Witch Hunt (The Hayle Coven Novels: Book Two)
Page 24
Pain was the only one who seemed subdued, but she’d been through a lot too. After all, she’d somehow managed to break through the very heavy shields holding back her magic and get in touch with Cesard during a séance I was sure wouldn’t amount to anything.
Alison caught me up on the drive over. “She’s been away too,” she said. “You know. Getting better.”
I couldn’t tell her or anyone else there was nothing wrong with our friend. Nothing that is that a little magic couldn’t cure. But I’d been forbidden to do anything about Pain or her problems so all I could do was nod.
“Is she okay?”
Alison shrugged. “She freaked out in class and they had to take her away in a straight jacket.” I’d been there. And though Alison was right about the freaking part, there wasn’t a straight jacket in sight. “Do you think she’s okay?”
And yet, when Blood told a joke, she laughed. When Simon dribbled hot marshmallow on his pants, she wiped it away. She was Pain. Though her blue eyes, when they met mine, seemed to know more than they did before.
Blood slid another stick of wood onto the flames, stirring sparks. I looked away, my heart in my throat. When the fire first blazed to life, I’d shuddered. I had the double whammy of almost being burned alive and the memory of the magician lighting up as the sun rose.
“You okay, Syd?” Alison held her stick out to the flames, seeming to have more fun turning her own marshmallow into a charred lump of black.
“Yeah,” I said, shuddering again, my mind going to the smell of kerosene and choking smoke, people in white robes sentencing me to death while Demitrius Strong smiled his cherub smile at me. All topped off by the vision of a head coming loose from the owner’s neck and bouncing into the fire at my feet. “Just… need another sweater. I’ll be right back.”
I retreated into the tent and collapsed on my sleeping bag.
There was a reason Mom grounded me, I figured. I just wasn’t ready to be around normal people yet. I could hear them laughing and talking, uncertain if I was in the right headspace to join them.
Oh, get it together, I snapped at myself. They are your friends. You’ve wanted friends for as long as you can remember and now you have them. Enjoy it, Syd. This won’t last forever.
My demon hummed her agreement. We both knew one of these times something catastrophic would happen and we’d have to move and that would be that.
I grabbed a sweater out of my bag and peeked outside. They looked so happy. So normal. The fire climbed from the middle of the circle they made, sending a glow from Pain’s piercings, shining on Simon’s glasses. I felt a surge of love and affection for them that trumped the mess in my mind.
They were my friends and I wanted to be with them.
I leaned back and dropped the flap, pulling the sweater on over my head. Time to get back to the life I wanted to live.
I heard a soft hiss behind me, a sound like fabric being cut, and turned to look. Before I could spin all the way around, something wet and stinky covered my mouth and nose. I tried to cry out, to fight, my demon struggling with me, but the drug went right to my mind and I spun down into black.
***
Everything seemed off. For one, it was dark. And the floor moved. I had a horrible taste in my mouth. Reality morphed in and out, muffled sounds turning sharp in a moment only to fade away again. I felt like I was under water, only to find myself falling before floating again. And somewhere, far in the distance, someone screamed at me.
What the hell happened?
My mind tried to piece it together. Flashes of memory came to me in the darkness. The party and Suzanne’s insanity fed by the evil spirit her blood raised. The attacks on the family by the same spirit. The vampire alliance and the séance with Pain. Brad’s birthday gift tied to his latent magic. The battle with Cesard, the demon and the vampire spirit he was bonded to. Around and around they went, swirling so fast my stomach clenched. I was going to be sick.
The screaming voice didn’t help. If she didn’t quit it soon, my head would explode.
I was supposed to be camping with my friends. As more reality returned, I remembered the sound of ripping tent fabric, the stink of something wet and cold pressed to my face. A thin slice of terror drove itself through my heart. I’d been kidnapped.
I reached for my magic. Nothing. I fumbled around the edges of it, unable to focus, the groggy fog bouncing me around far too much. Or was that something else? The bumps I felt… I was moving without going anywhere.
A car. Or a van. I had to be in the back. Now that I understood, I could hear the hiss of tires on pavement, feel the rocking of the vehicle beneath me. I tried to struggle, but even that simple physical act was still impossible beyond a feeble flapping of my hands. I poured everything I had into fighting and barely managed to shift my feet.
The voice’s screams turned to cursing fury. Who was that?
Someone hovered over me on the other side of the black. My eyelashes fluttered against resistance. Had to be a blindfold. Was that the screamer leaning close? No. Whoever it was, his voice went in and out like my ability to focus, his tone quite normal.
“… witch and she shall be…”
What? Who knew I was a witch? Was this some kind of coven joke? I must have grunted aloud because I felt fingers on my face and the dark went away. At least partially. My eyes registered three people, all in black. A van, definitely. A face entered my line of sight, cherub cheeks and clear blue eyes familiar. A fading bruise graced one side, taking up almost half of his face, coupled with a healing split lip. But his faint smile was so sweet I found myself smiling too.
“Welcome back, Sydlynn Hayle,” he said.
My mind clicked. Demitrius Strong. Leader of the Chosen of the Light. There was something wrong with him, with this. I shuddered from an image of fire and a group of people in white robes. His face swam a moment then returned to clarity.
The screaming voice never shut up. In that instant I realized two things. One, whoever yelled at me was inside my head. And two, this man planned to kill me.
I fought harder, but still without success. My struggles almost made it worse. The more I battled the fog and fuzziness of whatever he drugged me with, the deeper I spun into haze and the edges of oblivion.
“There is no use in fighting us any longer,” Demitrius said. “Now is the time for true judgment. We offered you release, salvation for your eternal soul, and you set a demon upon us. Now we see how truly evil you and your family have become.”
Inside my head, my demon stopped screaming and started listening.
“This time you will face eternal damnation,” he said so serenely it made my skin crawl even through the drug. “You will be bound for all time, never receiving the cleansing of the holy fire, your soul forever in suffering. You will be punished for your evil at last, Sydlynn, and no one will ever set you free of your torment.”
I forgot how insane he was. Or maybe I chose to. But staying under his power was not an option. I had no idea how he intended to trap me for all eternity, but I knew I wouldn’t like it.
I scrambled for my magic and still came up empty. I could feel the edges of it, but without the ability to focus I was a total mess. Maybe if I studied harder, learned more. Hadn’t wasted my entire life fighting my abilities and refusing to use my magic.
No time now for poor Syd. But, well. Poor Syd.
Let me out.
That was enough to jerk my whole body in reaction.
Let me OUT!
My demon. She clawed and fought and tore at my mind.
How? The fog. That was it. I only imagined my demon spoke to me. She was part of me. How could she talk? Still, I was out of it enough to ask.
She growled and howled in answer. It was really starting to hurt.
“Hurts.” I know that came out of my mouth because I heard it. And watched Demitrius bend over me with his sweet smile.
“Good,” he said. “I’m so glad.”
My demon slammed again
st the walls in my mind so hard I felt a cry torn from me. For one brief instant, everything was completely clear, but from outside myself. Like a bright snapshot just at the moment the flash goes off, I saw it all. Demitrius, his mouth a perfect ‘O’ of surprise, his two counterparts looking terrified. The inside of the plain white van, my own bound body. My mind immediately decided it was time to toss the sweatshirt I wore because it made my skin look sallow even while my demon ripped through my mind and took over.
I was instantly shunted aside, my mind still in fog. The rest of the scene unfolded as I struggled to fight off the effects of the drug. It was like playing a first person shooter where you don’t have control of the characters. I watched the rope around my wrists burst apart in amber flames before I flickered to black. The next instant I saw the two Chosen on the other side of the van lift suddenly from the bench and slam face first into the floor. I faded out again only to come to as Demitrius lunged for me. My demon slashed out with her power, amber energy pummeling him into the wall.
I was out longer this time because when reality came knocking I hung in mid-air, my body weightless as the van tipped sideways. Blissfully, I left that scene, had a moment of gray, then came back as my demon saved us from injury, using her power to cushion our fall. Something heavy impacted us, rolled over us. Demitrius snarled as he grasped for us but the haze called me and I missed the rest.
I was wet all of a sudden. My demon hauled us out the crumpled back door of the van. We were hip deep in very cold water. The current pulled against the legs of my jeans, would have made me stagger, but my demon never faltered.
I flickered out. When the real world returned one last time, we stood on the side of the road, looking down over a steep bank into a river. A white van lay at the bottom, half submerged in water, the still living headlights shining down to the bottom.
No one moved inside. For a heartbeat I felt terror, real terror. Had I killed them? Had she? I’d be just as guilty. She slammed me hard with her power.
They deserve what they get.
I didn’t have a chance to protest. The fog called me back and this time I felt her pushing me into it, driving me deeper and deeper until the darkness claimed me once and for all.
***
About the Author
Everything you need to know about me is in this one statement: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl, and now I’m doing it. How cool is that, being able to follow your dream and make it reality? I’ve tried everything from university to college, graduating the second with a journalism diploma (I sucked at telling real stories), was in an all-girl improv troupe for five glorious years (if you’ve never tried it, I highly recommend making things up as you go along as often as possible). I’ve even been in a Celtic girl band (some of our stuff is on YouTube!) and was an independent film maker. My life has been one creative thing after another—all leading me here, to writing books for a living.
Now with multiple series in happy publication, I live on beautiful and magical Prince Edward Island (I know you’ve heard of Anne of Green Gables) with my very patient husband and six massive cats.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Excerpt from Demon Child