Witches of Ash and Ruin

by E. Latimer

  With her mind clear, she immediately focused on her breath. On the oxygen leaving and entering her lungs.

  Shit. She tried to clamp down on the panic before it started. To think of something, anything else. It seemed like the obsession was always just around the corner, waiting to pounce on any blank space in her thoughts.

  The reading wasn’t going to work if the panic kept invading.

  She glared at the crystal, forcing herself to refocus. To zero in on the light dancing and bending on the surface. The flickers of candle flame that stretched and zigzagged in the crystal. The dancing shadows between, like smoke swirling across the surface—

  No, not smoke, she realized—fog. Curling up and slowly clearing away like a strong wind was blowing. She stared, transfixed, as something came into view on the surface of the crystal—and then somehow she was in it.

  She was standing in the woods—and yet, she marveled, she was also not standing in the woods, but sitting cross-legged on the living room floor—and there was an abandoned, crumbling stone house before her, covered in creeping ivy and moss. The roof was missing, and when she stepped closer, she could see strange symbols carved into the walls, swirling spirals and knots, intricate patterns that made it hard to focus.

  She walked closer to the house, until she could peer into the window. In the center was an altar made from new, fresh stone. On the altar lay a book, bound in dark brown leather. The words inside blurred as she tried to read them, and Dayna squinted in frustration. This was something desperately important, something that would help her protect her coven. But in the vision, the words continued to squirm and reshape themselves.

  She could only make out one thing on the page, a symbol. The one they’d found at the murder scene. There was something about the book that was strangely familiar. She could dredge up a faint memory of holding it, feeling the leather cover beneath her fingers. But it felt like the memory of a dream, or the elusive, ungraspable feeling of déjà vu. Already it was slipping through her fingers.

  The crackle of underbrush brought Dayna upright, heart beating hard against her rib cage. She stared out the moss-framed window. Her breath stopped.

  What stood in the clearing just outside the little stone house was not a beast, but it was not a woman either. She was tall, with black hair that rippled down her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and long-lashed, and her lips were the red of winter berries. She wore no clothes, and the surface of her skin was freckled and golden, like the speckles of a fawn. Massive antlers twisted from her head, six points that towered on each side.

  When she saw Dayna in the window, she smiled. Her voice was low and musical, and she spoke so quietly that Dayna knew she shouldn’t have been able to hear her at such a distance. “Hello, daughter of oak.”

  Too stunned to speak, Dayna only stared wide-eyed at this apparition, suddenly hit by the barest shadow of a memory. She’d stood here before, in the center of this forest, her back to the stone temple, asking the woman to guard…something. She couldn’t remember what.

  And here she was, all these years later.

  Dayna blinked, surfacing from the memory as though she were waking from a dream. A dream of another life, another time. The sensation sent her mind reeling.

  A memory within a vision couldn’t be real, could it?

  The woman stepped closer, and her face became grave. “We don’t have much time.”

  Dayna gripped the mossy windowsill. She was pressed against the wall now, and she half wondered if she was going to stain her white sweater. The vision was so real; she could feel the rough stone beneath her palms, smell the scent of fir trees as the wind tangled cool fingers through her hair. “Who are you?”

  “My names are many, but you may think of me as Cernunnos, if you wish.” The not-woman stepped closer, and Dayna realized she was a giant. The tips of her horns nearly brushed the bottom branches of the trees. “Daughter of oak, you must listen carefully. The world beyond yours is unbalanced. The deaths of our saints are unlocking her cell one by one. You must find the book. Find the list before he does.”

  Cernunnos. The god—goddess, clearly. Holy shit. Her words came out in a stammering rush. “Wh-what book? What do you mean cell? Who—”

  There was a rustling in the underbrush behind the ruins, and Dayna jumped. The antlered woman’s black-eyed gaze flicked away. She inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring.

  “The black one is coming. You must go, daughter.”

  Another crack, the sound of a branch breaking, and the antlered woman began to fade back into the forest. “Watch for him.”

  Dayna leaned forward, trying to keep an eye on the woman, who seemed to be disappearing as she watched. The stone sill scraped her palms. “Wait!”

  Cernunnos turned away, her voice floating behind her. “Wake up, daughter of oak. Wake up.”

  The woods were suddenly empty, leaving her staring at the spot where the woman had been. Another rustle, this time louder. When she turned to look out the other window, she saw only thick forest.

  Another crack. Sharper, closer. The sound of heavy footfalls. It sent a sudden, cold pang of fear through her, and Dayna clutched the windowsill harder, clinging to the moss-slick stones as if they might anchor her. Something impossibly heavy was crashing its way through the forest toward her.

  The antlered woman’s warning echoed in her ears: The black one is coming.

  Whatever that was, she didn’t want to meet it.

  She had to wake up.

  The vision seemed impossibly real, though. Everything, the moss beneath her hands, the stones beneath her bare feet, the wind rustling the trees, and the dusky surroundings of the forest. At first it had seemed blurry and dreamlike. But now everything seemed incredibly vivid, like she’d sunk deeper into the vision without noticing.

  But what did that mean? Did it mean she could be hurt here? Killed?

  The thought sent a chill through her. She backed up into the center of the tiny stone house.

  Another crash, a snap. Closer, closer. Dayna squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on her heartbeat, frantic and birdlike, fluttering against her ribs. She dug her nails into the fabric of her sweater, fingers twisting and clenching as she commanded herself to wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

  Wake up, daughter of oak. Wake up.

  Footsteps pounding now, faster and faster. Barreling through the forest toward her. The stone structure beneath her shuddered and groaned.

  Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

  “Wake up. Dayna, wake up.”

  Reagan’s voice.

  Dayna’s eyes flew open.

  There was a perfect globe of light hovering in front of her, and at first she thought, The moon looks strange. Then her eyes focused, and she saw the crystal ball on the table in front of her. She blinked around at the circle. The witches stared at her.

  “You were shaking.” Reagan’s eyes were wide and scared. Her grip on Dayna’s hand was still tight, as if she were physically anchoring her to the present. “You were yelling at yourself to wake up.”

  Dayna slumped back against the side of the couch, releasing her grip on Meiner’s and Reagan’s hands. A second later she realized they were all still staring at her.

  “Wha—” She sat up, and Reagan pointed, face grim.

  “Dayna, look.”

  She looked down, heart pounding, at the dirt stain in the center of her white sweater and the flecks of green moss that had coated the walls of the dream house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MEINER

  They spent the evening at the kitchen table, researching the strange symbols they’d seen in the surface of the crystal ball. Yemi served them dinner—a dish she called jollof rice—as they pored over books and articles.

  Meiner—like everyone else except Dayna, it seemed—had seen a series of pictures in the cloudy crystal. The ruins of a church, stained and covered in moss. The strange symbols that had looked so familiar.

  Dayna’s scream had jerked her from t
he trance. And the stain on her sweater…Meiner shuddered as she flipped through the book in her lap, trying not to think about how the stain had bloomed in the center of Dayna’s torso like a gunshot wound. Leaching into the fabric out of nowhere.

  Bronagh had explained that if your magic was especially strong and your state of mind a certain way—heightened emotions, maybe—you could get pulled completely into a joint vision. Apparently it didn’t happen often, but Meiner thought once would be more than enough to put her off joint scrying for life.

  It seemed the aftereffects of the ascension had opened Dayna up to it.

  What was less common, apparently, was for a god to insert itself directly into your vision. On top of that, none of them were pledged to Cernunnos. Bronagh didn’t seem to have an answer for this, and even Grandma King just shrugged and said the gods did as they pleased.

  Hardly an answer, in Meiner’s opinion.

  In her experience, the gods didn’t show up unless things were especially dire. The thought made the back of her neck prickle.

  “I think the symbols on the ruins may simply be older versions of what we know already.” Bronagh was flipping through a very old, ratty-looking book with a yellow cover. “I swear I recognize the one with the knot work around the edges. I’m almost sure it’s got something to do with spell work.”

  “We suspected the Butcher possessed some kind of magic,” Brenna said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to tell who’s a witch and who isn’t.”

  “The book tells him,” Dayna said. “There’s a list inside; that’s how he knows. We have to find it.”

  “She said find it before he does,” Meiner said slowly. “Which means he doesn’t have it. How did he know to kill the first two?”

  Dayna frowned. “Sam thinks he kills in cycles, which means…he keeps trying to repeat the list. Like…he remembers some of it, but…maybe just the first part?”

  “Never mind all that. Does he have magic or not? Are we fighting another witch?”

  They all turned to look at Cora, who’d just come down the stairs and was leaning in the kitchen doorway. She looked pale, and her blond hair was messy.

  Brenna shook her head, staring down at her cards, which she’d laid over the entire end of the kitchen table. “Certainly not. Masculine energy all over this spread.”

  Grandma King snorted. “Of course there is.”

  Bronagh took a moment to catch Cora up on everything, and the others went back to silently studying their books.

  After a long moment, Reagan passed her book to Dayna. “I wasn’t sure about this, but…do you think it’s similar?”

  Dayna took the book gingerly and laid it flat on the table. The pages were very old, and they crackled beneath her fingertips. The symbol Reagan had pointed to in the center of the page was a small square with four other squares inside.

  “Yeah, I saw this one on the wall.”

  “It symbolizes the god Lugh, associated with the law. The druids had their own courts, and they’d carve that symbol into the earth to invoke the god’s wisdom.”

  The kitchen was utterly silent as the witches turned to look at the tapestry above the table. The god Lugh was depicted with what looked like a mini sun in one hand and a gavel in the other. Meiner could see the same realization dawning on all of them. “The woman who died,” Dayna finally said, a little breathless. “She was a judge.”

  There was another deep silence, punctuated by the shuffling of Brenna’s cards. Then Bronagh muttered faintly, “Someone’s stained Lugh,” and reached up to fuss at the oily stain near the god’s left foot.

  “So…what? Does this have something to do with the law? Someone with a grudge?”

  “Dayna, what was it you said the dream-Cernunnos said to you?” Brenna paused in her shuffling.

  “‘The black one is coming.’” Dayna shuddered.

  “The black one,” Brenna mumbled. “Sure and that does ring a bell. Reagan, give me that.”

  Reagan looked surprised, but she handed the book over without question. Brenna flipped through page after page, licking her finger every now and again. Cora was looking gradually more irritated. Finally Brenna paused near the middle of the book.

  “Found it.”

  The chapter featured a painting of a weathered stone temple, rounded, with pillars on both sides. Above the doorway hung a golden plaque. Meiner recognized the shape etched into the plate, the complex patterns of lines inside the circle. It was missing some of the sharper lines at the edges, but it was unmistakably the Butcher’s symbol.

  Dayna glanced over at Meiner, eyes wide, and Meiner knew she was thinking of the stone ruins in the vision. It was hard to tell from the drawing, but it might be about the same size.

  “What does it say?” Cora’s voice climbed with excitement. They’d all crowded in now, and her shoulder pressed against Meiner’s. Meiner was about to lean away and shoot her a dark look when she caught sight of Dayna’s irritated expression. She shouldn’t feel a thrill at that, she knew, but it was a bit gratifying. She inched sideways, closer to Dayna.

  There was a caption under the picture.

  The temple of Carman, a witch who invaded Ireland with her three sons, Dubh (the black one), Olc (evil), and Calma (valiant).

  There was silence for a moment as everyone took in the picture, and then Cora said, “Carman, as in, the village of Carman?”

  Brenna continued reading.

  “‘She was locked away when she tried to take over Ireland, by the gods Lugh, Bé Chuille, the Dagda’”—she poked a finger at the tapestry each time, finding the corresponding gods—“‘Crichinbel…’ Hm, these last two aren’t on the tapestry.”

  This time it was Dayna inching closer to Meiner, practically reading over Meiner’s shoulder, which was just as distracting, but in an entirely different way. Half of her was concentrating on an illustration of Carman—a dark-haired woman clad in black, electric currents of power crackling around her—the other was distracted by the fact that Dayna’s perfume was distinctly citrusy.

  “‘She died after being locked away, and they buried her,’” Faye was reading over her shoulder now, “‘trapping her spirit in the grave.’”

  “The bitch isn’t even from here. She’s from Athens.” Cora folded her arms across her chest, frowning. “Is that all we’re up against, then? A witch with a chip on her shoulder and a couple of dodgy blokes? Big deal.”

  Faye frowned. “Maybe. But look at the bottom. There seems to be some debate if she was goddess or mortal.”

  “If she’s a god, her sons are, too.” Meiner forced her attention back to the page, even though Dayna’s hair was now tickling her bare shoulder as Dayna leaned over to peer at the book.

  Faye shook her head. “It says Carman’s dead, though. Buried in a tomb somewhere near Wexford. The brothers were banned by a spell, cut off from Ireland as long as there was water around it.”

  Bronagh sighed and sank down into the seat next to her daughter, picking up her teacup. “Perhaps the magic doesn’t see it that way anymore.”

  They stared at her, waiting.

  “That great bloody bridge they keep pouring thousands into, the Celtic Crossing or whatever they’re so determined to call it,” she grumbled. “Ireland isn’t completely surrounded by water anymore, not really. It’s connected to England.”

  Meiner’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, the Butcher’s victims started showing up—”

  “As soon as the bridge went up. Then he could enter Ireland,” Reagan said, and collapsed into the chair on the other side of her. “Damn.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CORA

  “Again.”

  Slowly Cora opened her eyes.

  The forest made the midday sky dark, the trees ominous, towering shapes above them. The glowing coals of the fire between them painted Grandma King’s weathered face in orange and black. She looked like some kind of forest wraith, crouched beside the shallow glass basin of rust-red liquid.

  Cor
a let out a heavy sigh. “We’ve already done it six times.”

  “And now you’ll do it a seventh.”

  She stood across from Grandma King, in the center of the crude hexagram she’d constructed from fallen branches. Smoke rose from the pit between them, filling her throat and nostrils, making the headache pounding behind her brow a hundred times worse.

  Her arms ached from the forest of tiny slashes she’d created with her dagger along the insides of her arms. She kept them on one small spot on both her wrists so they could be covered.

  Blood trickled down her palms and onto her fingers. She’d protested this part of the practice initially. Why did a test run need real blood? But Gran had given her a scornful look that had shut her up fast.

  Besides, she felt a surge of power every time she did the ceremony, even though she never said the final word, as Gran had instructed her. But it was like something pressed at the edges of her skin, something powerful inside her responded each time she chanted the spell. This power, and the promise of it, was the only thing keeping her on her feet, and even so, she swayed slightly, the trees blurring in and out around her.

  She did the ritual again, wincing as she pressed the tip of the dagger to her skin, letting her blood drip to the ground inside the hexagram. When she finally came to the end of the chant, Gran gave her a wide, nasty smile and said, “Again.”

  At this moment, there was nobody in the world she hated more than the old woman. She shook her head slowly, cheeks flushed, hands trembling at her sides. “I’m exhausted. We’ve done this seven times now. I’ve got it.”

  “Have you?” The old woman narrowed her blue eyes at Cora. “Your mind wanders. Do you grow bored with this? Shall I hand things over to Meiner instead?”

  “No.” Cora scowled at her, the anger making her sit up taller. “I can do this.”

  Grandma King flipped her cigarette case closed, tapping a cigarette on the top. “We shall see.” The old woman turned away, carefully taking a metal box from her bag, which she deposited onto the ground in front of Cora.