She was laughing now, so close I could see the muscle fibres caught between her teeth. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye.
‘If I had your magic, I would have everything. I wouldbeeverything.’ Astrid growled, her foul breath making me retch. ‘This is what makes me so angry, you ungrateful wretch. All the gifts you have been given, and you do nothing with them.The magic is endless, Emily, your fear is the only limit. Do you not understand who you are? A witch powerful enough to end the world and even now you just stand there, doing nothing. You’re pathetic. That’s why you won’t win against me. It’s the one thing your grandmother was right about, you aren’t prepared to do what is necessary.’
‘That’s the difference between us,’ I replied, forcing myself to stand still as she advanced. ‘I don’t need to win. I only need you to lose.’
When she lunged forward, I ducked to the side and snatched the moonstone necklace from around her throat. It resisted my grip but only for a second. Astrid’s magic was stolen, mine was a gift, and I only wished to return the precious metals and corrupted stones back to the earth where they belonged. Once they understood my intention, the gold melted away, dripping through my fingers, and the moonstones tumbled into the wet grass.
The phase was instantaneous. Before the last stone rolled to a stop, Astrid was something else, half-human, half-wolf, stuck midway, either by accident or design.
‘Not smart, Emily,’ she snarled before snapping at my outstretched arm and sinking her teeth deep into my wrist. The pain was mind-altering, a thousand times worse than her potion, arteries and tendons severed, an agony like no other. Right away, the world tilted on its axis, everything wrong, everything fading.
‘Stupid girl.’
Astrid’s voice was full of rage and blood as she released me, tearing through my flesh. I let my arm fall to my side as I staggered backwards, blood gushing out of me.
‘This is the part where you’re supposed to run away,’ she growled.
But I didn’t run. I didn’t move an inch.
The ground trembled as the first drops of my blood spilled onto the dirt, soaking through the soil, my intentional offering accepted. Then the whole world quaked. The chasm that tore the park in two opened so quickly, Astrid couldn’t see what was happening until the earth beneath her feet broke apart, giving her no chance to escape. The Savannah River raged at its banks, the trees that surrounded us bound themselves closer together, and the humid night air roiled. I watched as Astrid fell backwards, her half-wolf hands clawing at nothing, her eyes wide open with panic-stricken surprise, and I remained motionless when the city of Savannah swallowed her whole. The chasm closed, the river calmed itself and her muffled screams were silenced by the night.
‘I’m not the one who should’ve run,’ I whispered.
Clutching my wounded wrist, I closed my eyes and bathed in the quiet stillness before crumpling sideways, broken and bloodless.
When the dead fight back. When the earth consumes.
Cole was dead but fought back. The tunnels beneath Savannah had consumed Astrid. Weakened but ready, I steeled myself for what might come next. There had been so many lies, which would become the truth?
The wet grass was a feather bed as I stared blankly at a darkening sky. My arm. The bleeding wouldn’t stop, and I was too weak to heal myself. The last time I suffered a Were attack, Catherine had given up her life for mine but there was no one to offer up a sacrifice this time. As my existence ebbed away, a flurry of shooting stars appeared in the sky. So pretty. I couldn’t help but sigh at the beauty as I began to bleed out, the wonder of the universe, putting on a show and sparkling just for me.
Not just for me.
A quiet whimper sounded at my side and I turned my headto see a wolf, one I recognized, looking down on me with the saddest green-grey eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ I told Wyn when he threw his head back and howled. ‘Just, stay with me, please?’
He turned around in a circle, tail between his legs, before laying down at the side of me, his body warm, his fur so soft. I didn’t know I was crying until I felt his tongue lap the tears from my cheek, and when it all went dark, I realized I had everything I ever wanted.
He was alive. We were together.
I closed my eyes and smiled.
‘Oh, honey, please tell me that is not what you wore to conduct a Becoming ceremony?’ Catherine shook her head as she tutted, frowning with disappointment. ‘Really, there are days when I have to ask myself if I ever taught you anything worth knowing. In one ear and out the other, all of it.’
The stars had disappeared and the soft grass had given way to something cold and hard. Marble. It took me a long moment to realize where I was. The Bell family chapel, underneath our monument in Bonaventure Cemetery. The caskets of our ancestors lined the walls and all the wooden pews glowed in the lamplight. Behind me, the steep stone staircase that led up to the outside world was sealed shut.
‘Am I dead?’ I asked.
‘You look it. Blessed with a gorgeous head of hair and all she does is pull it back in a ponytail. I despair, I really do. Would it kill you to apply a touch of blush before you run off to sacrifice your life?’
I slid down from the altar where I’d awoken and stretched. Nothing hurt. There were no teeth marks on my arm, no rope burns on my wrists.
‘You’re not dead,’ Catherine called from her seat in the frontpew. ‘Not yet anyway. The way I understand it, this is a spot we Bell witches like to use when we have some thinking between this life and the next.’
‘But Astrid bit me.’
I held out my unblemished arm, but it made for poor evidence.
