Sorciére (Born of Shadows Book 2)
Page 31
A cold gray sky began to transform as Abby watched the first snow of the year. Fat white flakes grew into a sea of dazzling white beyond the windows. She stepped from the car and tilted her face into the snow. It started to fall harder, coating Abby's eyelashes and hair. Soon she could barely see the woods at the edge of the road.
A vicious shriek broke the wintry silence. Abby ducked, afraid that the winged monster circled the sky above her. She pushed away from the car and stumbled blindly through the storm. Gusts of snow hit her in waves, attempting to drive her back as she continued forward into the woods. She prayed for her inner knowing to guide her because her eyes surely could not.
In a thicket of pines she stopped and placed a hand on her belly. Something stirred deep in the center of her being. She sank to her knees and felt the fluttering in her womb. A sudden vicious wave of nausea coursed through her and she leaned over and vomited. She rested her back against a tree and closed her eyes.
****
The fire came all at once and from everywhere. The boulders that Oliver had lodged in the tunnels blew into the cavern. The crevices above them poured liquid fire, igniting the tower of bodies. The undead that still crawled through the underground lair began to wail in grotesque agony. Several Vepars fell from the tunnels overhead, their bodies twisted in the flames.
There was no time to think and barely time to act. Max threw a shield over Lydie and himself. Demetrius, Oliver, Elda, Faustine and Julian locked hands and created a bubble of earth and air and rain. Sebastian cowered in the center, astonished, as beyond the bubble, the fire ravaged everything. The witches fought the blaze with earth and water. Water spewed from the walls and roof of the cavern soaking the bodies and the earthen floor beneath them. Mixed with the soil, the water created a deluge of mud that dripped from the ceiling and flowed down the cavern's walls. Their bubble grew black with smoke and dirt and the slimy entrails of the bodies that fell from above. The air grew thinner in the bubble as the temperature climbed. Sebastian coughed and stuffed his face close to the earth.
Something rumbled inside of Sebastian and suddenly he couldn't stay within the bubble. He felt as though he might explode. He burst from their protective canopy. Pressing his hands against his ears, he began to wail. The sound pierced the air and grew so loud that it drowned out the raging fire. The ground began to shake and above them the earth split. Rocks and dirt and trees rained into the crevice as it opened to the sky. The snow, falling in waves, slowly muted the fire.
The circle of witches fell to the floor gasping. Oliver bled from his nose and ears. Elda's silver hair had been mostly singed away and patches of her scalp showed angry red welts. Faustine collapsed completely. Oliver rolled him over and felt for a pulse. It was there, but faint, and he barely breathed. Oliver adjusted his head and neck and started CPR. He pounded on his chest and blew breath into his mouth.
"Let me," Julian rasped, pushing Oliver out of the way. He pressed both palms against Faustine's chest. His body convulsed as if Julian had shocked him. He did it again and Faustine groaned. His eyes fluttered and then closed, but his chest began to rise and fall as he took in breath.
Lydie began to sob and Oliver, barely able to stand, lurched to her side. She crawled out from under Max whose head and back had blistered purple. He had died protecting her.
Slowly, they all turned and looked at Sebastian, whose screams had somehow ripped the earth in two.
Chapter Thirty-Six
They found Abby unconscious in the snow. In her hand, she held a familiar antique bottle. Sebastian remembered it from the Vepar's ritual--a bottle that held the blood of some ancient Vepar. They made their witch sacrifices drink it. It was empty. He pried it from her fingers and threw it into the woods. He lifted her and carried her to the car.
The witches trudged together through the forest. The tempest had calmed, but hid the earth in a layer of soft white. Elda and Faustine leaned heavily on one another, cringing against the harsh cold on their raw skin. Oliver carried Lydie whose silence scared them more than her cries. Julian and Demetrius carried Max's body.
Adora did not greet them in the trees and a bloody trail led ominously from the well, suggesting a violent end for the cautious witch. With each new discovery, the devastation grew. They found Galla in the car with both relief and sadness when they learned the fates of Thomas and Rod.
"They've become skin-walkers," Galla told them shuddering. "The Vepars can change forms..."
****
They did not return to Ula. Together, the seven witches and one human, traveled to the coven of Sorciére.
The Sorciére witches doted on the injured and grieving of Ula. They too mourned the loss of their beloved Thomas and, equally, the disappearance of Indra. Neither she or Dafne had been found and many of the witches feared that their corpses were merely two of dozens buried in the Vepar's charnel ground.
Abby and Sebastian occupied a single room in a sunny part of Sorciére's north tower. For their first three days at Sorciére, they spoke very little and then, one night after a wonderful dinner prepared by Bridget and Sorciére's Jacque,the flood gates finally opened. They talked, almost without pause, for two days. Sebastian told Abby about losing his memory, the woman, Isabelle, whose body he saw in the Vepar's lair, and his insane escape from Julian, Adora and Rod. Sebastian teared up at the mention of Rod's name, but they both agreed that Sydney had welcomed him into the after-life so that the two could continue their shenanigans for eternity. Abby described her quest for answers. She told Sebastian about Victor and his intentional witch community in Chicago and promised that Sebastian would meet them soon. Sebastian tried to describe what happened in the Vepar's dumping ground, but he found it impossible to reconstruct. He knew that Elda intended to help him investigate the power when they visited the concrete slabs of Ula.
Oliver spent every waking moment with Lydie who lapsed into long silences punctuated by clichés or total melt-downs. She slept in Oliver's room every night, curled at the foot of his bed. The Sorciére witches swarmed around her. They brought her sweets and performed exotic magic, turning parrots into bunnies and changing the color of Oliver's hair to a pink Mohawk and then long orange dreadlocks. She smiled when they paraded Andromeda's seventy-five cats through one of the banquet halls, but she rarely laughed. Sometimes she sat with Abby, and Sebastian told her stories about Claire. She seemed to relish the anecdotes from the young witch's life and perhaps relate them to her own.
Elda and Faustine were a single unit. They moved as a powerful entity and they talked incessantly about Ula's rebirth. Galla, Demetrius and the other Sorciére witches vowed to help in the rebuilding of their coven. Helena too was exhilarated at the thought of Ula's revival. However, her injuries left her weak and plagued by bouts of dizziness. Sorciére's healing witch, Yia, insisted that Helena would recover when her coven was whole again and that gave everyone additional motivation to see Ula rise from the ashes.
In the end, Abby and Sebastian decided that they would not return to Ula. Neither Abby or Sebastian could stomach the thought of living again within the repressive stone walls. Instead they would return monthly to discuss the curse. A time that would also allow Abby to continue her studies and training.
The witches of Ula gathered together in Sorciére's Chambre des Reves, or Room of Dreams, on their last night at the coven. The room's ceiling was enchanted into a twilight sky. One half of the dome ceiling revealed a glowing red sun disappearing into the horizon, but as their eyes drifted up, the sky merged into pinks and purples and finally blue with a tiny sliver of moon on the other half of the dome. The floor appeared to be a forest. However, the leaves and grass were thick soft carpeting and the stumps and giant flowers were pillows and bean bags. Holographic trees rose up in the center of the room, releasing vibrant lavender-colored flowers. Hummingbirds darted into imaginary rose bushes.
Oliver settled on an enormous daffodil and Lydie folded into his lap. Sebastian and Abby opted for a mushroom that squish
ed as they sank into it and they laughed, almost toppling out. Faustine, Helena and Elda all chose the carpeting beneath the falling leaves. Bridget stretched out on a long pillow log and watched the shooting stars overhead.
"We will meet four weeks from today?" Faustine asked, though it had already been decided. "And we will share all of the information that we have discovered about the curse and about this Kanti woman."
"And we will celebrate a new Ula as well. With a feast!" Bridget chirped. "We must not forget about the food."
"Never forget the food," Helena added, laughing.
"We need one of these rooms at Ula," Lydie sighed and Helena agreed.
"You can have anything you want," Elda said seriously. "We're creating a whole new world..."
Sebastian kissed the top of Abby's head and hugged her close. After all of the tragedy in his life, he suddenly felt hopeful again.
"Yes, four weeks from today," Abby chimed in. "But first we're going to buy a house."
Elda smiled and held her hand out for a darting hummingbird.
"Do you already have something in mind, Abby?" she asked.
None of the Ula witches argued when Abby and Sebastian insisted that they wanted to create a life beyond the coven. Oliver, however, looked crestfallen at the news.
"Yes and no," Abby replied. "We both love the Sleeping Bear Lake shore and we want to be near the water and the forests, so..."
"And Trager too," Helena added darkly. "Are you sure that you want to be near that city?"
"Yes," both Abby and Sebastian answered together.
"It's not the city that's evil, Helena," Oliver added in their defense. "It's the Vepars and I think they're pretty well cleared out for now."
All of them hung on the 'for now' because they knew that both Alva and Tobias had escaped the lair. Not only did they escape, but their new ability to transform into flying creatures of the night meant they were far more lethal than before.
"Do you think they have Dafne and Indra?" Lydie asked, reading their minds.
"If they do," Faustine told her, "we will rescue them. That is our first priority, dear, I promise." He placed his hand on his heart, but Lydie did not look convinced.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"I don't think we won," Lydie murmured, pulling Baboon into her lap and stroking his ears. He purred and nuzzled her fingertips.
"Why do you say that, Lyd Pie?" Oliver asked her. He was still sorting journals into dates and fighting the urge to eavesdrop on Sebastian and Abby in the kitchen.
Oliver and Lydie were staying with Abby and Sebastian in their new house for several weeks while Faustine, Elda and the witches of Sorciére cast new spells to protect Ula.
"Because I think Kanti, the spirit, won. I think she wanted some of us to die and some of us to live, maybe just to let us believe that we'd survived something."
Oliver paused and looked at Lydie, whose tiny body was nearly lost in the silver throw that she snuggled in. She looked old--not simply older, but old. Small lines flecked her mouth and the crease between her eyes held thoughts that he didn't want to consider in her young mind. Worse still, her words revealed some of his fears.
He considered reassuring her. He almost felt obligated to do so, but he knew that he would lose her if he followed the lead of the elder witches and continued to treat her like a child. He sat on the floor in front of her.
"I know what you mean, Lyds. I wish I didn't, but I do."
"So does Abby," she said. "I saw it in her eyes at Sorciére. It's not over and she knows it."
Again, Oliver marveled at how adult Lydie seemed, terrifyingly so.
"I know, but we have knowledge on our side now. Before we were all in the dark and that gave her an advantage. This time..." he pointed at the boxes of journals, "...we're going to do our research and we'll be ready, not to mention Victor and his crew will join us for our monthly meetings at Ula."
"The Chicago witches?"
"Yes, and you're going to love them, I promise. They're pretty unconventional and that's exactly what Ula needs."
Lydie glanced at the windows facing the lake. The blue sky was marred by distant dark clouds moving in.
****
"I love this house so much," Abby told Sebastian for the hundredth time, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. They had signed the contract the week before and Abby could barely contain her excitement.
They walked from the kitchen onto the sunlit porch, heavy with the morning's fresh snowfall. The snow caught the sun and dazzled her eyes in a wave of sparkling grandeur. She lifted a hand to shield her face and looked out at the iron gray waters of Lake Michigan. The lake never froze completely, but along the shoreline sheaths of ice formed and created outcroppings of twisted glassy structures that reached into the lake.
The vast house behind them towered over Lake Michigan and sat at the tip of a long wooded peninsula. The Gothic Revival structure boasted a single turret, an elaborate widow's walk and a porch that wrapped around the entire base of the house.
Sebastian and Abby bought the entire peninsula along with the house, which included more than two hundred acres of dense northern Michigan forest. The color, Japanese Indigo according to the real estate agent,reminded Abby of the dark blue waters of the lake. The intricate wood work along the gabled roof and widow's walk was a lighter shade of green. Fireplaces warmed every bedroom, the sitting room, the library and even the kitchen. Sebastian loved the kitchen with glistening marble counter tops and a commercial-sized gas stove. His eyes glittered when he talked of Christmas dinner at their home. It invited you, this house.
They both embraced the dawning of a new day. The home held an air of possibility that Abby had never genuinely experienced. She turned and gazed back at the house. She could see rose-colored silk curtains hanging in the tower window just above the porch. She loved that room most of all. The circular shape and soft edges made it the perfect space for a nursery.
As if the child sensed her thoughts, she felt the tiniest shift deep in her womb. She smiled up at Sebastian and wondered again why she had not told him about the new life growing inside her.
The End
Of this Book anyway - continue Abby's adventure
in Kanti: Born of Shadows Book 3
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