by Sammie Joyce
Gavin nodded slowly. “I’m so sorry, Rose. This is all my fault.”
Rose put her arms around him. “It’s okay, Gavin. Most of it wasn’t your fault at all. For the part that was, I forgive you.”
He kissed her, slow and deep. Rose knew that they probably wouldn’t make it out of this alive, but she couldn’t help being happy right now. She had Gavin back, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.
Gavin’s hands brushed the collar around her neck. He frowned at it. Rose was about to explain it to him, assuming his memory was a bit patchy after being under Hellith’s spell, but he put a finger to his lips.
He put a hand on either side of the collar and pulled. It opened, and Gavin carefully laid it on the ground. Rose remembered that Gavin had told her only he would have the power to remove the bracelet. She guessed it was the same with the collar.
Talk mentally only. Hellith has brilliant hearing, and she will hear even whispered words.
You don’t know what it a relief it is to have that thing off. Won’t Hellith know, though? She knew when I got the bracelet off.
No, she didn’t. She linked the collar and the bracelet to me. I knew when you got the bracelet off and told her. Shame suffused the link between them, and Rose squeezed Gavin’s hand.
Why hasn’t she thought of this, though? Do you think she didn’t know that the spell she has on you broke when she tortured you?
I’m sure she knows, but she probably doesn’t care. You’re still recovering your magic, and even when you do, your powers are nothing compared to hers without the necklace. It’s too small for me to shift in here, and she controls the door. She has us trapped.
For how long, though? She has to know that rescue is coming. Why would she keep us here?
I don’t know. It’s probably best for us to stay here, or else we could be moved to a place Asher and the others have already searched. I doubt she’s going to give us much of a choice, though.
Rose knew he was right. It was frustrating, how little control they had over the situation. I can try welding us in, when Hellith next comes to get one of us.
Good idea. I’m not sure it’ll hold, but it’s worth a shot.
I just hope my magic is recovered enough by then.
If it’s not, I’ll protect you. She won’t hurt you.
Rose knew that it wasn’t under Gavin’s control, but she appreciated the sentiment all the same.
Do you know where we are? I’ve only seen the inside of this cave, but you must have found your way here.
I do. It’s far away from the coven—it’ll probably take them days or even weeks to find us.
But you know where it is! Quick, tell Asher before Hellith finds some other way to block our mental communications.
I can’t.
Rose stared at him in disbelief. What do you mean, you can’t? You have to!
I can’t face him, not after what I’ve done.
Now wasn’t the time to worry about that, but Rose could feel Gavin mentally cringing away from the idea of facing his brothers. Now wasn’t the time to persuade him that they would forgive him once they knew the whole story.
Show me, then. I’ll show Asher.
Gavin smiled in relief. Of course.
Rose paid careful attention to the mental images he showed her. She was sure Asher would be able to find them, but she worried about how long it would take.
When Gavin was done, she opened the mental connection.
Asher, I’m back.
Rose, thank God! What happened?
I was blocked off from communicating. It’s a long story. Look, I know where we are.
She sent the images to Asher, who swore loudly.
Fuck. We’re across the country from there. It’ll take us a couple of hours.
Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere.
He didn’t laugh. Are you okay?
Rose decided not to mention her throbbing nose and shoulder for now. No need to make Asher worry over something that Maria could fix in about thirty seconds. I’m fine. Just hurry. Gavin is back to normal, so at least he can help us fight our way out.
Hm. Asher’s disapproval was clear.
Hellith had him under a spell, Asher. It wasn’t his fault.
Oh. Asher’s grim mood seemed to lighten. I’m sure we can sort this all out when we’ve got you safely away. I need to go tell everyone else.
Good luck! See you soon.
Rose closed the connection regretfully. As much as she would have liked to chat with Asher, distracting him right now would not be a smart move.
He knows, she told Gavin. They will be a couple of hours in arriving, though.
I think you should seal the door now. Hellith can pull us out with magic at any moment. We won’t get any warning, and I’m not sure you’ll have time to do it once she decides she wants us.
Do you think the door will hold for a few hours?
I guess we’ll see. Once you’ve done it, stay behind me. If Hellith is going to grab one of us, I’ll make sure it’s me.
That hardly did anything to make Rose feel better. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
She focused her magic on the door, whispering the word to melt the stone together.
Nothing happened.
Crap. Rose was slightly less exhausted than she had been before. Clearly her magic needed more time to recover.
Gavin, it’s not working, I need more—
“Well, I see that you’ve recovered your energy.” The door opened, and one of Hellith’s red eyes peered through. “I guess it’s time to play.”
Gavin shoved Rose roughly back. “Stay away from her!”
“She’ll have her turn, once you pass out again. We’re all alone here, and there’s no one to hear you scream. We’ll see how defiant you are after weeks of this. You’ll be spilling your clan’s secrets before long.”
Rose stared at Hellith. Did she not know that rescue was coming?
She felt realization dawn in Gavin’s mind. I never told her that the witches and dragons are united. It never seemed relevant. She knew we fought together against her once, but maybe she assumed we’d go right back to hating each other.
What does that have to do with anything? Panic was making it hard to think. At any moment, Hellith was going to start torturing Gavin again.
Think about it. The dragons are searching, but they have no chance without a locator spell—and only witches can do that. Hellith thinks they have no chance of finding us here.
It should have been a relief to know that Hellith wasn’t moving them, but it was hard to be relieved while watching Hellith’s claw drag Gavin out of the cave. He didn’t resist. Rose wished he would, but she knew he was quite happy to be the one tortured instead of her.
She grabbed his arm, trying fruitlessly to stop Hellith taking him. An electric shock came through his skin, going all the way up to her shoulder. Gavin and Rose both cried out. Rose crumpled to the ground, but Hellith kept dragging Gavin.
Rose scrambled to get out the door before it closed. “Please, Hellith! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just don’t hurt him!”
“You’re lying, little witch. But we’ll see how you feel when he’s hoarse from screaming.”
In truth, Rose didn’t know whether she was lying or not. She knew she couldn’t tell Hellith what she wanted to know—it would spell death for everyone. But she would do anything to stop her torturing Gavin.
Gavin screamed, and Rose screamed with him. While it was physical pain that tore through him, her love for him had her insides twisting in torment seeing him like this.
Rose was vaguely aware of her knees hitting the ground, her hands in her hair, helpless to do anything to stop it.
It seemed to go on forever. She kept praying that Gavin would pass out, but he never did. She guessed that Hellith was keeping the pain levels just below the point that would let him slip into the mercy of unconsciousness.
Time warped. They could have be
en there minutes or days. Hellith ignored Rose’s pleas and threats.
Gavin kept screaming.
Chapter Thirteen
We’re here.
The words appeared in her mind only a split second before the dragons did.
Asher and Jagger barreled into the cave, followed by the rest of their clan. The witches came afterward, their shield spells shimmering slightly in the dark.
As soon as there was enough room, Asher shifted to his dragon form. He roared at Hellith, sending a stream of fire her way. Normal dragon fire wouldn’t hurt her, but it served as a distraction. She turned from Gavin to Asher. Gavin went limp with relief as the pain was lifted.
Get Gavin! Jagger yelled to her. Grab him and get out.
It was as Rose suspected. The dragons and witches were merely causing a distraction so that they could escape.
“Gavin!” Rose knelt down next to him, tapping his face with her palm. He seemed only semi-conscious. “Gavin, wake up. We need to go. Please, Gavin.”
Rose could barely hear her own voice over the sounds of fighting. Hellith shrieked and Asher roared. The witches cast spells that erupted against Hellith’s hide with echoing bangs. Everyone was shouting instructions and warnings to each other. It was chaos.
“Gavin, come on!”
Gavin blinked blearily at her.
“That’s right, come on, we have to go.” Rose put an arm under his shoulders, helping him sit up. “Mace is waiting outside for us. We just need to get to him and then everyone can withdraw.”
Gavin nodded, staggering to his feet, leaning heavily on Rose’s shoulder. The two of them made their slow way toward the cave entrance, skirting the main fighting. Gavin’s feet didn’t seem to be working that well, but Rose managed to keep him upright.
The fight looked brutal. Hellith was bleeding black blood from a number of places, and several of the witches and dragons who had come to their rescue were unconscious or wounded. As bad as it looked, though, Rose knew that things were going largely as planned.
They were about halfway to the entrance when everything went wrong.
Hellith let out a particularly loud shriek, and some kind of forcefield blasted out from around her in all directions. Everyone was knocked down. Rose’s scream of pain was drowned out by the voices of all the other witches and dragons.
It felt like she’d been hit with a paralysis spell. Rose tried to move her limbs. She could do it, but it felt like she was impaling herself on knives as she did. Not a paralysis spell, then. Some mixture of a paralysis and pain spell.
How could Hellith do it, though? If she had powers like this, why would she not use them from the start?
A flash of red and gold caught Rose’s eye.
Of course.
Hellith was still holding her necklace. Hellith couldn’t use it—the necklace only worked for someone committed to unity between dragons and witches—but the necklace had always been a bit of a random factor. It reacted by itself, and no one could truly predict when it would do so.
Hellith had probably cast a normal paralysis spell, and the necklace had amplified it, possibly sensing that Rose was in distress, but not able to detect that Rose wasn’t in possession of it right now. After all, it was supposed to be impossible for anyone to remove it from her against her will.
Whoever had created the necklaces of power obviously hadn’t counted on Hellith.
Gavin groaned and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Hope flared in Rose’s mind. Her body had been shielding Gavin from Hellith as she pulled him toward the cave entrance. He wasn’t affected by the spell.
He quickly appraised the situation. Asher looked like he was unconscious, shifted back to his human form. Everyone else was on the ground. Hellith grinned over them, clearly preparing to deliver a fatal blow.
Gavin leapt into the air, shifting mid-leap. Rose ducked as one of his wings swung over her head.
“Gavin, no!”
He was flying straight for Hellith.
Gavin, get everyone out of here, don’t attack her!
He wasn’t listening to her. Rose was sure that he was trying to make up for his previous trust in Hellith, but he was going to get himself killed, attacking her directly like that when he was all on his own.
Hellith turned to the new threat. To Rose’s surprise, Gavin didn’t attack her directly. Instead, he swooped left, biting down on one of her many spindly protrusions that worked as arms. Hellith screamed in pain, but it was far from a debilitating wound.
Gavin’s intention soon became clear. He swung around and returned to Rose, dropping the arm at her feet. Rose saw her necklace safely dangling from the end.
Hellith didn’t waste the opportunity Gavin had given her. With his back turned away from the danger, she unleashed her full power on him.
A mighty blast threw Gavin forward. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he shifted back to human automatically, just in time for his body to smash against the wall.
It made a sickening crunch. Rose was sure it had broken every bone in his body.
“GAVIN!” Either Hellith’s spell had worn off, or she simply didn’t notice the pain anymore. She scrambled over to Gavin. His neck was bent at an odd angle. Blood ran from his nose. He was unnaturally still.
Gavin was dead.
“NO! GAVIN! Wake up, please, WAKE UP!” Rose shook him, desperate for some sign of life, but there was none.
She had been right before, when she’d theorized she would know if Gavin was dead. She knew now. She felt like a part of her heart had withered and died. An essential piece of her was missing. Rose didn’t know how to move or breathe without him.
Rose, get moving! Jagger’s mental voice was laced with pain and panic. Pain for his brother’s death, panic for Rose and all the rest of them.
Rose knew he was right. She couldn’t let any more of her dragons die protecting her. Her hands shook as she put her necklace on.
She gasped as a fizzle of power went through her whole body, ending in her fingers and toes. The necklace seemed to have accelerated her recharge time. Rose wasn’t going to waste it. The first spell she used was to make Gavin’s body light enough for her to carry easily.
Rose flinched as she picked him up, doing her best not to look at his too-still face. She wasn’t leaving him here. He deserved a proper burial, not to rot in Hellith’s lair. She cast a powerful shield around the two of them, walking almost untouched through the fight.
Hellith’s spell had worn off, and the witches and dragons were up and fighting again. Rose knew that the plan was to get in and out as quickly as possible. It had seemed a good plan before now.
It didn’t seem good now. Now, Rose’s blood pounded in her ears, threatening to boil over with rage. Rage was easier to feel than grief, and she let it take over.
Hellith had murdered Gavin. That would not go unpunished. Rose didn’t just want to escape. She wanted to send Hellith back to the depths of hell, where she belonged.
Rose staggered out of the cave, laying Gavin gently down between Mace’s feet. He was still in his dragon form. Rose could feel his pain through their mental link, but she didn’t stop to comfort him. There would be time for comfort later. Now, it was time for vengeance.
She turned back to the fight. “Everyone out! Now! Prepare to cast banishing spells.”
The coven had been working on a way to defeat Hellith for months. Nothing certain had been discovered, but their most promising line of research was a banishing spell. Spells like this had been used long ago to send monsters back to their home realms. No one had been able to determine for certain whether these accounts were true or mere myth, but most of the senior witches in the coven thought they were true.
Hellith may have been born on Earth, but she had mutated into a monster whose true realm was the pit of hell. If they could banish her back there, she would be trapped.
The problem was that if they did something wrong with the spell, it might leave a path for Hellith to escape
again. For all the research they’d done, none of them had been able to practice the spell—they couldn’t, not without Hellith to practice it on. They had all agreed that until they knew more, it was too risky to try. They should wait until they were sure they could do it without allowing Hellith a way back.
Right now, Rose didn’t care about any of that. All she cared about was seeing Gavin’s murderer punished. She half-expected the other witches to argue with her, but they didn’t. They followed her order without question. She was the coven leader, after all, even if Maria was filling in for now.
The dragons fell back, Jagger dragging Asher along. They formed a protective line in front of the witches. Hellith took advantage of the retreat, lunging for one of the witches on the end of the line.
Rose ran forward, expanding her shield spell. The coven witches saw what she was doing and added their own power to it. Hellith was rebuffed by the shield, for now. It wouldn’t take long for her to break through it, though.
“NOW!” Rose didn’t wait to see if anyone else was following her order. She started chanting, relieved when she heard the voices of the rest of the coven join hers. She had to drop the shield to concentrate on the spell, but Jagger was ready. He shifted to his dragon form, putting himself between her and Hellith.
The incantation for the banishing spell was much longer than any spell Rose had ever cast. Almost all spells were one or two words. This one went on for a good paragraph. They all had it memorized, of course, but it still took time to say.
As one, the coven shouted the final line of the spell. Rose held her breath, waiting to see if it worked.
If it didn’t, then she had likely just sentenced her entire coven to die.
Hellith lunged once more for Jagger. Mid-lunge, something happened. Her form wavered, turning to smoke. The smoke shivered, then started being drawn downward, through the very rock itself.
Hellith’s last shriek turned into an unearthly wail as she was pulled down back into hell. The mountain shook as the spell let off a blast of excess power.
Hellith vanished.
There wasn’t any time to celebrate. The mountain was still shaking, and the shakes weren’t fading. They were getting worse.
