by Kaia Bennett
She swept her arms up and down in the warm pool, and I marveled at the play of milky water and steam lapping at her smooth skin, filling in the valleys of her body. Her dark curls swayed in the water and soon her upper body did, too. She let her mind drift open. Loosening her thighs and trusting me, she offered me entrance, a nudge gentle as the wind on my shoulders.
Her cousin had died in water, as had Evie. But, always she remembered the stillness of floating on her back, the lullaby of waves lapping at her ears on a North Carolina summer day. She dreamed of that happiness. She took Liam to a place in her mind that mirrored this peace before he died. Like her abilities as an empath, water had been a thing to fear once, a harbinger of death.
Maybe it was. Maybe I needed to die so I could be reborn.
I didn’t let her go even when her legs swished lazily beside me. I let her sway with my body as her anchor.
For the first time in my life, since I was a little girl, I’m not afraid of what I am. I’m not afraid of the water.
I would’ve kept her there all day, listening to her mind, sifting through her memories and stalling the inevitable.
The priestess swam to us instead. Evie opened her eyes to see the older witch blotting out the rising sun overhead.
“It’s time we talked.”
Evie blinked and righted herself with my help. She realized then just how deep she’d gone into the pool and startled, clutching my shoulders. But after a few false starts, she steeled herself against the last remnants of her fear, spun, and swam after the priestess, leaving me behind.
Evie and I left the pool, dressed quickly, then followed the still-nude high priestess to a big meeting lodge in the opposite direction of the stream, a ten-minute walk from the circle. The priestess said nothing. Aside from braiding her wet hair, she did nothing but charge ahead with singular focus. I felt, as did Evie, who shared the odd sensation with me, a resistant energy, an invisible tug that urged us backward rather than forward but the priestess marched on, and we had little choice but to push through the barrier, sharing quizzical stares
At the door the priestess revealed the source. “It’s another set of wards that protect the rest of our people, especially our children. You get a temporary pass to the edge of the inner sanctum, but that is all. You’ll experience a slight discomfort, and the journey forward will be like spiritual quicksand with every step. People have died trying to break through this magick, so be sure you enter as a friend.”
I worked my jaw to keep from clenching in annoyance.
Evie nodded, diplomatic as ever. “We understand, priestess. Thanks for seeing us.”
The priestess gave a curt nod. “Wait here. Keith and I will be ready in a bit.” She disappeared inside.
A few minutes later one of the quadruplets opened the door. Clint Eastwood’s stand-in by the looks of his scowl. Wonder if he was in the circle and this is his happy face? Evie and I stepped inside a mostly empty lodge, with four rows of long tables and benches, a wide path set between both rows. The building appeared to be a place for ceremonies. The lingering scents of dead things signaled a dining hall. A beautifully crafted dining hall, at that. The ceiling arched and large windows, as tall as a man, sloped along, set into the walls to bathe the room in natural light.
Braziers stretched along the walls at wide intervals, to give off heat, and possibly add light when darkness fell. On the walls between them were tapestries depicting legends I’d never seen before. Erotic love stories, battles, sacred circles of old, each rendered in a different style, as if collected the world over from every century. At the head of the room a large carving of the Goddess holding a pregnant moon dwarfed every other piece, even the windows. From her skirts a circle of witches holding hands stretched across each wall like a border.
The priest and priestess sat at the foot of the carving, behind a banquet table, now dressed in jeans and sweaters. Two of the quadruplet wolves—the shy Daniel, and Cade, who winked at Evie—stood guard on either side of our hosts, while the humorless one guarded the door. I knew from Stark that, thanks to their roles as liaisons between the outer world and the coven, the brothers could turn into any wolf form at will without weakening the wards. They made the best guides and scouts, and I hoped, had the ability to keep a secret.
The vibe couldn’t have been more different from Masilda’s coven. Our hosts didn’t offer us a seat, so we stood before them like petitioners. I wondered if they even knew Masilda, until the priestess spoke.
“Masilda sent word ahead of time that we should expect you. I must say, I’m surprised by the strength of your bond. Even with extra protections, drummers, moon brides and consorts, and a good sample of our pack, you still almost set our forest on fire.”
Her tone held no hint of a teasing lilt, but her consort smiled and spoke with a booming baritone. “Yana’s not a fan of surprises. Everything must go according to plan, always. I’ve been trying to mellow her out for thirty-four years without much luck, but I think I’m wearing her down.”
Yana gave her consort a droll look.
“Alright, I admit. It was a bit touch and go in the beginning, but the energy we conjured last night was a blessing.” The priest tilted his head toward her in a cajoling fashion. “You can still feel it, can’t you?”
Evie answered, “Yes.” Her sadness and doubt made me resigned to end the banter and get on with the last rite.
“If Masilda spoke to you, then you know why we’re here.”
“Yes.” Our hosts replied in unison.
“But, we’d like to hear from your lips why you’re here,” the priest added. “Tell us your story. I have a suspicion there are pieces only you can help us understand.”
I sighed, feeling like a barbed wire tightened around my throat. I wanted out of this coven, I wanted to get this rite over with. And they want a fucking story.
“I… I made a mistake and now I need to make things right. I need to make sure Evie is safe and free, and that means—”
“Mistake?” Yana furrowed her brow. “In what way? Surely you knew, when you bit the girl, what you were doing?”
I shared a wary glance with Evie, wondering how they didn’t know this already, then turned my attention to the priestess. She leaned into the straight back of her chair. The priest leaned forward with his fingers steepled under his chin.
“I forced a witch to be my mate. I didn’t realize what I’d done until after.” I tried and failed to hold the cold steel of the priestess’s gaze and the warm, yet guarded, expression on the face of the priest. They waited expectantly, instead of just cutting the cord.
“Fine,” I barked. How had I gone from calm to edgier than Vaughn’s knife? “You want the blood and guts, then I’ll give you the blood and guts. I’ll give you the whole nasty fucking story.”
I told them how I hunted Evie, how I’d realized just before we killed her that she was an empathic witch and kidnapped her instead. I told them how she used her power to stay alive, but admitted she wasn’t able to stop my brothers and I from feeding.
I heard the low rumbles of wolfish disapproval from Cade, who stared at me like prey. The shy one, Daniel, stared at the ground, cheeks gone scarlet beneath his tanned skin. I didn’t need to elaborate on what feeding meant for a vampire.
“I meant to kill her. I thought I’d toy with her for a while. Then, I wanted to keep her as a pet and kill her when I got bored.”
“Why didn’t you?” The priestess leaned forward and folded her hands on the table.
I got caught in her spell. I fell in love.
I masked the thought, hoping Evie hadn’t heard the burst of emotion streaking across my mind like a runaway convict.
“My brother died.” I tried to keep the quaver of grief out of my voice. “I was… vulnerable. She began bleeding that night and I fed from her. For the first time, I could think straight beyond my hunger, and that made me think I could keep her as a partner, maybe even return her to her family, when I’d had my fill.”
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Evie exhaled, recalling just how close she’d been to that outcome before all her effort went to shit.
The priest closed his eyes when I got to the part where my father ordered her death. He rubbed his graying beard. Beside him, the priestess shook her head and ran a hand through her consort’s locs. Soothing him the way Evie soothed me.
“The rape and murder of our kind is an old tale, Oldman’s son. Many of us, like Keith, know the tale by heart.” The priestess glared, but my gaze drifted to the priest.
I felt, through my bond with Evie, the priest’s wounds. Death and travel and more death. A wife and a son taken. A sister slain. Until the priestess became the woman who healed and housed him.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Evie offered softly. “They were beautiful.”
The priest gave her a smile that had to be a spell. No one could be that gracious after so much loss. “Thank you, child. They were.”
“Whole covens gone,” the priestess intoned. “Packs slaughtered and ripped from their homes, for protecting us. Generations of magick and knowledge wiped from the earth. And what becomes of the lost? They wander, they have no lineage—like your mate—and no protection. They’re raised by humans who’ve no clue of the gifts of our kind. Powers skip generations, hiding in plain sight, or stifled by fear. Some become mercenaries forced to serve your kind and betray their own people in exchange for their lives. This is genocide by your father, and his father’s hands. What makes you different from your forebears, Jesse?”
I forced myself to lift my chin and stared into the varying degrees of disgust and pity straight on.
“I have no excuse. I knew giving venom was forbidden, and I had no idea whether or not my venom would take with a witch. I did something desperate and stupid and selfish, with no plans for what would happen if she did wake. Part of me thought she wouldn’t.”
“But, by then, you’d chosen each other.”
Evie tilted her head at the priest’s strange declaration. I spied a curious expression on her face when I sneaked a glance.
“No.” Irritated at what had to be their willful misunderstanding of my tale, I shook my head. “She didn’t choose—”
“Yes.”
Evie looked at me then and gave me a forlorn chuckle. “We’re nothing if not complicated. When you attacked me, I chose you, because you were the strongest. When Liam was sick you called to me and I came. And in the end…”
I could love you. I could be yours.
I’ll see you in hell, Jesse! You’ll never be free of me!
“That wasn’t a choice. That was survival. You did what you had to do to survive. When you thought you were going to die, you cursed me.”
“I didn’t say it was ideal. You sacrificed your survival to keep her alive. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t selfish.” Keith’s deep sigh made his shoulders droop. “So. This is why Masilda sent you to us, and this is why she told us not to see you until the full moon. She was hiding the truth from us, because she knew we wouldn’t waste your time. She knew the second we heard your story, we would turn you away, tell you to come back for the circle for healing. I suppose she feared you wouldn’t bother. Young people, when denied what they want, will often bite the hand that offers what they need.”
The priestess nodded. “We’ve done all we can do for you, as she knew we would. You’ve cleansed the parasitic element of your bond. But, the bond itself can’t be broken. Masilda knew this, and now, so do you.
For one long moment, I couldn’t hear anything but the buzz in my own ears. The static of rage and panic. Hope that I could finally do the right thing slipped under the water and choked on lies.
“What?”
38
The priestess rapped her knuckles on the wood table.
“Oh, you’ve met the woman. Masilda is nothing—nothing—if not wily. Preternaturally arrogant, as well. Sometimes I think the Goddess made her a high priestess to test my patience. I have to answer whenever a sister or brother calls.” The priestess huffed and rolled her eyes to stop her tangent. “But she’s a great healer. Her heart is full of love. She knew deception for a good cause was the only way to get you here to finish the cleansing rites. I supposed she’d have done them herself, but her coven’s small, and your bond is great. Much stronger than any of us has seen in our lifetimes, even among bond witches mated to wolves.”
Panic spiked between Evie and I.
“No. No, Masilda said she was breaking the bond, separating the threads—”
“So we could be free,” I finished. “This is supposed to free her. This is supposed to make it right, so she can go back to her family and have a life, whatever that means for her.”
Keith frowned, his eyes shimmering with compassion. Pity. Because my mate and I had been utter fools.
Cai’s laughter rang in my head.
Breaking the bond? If you believe that I have some invisible gold to show you.
So arrogant. Like father. Like son, Sundara cooed.
“That fucking. Bitch!”
Evie’s flinch sent all the lies we’d been told crashing like dominoes, leaving a cacophony of disbelief howling in my head.
Evie’s fantasy of throttling the witch to death, bringing her back to life, and repeating the cycle for every sunrise and every sunset of this pointless journey lit up the pleasure center of my brain. The vivid image of retribution could’ve been mine. Would be mine, if I ever got my hands on that lying witch.
The priestess closed her eyes and averted her gaze. Did I taste shame? “I understand your disappointment in my sister. She told us only that a turned witch and her lover were in route and they would need to untangle their messy bond to be whole. She made sure we wouldn’t speak to you before the circle by making me promise not to indulge you. Lies and half-truths, but she knew which ones to speak to make us complicit. Her warning that it would be catastrophic for us to admit you unless under the full moon worked in her favor. Last I heard she’s still repairing the damage your bond did to her wards, so the bitch didn’t lie about that, at least.”
The priest snorted and thumbed his consort’s full bottom lip. “That mouth. I swear, when you kiss me, sometimes I expect to feel barbs.”
Evie gaped at me, still speechless, then pinned the priest and priestess with a mortified stare. All playfulness drained from their faces.
We’d endured months of betrayal and heartache. We’d be hunted for the rest of our lives if bound to one another. I couldn’t live without her, and if she couldn’t live without me, she’d spend the rest of her life paying for what I’d taken.
“You’re lying,” I roared, anger sharpening my vision. The wolves on either side of the table growled like beasts through their human mouths. I took a deep breath and forced myself to remain calm. “She’s already done two of the rites. We felt them working and in the circle last night, we were finally prepared to let go. That’s why Masilda wanted us to wait isn’t it? So we’d be ready. And your vendetta—”
“Vendetta?” Yana screeched.
“—against my kind is why you won’t help, right? Right?”
“We have no vendetta, boy,” she sneered, and though I out-aged her by more than a century, I felt like a child in that moment. “What we have is limitations. What the Goddess has joined, we don’t have the power to pull asunder. Masilda performed cleansing rites. Rites made to untangle threads that were strangling your spirit. One for blood. One for breath. One for the mind. It had to be for your sake, and her nephew’s pleas, that she entertained this deception at all.” She gestured at Evie. “Vampires aren’t known for their generosity of spirit, especially when it comes to our people. She probably feared for the girl’s life, because of the nature of her turning, and your stubbornness. Am I right?”
Reluctantly, I nodded. Evie murmured a forlorn, “Yes.”
“Tearing out your own beating heart would have been less painful than murdering your own mate.” The priestess rolled her eyes and hissed through her teeth. She glared
at her priest as if he’d betrayed her instead of a witch thousands of miles away. “I swear, Keith, if I weren’t honor bound to heed a sister or brother’s call—”
The priest shushed his priestess and stroked her arm.
“It’s like you said. Masilda doesn’t always do things by the book, but she’s not cruel. She’s a healer and these two needed healing, maybe for reasons bigger than we know.”
“What we need is to break the bond. That’s why we came all this fucking way and we’re not leaving until we get what we fucking came for.”
The wolves snarled at my outburst, their eyes glowing as amber as mine were black. I used the last reserves of my strength to keep my fangs sheathed.
“She can’t be bound to me. She can’t—” My voice cracked and I tried again. “She deserves to be free of me. She deserves whatever life she can salvage after everything I took from her, after everything my kind has taken from yours! How can you not help?”
For the first time the pair looked united in one expression. Heartbreak. Guilt. Resignation.
They can’t do it. They aren’t lying.
Evie grabbed my hand with one of hers and wiped away her tears with the other. She squeezed my fingers, the way she had as I knelt over Liam’s body. I tingled with rage and fear, but I couldn’t give up.
My mate had already begun to mourn, outpacing me yet again.
“Masilda was right, I guess.” Evie laughed, the sound as brittle as dried leaves under a boot. “I wanted him dead, and I knew part of him wanted me dead, too. I was starving myself to starve him, denying my urges like I used to deny my abilities. I felt like I was dying over and over again, but the rites helped.” Her voice quivered, but in comparison to my outrage, she seemed composed. “Ironic, in a way. At the end there, I almost hoped we couldn’t sever this thing between us. Guess I got my wish again.”
Keith leaned forward in his chair. I stared daggers at the guards watching this spectacle.
