Ashes: Witches of Whitley Bay Book 2

by Katherine Heason

  Lillith breathed deeply, attempting to control her nervousness about what she was about to do next. She waved her hand to release Arthur from his freeze, and ran into the kitchen. Arthur shot magic at her, which hit the door frame as she ran through it. Heavy footsteps chased her into the room. She crossed the invisible pentagram, and spun around just in time to see Arthur, with an angry expression and glowing eyes, running towards her like he was chasing prey. She saw him aim his staff in her direction, and saw his lips forming the words of a spell.

  “Now!” she cried.

  Donovan flicked on the light. It was perfect timing. The pentagram appeared on the floor, and trapped Arthur inside it. Whatever spell he was chanting hit the invisible pentagram walls, and made a loud booming sound.

  “What have you done?” Arthur asked, spinning around, looking at the floor. He looked up, angrily. “A pentagram?” he scoffed. “That won’t keep me trapped for long.”

  Lillith smiled and shook her head. “Long enough,” she said, raising her hands.

  “You’re going to kill me?” Arthur asked, visibly shocked. He looked at Gloria standing behind him, then at Donovan still standing at the door, then back to Gloria. His eyes were softer now, pleading. “And you’re going to let her?”

  Lillith eyed Gloria. She was staring at Arthur, with wide eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek. She was wavering.

  “And you’re the one who keeps insisting that she’s not evil, and doesn’t need locking up,” Arthur went on.

  Gloria shook her head and spoke, while fighting back tears. “She isn’t, but how do you expect her to react, when you attack her all the time?”

  Arthur stood tall and bared his teeth. “I wouldn’t have to attack her if she wasn’t…” He looked in Lillith’s direction. “Well, this,” he said, pointing at Lillith.

  Lillith was poised, ready to fire fatal magic at Arthur. She realised it looked bad, but he’d come here to kill her. She had to defend herself. “You’re the one who’s broken into our house,” she said.

  Arthur moved his gaze from Gloria to her.

  Lillith breathed in. “You’re the one who’s come to kill me. I’m just getting in there first.”

  Arthur shook his head. “We haven’t come to kill you.”

  Lillith shook her head. He was stalling. She’d hesitated on the beach, and look what happened. All of her friends had died, due to her hesitation. She had to change that. She had to rid the world of this evil.

  “I know that’s not true,” she said. “I’ve heard enough.” Lillith closed her eyes, and focused on administering that fatal blow. She pushed out with her hands, and opened her eyes. To her horror, she realised that the light was off, and the pentagram was no longer visible. This released Arthur, who dived out of the way of her magic.

  Lillith quickly glanced at Donovan, who was flicking the light switch on and off, but no light was coming on. It was too much of a coincidence that the light had gone out just at that moment, but she didn’t have time to wonder what’d happened. She spun around, and found Arthur through the candlelight. She fired another shot at him. This time her magic clashed with his. Blue sparks lit the room, and a sound like the loudest lightning followed. Lillith wasn’t put off. She tried a second time. Yet again, her magic clashed with his. She would have to separate him from his staff. He wouldn’t be expecting that.

  Lillith deflected the next shot of magic from Arthur’s staff, then aimed for it. She willed it to fly across the room. The staff left Arthur’s hand, but only for seconds before he pulled it back again, echoing what had happened on the beach. Lillith was stronger than she had been then, and she had Donovan’s Assan powers to tap into. She did this now, willing the staff to fly across the room, and willing Donovan to help her. She felt the energy leaving her body, like someone sucking her up with a vacuum cleaner. She willed and pushed with all of her might, and what happened on the beach happened again.

  Lillith was no longer in her own body. She was the staff, and she could do whatever she wanted to do. She could feel Arthur trying to pull her towards him, but she was stronger than him. As the staff, Lillith left Arthur’s pull. Angry amber eyes watched her leave. She decided to head towards Donovan, and that’s when she saw Gloria in the dim flickering candlelight.

  Gloria was crumpled under the dining table. She looked like she’d been thrown there, with some force. One side of her was black, as though someone had poured soot all over her. Her face wore an expression of pain. Her skin was deathly white. Her lips were slightly apart, and her eyes were glassy and lifeless.

  Lillith’s spirit returned to her body, and the staff clattered to the floor. She was temporarily paralysed. Hot tears streamed down her face. “Gloria!” she cried out. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was high, and filled with pain.

  Arthur span around and looked in the same direction as Lillith. She ran past him and towards Gloria, but before she got there, a force stopped her. The light had come on again, and she was now standing in the centre of the pentagram. For a horrible moment, she suspected that Donovan had betrayed her, just like Brody had, but when she spun around, she saw that Donovan was also standing in the centre of the pentagram.

  Arthur was waving his staff around. Lillith sank to the floor. She’d let him regain his staff. She realised that Arthur was magically drawing over the lines of the pentagram. It was now drawn in thick black, not the UV pen that it had originally been drawn with.

  “You made a few big mistakes tonight, little girl,” Arthur spat.

  Lillith looked up, feeling deflated. As Lilly, though, she was hardly a little girl.

  Arthur narrowed his eyes at her. “Your first was to position the UV light within the pentagram, leaving me able to control it.”

  Lillith looked up at the light. Sure enough, it was directly above the perimeter of the pentagram. She hadn’t thought of that. It explained how it had gone out just in time for Arthur to escape. If it worked for him, it should work for her. Lillith pushed energy up to the light, breaking it. Glass spilled down, onto her and Donovan. She jumped over Donovan, and sheltered him from the raining glass. A few pieces scratched her arms, and the cuts started to bleed.

  “It’s not going to work now,” Arthur said. His tone was patronising. “I’ve secured the pentagram.”

  He was right. Lillith could see the thick black lines of the pentagram in the flickering candlelight. Movement and rustling noises caught her attention. She looked towards it, and saw all of the coven spilling into the room.

  Arthur grinned. “Your powers don’t work on us from in there,” he said, by way of explanation.

  Lillith watched as the coven surrounded the pentagram. She saw Uma, her mam. Her face was stern, and she was looking at Lillith like she was a rabid dog. Lillith saw Cassandra, and Mrs Parker, Brody’s mam. Lillith scanned the other faces. Younger, but recognisable as the present-day coven members, some that she recognised from the night Arthur had tried to kill her. She wondered which one was her father. Which one of these faces was her dear old dad, and her jailor?

  Lillith looked at every face looking back at her. They all wore horrified expressions. They all looked terrified, like they’d trapped a poisonous spider in a glass, and didn’t quite know what to do next. Idea’s ran through Lillith’s head. She suspected that she was strong enough to break free of this pentagram, but what then? Gloria was dead. She and Donovan were the feared spiders. Letting them go, so that they could bite others, wasn’t going to be an option. The only way this was likely to end would be by them getting killed.

  Lillith could get in there first, of course. She could kill the entire coven, but that would mean killing people she knew and loved. She wasn’t the monster that they all thought she was, and she couldn’t do that. Lillith realised what the best course of action would be. She turned to Donovan and hugged him.

  “Help me,” she whispered in his ear.

  Donovan shook his head, not understanding what she needed.

  “Help me
with some magic,” she said. “Just accelerate it as much as you can.”

  “Will that get us out of this?” Donovan asked.

  Lillith smiled and nodded.

  “Will it fix mam?”

  Lillith saw a tear roll down Donovan’s cheek. She gulped, and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Donovan sobbed. Tears sprang out of his eyes. It was difficult to see him like that. Lillith felt emotion surge through her, and it took all her might not to break down into tears with him, but she had to stay strong and focus on the plan. “Donovan, you have to accelerate my magic. Can you do that?”

  Donovan stopped sobbing. Tears were still rolling down his cheeks, but he was focussing again. He nodded. Lillith realised that the coven had started chanting their Regressus spell. She held Donovan by the shoulders, and closed her eyes. She reached out for his Assan energy and wrapped herself in it, and then she willed them both to regress. Not just their powers, which was what the coven was trying to do, but their entire bodies. Regress back into babies. Reset their lives, so that they could start again. For a moment, she felt as though she was floating. She and Donovan were somewhere else. They were happy, and Lillith knew she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t a murderer. She was a good person. In her new life, she had the power to prove that.

  A green flash of light sparked inside her head, and then there was silence.

  Epilogue

  Lillith could hear the sound of her own breathing. She was looking at the ceiling, which was blurry, and she was taking shallow breaths. A quick heartbeat pumped in her chest, and she couldn’t move.

  She heard a voice. “Is that them?” it said.

  “Yes. Look at her eyes,” another replied.

  Lillith felt movement against her arm. She could see a baby from the corner of her eye. It was fidgeting tirelessly, and making noises from its mouth, as if trying to say something. It was Donovan, she realised. They were both babies. It’d worked.

  She edged an arm towards the squirming Donovan. The back of her hand touched the back of his. Her touch seemed to calm him down, and he stopped squirming.

  The coven were still speaking. She heard Cassandra’s voice, pleading with the coven to give them another chance. Lillith smiled inside. Good ol’ Cassandra. She heard Uma’s voice, agreeing to take Lillith. The Parkers agreed to take Donovan. It was all working out perfectly. When Lillith heard Arthur’s voice again, she shuddered. He advised the coven to keep an eye on these babies, and got everyone to agree that they would finish the job they started tonight if they turned out to be bad. Lillith knew what that meant.

  A face came into view. Lillith couldn’t see very well. Her eyes weren’t focusing. She blinked a few times. The face came closer, and Lillith realised it was Uma. She was smiling, and picked Lillith up, cradling her in her arms. Lillith tried to smile, but she wasn’t sure it worked.

  “I’ll take care of you, don’t you worry,” Uma said.

  Lillith wished she could answer.

  Another face came into view. It was an older one, and someone wearing glasses. “What name should I put on the adoption certificate?”

  Uma answered, a questioning tone in her voice. “Lillith. That’s her name, isn’t it?”

  “I mean surname,” the spectacled witch explained.

  “Right. Orenda.”

  The spectacled witch entered that in a notebook, and moved away.

  Lillith heard Arthur’s voice, next. “The boy is done. Time to bind this one.”

  He was coming to bind her powers. Even through her out-of-focus eyes, she made out his glowing eyes and staff coming towards her. He stopped just in front of Uma.

  “Say it with me, Uma,” he commanded.

  Uma and Arthur began to chant. “By all the Heka surrounding me, we bind this witch’s powers and send them unto thee…”

  Lillith felt her spirit weakening.

  “We ask you to stop them, so they cannot be used…”

  Lillith felt her very being fade away. It was a strange feeling, like she was disappearing. She wondered if her spirit was moving on. Maybe it was going back to where it belonged. Maybe this was death?

  “To ensure that from now and for forever, they can never be abused.”

  Lillith felt herself leaving the baby’s body. She hadn’t changed anything today, so why had she come back to this time, anyway? She couldn’t answer that.

  Lillith could see properly again, now. She seemed to be floating above everyone, rather than inside the baby. She caught a glimpse under the dining table. She prepared herself to see Gloria’s crumpled body. Instead, she saw an empty space. Gloria wasn’t there anymore. She wished she could cry out, and draw someone’s attention to it. Where was Gloria’s body? But she couldn’t cry out. Instead her spirit faded, and faded, until there was nothing but darkness.

  The End

  Before you go

  I just wanted to say thank you so much for reading Ashes. I hope you enjoyed it and I’d very much appreciate a review if you have the time.

  “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” [Bill Gates]

  This exciting trilogy continues in the 3rd book in the Witches of Whitley Bay series: Phoenix, expected out in Autumn 2020.

  Be notified of it’s released & launch offer by signing up @ https://kheason.com.

  While you wait for it’s release, why don’t you find out what your witch special talent is @ https://kheason.com/wp_quiz/whats-your-magical-super-power/