“I don’t need to tell you what might have happened, do I?”
Maia shook her head vehemently, and I smiled grimly. “Good.”
Lacey burst out of the bathroom, freshly washed and dressed and ready to go. Maia ran over to her and wrapped her in a tight hug and I felt the knot in my stomach loosen just a little.
“What’s the matter?” Lacey laughed, patting Maia’s back nervously.
“It’s nothing. I’m just... I’m glad you’re here,” Maia said. She smiled, but I could see that it was an awkward sort of smile, and I wondered what she was really thinking.
* * *
We walked through the hotel lobby together, and I knew that Maia was looking at each of the people milling around, searching for any telltale signs that they were Malleus. But I knew there were none here. They’d left before we came downstairs. I don’t know how I knew, but I was sure of it.
The setting sun hadn’t dimmed much of the heat that radiated from the streets, but the temperature was more comfortable. Lacey seemed to be perkier than usual, and she skipped ahead of me, arm in arm with Maia as they headed in the direction of the house we’d found only a few hours ago.
Maia might not have been able to get a handle on her powers, but she was good with directions and she remembered every twist and turn, every side street, and every other detail of the route we’d taken.
The familiar itching burn of my witchmark alerted me to the fact that we were close, and my headache began to pound in my temples again. We’re coming.
“You want me to go in there?” Lacey asked, making a face. “It smells like dead rats in there.”
“Oh god... does it really?” Maia was looking for any reason not to go inside. But I wasn’t about to let that happen.
“At least they’re dead rats,” I said through gritted teeth. “We’re going in. Come on.” I pulled at the door, making enough of an opening for Lacey to scramble through. Maia hesitated, and then ducked into the darkened entryway. I looked quickly over my shoulder, making sure that none of the nosey neighbors were watching, and then I followed. I knew that the Malleus would find us eventually. If this was where their orders were coming from, the place would be crawling with them in no time.
There was no way that this was going to go well, we had to hurry.
It was dark and musty in the entryway, and there was a metallic clang as Maia tripped over something.
“I can’t see anything,” she said, kicking the metal object away in the dark. It clattered against the fallen timbers I’d seen earlier and hit one of the peeling plaster walls. “Do we have flashlights?”
“Shut up,” I whispered. I pushed my magic forward, allowing the purple flame to envelop my hand. The cold fire cast a violet glow over the room.
“Oh,” Maia said, I watched as she closed her eyes and felt her magic shift as a pale blue flame rippled over her left hand.
Lacey could see everything, and she picked her way through the debris of the ruined living room and hallway. A set of stairs opened in front of us, leading to the second floor. Several of the stairs had collapsed, and it looked dangerous, but I knew we had to go up there.
“Ugh, don’t come in here... I found the dead rats,” Lacey said, her voice echoing around us. Oil paintings, covered in years of dust and grime hung askew or had fallen from the wall, chunks of plaster and wood had fallen away to reveal the skeletal frame of the inner rooms of the house. It looked as though no one had lived here for years.
Crockery and china was smashed on the floor in front of a giant wooden cabinet, and my boots crunched through the carnage as I made my way to the stairs.
“Are we really going up there?” Maia asked, her voice trembling just a little.
“I’m going upstairs. You can stay with Lacey if you want, but I’m going up.” I set my boot on the first stair, taking a deep breath before putting my weight on it. One at a time.
The railing shuddered under my hand as I made my way up the stairs, and I paused at the landing, turning to see that Maia was making her way gingerly up the stairs behind me. She was braver than she thought she was. That was a good thing.
I climbed higher, stepping over another broken stair, and I swallowed hard as I dodged the body of the biggest rat I’d ever seen. It was mummified, desiccated and twisted by the heat, its teeth bared in a terrifying death grimace. Maia’s thin gasp of horror told me that she’d avoided stepping on it just in time.
As I reached the top of the stairs, a jolt ran through me, a familiarly painful tug on my spine... the same feeling as the night I’d met Maia. It couldn’t be.
Maia stepped on to the landing behind me, and I heard her suck in a sharp breath of the stale air. “Did you feel that?” she asked. “It feels like my ribs are about to crack open...”
“This way,” I said grimly, turning down a hallway that was hung with rotting tapestries, half fallen to the uneven wooden floor. In front of a huge pair of ornately carved doors was a massive hole, likely where the timbers that had fallen into the living room had come from. I peered down in to the room below, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lacey. I could hear her moving around, but I couldn’t see her.
Maia dodged the hole and pushed at one of the doors. She was as eager as I was to discover what was hidden inside this house. My wild hope that it would be nothing at all had disappeared as soon as I’d set foot on the staircase.
The door creaked loudly, and Maia pushed harder against the ancient hinges, forcing them to move. I could feel her using her power to help her push, and the flames that encased her left hand dimmed just a little as she used her magic.
Suddenly, with an angry screech, the door gave way, slamming into the wall and throwing Maia off balance. I leapt over the hole in the floor, trying to catch her before she fell, but her momentum carried us both to the dusty floor.
We lay in a heap for a moment, Maia moaned, untangling her legs from mine and trying to get to her feet.
The room was dark, and in the center was a massive bed covered with a canopy of what would have been at one time an opulent gold material, but now it was dark and covered with years of grime. Books, stacked in piles taller than I was flanked the bed. Books that hadn’t been touched in years. A scratching noise filled my ears and my headache surged forward again causing me to sway just a little on my feet.
Maia pulled me to my feet, and with a shaking hand, she pointed at the bed. As my eyes adjusted to the light thrown by our magic, I saw her.
In the center of the bed, draped in lengths of rotting brocade was a hunched figure. Her long white hair cascaded down her shoulders and pooled around her on the bed. Her fingers were stained black and she wrote with a feathered quill, the nib scratching over the paper of the book she wrote in endlessly.
“Mis hijas perdidas...”
My lost Daughters.
The crone’s voice was soft and dark, like burned paper curling in the flames of a forgotten fire. “He estado esperando...”
Chapter 19 ~ Maia
The smell was overwhelming, and I was trying my best not to choke. Jasmine, the rotting fabric, and the dust... it was all too much. The old woman in the middle of that massive bed just kept on writing. She didn’t look up, and she didn’t smile, she just kept writing. I didn’t understand a word that she’d said, but Ophelia stepped closer, pulling her elbow out of my grip.
“You’ve been waiting?” she asked.
“Yes,” the old woman said, and her voice was smooth and dark. “I have been looking for you, my lost Daughters.”
“Lost? We weren’t lost. We were doing just fine in New York, we didn’t know anyone was looking for us.” Ophelia sounded confused, but she was curious.
Curiosity killed the cat.
“Ophelia... we should go. We should get Lacey and go,” I said quietly, hoping that the old woman wouldn’t hear me.
“Where will you go, preciosa? Back to America? Hiding and staying out of sight?”
“How did you—“
“I know much more than you think, Ophelia Turner... I know all about you. But you, Maia Hickson.” She gestured at me with her quill and I felt a shiver run up my spine. “You are unknown to me... who was your mother?”
“It doesn’t matter, she’s dead,” I said flatly.
The woman shrugged and returned to her writing. Ophelia took another step closer to the bed, holding up her hand to cast more of her violet light over the strange woman on the bed.
“Urraca de Leon?” she asked quietly. “We’ve been looking for you, we believe—“
“Doña Urraca de Leon was my mother. She died over nine hundred years ago, burned to death by her own people.” The woman’s voice was calm, but full of anger. “They hated her because she would not be ruled by her husband... they called her bruja and set fire to her palace, leaving her to die. I was an infant. Ripped from my mother’s arms and taken away by a servant. She delivered me to my aunt. I am Magdalena de Leon Abellan. She raised me to be a proud Daughter of Blessed Hecate.”
That name. Oh, shit. Shit. Shit.
“You’ve lived so long,” Ophelia whispered, and I tried desperately to do the math in my head. Nine hundred years... impossible.
“Ophelia... we have to go. Please, we have to go.”
The woman on the bed set down her quill and closed her book carefully, and the ancient leather creaked in protest.
“No, no. You cannot leave. You must stay here with me, preciosa. You will both stay with me. I will teach you, train you. You are both so alone, so frightened. I will help you. Great Hecate speaks to me, oh yes, I have heard her voice since I was a girl. She has told me many things...”
Magdalena de Leon Alleban set the book she’d been writing in atop the pile next to her on the bed and turned her black, black eyes on me. The purple light from the fire in Ophelia’s hand glittered in the old woman’s gaze, and I felt a thick cloak of dread falling over my shoulders. The heat in the room was suddenly overpowering and the room tilted just a little.
Ophelia wasn’t listening to me, she was standing almost close enough to touch the ancient witch.
“You’ll teach us?” she asked quietly, and I could feel Ophelia’s sorrow, her pain at being alone for so many years. My heart ached for her. It would be so wonderful to have a guide... someone older, wiser, someone able to reveal all the secrets of our magic.
The old woman reached out, a small red flame flaring to life in her palm. Ophelia stepped closer and took her hand, the purple flames crawling across her fingers to snake up the old woman’s arm. As the red and purple flames twined together something inside me snapped tight, like a rubber band.
“Lacey!” I shouted, turning to run out of the room and down the hall, but as I turned, I was overcome by a coughing fit... that same cloying smoke that had affected me so harshly in the train car was in my nose, invading my lungs, smothering me. In the doorway stood three men dressed in black.
Malleus. They’d found me. Found us.
* * *
Coughing and spluttering, I crashed to the floor on my knees in front of them. I gasped for air, but found only smoke and ash. It coated my tongue and stung my eyes, but Ophelia didn’t do anything. She was standing by the bed, smiling down at the old woman, letting the red flames of the crone’s magic wind up her arm and tangle in her hair.
“Tomarla,” the old woman said, not to me or Ophelia, but to the Malleus, and they moved forward to pluck me off the floor. I kicked weakly, trying to keep them away, but they were too fast and too strong, and I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see through my desperate tears.
“Ophelia!” I choked out, but she didn’t turn, and I watched in terror as the red smoke that was curling around Ophelia’s throat tightened. She smiled and opened her mouth, and the red smoke poured inside, as though she were inhaling it in deep breaths.
“No,” I coughed again. I was getting light-headed from lack of oxygen and my throat was raw from coughing. The room spun and I sagged between the two goons that held me.
“Do not be frightened, hija. I have been searching for you for a long time... three hundred years. I thought you had escaped me, but now you have come to me freely. For nine lifetimes I have devoted myself to the service of mighty Hecate... but nine lifetimes is not enough to understand everything that we have been given” The old woman was speaking quietly, conversationally, as though Ophelia had asked her a question.
“I have lived more lives than I should have because of my devotion to her, each Daughter I take, each Daughter who has wasted her gifts... they pass to me. You have wasted your gifts, Ophelia Turner, and now they will be mine to use in service to the Goddess. She will reward me and bless me for my efforts on her behalf.”
I squirmed in the Malleus’ grip, trying to twist free, but I was too weak and they were so strong.
“Ophelia!” I tried to shout her name, but it came out strangled and quiet. The room blurred in front of my eyes as I coughed again. The witch on the bed gestured vaguely at the men holding me, and they dragged me forward.
I would be next.
She would drain my powers... but I’d only just found them. No. No, I wouldn’t let her take them from me. I couldn’t. I struggled again, kicking wildly and hoping that my boots would connect with something other than air.
I was thrown to the dusty floor, knocking over a pile of dust-covered books. A heavy boot, planted in the middle of my back held me down, my face pressed into the corner of a thick leather bound book.
I gasped for breath, trying to roll away, but the boot ground down harder. “Don’t move bruja, Doña Magdalena will be with you soon.”
The red glow from the crone’s magic illuminated the floor and I struggled harder as the boot pressed down. I heard something in my back crack and I cried out in pain.
All at once, the foot on my back was gone, the pain and the pressure disappeared. I gasped in a lungful of air, the smoke and ash had cleared and I could breath again. I rolled over onto my back, coughing as the fresh air hit my lungs.
I heard a guttural growl, and I sat up straight, scrambling back, away from the sound. I crashed into the foot of the bed, hitting my head against the ornate wooden carvings. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to clear them of the tears that had blurred everything.
As my vision cleared and the room stopped spinning I saw Lacey, crouched over the bodies of the Malleus, she was breathing hard and gore dripped from her hands and face. My mouth dropped open in shock as she dove on one of the bodies, ripping at the throat of the fallen man.
My stomach churned and I turned my face away, trying to ignore the wet, ripping sounds that accompanied Lacey’s feeding. I wrapped my hand over the edge of the bedframe, using it to pull myself up to my knees. The ancient witch was holding Ophelia suspended in the air, the red smoke of her magic coiling around Ophelia’s body like red snakes.
“Ophelia! Let her down! Put her the fuck down, now!”
Doña Magdalena de Leon Alleban didn’t even look in my direction, and that pissed me off. I might be new at this witch thing, but I had just as much power as Ophelia did, I just didn’t really know how to use it... but I wasn’t going to let that stand in my way. I stood up and held my hand out, trying to concentrate on pushing all of my power at that awful old woman on the bed.
“Piensa otra vez, preciosa…” she said, her voice piercing my ears and making me stumble.
“No!” I shouted, closing my eyes tightly. Something roared inside my head, like the rushing of water, a great wave crashing on the shore. And then all at once, everything went blue. Blue light flashed behind my eyes and I felt my magic swirling and churning inside me. It surged forward, making me stumble, and I opened my eyes, wincing as the sound grew even louder, and then I realized that it wasn’t rushing water that I was hearing, it was flames.
The old woman’s bed was engulfed in blue flames, they rippled up the curtains, and through the ancient books. My fingers sparked with blue fire, the tendrils of flame twining up my arms and around my face. The
fire that touched me was cool, but the flames that ripped across the old woman’s bed were hotter than anything I’d ever felt, and I stumbled backwards, covering my face with my arms as the fire surged upward, fed by centuries of dust and dirt, the rotted fabric feeding the flames and pushing them higher.
The red smoke of the witch’s magic uncoiled itself from around Ophelia’s throat. She slumped to the floor, knocking over another pile of books as she fell.
“Ophelia!” Lacey ran forward, dragging her friend away from the blaze. “We have to get out of here!” The blue light turned Lacey’s face into a ghoulish mask, the blood on her face and dripping from her chin was inky black and I recoiled in horror as she reached for me.
On the bed, Magdalena de Leon Alleban began to scream, her voice echoed in the chamber and I covered my ears as her voice reverberated in my head. She grabbed for the books on her bed with desperate hands, and without thinking, I ran forward, grabbing the one she had been writing in when we had entered the room. Doña Magdalena’s hand, her nails sharp and stained with ink, scratched at my arms, the nails digging into my flesh. I screamed in pain and Lurched backwards, falling away from the bed as the pale blue flames roared higher.
I heavy hand fell on the back of my neck, pulling me away from the blaze. “We have to get out of here!”
Lacey. I held the book tightly to my chest and scrambled to my feet. Everything hurt. Everything was burning. The old woman on the bed was engulfed in flames, and her scream vibrated through every fiber of my body. It shattered windows and shook the floor as we ran. Lacey tugged Ophelia with her, jumping over the hole in the floor and pulling her down the stairs.
As we ran, I set fire to the shredded wallpaper, the rotted tapestries in the hallway, the oil paintings on the walls. The house was an inferno of pale blue flame by the time we stumbled through the entryway and squeezed ourselves through the broken front door and into the street.
Moonlight Burns: (Urban Fantasy) (Daughters of Hecate Book 2) Page 18
