by Ava Benton
She frowned. “Not a cult. Don’t make it out to be like that.”
“I’m not. You are. Just tell me who they are, and it won’t seem so flipping weird that you won’t come out and say it.”
“You’re going to have a tough time with it. I mean it sounds absolutely impossible.”
I rolled my eyes. “Once again. The impossible has found me. My possible/impossible line has blurred a lot today.”
“I guess so. I felt the same way when I first saw them.”
I was either going to explode or smack her. “Saw who, already?”
“Ladies.” Selene’s voice echoed through the cave and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. My hands clenched tighter than ever over Keira’s.
We stood, and I couldn’t help feeling guilty again. Like she had caught us at something. There was a motherly feeling about her—that had to be it. Anybody could see she was in charge of the witches, and that she kept them in line pretty efficiently.
To keep a bunch of powerful witches in line. How much more powerful did she have to be? It boggled the mind.
She was smiling warmly as she approached, walking across the big, open room. It wasn’t my imagination: the torches burned brighter with her there.
Iris, Hecate, Callie, and Electra followed her.
None of them looked at me—no, they were focused on Keira. What were they thinking about her? I wanted to stand in front of her, to protect her, but she didn’t need my protection. She was just as fierce as them, even if she couldn’t create magical fire or make cups of water appear out of thin air.
Didn’t they remind me of her when I first met them in the woods?
“You came here to find your friend, did you not?” Selene asked, coming to a stop just on the other side of the invisible wall.
“Yes, I did. Why did you take her captive? She did nothing to you.”
“She trespassed on the land we’ve shared with the clan for hundreds of years.” Selene’s gaze landed on me for just a second. “We mean no harm to the human, but she now knows entirely too much.”
“She knows nothing.”
“You expect us to believe you told her nothing?” Iris asked. She sounded ready to start a fight, as always.
“Iris, please.” Selene didn’t have to look her way to make the witch back down—though she wasn’t happy to do it, judging from the scowl on her otherwise beautiful face.
I felt like the ugly friend, standing in a room full of supermodels.
“She knows no more than what you’ve shared with her,” Keira insisted. “In fact, there is not much I could tell her, since there is so little I’m clear on. It’s all a mystery to me right now.”
Selene frowned. “They did not tell you who you are? I had expected them to do so.”
“I know who I am—I think,” she whispered, glancing at me from the corner of her eye. “I would like to keep my friend removed from this, if possible. Can we discuss it elsewhere?”
“Don’t even think about it.” I turned to her. “I’m in this now. You can’t keep me in the dark.”
“Em. You can still get out of this.”
“She cannot,” Selene disagreed. “She knows far too much, even without you sharing information with her. She has seen where we live, how we live. The very fact that a human knows we exist…”
“Wait a second, please.” I was having a hard time keeping up. “Why are you calling me a human, like I’m different from her?” I jerked a thumb toward Keira.
“Because she is not human,” Selene replied, like it made all the sense in the world. Like there was nothing crazy going on.
I looked to Keira for clarification, but she only shrugged.
“I didn’t know, either. It’s not like I was keeping a secret from you.”
She was right, after all. I was having a tough time believing her.
“There is more to it than you merely being one of us,” Selene told her, looking and sounding grave. “Much more.”
It was Keira’s turn to be surprised.
At least I wasn’t alone.
7
Alan
“We’ll split into three teams,” I announced, standing at the front of the room. “Team One, led by Dallas, will take the west side of the mountain and the loch. Team Two, led by Owen, will take the east side. I will lead Team Three along with Tamhas, and we will cover the south.”
I nodded to Ainsley, Leslie, Bonnie. “You three will take to the air and watch each team from above. At the first sight of danger or anything you believe we should be aware of, you will alert us.”
I touched two fingers to the earpiece already tucked into my ear. “We’ll stay in contact at all times. Keep the channel free of chatter.”
With that, we headed out, all of us dressed in clothing suited for hiking—boots, long-sleeved shirts, pants with pockets which carried water flasks, everything in dark colors. It would have been much easier to locate Keira if we could all fly, but none of us were of a mind to assist her while we were undressed and in our human forms.
“How much do you know about this Emelie?” I asked Tamhas as we entered the woods.
“Keira spoke of her quite a lot in the early days, while we still emailed. They’ve known each other since they were young children. Both of them were orphaned at a young age—though I suppose we know something of why Keira was,” he added.
A brief flash of guilt struck me. Yes. I knew of at least some of the reason why.
“They’ve been all but inseparable ever since. They passed in and out of the same group homes once or twice, attended the same school, kept in touch when the system separated them for one reason or another. They lived within walking distance in New York.”
“And Emelie supported herself through hacking?” There was no suppressing the distaste in my voice. I would never blame a woman for doing whatever it took to support herself, but her means of support had led to Keira finding our mountain.
And had brought Emelie to us, as well.
I could hardly be anything but disapproving.
“She’s quite talented at it,” Tamhas explained.
“I had guessed as much, seeing as how she found us when there was no end to the security measures in place to prevent such discovery.”
“Admit it. You feel a grudging sense of admiration toward her for being able to do it.”
“Do not speak for me.”
“She is the only person who had ever been able to track us in spite of the proxies in place—and it isn’t as though I’m the only one of the clan whoever sent an email or browsed on the internet. We might have been discovered at any point, but we were not.”
“She’s quite talented and intelligent. Your point has been well made,” I grumbled.
My dragon did not appreciate the fact that it was a woman who’d managed to best us. He did not adhere to anti-sexist thinking. A creature of ancient times.
“And a faithful friend,” Tamhas added, as though he had not already driven the point home. “She took quite a chance, coming out here to find her friend. She knows no one in Scotland. In fact, the impression I’ve received of the lass is that she is more than a bit anti-social. Her choice of occupation is not accidental. It allows her to work alone, away from the world.”
“I suppose we have that much in common, then,” I muttered. “Though we separate ourselves more by necessity than by choice.”
Dallas’s voice came through my earpiece. “Alan, come in.”
“Alan here.”
“We’re at the loch, planning to cover the banks before heading into the woods. All looks normal here.”
“And the same here, along the west face,” Owen reported.
None of this was a surprise. Keira would naturally go back to the place where she’d found Emelie’s bracelet, which would take her along a path heading south. Tamhas led the way to where the signs of struggle were spotted.
“Here,” he said, pointing to a clearing where one birch had fallen again
st another. “This is where the bracelet was, and as you can see, the leaves had all been brushed away as though someone slid through them.”
“Or crawled,” I murmured, turning in a slow circle to take in the scene. Not a pleasant image, but there was little else the scene before me brought to mind. Someone had taken Emelie by surprise. And she’d tried to get away.
“I doubt it was an animal,” I murmured to Tamhas as the rest of our team surveyed the area. “There would be blood.”
“This is true. And a bit of a relief.” Tamhas sniffed the air. “I pick up nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Nor do I,” I agreed.
Only the animal odors, bear dens far in the distance, faintly carried to my nostrils thanks to a breeze coming from the west. The bears were no threat to us, as there was a sort of understanding between our species. Even they understood the need to keep a wide berth while dealing with us.
“Footprints!” a voice cried out, turning our attention to where a trio of our kin stood. “Here. Three, perhaps four people.”
Sure enough, in the soft earth were prints made by flat-soled shoes. While I’d reminded myself time and again to keep an open mind, the memory of the flat-soled leather boots frequently worn by the Blood Moon Priestesses asserted itself.
It was them. They have interfered once again. My dragon had no interest in keeping an open mind, or in anything but exacting justice on those he perceived as threats. I was in agreement with him, no question, but rushing foolishly ahead would help no one.
We followed the prints as best we could, losing the trail at times but picking it up again. Mixed in with the flat footprints were those of a pair of hiking boots. “Keira,” Tamhas breathed.
“She was quicker at this than we were,” I had to admit before calling the other two teams in.
We waited for them to join us, with Tamhas chomping at the bit all the while. I understood his anxiousness to move on, but I wouldn’t face whatever it was we were about to meet before having the entire clan together.
With all of us in one place, including my sister Ainsley, Leslie, and Bonnie, we continued to follow the tracks left by what we could only assume were Priestesses.
“How long do you think they might have been living out here?” Bonnie asked no one in particular. “So close to us all this time.”
“Perhaps they only recently returned to the area,” Tamhas suggested.
“Yes, but to what purpose?” I could not trust the Priestesses, not for a moment. Not when they had betrayed us.
Not when they felt as though we had betrayed them.
“Their motivation might not have been nefarious,” Ainsley whispered. “You always believe the worst.”
Because I was aware of that which she had no knowledge of. If it meant shielding her from the truth, I would allow her to think the worst of me. Though I could not imagine coming face-to-face with any of them without the truth coming out.
The tracks ended in a small clearing. They simply vanished.
“No, no!” Tamhas snarled, looking this way and that. “It’s not possible. They cannot have disappeared. Keira could not have. They must have gone somewhere.”
Klaus joined him, and the pair continued their quest to pick up the trail.
Ainsley drew a deep breath, hands on her hips. We exchanged a concerned glance. There was no way Tamhas would ever give up searching for his mate, which was to be expected. Yet if the Priestesses were involved, there was no telling what we might have been up against.
“Hang on.” Bonnie took a few careful steps toward what appeared to be a vine-covered rock face. The ground was quite rocky where we had come to a stop, with random boulders appearing from time to time.
“What is it?” I asked, following her.
“Look.” She leaned in, close to the overlapping vines and branches. “There is something behind this. A cave.”
I did as she suggested, pulling a flashlight from one of my pants pockets as I did. When I shone the beam on the rock face, it ceased to be solid rock. It had never been solid at all. The branches and vines merely concealed the entrance to a cave.
I whistled for Tamhas and Klaus to join us, then showed them what Bonnie had discovered. With a finger to my lips, I gestured for the clan to come together and follow me.
“It can only be the Priestesses,” I whispered. “Only they would take such pains to conceal themselves.” With that in mind, I braced myself for what might await us.
We separated the camouflage, revealing the wide, deep tunnel which led to we knew not what.
It was time to once more meet with the Priestesses.
8
Emelie
I remembered something in the middle of my complete confusion.
“You said you found the one who is missing,” I said, looking at Selene but pointing to Keira. “Didn’t you? When she first arrived.”
She nodded. “I did. You are quite perceptive. I can understand how the two of you gravitated toward one another in the outside world. She is the heiress. That’s the correct word, I believe.”
“The heiress?” Keira asked. “Of what? A cave?”
“Keira,” I whispered, wincing.
She needed to back off a little—while I found it difficult to believe that she was one of them, since I had known her my entire life and would be the one to know something like that, there was only so far she could push them before they decided to zap her with a lightning bolt or something. Or so I imagined.
Iris’s eyes blazed icy fire. “How dare you insult us in such a manner?”
“Iris, please,” Selene murmured.
Seemed Iris would not be silenced. “It matters not that she is the last of our original bloodline. You would never allow one of us to speak this way to you. Why should she receive special dispensation?”
“You’ll need to slow down a bit.” Keira rose her voice to be heard over Iris’s protests and the attempts of the other witches to shut her up before all hell broke loose.
Selene didn’t move a muscle, but something told me she could turn on a dime and lay some serious smackdown.
Iris was practically begging for it.
“I did not intend for you to find out in this manner,” Selene explained, speaking slowly and deliberately, “but it is true. You are not only the last of the coven’s original bloodline, but you are the daughter of my daughter—who would have taken my place as High Priestess.”
I looked at my best friend, the girl I had known almost my entire life, who knew more about me than anybody else ever had. We had shared almost everything. Every fear, every dream. We had laughed ourselves sick together--once, she had even made me wet my pants, though she had sworn she’d never tell another soul.
And she never had.
I wasn’t seeing any of that as I looked at her, the two of us standing side-by-side in that insane cell. I saw a witch, like the others around us. How was I supposed to ever see the old Keira again?
“That’s impossible,” Keira whispered. She took a step back from the invisible wall, then another. “They told me you were all disbanded by now, that the coven didn’t even exist anymore.”
“They lied to you,” Selene replied. “Or, it’s quite possible that they simply did not know of the coven’s existence. The relationship we once had with them disintegrated not long after we discovered your expected birth.”
“No, no. That makes no sense, either. Alan said the rift occurred much earlier than that.”
“It is true, our relations had begun to fall apart long before—which was why the announcement that you were due to be born finally broke our connection to the clan irreparably. The fallout very nearly caused a war. Ever since then, we have missed your presence in our coven. Your absence, and that of my daughter, have disrupted the balance of our existence. Now, you’ve returned, and things might be set to rights.”
“Wait, please!” I clapped my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to hear this! I don’t understand it, and I don’t want to
know about it. If this is who you are,” I said, looking to Keira, “fine. Whatever. But it has nothing to do with me! I just want to go home!”
It was like being in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. Everything had turned on its head. My best friend was a witch, her mother had been a High Priestess, and now there was talk of a clan, and a war, and what the hell was going on?
Nobody cared about me. Nobody cared that I was there. I was nothing more than an accidental arrival, someone to lure Keira to the witches who considered her their heiress. I had served my purpose, but they weren’t about to allow me to leave after hearing all of this.
The more I heard, the less likely it was that I’d ever be free again.
Tears filled Keira’s eyes as she turned to me, hands closing over my wrists. “Em, it’ll be okay. I don’t want you to ever be hurt. Nobody here will hurt you, I swear. I’ll never let that happen.”
“How do I know?” I whispered as I let her lower my hands. There was no sense in fighting, since she was a witch and everything. How was I supposed to know she wouldn’t use her witchy powers on me?
“It’s still me, you know. I’m still me. I’m still your friend.” Her eyes searching mine. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“This is unimportant at the moment, and something the two of you can settle later,” Selene announced.
I turned to her, and just like that my tears were nothing but a memory. “I’ve had about enough of you,” I spat. What did it matter that she was powerful and could probably shut me up permanently with a wave of her hand? I almost wished she would, since there was nobody left in my life. I had no one left.
Her sapphire eyes widened. “Pardon me?”
“I thought you could read thoughts, right? Why do you need to ask me what I said?”
“All right,” Iris snarled, taking a step toward the cell. “You might ask me to hold my tongue toward one of our own, but I will not allow a pathetic human to speak to you this way.”
Keira stepped in front of me. “You’ll have to go through me—and in case you forgot, it took four of you to drag me in here.”
