by Sarra Cannon
I shook my head and kept pacing, needing to keep my mind and body occupied as much as possible.
It was stupid to believe I could beat her at her own game, but I had to at least try.
The only other option was to completely give up, and that just wasn't in my nature. I’d come too far—loved too completely—to give up now without a fight.
If I could know anything there was to know about the Mother Crow, what would that be? What information would be the most useful to me right now?
I already knew what she planned to do with me, and I honestly didn’t care or see much use in finding out more about her past as a young girl.
But maybe if I knew more about the spell I’d so stupidly cast on myself, I could find a way to reverse it.
Yes, she’d told me that it was impossible to stop what had already begun, but just because she said it didn’t make it true. She was a liar and a deceitful witch. For all I knew, there was a simple way to end all of this.
I prayed that could be true, because all I’d been able to think about since the moment she told me the truth about this spell was that either Rend was going to die by failing to kill the Mother Crow, or I would die by his hand.
Or, worst case scenario, we would both die.
Other than finding a way to reverse this spell, I couldn’t think of a single solution that had us both coming out of this alive.
I walked over to the door and placed my ear against the cool wooden surface to listen. It had been a couple of hours since breakfast, but since there wasn’t a clock in this room or any real way to show the passage of time, I wasn’t sure how much longer I had until Mary Evelyn came by with lunch.
There hadn't been much movement in the house, as far as I could tell. No footsteps on the stairs. No voices in the hallway.
Mary Evelyn had told me that she’d been released from her normal daily chores so she could wait on me and guard me, but if she was outside my door right now, she was sitting in complete silence.
I listened for a long moment, and when I heard no sign of anyone nearby, I walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. If anyone came in to check on me, they wouldn’t be able to see me from the doorway. They’d have to walk all the way into the first room to even catch a glimpse of me over here, so all I would have to do is lay down as soon as the door opened.
I could pretend I’d been sleeping, and they would never know I’d been attempting to use magic.
At least, I hoped that was how it would go down.
But there were a lot of variables here.
It was possible the Mother Crow could feel my energy the same way I could feel hers when she was close. She might immediately know if I was using my power or trying to get a deeper look inside her mind.
What was worse, it was also possible that I was expediting the transfer by actually trying to find a specific memory in the witch’s mind.
I shuddered at that thought. I would rather try to find a way to slow the process down, but the truth was that I needed answers. I needed to find a way out.
That meant taking some risks to push the abilities of this transfer spell to its limits and see what happened. Besides, what was the worst she could do to me if she didn’t like it?
It wasn’t like she was going to physically harm me. This was, after all, the body she planned on inhabiting in the near future and for the next hundred years or so until I started falling apart the way she had.
Nausea rolled over me like a wave.
The thought of being trapped inside my own body with no control or ability to speak for the next hundred years made me sick to my stomach. I’d talked to demons who had been trapped inside the bodies of witches a few times at Venom, and their stories had terrified me.
I would not end up like that.
I couldn’t.
I crossed my legs under me on the bed and placed my palms upward. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply through my nose.
Okay, so when I had tried to cast my power against the Mother Crow, the stone in my chest had burned me. But what would happen if I embraced my power with no ill will towards anyone?
“Only one way to find out,” I muttered.
I took a deep breath in, and as I let it out, I braced myself for the pain and reached for the well of power deep in my core. I gave no intention to it, good or bad. I simply connected to it, like dipping my toe into a stream of rushing water.
The power immediately flowed through me, but there was no pain. Only energy.
My heartbeat kicked up a notch. This was a good start. I could work with this.
I sat there for a few minutes, just breathing and paying attention to the buzz of the energy just beneath my skin. I’d spent a lot of time in meditation over the past few months, trying to learn to control the darker sides of my magic, so this part, at least, was easy and familiar.
Where I usually went wrong was the moment I tried to actually channel my energy into some kind of action. When I grew a flower, it would turn black, wither, and die all within the span of a few seconds. Even my orbs of light would usually darken to a cool silver-grey rather than the bright blues, whites, and even pinks I’d seen from other witches.
Glamours had gone a little easier for me, but using any particular glamour or illusion for very long tended to leave the taste of ashes on my tongue. I’d asked Lyla about it once, and she’d said that tasting ashes was definitely not normal.
In fact, I think her exact words were, ‘Damn, sometimes you really are a freak.’
She’d said it lovingly, of course, but I’d felt it every single time I’d tried to use my magic. I was different, plain and simple.
For a long time, that had meant I’d avoided it as much as possible. But my life was running short here, so it was time for a crash course in miracles. I either found one locked inside of me, or I died.
That was pretty compelling motivation, to be honest.
So, for now, I simply let the power exist. I let it flow through me, imagining that it travelled down my arms to my fingertips and back. Up toward the top of my head and all the way down to the tips of my toes.
When I was saturated in it, I dipped a little deeper into the well, amplifying the buzz.
I had practiced this technique many times before while sitting on the edge of the cliff at Rend’s, breathing in the crisp air, so I pretended I was back there now to help calm my nerves and keep me centered.
The power felt amazing, but I knew it wouldn’t do me any good to just sit here without using the magic for something specific. I had to push a little farther to see what I was capable of, but the thought of feeling that pain again terrified me.
When I’d thought of attacking the Mother Crow before, I had poured all my hateful intentions and my anger into the power. The feelings were intense, which also intensified the level of pain I felt.
Or at least that seemed like a logical conclusion.
So maybe if I just barely reached into the Mother Crow’s mind with no intention of harming her in any way, it wouldn’t hurt me at all.
I refocused on my breathing and counted to five. Then I sent just a tiny piece of my power out to search for a connection with the Mother Crow. I wanted to see if I could sense her in the village or see just how far she was from me now.
I imagined my power snaking across the floor, going through the doorway and searching the house. I sent the energy around, but I didn’t seem to be connecting to anything in particular.
Carefully, I pulled the energy back to me and tried again. This time, I imagined it spreading out like concentric circles, each growing larger and larger until they broke through the walls of my room and spread through the village itself.
I had no idea what I was doing. I just followed my instincts, trusting that somehow, the magic knew what to do.
And the moment I found her, an electric shock seemed to zap me. I drew a harsh breath through closed teeth, but held onto the connection, refocusing my energy on the source of that shock.
&
nbsp; I could feel her, but I couldn’t see her. She was outside of the house, but she wasn't too far away. Maybe standing in front or sitting on the porch? It was hard to tell, but I could sense the distance between us, as if my mind held a rope that was attached to both of us.
The connection was so solid, I almost felt that I could have grabbed it with both hands and pulled until she came to me.
Holy shit.
Was that why I’d felt compelled to be closer to her when she was in the room with me? Did she feel our connection so acutely that she could control my movements and desires?
And more importantly, did that connection work both ways?
I nearly dropped my power in my excitement and fear. The Mother Crow was pretty much one of the last people in the world I’d want to share a connection like this with, and yet here I was, willingly making it stronger.
But now that I had established it, what in the world could I do with it?
What I wanted most was to summon a particular memory. One where the Mother Crow had first discovered the spell and read the words of it. The rules of it. I wasn’t sure if it had come from a book or a scroll, or if someone had simply told her about it, but if I could find that memory, I might be able to find some type of clue along with it.
But I was playing with fire here. If she sensed what I was trying to do, she might punish me in ways I didn’t even know were possible.
Fear of the possibilities caused me to drop the connection, and when I tried to establish it again, I couldn’t get it to work.
Frustrated, I went back to pacing the room and praying for a miracle.
The Fountain of Youth
Rend
Silas and I listened to everything Mary Tate had to say about the Mother Crow. She ruled her coven of women and girls with a heavy hand, and although their life in the trees was not always unpleasant, it was strict.
They were a family above all, but according to Mary Tate, there were many witches in the village who wanted a different life for themselves, and for their children.
Sometimes, a group of them would get together late at night and discuss a rebellion while the Mother Crow slept, but those kinds of meetings were extremely dangerous. For what seemed to be such a tight-knit community, it was hard to know who you could trust.
She’d said that she’d watched four women and three teenage girls be killed in a single afternoon because they’d been caught discussing wanting to protect the boys who were born into the crow family. Apparently, there had been a string of boys born in the months preceding their discussion, and a lot of the women were going out of their minds from watching them be sacrificed.
I couldn’t even imagine it. Not only did the Mother Crow kill those babies by consuming their life-force, she required everyone in the village to watch the ceremony. A display of her great power over all of them, Mary Tate said.
After the seven betrayers—as the Mother Crow called them—had been sacrificed in a ritual to help create new soul stones for the witch to consume, talk of rebellion in any form had died down. People were even afraid to complain about food or daily chores. Things had been tense for a long time after that, but when Harper had been confirmed as the long-lost Prima of Peachville back in Georgia and the Mother Crow had made plans to finally take back the demon gate she felt she’d lost to Harper’s family, several of the witches made their move against the Mother Crow.
“I’m sure we’re called the betrayers now,” she said. “We didn’t actually fight against her, but I wish we would have. We were scared, and we saw an opportunity to escape, so we took it. But now, I wish we had stood our ground. The Mother Crow was injured in that fight, and we might have been able to kill her if we’d all worked together, but we were afraid that it would turn into a fight with our sisters, as well. I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone else. I just wanted to find peace for a little while. A place of my own.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “I wish you had come to me at Venom. I would have helped you stay safe.”
She shook her head. “We are used to taking care of things on our own,” she said. “Besides, you have to understand. We are all taught not to trust men or demons. Especially vampires. I had no idea a place like Venom even existed when we first left, but of course, I found out about it after Franki started working there.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that might be important to know about the Mother Crow?” I asked. I’d already asked her about the crow’s preferred magic and the rituals she’d cast in front of them over the years, but I still hadn’t learned anything that might save Franki’s life. “Does she have any weaknesses? Any type of magic that seems to hurt her more than others? Anything in particular that makes her angry to the point of distraction?”
Mary Tate sighed, her shoulders dropping. “I honestly can’t think of anything else besides the things I’ve already told you,” she said. “Her biggest weakness right now is her failing body. She has great power and her mind seems to still be young and strong, but her body is decaying rapidly. To discuss it or even to stare at her for too long makes her violently angry. But I don’t see how that can help us save Franki.”
“I don’t either,” I said.
“Obviously, she hates the Order of Shadows and what she feels they did to her,” she said. “That includes Harper, even though that poor girl had nothing to do with what happened over a hundred years ago. The Mother Crow still blames Harper’s ancestor for turning her in when she found her in the woods with a book of spells she wasn’t supposed to have.”
“That’s a long time to hold a grudge,” Silas said, speaking for the first time in over an hour. “Why is that still so important to her?”
“Because she wanted the power that came along with having a demon of her own,” she said. “She talks about it like it was the holy grail. The fountain of youth. She believes that if she had a demon inside of her the way the priestesses in the Order do, she’d be able to stop the decay of her body. It wasn't always this bad, but about twenty years ago, it started getting worse and worse for her.”
I glanced over and met Silas’s gaze. This could be useful information.
Wanting to rule a demon gate of her own was the one thing that had motivated her to go outside of her crow village and attack other witches over the years. She’d killed Harper’s grandmother and her mother, and then years later, when Harper had returned to Peachville, the Mother Crow had tried to kill her, too.
According to Mary Tate, there wasn’t much else that mattered enough to the Mother Crow to leave her sanctuary in the sky.
“If we could give her something she wants more than Franki, maybe we could convince her to release the spell,” I said, standing.
“How does that help us?” Silas asked. “We can’t exactly sacrifice an innocent demon and condemn them to a life as a slave inside of that witch? Plus, we’d be giving her even more power than she has now.”
“I don’t care about her power,” I said. “I care about saving Franki. If I could somehow get her to stop the soul-transference spell herself, I could worry about how to kill her afterward. And even if I can’t kill her, I’d rather spend the rest of my life in the dungeons than watch that witch take over Franki’s body and soul.”
“And the demon you suggest we sacrifice to make this happen?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.
Well, he had me there. I had spent enough of my life feeling tortured about the time my sister spent enslaved in a witch’s body. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
Except maybe the three Council members who had put me in this situation to begin with. Them, I’d gladly sacrifice.
Putting myself on the chopping block for killing yet another member of the Council, however, was not exactly at the top of my to-do list.
“Besides, the demons don’t keep the Primas young and powerful,” Silas said. “Only the Priestesses themselves. Most Primas live normal life spans and die of old age or accidents just like any other woman.”
> “Most Primas don’t consume the souls of their grandchildren, either,” I said, and he nodded.
“That’s true.”
“None of this talk matters, anyway, until we know where the Mother Crow is located,” I said. “Which means that we need to—”
“Rend, this is exactly why I didn’t tell you about Mary Tate in the first place,” Silas said, interrupting me. “I agree that we need to consider rescuing Mary Kathryn, but we need to talk about the repercussions of our actions. If Raum is the one holding her, that could mean she’s at the Brotherhood’s castle.”
“And?”
“And last time I checked, there was an army of Hollows guarding that place at all times,” he said. “Not to mention the fact that an attack on the castle to rescue a witch that’s being held as the Council’s prisoner is going to directly compromise our already-tricky standing with those three, very powerful vampires.”
I closed my eyes and turned, shaking my head. This was ridiculous. My life right now was like a maze, and no matter which way I turned, something dangerous and likely deadly was blocking my path.
I needed a damn bulldozer to just plow straight through the middle of it.
“So, what can we do?” I asked. “If Mary Kathryn’s the only one who knows the location of the village, we have no choice but to go after her. Screw the repercussions.”
“How did Mary Kathryn find out the various locations of the villages after they were moved?” Silas asked, turning to the witch on the bed. “Did she have some way of tracking them?”
“No, she was meeting with someone,” she said. “A spy on the inside.”
My eyes widened, and I stepped closer to the bed. “A spy? You have a witch who lives with the crows now who comes out to tell you where they are?”
“Yes, but no one knows who it is except Mary Kathryn,” she said. “They arranged it before we escaped, and Mary Kathryn didn’t want to put that person’s life in danger in case someone in our group wasn’t trustworthy. Turns out she was right to be paranoid.”
