I froze, unable to move. The blood ran cold in my veins. How did she know?
Did she even know, or was she just guessing, or trying to rile me up for some reason? There was no way she could know, right?
“It’s in your blood. Wicked. Wicked blood.” The Baba Yaga snapped her teeth, biting the air.
I resisted the urge to scream. She was so close behind me. If she wanted to kill me, she just had to grab my neck and do it—despite her advanced age, I was sure she had the strength for it.
“I… I…” I stuttered, trying to find the right words. “I have to focus for the ritual.”
The Baba Yaga laughed, a humorless sound. But she did back away, allowing me some space.
“I will need to know the purpose of the curse before I can begin,” I said. A small shudder had crawled into my voice, but the Baba Yaga either didn’t notice or didn’t care enough to comment on it.
“A horrible curse, I need, blood witch,” the Baba Yaga said, now moving until she stood in front of me. With the light of the fireplace reflecting behind her, she seemed like a beast who had risen from the belly of hell itself, a demon roaming the earth. “A curse of death.”
I gasped and nearly dropped the knife I was holding.
Death curses were the worst types of curses out there.
“That’s forbidden,” I said before I could stop myself. I flinched the moment the words escaped from my mouth.
“Forbidden by whose rules?” The Baba Yaga leaned over and grabbed the hair of the slave girl, pulling her head backwards by yanking her long, brown hair. “I’m the Baba Yaga, child. I’ve been around longer than the rules you are referring to.”
What should I do? Father had said a Baba Yaga should not be thwarted, but a freaking death curse? I didn’t even know if my magic was strong enough for that.
And why didn’t this monster do it herself? By the looks of her, and her own claims, she certainly seemed more than capable of killing whoever she wanted to, without needing my help for it.
My fingers circled around the pendant. I couldn’t ask Father for help, though, not yet. The Baba Yaga wasn’t actively threatening me, and if he came to my rescue, it would only anger her more.
I tried to stay calm, tried to think. Was there a way I could get myself out of this?
“My magic will not be strong enough.” Maybe she would curse me for being too weak, but at least it would keep me from having to do the unthinkable.
The hag shook her head and a grotesque, sickening smile appeared on her features. “You are strong enough. A Silvermane. I heard about the strong heir of the Silvermanes, the one resembling the great Selena Silvermane.”
“That’s not me.” My voice sounded as weak as a child’s. “That’s… that’s my sister. Samantha. But she’s in a coma now…”
“Not that strong then after all, isn’t she?” The witch threw her head backward and let out a loud, howling laugh. “No, Kieran Silvermane, you must do it. It must be you.”
I glanced around, trying to look for an escape route. Maybe if I could make it out of this hut and run out of the forest, I could make it. She couldn’t force me to do forbidden magic, right? My father would understand; he would encourage me to say no to this request. Even if you should never cross a Baba Yaga, you shouldn’t violate our ancient rules either.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t do it.”
The witch tsked, and swung her finger from left to right, as if disciplining a naughty child. “But you can, and you will. I chose you specifically because you can. There is the scent of death around you, Kieran Silvermane, swarming all around you like maggots to a corpse.”
I was still on the floor, looking up at her, the knife still perched in my hand. If I stabbed her, would it kill her? Could you even kill a Baba Yaga with ordinary weapons? How did you kill the legendary witch?
And what punishment befell those who killed a Baba Yaga? Was it worse than uttering a death curse, speaking the forbidden words, and forcing someone to die?
“I don’t… I can’t…”
“You have offered your blood to a vampire. Sacred blood, to a wicked creature. I can smell it on you.” The Baba Yaga spat at me, the spit barely missing my face. “You refuse a death curse, but you do so much worse? A union so unholy it would have you cast out of your coven, stripped from all your magic.”
“I…” I was lost for words.
My worst secret in the world, and she had uncovered it, this monster.
If I didn’t help her, she could use it against me. There was no doubt in my mind that she would expose my secrets if it helped her to get what she wanted, and even if I helped her, she might just do it out of spite.
“Perform the curse, and I will not tell of your wicked deeds,” the Baba Yaga said.
Never trust a Baba Yaga… But what choice do I have?
If I was stripped off my powers, if the magic running through my veins evaporated, what else did I have left to bargain with a vampire? And if I did not offer Arthan something in return for the blood he provided me, the blood keeping my sister alive, then Samantha would die.
I had no choice but to cooperate.
Still, I felt as if I was selling my soul to the devil himself, and maybe I was.
I grabbed the knife so hard my knuckles turned white. With my other hand, I grasped the lower arm of the Baba Yaga’s slave girl.
“This is going to hurt,” I told her, right before I carved into her flesh.
Chapter 8
The slave girl barely let out a cry as the cold metal touched her skin. Cut strong and fast, Dad had told me this afternoon, to make it as painless as possible.
Still, it must’ve hurt a lot.
Sweat drops had appeared on the girl’s forehead, and her heartbeat was increasing with the minute. She looked even paler than this afternoon.
Guilt tugged at me as I cut out a chunk of the skin on her arm, less than probably would be recommended, but enough to fulfill the spell.
After I finished, the gawking wound on her arm nearly made me throw up. I couldn’t even stomach to look at it.
The girl was still quiet. She let out two small sobs, nothing more, and then went back to saying nothing.
I felt guilty for doing this. If my curse worked, then someone would die because of it. And magic, one way or another, always came at a price.
Through using hex bags, you circumvented this, up to some degree. It was not the person performing the curse, or the person asking for it, who would be targeted by the ‘magic always comes at a price’ principle, but the person whose skin the hex bag was made of. In case of animal skins, the animals were already dead beforehand, so the whole system was cheated.
In case of human skin…
I looked at the pitiful girl in front of me, the gravity of what I had done sinking in. If she had to pay for a death curse…
The Goddess might take mercy and not take much, but she might also request the ultimate sacrifice.
A life for a life.
And by all accounts, this girl looked like she had suffered enough.
What have I done?
Still, with the prying eyes of the Baba Yaga glooming over me, I couldn’t stop it. Not if it meant Samantha would no longer get the rations she needed and would die. I couldn’t do that to my sister.
With trembling hands, I placed the bloody piece of skin on the cloth, just about ready to throw up. This was wrong, all wrong. What the hell am I doing?
I nearly dropped the herbs when I picked them up to put them in the hex bag. Then came the water, of which I sprinkled a few drops on the skin and herbs. Next, I put the branch of the dead tree inside the bag.
“Good, good.” The Baba Yaga rubbed her hands, like Scrooge when he came upon a pot of gold. “Now, the blood, the wicked blood…”
It wasn’t a question.
While I knew this was wrong, while my entire body rebelled against it, and everything I knew about right and wrong told me I shouldn’t
do this, I had to.
I pricked my finger and let the drops of blood fall on top of the hex bag. Breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, I counted one, two, three drops.
The Baba Yaga cackled. Her eyes grew wide in delight. The old hag was enjoying this.
Gagging, I tied up the strings of the bag from human skin, sealing its contents. The spell was almost finished.
I felt power course through me as I held the bag. The power from my blood inside. Strangely enough, I felt… capable. Strong enough to fulfill the death curse.
Power, so strong and so addictive. It rolled over me, like waves of the sea, crushing against me as I tried to keep steady, tried to keep my mind sane.
Wolves howled from outside, thunder cracked through the air. Wind whistled all around the cabin.
The elements were ready. The wicked moon was providing its aid. The death curse… it was working.
I was as certain of it as I was of my own name.
The hex bag in my hand pulsated with power: the power to kill, to destroy. A terrible power with a horrible price tag attached to it.
I glanced at the slave girl one more time, thinking what I, if anything, could do for her. Had I just condemned her to a fate worse than the one she was already living?
“Say the name,” I said, looking at the Baba Yaga.
I no longer felt fear, just repulsion. For all the unholy things I had supposedly done with Arthan, none of it felt as unholy as what I was doing here.
The Baba Yaga looked me straight in the eye as she said the name of the person that needed to be killed by the death curse.
“Samantha Silvermane.”
Chapter 9
It felt as if all the breath was punched out of my lungs violently. I couldn’t breathe. My mouth dropped to the floor.
This couldn’t be real. I was trapped in a nightmare; I had to be. It wasn’t possible that my actions, that the curse this monster had made me perform would lead to the death of my sister.
I screamed at the witch, clawing at her.
She cackled, snapping the hex bag out of my grip with the strength of a dragon. The Baba Yaga threw her head back and laughed like a maniac.
This wasn’t real. This was just a bad dream.
It felt as if the floor disappeared from underneath my feet. My knees were wobbly, my breathing ragged. What had I done? What had this monster forced me to do?
“No!” I tried to reach for the witch again. Maybe if I could grab the bag then…
Then, what? A spell cast cannot be undone. I knew that.
I had cursed my own sister. I had condemned Samantha to die.
I pushed against the old hag with all my strength, but the witch barely moved. She seemed to be made of stone, created by the Gorgon Medusa, a terrible monster that had come to destroy me.
She kept on laughing, the sound echoing all around the cabin.
Even if I couldn’t undo what had been done… I had to make her pay.
I focused on her blood, on the steady heartbeat, the rhythm. My head hurt right away, the power coursing through me overwhelmingly strong. It was anger fueling the force that raged through me, as strong as a thunderstorm on a rainy day.
“No!” I screamed at the Baba Yaga. I sensed the blood boiling beneath her skin, felt it pulsating underneath her veins.
She wailed in agony as I made her blood turn into fire, from red wine to a raging hot inferno.
I screamed along with her, the energy invading me as painful as what I was inflicting on her. The strength, the savagery of the power was overwhelming…
The witch fell to the floor, clutching her chest. Despite the pain and tears rolling down her cheeks, she still chuckled. I wanted to hit her until she stopped laughing. I wanted to hurt her in the way I was hurting.
“Why?” I asked her. “Why my sister?”
The Baba Yaga shrieked louder, the echo of a thousand laughs all combined in one. She wasn’t about to answer me, I realized, as the floor underneath me began shaking.
The hut was moving. What was happening?
Despite being a little rusty on the lore surrounding the Baba Yaga, something told me it wasn’t a good sign when she started moving her chicken-legged hut around.
“Get out.” The voice sounded hoarse, as if the person speaking had been stuck in the desert for days on end without access to any water supplies whatsoever. It belonged to the slave girl, still chained to the table.
She seemed surprised at the sound of her own voice.
The walls of the cabin started caving in, as if the whole structure was collapsing around us.
“Underground,” the chained-up girl said.
The witch cackled even louder, and my eyes went wide. If I didn’t get out soon, per this girl’s warning, then the hut would disappear below the earth, and I would be stuck there too, along with the person who had condemned me to the worst crime imaginable.
The girl clutched my arm. “I can help.” The words barely reached above a whisper, swallowed as they were by the obnoxious sounds of the Baba Yaga and the tearing noises of the walls all around us.
“Help your sister.” The girl’s gaze met mine, and I saw only sincerity and worry in there. She looked more alive in these seconds than she had during all the time before, even when I had cut off the skin from her arm.
But was she telling the truth? Could I trust her?
“Save me, and I will help,” she promised, her fingers digging into my skin.
The roof cracked ominously, one of the beams tumbling down to the chorus of the Baba Yaga’s insane snickering.
“Go!” the girl screamed at me, letting go of my arm. “Go!”
I did, scrambling to get up. In three steps, I had made it to the door of the cabin, right before another beam slammed down at the exact spot where I had been sitting minutes ago.
I glanced behind me once more, at the cackling shape of the Baba Yaga and the girl cowering underneath the table.
“I’ll come back,” I shouted at the girl, not sure if she had heard me. I felt a pang of guilt for what I had done to her, for what had brought her here.
Then, I pulled the door open. The ladder had all but disappeared beneath the house, and we were inches away from the ground. Beneath the hut, a hole had opened, an abyss leading maybe to hell itself.
The cabin would disappear for God knows how long, only to reappear when the Baba Yaga willed it so. Unless I found a spell to summon it back sooner. Unless I found a way to save the girl trapped inside, the girl who claimed she knew how to help my sister.
Perhaps I was clutching at straws, but if that girl had lived with the Baba Yaga for a long time, she might know the latter’s weakness. She might know something to stop that spell.
I inhaled deeply, jumped, and then rolled over the ground as my body hit the floor.
As I got back up, the Baba Yaga appeared in the doorway. She looked utterly mad, hysterical, a harpy from the ancient Greek myths.
She smiled at me, a grotesque, monstrous smile that sickened me to my very core. Then, she pulled the door shut and in a matter of seconds, the roof collapsed, and the walls fell in. The cabin became impossibly small, and then vanished under the ground.
The hole closed immediately. Seconds later, the exact spot where the hut had stood, was completely empty, and it was hard to believe it had ever been occupied by a chicken-legged hut at all.
But it was real. This entire nightmare had been real. I felt it in my blood, felt it in my bones.
The Baba Yaga had tricked me into cursing my own sister, the person I had sworn to protect.
As I lay there staring at the empty spot, realization of what had just happened sank in. How could I ever tell my parents? Aileen?
They would hate me. Hate me that I hadn’t used the pendant to ask for their help in time, that I had been so stupid to wait and ask for the identity of the intended victim until after I had completed the death curse. They would despise me for being stupid enough to curse my own sister.
I wanted to curl up and cry my eyes out.
But I had no idea when the curse would hit. It could be today, it could be one week from now, but not more than one month: curses as strong as this one were tied to the phases of the moon. When the next waxing crescent appeared in the night sky, my sister would be dead.
So, I had no time to cry and feel sorry for myself. Samantha needed me, and since I had done this to her, I had to save her.
Chapter 10
I called Arthan.
I didn’t know why, but as I stood there in the forest, staring at that bottomless pit into which the Baba Yaga’s hut had vanished seconds ago, with only the pale moonlight illuminating my surroundings, and the weight of my own guilt pressing me down, there was no one else I could think of to call.
My parents wouldn’t understand. They would blame me. Heck, I was in the room when it all happened, and I still blamed myself.
Aileen would probably try to help me, but she’d be forced by family duty to tell my parents the truth, and that would put me in the same horrible situation.
I could try Jadis from Hexagon, but besides chatting over some tarot cards and the power of wind chimes, we weren’t exactly friends. Not like Camille, Dean and me. And I couldn’t tell my friends because I hadn’t even told them who I really was. It was forbidden, and I, like a fool, had always obliged by the rules of my ancestor’s stupid Grimoire, up until I broke just about every rule in the book and cursed my own sister.
So, I called Arthan.
The phone rang only two times before he picked up.
“Hello?” His voice sounded tentative, worried.
“Arthan.” I said his name like it was salvation. “I… I’m in trouble.”
What did I expect? That he would come over here and help me, like a freaking knight in shining armor? He was a vampire. We weren’t friends. There was no special connection between us when he drank my blood, except for my own stupid thoughts.
He only came to me because we had made a deal, and my blood made him stronger. That was it.
Why would he risk everything to help me fight a Baba Yaga?
Playing With Fire Page 72