by Mae Doyle
“Oh, fuck. They were gods, weren’t they?”
My dad didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Chapter 3
Even though we were silent for most of the ride back home, my mind was racing. Those two guys couldn’t have been gods, right? I mean, I had always thought that the gods were old and they definitely looked only a few years older than me.
But the way that they enthralled me? My core still throbbed when I thought about the way the two of them looked at me, and I shifted uncomfortably on the seat of dad’s truck.
He glanced over at me, and even though his eyes were still snapping and sending sparks flying, I could easily see the concern written on his face. “You okay there, Emily?”
I knew that I’d just fucked up. Royally. Pissing off the gods was a huge no-no, and doing it on this big day when we were going to be sacrificing my sister to them?
Yeah, not the best move that I’d ever made.
Taking a shaking breath, I nodded. “I’m okay,” I told my dad, even though it was a lie. I was not okay. I wanted to be near them again, even though the entire time that we were all close to each other, my body had also been screaming for me to run away. “I just hope that I didn’t make them mad and that they won’t take it out on our family tonight.”
Dad was silent and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to music that only he could hear. Suddenly, the radio clicked on, and the exact song started playing. I knew it immediately – it was some old rock n roll song that he listened to whenever he was really stressed out.
I wondered if I should I say something to him. A quick glance over at his face and I could see how tightly he was clenching his jaw. He’d stopped drumming on the steering wheel and had his hands firmly locked in place.
So, maybe talking to him right then wasn’t the best idea. Turning away from him, I stared out the window, trying to ignore the fact that I had just majorly fucked up.
We were quiet the rest of the way home, but when we pulled up in the driveway, he turned to me. “You better make yourself scarce while I figure this out with your mom,” he said. A slight breeze swept between the two of us while we talked, lifting my hair and making me shiver.
Yeah, he was pissed. Dad usually did a great job holding in his anger, but when it manifested in ways that I could feel, like wind or rain, then I knew that I was in trouble.
“I’ll be in my room,” I told him, turning and scurrying into the house as quickly as possible. I could hear my mom in the living room cleaning, and I scooted up the stairs and down the long hall before she could catch me.
Just when I thought that I was alone, though, my sister appeared in front of me in the hall. She wasn’t there one moment, and the next she was, a loud crack and a strong smell of sulfur the only signs that let me know she had suddenly appeared.
“Shit! You can do that now?” My mouth dropped open. Even though I wanted to hide in my room and not think about what had happened at the church, I couldn’t believe that my sister had learned to apparate in a morning. Most witches take months or even years to learn how to do that.
She grinned and held up her hands. They were glowing slightly, a light pulse that waxed and waned as she breathed. Her bright eyes shone and sparked and I noticed that the veins on her arms were standing out more than usual.
All clear signs of a witch who has been using too much magic too quickly and isn’t sure how to handle it. Most witches would take a breather and let their body rest, but my sister didn’t have time. If she wanted to cast spells or charms, then she only had a few more hours in which she could do it.
“I can do it all.” Her voice sounded high and hollow, and she grinned at me. “You have no idea how cool this is, Emily! Apparating hurt the first time, but now all I have to do is think about where I want to be, and I go there. Magic. Mom taught me a few things while you were gone, but it’s all just coming naturally to me. It’s like…I knew how to do these things, but I had to unlock them, you know?”
I didn’t, not really, but I nodded anyway, not wanting to upset her. She looked down at her glowing hands and made fists, forcing the bright light emanating from them to become even more intense.
“I just hate that I have to give it up so quickly,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
I frowned. There was one part of the deal that came with the blood sacrifice that ensured that the person being sacrificed wouldn’t miss the power. They were supposed to feel it course through them, giving them a sense of growing euphoria all day long. By the time they were ready to be sacrificed, the deal was that they would be so overcome with the power that they wouldn’t feel anything.
She wasn’t supposed to regret this. She was born and molded for this. The fact that she was feeling some doubts wasn’t good, and it was a clear sign that maybe something wasn’t working right.
“I’m sorry. What can I do?” Tentatively I reached out to touch her, gasping as my fingers met her bare arm. Her skin felt electric, and the energy poured into my body, making my hair stand on end. I felt like I was buzzing, like you do when you have two really good drinks and you want to take on the world.
Was this what she felt like? I thought maybe so, but there was a bright look on her face that told me that I wasn’t experiencing a tenth of what she was feeling. Sara was burning bright, every cell of hers vibrating with the power coursing through her.
“I have to see him.” Sara reached out and clamped her hand over mine, holding me in place. I couldn’t pull my hand away from the arm, and the amount of her energy flowing into me was making me dizzy. “You have to help me get out of here. Mom will never allow it.”
I knew exactly who she meant, and I shook my head immediately. “Not a good idea, Sara, and you know it. If Travis sees you like this, then he’s going to freak out and we can’t have that. You know that dad would have to wipe his memory.”
“He’s going to do that anyway. Travis doesn’t want to remember me, not after tonight. He told me that he wants his memory wiped so that he doesn’t have to picture me being the sacrifice for all of the witches. Please, Emily, I don’t have much time. You have to let me have this last moment with him before he forgets me forever.”
I paused. Would it really hurt for her to see her boyfriend one more time? Hell, I could even chaperone to make sure that they didn’t do anything stupid.
Yeah, the other part of the agreement? Sara had to be a virgin. So far, so good, but the wild look in her eyes made me nervous.
“It’s not a good idea.” I yanked back on my hand, managing to remove it from her arm, and her eyes darkened as she stared at me. “I know that it’s tempting, Sara, but if you – ”
“You know nothing.” She glared at me, sparks swirling around her. I could feel the anger in the air. It felt like it does before lightning strikes in a particularly bad storm. There was panic starting to rise in my chest, and I wondered why the hell my parents hadn’t felt her rage and come up to see what was going on.
Then I remembered – they were probably talking about the fact that I royally pissed off some gods today.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be created only to be destroyed. You have no idea what it’s like to know that I’m going to leave behind this power and the people I love. And you can’t stop me.” Her voice was still quiet, but when I glanced down, I saw that she was rising off of the floor. Sara’s toes were barely touching the wood floor.
“Get over yourself! You can’t just go around putting all of us at risk, you know that? Yeah, this sucks, okay? But you can’t make it worse.” My heart pounded in my chest and I hoped that my response would calm her down. I knew that I should call out to my parents, but I grabbed her arm instead, trying to pull her back down to the floor.
“Emily. Don’t try to stop me.”
Yeah, like I would ever be able to. The words were barely out of Sara’s mouth before there was a loud snap that made me drop to the rug and cover my ears with my hands. I sucked in a breath of air
only to choke on the thick smoke she’d left behind. When I stood up, I wasn’t surprised to see that she was gone.
Great. Travis.
Turning, I ran as fast I could back down the hall, taking the stairs two at a time to get to the first floor of the house. My parents weren’t inside, which meant that they were probably on the front porch talking about how dead I was for pissing off the gods.
Milo regarded me with a raised eyebrow as I skidded past him in the foyer. “Are they really pissed?” I asked him, taking time before opening the door to try to slow down my breathing.
He nodded, and I groaned, rolling my eyes and then throwing open the door.
If they were pissed before, I could only imagine how angry they’d be when they learned where Sara ran off to.
“Emily.” My mom spun around at the sound of the front door opening and took a step towards me. Just like with Sara upstairs, I could feel the rage radiating off of her. “What the hell did you just do at the church?”
My dad stood behind her, his arms crossed. He looked sad, but what I was about to tell them was sure to change their expressions.
“Yeah, about that, I’m really sorry.” My mom narrowed her eyes at me and I swallowed my fear. “But something worse has happened. Sara left.”
“She left?” Dad walked past my mom, who was still vibrating with anger. “What do you mean she left? Where the hell would she go?”
Oh, fuck. There wasn’t any good way around it. “She went to see Travis. She wanted to say goodbye to him before you wiped his memory and made him forget her. She was a little…wound tight?”
That didn’t really capture her rage and the energy pouring off of her in the hall upstairs, but it was the best way I could think of to describe how pissed she’d been.
“Wound tight,” my mom repeated. She took a deep breath and I exhaled when I noticed her aura stopped shimmering so violently. Not that she wasn’t still mad, but she knew that things had to happen to stop Sara from making a big fucking mistake. “Let’s go. You stay here,” she said, pointing at me.
Yeah, like I had any desire to get into the car with the two of them.
I watched as the two of them ran to the car. My dad hopped behind the wheel, shutting the doors silently before they backed down the driveway. It was probably for the best that I was left behind, even though part of me wanted to be involved. Part of me honestly felt like maybe I could do something to help my family, even though I knew that was a load of shit.
There wasn’t anything that I could do, anyway. No spells, no magic, and I obviously couldn’t talk Sara down from making stupid decisions.
Bending over, I grabbed my knees and breathed deeply through my nose, trying to calm down. It was all okay. They were going to get Sara in time and keep her from doing something stupid. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t just apparate, but it was probably so one of them could hold her down in the backseat of the truck on the way home.
The air felt empty without their energy at the house, and I was suddenly exhausted. Dealing with pissed off witches was one of the most tiring things, and my body felt completely drained. At least it wasn’t too late to get a cup of coffee and see if I could perk up before they got back home with Emily.
That was what I would do. That, and clean up the house so that when my parents got back home my mom wouldn’t be able to use the excuse of a filthy house to be even more pissed off at me.
Sighing, I turned back to the front door. As I touched the handle, though, I paused.
It felt like someone was watching me. Or something. Something was watching me. I shivered and turned around, my eyes quickly scanning the front yard. Mom always hired a druid in the spring to make sure that everything looked beautiful, and the flower beds were lush and full.
Huge hydrangeas bowed over with the weight of their bright flowers, and azaleas and butterfly bush attracted hummingbirds. They whipped around the yard, sipping nectar at the flowers, obviously unaware that something might be lurking in the yard.
Slowly, I turned my head. By the stone bench and the arch there was some clematis and lots of hosta. A few of the leaves from the bigger plants swayed, but there wasn’t any breeze.
There.
I took a deep breath and hopped off of the front porch, running straight at the patch of hosta where I’d seen the leaves move. These plants were huge, with giant leaves the size of my arm, and they grew almost as tall as my hips, so anything could be hiding underneath them.
“What are you? Show yourself!” I cried, brushing leaves out of the way as I looked for whatever it was that had been watching me. The leaves moved quickly as something ran away from me through the plants, and I forged after it, ignoring the fact that I was probably trampling a path through my mom’s favorite plants.
“Stop running!” My voice echoed through the yard, but whatever it was didn’t slow down. Suddenly, it leapt out of the plants, a huge dark shape that was almost a blur as it flew past me and landed on a tree twenty feet away.
I stopped running and bent over to grab my thighs, gasping at the stitch in my side. A gargoyle. Nobody in their right mind would chase one through their garden.
Fucking hell. What the fuck was a gargoyle doing hiding in the hosta?
I wasn’t sure if it was the same one from the morning. Call me stupid, or whatever, but we didn’t see many living gargoyles around here, and they all looked alike. This one had tiny wings protruding from its back and its mouth was open in a snarl.
Yeah, probably the same one from the morning, if I knew my luck.
“Why the hell are you here?” Without thinking, I reached down and grabbed a rock, flinging it at the creature. “You’re not welcome in our garden! We have protections to keep you out, you know!”
The rock bounced uselessly off of the gargoyle’s back with a loud thud, and it snarled at me, tilting its head a little like it was sizing me up for an attack.
“Get out!” My neighbors were probably watching from their windows, wondering why I was screaming, but they wouldn’t be able to see what I did. From the road, our yard was neat and tidy like the rest in the neighborhood, with short grass and no flowers.
Humans couldn’t see through the enchantments, which meant that they couldn’t see the gargoyle who looked like he was sizing me up for a meal right now.
“I was just watching you.” Its voice cut through my body. “But if you throw another rock at me, witch, I will rip your head from your body.” I could see its muscles trembling as it hung onto the tree, and I had no doubt that it would willingly make good on its threat, but something seemed to be holding it back.
Like an enchantment.
“You’re his pet. Wydar, right? You belong with him?” I took a step closer to the gargoyle, not knowing for sure what I was going to do or say when I reached it.
It snarled again but relaxed some, the tension disappearing from its muscles. It still clung to the tree, its sharp claws ripping the bark into ribbons. “I serve him.”
Right. Fucking gods love to brainwash magical creatures so that they don’t realize that their serving is actually a form of slavery. It made me hate our agreement with them even more.
“Well, you can tell your master to fuck off.” Bending down, I pick up another rock. It felt good in my hand, like I would actually be able to protect myself, even though I knew that if the gargoyle wanted to kill me, it could do so before I had time to respond. “I’m not interested in his little pet following me around.”
This made the creature growl, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
“I’m just here to watch.”
“Pervert.” The gargoyle didn’t move or respond, so I dropped the rock. “Have fun watching a boring house then, you weirdo. Tell your master to stop being such a creeper, okay?”
With that, I wheeled around and stalked back to the house. I could feel the gargoyle still watching me, its eyes boring into my back, but I didn’t want to turn around and look at it. If Wydar wanted to s
end his little pet to watch me, that was fine, but all it was going to see me do was vacuum and drink coffee.
Fucking meddlesome gods. I couldn’t wait for them to leave and go back to their realms so that they’d leave us alone.
Chapter 4
By the time my parents finally got Sara back, I’d finished the coffee in the pot, picked up the kitchen and living room without magic, and showered. Every time I peeked out the window I saw the gargoyle looking back at me. It had moved around the house instinctively, as if it knew where I’d be.
Creepy little fucker.
The front door swung open with a bang and I jumped off of the sofa, throwing the book I’d been reading onto the coffee table. After a moment, my parents walked through, my sister between them, rage pouring off of her.
They’d had to charm her to make her come back home. That much was obvious by the way she drug her feet and the set of her jaw. Carefully I walked over and shut the door behind them, but before I could lock it, my mom waved her hand and all of the locks sprang into place with a loud click.
We were all silent, my sister standing defiantly in the foyer. Slowly, I walked around her, stepping to the side to be closer to my parents, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Sara.
Before, it had just been her hands that were glowing, but now all of her skin seemed to be emitting light. Small cracks had appeared on her face and her arms, and these glowed brighter than the rest of her.
“Is she going to be okay?” There was more magic in my sister than I’d ever seen before. Her eyes sparked and her hair crackled when she moved.
“She will be, but this isn’t going to get any better until tonight.” My mom sighed and rubbed her hands together before reaching out and touching Sara’s temple. Immediately there was a whoosh of air and energy as she started to pull some of the magic from Sara.
“Does that hurt?” I whispered to my dad. My mom’s face was screwed up with concentration and sweat broke out on her brow.
