Witch's Betrayal

by Crystal Ash

  Alfhilde! Where are you? I can't reach you! The panicked voice in my head belonged to Ash.

  Up high. An angel has me. My body is so close to death but he's not letting me die. He's talking shit and taunting me. This is bad, love. I think he's going to take my soul.

  Fuck! We're getting Lucifer and Beelzebub to help. We can't go up but there's nothing stopping us from going down. We'll have an army at your back in five minutes, my love.

  Fear gripped my soul as the angel began gesturing, casting his own brand of holy magic. A heavy sensation laid over me and I realized he was beginning to separate my soul from my body.

  I might not last that long. My body is broken. I can't talk. I can't stall him.

  We're coming, my love. Please hang on.

  The two hemispheres of my brain felt like they were splitting apart. The pain radiating through me made childbirth feel like a walk in the park.

  Ash, I love you so much. Tell Raum and Sal I love them too. Take care of Ragnar. Guide him and make these damned angels afraid to speak his name.

  Stop! Do not say goodbye to us. We're coming for you now.

  You were my first true love. Curse the god and all the angels, I love you with all my soul. Please don't forget me.

  Lilith, my love! Don't let go. Hold onto your soul with everything you have. We won't let them take you.

  I couldn't scream with my mouth so I did inside my head.

  If this angel ripped out my soul, he'd ensure I'd never occupy another human body again. I'd be truly dead, never to come back and feel the love of my men or children ever again.

  I saw the angel sneer through my blackening vision. He was taking his time, making this as painful as possible for me. My soul peeled away from my physical body inch by excruciating inch.

  And then, nothingness.

  9

  SETH

  I watched Deja with fascination for what felt like hours but had to be mere minutes.

  Her golden eyes shut tightly in concentration. Her full lips moved rapidly, muttering words I couldn't catch as she traveled through the deepest, darkest trenches of her mind.

  I enjoyed watching her and not only because she was beautiful. I'd never admit it to her but she was a prodigy of a student. While unfamiliar with shadow magic, she took my direction easily and used it effortlessly as the tool it was meant to be. I'd never seen anyone grasp it so quickly. Even I took years to successfully work my way through everything hidden in my subconscious. And when I did, I never cared to fully immerse myself in the hidden memories like she did.

  Suddenly her brow knitted and her head jerked to the side as if bracing herself against something painful. She let out soft, pathetic whimpers that sounded like a puppy being kicked.

  "Deja," I said with clarity and calm. "You can move away from the shadow any time you wish. But don't put your focus away all at once. Ease out of it slowly."

  She didn't seem to hear me. She was too deeply entrenched in whatever was happening in her mind.

  "Ragnar," she whimpered under her breath. "Ash, I love you."

  I moved in front of her and took each of her hands in mine. She was in so deep I had to pull her out myself.

  This was just another reason why so many non-demons failed at shadow magic. They went so deep into their own minds as either escape or punishment, they never returned to reality and went mad.

  "Deja, listen to my voice," I said loudly and clearly. "It's Seth. What you're seeing now isn't real. Come back to the sound of my voice."

  She was crying now, openly sobbing and looking so heartbroken I physically ached for her. Without thinking, I pressed my palm against her cheek and wiped away a tear with my thumb.

  "Come back to me, Deja," I said, my voice much lower as I leaned in, my forehead nearly brushing hers. "It isn't real. I'm real. Me, the guy you hate. I can't possibly be worse than what you're seeing right now."

  But her sobbing continued. She mumbled something that I couldn't make out the words. It could have been, "He won't let me die. It hurts so much."

  Shit! This was bad. Her mind could collapse in on itself if she was reliving some horrible trauma.

  Panic and frustration hit me in equal measures as my hands lowered to her slender shoulders. I squeezed and gave her a gentle shake.

  "Gods be damned, you gorgeous infuriating bitch! Snap out of it!"

  Her head suddenly threw back and released the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream I ever heard.

  The shock of it made me release her and sent me stumbling backward. I stood stunned, watching her scream like a banshee and my mind went completely blank on how to stop it.

  While I watched helplessly, a force of power surged at my back like a strong gust of wind. It felt familiar but stronger than anything I'd ever faced before. Muttering a curse, I reached for one of my angel-kissed blades tucked into my waistband. But by the time I withdrew it, the demon was already next to her.

  "Stay back!" I commanded at the infernal creature who took on the shape of a man with dark red hair and catlike green eyes.

  He ignored me, simply waving a hand in front of Deja's face. Her screaming stopped immediately and her knees buckled. She collapsed into his waiting arms and he picked her up as if she were a bride. He looked down at her tenderly, whispering softly when her head rolled onto his shoulder.

  "Stop! Put her down, demon!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "I'll cut your backward-beating heart out before I let you hurt her."

  He glanced at me with nothing more than annoyance. I suspected it from feeling his power, but right then I knew this was no ordinary incubus. This creature sat much closer to the top of the Hierarchy than the bottom. But what would he want with her?

  "She is safe. You never saw me." Those were the only words he spoke before they vanished into thin air.

  I stood dumbfounded and blinking, looking behind me and then in front where they had just stood moments before. Deja was nowhere to be seen. She really did get whisked away by a demon.

  Slowly as if in a trance, I walked up to Laurel's patio and pulled the sliding door open. She and John sat relaxed and reading books by their fireplace. Laurel looked up and smiled when I came in, giving no indication that she heard Deja's scream or caught sight of the demon that took her.

  "Done already?" she asked in a curious tone.

  "Yeah." I cleared my throat in an attempt to release the knot that settled there. "Deja wasn't feeling well so she took off. Went out the gate on the side of the house."

  For some reason I couldn't place, I was compelled to obey the green-eyed demon's words. It would do no good if I reported that I saw him. The calmness in my instincts also assured me that Deja was indeed safe.

  Laurel's smile fell into a frown. "Don't let her off too easy, Seth. I can tell you're attracted to her but you must find her limit and push it. She's no damsel in distress."

  "Yes, High Priestess." I lowered my head respectfully as I addressed her as the head of our coven. "I will not go easy on her. I could tell tonight she legitimately came down with something."

  "Remember, she has to be humbled by her power," Laurel went on. "She can't let her prowess get to her ego like a spoiled brat. I already saw the beginnings of that when she at first requested a different teacher."

  The corner of my mouth ticked up in a smirk.

  "She apologized for that and has been fully present in our lessons. I think she's learning some humility yet."

  "Good." A hint of a smile returned to Laurel's face. "You realize she will most likely be the one to join you on your hunting missions?"

  "No doubt," I agreed with a curt nod. "She will likely surpass me in shadow magic abilities within a year or two."

  "Excellent," Laurel beamed. "We'll be so fortunate to have not only one powerful hunter in our midst but two!" She turned back toward the fire, grinning at the flames. "It will be a fine day when we eliminate the demon scourge off the face of the earth."

  I allowed a grin to spread on my face as well.
>
  "Agreed, High Priestess."

  10

  DEJA

  I groaned in agony, feeling the unbearable pounding of my headache before I even fully woke.

  "It's okay, beautiful," a voice soothed me from somewhere above. "You're okay. Move slowly."

  My eyelids cracked open, nearly blinded by the ordinary daylight coming through the window. A gentle hand skimmed across my forehead and I turned in the direction of the voice.

  Sal's green eyes glittered down at me and his smile was filled with relief.

  "Hey, handsome lion," I croaked.

  "Hey." He planted a warm kiss on my forehead. "You were out for a while. We were starting to get worried."

  As I slowly blinked my eyes, my surroundings came into focus. I recognized Ash's study, lined with books and the fireplace roaring with cozy flames. I was laid out on the love seat, covered in a blanket and propped up with pillows. Ash and Raum sat nearby in chairs, relief etched into their features as well.

  My headache was killing me and all my limbs felt beyond exhausted, but I was cozy and happy to be surrounded by my men once again.

  "Sal filled us in on what he saw," Ash said, reaching for my hand and planting a kiss on the back of my palm. "Do you feel up to telling us what happened from your perspective?"

  "She needs to rest," Sal growled with a warning at him.

  Annoyed, Ash turned his icy eyes to his second in command. "Which is why I'm asking if she feels up to it. Calm the fuck down."

  Another warning growl started rumbling in Sal's chest, which halted when I touched his cheek.

  "I'm okay, lion," I assured him. "I want to talk about what happened."

  "Only if you're sure.” He pressed my hand against his face and kissed my palm.

  I gingerly pulled myself up to a sitting position while Sal, being a total sweetheart, stuffed pillows behind my back to prop me up. The other two waited eagerly while I got comfortable.

  Cutting to the chase, I blurted out, "I saw when I died. For good."

  All the air seemed to get sucked out of the room as each man muttered curses and hung their heads. Sal squeezed my hand tighter.

  "I found the memory while looking through my mind's shadows," I went on. "I felt every bit of it exactly as if I was there. Right up until the point the angel ripped my soul from my body."

  "My love," Ash said softly, reaching for my other hand. "Why would you want to relive that?"

  "I didn't go searching for it," I protested, my heart aching at the pain in his blue eyes. "When we talked about our children the other day, it made me want to look for the ones we've had in the past. The first one I found was Ragnar."

  Raum's dark eyes caught mine from across the room. His aura flickered and pulsed with red energy when he heard me speak our son's name. Our last son.

  He shook his head, letting out a huff of laughter as he seemed to recall the memory himself.

  "I almost thought that would be the last happy moment of my life," he said softly. "Before we found you again."

  "You should have pulled away from the memory once it started to go bad." Ash's voice was harsh and commanding. "Especially with so many other things in your head, you could've gone mad from living through that again. And the Mother of Witches would spend the rest of this lifetime in a vegetative state."

  "I didn't know." My frustration started climbing. "Especially with all of you not telling me what happened."

  Ash bit his lip and lowered his eyes. He knew this withholding of information was my ongoing gripe with them and it was pissing me off that it was still an issue.

  "We didn't know either," Raum said from across the room. "We had no idea if you would have any memory of that event after your soul returned. But we felt your pain through our auras and it nearly broke us in turn. We figured if you didn't remember, it would be for the best."

  "The three of us still remember it all too well," Sal chimed in softly.

  "But how did I come back?" I asked. "I remember knowing that angel would destroy my soul and never let me come back. So how did I?"

  "Lucifer," all three of them said in unison.

  "You’re lucky that old bastard loves you like a daughter," Ash said with a hint of a smile. "He broke through that barrier the angels created like tearing through paper. The rest of us could only watch as your lifeless body fell back down to earth."

  "What did he do?"

  Ash's expression hardened. "He used nearly half his power to destroy that angel, and then saved you in the only way he could." His thumbs lovingly caressed my palm as he spoke. "He split your soul into thousands of pieces and let them fall back down to earth. The pieces would inhabit humans, but none would have your magical abilities. They would only have echoes of your spirit. Only after a thousand years would the pieces be able to converge into one body again."

  I sat silently while I processed his words. He mentioned it briefly in passing the other day when talking about how the world got thrown into the dark ages.

  "What year was Ragnar born?" I asked no one in particular.

  "800 AD," Raum answered with a wistful smile. "He and his sons became everything I foresaw and more. After the Roman Empire fell, they held off the grip of the cross-bearers as best they could but without you, we just didn't have enough influence to rebel against them."

  I wracked my brain trying to recall history lectures in college. The Renaissance period didn't begin until the 1400s, when creativity, science, and rational thought became valued by the general public again. But even during that period, the grip of Christianity reached far. Galileo was accused of heresy and imprisoned by the church for his findings, despite being proven correct. And like Ash said, women served little purpose aside from breeding and domestic slavery. Hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent witches and ordinary humans alike were either burned or hanged for not conforming to the Church's doctrine.

  Only in recent centuries did few, spirited women fight back after hundreds of years of oppression. That must have been when the pieces of my soul began to converge, whispering ideas of rebellion to the brains of the bodies they inhabited. My first instinct was to refuse to be subservient to a man and they must have felt it.

  The ones who taught themselves to read and write. The ones who unashamedly demanded their own pleasure during sex. The ones who refused to be sold off like cattle to a loveless marriage. And the ones who happily killed their abusers and rapists. It was Lilith urging them to do it all along. And slowly but surely, I turned the tide before even becoming whole in this body again.

  I looked at Raum. "Will the angels do that to me again?"

  He hesitated, knowing I was asking if he saw it in a vision but I didn't give a fuck if that was his burden to bear. I could understand him not wanting to tell me about my mother but this? I needed to know.

  "I haven't seen it," he answered, bringing his hands together in a prayer position, ironically. "They probably won't attempt it again because they know we'd expect it. And Lucifer wouldn't hesitate to smite one of them again." He licked his lips. "However, my guess is they're counting on modern witches to do their dirty work for them now. I'm sure you've noticed their sentiment toward our kind."

  "Oh, really? I haven't." My voice, dripping with sarcasm, was punctuated by my massive eye roll. Sal and Ash both chuckled at my reaction.

  "Right." Raum's signature smirk returned. "Their resentment of us has run especially deep since the Salem witch trials. It seems many of them have even forgotten there's a touch of demon in all of them. Even though we've never done anything directly to hurt them. Only humans have done that."

  "You've never exactly done anything to help them either," I pointed out. "I don't think it's fair how they think of you now but I can see where the resentment comes from."

  "Now that you're back with us," Ash said, brushing my hand against his lips. "Maybe we can work on turning that around."

  "Maybe," I sighed. "It will take several lifetimes, though. Even the younger generation has bee
n fed anti-demon propaganda."

  "All of our work tends to do that," Raum teased, his eyes lighting up. "It's why we're still here, all these years later."

  "Rome wasn't built in a day," Sal chimed in with a kiss on my cheek. "I should know, I spent a good three lifetimes building the damn place."

  I giggled, nuzzling to kiss him back. "And look where that got you," I teased.

  Raum let out a throaty laugh from across the room. "I think our girl is back."

  "Agreed." Ash gave a rare, full grin that made my heart flutter. He looked so much like an angel when he smiled. "I'm happy you're feeling better, my love."

  The relief and relaxation on their faces made my heart want to burst. I swore it was from their love and concern that my headache was suddenly gone and I felt like myself again.

  "Me too," I said, leaning back into my pillows. "Now we can move forward and change the world again." And get to the bottom of finding my mother's murderer.

  "There may be one small holdup," Sal said after a moment of silence.

  We all turned to him expectantly. He chewed his lip and looked directly at Ash.

  "The witch who was teaching her. He saw me."

  "The fuck?" Ash went from grinning to scowling in a matter of seconds. "Why didn't you cloak with a shadow?"

  "He would've sensed my presence without needing to see my face, anyway," Sal shot back. "He's a shadow master, remember? Either way, he knows Deja is associated with our kind now." He looked at me with an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry, beautiful. I just panicked and had to help you when I saw you screaming. I didn't intend to blow your cover."

  "It's okay, lion," I assured him. "He read my shadows and saw I had three lovers, so he might have already known. It was bound to come out at some point." I kissed him deeply so he knew that I wasn't angry. "Whatever comes of this, we'll outsmart them. We always do."

  "That's definitely our girl," Raum grinned.

  11