Chapter Thirty-One
"How many are missing?" Galla asked.
"Four. Abby left first. Dafne disappeared two days ago. At first we didn't even realize she'd gone as she often avoids breakfast and has been keeping to herself lately. At dinner, her absence was noticed and, when we went in search of her, one of the row boats was missing as were some of her things. Oliver left to find Abby more than a week ago, but came back today when he dreamed of Lydie. Lydie was taken this morning when Helena was attacked."
Galla looked grim.
Outside a raven soared through the early morning sky. Elda looked around the library at the towering shelves and the thick oriental rugs and wondered why everything around her felt so old and near to death.
She felt Galla's inquisitive eyes and she let her mind fall open, for an instant, to the secret dread that lived inside her. Galla gave her a small nod of understanding and then returned to Thomas who had begun to rattle off a plan of action.
Galla interrupted him. "Before we leave, gather an item from each of the four. It should be something very personal otherwise I will be unable to get a read."
"I will go to Lydie and Oliver's rooms," Faustine said. "You can secure items for Abby and Dafne."
"And Sebastian," Galla added. "I want to try to understand what happened to him..."
"Of course." Elda and Faustine left the three witches in the library.
****
They traveled by boat to the small coastal city where Ula housed their cars and other affects. At the warehouse they chose two separate vehicles. Elda also went quickly to the upper level and saw Dafne's secured trunks lying open with items strewn about the floor. She snatched up a small copper ring and dropped it in her pocket.
Galla was an air element and wanted a peak or a cliff to catch the mid-day breeze. They parked the two cars at the base of a rocky outcrop and the six of them climbed to the top. They sat together in a circle, their jackets whipping roughly back and forth. Elda's long hair splayed out behind her and she closed her eyes against the chill, inviting the sweet freedom that called to her.
Galla took Lydie's tattered baby blanket in her hands. The yellow fabric had faded and worn bald in spots. Elda could still see the ghostly images of once bright orange and purple ducks, now mostly edges of feet and beaks. She leaned her head on Faustine's shoulder and remembered how good it felt to be comforted by someone that she loved.
Galla closed her eyes. Her hands clutched the blanket and her mouth turned down, but she made no sounds at all. When she finally opened her eyes, they looked troubled.
"Tormented child," she said. "Images of a sand dune, an old dilapidated house, her house as a child maybe, a strange tree, a willow, but bright red in color, a dark soul there with your witch Dafne, talk of a curse. Who took Lydie? A Vepar, yes and no, a mutant, human in it and an animal..."
They all listened closely. Galla did not receive a story when she read the energy of another being, but instead bits of images, words and feelings, which together they would attempt to make sense of.
"Lydie's childhood home, I'd imagine. It was near the base of a sand dune in the woods. It is quite fallen now and she hasn't been there since she was very young," Faustine said.
"I'm sure she has gone recently," Galla replied, staring at the blanket. "But maybe not in her body. In her astral body, I think. Yes, I'm sure."
"She can't travel in her astral body," Elda told them, but knew in that moment that she was wrong.
"She can and she hid it from you. I feel the cloak of secrecy now," Galla continued.
"A red willow? Are you sure?" Faustine asked, concerned.
Galla nodded.
"The Lourdes of Warning," Elda completed his thought.
"Why would she astral travel there? And how?" Max asked, clearly upset. As Lydie's teacher, he felt responsible for the young witch.
"Called, I would imagine," Thomas replied. "The astral body is easily guided, especially when something is amiss. I have been called to strange places in my astral journeys. Places filled with purpose if I could only see them correctly."
"Why didn't she tell us?" Max looked toward the ground as if an answer might be found there.
"You said the person that took Lydie was part human or animal? What does that mean?" Faustine asked Galla, shifting the discussion.
Galla stared at the distant clouds. They moved quickly across the light sky.
"I didn't see it, I felt it and it felt...different. Not like a Vepar..." She held her hands up in frustration. "I don't know."
"Go on." Faustine handed her a soft leather bracelet of Oliver's. Helena had made it for him not long after he arrived at Ula.
Galla took it and closed her eyes. Her features softened and she did not drift for long.
"Oliver has been with Abby on some kind of search." She smiled. "I think that he loves Abby. They seemed to be discovering something big, perhaps. Yes, there are other witches, young ones like themselves. I feel him going down into the earth, but then all is lost for me."
She shook the images away and held her hand out for the next item. She rarely got more than a fleeting idea of what went on in the individual's life over the previous days or possibly weeks if she could make a really strong connection. The wind did not seem to be boosting her power a great deal.
"It's Abby's hair," Elda said handing her a small satchel with an inch of Abby's hair tied with a purple string. "Helena cut a piece for the ritual in the Circle, but it never came to pass."
None of the other witches spoke, but Elda suspected that they disapproved of a witch living in the coven who had not spoken the vows.
Galla took the hair from the satchel and the color drained from her face. She swayed from side to side. A tear fell from her tightly-closed eyes and, when she returned to her body, she looked dazed.
"Abby is near death." Galla started to fall to the side and Thomas steadied her. She pulled heavily on his arm and stood. "Something attacked her in the night, she and Sebastian both. He lives! I can find her."
Before they could protest or ask for more, she began to fumble her way down the rocks, leaning heavily on Thomas as if the visions had depleted her.
"Sebastian is alive? You saw him?"
"Yes, or he was alive, but something terrible has happened. Blood and Abby," Galla clutched at her stomach.
Elda knew that Galla could feel Abby's injury and grew cold wondering if they might find her dead.
"Tell us what you saw, Galla?" Faustine asked urgently.
Galla mumbled and started to fall to one knee.
"It's the hair. Take the bloody hair out of her hand," Thomas growled.
Faustine jerked the hair away and Galla shut her eyes. When she opened them, she had regained some of her composure
"It attacked them in the night, but Abby was not in the bed. She found the bed empty and bloody," Galla's eyes were far away again. "It's like a bird, it ripped her open. She is nearing death."
When they reached the cars, Galla held up a hand to stop them.
"Faustine, you must take Demetrius and Max and go to Oliver. It is unsafe to go into the lair because they trapped him, I am sure of it. But you must go and watch the hole. He is alive and they are saving him and Lydie both for something, which is why they must not know we are near because they will do something extreme. We will go to Abby." She gestured to Elda and Thomas. "Be vigilant. This thing is new, and it will not be predictable."
Thomas drove and Galla tried to tell them more, but already the images had lost their potency and she struggled to describe the feelings that overpowered her.
"First grief," Galla told them. "Her heart so broken and then he was there. Sebastian lived. But then I saw her coming into the room and the comforter on the floor streaked with blood and the sheets and when she emerged from this cabin... yes, it was a cabin..." she said slowly, thinking, "...it fell upon her and it tore at her." She groaned as if she still could feel the pain.
"But she's alive, you'
re sure she's alive?" Elda asked.
Galla did not answer right away.
"I believe that she was still alive five minutes ago when I held her hair."
****
Galla directed them to a secluded stretch of woods almost seventy miles north of Trager. Why Abby and Sebastian had chosen that location, no one knew but, as they turned onto a two-track road and began to bounce over roots and rocks, Elda grew concerned. When they finally stopped in front of a tidy log cabin, a rusted Buick parked near the shed, Elda almost jumped out of the car.
She walked to the steps and saw a pool of blood beginning to dry. The blood dotted the dried grass and disappeared into the trees. She followed it, without waiting. It was too much blood. That was the first thing that she knew without a doubt. A person died when they lost that much blood.
They found Abby, floating face up, in the glassy lake. Her hair fanned out from her face in a dark halo and the angelic, waxen smoothness of her skin made Elda's breath catch in her throat. She splashed into the water, barely registering the icy shock. Before she could grasp Abby's broken body and pull her to the shore, Thomas's voice rang out.
"Wait. Look at her stomach, Elda!" he cried.
Elda did, and reeled away in horror at the twelve inch gash running horizontally across Abby's mid-section. Her shirt had been ripped open as had her skin and, it seemed, the organs beneath her skin. Elda saw the raw inflamed edges of Abby's intestines. Her body no longer hemorrhaged blood as it surely had when the wound was first created, but that only made Elda more terrified.
She stood, cemented to the marshy lake floor, until Thomas strode into the water beside her.
"Lay hands upon her," Elda implored him, knowing that he, a gifted-healer, might have the power to save the young witch.
Thomas placed his hands on each of Abby's temples.
"She's in there," he said. "She's alive."
With Thomas's words, Elda found the energy to move.
"We can't keep her here," Galla said, surveying the small cabin that Sebastian had been abducted from. The air felt electric with the violence of the previous night and all three elder witches shifted uncomfortably, their eyes darting into the trees around them.
Elda, flustered, tried to think of safe havens and grew embarrassed at their lack of connections on the shore. It served as yet another reminder of how disengaged Ula had become from the living world.
Thomas had tucked Abby carefully into the back seat after suturing her belly closed with a crude thread and needle they had found in the cabin's little bathroom. They had also found a small backpack with Sebastian's things, but seemingly nothing of Abby's except a pair of dirtied jeans hanging over the shower and a ripped, bloody sweatshirt. Galla had touched these items and retrieved fragments of Abby's first attack the day before.
"There is Lydie's home," Elda said, hesitating. "From your vision, Galla. Her mother was a great witch, an herbalist. The plants around the cottage are surely still teeming with useful remedies."
"How far?" Thomas asked, knowing that they needed to begin healing Abby soon or she would be dead by nightfall.
"It's near Trager City in the Sleeping Bear Forest. I think half an hour from here."
"Let's go."
****
"I am at fault," Julian sighed, maneuvering into the left lane and passing a slow-moving semi.
They had realized, after more than an hour, that Sebastian had never returned from 'checking out the pool.' Rod claimed ignorance and Adora would have been reluctant to believe him except that she knew he wanted to leave as badly as Sebastian, not to mention Sebastian had taken all of Rod's money. If Rod had known, he would likely have insisted that he join.
"I was thinking aloud to myself before we left France and he heard me. He must have feared for her life."
"Well, now he's put us all in jeopardy," Adora said, trying to keep her hands steady in her lap, but unable to stop their shaking.
She knew how to appear calm in every circumstance, but her steely resolve grew more tenuous every minute. Once upon a time, curses did not exist. Of course, Adora had been a witch too long to suffer in such blissful ignorance. As she and Julian uncovered bits of evidence, her unease had doubled and then tripled. She wanted to believe that it did not exist and that they would find Sebastian anxiously rowing his way to Ula, but unable to break through the coven's barriers.
Julian cocked his head to the side and then slowed the car, exiting the freeway.
"I need you to drive, Adora," he told her.
They changed seats and Julian took a moment to dig a bag of crystals from his small leather suitcase. He held them in his lap and closed his eyes.
"I have just had the most vivid image of Faustine come into my sight," he whispered, mostly talking to himself. "He needs us..."
Adora returned to the freeway, pushing the car over one hundred miles per hour while simultaneously cloaking the car in a spell of concealment. They were not invisible per se, but merely under the radar.
After several minutes in deep concentration, Julian came back.
"Elda is at the Nook," he said, looking curious.
"The Nook?"
"Yes, Lydie's childhood home. It's been years since I've been there. I'm amazed it's still standing."
****
Sebastian threw up and rolled onto his side on the cold steel floor. He pressed his forehead, on fire, to the metal and tried not to throw up again when his stomach heaved at the smell of the vomit spreading out beside him. Overhead a fan whirred and something sucked and sputtered, like water caught in a hose. He opened his eyes and stared to his right where the shiny floor was marred by the black clawed legs of a table draped in dark sheets.
His head swam with whatever rushed through his veins and his vision grew blurry, focused and then blurry again. The sucking sound tried to draw his eyes up, above the table, but when he shifted his gaze, the world tilted with him and he vomited again. He felt as if he'd just stumbled off the Gravitron, Claire's favorite fair ride when they were children.
He thought of Abby and tried desperately to remember what had transpired after they'd fallen, sweaty and elated, into bed. He knew that one moment his hand rested on the small of her back as she lay beside him, and the next, something dark and foul had taken hold of him and dragged him into the black night. He felt sure that the creature had bitten him and lighted briefly on waves of green leaves flashing by as if they were above the trees, flying.
He planted both palms on the floor and pushed, rolling onto his back with a gasp as pain coursed through his entire body. Bodies hung from every available wall, held in place by thick black straps. Tubes ran from their noses and mouths. Some of their heads were shaved, making their nakedness seem even more complete, and complex helmets, streaming with wires, were fitted to each of their heads. The tubes fed into an enormous metal cylinder that sounded like a washing machine. Sebastian could see a lifeless hand dangling over the edge of the black gurney.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Abby stumbled through the woods, the snow falling in thick layers and blotting out the world around her. She waded, more than walked, and twice fell forward into the deep drifts, almost wishing that the hard earth would greet her and put an end to the writhing in her belly. It was time. She could feel the wetness spreading out from within her. It saturated her thighs and made the skin raw beneath her fabrics. Her tears froze hard and glass-like in the whipping winds. When she saw the tiny stone cottage, she cried out in relief. The frozen door would not give and she threw her weight against it again and again. Finally it cracked and then inched open. She pushed again and this time it swung into the tiny room, barren except for a pile of hay and dusty wool blankets in one corner.
She slammed the door and dropped to her hands and knees. She crawled to the bed of blankets and fell onto her side as another wave of pain rushed through her abdomen. She felt the hands of a giant clamped tightly on her belly trying to squeeze her empty.
She cried and
gasped and fought her damp and frozen clothes from her body. Blood immediately began to seep into the straw. She shuffled onto the blankets, screaming, and biting the glove that she'd pulled from her hand when another storm of contractions coursed through her.
The baby came quickly. She pushed and felt its slippery weight gush into her hands, barely able to reach it, before it slid onto the makeshift bed. She had seen at least a dozen births, but the new mothers were always surrounded by her circle of women. She had no one to help her and no tools to sever the life cord. She raised the baby toward her face and bit the cord, barely acknowledging the stream of hot liquid that rushed out. In her tribe, the liquid would have been preserved and the mother would have consumed it, bringing the power back into her own body, but Kanti spat it out and thrust the cord away from her face.
She stared at the oddly silent infant through exhausted eyes and thought, briefly, that it had died. But then the child, a girl, blinked and let out a feeble mewl. She held the baby to her chest and felt the girl's tiny mouth easily find her breast and attach to the nipple. She laid her head back and drifted away.
* * * *
Abby woke with her hands pressed against her belly expecting to feel the weight of the child from her dreams--but not her dreams, Kanti's dreams.
Slowly, her own life materialized and she blinked the room into focus. Elda's solemn face peered down at her.
Elda clasped one of her hands and held it to her heart.
"Thank you," she whispered, her eyes shifting toward the heavens before her gaze returned to Abby. "Just now you seemed to go away. I thought we had lost you."
Abby didn't speak, but pressed her hands into the bed beneath her and started to sit.
Elda pushed her back down.
"You can't get up, Abby. You were gravely injured."
Abby looked down at the place her hands had been and saw thick gauze layered across her stomach. It was soaked with blood. For a moment she thought that the dream had been real and then she remembered the creature attacking her. Its claws had ripped her open.
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