by M L Garza
Hour after hour dragged by, and yet it seemed to fly at the same time. Was this how the condemned felt before an execution? At least her last meal was Becky's prime rib. No prison chef in the world could beat that.
When the clock beside her bed read eleven-thirty, she heard a soft tap on her door and knew it was time.
"Come in," she murmured.
"It's normal to be nervous, love," she heard her Aunt Mirriam say. Did the woman even care that she was going to die? Would she weep at her funeral, the woman who had raised her like a daughter?
Rachel forced her face neutral and stood up, walking over to the robes to get ready. "I'll be ok," she said, as much for her benefit as for her aunt's. To defy her aunt without her even knowing it.
"I know you will. We all do."
Oh, do you now? Or are you just hoping I go quietly like a good girl?
Rachel undressed down to her underwear and pulled the robes on over her body. Despite the heavy emotions weighing her down, she let out a soft sigh when she felt the fabric touch her skin. It was just as she imagined when she first saw the delicate material hanging up in Mirriam's library. Not even the high priestess had such fine robes to wear during their ceremonies, of that she was sure.
"Beautiful," Mirriam breathed, clasping her hands together. "You look just like your mother did when she was your age."
And tonight, I'm going to make her proud of me.
Firm smile on her lips, Rachel turned to face Mirriam and pulled up her hair into a bun. "I'm going to beat this thing," she said, meaning so much more than just the beast lurking just beyond the thin veil separating worlds.
Her aunt nodded and hugged her tightly, as though for the last time she realized. "You will. I'm so proud of you, Rachel. You're a remarkable woman and witch. Now come, we don't want to keep everyone waiting."
It's not polite to keep the Leviathan waiting for his meal...
Rachel took her hand, just as she did when she was a little girl and followed the only mother she'd ever known downstairs to her doom.
Chapter 11
The ceremonial hall was nothing like it normally was. On the night of Samhain, it was lit like the rest of the house as Rachel and Mirriam had planned, with lanterns and candles meant to draw Spirits close. Every decoration she and Bryan set out enhanced the space with an ethereal light that could not be matched. There was magic already present and not a single word had yet been uttered. It greeted Rachel like an old friend, reassuring her with its presence better than even the members of the coven did as they stood there in a circle around the altar in their robes of green, blue, yellow, and red.
The magic would not fail her. It would not betray her to the Leviathan's endless gluttony. When she reached for it today, it would be there.
By now, Grey would be inside the house, let in through the window left unlocked in her bedroom. And as soon as he heard the the first sounds of commotion beginning down here, he would arrive, guns blazing. Her own personal hero.
Assuming she wasn't dead by then.
"Welcome, child," Madam Montgomery said, stepping forward to greet her properly. She wore a gown of silver and headdress to match, each making her look like the goddess she represented and befitting a high priestess of Ashwood. When she was little, Rachel imagined herself wearing it when it was her turn.
Just another lie.
Rachel accepted the embrace with a stiff hug and a stiffer smile. "I greet you, Madam," she said. "With open mind and open heart."
"Then let us begin."
The circle opened and allowed her access to the altar in the center of it all, already prepared with everything needed to perform her task. This was no rehearsal, no simple recitation of words and summoning of lesser Spirits. The next thing to come forth from the veil had the power to devour worlds, and if she was not careful in the next hour, she would become its first victim.
Hurry, Grey.
Rachel stepped forward, her shaking breaths the only sound to be heard in the chamber. She kept her eyes on the black marble slab before her, blocking out the dozens of eyes focused on her. She meant nothing to them in the end, so they meant nothing to her. Crystals, herbs, wand, athame, book... everything was there, just as she needed it to be. Good.
And as she knelt down at the floor pillow and smoothed down the altar cloth, she pushed the fear aside. It was not a necessary tool in the spell, and so she cast it aside.
Her eyes closed.
She took a deep breath.
And when she opened her eyes again, honey-brown like her mother's before her, she was ready for the trial at last.
She was Rachel McDaniel, still the heir of Ashwood, and she was beholden to no one and no thing. Not the Leviathan, not the mortals in the town, and not even the coven itself. This was her center and her focus.
The magic came when she called for it, summoned now that she had the strength and the will that was lacking before. The spell that she'd been practicing for so long was no less difficult. It still fought her every step of the way, but at least it allowed her to mold it into the portal needed to let the creature through in a controlled manner so it didn't force itself in another way.
The coven chanted and added their power to hers, stabilizing the magic that Rachel drew forth. Well, at least they were helping bring out the Leviathan. How kind of them.
For a moment, the Spirits themselves faltered just as the magic reached some sort of threshold.
The veil thinned.
Parted.
Something enormous was approaching.
Something emerged.
It’s here.
Rachel thought that when the Leviathan appeared that it would somehow be different from her memories of it. That it was smaller than the monster her childhood mind had conjured, or less frightening in some way. Weren’t old fears usually like this?
No, if anything it was worse. So much worse.
Six blood red eyes peered out of an inky serpentine face. Multiple rows of fangs smiled at her, promising a quick death if she only offered herself to him. What seemed like miles and miles of black coils curled around and around themselves like a boiling sea, threatening to strangle the entire world.
But it wasn't interested in the entire world. Not yet. All it wanted was her.
Had she not known that she was a blood sacrifice, the coven's sudden retreat from the chamber would have hurt and frightened her. As it was, even seeing Bryan's quick apologetic glance as he too ran from the room was nothing more than a momentary distraction from her true enemy settling before her.
The Leviathan seemed content to wait for the minor creatures to escape, knowing his true prey sat in the center. All of its eyes were focused on her and her only as it coiled in on itself, in no hurry now that it was in the mortal realm.
Good, it would allow Grey to get his ass down here to help her kill it or send it back.
As soon as the door was shut, Rachel got to her feet and squared off against the beast that killed her mother, holding only the wand that was provided for her. How easy it would be if it worked like in the movies where all she had to do was point it and it would shoot out flames and lightning. Or if she could mumble some Latin and turn the thing into a million butterflies.
But life wasn't like the movies. The wand would help direct her energies but not do anything that was not within her own power to do in the first place.
And the Leviathan knew it.
Then, impossibly, she heard the door open again behind her and she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Rachel!"
About time.
"Grey, up here!"
He ran up to her, and to his credit didn't run back out again. In his hands he held a rifle, no doubt illegally obtained by the armory in his department and completely useless against the creature, but he got points in her book for the effort. And for being there.
"Big snake," he pointed out when he reached her side.
"Yeah," she said. "Did the coven give you any trouble on the way
in?"
They looked at one another and her old friend and lover chuckled softly. "Nah. Too busy tripping over their choir robes to worry about little ol' me. You look cute, by the way."
Leave it to him to say something glib at a time like this.
"Thanks," she said. "So you ready to take down this thing?"
"Sounds good. I promised I'd help Mark keep an eye on the high school later tonight after trick-or-treating hours ended anyway." He sounded less flippant then, but the words helped her frantically beating heart to settle into a hard, firm rhythm.
I can do this. We can do this.
Sensing their resolve, the Leviathan pulled back its lips and snarled, revealing rows and rows of jagged, yellow teeth. Its many eyes stared down at Rachel, and then Grey, with hatred and hunger, growling for their deaths with each breath it took.
It was the same look it had right before it took Rachel’s mother.
"Let's do this, you ugly piece of shit," Grey muttered, raising the rifle to his shoulder. He sighted along the barrel and aimed his shot. A primitive weapon, but those without the Gift did what they could.
Rachel held the wand before her and concentrated on her own abilities. Though she couldn't see it, she knew her eyes were beginning to glow a dark gold as they always did when the magic was building inside her. It filled her like a warm meal, like a deep breath that needed to be let out. It ran across her skin, prickling like static just before a thunderstorm.
Chapter 12
She pointed the wand straight at the creature's face and grinned back at it, though her teeth were not nearly as impressive as its own. And while that bolt of lightning didn't come out of the wand, a fierce pulse of blue and white did. Coupled with Grey's tight shots from his rifle, they managed to hit the Leviathan straight in its six eyes, blinding it immediately.
The scream the creature let out was deafening and truly not of this world. Both Rachel and Grey doubled over in pain, blood streaming from their ears. They stumbled back from the writhing snake so they wouldn't be crushed by the curling and uncurling coils of black flailing throughout the hall.
Though it was nearly as thick as a school bus, the Leviathan was as fast as a viper when it struck in return. It was Rachel's saving grace that it was blinded, and unable to properly rear back or find purchase in the suddenly little room.
The great build-up of power was spent for now, but Rachel could feel it still there, just within reach as she lunged out of the way of the snapping fangs. This thing killed her mother, it killed so many women before her, but it would not kill her! She would not allow it!
But how would she send it back beyond the Summerlands?
Grey didn’t bother wondering anything at this point. He didn’t flinch or fear, but was in pure cop mode, firing at his target, moving, reloading.
Time to do the same.
Rachel mustered the power within her again as though to reload as well. She called the Spirits to her, though they feared to come without the power of the coven behind her. It took some cajoling, but at last they came back and allowed her to borrow their power once more.
Grey's shots did little more than annoy the Leviathan and alert it to where they were, so it kept them on the move, causing them to thread back and forth in the ever-tightening quarters to avoid the monster's jaws and tail.
Whenever she had enough power to direct, Rachel lashed out in the hopes of wounding it. There was very little hope of killing it, but if she could make it uncomfortable enough to want to leave, it might yet find the portal the best option and it could retreat for another twenty years.
That hope, small but bright, was dashed with a flick of the Leviathan's tail. It snapped with the speed of a whip, breaking the sound barrier and catching Grey across the chest. It cut straight through his shirt and down to his bulletproof vest, sending him flying through the air to the opposite wall where he hit with a sharp crack.
When he fell to the ground, he did not move nor make another sound.
"Grey! Grey, get up! Please get up!" Rachel started toward him, but the great mass of the Leviathan's body made that impossible.
She was alone, just as before. And if they were going to make it out alive, she would have to finish it that way.
The Ashwood heir looked up at the Leviathan, trying to control her fear once more. It was trying to smell her, taking deep breaths of the air around it as it tried to find out where she was. Covered in sweat and blood as she was, no doubt she would be easy to locate now.
I'm out of time and out of tricks. Without even my coven to see me off.
A coven. She needed a coven. Just not the coven she came in with.
There was another spell available to her, ancient and difficult though it was. With a Leviathan attempting to eat her in a room the size of a greenhouse, she wouldn’t put money on herself in a bet.
But what choice was there?
“Come to me again, great Spirits,” she whispered, reaching out one last time to the Spirits around her for anything left lingering behind.
Whether through the summoning or the use of her voice, it caught the attention of the Leviathan, constantly searching for her as its feast. Its snout pointed right at the lone witch and it smiled that horrible grin again as if in victory.
Not yet, snake. You have to catch me first.
She dove to the side just in time to avoid another whip snap of the monster’s tail, muttering the spell to summon together a coven of her own. One made of more power and experience than Sierra Montgomery could ever hope to have in her entire life.
“Come to me,” she murmured, reaching out as far as she dared without projecting herself true. “The veil is lifted on Samhain night. Visit your old coven, come to me, help me face this monster and together we may prevail where alone we failed.”
Nothing.
Then, she came. So small and faint at first that Rachel thought it was a trick of the dim lighting of the candles. But no, there it was, a little rabbit hopping toward her as fast as it could, weaving and dodging the Leviathan with expert ease.
When at last it reached her side, it waited for Rachel’s cue. Rachel gave it and Catharine soon stood in its place, dressed for battle and ready to go.
For a moment nothing happened. All was still.
Then they came.
In ones and twos, they came, and then in threes. Fours. Fives.
More and more women solidified behind her from the air, the line seeming to go back over a hundred years. Witches of all ages stood before her, some old, some young, one just a little girl not ten years old. All of them eager for the revenge she so freely offered. These were the formal heirs and priestesses of Ashwood Falls, more powerful than the coven outside and more ready for the fight ahead.
"I greet you, Rabbit. Mother,” she said loudly, not caring if the Leviathan heard her now. “I greet you, Grandmother. I greet you, all the Mothers and Grandmothers before me who have suffered unjustly at the jaws of the Leviathan. Come to me from the veil, come to me from the Summerlands, and together, let us form a new coven this Samhain."
The shimmering women took their places where the Ashwood coven once stood, the flailing of the beast not bothering them in the slightest. It could not harm those it had already killed.
It took much of Rachel's power to keep them with her, but they remained tethered to this world with greater ease the longer they remained with her in the mortal realm.
"Together, my sisters!" Rachel cried, the magic welling within her like a great swell of an ocean's tide. "We will not allow this monster to threaten our world a moment longer!"
The lost women of Ashwood rose together in song and chant, harmonizing in a way that the present coven never could hope to. The magic swelled again and again, a rising wave that threatened to overcome the very room they were in.
The Leviathan snapped and roared in anger, confused by the sudden new presence of people in the room. It tried to lunge for Rachel, but she deftly dove beneath its jaws entirely and it snapped h
armlessly through the shade of the young girl. The girl didn't pause or even open her eyes but continued her singing as though nothing happened at all.
Swaying its head back and forth, the Leviathan continued its mindless search, growing ever more frantic by the moment. If this did not conclude soon, Rachel feared it would try to burst free of the room altogether and take its frustration out on the rest of the world.
I can't allow that to happen!
She directed the wand at the monster again, this time from beneath, using all the energy she possessed within her. The cascade of blue and white emanating from her body shot up towards the Leviathan's jaw, searing its flesh down to the bone.
The scream it gave off was surely heard for miles, and when it squirmed and thrashed, it nearly crushed her beneath its enormous body.
"No!" she screamed back at it. "Go back where you came from or die!"
The magic returned to her faster now that the other women were there to help her. The magic came forth again and again, firing into the creature with such intensity that the entire room smelled of burning flesh.
But her luck could only last for so long and it was only a few minutes more before a coil slammed into the woman, taking her against the ground with enough force to knock her cold.
When she finally came to, the first thing Rachel noticed was the acrid odor of sulfur and brimstone still lingering in the air. Her heart nearly burst from her chest and her body tensed, ready for the attack that never came. Her eyes were still closed, too heavy from exhaustion to open, so she listened to hear where the beast might be.
Nothing. There was nothing.
No breath, no roar, no slightest hint that the Leviathan still lingered in the room or even in the mortal realm.
Did she do it? Did she accomplish what even her mother failed to do alone?
"Rachel?"
That voice... she knew that voice...
Mother?
"Oh, Rachel, you're ok!"
A gentle pair of arms scooped her up and held her to a warm body, a body she knew so well. Aunt Mirriam.
