by Nancy Holder
“Once you spellcast, they’ll know exactly where you are,” the High Priestess had warned Holly. “The only chance you have against them while you rescue Nicole is to remain hidden.”
And passive. And unarmed, Holly thought now. We’re in danger. Should I break the cloak of invisibility to fight?
The lead falcon moved its head in lockstep birdlike fashion, twisting right, left, and then it swooped back up into the lowering sky. The others swooped back up in formation, forming a V behind it, and then skyrocketed toward the moon.
Holly was so surprised that she stumbled over her own foot and fell to the ground. Her ankle throbbed as she dragged herself closer to the wall of the nearest building.
Sasha ran up to her and pointed a finger as if to cast a spell. Holly wildly shook her head, and Sasha immediately stopped, bending over and extending a hand toward Holly, a simple physical gesture to help her up. Holly gripped Sasha’s wrist and let her pull her to her feet. She hissed from the pain in her ankle.
They both looked up.
The shimmering lead bird seemed almost to disappear against the moon as the others became small, moving lines … and then they disappeared. Whether they had truly vanished to another place or continued to fly until they were no longer visible, Holly couldn’t tell.
They might come back.
Not willing to take any chances, she limped forward, gesturing with her hand that the others should do the same. She could hear their footfalls, heard one of them faltering and turned around to see Kari stop, looking panicked and confused. Tommy grabbed her hand and yanked her forward; she shook her head again and stayed rooted to the spot.
She’s freaking out.
Amanda glanced at Holly with something like exasperation, then ran back to Kari and took her other hand. Silvana made encouraging gestures while Tommy kept hold of her and, together, he and Amanda pulled her forward like a horse on a lead line.
Holly glared at Kari, but Sasha gave her a little tap as if to say, Ease up on her. Then she slung Holly’s arm over her shoulder and helped her forward.
On their side of the street, about a hundred feet away, a door opened.
A man peered around it, saw them, and raised his hand.
Sasha and Holly looked at each other. Holly mouthed, A guy?
They had expected a woman; the only man they had seen attached to the Mother Coven had been Tommy, in the temple for the ceremony to renew them after their battles with Michael Deveraux and the long flight in the Mother Coven’s private jet to Paris from Seattle.
The man was young, maybe Holly’s age, and he gestured to them to hurry. Sasha wordlessly propelled Holly along; Holly shut her eyes tightly against the pain, and glanced over her shoulder to make sure that the others were following close behind.
They were, and they had caught up with Holly and Sasha by the time the two reached the door.
The moment Holly stepped across the threshold, her ankle healed. She raised her brows in delighted surprise.
After everyone had entered the building, the man dipped a little bow and said to Holly, “Blessed be.” He added, “It’s safe to talk in here. The place is very heavily warded.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, skipping for the moment the traditional greeting of the Mother Coven. That was rude. It was immature of her, perhaps, but she was angry at the Coven for not providing them better protection for the journey. “And you,” she said, wheeling on Kari. “Don’t you ever put the rest of the coven in danger again.”
“Or what?” Kari demanded, her eyes flashing. “You’ll throw another fireball at me?”
“Hey.” Amanda stepped between them. Then she said to the man, “Blessed be,” enunciating each syllable as if to remind Holly how to say the words.
“Blessed be,” Silvana and Tommy added.
Silvana extended her hand. “I’m Silvana, and this is Tommy.”
“I’m Joel,” he said, shaking with her. Holly detected a bit of a Scots burr in his voice. “I’m a male witch.”
“As opposed to a warlock?” Holly filled in, a little perplexed.
“Aye,” he told her. “I worship the Goddess.”
There was a moment of silence in the Goddess’s honor.
“We were told to expect a woman,” Holly said. Then she realized they hadn’t been actually told whom to expect. Maybe she’d just assumed it would be a woman.
He frowned. “That’s odd. As you can see, I’m not one.”
Holly and her coven stared edgily at him. He held out his hands; in each palm was incised a moon, symbol of the goddess. Holly remained unconvinced.
“Is there some way you’re to contact the Mother Coven?” he asked. “You can check my credentials.”
As with magic use, Holly had been warned that trying to communicate with the Mother Coven would alert her enemies to her presence.
She looked coolly at Joel and said, “We’re staying, for the moment. But if you do anything I find the least bit suspicious, I’ll kill you. Fair warning?”
“Holly,” Kari protested, but Holly made no reply, only gazed levelly at Joel.
“Fair warning,” he said somberly. “I assure you, we’re both on the same side.”
“As long as it stays that way, we’ll be fine, then,” Holly retorted.
He inclined his head, and a small bit of the tension escaped from the room.
Holly looked around the room and realized it was a souvenir shop. English bone china tea services sat in the front window, and the shelves bulged with dolls dressed like Beefeaters and Royal Marines, and piles of scarves in tartans and plaids.
Maybe I can find something to take home, she thought wryly. Though I’d rather it was Michael Deveraux’s head.
She was a bit shocked to realize that she meant it.
“Please, take off your coats and make yourselves comfortable,” he urged as he flipped a CLOSED sign in the front window and pulled the drapes, obscuring the view from the street. “I’ll get some tea.”
They began to do as he asked while he bustled off through a curtained doorway, leaving the coven alone.
“That was so scary, with the birds,” Amanda said as she carried her coat to a coatrack beside the dark wood door. “I guess they couldn’t quite figure out where we were.”
“They were too close for comfort,” Silvana observed, shaking her cornrows to dust the snow from them.
“It’s not a good sign,” Sasha observed. “We’re supposed to be completely cloaked. The Supreme Coven must be working overtime to find us.”
“Oh, joy,” Tommy drawled.
“Please, come in,” Joel called through the curtain.
Holly went first, feeling apprehensive. She murmured half of a spell to conjure a fireball, then pushed the curtain away.
She stood in the sitting room of what had to be his living quarters. There was an overstuffed settee upholstered in fat cabbage roses, and a dark green lounger set at a right angle beside it. On a coffee table before the settee were a ring of runestones, a burning lavender candle, and a statue of the Goddess in her incarnation as the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A space heater hummed on the other side of the settee, and Holly moved instinctively to its warmth.
Gesturing eagerly, Joel said, “Please, sit down. The High Priestess told me to make you as comfortable as possible.”
He went into a small kitchen alcove. Silvana sidled over to Holly and said, “I have a good feeling about him. I’m not getting any bad vibes.”
Holly cocked her head. “I didn’t know you could read people.”
Silvana shrugged. “Not in any mystical way. Just intuition.”
Joel returned with cups of tea on an oval tray, and all the myriad things the British poured into their tea. Holly liked the richness of the heavy doses of sugar and cream.
“Can we do magic in here?” Tommy asked.
“Aye. Magic.” Joel smiled at him as he set the tray down on the coffee table. Then he blushed and looked away. Tommy grinned as he
apparently realized he was being flirted with.
“I’ve got some cots for you too,” Joel said, “in my bedroom.” To Holly, he added, “You can have my bed, of course.”
“Royal treatment,” Kari muttered.
Holly didn’t react—she didn’t bother anymore. Kari’s resentment was very old and very boring. But Amanda, loyal to her core, snapped, “Shut up, Kari.”
“Let’s all stay calm,” Sasha suggested, holding out her hands. She had taken off her coat. It was hard to believe she was old enough to have two children, with her soft, almost girlish face and her thin body. She had that coltish appearance many girls had in their early teenage years. Holly also had trouble believing Sasha had actually been married to Michael Deveraux. She was so nice.
“We were attacked,” Holly said to Joel as she sat down on the settee. Her jeans were damp from the snow, and her boots were completely soaked through. “Did you see the falcons?”
“Aye.” His shy smile returned. “I did a spell, tried to keep you cloaked.”
“It worked,” Tommy told him as he sat beside Holly and accepted a cup of tea from Joel. “Thank you. For the tea, too.”
“Now what?” Holly asked. She was exhausted, but she was also totally wired. She lived in a constant state of tension; it was as if fleeing for her life was the only reality she had ever known, and being a girl back in San Francisco with a job at the horse stable and parents who fought a lot was some strange dream she had borrowed, for a time, from someone else.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to relax again? And even if I weren’t in danger, would I remember what it’s like to not monitor every situation, looking over my shoulder, sleeping lightly and not for long?
Holly sipped her tea and wondered those things. From the expressions on the faces of the others, their thoughts were similar.
Amanda glanced up at her and through the steam of her tea murmured, “Blessed be, Holly.”
There’s nothing blessed about this situation, Holly thought angrily. But she gave her cousin what she wanted, which was a smile—which reached nowhere near Holly’s protected, frozen heart.
Nicole: London Headquarters, the Supreme Coven, December
The “honeymoon suite” at the headquarters of the Supreme Coven was decorated in nightmares.
Nicole sat with her back against a headboard carved with grotesque, misshapen human figures— imps—worshiping the Horned God, who had been carved in the center standing atop a pile of human skulls. Lovely. The hangings draped from the ebony canopy bed were bright crimson, sporting the leering face of Pan, forest god of lust.
At the sound of the opening door, she had bolted upright and pulled her knees to her chest, murmuring a warding spell. A gossamer rectangle of blue formed around the doorway.
James Moore, Nicole’s bridegroom, chuckled as he walked through the rectangle and made a casual gesture with his left hand. The rectangle popped like a soap balloon, and the remnants winked back into the void from which Nicole had summoned them.
“It’ll take more than that to keep me away from you,” he laughingly told her. “Just accept it, Nicki. Your magic is no match for ours. You might as well put yourself in thrall to me willingly, because on Yule, I’m going to force you into it if you’re not with me already.”
He had bleached his hair white, and was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. His left ear was pierced, and a black loop of metal hung there.
“I don’t know why you want to bother,” she said sullenly.
His smile stretched across his face. “Because you’re hot.”
“You make me sick.”
He laughed. “No. I don’t.” He took off his jacket, dropped it carelessly to the floor, and walked toward the bed. “Do I, Mrs. Moore?”
I will not cry, Nicole admonished herself. I won’t do anything. I’ll just sit here… .
James approached her stealthily, jaguar to prey. She clenched her fists around her knees and clamped her mouth shut so that she wouldn’t scream.
“I know what you did to me,” he informed her as he reached down and pulled his T-shirt over his chest. “When we captured you, you put a glamour on me. I knew even then that you did it. It backfired, didn’t it, Nicki? You didn’t think I would actually marry you. You just thought I’d fall in love with you and free you.”
“Yes,” she hissed at him, breaking her promise to herself not to respond to him in any way. “I bewitched you. Or tried to. And now you’ve married me and you …you’re …” She trailed off helplessly. “Don’t you care at all that I don’t love you?”
He blinked his deep blue eyes. “No. Why should I? I’m a warlock. We don’t believe in love.” He chuckled low in his throat and added, “We do, however, believe in lust.”
Then he came to the bed, and Nicole willed herself away to another place… .
“Isabeau, ma vie, ma femme,” Jean whispered fiercely. “Comme je t’aime! Comme je t’adore!”
She lay beneath him in their marriage bed, on a mattress that was loaded to overflowing with fertility charms. Roses were strewn all over the chamber— roses in winter, forced to blossom by Deveraux magic.
As I am forced, she thought; but she was lying to herself. She was giving herself to him freely; nay, she wanted him, was taking him even as he took her—
I did not dream such passion existed, she thought, as in the candlelight, Jean’s eyes lit up with fire. His face was a study in ecstasy, and triumph. And he is the giver of it; he is the center of the fire that burns me… . I burn with him, I burn from him… .
And in Joel’s little London flat, Holly cried out and bolted upright. She was bathed in sweat, and her heart pounded.
From the doorway, Amanda flicked on the light and said, “Holly, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Dream, that’s all,” Holly assured her as she brushed her dark ringlets away from her damp forehead. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”
Amanda hesitated. “Are you sure? My God, you’re sopping wet.”
“I’m okay,” Holly insisted, her voice rising. “Go. It’s all right.”
“But—”
“Damn it, Amanda! Leave me alone!” Holly shouted.
I want to go back to sleep. So I can be with him again.
Stunned, Amanda stared at Holly as the other witch pointedly shut her eyes and turned on her side.
Something’s happened to her, Amanda thought. Ever since she sacrificed Hecate, she’s been so mean.
I’m scared. We all are. She’s supposed to be our leader, but I’m not sure where she’s taking us. Are we really going to try to rescue Nicole, or is Holly going to make us look for Jer instead?
Alas, Amanda could not see the future, and wasn’t sure that she would want to even if she could. Time alone would reveal Holly’s intentions. As Holly lay still, Amanda left the room and shut the door.
Headquarters of the Supreme Coven, London, 1676
Luc stood before the convened Council of Judgment as they peered down on him from a dais. It had been ten years since the Great Fire of London—as it was being called—begun by him and Giselle Cahors, as they had fought in public. Ten years that the Supreme Coven had waited for House Deveraux to provide the secret of the Black Fire in return for being restored to favor. The throne of skulls, once occupied by his family, groaned beneath the weight of Jonathan Moore, who still reigned as High Priest. The red and green of Deveraux, their coat of arms emblazoned with the fierce, proud visage of the Green Man, hung behind the throne, symbolizing their ownership of it. A hooded man stood beside the tasseled hanging with a torch, awaiting word to shame Luc by putting the flame to his family’s badge of honor.
Though Luc kept his head raised high, he was terrified. Not only his life, but his soul lay in peril. And for what? An ill-conceived altercation with the Cahors witch. He had been such a fool to attack her in broad daylight, with all of London watching.
It’s my hot Deveraux blood, he told himself. The sight of a Caho
rs is enough to send the most stalwart of us into a frenzy of rage. They nearly destroyed us, and we have vowed to obliterate every one of them from this land and all others. We have sworn blood oaths, father to son to son to son, that there shall be no place, anywhere, that they will find safety from us. That oath has bewitched us. We cannot stop ourselves from attacking when we see one of them.
Now he stood before the Judges. There were thirteen of them, all robed in the black gowns of their estate, heavy gold chains draping their shoulders and chest, their faces for the most part concealed by the hoods they wore. Each sat beside the other in a row of high-backed chairs with pentagrams carved into them. A long table fronted them, and at each place sat a bowl of salt, a goblet of wine, and a burning black tapir.
Behind them, a stained-glass window of the Great Horned God ate demons and humans shrieking for mercy. Flames danced behind him; and from his hollow mouth, a cascade of red splashed into a pool behind the massive ebony chairs in which sat the Judges.
Jonathan Moore smiled evilly down at him as Luc stood all alone facing his inquisitors. He knew very well that if the sentence for his misadventure had been solely Moore’s to pass, he would be a writhing tower of flame right now. Satan himself would be feasting on his soul.
But Moore’s was only one vote among several, and the Deveraux still had many friends. As House Deveraux rose and fell, so would their own fortunes.
“Luc Deveraux,” Moore intoned. The man’s smile faded, to be replaced by a scowl, and Luc’s heart thudded. It is good news, he thought. If it was the worst, he would deliver it to me with joy in his heart and a smile on his face.
Luc lifted his chin and stood with his legs apart, reminding himself that so long as he lived, he would be able to come back another day to restore the Deveraux to power. All that he need do is survive.
With a flourish, Moore unrolled a vellum scroll and began to read. “You fought in public, displaying the proof of the Black Arts to the eyes of ordinary men,” he began. “You brought disaster to London Town, endangering our revered landmark, this headquarters. And to add to your list of offenses, you let the Cahors witch get away.”
