by Laken Cane
“Jewel,” she cried, again.
She realized her face was wet with cold tears, and her heart twisted with grief—for the child Jewel no longer existed. Her departure had been so abrupt that to Abby, it was as though the girl had died and been replaced with a…
With a demon.
And that demon was powerful, more powerful than Abby.
She would be the one to defeat Acadia Desrochers.
She would be the one.
“You’ll kill her,” Abby said, not even caring that Jewel was reading her thoughts.
Jewel nodded. “Take my hand, Sister.”
It was for more than the transference that Jewel needed her hand. She needed Abby to see. Jewel wouldn’t defeat her mother alone.
But together, she and Abby would destroy the bitch.
The wind shifted, shrieked, and blew dust and debris like a tornado—only the tornado was inside her, and it was inside Jewel.
Sadie and Elmer howled and pressed against her legs.
She wanted to reassure them, but she could not.
When the spirit entered her, it was painful. Her body fought it though her mind tried to accept it. It was like trying to choke down a huge icicle that wanted to lodge in her throat, sliding with agonizing slowness down, down, down into her soul.
She could no longer speak. She couldn’t move.
If she could have, she would have screamed to break the spell because she was being broken. Shattered.
And she no longer remembered why she’d agreed to it.
Jewel had total control, though, and Abby could only stand there with her head thrown back, gagging and crying, fearing the torment would never end.
But it did end, finally.
Just that suddenly, it was over.
She sank to the ground, gasping, her fingers to her throat. She said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Jewel would already know how she felt.
She wrapped her arms around the hounds’ warm necks, and pressed her face into their trembling bodies.
And she began to recover. Thoughts of Eli seeped once more into her mind and heart, and at last, she climbed to her feet.
“Do you feel him in your head?” Jewel asked, returning her wand.
Abby nodded slowly and pushed the wand into her pocket. “It’s like a…it’s bewildering. Disorienting.”
Trace said nothing, but she could hear him there, sort of. He was as confused as she had been. More, perhaps. He was in shock.
“Go now,” Jewel said. “You are ready.”
“Don’t you have to tether yourself to me?” Abby was hesitant, now that the moment was upon her.
“I already did,” Jewel said. Then she stepped back. “Good luck, Sister.” Before Abby could say another word, Jewel turned and slipped away.
And Abby was alone.
No, not alone. Jewel was inside her head, sort of.
And Trace was in there…somewhere.
The hounds were at her heels.
And the alpha…he waited inside Waifwater Woods.
“Eli,” she yelled, and just like that, she was ready. She jogged toward the ripple, Sadie and Elmer running with her, Camilla’s straw weaving throughout her flowing hair, as though the broomstick were holding on for dear life.
“Keep us safe,” she whispered, and then she plunged through the undulating air.
There was a heartbeat of nothing.
She shattered. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but she could feel particles of herself swirling through the air, spinning, breaking…
Then she was frozen in a block of clay, unable to move, see, or feel anything at all. She just was. And eventually, she felt hot stickiness as unseen hands began to mold her, to manipulate her back into her woman shape, creating anew those things she carried with her. Her broomstick, her pack, her clothes.
Her.
When she came back to awareness she found herself on the ground, her muscles twitching, her head aching, her face wet with tears. She tried to get up, but fell back to the ground like a just birthed foal. “Sadie,” she cried. “Elmer. To me!” But her voice was little more than a croak, and her familiars did not come.
Her back felt bruised from where she’d fallen on Camilla, and it took three tries to get the broomstick out of the sheath on her back.
“Ouch! Goodness!” She was aware she was yelling like a little kid but couldn’t seem to stop. “Goodness!”
At last she calmed herself—somewhat—and used Camilla to help her struggle to her feet. “Sadie,” she called. “Elmer!”
Trace was gone. She didn’t know when he’d left, but she felt his absence. Maybe he’d find his body and return, but she wouldn’t be too surprised if she never saw him again.
She leaned on the broom and took stock of her surroundings, trying not to panic when the hounds didn’t come to her.
Woods surrounded her—Waifwater Woods—but if she hadn’t known she’d passed through the nearly invisible doorway, she might have thought she was still in the pocket. They were normal woods, trees, carpet of leaves and broken limbs and other debris, and from above, a blue sky hung serene and cloudless.
But those woods…they felt different.
She saw no animals, but she heard them; quick, scurrying sounds, occasional squeaks, the fluttering of wings.
She began walking, careful not to go too far, her stare on the ground as she searched for the thin, lanky bodies of her hounds. Running through that doorway had made her hysterical, sore, and afraid, and the effects of it lingered. She could only imagine how it had affected the dogs. Maybe she should have left them behind, but if by some chance Jewel was unable to bring her back, the dogs would have grieved until they died.
They could not be without her.
“Sadie,” she called, though the shadowy, eerie stillness of the woods made her want to keep silent. Made her want to hide.
Where was everyone? All the people who’d been shoved into the woods or had gone in of their own volition…where were they?
She didn’t want to put Sadie and Elmer through any more trauma, but she’d have to summon them to her by the force of her magic. They were tethered to her much as Jewel had tethered herself, and Abby had the power to force them to her side.
If they lay sick and broken or damaged, however, forcing them to her would hurt them—they’d come, whether their legs were broken or their heads had burst upon a rock as they’d landed. It wouldn’t matter. They would drag themselves to her like rotting, brainless zombies. All she had to do was will it.
She didn’t want to.
But what if they were simply lost? What if they’d gotten separated and were terrified, loping farther and farther away from her? What if someone—or something—found them before she did?
Oh no. No. She had to summon them.
She pulled her wand from her pocket, and holding Camilla with one hand and the wand with the other, she closed her eyes and began chanting under her breath.
It wasn’t so much the words that would call them, but the power behind the words.
She let that power build, gathered it to her, then finally, she flung it out into the woods on the rising wind.
The power clung to her, radiated from her, was her. And she felt the exact second it touched her hounds.
“To me,” she muttered, eyes still closed, and when the power lassoed the dogs, she began to pull them to her.
She felt the hounds, but she felt something else as well. In Waifwater Woods, her power was…more.
It was as though the woods had unleashed something inside her she hadn’t even realized she’d possessed, and with the boundaries gone, the power was free to roar through her. The moment she’d used her power to call Sadie and Elmer, it had sparked to life, and it had grown.
It continued to grow.
She stood still and let it overtake her. It encompassed her, swirling, coating her insides, teasing her mind, bathing her in pulsing, frantic rivers of energy and magic and life.
Power.
Ecstasy.
Her hands began to burn with pain that was at once excruciating and pleasurable, and she shot open her eyes.
She was caught in a tornado of power and could see nothing outside the chaotic circle that spun around her. Her hands were melded around the objects they held—broomstick in her left, wand in her right—and with an inexorable compulsion she could not control, she began to push her obedient wand and her broomstick together.
They were at once blistering hot and icy cold, and she shook with the agony of it, but still, she kept her fingers bent around the items and continued to push them together. The wand and the broomstick fought her, as though touching would mean their deaths…
And essentially, it did.
When she finally got them within a few inches of each other, they slammed together so hard the shockwaves traveled up her arms and through her entire body. Maybe through the entire world.
The obedient wand and the broomstick seemed to explode into droplets of blood larger than her hand; they hung in the air, motionless, for one brief second before gelling and then slapping into each other almost violently, reforming into something new.
A staff.
Finally, the tidal wave of power calmed. It drifted and swirled around her, caressing her, welcoming her, and her wand and broomstick weren’t the only things changed.
She was changed.
“Sorceressss,” someone whispered, but when the curtain of power faded and she could see again, no person was there.
Her familiars were there, though. They sat on their haunches and stared at her with dark eyes, studying her as she studied them.
When Sadie and Elmer had to protect her, their inner hellhounds were released—their eyes glowed red, their fangs elongated, their minds went dark. They became, in those moments, killers. They existed to protect her.
Once the danger passed they always settled back into their lovable, sweet, funny personas.
But Waifwater Woods had changed them, as well.
Their inner darkness was no longer inside them, waiting to be taken out when she needed their protection. Their inner darkness had exploded free, as hers had, perhaps, and now that darkness sat quietly watching her.
They were larger and sleeker and darker, but they were Sadie and Elmer. Just slightly…altered.
Just as she was.
Neither appeared harmed.
“Let’s go find our wolf,” she murmured, and with her newly formed staff firmly in her hand and her dogs beside her, she began to walk.
Chapter Eleven
The woods went on forever.
She began to hear different sounds the farther she walked—but one sound was unchanging. The raucous caw of crows.
At times she’d catch sight of one, huge and shaggy and dark, perched high on a leafless tree limb or racing through a darkening sky high above.
They seemed to be warning her away.
Where were the people? The souls who’d been lost to the woods over the years. Where was Eli Dean?
How vast were those woods?
She didn’t belong there. She could feel that knowledge like a weight pressing on her shoulders and a tight band around her skull. She did not belong there, and she needed to find Eli and get out as quickly as possible.
Before something terrible happened to keep her there.
Before something terrible happened to her dogs.
A black bear ambled by, fat and furry, snuffling as it walked. It looked at Abby and the hounds once, then shook its big head and walked on.
Neither Sadie nor Elmer paid it any mind.
They knew, as she did, that there were more worrisome things surrounding them that day. The woods seemed to watch, breathless and sinister, waiting for them to parse out the secrets of Waifwater Woods.
Or fall into its blackness.
She wanted to call for Eli, but she was too worried about who—or what—might hear her. She didn’t want to alert the darkness to her arrival.
As if it weren’t already aware.
She clenched her staff, feeling as though she should apologize to Camilla, but hoping that whatever consciousness the broom possessed was overjoyed at being made stronger.
She felt something running toward her before she saw it, and immediately leapt behind a huge, overgrown tree. The dogs pressed against her, then the three of them peered around to see what was coming.
It rushed into view, its tusks flashing silver in the forest light, grunting and snuffling roughly as it ran. It was the size of a small pony, its body glistening with open, running sores. The ripe smell of decaying flesh wafted toward her, and she slammed her hand over her nose, gagging.
It didn’t help. The scent permeated the area and seemed to seep into her pores.
Sadie and Elmer whined and stepped back, snorting.
One of the beast’s tusks had speared what appeared to be a battered hat—a western hat, she believed—and she spared a second to wonder about the cowboy on whose head that hat had surely rested before she ducked back behind the tree trunk.
Despite the tree, the tusked animal was heading right for her, as though it sensed her hiding there. Likely, it did.
She’d never seen—or smelled—anything like it in her life. Waifwater Woods held more than lost souls—it held monsters, as well.
She lifted her staff and stepped out from the meager protection of the tree to face it. Sadie and Elmer stood on either side of her, neither one of them flinching as the thing bore down on them.
“Stop,” she commanded, and though the beast seemed to hesitate, it glared at her with its small, piggy eyes and kept coming.
She muttered and gave her staff a quick shake, sending out a small spark of power—not enough to kill the monster but enough to stop it in its tracks.
Or so she’d believed.
But the beast didn’t falter.
She felt its hot breath before she panicked, leapt out of its path, and then sent another blast of power after the reeking animal.
The blast sent it into the air, squealing and kicking, then flung it against an enormous oak tree. She heard the crack of its skull before it fell to the ground.
She crept closer to the beast, her eyes wide, but before she could get too close, Sadie and Elmer leapt in front of her and began growling a low, familiar warning.
A warning that meant they weren’t the only ones in the area.
“That was impressive,” someone said, and a lanky, long-haired man stepped out into the open. “Mind if I get my hat?”
She nodded, and her hounds stayed put as the man walked to the silent, unmoving beast and retrieved his hat. He smacked it against the tree, stared at it ruefully, then planted it on his head with a sigh.
And then, before she could draw a breath, he pulled a blade from a sheath at his side and pressed it against the animal’s chest. He put his weight into it, grunting as he forced the knife to penetrate the beast’s thick, rancid skin. The unconscious creature jerked once and then moved no more.
Abby drew back, her hand to her chest. “Did you have to kill it?”
He lifted an eyebrow and studied her from beneath the brim of his hat. “You have one of these sonsofbitches at your mercy, you don’t want to leave it alive. It’ll track you until it kills you.”
“But you were chasing it.”
He shrugged. “Bastard stole my hat.”
He knelt to wipe his blade clean on the grass, and she and the hounds watched silently until he was finished. Finally he stood and slid it back into its sheath.
“What is that thing?” She pointed at the dead beast. “Some kind of giant boar?”
He narrowed his eyes—reminding her, for a second, of Eli—then took a slow step toward her. He stopped when Sadie gave a growl.
“Are they spirit dogs?” he asked. His voice was calm, his body loose, but…
Danger emanated from him.
She frowned, glancing at her hounds. “They’re coonhounds. My familiars.”
He stared at her.
“I’m not from here,” she told him. “I came through a—”
And despite Sadie and Elmer, the cowboy strode forward, only stopping when he was close enough to grab her shoulders.
The dogs quivered but didn’t attack—they’d only do that if she were in obvious danger or if she gave the command.
“Where did you come from?” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“From Waifwater,” she said, staring up at him.
“Through a portal?”
“I came through a door in a pocket,” she said.
“Show me.”
“Ouch,” she said, pulling out of his grip. “I don’t know where it is. A demon will call me back when it’s time. I can’t find my way home without her.”
He took a step back, snatched off his hat, then ran a hand over his head before clamping the hat firmly back into place. “It has to be the path,” he murmured. Then his gaze sharpened. “You’ll take me with you.”
She couldn’t take a strange man into the pocket. It would be too dangerous for Basilia and Jewel. For the pocket itself.
But she wasn’t telling him that. He appeared unstable and she didn’t want to have to put her hounds on him. Something about him tugged at her heart, just a little. He was a desperate man.
She understood desperation.
“I’m Abby,” she said. “Witch of Waifwater.”
The darkness in his eyes receded, just slightly. “And I’m in need of a ride home.”
She put a hand on his arm, suddenly understanding. “How long have you been lost in Waifwater Woods?”
“This place isn’t Waifwater Woods,” he told her. “It’s the edge of hell.”
She let it go. He could call it whatever he wanted. “How did you come to be here?” she asked.
He said nothing for a while. Finally, he shrugged, gave her a completely fake smile. “That’s a long story. I need to find my way back, and you need to help me with that.”
“Of course.”
Again, he narrowed his eyes. “That wasn’t entirely convincing.”
She could feel her face heat as she avoided his stare. “I’m here to find my alpha. Once that’s done, I’m going home. You may tag along.” Maybe he knew she was lying, but she couldn’t help that. She was not taking him back with her.
