Turning the Stone (The Blood Rites Trilogy Book 2)

by S. L. Perrine

  Chapter IV

  The agony Silas woke in, was almost the worst pain he’d ever had to deal with. The worst of it being the shooting pains from his shoulders down and the sides of his chest. He opened his eyes to darkness. The lantern was out, but the opening of the cave gave off the slightest bit of light from the morning sun outside. His wrists felt like they’d been cut. Most likely from the pressure of sleeping with them in the irons.

  “Yeah, that’s not the best position to sleep in.”

  The girl was there. Silas felt her move closer to him. His body tensed when she reached out, her hands maneuvering around the chains and iron cuffs. He quickly realized she was trying to fit the key into the manacles in the dark. When the first cuff opened, Silas winced as his arm landed on his lap with a thud. Pain like pins and needles ebbed into his arm and shoulder. He tried to catch the other when he heard the click of the key, but it was no use. The arm flopped just as the first did, but instead of landing on his lap, it struck the cold stone floor. The skin on his knuckles ripped open.

  “Ouch.” He let it slip, not meaning to. He didn’t want her to see him vulnerable.

  “Sorry.” She gasped the word quickly. “I didn’t mean to leave you chained up all night. I kind of fell asleep while I was reading.”

  “What did you do to me?” He tried to see her, but the light from the opening only allowed him to see her outline in the dark. Normally he could see in any light.

  “Belladonna. It’s very effective. I may not have trained enough with my gifts, but I’ve never walked away from book work.” She sat back on her heels and moved the lantern nearby. A flick of a flint and the sound of gas and there was light. She was wearing the same black dress. Her hair looked bedridden like she’d tossed and turned in the night.

  “Why?”

  “Your mind was all over the place. I even left for a little while, hoping it would quiet without me here, but it roared. I sat in the corridor there.” She pointed to the curved entrance Silas entered through. “Once I had what I needed, you started thinking about someone. A question in your mind so deep I doubt if you’d known it was there. So, I looked in my ancestor’s journals.”

  “So, they are journals.” Silas winced as the life slowly returned to his limbs. “Wouldn’t happen to be Seraphina’s, would they?”

  “1868, the one you’d held prisoner. It held some interesting information. Something I was looking forward to reading before you barged in here. I started with it, and must have fallen asleep.” She watched as he tried and failed to lift his arms. “Don’t worry, they’ll wake. It’ll hurt like a bitch, but you’ll be fine.

  “This cave is for the shifters of my coven. On their eighteenth year, the shift takes them. You should know all about that.” She rose to replace the key to the manacles back on its hook. “The twelve hours it takes their body to fill with the moon magic, they spend shackled to that wall. When the sun rises, they are set free. To keep them from causing harm during the transfer.”

  “That’s an interesting way to confine them. Why not just lock them up?”

  She laughed. “Do you see cell doors? We don’t exactly have a place that can contain them. Why, is that what you do?”

  “My father, he built our family’s legacy around our mausoleum. A great big walnut grove. It has a basement with three cells. The mausoleum, not the grove.”

  “The darkest family of all the covens and you own a walnut—”

  “Live on a walnut grove. Work the land. Yes.”

  “You’re a farmer.”

  “No, I’m not—” He stopped short, considered then added, “Yes, I’m a farmer.” He shrugged. “Oh.” He moved his shoulders again without much effort.

  “See, I told you they’d be fine.”

  He tried to lift his hand again, but the pinpricks were still covering too much of his skin.

  “They need more time. Just sit still.”

  Silas bowed his head and rested his back against the wall. “So, what did you find?”

  She looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

  “Once you knocked me out. What did you find?”

  “Oh, that. I saw a vision you must have had. One of me.” She sat back as well. She pulled her legs close, hugging her knees to her chest. “Do you have that vision often?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Margaret, my grandmother, said a vision could only be pulled through another’s mind if it was repeated. If a vision was only seen, say, once or twice there wouldn’t be enough cognitive memory for an extraction. Not whole anyway.”

  “Cognitive memory? Wow, I thought I was here to teach you.”

  “Yeah, well that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “What? That you have more book smarts than me?” He rolled his eyes. “That cannot be a surprise.”

  “That you thought you were going to walk into enemy territory and train me. Why should I let you walk out of here, without calling the force of my house on you?”

  “Because, if you saw that vision, you know I only have your best interest at heart.”

  “I did. I also witnessed several discussions with your father. Some more disturbing than others. Why would he want you to train me? He can’t possibly have any interest in protecting me.”

  “No, I think it’s a safe bet that he has no care to your well-being at all, once you’ve served a purpose. I want to protect you from him. Didn’t you see it all?”

  Gwendolyn stood. Silas was starting to get annoyed by the way she kept moving around. Never sitting still for more than a few moments. He watched her as she twirled a long tendril around her thumb and forefinger. Then, clearly aggravated, she tucked it behind her ear.

  “No. No, I didn’t. You obviously have no idea. So, let me teach you something else. Your mind has been altered. You may remember certain things that have happened, but your mind has cleared it away. Somehow, you're calling it into working memory, but it’s just not there. If I were to know anything you must show me, you’d now have to tell me.”

  “How can that be?” Silas jerked his body, and his arm tingled more. If he kept still there was no pain, but now he ached to get them moving in spite of it. To pace himself across the small room. The only explanation he had was his father. Or the cronies he used to tell him of the future he couldn’t see. Like his own.

  Things were not going as planned. Silas thought it would take her time to get into his mind and then a considerable amount of time to piece it all together. The latter was an impossibility. It was going to take more time to tell her everything. Then an equally difficult amount of time to get her to believe him.

  “Why did you unshackle me?”

  “I can’t send you back to your father without arms, now can I?” She chuckled, just once.

  “You have trained.” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a revelation. She looked at him, her lips upturned for a fraction of a minute.

  “That makes your work here almost complete.”

  “Almost?”

  “You have to get blood flow back to your hands before the tissue dies. You’re a witch, why are you working them the hard way?”

  Another realization. She’d been waiting for him to heal himself. “I don’t have that ability.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him questioning. “You’re a healer, aren’t you?”

  “You mean a death watcher? Yes.”

  “I hate that term.” She paced more. “Why can’t you heal?”

  “I can heal others. Death watchers do not have the ability to heal themselves. Why? Have you…?”

  “Yes. I thought it was a healer’s gift. To heal.”

  “No, that must have been a Seraphina gift.”

  “Oh, fine.”

  She moved over to him. Her dress shifting over her chest, giving him more than enough to look at while she spread her hands up and down his arms. Focusing on the tips of his fingers and the cuts he could see on his wrists. Silas shifted uncomfortably as the warmth of her touch reverberate
d and scorched every hair along his skin. The tingles and pinpricks eased, and a warmth filled his arms down to his fingertips. When she sat back on her heels, Silas bent his arms at the elbow and flexed his hands. The pain was gone. The cuts disappeared as if they’d never been there. The only evidence was the dried blood coating his skin down to his elbows. He rubbed at it till it was all but gone. Then clenched his fists once again.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. It was my fault anyway.”

  “So, what now?”

  She moved back to her place on her blankets. Books scattered all around her. “Why don’t you start from the beginning? Before I change my mind about returning you and just end you.”

  “You have trained.”

  “Yes. I have. I studied with my grandmother, and now with my mother. Even though she’s ill. I also have these.” She pointed to the large stack of books in the shadows that Silas hadn’t noticed before. There was also a large file box behind the stack, also full of small leather books.

  “So, the beginning then?” he asked.

  To that she nodded and leaned back against the wall, placing a pillow between her skin and stone.

  Chapter V

  Silas told the tale he’d been practicing in his mind since his father bid him farewell from his family’s home. He told her of Sigmis’ plans to get close to her and bring her into the fold through the means of seduction. He thought she’d be furious at that. She just looked at him with her big blue eyes and fluttered her lashes as if she were going to blush at any moment. Instead, she leaned forward into him.

  “Who says you’d be the one doing the seducing?”

  If he didn’t know any better, Silas would have thought the inner workings of Gwendolyn Crawford was a lot different than her outer persona. She looked meek and breakable, yet there was part of her that called to his darker side. The side he was trying so hard not to indulge.

  She’d left the cave around noon. Being the weekend, she usually stayed out much of the days hiding from the watchful eyes of her family and protector. None of which ventured into the cave unless it was being used for the new shifters. Luckily for him, the newest generation had already been infiltrated with the moon magic.

  In the time of Seraphina Crawford and Seth Sigmis, shifters did not exist. While they vied to go against the Council, Seraphina’s group of witches was attacked by the Council’s watchdogs, preternatural beasts that had once been humans. They roamed the world as nothing more than hound dogs, sent by the Council to entrap and kill witches. One bite to a witch from a preternatural was a death sentence. Seraphina had the book of moons with her. She’d worked with the help of Seth to heal the bites inflicted upon her friends. The moon magic turned them into a new kind of witch. Since then, anytime a preternatural bit a witch, they were given the choice to live on or die. By the 1990s over a third of the Wiccan community were shifter-witches. It became apparent early on that the moon magic carried through to each new generation.

  The new Council with the help of Seraphina assigned the positions of priests and priestesses to four families. Giving each a set of shifter-witches as protectors of their priest or priestess. Silas was lucky in the way he’d been able to develop a friendship with his protectors. Some families did not fare as well over the years.

  Gwendolyn and her protector were bonded by an oath. One his ancestor made to Seraphina. Silas knew the two were also good friends. Watching the two of them together, however, Silas found out quite easily that Chester Crain had more than feelings of friendship for the high priestess. The way he looked at Gwendolyn made Silas furious. He’d had an overwhelming need to strangle him for it, but he would refrain. For her sake.

  While Gwendolyn went to the main house to freshen up, Silas could relieve himself and speak with Hex and Finis who had stayed vigilant through the night. He dismissed them to rest. Hex stayed in wolf form to sleep under a big oak tree, just in case. Finis retreated to the place they called home. When Silas returned to the cave, the girl had returned with two more pillows and food.

  “To sit on,” she said when he gave her a questioning look.

  “You didn’t tell anyone I was here?”

  “Why would I?” She moved the blankets around her, spreading them out to give the food a flatter surface to sit on. “They don’t get me. My brothers want to control my life, my father is busy tending to my mother. Even my sister keeps to herself. The only one I can ever count on around here is Chester, but he’s working at the mill with his father today.”

  “Lucky me.”

  She laughed at that trying to keep the small cherry tomato she’d just thrown in her mouth from shooting out.

  “I get the feeling you think you’re getting somewhere with me.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Hardly. I just realized I like your company. Even if you came here under false pretenses.”

  “I did not. I came here for the reasons I stated.”

  She cut him off, “I know, to protect me from your father. From the Black Willow.” She put the tomato she was about to eat back on the platter. “So, train me then. If you really came here for that. Teach me everything about my power, about everything I can do.”

  “That’s the thing,” he said lifting a can of soda she’d put in front of him. “I’m not sure what gifts you possess. I can’t heal myself. I can heal others. You said you’ve healed yourself before. So, while I know of the healer’s gifts, I don’t know what you have acquired from your ancestor.”

  “Then teach me. Teach me whatever you know. I spent too many years not listening to the stories my grandmother told me. She was Margaret Crawford. The high priestess everyone loved and adored. How can I follow her?”

  It wasn’t a question really, and Silas knew not to give her a generic reply about how well she was going to do. Being a high priest and high priestess meant they shared that one uncontrollable power. That of a death watcher. Why Seraphina and the Council thought that was a good idea, to make the most unstable of powers to be in the highest seat of power, was something nobody had figured out.

  “You have to. That’s how. I’m not interested in how well you do, or if you surpass your grandmother. My only interest is you.”

  “Really?” She gave him a steely glare. “That almost sounds like a come on.”

  He’d said it to mean something entirely different, but found he couldn’t amend his statement. He’d known since he landed in Springfield that she was not just some pawn in his father’s game. So instead or correcting himself he simply continued. “Making sure my father doesn’t have a chance to use you for his end game is my top priority.”

  “What would his end game be?” She relaxed a bit against the wall and plopped another tomato in her mouth.

  “To use you to get to the ring.”

  “Ah.”

  The ring of immortality. Some had said it contained all of Seraphina’s powers. Those that she’d murdered for, and the curse of immortality she tricked the Covenant into placing on her. The Council had allowed her to keep it and pass it down to a witch in her line that would be worthy of using it. Sigmis wanted that power. He’d do just about anything to get it.

  “What do you really know about that ring?” she asked.

  Silas got comfortable at last, relaxing his back and finished the caffeine riddled soda. “That it has the curse in it. That it needs the power of the high priestess and a priest to open it.”

  “That’s close. Close enough. Maybe someday I’ll share with you the real way to open it. For now, I’ll tell you this. Even if he got his hands on that ring, he wouldn’t ever be able to open it. He can force me, threaten me, torture me…there is no way to open it. Not like that.”

  Silas accepted the directive of the ring. Gwen told him that she may, in the future share with him the real way to gain access to it. She would need to trust him a lot more for that to happen. He left the cave and made his way to his house. Hex, in human form, rode back with Silas in the car. He tried to update him o
n all that had happened. He kept out a few key points. Like how his insides burned with every touch of her against his skin. Or how he felt looking her in the eyes before the effects of the belladonna took him. If he had been there to fulfill his father’s request, he would have enjoyed it more than he’d thought. At the thought of his father going anywhere near her smooth, milky skin made Silas see red. He wouldn’t allow it. His father or any other man for that matter.

  “So, if she saw the vision, why did she not see the last part to it?”

  “She said it had something to do with seeing it repeatedly. I only saw that bit once. It must not have been enough for her to see. She will though. I’ll walk her through it. Just not yet.”

  “You're enjoying this, aren’t you?” Hex stretched back in his seat, reaching his arms over his head to push against the roof of the car. “Doesn’t hurt that she’s not fugly.”

  “You’re not wrong, my friend. Not wrong at all.”

  The heat in Ohio was around the same as Indiana. However, Silas had managed getting shoved into the worst heat wave Ohio had seen in many years. Spending the days indoors was not hard to do. Since they managed to get a house with central air.

  The night was cool inside the cave while he was training Gwen in all she needed to know about her gifts. Before they knew it, the month of August swept by, and without incident. It wasn’t until early September when things started to get interesting. Her father, Alistair Crawford called a meeting of the covens. Gwen made Silas promise not to show his face on the property. Of course, he hadn’t listened. He stood in the back of the crowd watching as the families gathered around her.

  “It’s a wise decision,” a tall thin man with white hair on top of his head said to the rest of the group.

  Silas missed the first part of the conversation.

  The back of the house jutted out on either side of a large area set up as a covered patio. A wooden table sat in the middle of the patio area. Each of the four families was represented at the table. Gwen and her coven members sat with their backs to the crowd. She was in the middle of four others, two on either side of her. Or there should have been. When Silas asked her about her coven she’d said she had yet to fill one spot. It was between a twin sister and brother as to which she’d chose. The other chair was vacant due to its owner being away at school.