Mark of the Witch

by Maggie Shayne

  I wanted to change the subject—because really, no matter what was happening to me, it wasn’t that big. It couldn’t be. I was just…me. Not some soldier in a war between God and the Devil or whoever. “I never had breakfast this morning,” I said. Damn, my voice had this funny little tremor underneath it. “And I’m starved.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  She was afraid, Tomas thought. Scared to death of the horrors he was likely to reveal to her if they kept on talking, and putting off that moment of revelation for as long as she possibly could.

  She’s arguing for the demon’s side, and probably trying to ensorcell you while she’s at it.

  That was not his own inner voice. That was Dom, lecturing him on the powers of the witch. And while he might have changed his mind about disbelieving the rest of this, he was standing firm on that.

  Food was an agreeable distraction, and when he located an IHOP about an hour later and pulled in, he knew by the look of rapture in her eyes that she hadn’t only been making excuses to end the conversation. She was, by all appearances, ravenous.

  And beautiful.

  Difficult for him to believe she was one of the three witches whose souls were allegedly bound to a demon. And that was only a small part of what was unbelievable about all of this.

  Dom had warned him repeatedly these chosen witches were cagey and clever, and might or might not be aware of their mission, but that he must always presume they were and guard against their tricks. They were powerful women, all three of them. They would sense a man’s weakness and use it against him.

  Tomas had rolled his eyes at the notion. He’d never thought he had any real weaknesses. Oh, he didn’t believe himself perfect by a long shot, but he didn’t think he had any particularly lethal vulnerabilities.

  Now, though, even that belief was being challenged. Because he was attracted to this woman. Sexually attracted. And while he was still a man, a fully functioning one, he hadn’t experienced this level of temptation since—well…ever. It was growing stronger with every second he spent in her company, and they were going to be together—alone together—for the next week or so.

  Was it a spell? Was she, as Father Dom had warned, perfectly aware of her bond with the demon, ready and willing to help him, and using her wiles to enchant and bewitch the priest sent to stop her?

  Or was she as innocent as she seemed?

  He didn’t suppose it mattered, honestly. He had to resist her, had to stop her, and how much she knew or didn’t know was irrelevant. Moreover, he had to convince her that her mission, her calling and her key to salvation from the torments afflicting her, were all one and the same: to help him stop the demon from crossing the Portal. When in truth, he was pretty sure her true mission was just the opposite.

  The three witches were foretold to be the demon’s consorts. They were supposed to help him escape the Portal. But they were also the only ones with the power to stop him.

  He supposed he would have to tell her that part of it at some point.

  “I’m going to have an omelet,” she said as they got out of the car. “A big fat three-egg omelet with a half pound of cheese and ham and mushrooms and—no, wait.” She held up a hand, apparently deep in thought. As if the choice was one of the most important of her life. Then she snapped her fingers. “Belgian waffles, with butter melting down the sides and all that whipped cream piled on top, and fruit, and maybe sausage on the side.”

  She was walking as she was talking, absently rubbing her upper arm. He wondered about that as he held the door open for her and she stepped inside, inhaled, then closed her eyes as if smelling the sweetest perfume. “Coffee,” she muttered. “Hail the Goddess Caffeinna.”

  “That’s sort of blasphemous, you know.” He was only teasing. He was starting to enjoy her use of sarcasm-laced humor to deflect the things she called scary, even beginning to return it in kind.

  “Oh, please, not to the Holy of Holies, Divine Creatrix of the sacred coffee bean.” Her attention switched, quick as a heartbeat, to the hostess who’d just appeared to greet them. “Two for breakfast, and a vat of high-test, please. Death to decaf!”

  The hostess smiled at her enthusiasm and led the way to a booth.

  Indira rubbed her arm again, only this time she pulled her hand away quickly, as if the arm was sore to the touch. Frowning, Tomas looked at her. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” She dropped her hands to her sides.

  He wished he could see her arm better, but she’d donned a brown leather jacket with a fake fur collar that looked as if it ought to have a matching helmet and goggles to go with it. Beneath that, she wore a T-shirt that came just to the low-slung top of her skin-tight jeans, so he caught glimpses of bare midriff every time she moved. The jeans were tucked inside a pair of cowgirl-style boots, brown, with stitching and embossing in swirls, loops and flowers, and impossibly high heels.

  She looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of some urban style guide. Her T-shirt read Born Again Pagan, and had a triple moon logo that glittered when the light hit it at the right angle. She wore a pentacle, a different one, suspended from a thin silver chain, its star formed in the shape of a gleaming spider’s web, with the spider in the center. Its body was a moonstone, its eyes tiny bits of ruby, its legs made of black tourmaline. She had earrings that matched, each with a tiny pentacle web at the earlobe and a thin chain dangling with the spider at the end of it. Same gemstones. Same size.

  She might as well have worn a flashing neon sign proclaiming herself a witch. It wasn’t a habit he’d noticed in her before, and it sort of belied her claim that she’d become an atheist. Maybe she just felt safer, wearing the symbols of her former faith.

  The looks they were getting as they sat at their booth, she in her pentacles, he in his collar, were almost funny. A priest and a witch, having breakfast together. Indira ended up devouring a stack of Belgian waffles and an omelet, washing every other bite down with creamy coffee, and claiming she would quit caffeine again when life returned to normal. He only picked at his own pancakes.

  He was too tense to eat, and not only because she was proving to be the biggest test his faith had ever undergone.

  Of course, he’d been in a crisis of faith for a while now. And all of this was making him wonder if he’d made the right decision. Because if this was real, after all—if Dom’s obsession turned out to be true…

  But this wasn’t the time to ponder those things. That would come later.

  Right now, he was about to face a demon. Maybe the devil himself. With a witch as his only ally, a witch who didn’t know—or did she?—that she was that demon’s friend. Either way, that alliance made her Tomas’s enemy.

  It seemed unnecessarily risky to take her so near the Portal, since allegedly the demon couldn’t pass through without her help. But Dom said it was worth the risk. That she had to be there to help Tomas destroy the demon for good.

  He’d trained for this, he’d studied, he knew what had to be done, but that was all back when he thought the whole thing was just an old man’s crazy fantasy. But now it was here, real and present. And complicating things further, in all his thoughts on this very topic, he had never counted on liking the woman.

  He looked up at her. Sipping her coffee, eyes closed, thick lashes resting on those high-boned cheeks, skin like a ripe peach. He was drawn to her and felt an unbelievable urge to touch her at every opportunity.

  She burped, interrupting his thoughts. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes went huge. “Well, that was polite,” she said. “Excuse me.” Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, her smile self-deprecating.

  She was charming the socks off him, he thought.

  He glanced at her plate. Empty. She ran her forefinger through the syrup on the edge and popped it into her mouth, and he clenched his jaw to keep from groaning out loud. “God, that was good,” she said.

  “Glad you enjoyed it.”

  “You eat like a bird, Father
Tomas.”

  “Not normally. Got a lot on my mind.”

  “Ow!” She gripped her arm again, then frowned and lowered her hand.

  “Are you going to let me take a look at that?”

  “There’s nothing to look at.”

  He tipped his head to one side. “Clearly, it hurts. You keep grabbing it, then quickly letting go.”

  “And just as quickly putting it out of my mind. It only hurts if I think about it, so I wish you’d stop reminding me.”

  “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” He picked up the check their waitress had dropped, and rose from his seat. “Are you ready?”

  The bubbly mood she’d been emanating seemed to burst. Back to reality, he thought. She really was dreading what lay ahead. “Yes. All ready.” She got up, too, snatching her mug off the table and taking one last gulp before hurrying to the counter with him. She tugged on his sleeve and said, “Restroom” in a stage whisper. He nodded and tried not to watch her as she walked away.

  * * *

  The restroom was deserted. Perfect. I needed privacy, big-time. ’Cause something was going on with my arm, despite my denials to Tomas.

  God he was good-looking. And funny. And interesting. So okay, he believed in demons and a fairy tale grimmer than anything the Grimm Brothers could have come up with. And he’s a priest. Don’t forget that minor detail. But no one was perfect.

  I pulled off my jacket, wincing as it peeled down over my right arm, then, turned my shoulder toward the big mirror.

  My blood rushed straight to my feet, leaving me so damn dizzy I almost fell over. My arm looked as if it had been hacked by a mini-madman with a tiny blade. Little cuts crisscrossed my flesh like a road map, and blood had run everywhere. The inside of my favorite jacket must be soaked in it. Ruined.

  Damn it all, Past Self, if you want me to bail on this whole harebrained road trip, you just keep fucking with me.

  I looked up at my own face in the mirror, but someone else was looking back at me. Not a pale-faced dirty blonde with a killer sense of style, but a copper-skinned woman with thick black hair hanging long and wavy, heavy brows in desperate need of tweezing, and black, black eyes.

  And behind her—no, behind me—stood another woman with similar coloring but a totally different face.

  Lilia.

  I ought to turn around, see if she’s really standing there. I really should.

  Too bad I was too scared to move.

  She stared at me in the mirror, then suddenly shouted, “Remember, Indira!”

  After jumping out of my skin, I yelled right back at her. “Remember what, for cryin’ out loud!”

  “I’ll make you remember!” I sort of heard her say inside my head. Then she lifted a big curved blade that glinted in the fluorescent restroom lights as she swung it down to carve me up some more.

  That was enough to end my paralysis. I spun around, screaming at the top of my lungs. But there was no one behind me.

  Before I could even sigh in relief, though, I heard the hissing sound of the invisible blade as it cut the air, and something slashed across my chest. I felt it slicing my flesh, saw the gaping cut opening up like a zipper, saw the blood flowing out of me as I sank to the floor in pain. In terror.

  5

  The door crashed open, and then Tomas was bending over me. “Indy. Indy, it’s all right. It’s all right. I’m here. I’ve got you.” His big hand cupped my head, lifting it slightly off the floor as the other one ran over my hair. Wait staff and a customer or two crowded in the doorway to see what was going on, though Tomas’s frame mostly blocked me from their view.

  Turning their way, he said, “Leave us for a moment, okay? She’s had an accident, and I want to get her cleaned up.”

  “I’ll call nine-one-one,” a waitress—our waitress, I realized—offered.

  “I don’t think it’s that bad. Let me check her over first, all right?”

  “Do you need any—”

  “We’re fine,” he barked in a tone I’d never heard him use before. But it did the trick. The onlookers backed out, and the door swung closed.

  Tomas quickly turned his attention back to me. He snatched handfuls of paper towels from the dispenser, soaked them beneath the tap and returned, patting my chest with the icy wet towels. The cold made me gasp and look down. My T-shirt was torn in two, laid open to reveal a long slash across my chest. The blade had sliced my bra dead center, and it gaped, exposing more of me than I liked. Both breasts, almost entirely bare, the bra’s lacy cups barely clinging to either side. My eyes shot back to his, but he was intent on patting the blood away from my chest.

  “It’s not deep, thank God.”

  I winced at every touch, though he was being gentle. He straightened and then lifted me up and sat me gently on the counter with all the sinks. I had to part my knees so he could get close enough to mop up the blood from my arms, and the feel of him standing there between them was so damn intimate that I noticed it, even amid all the pain and blood.

  And fear. I’d never felt so near death as I had when I’d seen that blade flashing down at me. Except in the dreams.

  “What happened?” he asked, stepping away long enough to soak a fresh handful of towels.

  “I—I—I…” Why the hell won’t my mouth work?

  His gaze snapped to mine, and instead of wiping away more of the blood, as I was expecting, he reached around me to lay the fresh batch on the back of my neck. I tipped my head forward, closed my eyes.

  “It’s all right now. I’m going to wash the rest of the blood away, okay? Are you ready?”

  “It hurts.” God, I sound like such a baby.

  “I know, Indy. I know. I’ll be careful.” He got the towels so wet they were dripping, and squeezed the cool water over the cuts on my arms. I covered my breasts with one arm while he took care of the other, and then switched sides. I tried not to look at the injuries but couldn’t stop the tears that burned past my tightly closed lids. Even the trickles of cold water hurt. Finally he tossed the wet towels aside and used his cupped hands to do the job.

  “You know how you were telling me the more you think about pain, the worse it is?”

  I nodded, the motions jerky, my eyes stinging.

  “Well, focusing on something good works even better. So I want you to try that for me. Think about something good, okay?”

  “I’ll try.” I thought for a minute, and then I almost smiled a little.

  “Got something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. You just keep focusing on that, all right? Whatever it is, just—”

  “It’s you,” I whispered.

  Tomas went very still. I lifted my head to meet his eyes.

  “You’re like some kind of superhero, you know that? The way you came busting in here, the way you’re trying to take care of me, like I’m the helpless female. Normally that would piss me off, but you do it in a way that doesn’t. And you’re cover-model gorgeous, too. So I…” I shrugged and let my voice trail off.

  He sighed and returned to rinsing away the blood.

  “I looked in the mirror, Tomas, and I wasn’t me. I was someone else. And there was this other woman standing behind me, yelling at me to remember, and then she was slashing me with a blade. Only she wasn’t there. No one was there, but it kept on cutting.” My voice broke, and I couldn’t speak anymore.

  Tomas caught my chin in his hands and nodded at my arm. “She wasn’t just cutting you. She was writing something. Look.”

  I was afraid to look, but I did it anyway. I turned slightly on the counter, checking out my arm in the big mirror behind me. The blood was mostly gone, and the new trickles seemed to have stopped, so the shapes of the cuts were evident. Symbols had been carved into my flesh, odd, ancient-looking symbols that I knew, somehow, were words, letters, writing of some kind. The cuts in my skin weren’t deep. They’d bled, and they’d hurt like hell, as if the blade had been hot. But the burning pain was already fading.

  �
�What does it say?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I have no idea.” Then he blinked. “They’re disappearing, they’re healing, just like the marks of the whip did.”

  “Wait,” I said, wondering if the other mark had returned, as well. I lifted my shirt in back, looking over my shoulder into the mirror. Sure enough, the tattoo was there, just like before, and fading fast.

  He patted his pockets in search of his phone but came up empty. “I left my cell in the car. We need to get photographs before they’re gone entirely. Do you—”

  I nodded at my gorgeous jacket, lying discarded on the floor, and he quickly picked it up, searching the pockets. He came up with my BlackBerry and fumbled around trying to find the camera function. By the time he did, and aimed it at my lower back, the marks had vanished, so he tried to capture the ones on my arms, but they’d faded to pale pink welts, crisscrossing my skin.

  He snapped a shot or two as I tried to hold the sliced edges of my T-shirt together to cover my boobs, then he gave up and shook his head. “Gone. As if they were never there.”

  “Wish the bloodstains inside my jacket would disappear that easily,” I muttered. “Bitch ruined my leather.”

  He bent and picked up the jacket, turned the sleeves inside out and easily tore the ruined lining out, then tossed it into the garbage. Using more wet paper towels, he wiped the remaining blood from the leather and then handed the jacket to me.

  I’d slid off the counter by then but was none too steady on my feet. And there was blood all over the floor.

  “I’m going to clean this place up,” he told me as I pulled the jacket on and zipped it up. “I want you to go to the car and wait for me. Let the staff know you’re all right, and that they’ll have their restroom back momentarily. Don’t answer any questions, just let them see that you’re fine. Okay?”

  I nodded, a little surprised by this take-charge, give-orders, lay-down-the-law side of him. I hadn’t seen it before.