel, each standing sentry by their own casket.
Emma Catherine Bell ran her hands over my hair. My breath hitched in my throat as I saw it turn from reddish-brown to scarlet, her ancient magic passing through me. I was truly whole, truly who I was meant to be.
‘Catherine isn’t dead,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother has her own choice to make.’
Holding on to the rough stone wall, I staggered over to where she lay. She looked more peaceful than I had ever seen her. Serene. She was still there but too far away for me to reach.
