by Roger Hayden
Wren obeyed, brushing hay from his hands. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the house,” I said, forcing the stable door open once again. Wren and I stepped outside. “We have to warn the coven.”
“Oh, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that,” said a satisfied voice.
Roger Parris emerged from the darkness, a slim gun pointed directly at my chest. Before I could react, he pulled the trigger twice, once at me and once at Wren. Glancing downward, my vision blurring, I caught a bleary glimpse of a tranquilizer dart.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Eight
In Which Parris Is Still an Asshole
When I came to, I found Leigh snapping her fingers in front of my face. Still dazed, I stared up at her. Stars winked at me from behind her head as I resisted the urge to drift back into unconsciousness. My mouth felt fuzzy and dry.
“Oh my god,” I groaned, shaking my head from side to side in an attempt to clear it. “How much tequila did I drink?”
“Snap out of it, Morgan,” Leigh said urgently. “He’ll be back soon.”
It was only then that I remembered Parris’s tranq gun. Frantically, I looked around. I was sitting at the base of the yew tree, my hands bound in rope behind my back. My feet were tied together at the ankles.
“Where’s Wren?” I demanded.
“Over here,” his voice said. It seemed to be coming from the opposite side of the yew tree.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Just peachy, thanks. I actually really enjoy being tied up. It’s kinky.”
I growled, a noise of pure frustration. Wren’s attempt at making light wasn’t helping. “Where’s that bastard gone, Leigh?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She knelt beside me, regarding the rope cutting into the skin of my ankles. I kicked my feet out, hoping to loosen the bindings, but Parris’s knots were foolproof.
“Bastard must’ve been in the Navy,” I muttered.
“Boy Scouts, actually.”
It seemed Parris had a way of appearing out of nowhere. I wondered how much of his soul he had allowed to deteriorate in order to placate the needs of his dark magic.
“Oh, goody, you’re back,” I said, my voice dripping with poison. “I missed you.”
Parris smiled wryly. “I can’t wait to kill you, Ms. Summers.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes as overdramatically as possible. “Ugh, this is like a bad horror movie. Can’t you come up with a more original one-liner?”
Suddenly, a knife met my throat. Parris’s face was inches from mine. I swallowed, feeling the cold blade of Parris’s new dagger press against my skin.
“Not so mouthy now, are you, Ms. Summers?”
“You can call me Morgan,” I quipped, though my voice wavered. I hated every bit of Parris’s stupid, handsome face. My whole body trembled, though I couldn’t tell if it was out of fear or anger. In my periphery, I could see Leigh pacing back and forth beside the yew tree. She looked as though she wanted to clobber Parris upside his inflated head. If only she could.
Parris drew back, wiping the blade on his shirt. I realized he’d nicked the skin at my neck as I felt a dribble of blood trail down to the base of my throat.
“Not yet, Morgan,” he said. He knelt down, depositing a black duffel bag on the ground. When he upended it, several black candles and a new silver chalice fell out, along with a dusty, worn-out journal. This, he set down beside me, opening it to reveal the original source of the photocopies Leigh and I had found in the library.
“May I inquire,” I began, “as to why you bothered to make copies of your insane ritual and leave them in the town library? Didn’t you think that I would find them?”
“I made those copies years ago,” Parris said, consulting the pages before him. “Just in case the originals were ever lost or damaged. I’d hidden them well, or so I thought. I didn’t account for your nosiness. You must have torn the library apart to find them.”
“I had help.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You may have murdered Leigh Lockwood,” I said, “but that won’t stop her from putting you into your own grave.”
Leigh looked at me in consternation. I couldn’t explain to her that my words were only a last-ditch attempt to scare Parris off. I was hoping his knowledge of ghosts was scarce. Most mortals were terrified of the dead, especially dead with a vengeance. Parris, who only reacted with a cold grin, did not seem to be one of those people.
“I forgot you make friends with the dead,” he said, clearly unconcerned. He plunged the tip of his dagger into the dirt near my feet and began to trace out the familiar lines of a pentagram.
“How did you know that?”
“Wren told me.”
From the opposite side of the tree, I heard Wren call out, “Sorry, Morgan!”
“Too little, too late, Wren,” I said back. I returned my attention to Parris. “What the hell are you doing? It’s not like you can do the ritual now. You have to wait until the new moon.”
Parris chuckled, finishing the initial circle of the pentagram and moving on to its inner star. “I’ve decided to alter the timeline of the ritual.”
“You can’t do that,” Wren said.
“He’s right,” I said matter-of-factly. “It’s not witchcraft, but the same rules apply. The power you’re drawing on stems from all of the different energies involved. The candles, the pentagram, the moon. It’ll swallow you whole if you ignore the rules.”
The pentagram complete, Parris moved over, a few feet closer to Wren, dagger still in hand, and began to dig a second pentagram in the dirt.
“You’re going to sacrifice us both on the same night?” I said, horrified. As far as I knew, it had never been done before. For good reason, too. The kind of power that would surface with a dual sacrifice was immeasurable. It would destroy Yew Hollow on premise. “You can’t—”
“I suggest, Ms. Summers, that you stop telling me what I can and can’t do,” Parris interrupted me. He completed the second pentagram. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. I have done things that no dark user before me has ever accomplished. This dagger, for instance, is shielded from your clever sister just as the first one was. She’ll only see the pain it caused, but not whose hand caused it. I can’t wait.”
My throat closed up at the thought of Malia scrying my death with Parris’s dagger. Parris, satisfied with my disheartened expression, returned to his work. He began to plant the candles in the dirt so that they stood upright and lit them one by one.
Leigh knelt beside me. I turned my head to face her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Parris, busy with his candles, didn’t seem to notice that I was speaking to thin air.
“Don’t be,” Leigh said. She leaned her forehead against mine. For once, I appreciated the glacial effect of her touch. It soothed my brewing feeling of hopelessness. “I have to do something.”
“Who’s first?” Parris said, standing. He’d completed his work. All that was left was the sacrifice itself. “Any volunteers?”
Leigh looked sickened as he laughed cruelly.
“Wren?” Parris said, walking around the tree to where Wren was. “How about you?”
Wren did not object as Parris seized the ropes at his feet and began to drag him into the nearest pentagram. Then, as Parris turned away from Wren to consult his drawings, I saw Wren draw in a deep breath.
“HELP!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “HELP, HELP, HE—”
Parris’s boot made contact with Wren’s temple, dropping him instantly to the ground. Leigh gasped in surprise, and I flinched. I could already see a bruise blossoming on the side of Wren’s head.
“Shut up,” said Parris, though Wren was unconscious. Parris glared at me. “Don’t you dare try that,” he added.
With the dagger, he cut Wren’s ropes. He began to rearrange each of Wren’s arms and legs, spreading my brother’s body out along the pentagram jus
t as Wren had done to Leigh. Once finished, Parris dusted his hands off and stood.
“I don’t suppose you’ll lay down quietly, will you?” he asked, approaching me.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“No, I didn’t think so,” Parris said. He seemed amused by my antics. “I’ll let you sit in the middle of yours, then. I want you to watch.”
Without further ado, he heaved me up by my armpits and maneuvered me into the center of the other pentagram. I thrashed wildly, hoping that my violent spasms would somehow free me from Parris’s grasp. Leigh looked on, clearly in despair. As Parris dropped me in the dirt at the center of the pentagram, I avoided eye contact with Leigh. I had failed her. Her spirit would be stuck in Yew Hollow forever.
“Have you ever seen a dark ritual performed?” Parris asked, now fondling the silver chalice between his large hands. “It’s quite beautiful. The whole world seems to catch fire. Wren would agree, but it seems he’s lost his voice.”
He laughed, turning his back on me to nudge Wren’s decumbent body with his foot. I tried to take advantage of his distraction, swinging my feet around and rocking forward in an attempt to stand. It was a mistake. I swayed, nearly losing my balance. Then I felt a boot connect with my rib cage, and I collapsed.
“Tsk, tsk,” Parris scolded as I gasped for breath beneath him. “You know better. But since you’re so eager, we should probably begin.”
Still curled up in a ball, I lifted my head to watch Parris raise his hands to the sky, as if presenting the silver chalice and his dagger to some great demon or corrupt god. He began to chant, slowly at first, in a guttural language that seemed to take Latin and twist it into something repugnant and dirty. The world darkened around us. Stars blinked out, streetlights disappeared, and Leigh, a once-shimmering beacon, dimmed to a diaphanous presence.
Then the fire started.
The pentagrams ignited. Great, billowing flames erupted around me. I shrieked, pulling my legs in close to my body. Terrified, I glanced over at Wren. Though immense heat seemed to radiate off the pyre of my confinement, the same flames did not seem to have any immediate effect on Wren’s body, which was lying in direct contact with them.
This was not the method in which Leigh had been sacrificed. Parris had concocted a whole new process to feed his ritual, one that mimicked the power he hoped to procure. His voice rose, a rhythmic requiem that may have been dangerously beautiful had I not known its true purpose. The fires roared, as deafening as the engines of a fighter jet.
As the cacophony continued, Parris stepped through the inferno, unscathed, to kneel next to me. His eyes were red, either reflecting the flames or transformed by the power he had invoked. Though the chant continued, his mouth shaped new words.
“The whole town has come out,” he said. “They couldn’t stay away. You should see the look in their eyes. They’re... what’s the word? Transfixed, I’d say. Hypnotized. It’s beautiful, really. Look—”
He seized my chin, forcing me to look out toward the town hall. Sure enough, as I squinted through the conflagration, I could see the shadowy figures of Yew Hollow’s inhabitants, drawn out of their homes in the middle of the night by the strange influence of Parris’s ritual. With vacant expressions, they gazed at Parris, mortals mesmerized by an otherworldly force.
Parris raised his dagger, circling around me. “Shall we?”
In a flash, he dug the blade into my shoulder, tearing through the fabric of my shirt. It felt as though the fire had taken hold of my bones. As I howled in pain, he swiped outward, carving an elegant curl into his live canvas. Then, without hesitation, he engraved a matching swirl on my opposite shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said, a cruel smile decorating his face as I quivered beneath him. I felt the cold metal of the chalice press against the bare skin of my back. “I’ll give you angel wings.”
The blade flashed again, this time slicing a delicate curve along the outer right edge of my back. Leigh cried out at my distress, barely visible as she paced beyond the fire. It seemed she could not cross over the flame. Then, as Parris etched the left side of my back, Leigh vanished entirely.
“No!” I burst out, my voice breaking.
Her disappearance was unbearable. Evidently, Parris’s ritual was also feeding off of Leigh’s essence. It was the only explanation for her sudden eclipse. A sob escaped from my mouth. As I felt the cold chalice against my back again, something seemed to snap inside me. My insides burned, as if my suffering had suddenly transformed into hate. With a strength that I hadn’t recognized before, I turned and exploded, planting my tied hands beneath Parris’s breastbone and ejecting him from the inner star of the pentagram. He landed with a grunt a few feet away, his hands splayed out to catch his fall. The chalice, which he’d slowly been filling with my blood, rolled off across the dirt, spilling its contents.
Parris breathed heavily as I glared at him.
“That was a mistake, Morgan,” he said, pushing himself up and retrieving the chalice. The silver cup was now coated with a layer of dirt and blood. Parris wiped it off on his shirt, leaving an alarming stain. “You’re only putting off the inevitable. Stop fighting it.”
“No,” I hissed. The skin of my back felt raw, but the loops of rope restraining my wrists had somehow loosened during the fray.
Parris sighed. It was almost mocking, as if he was disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm to end my own life. “I guess I’ll start with your brother, then. Enjoy the show.”
He stepped into Wren’s pentagram, the blaze intensifying in response to Parris’s presence. As he bent over Wren’s body, I desperately tried to wriggle free of my bondage. With an eye on Parris’s blade, now poised over Wren’s throat, I took the rope around my wrists between my teeth, pulling this way and that to slacken its hold on me.
Suddenly, Leigh blazed into existence, burning more brightly than ever as she circled my fiery prison.
“Help is coming,” she said and then vanished again.
I had no idea what kind of help Leigh was referring to. I only knew that it wouldn’t arrive in time to save Wren. Parris looked up, watching my expression as he lowered his dagger to Wren’s neck. He didn’t expect me to react, didn’t expect I had any strength left in me to prevent him from casually murdering my brother.
Except I did. I leapt, hands and feet still bound, hurdling through the flames of both pentagrams. I tackled Parris, wrapping my arms around his neck and wrenching him away from Wren. He gagged, taken aback by my impulsive attack. There wasn’t much I could do other than hold on. I tightened my grip on Parris as he stood, trying to shake me off. He pried at my arms, but I held him fast. Then he backed up and body-slammed me into the trunk of the yew tree.
My head thunked against the tree, dazing me. Parris threw me off, and I slumped down to the base of the yew, trying to see straight again. My hands groped the ground in the effort to steady the world around me. I grasped the exposed roots of the yew tree. Help me.
As if in answer to my silent prayer, the yew tree’s aura unexpectedly flowed through me, filling me with pure, white light. It radiated from my fingers, through my core, illuminating the space around my heart, and all the way down to my toes. My head cleared, and the burning pain of the cuts in my back seemed to lessen. Then the ropes around my wrists and ankles disintegrated, turning to dust.
“Thank you,” I gasped.
Parris had returned to Wren, his dagger digging into the flesh of Wren’s right arm. I staggered upright, determined to separate Parris’s head from the rest of his body. However, before I could even take a step toward Parris, a resounding boom echoed through the town square.
I froze, my heart stopping. Surely, Parris hadn’t completed Wren’s sacrifice. He’d only begun to spill Wren’s blood. Then I realized that Parris had looked up in confusion. The thunderous explosion was not an intended product of Parris’s ritual.
That’s when I saw them.
The witches of Yew Hollow charged through the town squar
e, surrounding the yew tree in a wave of auras and power. My mother and sisters led the brigade, hands ablaze with the sapphirine colors of protection spells, weaving witchcraft into the air like passionate conductors of a grand symphony. It enveloped Parris’s fires. The hues wound together, Parris’s devious reds and the Summerses’ indomitable blues, dancing into the sky. The sound of it was unfathomable, like fireworks magnified by the thousands. Beyond the battle, I caught sight of Leigh, her expression triumphant.
Parris, having overcome his shock at the coven’s appearance, stood. He had managed to fill the dirtied chalice halfway with Wren’s blood. Not to be outdone, he took a stance between the two pillars of feuding colors, in the middle of the two pentagrams. His eyes wide, teeth set in the grimace of a shark, he gave himself over to derangement. In a move I hadn’t anticipated, Parris sliced open his own arm, catching drops of his blood in the chalice. He turned to face me.
“You foolish girl,” he said, his voice crackling with overuse. He had been chanting his warped Latin all along. His hand shook, threatening to drop the chalice. “Your mother can’t save you now. I have enough of your blood left in this cup. As soon as it touches my lips, the ritual will be complete, and you’ll regret having ever been born.”
Before I even had the chance to react, he raised the chalice to his lips and tipped it back. Immediately, the flames roared higher than ever. The coven’s craft dimmed, engulfed by Parris’s power. Parris drained the chalice, tossed the cup to the side, and grinned madly at me. He spread his arms wide in triumph, advancing toward me as I backed against the trunk of the yew tree.
It was like standing at the gates to hell. Fire raged behind Parris, his face now distorted into something that was not entirely human. The witchcraft had all but evaporated, despite the coven’s laborious efforts. Parris took agonizingly slow steps toward me. I was frozen with terror, watching the devil take his last stand. Then he lunged.
Instinctively, I raised my hands. Cerulean craft exploded from my palms, the physical form of a defense spell that I had learned as a child. I had no idea that the ability to perform that spell still lingered within me, but with the aura of the yew tree boldly pulsing through my soul, there was no doubting its effectiveness. It slammed into Parris, halting his attack. It seemed to pull at his features, stretching his infernal face from the mouth outward. My craft grew and grew, fed by the unyielding power of the yew tree. It saturated the town square, illuminating the citizens of Yew Hollow, eyes widened in awe, and the coven, still wielding their own protective spells to add to mine.
