She took a moment to clear her room of all lingering thoughts and energy, ensuring that no other witches would detect anything amiss if they passed through. Elda had been lurking about and Dafne sensed her inquiries, but knew also that she had discovered nothing. Dafne's naturally suspicious character heightened her powers of deception--she could hide in plain view. Even her own coven could not sense her thoughts if she turned away from them. Of course, she would lift that veil of secrecy in time, but only after he was gone, purged from the castle and toppled from the evil throne that she felt sure he was destined for. She would never receive thanks for her great feat, for none of the witches, save Indra, would ever trace the threads back to her. She knew how to cover the silken lines of her web, how to weave the pattern so that it became chaos to any eye but her own. She had gone beyond befuddling Sebastian and Abby. She had included all of her coven and guaranteed her success by using All Hallow's as her supreme cloak.
Her dreams had grown more urgent, more terrifying, and despite the fast approaching Ball, she longed to will the sun to set earlier each night and rise sooner each morn. Her blood raced and even in that moment, in the cool sanctuary of her dungeon room, a fever prickled at her hairline, creating a crease of sweat-matted hair that she didn't bother wiping away.
She returned her gaze to the mirror and blessed the Goddess within before darkening the glass.
She waved her hands over her vanity table and then cast the same spell across her room.
"Conceal," she whispered. "Mote it be." And it was. Only her eyes drew out the shapes and shadows of her secrets. Her eyes lingered on a painting that hung above her armchair. A raven with dark probing eyes perched on the gnarled branch of a tree from her youth, a youth that existed before her tender heart had broken. She still remembered his hand sweeping along the canvas, oily paint smeared on the cuff of his yellowing shirt. He had turned to her, eyes gleaming, and laughed at the macabre beauty of this bird, which had seemed to follow them everywhere. "It is our guardian angel," he'd told her.
But of course she knew now the message of the raven--death.
"Dafne?" A small voice squeaked from the doorway and Dafne turned to see Lydie, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her sweatshirt.
Chapter Five
"Crabby Abby? Knock Knock," Oliver peeked his head through her door, knocking gently on the wood frame.
Abby looked up from her Mystical Herbs Reference Guide and yawned. Stretched out on her bed with a cup of Bridgett's super strong Turkish coffee, she'd been reading about the psychoactive properties of nutmeg.
"Did you know that you can get stoned with nutmeg?" Abby asked, pointing at a picture of the large nut.
"Myristica insipida," Oliver said knowingly. "But I don't recommend it."
"Really?" Abby was intrigued. "I love nutmeg. I wonder how much you have to eat."
"A lot and it's not pleasant."
"You've tried it?" Abby rolled onto her back and looked at Oliver upside down.
"Let's just say that I received training by a very interesting witch whose teaching philosophy was 'No physician is really good until he has killed one or two patients.' I think he told me that was a Hindu proverb, but the jury is still out."
Abby laughed and sat up, swinging her legs to the floor.
"But, alas, you live."
"That I do, barely after the nutmeg incident, but that is a story for another time."
"Oh, come on. I feel like my learning here is a series of anecdotes that I never get the full story on. Tell me about him or her? Was it Elda that nearly killed you?"
"Ha, yeah right. Have you met Elda? No, but consider this, if you will commit to three hours of library study with me, I will tell you about my teacher."
Abby grimaced. "What are we studying?"
"Vepars."
Abby gazed at Oliver's face to see if he was serious. Despite having encountered several Vepars and even killed one, most of the coven had avoided answering her questions about their mortal enemy. Curiosity compelled her, but Sebastian's growing obsession with the creatures made her reluctant to know them.
Oliver smiled gently and sat on the edge of her bed.
"He's not joining us. Elda asked him to spend the afternoon with Lydie and Max in the dungeons."
"Why?" Abby asked keeping her eyes firmly on the window across the room.
She knew why, of course. The other witches were no more interested in fueling Sebastian's fire than she.
"If you're wondering about what she told him, it wasn't a complete put off. Max is teaching Lydie to communicate with animals. It's truly amazing and Sebastian will no doubt enjoy it."
"Animals?" Abby asked incredulous. "Speak with them?"
Oliver smiled, amused.
"Not in English, but yes, in the language of the earth. There are many ways to communicate. I think humans are the only ones that forget it."
Abby paused and remembered the terrified squirrel from her last meeting with the Vepars. No words were exchanged for her to know his fear.
"I think I would rather do the animal teaching too." She grinned and looked at Oliver from the corner of her eye.
"You and me both," he sighed and squeezed her knee.
She stared at his hand, but said nothing, enjoying the warmth through her jeans.
"It's strange having had that relic," Abby murmured, remembering the tiny Goddess lighter that had forged a connection for Devin to stay in the world of the living. It also allowed her to see life through the eyes of a Vepar. "I could see through Vesta's eyes. I didn't have access to her thoughts, but I was right there. Now I'm in the dark again and, honestly, I prefer it that way."
"Of course you do," Oliver assured her. "I have spent most of my life hunting Vepars, but I would never want that kind of window into their darkness. I need distance in order to destroy them. You're an empath, Abby. Had that relic stayed with you, Vesta would have become a doorway for them into you. That's the reality for some witches. You're a healer, you would have wanted to help her."
Abby remembered the final glimpse that the relic had shown her of Vesta observing the corpse of her brother Tane. Black tears were smeared across Vesta's pale cheeks and Abby had felt her grief and loss.
"So what exactly will I be learning?" she asked him, changing the subject and releasing those final images of Vesta.
"For starters, how they operate. How their venom affects us, what their deeper motivations are, and how to sense their presence. There's a lot to cover, more than a day or even a year's worth of study, but we have to start somewhere..."
A year? The idea of devoting a year to Sydney's killers made her hot with rage.
"Why should I learn about them? Why should we spend any time thinking of them?" she muttered angrily, again ruminating on Sebastian's infatuation with the murderers.
"Because they're learning about you right now. They're learning about your human history, the people that you loved, the places you might hide. They teach their recruits to hunt us, to kill us, to steal our power. You would be doing yourself and your coven a great disservice by choosing ignorance over knowledge."
Abby felt a lump begin to form in her throat as she flashed on Sydney's dead face in the Pool of Truth. Her beloved aunt could never be returned, but other deaths could be prevented.
Oliver saw the gleam in her eye and nodded.
"That's it. Hold onto that feeling, Abby. That's the witch's power, the desire for justice at all costs. Not revenge," he quickly added, "but an end to evil."
****
Lydie squealed in delight when Max pulled the silver cloak from an enormous golden cage in the center of the dungeon. Inside, a small orange kitten stood, his fluffy tail puffed in exasperation.
Sebastian laughed, momentarily caught in the glee of Lydie's excitement.
"Oh, Max, he's adorable. Is he mine?" She turned her big glittering eyes on Max and he looked briefly dumbfounded.
He seldom got carried away by Lydie's girlishness becaus
e it rarely appeared. Since dropping the clichés, she had seemed to regress to a sweeter childhood self, a girl of seven or eight, and though it brought some trepidation in him, he enjoyed her innocence.
The cat and all of the animals he had brought to the castle for the day's lessons were from an animal shelter on the mainland. He had cast phantom replacements in their cages, but intended to return them by the following day. However, her joy was intoxicating.
"You can keep him," he said, resigned. "Though I'm not sure Kissy will approve of his new housemate."
Kissy was the only pet at Ula. He had been wandering the castle halls for well over twenty years, searching for food scraps and belly rubs. Max did not actually know who originally brought the chubby gray cat to the island, but he felt confident Helena had a hand in it.
Lydie rushed to the cage and pulled open the door, gathering the puff-ball in her small arms and clutching him desperately.
Max had given little thought to such frivolities as kittens and toys during his years with Lydie. Though he had been her teacher throughout her time at Ula, from a very young age, she exhibited advanced powers and an aged cynicism that left little space for coddling.
Helena and Bridget had still managed to baby Lydie during her first years at Ula. Grief and fear had rendered her, for a short period of time, quite impressionable. They cooed and pampered her but, within a year, a hardened shell seemed to encase her. She no longer entertained baby talk, refusing to speak to them in response. She used her powers to light her stuffed animals on fire during an especially stressful time at the coven when a witch had fallen at the hands of the Vepar Tobias. To Bridgett's dismay, Lydie even refused birthday cakes after her seventh year and would tolerate only witch-related gifts--few toys or girlish items.
Max had not brought up Lydie's change with the other witches. They were all so preoccupied and she was in his charge, after all. Moreover, he wanted to cultivate Lydie's innocence, bathe it in loving acceptance so that she might let it live for a while. He ruffled the fur of the cat's head and rather enjoyed the thought of another kitty in the castle.
There had been a time when the coven was overrun with pets. They were both a necessity and a fancy. Faustine's cat Black was nearly thirty years old when it died while chasing a fireball produced by the witch Julian. Of course, that had been another time and Max rarely traveled into the past. The present was all that existed, but sometimes, on an especially sunny day, he could not help but remember a time of such intense light that it nearly brought him to his knees.
****
"Sit still," Oliver barked lovingly, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders.
Abby had been squirming since their so-called lesson began. She shifted in the chair, crossed and uncrossed her legs and tapped her feet. It was not the subject exactly, though the Vepars certainly made her antsy. Mostly it was a feeling that lingered in the room, a sense of something amiss.
"Don't you feel it? Something's off," she said for the second time, but again Oliver simply shrugged.
"Abby, you've been going at break-neck speed for weeks. That, combined with Sebastian's...well, you know. It's going to make you feel anxious."
Abby bit her lip and let her argument die. He might have been right, he probably was, but still she couldn't shake the unease that crawled into her bones and made everything jittery and tight.
She stood up and paced to the fireplace.
"Okay, keep going. The Vepars venom," she told him, nodding that he should continue.
"The Vepar's venom," Oliver continued, barely glancing at the book in his hand, "induces a nearly immediate state of unconsciousness. This occurs when their teeth make contact with flesh, puncture the skin and it enters the blood stream."
"What is it, the venom?" Abby asked. She had felt the Vepar's venom first hand, but she did not understand why it appeared to have less impact on her than other witches.
"Well, that's the thing. We don't know. Witches have been trying to collect Vepar venom for thousands of years, but it's virtually impossible. We can't find it. It's not stored in their teeth, gums or lips. When we try to isolate it in a witch who has been bitten, there's no trace of any foreign substance."
"How do you know it's venom then?" Abby asked, pulling a chair closer to the fireplace and perching on the edge, still too anxious to fully relax.
"We don't. The venom label has come from Vepar's themselves. It's what they call it. We don't actually know what it is."
"Then how did you create an antidote?"
"Trial and error. Not an easy process, to say the least. Bridget makes our antidote here at Ula, but the original creator was a witch in rural Ireland. He wasn't part of a coven or anything. A hermited witch, according to Helena."
"A hermited witch?"
"Yes, he lived in isolation, away from other witches. Apparently he was a genius chemist. Half of the elixirs in Bridgett's stores are from this guy."
"Really?" Abby imagined a witch with long graying hair and tattered leather sandals staring intently into a boiling pot and seeing the future.
"Yeah, we have books on him in here. But don't worry, Elda will send you there soon enough. For now let's talk Vepars."
Abby shrugged and leaned back, letting her hands fall on the arms of the chair. A light shock, like touching a low voltage live wire, ran up her forearms and she ripped them back.
"What, what is it?" Oliver lifted her arm expectantly.
She stared at the chair and tried to conjure the vision that had come to her. It was brief, nearly incomprehensible, but there had been a dark wood and a face lost, searching. Sebastian's face.
****
"Shh..." Dafne's eyes darted around the cave, but no other presence appeared.
She had traveled within her astral body to meet Indra, a witch from the coven of Sorciére, that she had been communicating with regularly.
Dafne and Indra had met at an All Hallow's Ball two years previously and their painful pasts, combined with a general suspicion of all non-witches, immediately connected them. Indra, like Dafne, was a hunter and she thrived on the study and annihilation of Vepars.
"I dreamed of him again last night," Indra whispered, when she felt confident that no other witches were present.
"And?" Dafne did not enjoy drawn out conversations. Learning of Indra's dreams and visions often took more patience than she could gather.
Indra took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"I am walking in a dark forest and the leaves are whispering a warning of danger. My skin, hair and eyelids prickle with fear, but I do not waiver from my path. Where am I going? I know not. Only that in my palm, I clutch a tiny red flower and I must deliver the flower for healing. From the shadows to my right..."
Indra crouched as she spoke and waved her hands to the right.
"A venomous whisper steals the wind for his own. He tells me that his transformation is nearly complete. That he, the Great One, will soon rise, and all of the witches of Gaia will cower beneath his gaze."
Indra shuddered and took another deep breath.
"I look into my palm and the flower is your coven of Ula, smoldering and ruined. The man steps from the brush and I see a hint of blue eyes and then...nothing."
Dafne let out a long breath and bit the knuckle of her right hand. Indra's dreams were coming more and more frequently. They were prophesying a great change. Dafne's dreams were much more gruesome, but foretold of similar catastrophe.
"Did you tell your coven?" Dafne asked, but she knew the answer.
No, Indra did not tell her coven. She had become estranged from them and spent all of her hours in the dungeons casting out for Vepars. She hunted them at night, alone, and when they fell, her coven celebrated, but she refused to participate. Instead, she returned to her solitude, her dreams and her visions and, more than all of that, her obsessions. Vepars had stolen more from her than the earth might ever replace. Her lover, her children and her closest friends had been sacrificed on their altar of
blood lust.
Dafne knew a similar tale of anguish and, though she had never revealed the details to Indra, Indra had dreamed of them in pieces.
"Have you begun?"
"I have." Dafne reached into her robe, her ethereal body shimmering and pulled out the enchanted scroll that carefully bound her spells. Indra leaned eagerly toward it, her eyes widening. Dafne felt a strange sense of satisfaction knowing that the witch, superior in many ways, appeared enthralled by her casting.
****
Abby returned to her room to retrieve a wicker basket of tinctures she had made. Part of her lessons with Bridget involved mastering human healing.
For a week, she had pored over worn texts and journals searching out remedies for a list of ailments provided by Bridget. If she had mixed everything correctly, she now knew how to develop medicine for nausea, PMS, paranoia, headaches, diarrhea, and the flu.
Bridget taught her in the healing room, where many of the coven's tinctures were stored. Two walls rotated to reveal shelves of potions that could help mend broken bones, clot the blood, and protect against the venom of Vepars. Abby longed to sit on a stool before the shelves and read every title. However, time rarely permitted such investigation. Between lessons, practicing her power, and Sebastian, she was amazed that she remembered to eat amidst the constant shifting.
"Forgot the prickly lettuce here in the premenstrual syndrome tincture," Bridget told her.
"Oh, shoot," Abby moaned, remembering the green thorny plant sitting on the workshop table. She had taken it down, two days earlier, to add to her pestle, and then Sebastian had arrived hungry. They went to the dining room and she completely forgot about her final ingredient.
Sorciére Page 6
