War Witch

by Layla Nash

  She forced her eyes open and raised shaking hands. “I hate you. What the fuck was that?”

  “Another bad night,” I said. I flinched as something creaked and cracked in the basement, and sprinklers and smoke detector went off in every room above us. “We’ve gotta move.”

  “Find the coven,” she said, holding her side as she started to sit. “We can’t leave them here.”

  I staggered to my feet and stepped over Tracy’s body to the back rooms of the basement. Something exploded upstairs and all the lights went off, plunging us into even more terrible darkness. I blinked and held my breath, an overwhelming anxiety gripping me. I hated the dark. I really hated the dark.

  And somewhere, Rook and Sam waited.

  But so did Brandr and Anne Marie’s coven. I used a tiny thread of power to shine a light into the darkness, moving as fast as I dared through a maze of boxes and the saints only knew what else.

  People shouted behind me, in the main room, and I paused, looking back for Anne Marie. But we couldn’t leave the witches. I had to find Brandr. He didn’t deserve to burn to death somewhere in the basement. My foot disappeared into a hole and I fell, wrenching my knee as my leg caught between the bars of a large grate in the floor.

  I stared down into the hole and found Jacques looking back at me.

  The cold iron grate burned my leg and I dragged myself away, breathing through the pain. He, Lauren, and Desiree cowered away from me in the bottom of a dank hole. Magic burned through the lock on the grate, and I heaved the grate up and away with a grunt. “Come on. This place is burning. We have to get out of here.”

  None of them moved, though they braced as if expecting an attack. And I wondered if they believed I’d tortured them, like Anne Marie said, instead of the dark witches. We didn’t have time for a detailed explanation. I ground my teeth but tried to understand where they were coming from. “It wasn’t me. It was Tracy. Tracy betrayed us. Anne Marie will tell you the rest, she’s through that door. We have to go.”

  Jacques stared at me for a long second, then held his hand up. “I’ll trust you this time.”

  “Great,” I said under my breath, and grabbed his hand. He nearly wrenched me into the hole with them, but I grabbed a nearby unused piece of exercise equipment and managed to haul him out.

  I zapped the collar off him and pointed behind me in the darkness. “Anne Marie is there. Have you seen the wolf? Have they brought a shifter through here?”

  “Not here,” he said, grim. “I’ll get them out. Go.”

  So maybe he didn’t entirely trust me.

  I didn’t have time to give a shit. The darkness and smoke closed in until I coughed and hacked and couldn’t see, even with my magical flashlight. I got low, trying to crawl under the smoke, and scrambled back to the main room. There had to be a closet or somewhere else to hide Brandr. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. I still felt him, in my heart.

  The stairs opened up to my left, offering an escape, but I passed them without hesitation. Utility space on the other side could have hidden him. I coughed and dragged my tattered shirt up to cover my mouth and nose, wondering if Anne Marie made it upstairs. Nothing else stirred in the hellish darkness.

  Something seized my ankle and I cried out. Looking back and seeing Sam, I kicked back as a sludge of magic rolled out and clawed at my insides. Blood streaked his face as he dragged himself after me.

  His expression turned even uglier. “You’re not getting away from me again.”

  The greasy power I’d taken from the destroyed wards and Tracy grew slowly as I fought the desperation of getting his hands off me. But he paralyzed me, stealing life from my muscles as he sucked away my magic. He crawled closer with the clammy grip of the dead. “I missed you.”

  He was cold, his body ice, and his breath reeked of gravedirt and maggots. I struggled against the overwhelming tide of his dark, cloying magic, and strained to throw him off as he crawled up my body. He reached my soul, consuming all of me until I couldn’t move or breathe or hope. I swallowed my screams, not wanting him to have the satisfaction, and whispered, “Not like this.”

  Sam closed his eyes in rapture, lips parted as he inhaled my magic and tried to inhale me too. “Couldn’t be any other way, lover.”

  The world dulled around the edges. Sam dredged my life force, the pool of magic that sustained everything that was me. It whispered away in a drift of smoke, insubstantial.

  No more magic. It was worse than being collared—there was simply nothing left. My aura faded. And Sam, dead and evil, lay against me.

  As hope drifted away, something stirred deep inside, beyond all the memories and magic and grief.

  Life.

  I wanted to live. I wanted to fight. I’d struggled for so many years to survive, I couldn’t give up. Not in a dark basement at the hands of an evil revenant. I wouldn’t surrender myself to him or his dark spells, even in death. If it was my time to go and the saints guided my path to the afterlife, then I would do it on my terms—under the sun or stars, on the earth, breathing fresh air.

  My lips parted and breath escaped. “Samuel.”

  He lifted his head, practically purring. “Yes, my love?”

  “I banish you,” I said. “Samuel.”

  “You won’t,” he murmured.

  I closed my eyes as tears gathered in defense against the smoke and a rising tide of panic. The stairs were so close. “I banish you, Salvatore.”

  Sam looked down at me, coal-fire eyes narrowing as he studied me in the darkness. “You can’t do this, Lilith. You don’t know my names.”

  This part was the worst. It was the worst. I dreaded it so much death almost seemed preferable. But I needed magic. I opened myself up to his power and let it crawl over me, through me. I shuddered in revulsion as Sam groaned, reveling in the connection, and bile filled my mouth as I forced myself to remain still and passive. Let him think me defeated. Let him think he won.

  “I banish you,” I said again, gathering enough of his power to make it matter. “Szemere.”

  He went rigid. “No.”

  The power gave me strength. “Szemere, I banish you. I banish you.”

  Sam screamed as I used his third name, the one with all the power and the one he thought I didn’t know, and flew backward as the stolen magic and all of my intent combined in a full spell.

  I couldn’t breathe. At least the magic helped me scan the surrounding darkness—no shifters. No sign of Brandr.

  Sam got to his knees, crawling toward me. “Lilith.”

  “Coward,” I said, pushing backward. I dragged myself upright with the help of the wall, though my concentration broke as Anne Marie and the other three witches appeared out of the smoke.

  Sam ran through me, knocking me down, and bolted up the crumbling stairs. I cursed and slid to the floor once more. Anne Marie leaned down and caught my hand, not flinching from the bloody, four-fingered grip. She shoved magic at me and I tensed. “What are you doing?”

  “If I’m going to prosecute you for performing magic in front of shifters, you need to be alive.” She didn’t smile.

  Her magic, at least, was clear and cold and crisp, the very opposite of Sam’s evil sludge. She gave me the strength to haul myself up and charge after Sam, fighting through the flames and smoke. He disappeared toward what remained of Tracy’s living room, and I dodged falling pieces of ceiling as I followed.

  Time for Sam to die.

  Climbing the stairs felt like trying to scale Everest without any equipment. The boards crumbled in places and broke, burning wood scraped my calves as I hauled myself toward the living room. Somewhere up there, Sam waited. Rook waited. I bared my teeth in a snarl and imagined the air clear and clean.

  The bloody carpet in Tracy’s living room turned black with soot and fire, dark smoke filling the place until I tripped over an overturned end table. Sam hesitated in the doorway, though all I could see were his glowing eyes.

  Anne Marie growled in fury behind me an
d hexed him. Sam dodged and flung a hex back; it was badly made but well-aimed, and clipped her. Anne Marie went down and Jacques crouched next to her.

  I chased Sam and tackled him on the lawn, hatred driving me to cripple him. He tried to crawl away, but I dredged up the power—some of it his own—to cast the spell from Mother’s book.

  “Bet you haven’t seen this one,” I said, gritting my teeth. I pinned him down with a beam of magic, trapping him like a butterfly on a board, as I built the spell in my mind. At least the air was clean and I could finally take a good breath. Thunder rolled overhead, and somewhere far away, sirens rose. “This is for death. Final, forever, never-coming-back death.”

  I raised my hands to summon the fountain of magic I needed. He begged. He said he could be rehabilitated, sobbed that he’d only been misled by others. That it wasn’t his fault, he’d been tricked. It was an exact repeat of the first time I killed him. I’d almost fallen for it then.

  Not anymore.

  I thought of Rosa and Joanne and Andre, and even Tracy, as I created the dagger of power to rip his soul from that revenant body and send all of him to an afterlife of suffering. It was for them more than me.

  Anne Marie shouted, “Look out,” and a figure blurred from the darkness in my peripheral vision.

  Something slammed into me and I fell, my hand trailing through the circle. It broke. Sam scrambled away in the wet grass, still alive. Still alive, damn him to the coldest hell.

  I screamed in rage and slammed all of my power at the one who saved him, knocking the dark-cloaked witch back as I rolled to my feet.

  He chuckled, the same velvet creepy voice as the one who’d taken my pinkie, and said, “We will meet again,” before he tilted his face to the sky and sang out a word of power.

  I almost saw the flash of lightning before it crashed down on top of me and the world turned to flames again.

  Smoke rose from the grass around me as I lay there, conscious only of the stuttering, slow beat of my heart. The dark-voiced witch, who could only have been Rook, jogged into the night with Sam. The other witches were long gone—so there was no honor among dark witches, either. Sirens grew closer, more and more of them gathering. I wondered how the Alliance knew. Maybe they heard me, when I Called.

  Anne Marie took a few unsteady steps onto the lawn, holding her dislocated shoulder from the hex, and collapsed. She managed to avoid the scorched earth where the lightning had struck me.

  At least I could see the stars.

  The house burned behind us, fueled by magic, and made the air gritty and hot. I badly wanted a shower. I released whatever magic I held, not wanting to feel the greasy slime of Sam’s magic anymore, and the wave of pain that rolled through me as it receded almost knocked me out completely.

  I stared up at the stars, trying to remember which ones Dad and I had moved around. “Anne Marie.”

  The quiet stretched as the three other witches ran away from the house, huddling together a few yards down to wait for the cavalry to arrive, and left the new Morrigan and the old Morrigan alone. She took a deep breath. “You were right. When you killed him. I didn’t want to see it, but with everything... You were right.”

  “I didn’t see it in Tracy.” I blinked soot and ashes away, though it might have been tears that blinded me. The full moon revealed more than I wanted. I tried not to think of Tracy, lying still and lifeless and alone in the basement.

  “None of us did.”

  It didn’t make me feel any better.

  The sirens cut off before they became deafening, and instead voices and shouts and running feet approached. The Alliance, coming to rescue us.

  My fingers dug into the earth to anchor myself, despite the pain in my hand, and I searched for Brandr. He had to be close. If he lived, he had to be near. But the darkness revealed nothing.

  I cleared my throat, raw from smoke and screaming. “I think I’m going to pass out now.”

  “Good,” she muttered. “I’m tired of listening to you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and gave up trying to stay conscious.

  Chapter 55

  When I woke, I expected to see Moriah or maybe Leif, if I hadn’t been abandoned on the lawn. But instead, moon-faced Kyle perched on the edge of a chair next to the bed, hands pressed between his knees as he stared at me.

  I blinked, waiting for reality to adjust itself around me, and couldn’t speak. My throat felt raw and brittle at the same time, and every inch of me ached.

  Kyle still stared at me, wide-eyed.

  I took a deep breath, testing my lungs, and wheezed. “What?”

  “You’re awake,” he said, breath exploding out in a rush. He sagged back in the chair as if his bones melted. “Praise the saints, you woke up.”

  None of my muscles cooperated as I tried to sit, so I settled for raising my head to study where I lay. “Was there suspicion I wouldn’t?”

  “Anne Marie said—”

  “She had my pyre planned, didn’t she?” My mouth twisted into something like a smile. Just like she’d promised.

  He flushed, flipping the dark hair out of his face. “She said she’d agreed to—”

  I snorted, then used my left hand to push myself up and drag the sheets back. I couldn’t stand the feel of my skin another moment—and though I didn’t think I had enough strength for a cleansing circle, I could take a really, really hot shower. I didn’t look at the mitten of bandages around my right hand.

  Kyle averted his gaze from my bare legs. “Uh, I’m supposed to tell the Alpha—”

  I lurched forward and grabbed the front of his shirt in both hands, yanking him closer until we were nose-to-nose. I kept my voice low, because to speak some truths too loudly meant returning to a very dark place. “A dark witch was inside me. He stole all my magic and then I had to take some of his just to survive. They tortured me. Used my dead mother against me. They almost burned me alive. I want to take a shower. The Alpha can join me if he’s so desperate to talk, but I’m going to scrub off at least three layers of skin.”

  He gulped, wide-eyed, as I released him and shoved him back into the chair. I braced myself on it and the mattress until I was certain my knees would hold me up, then began the marathon shuffle to the attached bathroom.

  Kyle fidgeted. “Do you…should I tell the Alpha to j-join you, or—?”

  “Saints preserve me,” I said, leaning against the wall to catch my breath. Four feet from the bed and already dizziness threatened to lay me out. “Can’t you wait half an hour before you tell him?”

  The mender slid lower in the chair, avoiding my gaze. “He already knows.”

  I used the sink for balance, though I avoided looking in the mirror. I didn’t want to know what I looked like. “I’m still taking a shower.”

  “Should I tell him to, uh—”

  “Get out, Kyle.” I shut the door.

  Near-boiling water didn’t help. Neither did soap or the loofah I used until my skin rubbed raw. The violation seethed inside me, tainting my aura and the little magic that remained. I couldn’t forget the feeling of taking in Sam’s magic, of voluntarily inviting him into me, despite everything he’d done. Even though it was only to save my own life, it still hurt. I feared he’d contaminated me forever. That my magic would always be dirty and corrupted and... wrong.

  I cried until the water ran cold and my eyes swelled so I couldn’t see and a headache drove a spike through my ears. I didn’t want to leave the protection of the shower curtain; there was no telling what waited outside. I doubted the world had gotten any kinder.

  As I stood there with my face in my hands, the door opened. I held my breath, wondering if Soren actually planned to join me in the shower. But the door clicked shut and no one else disturbed the air. When I dared peek around the curtain, a pile of clothes waited beside two towels, still warm from the dryer. Even though a knot formed in my throat at the sight and hiding under the water for another hour seemed like the best idea I’d had in weeks, I cl
imbed out and got dressed.

  They were Moriah’s clothes—I hoped and dreaded that she waited outside. If I asked, she would sit in silence, but she would have so many questions that I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t ready to talk about anything that happened. Not about Tracy, not about Sam, not about anything.

  I wondered what Anne Marie told them. She probably made herself the hero. I still lived, so she hadn’t told them everything.

  I pulled my tangled hair back without looking in the mirror, so I wouldn’t have to see the scars around my throat from the iron collar. No amount of healing would fix those, and I didn’t have the strength for a glamour. I didn’t even want to touch magic, for fear Sam’s evil still lingered. I took a deep breath to steady myself before I opened the door.

  Soren sat in the dim room, hands relaxed on the arms of Kyle’s chair. He watched me but didn’t speak.

  I shivered as I plodded to the bed and curled up under the sheets with my back to him. I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting to block out the world and the building migraine from all the crying. The bond, stronger after my Calling him, rippled. Soren wanted to know what happened. My eyes prickled and my sinuses burned, and I shook my head against the pillow. Couldn’t say it. Couldn’t speak it or it would be true.

  The chair creaked as he shifted, and the smell of his cologne grew stronger. I pressed my face into the pillow and tried to block out the world. He waited.

  The bond made it easier. I didn’t have to speak. I showed him, instead.

  Soren tensed as images of Brandr and me in the Skein filtered to him, as the evening began. As Sam tricked us and the kettle trapped us. As they tortured me using Mother’s face. As Rook cut off my finger. Tracy’s betrayal.

  He saw the fight, the demon, the miscast spell and the burning house, the feeling of Sam overpowering me and stealing my life, and the hopelessness. The emptiness as I watched my life fade away. The dirty contamination of taking Sam’s magic. Trading my soul for survival. The lightning bolt on the lawn that drove me into the ground but didn’t cleanse any of the past despite the fire and pain. Soren felt, I hoped, the desperation of deep water, the bitterness of Tracy’s treachery, and the hope that remained each time I found Leif in the darkness.