Witches of Ash and Ruin

by E. Latimer

  She glanced down and realized she had blood splashed across her front, up her arm and shoulder. And her hand was still covered, a gore-encased glove. A wave of nausea ran over her. Grandma King had thought her too weak to lead the coven, and in the end maybe she was. She hadn’t been able to pledge herself to her grandmother’s god. Hadn’t been able to save her.

  Cora had returned minutes later to find her sitting in the middle of the kitchen in a pool of blood, too shell-shocked to pick herself up off the floor. Once Meiner had told her what happened, the blond girl seemed to recover herself surprisingly fast. She’d lifted Grandma King onto the couch in the living room.

  Seeing the still figure took Meiner’s breath away all over again, and she hunched forward, gasping, hand braced against the brick fireplace.

  Grandma King was dead. It seemed impossible.

  Cora disappeared into the hallway for a moment, leaving Meiner with the body, and in spite of the bile rising in her throat, she edged closer, frowning. One of her grandmother’s arms was up on her chest, and her loose blouse had been torn away at the shoulder. The edge was stained with blood, and there was a deep cut on her arm, not a jagged slash, but even and deliberate. She remembered suddenly, through the haze, seeing one of the brothers stoop over her gran briefly, before they left. She’d assumed they were checking to see if she was dead, but…

  Had they taken blood?

  Suddenly furious, she stalked forward, reaching out to pull up the old woman’s sleeve. Then she paused, startled. There was a mark above the cut, a black ink pattern etched into her grandmother’s weathered skin. It looked like a strange cross between a pentacle and a spiderweb, and Meiner squinted down at it, puzzled.

  She didn’t remember her gran having any tattoos. But then, there was so much that her grandmother obviously hadn’t told her.

  The silver box, for a start. Dayna had been right: her gran and the Butcher had met before. She was willing to bet he’d given her that scar.

  “I guess we have to clean up the kitchen.”

  Meiner jumped. Cora was in the doorway, looking pale and hollowed out with shock.

  Meiner only nodded and turned back to Grandma King. “Did you know she had—” She cut herself off abruptly. The skin on her grandmother’s shoulder was bare. There was nothing but traces of blood showing through her tattered blouse now.

  Meiner blinked.

  Cora didn’t seem to be paying attention. She was staring at Gran, her eyes glittering. “We should go after those motherfuckers. Where did they go?”

  “Newgrange.” Meiner couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the tear in her grandmother’s blouse. She knew something had been there.

  It wasn’t like she was driven mad by grief. She hadn’t loved her grandmother. She hadn’t even liked her. Of course, the woman had raised her. Had been a constant presence in her life, as unwelcome as that may have been through the years. Mostly she didn’t know what to feel, so she just felt numb.

  But she’d definitely seen something, and now it was gone. Another of her gran’s secrets.

  Cora’s face was set in stubborn lines. “They’re going to keep trying to pick us off like this. We need to find them, and we need to kill them. It won’t be easy, but we can do it. I can do it.” Her eyes flicked over Meiner’s face, her voice holding an unspoken challenge. “She was going to pass the coven on to me, so it’s my call. I say we track them down.”

  Any other time Meiner would have balked at this, but she felt too numb to argue. Cora was taking charge in an emergency, the perfect time to step in and take on the mantle of leadership.

  Everything seemed so far away from reality that it hardly mattered.

  “Sure,” she said, her voice hollow. “You do that.”

  Cora’s brows knit together. She scowled at Meiner. “You can’t sit around and feel sorry for yourself, Meiner King. You think your grandmother would have done that? You think she would have wanted that?” Her face twisted, like she was about to say something else and then thought better of it.

  Now it was Meiner’s turn to look at Cora, narrowing her eyes. “She never actually said she left you the cov—” Meiner started, and then jerked to a stop when there was the rattle and groan that signified the Callighans were coming up the driveway in the station wagon.

  When Meiner and Cora went to the front door, the Callighans were in the garden staring up at the sigils on the front of the house, and Bronagh swept them over with a steely gaze. “What’s happened? It stinks of dark magic.”

  Meiner only stared at her. Cora was the one to explain, while she retreated to the front room and sat down in front of the shoe racks, feeling like there was a physical weight on her chest.

  She kept thinking about her grandmother’s last spell.

  Balor, glacaim mé ort.

  She had repledged herself, Meiner was sure of it, which meant she hadn’t been practicing black magic until the very end.

  Not that it made anything better….

  “You don’t want to know what the kitchen looks like,” Cora was saying.

  “I can hazard a guess,” Bronagh grunted. Then she sighed. “Still calling on the same god who got her kicked out of Carman so many decades ago. The coven dissolved after that. Some of us quit after witnessing true dark magic for the first time.”

  “She said she would do what she had to,” Meiner mumbled.

  “And she did.” Bronagh wove her fingers together and tipped her head forward, like she was saying a little prayer or a spell in the direction of the kitchen. “They’re wounded, and gods or no, wounded animals are reckless when they’re backed into a corner.” She waited for Faye and Brenna to follow Cora into the kitchen, and then sank down beside Meiner, skirts pooling at her feet.

  “Humor me a minute, lass.”

  Meiner flinched as Bronagh reached out and grasped her hand, turned it over to look at her palm. She had cleaned herself up as best she could in the bathroom, and the blood was mostly gone, but Bronagh still narrowed her eyes at her hand as if she could see it somehow. “Did you do it?” she said softly, and when Meiner shook her head Bronagh’s face softened with relief. “Good lass. You made the right choice, though I know it must have been hard.”

  “Bronagh, Gran…she had a tattoo on her—at least, it looked like one. It vanished when she died.”

  “What did it look like?”

  Meiner hesitated. “Like…a weird spiderweb, mixed with a pentacle maybe. And sort of…spiky looking.”

  The older witch frowned. “It sounds like a spirit trap, something to draw in spirits and bind them. But you draw it on the ground, never on yourself, unless you’re asking for possession.”

  Meiner swallowed hard and nodded, not wanting to hear any more. What exactly had her grandmother been planning?

  The two of them started, and Meiner jumped to her feet, as the front door thumped open.

  It was Reagan, standing on the doorstep, breathing hard. Her dark eyes were wide. “Dayna. When I dropped her off…We think— We’re pretty sure they have her.”

  Meiner gaped at her, dumbstruck. The news seemed to penetrate the wall of numbness surrounding her. “What?”

  Reagan opened her mouth to say something else, and then there was the roar of an engine as Yemi turned the minivan around in the driveway, which brought Faye, Brenna, and Cora back into the front room.

  Reagan didn’t bother to explain again. “All of you, get in.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  DAYNA

  They were going to kill her.

  She knew this with a kind of distant, horrified certainty, because when they led her from the car, across an open stretch of green field, they didn’t bother to blindfold her. And when they reached the massive green mound in the center, the tomb had been set up for a ritual.

  She recognized the area, the bleached stones at the front, the huge, fenced-off entrance covered in swirling runes. The last time she’d been to the Newgrange tomb had been a class field trip years ago.
It had been busy, full of tourists and sunshine. Now the mound loomed over them in the dim light, the dirt lanes around both sides still and empty.

  Dubh clutched her arm tightly, shoving her down into the center of a sprawling hexagram. She’d initially thought it was made of white branches, some of them burned or charred. But from the ground, her cheek pressed into the grass, she could see the hexagram was made of bones. Some of them old, cracked and splintered and bleached by the sun, and some disturbingly fresh, stained red in patches.

  She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, and watched as they hacked at the grass, turning up the earth inside four points of the hexagram.

  Dubh created a shallow hole, into which he dropped a shriveled bit of red meat. A tongue, Dayna realized, horror crawling up her spine. She looked away while he repeated this process with other body parts, muttering under his breath. When the impatient one, Olc, tried to grab something out of the cooler at his feet, Dubh slapped his hand away.

  “No. This time it needs to be in order. Go watch for the others.”

  Olc grumbled under his breath at this, but both brothers went, moving around either side of the tomb.

  Beside the rocky wall of the mound they’d set out a scattering of black stones, and a goblet full of what looked suspiciously like blood. Carved into the stones around the entrance was Carman’s symbol. Dayna stared at it, eyes watering. The carvings filled her with a kind of creeping horror. They meant something was about to happen. Something horrible.

  They still had two points of the star to fill, which meant they had taken a fourth victim recently. Dayna swallowed hard. She would be the next point, and then the Callighans.

  Dubh released her, stepping outside the circle. Dayna’s muscles were coiled, her body flooded with adrenaline, and for a second she thought about scrambling to her feet and making a break across the field. She was practically on the balls of her feet when she noticed Dubh watching. He seemed to be able to guess what she was thinking, because a cruel smile curved his lips.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I like it when they run.” He gestured across the field. “I’d be able to see you for miles, and you don’t have any magic left. I can feel it.”

  She watched, feeling sick, as he hunkered down beside her, balancing a thin silver cigarette case on his knees. He seemed so casual as he took one out and lit it up, like he was a tourist pausing for a smoke, instead of someone about to sacrifice a stranger in the center of a hexagram.

  Dubh saw her watching and grinned, tapping the top of the silver case. “Broke into your friend’s car earlier and took this right out of the old woman’s bag. Knew it would fuck with her when she realized I was coming for her. Did she go batshit when she saw it was missing?”

  He thought she’d been looking at the silver case, she realized, though it had hardly been the first thing on her mind. “No,” Dayna said. “Didn’t seem to notice it was gone.”

  That wasn’t true. She remembered now; Grandma King had torn apart the house looking for something, and they’d dismissed it as more of her dementia showing.

  Dubh shrugged, but his smile had vanished, and Dayna felt a little spark of satisfaction at the lie.

  “They’re not here yet.” The man with the shaved head reappeared, walking across the grass to stand at the edge of the hexagram. He had the leather book tucked under one arm, and he tipped his head back to survey the sky. “Our window is closing. We should kill her now and take what we need.”

  “You don’t kill the bait, idiot,” Dubh growled at him. “Have a little patience for once.”

  “Are you sure this is it? We only have one chance.” He frowned down at the hexagram.

  “It’s exactly as it says in the book.”

  Every muscle in her body was still screaming for her to run, but Dayna forced herself to stay very still. The tomb and the hulking rocks surrounding it cast long shadows as the sun crept inch by inch toward the hilltops. The coming darkness was somehow both threatening and comforting. Under cover of the shadows, she reached out slowly, while Dubh was still glaring at his brother, her fingers closing around a long, sharp bone on the inside edge of the hexagram.

  She shifted, covering it with her arm. It was about the right length, and she shuddered at how perfectly it hid beneath her forearm. An arm bone, probably, splintered at the end where the wrist should have been. She pressed her arm against the makeshift dagger and forced herself not to flinch when Dubh turned back to her, smiling, and said in a low voice, “Bone.”

  “What?” Her stomach plummeted, and she braced herself, sure he’d seen the makeshift dagger she’d stolen.

  “In case you were wondering what we’ll be taking from you.” His eyes glittered. “Blood and bone, ash and soot. Your friends are on their way.”

  She tried not to let the relief show on her face. He hadn’t noticed the subtle gap in his hexagram.

  Slowly, she pressed her thumb against the tip of the bone, pricking the skin until she felt a drop of blood bead on the tip. Sometimes, blood magic was stronger. Yemi didn’t approve, saying it could lead to darker things, but she had little choice. She waited until he’d turned back to the field and then whispered a quick spell of protection.

  “Sciath dom. Cosain dom. Please, Danu, hear me.”

  Nothing. No familiar rush of power, not even a spark. Her stomach sank.

  Her friends were coming, and they were about to walk into a trap. Dubh was right about one thing: the brothers would be able to see them coming. Dayna dragged in a shaky breath and clutched hard at the grass beneath her fingers. When she got the chance, she would have to use the bone dagger. But could she?

  She tried to imagine the bone in her hand, throwing herself forward, plunging the jagged point into living skin.

  Dubh paced toward the point of the star, and she saw him finger the hilt of his sword. “Try not to look so worried, witch. You won’t be the only one to die tonight, just the first of thousands. After she rises she’ll purge the land of the descendants of the Tuatha de dannan. All who wronged her will die in agony. The rest of your coven, for example. Maybe we’ll even save the white-haired witch for last,” he said, and he bared his teeth. “Not because she needs to die, but just for fun.”

  Dayna’s fingers wrapped around the bone dagger, and she narrowed her eyes at Dubh’s back when he turned away. She remembered her words from the car ride—it seemed like an age ago—what she’d confessed to Meiner. Now she knew it was true.

  She would kill for her coven. And he would be first.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  MEINER

  A fire had replaced the numbness. A burning in her chest that ached and pulsed, and Meiner slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, the car growling and rattling as it shot down the back roads. The wood-paneled station wagon in her rearview mirror did not fall behind; Bronagh was going just as fast.

  When she found the brothers, she would make them pay for what they’d done. For killing her grandmother, for taking Dayna.

  Dayna. The name repeated in her head with each beat of her pulse. Dayna, Dayna, Dayna.

  They had her, were probably planning on sacrificing her. What had she said to Dayna last? She couldn’t remember her words, just the emotion behind them, the anger. Hot and irrational and misdirected. She hadn’t been mad at Dayna, and yet they’d fought. She’d seen the wounded look on the other girl’s face and she hadn’t apologized. Too stubborn. Too stupid.

  “They know we’re coming.” Reagan’s face was ashen, and she kept fiddling with her seat belt. She looked how Meiner felt.

  In the passenger seat, Cora gripped the door handle, knuckles white. “Of course they do. They’ve killed one of us, taken another. They know we’ll come after them.”

  Gravel popped under the tires as Meiner pulled into the lot. They met in the center of the lot just as the sun slipped below the fields stretching out around them. The three Callighans’ faces might have been stone masks, save for the flicking of their dark gazes as they looke
d at one another. Cora was white-faced and tight-lipped, her fists clenched at her sides. Reagan looked grim and determined, and her lips were moving constantly, as if she were silently reciting spells back to herself, or saying protection prayers. Yemi kept running her fingers over the charm necklace at her throat.

  Meiner shifted from one foot to the other. Her entire body felt charged with that familiar, buzzing energy. The anger pulsed through her in waves, clenching and unclenching her muscles, sucking the breath from her body. Meiner was done fighting it. She was going to release it, let it burn and rage out of control.

  The tomb was a huge, ominous mountain in the distance. Dayna was there somewhere.

  “Wait a moment, girl.” Bronagh caught her sleeve as she turned. “Protection first.”

  “That will take too long.” It came out in a snarl, and Meiner cut herself off, surprised, when Bronagh’s grip tightened, and the old woman yanked her back.

  “Protection,” the old woman snapped, and Brenna added, “You’ll need it.”

  “We’ll all need it,” Faye said.

  Meiner forced herself to stay where she was while the Callighans began a protection spell, chanting, low and steady, in fluid Irish. She felt that familiar prickle of energy over her skin, raising the hairs on her arms. As eager as she was to get to Dayna, the magic felt good. It made her stronger.

  Cora, too, seemed to feel the same thing, for she tipped her head back and shut her eyes, lips moving. Meiner wasn’t sure if she was chanting along or mumbling her own spell.

  It seemed to take forever, as Meiner felt layer after layer of protective magic drift over her skin. She shut her eyes and ground her teeth. Dayna was in the hands of the same men who’d spilled her grandmother’s blood all over the kitchen floor.

  Magic was too distant for this. Too impersonal.

  She wanted to get her bare hands on them. At her sides, her fingers flexed involuntarily. She could almost feel them around their throats, closing around their thick necks, choking the life out of them.