“You didn’t. And she knows that.”
Josiah crosses the room for me, and I stiffen. He reaches for my free hand and pats it gently. “I am so glad to see you again, Rainey.”
His smile is soft, his tone genuine, and it’s exactly what I need when I already feel so raw. “Thank you. I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“It wasn’t you,” he replies kindly, repeating the exact words I uttered to Cole only seconds ago. Though, glancing around at the few shifters gathered in the corner, I imagine he and Cole might be some of the only ones who feel that way.
Jack steps forward next, a tall, slender brunette on his arm. She smiles warmly, and Jack wraps an arm around her waist. “Rainey, this is Willa. Willa, Rainey.”
“It is so nice to meet you, Rainey,” Willa says softly as she reaches for my hand. “Jack has told me a lot about you and Delaney both.”
I can’t help but smile at her. “It’s great to meet you too.”
“Astor.” Captain Reynolds’ voice is so familiar and reminds me so much of my time working with Ramirez that hearing it is like a dagger through the heart. Still, I turn to face off with her.
“Captain.”
She smiles and reaches for me, pulling me into a hug before I can move far enough away. Behind me, Elijah chuckles, and I make a mental note to shoot him a glare at the earliest opportunity. I am so not a hugger, at least, not usually. “I’m so glad you’re all right,” she says as she releases me. “And I’m so sorry about Ramirez and Kamie.”
“Thanks.”
“We need to talk—”
“If it’s about the warrant, I already know.”
“Warrant?” Elijah asks, and I cringe.
“Shit, sorry, got wrapped up before I remembered to tell you.”
“They want Rainey for Ramirez and Kamie’s murders.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he growls, and Paloma nods.
“I completely agree with you, but I can’t exactly tell them what I know, can I? Our best bet here is to keep Rainey out of sight until they find something else to go on.”
“Will I ever be able to go back?” Not having had the chance to consider the consequences of what this might mean for my career, the thought of never walking back into the precinct didn’t even cross my mind.
What the hell will I do if I can never go back?
“We’ll figure something out,” she promises.
Agatha and Jane walk in, the crows flying in behind them and landing on the bookshelf.
I can think what I want about Agatha Astor, but she sure as hell knows how to make an entrance. Always has.
As soon as she reaches the desk where Tarnley is seated, she turns to face the room, and Jane sets a large book down on the surface. I instinctively take a step back.
I know that book.
Heather’s thoughts surrounded pretty much nothing else whenever she was too busy to torment me with memories of what she was doing.
“You okay?” Elijah whispers in my ear.
I shiver and nod as he releases my hand to wrap an arm around me.
“Jane and I may have found something that will help us put Heather down for good.”
“Great, then let’s get on with it. I’m ready to have the lot of you the hell out of my house,” Tarnley says.
I smile. Especially when my grandmother glares back at him. A look I grew quite accustomed to being on the receiving end of as a child.
“It’s not so simple,” she replies. “We’re going to need one hell of a surprise in order to get close enough to pull it off.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” I ask.
My grandmother’s gaze is cold when it meets mine. “We use you.”
“Me?”
“No fucking way,” Elijah snaps. “You may be open to tossing Rainey to the bitch, but there’s no way in hell I am.”
“I agree,” Jack says.
“Same,” Josiah adds. “We won’t risk her again.”
Agatha groans and pinches the bridge of her nose.
“We aren’t going to be sacrificing Rainey,” Jane says, stepping forward. She’s pulled her long brown hair up into a high ponytail and is dressed more casually than I think I’ve ever seen her before—wearing dark jeans and a plain periwinkle T-shirt instead of her usual dressed-up attire.
It’s strange to see her in this capacity, to see her as anything but my friend—my human friend.
“We need Rainey to draw her out.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Agatha and I found a spell that should do similar to what the cure would. It will strip her of her magic—or rather Aoife’s magic—and give us the chance to kill her. The problem is that we need her blood in order to complete the ritual. And,” she adds, looking to Cole. “We need her bones.”
“What do you need her bones for?”
“Once we have her blood, we can add it to a potion that will remove all of her magic. We get her to drink that, perform a spell over her bones, and the bitch will die— permanently.”
“What about the other souls? The twelve others trapped in that box with her?”
“They will remain in the veil—permanently,” Jane tells me. “It is Heather’s spell trapping them here. Without her magic as a tether, they will move on.”
A silence falls over the room as we consider Jane’s words. But one question comes up, and I can’t deny that it was one on my mind as well.
“If this spell existed before, why did you trap versus kill her?” Jack asks.
“I didn’t realize this spell existed. The one to destroy her soul via destroying her bones is one Agatha found in an old text she had. Apparently, it’s one ancestral hunters used on witches to ensure they didn’t find a way to return.”
“How long will it take to make the potion?” I ask my grandmother.
“At least a few days. I need to gather the ingredients.”
“You should check with Bronywyn,” Tarnley offers. “She has a wide collection of things she’s gathered over the years.”
“I will. Once it’s done, the difficult part will be getting her to drink it. The last time this was attempted did not go so well as your vampire turned hunter can attest.”
“Yeah, not something I’m overly keen on repeating,” Elijah retorts.
“And how in the hell do you plan on making her drink it?” Tarnley huffs. “She damn near killed Elijah.”
“Do you have any better idea?” Agatha snaps.
The room falls into uncomfortable silence once more, everyone wanting to come up with some easier way to put our enemy in the ground, but none having an idea as to how to go about it.
“We need to take this one piece at a time.” I clear my throat. “Cole and Fearghas can gather her bones and bring them here.” Fearghas looks annoyed but nods anyway. “Agatha and Jane can get with Bronywyn to see about whatever ingredients they need.” Jane smiles softly while my grandmother stands stoic as ever. “As soon as those are in place, we draw her out using her want for the book. We need to move fast, though. And honestly, if we can get her blood at the same time we dose her, that would be preferable.”
“The moment you shove that into her mouth, we can spell the bones. We just have to make sure we’re all ready at the same time,” Jane adds. “If the dominos don’t fall at the right time, none of this works, and I very much doubt she’ll let us close enough again.”
“This is our one shot,” I agree. “So let’s make it count.”
“Shall we?” Fearghas asks, reaching for Cole.
“Might as well get this over with.”
They disappear, and one by one, everyone starts filing out, off to either live until we’re prepared to die or carry out whatever tasks they can. I know better than to believe this conversation was a win.
Yes, we know how to kill her, but getting a potion into her mouth, especially after Elijah already tried, could very well be a suicide mission.
“We’ll head over to Bronywyn’s with the list
,” Jane offers, and she and Agatha leave as the others did.
Tarnley, Jack, Willa, Elijah, and I are the only ones remaining in the study.
We’re the ones who will be going head to head with her—the ones who will either make or break this plan.
“This should be an interesting next few days.” Jack is the first one to break the silence, and I glance over as Willa reaches for his hand.
“Who volunteers to shove it down her throat?” Tarnley asks. “Is it too childish to call ‘not me’?”
“Yes.” Elijah glances down at me.
“I will do it.”
He doesn’t argue with me. Whether that’s because he doesn’t want to relive what nearly happened to him last time, or he just knows I need to do this for me—I don’t know. But either way, he simply nods and smiles down at me.
“This will work,” I tell them.
“It will,” Willa agrees.
Everyone settles into silence once more, and I send up a prayer—a plea really—that I’m not wrong. That everything will play out the way we want it to, and by the first of the new year, this nightmare will be behind us.
19
Heather
I glare out over the sea of gyrating bodies, watching them move with the force of my command. Even if they wanted to stop, they couldn’t, and that alone is what keeps me from completely losing my temper and simply decimating this pathetic city and moving on.
I’ve more than considered it. But doing so would be letting Rainey win. I know, without a doubt, that the little hunter bitch will find a way to escape, a mouse that runs away from the mouth of a lion.
“Into the dark you go, my love, into the dark you go.” I sing, turning to face the succubus strapped to a chair in the office of the warehouse I’ve turned into my own, personal lair. Soon, I will have a crown upon my head as I take a seat in a throne crafted from the bones of my enemies.
They may have fooled me with this pathetic excuse for a fae, but never again. The next time I see them, things will go my way.
Perhaps I’ll keep Elijah alive.
Perhaps I’ll make him wear a chain around his neck. My personal pet to do with what I wish.
Perhaps I’ll even keep Rainey alive long enough to watch what will become of her love.
I grin, a sadistic plan forming in my mind as I make my way over to the animal strapped to the chair.
She stares up at me, eyes wide with panic, short hair already matted with the blood of the other I tracked and killed.
“Your heart will be his undoing,” I say. Then, I begin to sing as I go to work. “Into the dark you go, my love, into the dark you go.” Blood drips down my wrist, falling to the floor. “Together we’ll fall. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, my love, into the dark we go.”
20
Rainey
“May I join you?” I glance up at my grandmother as she steps out onto the porch where I sit watching the stars. Elijah is back inside, sleeping soundly, and here I am, completely unable to find peace even as I sit alone.
I don’t openly respond to her, just offer a nod and stare off into the night once more. The swing stills as she sits down, propping her cane beside her.
“It is a nice night,” she says, her tone strained.
“You planning on saying anything worth my time? Or are we just going to talk about the weather?”
She chuckles. “You are so like me, child. Even as you try to deny it.”
“Wrong.” I turn my head to the side to face her. “I never would have treated my granddaughter the way you did me.”
Agatha sighs and nods in understanding. “I am sorry for the way things had to be.”
“They didn’t have to be that way,” I insist. “You could have come clean to me about Heather—the box.”
“Tell me, did your vampire explain to you how I knew it was you Heather wanted?”
I shake my head.
She sighs before taking a deep breath and turning to face me. “I knew because I was the first Astor to open the box.”
“What?” I gape at her. “You?”
“I opened it, and Heather possessed me. She would talk to me, whisper horrible things in my mind. Your great grandmother once told me that we are not responsible for the ideas that perch in our minds—it is the ones we allow to nest that we are held accountable for. I tried so hard to keep the thoughts at bay. And finally, one day, I asked her what she wanted.”
“Heather?”
She nods. “She told me that she wanted to be reborn, that she needed an Astor hunter born during a full moon. A hunter with witch blood whereas I was a witch with hunter blood.”
“I don’t understand, what’s the difference?”
“Hunters may not be as powerful as a witch or a vampire, but you do not share the same weaknesses. A fact that Heather knew.”
“Silver,” I whisper, recalling a faint memory of Heather mentioning as much to Stella.
“Yes. The fae world is impossible to reach alone for anyone with any active power because the barrier has been magically enhanced with silver ever since the first vampire was unleashed upon the world. The only way to get into their world, if you have magic, is to be taken there by a fae.”
“I don’t imagine they would be lining up to welcome her.”
“Exactly. They fear her, what she’s capable of. Not because they aren’t powerful enough to strike her down but because they have been unable to keep her that way. Many fae have tried, and each time, Heather came back. It wasn’t until Jane trapped her that she was able to be stopped.”
“And then I just let her right on out.”
“It truly wasn’t your fault. You must see that.”
I don’t answer. “So Heather just let you go? Just like that? She realized she didn’t want you and said, ‘Oops, sorry, my mistake. Go on about your life’?”
Agatha chuckles, but it lacks all humor. “Unfortunately, no. There was a price. I was supposed to give you the box on your eighteenth birthday. It was my promise to Heather, and she made sure I would follow through by bringing a friend of mine in on the idea. One who was already loyal to her way of thinking—and had been for some time.”
“Doloris.”
Agatha nods and reaches over to touch my hand in a tender gesture I never could have anticipated. I stare down at her lightly wrinkled hand where it rests upon mine. “I had to keep you away from Salem at all costs, Rainey. I fought against the urge to train you—prepare you for what could one day be your future—because I foolishly believed that the distance would keep you safe. I never could have anticipated Doloris reaching out to Delaney the way she did. And your sister has been beating herself up for what she did to you ever since she left that damn box in Salem.”
“Why didn’t anyone just tell me the truth? Why didn’t Delaney come to me?”
“She couldn’t. By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. The box had warped her—changed her—and because of everything Doloris had done to put that box in her path and by default—yours—Delaney knew there was no other option than to remove herself from the equation.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears as I imagine how lost Delaney must have felt. How could I not see what she was going through?
“The voices were getting to be too much. The spell Doloris wove in place was too strong for your sister to beat alone. She tried. She visited witches, begging for them to tell her of the Lunar Divide, trying to see if there was any way to close the void within you, but when it all became too much, she went to her friend and asked him to put her out of her misery.”
Tears burn in my eyes as I imagine kind-hearted, selfless Delaney reaching the end of her rope. She’d been all alone at the end, even more so than I had originally thought. “Elijah told me that she asked Cole.”
“She did.”
“And I know Stella forced his hand when he refused.”
“She will pay for that and so much more.”
Silence falls over us, and the ease
of it is so unlike the relationship I had with her before. There was no sitting in her presence; if I was there it had to be for a purpose. I can’t even count the number of times she specifically told my parents it was time to take me home. That she’d grown tired of the company.
And for a little girl who loved her grandmother to feel that unwanted—it was heartbreaking.
Pursing my lips together, I look back out over the stars. “And now she and my parents are birds.”
“They weren’t overly thrilled about it either.”
“Why birds? Couldn’t you have found human bodies?”
“Not without a soul,” she replies. “I could have killed someone, ripped their soul away to make a host, but murder is not something I am comfortable with.”
“So you used crows.”
“I did. They do not possess human souls, and therefore I didn’t have to kill anyone.”
I snort. “Never would have pegged you for a softie.”
Agatha laughs. “I never gave you much of a reason to think that I had much of a soft side. The magic was darker than I cared to use. Adding any additional sins to that just didn’t seem smart.”
“Can you talk to them?” I ask, the lump in my throat growing again as I fight the urge to cry.
“I can,” she says. “They are all very proud of you.”
I choke on the tears, a sob ripping from my chest. Her hand goes to my back, and she pats gently.
“You are more than any of us could have ever hoped for, child. So much strength, resilience. You take what would break a person and use it as a step to climb even higher. I am so proud of you.”
All of the words I’ve needed to hear. She’s saying them all, and the rest of my broken pieces begin to slip into place.
My family has long been out of reach for me.
Stolen.
Ripped away.
Even long before Delaney died, I felt like I was stranded on an island with no one who understood me. To find out that the family I felt like I’ve spent the last thirty-seven years letting down is actually proud of me—it’s nearly too much.
“I am truly sorry for everything I put you through,” she says softly.
Blood Cure: A Paranormal Vampire Romance (Vampire Huntress Chronicles Book 3) Page 13
