Blood Bound

by Tay T

  When did she ever ask anyone for permission to do something or go anywhere?

  The bizarre thought struck her out of nowhere and startled her beyond comprehension. It took her a full minute to realize she was becoming too familiar with the Alpha, to the point of letting his opinion matter to her.

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

  Maya couldn’t decide.

  The Cardinal Alpha turned to his waiting pack members and announced, “Let’s go.”

  After his words, Maya trekked with him and the pack warriors towards the Central Land. But before they could get very far, Maya sensed white magic pulsing at different intervals to the right of them, like it was trying to catch her attention.

  She paused in her steps.

  “You go first. I’m going to check out the white witches over there,” she said, pointing to the area where the pulses of magic became more and more prominent.

  Xavier didn’t like the idea of her going alone, but he was torn between his pack members and her. He couldn’t abandon either one.

  With a confident glint in her vibrant eyes, she reassured, “It’s just two white witches. I can handle them myself. I’ve fought more than two several times in the past.”

  Although he knew she was plenty capable of taking care of herself, the handsome Alpha still hesitated. Because the instinctive urge to stay with her, to protect her, was hard to ignore, and he didn’t want to ignore it.

  “Don’t worry. Just go,” she urged. “Your pack needs you.”

  After a moment more of hesitation, the Alpha nodded his head.

  “Be careful, Maya. I will come find you right after everything is settled,” he replied, turning to the dark sorceress and leaving a soft kiss on the corner of her delicate brow. Before she could protest, he hurried after his pack members and disappeared.

  Maya turned her attention to the two white witches.

  After they couldn’t sense the Alpha anymore, they had headed her way, powers glowing to show they weren’t just there to stand and look pretty.

  The corner of Maya’s mouth curled downward into an unsettled frown. She couldn’t tell if these two were here to attack her for the youth elixir or not, but she knew they were trying to single her out and separate her from the Alpha.

  With a quick glance behind her, she tried to check on the Alpha’s wellbeing, but he had walked out of the vicinity and she could no longer sense him.

  The unease and worry doubled inside her and would not ebb, regardless of how she knew he was far stronger than most beings on this earth.

  “Avalyn wanted us to give you this present,” the brown-haired witch in the white cloak said, tossing a nicely wrapped gift on the forest ground.

  Maya’s eyes scanned the package, noting the big white ribbon and the macabre black stains on the bottom of the light blue box. There was also a hefty barrier in place around it, keeping the scent from leaking out.

  At the notion, Maya’s face darkened and became cold and inconceivable.

  With her dark magic, she broke the barrier, untucked the ribbons tied around the box, and tore off the perfect wrapping.

  The moment Maya smelled sweet marshmallows and saw the pair of white wings stacked on top of each other in the box, her breathing had stopped. Blood roared in her ears from her uncontainable rage and heated her black aura into licking flames.

  Maya raised a hand, and the white witches were frozen in their place, holding their necks, as her aura wrapped around their body like a second skin and choked them off.

  She left them dangling in the air.

  “Where is she?” Maya coldly glared them down.

  Her eyes were blazing as her black aura dug into one of the white witch’s neck like lethal thorns, causing blood to ooze from the stinging wounds.

  “L-Lake Avalon,” the white witch choked out, gagging as the thorn pierced through her windpipe and blood seeped up her throat.

  Maya tossed the pathetic female aside.

  As her dark magic fluttered around her body in tumultuous waves, Maya rushed through the forest, dashing at unbelievable speeds towards Lake Avalon.

  Her vibrant red hair whipped around her head and fluttered wildly in the wind, and her body propelled forward until she disappeared before reappearing again several meters away.

  By instinct, every creature nearby knew to clear the way for the strange wind coming through. It blew dried leaves and dead branches up into the air like a fatal twister and caused trees to sway to one side.

  None of them were able to define the speeding phenomenon as anything other than black wind.

  They were unable to see the red-haired figure blur past them.

  Within the next few minutes, Lake Avalon came into Maya’s view.

  The entire clearing was dead. Trees stood without leaves, dried and gnarled, land barren of grass, and air seemed polluted with death and darkness.

  In the center of the dead trees was the vast lake with its water glittering as dark as night, bleeding black into the ozone since the day the Coven took ownership.

  It’ll be a miracle if anything grew here with all that miasma, Maya thought.

  As her eyes swept across the land, she spotted the group of white witches, dressed in white and led by Avalyn White herself.

  A mocking smirk curled on the corner of Maya’s lips, and she was suddenly reminded of why white was her least favorite color: it was the color of her enemies.

  “Where’s Everette?” Maya’s voice was low and dark. She bit viciously on the flesh of her inner cheek to keep herself calm and collected.

  “That pathetic bird should be the least of your worries,” Avalyn responded. A picture-perfect smile was glued on her lips, making her seem like a soulless, porcelain doll inside an antique shop full of Aldrich’s gutted puppets.

  Avalyn had always been fake and full of artificial sweeteners. Most of the time, she had on a complimentary smile that never fully reached her eyes.

  Over the long years, Maya had figured that Avalyn was raised to hide her emotions and cover it up with a candy-sweet expression, before she stabbed a knife into someone’s back and dug their internal organs out.

  Perhaps this was the doing of her father, Aldrich White. The man was no saint himself, so Maya could only imagine anyone raised by him would come out more or less psychotic and murderous.

  It was a pity he’d fathered Avalyn.

  “I think it’s time we finish this, Avalyn. Once and for all,” Maya said.

  “I do too, Maya.” Avalyn’s smiled widened for a split second, and her eyes gleamed with extreme willingness. “I’ll enjoy cutting your head off and taking it to Father. I’ll even let your whore of a mother know her evil spawn has been put to rest in the redeeming pits of hell. Don’t you think she’ll be so ecstatic to hear the news?”

  “She’s your mother, too,” Maya chastised. Her seething green eyes were ablaze.

  “That whore doesn’t deserve to be my mother!” Avalyn screeched. Her pretty facade cracked at the disgusting thought of being “mothered” by such a vile creature. She’d never been “mothered” by that woman. She’d rather die than let that happen.

  “Regardless of what you think, she is your mother. Wash your mouth with soap before you talk about her that way,” Maya stated sternly.

  “Shut up!” Avalyn exclaimed, her voice shrill and sharp.

  The dark sorceress suddenly darted forward. Her feet barely touched the ground when her hand slid across and bounced heavily off Avalyn’s rosy cheeks.

  The slap rang loud and clear, sharp and agonizing, to Avalyn’s ears as it echoed in the wide expanse of barren land.

  Avalyn pulled her arm up and made a move to slash the sharp blade of her white dagger into Maya’s unblemished face, but she was much too slow.

  By the time she had her arm raised, Maya was already several yards away, looking at her with icy-cold emerald pools and a mocking, dark smirk on ruby red lips.

  Avalyn’s manicured fingers curled tightly aro
und the dagger and dug into the skin of her smooth palm.

  Anger bloated her chest in hot strokes and burned lividly inside her lungs, threatening to consume her. But she took in two deep breaths to calm her simmering emotions, just like when she’d been starved and punished by her father, before plastering the wobbly, piteous smile on her lips again.

  “You’ve gotten a lot faster now that you’ve stolen the Alpha’s powers,” Avalyn admitted, pausing her next words to glance at the evidently unamused expression on the face of her half-sibling. “It’s just too bad his powers won’t be enough to save you today.”

  It was obvious Avalyn knew where Maya’s new powers came from, knew the sorceress had stolen from their library right after she had left.

  After a long pause to let Avalyn’s annoyance escalate, Maya drawled, “Why do you white witches like to sprout so much crap before a fight? It gets really annoying, really fast. What’s the point of dragging this out?”

  Maya knew Avalyn was trying to buy time, probably waiting for reinforcements. But she didn’t want to give the white witch the chance to make the fight any more difficult than it had to be.

  A scowl flitted across Avalyn’s doll-like face, and her lips turned white from how hard she had them pinched together. “You won’t be so lucky this time, Maya.”

  In the past, Maya had been left at the doors of death on several occasions, most of which came from the beatings she’d received from Avalyn White. The older half-sister was not merciless in any way when she took all the anger out on Maya after a day of lessons with Aldrich.

  Avalyn considered Maya her punching bag, free to use when she needed to dispose of all the negativity and stress in her life. Whenever the occasion presented itself, Avalyn didn’t stop until the dark sorceress was a bloody mess of red and black, of broken bones and bruised organs.

  Sometimes, Avalyn had even left Maya for dead, hoping the hardy dark sorceress would just lie down and die, but was sorely disappointed when she’d spotted the unwanted sibling still alive several weeks later.

  Maya was persistent and tenacious, refusing to stay dead no matter how many beatings she’d received.

  But this time, Avalyn wasn’t going to stop until Maya took her last breath and fell off from the face of the earth. Never to be seen again.

  Today is the day, Avalyn thought darkly.

  “Bring it on, sister,” Maya taunted, mockingly emphasizing the word “sister” just to add more fuel to Avalyn’s raging fire.

  Within seconds of speaking those four words, the fight broke out.

  Different colored potions and white magic went flying in Maya’s direction, but most failed to connect because of the deflecting spell Maya retaliated with.

  The dark sorceress’s body leaked out tendrils of black. Her hands glowed with a dim light when she sent most of the spells back at its original owner, adding to it with several of her own dark spells.

  CHAPTER 26

  Maya tossed a handful of yellow triangles to the ground and poured dark magic into the paper. Upon the touch of her magic, the spells expanded in size and tore as massive limbs punctured through, like a chick coming out of its hard shell.

  After a minute, monstrous creatures with corpse-like gray skin appeared, smelling of rot and death. The creatures stood almost eight feet tall with a bulky figure similar to the green man known as Frankenstein.

  Some of the witches were sent back several yards with whatever ailment they sought to bestow Maya, while others were left battling the abominable creatures of darkness, crafted from her perfected necromancy.

  Soon, their groans of pain multiplied as did the numbers of white witches joining the fight.

  As for Avalyn, she was extremely hesitant in fighting Maya one on one. She knew the dark sorceress currently had powers she could no longer gauge or overcome, so she stood back and let the other white witches do the dirty work, waiting until she could put in the final blow. But as she watched her fellow white witches get smacked around by the grotesque creatures, she realized her side would lose if she didn’t do anything.

  “I thought you wanted to fight, Avalyn? Why are you standing behind a barrier and shaking like a cat stuck in a tree?” Maya taunted, grinning maniacally in response to Avalyn’s paling face.

  The dark sorceress beat through the crowd of white witches, sending powered fists straight into several blurred faces of those who opposed as she came for Avalyn.

  Many of them flew back from the power of her punch and fell unconscious in the aftermath, while others dodged out of the way.

  Upon Maya’s arrival before her, Avalyn was quick to send a deadly spell Maya’s way.

  When the dark sorceress batted the white magic off, the skin of the back of her hand blackened and sunk in for a split second before filling back out and returning to normal.

  Avalyn’s expression fell, and her forehead wrinkled in disbelief, but she didn’t have the time to focus on the sorceress’s godlike healing abilities.

  Within seconds, the dark sorceress was on her.

  Avalyn stumbled back and waved her dagger around in wild abandon, desperately hoping to get a hit, yet none of her attempts were able to make a dent on Maya’s being.

  The dark sorceress gave a small chuckle and said, “Is that the best you got? After so many years, you don’t seem to have improved any. Aldrich will be so disappointed.”

  Maya’s hand came out, nails like sharp daggers. She easily broke through Avalyn’s barrier and scratched across the white witch’s stunned face, tearing out a chunk of flesh. Blood rained and dripped down Avalyn’s skin, tainting her white gown red within seconds.

  The older female screeched in pain and stumbled back, anger fueling her willowy body with adrenaline. She held her stinging cheek with one hand and dodged Maya’s attacks with the other, but a deafening blow to the side of her face sent Avalyn to the ground. Instinctively, she rolled over on her back and glared through tears of pain, choking on the taste of her own blood.

  “How does it feel to be the one beaten to a bloody pulp?” Maya asked, towering over Avalyn’s body from where she stood. Her sharp green eyes glared back like shards of jagged glass, stabbing into Avalyn’s face.

  “Don’t laugh too soon. I’m not done yet,” Avalyn bit out. A wide smile curled on her bloody lips as her frantic summoning to her white witch sisters was answered.

  Within seconds, over fifty witches walked out of the grove of trees surrounding the lake. They formed a wide circle around Maya, glowing with the power of their incantations, like how Avalyn glowed with white light.

  Maya’s eyes narrowed.

  When she took another step backward from the push of their powers against her own, she noticed they were trying to lead her in the direction of the lake. Though she tried to veer out of the way, another heavy hand of light forced her back into position and kept her boxed in.

  Avalyn smiled through her angry tears, lightly feeling the gaping wound on her face.

  This had been her plan the whole time. Since she couldn’t physically beat the dark sorceress, she had waited until there were enough white witches to overtake the black magic, so that she could trap Maya within the depths of the lakes, just like they had trapped her mother.

  At the knowledge of the white witches’ intent, a malice-filled, demonic smirk darkened Maya’s face.

  Instead of the handful of witches dying here today, no one from the Coven of Light was going to come out alive.

  They had—literally—burned down their last bridge.

  The massive amount of white magic enveloped Maya’s body, keeping her captive, as it pushed her backward over the rim of the lake and into the icy water. But before she could breach the surface, she blanketed her entire form in black magic, using it as a layer of protection from the water.

  Even though Maya knew the lake was probably below freezing, it didn’t stop the unconscious gasp for air that left her mouth.

  The mass of black surrounded her body and consumed her whole. It wea
ved through her hair and melded with the darkness of her gown, bubbling and burning her skin like liquid acid.

  As she sank to the middle of the lake, Maya felt several invisible hands curl around her neck and dig into her arms and legs, breaking through the thickness of her magic to draw blood upon the surface of her skin.

  Her black magic could not withstand their powers.

  If she didn’t calm them, they were going to tear her body to pieces, or—possibly—devour her, because of the white witch blood running through her veins.

  ‘I can help you get revenge and leave the lake,’ Maya persuaded, expelling her words and intentions into the freezing water. Blackness pried through the crevices of her pursed lips and entered the orifice of her mouth.

  Although panic inflamed her lungs, she quickly snuffed it out, hoping the spirits wanted revenge more than they wanted to kill her.

  Laughter bellowed all around her, daunting and dark, full of malicious intent, as if her pathetic words were just a blatant joke to them. But Maya didn’t dare to give up. She forced dark magic out of every pore to keep their assault at bay and tried to dissuade them from killing her.

  ‘If you are willing to give me a chance, I can help you. Please believe me. My father was also killed by the white witches. I want revenge just as badly as you.’

  After her words, silence reigned.

  Maya could hear nothing more than the sounds of her heart pounding in her ears.

  After a prolonged moment, the hands on her body relinquished their hold and disappeared in the murky depths.

  Maya stifled the urge to breathe a sigh of relief, afraid more of the black liquid would enter her mouth and fill her lungs.

  ‘All I need you to do is attack at the same time I do. If we work together, we will all be released. And we will all get our revenge,’ Maya informed.

  She pointed her finger in the direction of the white magic above her, weaving like fortified chain mail in a colossal web.

  Then, she waited for them to reply, but there was no answer, just cold, sloshing water and pure darkness. Gritting her teeth, she went on with it.