The Guild Elders assured me that everything I found was hidden, locked away and sealed into the catacombs of the Guild. The one place no one in our own coven or he would ever think to look.
Like pieces of a game, everything was set up, placed perfectly for the next rebirth to find and use against him. He’d been searching for me, the one who had been reborn with the cursed soul of his beloved Katarina inside of her. The darkness had whispered her secrets, and with those secrets came her memories.
It was a love that always ended in death, a love that should have never been. In every rebirth, he seduced the unlucky woman. He turned her into a mindless being so lost in love that she allowed her to death to occur. Some had gone to him blindly, some had fought him; all ended up in love with him. In the end, no matter how hard they fought, every one of them ended up dead.
Each one had added a curse to his soul; one had made him unable to sire children. Of course, she’d had to include a way around it, as so many curses included some sort of exception to them. So far, he was childless, as had been my sister when I’d killed her. Another had cursed the soul to carry the essence and souls of those he had killed, figuring together, we were stronger.
What a mess that was, considering they all whispered inside my head, insistently. I could hear their voices, feel their emotions, even the love Katarina had for the monster she had fallen for. My curse, my curse wouldn’t do anything to him. I was the first reborn witch who planned to curse his beloved Katarina.
I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that I would survive where others had not. I knew death had called for me, whispering my name upon the stars, and I welcomed it. After they’d marked me, they’d taken everything away from me. My love, the man I’d given my heart to, had been slaughtered at the order of this monster who hunted me, and that monster was ultimately responsible for the dead and dying who now littered the meadows.
A few from the coven had distracted me, as the others had gone to my house to murder John, the man I’d loved with every piece of me. We’d planned our lives out, children to fill our home with love, and they’d taken it from me. I’d rushed home, only to find what was left of him inside our cabin. Written on his body had been a message from his murderers to meet them here, beneath the moon in this sacred place where the leylines gathered and crossed.
It had done them little good, considering I lived and they were nothing more than fodder to feed the worms.
The rest of the coven must have been confident that these fools would best me and had hidden in town or the abbey. Instead of hunting them, I’d started preparing for retribution. I’d called to the salt from the lines to gather and create the hexagram the evil inside of me had instructed me to make. Next, I’d started the fires that created a circle around me and the area I needed to work in. The fires burned brightly, fueled by the remains of those who had been sacrificed here and strengthening me and the curse I intended to inflict on the monster who’d taken everything from me. I’d prepped the cauldron, flames licking its sides as it began bubbling with the ingredients I’d collected as I waited for Lucian to come.
Because he would come, he always did.
I grabbed the dagger and pulled my blonde braid forward, sliced it off, and threw it into the boiling cauldron. It sizzled, sending a thick putrid plume of smoke into the air. I sliced the palm of my hand as a twig broke, alerting me that the monster was here.
The shadow took form, and I watched as he knelt beside Flora’s corpse. Two of the witches who had not succumbed to their injuries called to him as he rose from her lifeless body and I smirked, flicking my wrist as he moved to one who had yet to die. The moment he reached her, I flicked it again and enjoyed the sound as their necks broke, smiling as I felt their life forces fading away as they added to my growing power. He lifted those midnight eyes and locked gazes with me across the open field, and I smirked coldly as death stared at me.
He prowled towards me, his strut perfectly matching a cougar as it hunted its prey. I could feel his anger. The subtle pulse of raw power he exuded and gave off when he entered a room slithered through the protective barrier and across my skin.
I murmured the spell to ignite the barrier as I remained still, watching his fluid, graceful movements.
“You didn’t have to kill them to get my attention,” he growled, and I laughed, clapping my hands as he neared.
“You think I killed them for you? They didn’t die to get your attention. They died because they thought to do your bidding. You turned them against me, and so their lives ended here. You did this; you brought them into this, so their blood is on your hands. Not mine, monster,” I hissed as I glared at him from beneath my lashes. He walked over to the dead, unaffected by their brutal deaths—but then again, in the past, so many of us had died at his hands. He was the monster in this story, not me. “Besides, had I wanted your attention, I would have spread my thighs as my sister did for you. Isn’t that how this works? You fuck me, and then you destroy me.”
“They were trying to save you, as was I this time,” he snapped, his eyes burning with the anger that I felt.
I could sense the truth in his words. Unfortunately, no one had asked me if I wanted to be saved. Now, I craved death, because I’d be with John, at least until the souls were forced to be reborn into the next incarnation. Instead of speaking to me, they’d believed him as he’d whispered lies in their ears, telling them of the darkness which controlled me, and yet it hadn’t. It told me truths, showed me a path to escape the creature who stood before me. They’d tried to leave me defenseless against this man, this creature who hunted me through space and time just to kill me over and over again.
He’d told them I needed to be saved, but he had no idea that I enjoyed the darkness. I craved this thing inside me, the seal that kept balance between the worlds. Did I trust it? No, I trusted no one except John. I knew I was being used by the seal to fight this monster in front of me, and yet I didn’t care. I wanted to end this game, to put a stop to it once and for all. The next time he killed me, it would be over. There would be no rebirthed soul, it would cease to exist. I planned to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me by killing John.
“Ah, beautiful Katia likes the darkness she harbors, doesn’t she?” He studied me as he walked around the circle, looking for a chink in my defenses. Those eyes of his seduced, they bored into me and tried to lower my defenses as I watched him, spellbound by every step he took. His gaze slid down the tattered remains of my chemise and I shivered at the heat that pooled in his inky gaze. His eyes feasted on my breasts that had been pushed up by my corset, heaving with every breath I took. “Come to me, and I’ll show you pleasure unlike anything your poor lover could have shown you.”
“You’re afraid of what I hold inside of me, are you not?” I needed to change the direction of the conversation, as my body heated for him. It responded as if it knew he spoke truths, but then it probably did. I housed his lovers inside me; each one had succumbed to him at least once. “Is it because it shows me what you truly are? Or because it told me how you enjoy seducing, then murdering us after you’ve enjoyed yourself?
“Tell me, Lucian, what will you like most about hunting me down; the excitement of the kill, or fucking me as you end my life? I know all about you because I listened to it, and the women before me who you slaughtered. Did you want me to fall hopelessly in love with you so that we could play out this deadly game again? Or do you prefer I just take off my clothes and let you have me?” I pushed down the straps of my chemise, exposing my shoulders to him. “That’s why you killed my John, wasn’t it? Because he stood between us, and I loved him.” I reached for the bloodied ribbon that held the chemise together and pulled it free. Slowly, I moved closer to him as I exposed more skin than was proper.
I reached around, slowly loosening the ribbons that held the corset up, one by one, undoing them until I was before him in nothing more t
han the chemise. I dropped the corset to the ground and bent over, grasping the hemline of the slip and pulling it over my head to expose my naked body to his heated eyes.
My eyes held his in open challenge, knowing he wanted me as I wanted him, but it wouldn’t be love we made. It would be war. How I could want him after what he did—well, it didn’t make sense. He’d brought us to this time and place; he’d put me through hell to make sure this confrontation happened.
I stood inches from him, naked as the day I was born into this world and drawn by the fire I saw burning in his eyes. He watched my movements; they were slow, calculated, made to bring his attention to my naked form. The fire from the protection barrier licked my skin, and yet I cared little if it burned to the bone. His eyes did little to hide his hunger as he slowly moved them down my body until he brought them back up to hold mine.
“Come to me, Katia,” he crooned, his body calling to me, but his eyes… His eyes searched my soul, finding every flaw, every desire, playing it like a fiddle. “I’ll help you; you want me, don’t you?” He started to unfasten the gold buttons of his dashing blue undress coat. He’d come to us in the guise of a soldier, a deserter who did not think our country should be involved with the conflict between Spain and some of its colonies. Our town was isolated and news was hard to come by, so our coven had glutted themselves on his stories of the outside world. He’d played on our sympathies by telling us that his coven was no more and he longed to belong to another. Lies, all of it lies to ingrain himself into our tight-knit community.
I slid my hands down my sides, watching as his eyes followed their subtle descent. Once he removed his coat, he pulled the white shirt over his head, revealing runes that covered his chest in utter perfection. I moved my hand over my pussy, watching as the muscle in his jaw clenched.
“I don’t want to be saved,” I murmured. I stared into the flames inside his eyes; they burned midnight blue. “I like how I am, don’t you?” I taunted as I grabbed my breasts, squeezing them as he watched me. “Do you think I’m pretty?” I tilted my head as I gazed into his eyes defiantly.
“You’re beautiful, Katia,” he growled as he stepped back. “Let me touch you,” he pleaded as he worked the buttons of his breeches.
“I don’t think so,” I said, turning to dismiss him and walking back to the cauldron. I retrieved my knife from the ground and, over the boiling pot, sliced through my palm so both matched. Then I slapped my bloody palms together, twisting my hands as it sent droplets into the boiling potion. “Do you know what happens to a witch who kills those she is bound to?” I didn’t bother to turn towards him as I spoke, for fear that he would be more than I could resist. I was testing his knowledge of witches since it had to be vast, considering he’d stalked me through generations, always hunting the same coven.
“She will be cursed by Hecate,” he snapped, once more pacing the circle as he watched me, like an animal, stalking prey that was just out of his reach.
“And if she’s already cursed?” I turned and observed him as he paced around the circle, the hunger in his eyes deadly as he took in my naked form. The curses of my past lives were now visible, brought forth for him to see. My flesh marred, glowing with every curse he had placed upon me. “Do you know the answer or not?” I mocked as I drew the words and runes of a new curse upon my body in blood. “You should know the answer. Are you not the one who enjoys this game, Sir Lucian?” I asked with a one-sided smile. “The curse will be intensified, so any curse she used on herself, or those that someone else cursed her with, in this case, that’s you, are tenfold what they were when she is reborn.”
“Don’t do it,” he growled as he stopped in front of me, his naked body luminous in the moon’s light. “Come to me, now, or you will die,” he growled.
“I’m already dead,” I laughed. “I was dead the moment you walked in and spread your lies to anyone stupid enough to believe them. John, though, he didn’t deserve what you did to him. That was your mistake, Lucian. You shouldn’t have touched him. You see, I was content to play your game, but you had to go take the one thing I loved the most away from me.” I grabbed the ladle and poured some of the bubbling liquid from the cauldron into a vial.
“He deserved everything that happened to him and more,” Lucian returned, stalking my naked form as I moved around the cauldron, dropping in the remaining ingredients so he wouldn’t be able to identify the curse I’d made. “He wanted you because of something you have inside of you, not because he loved you. He didn’t marry you; he only wanted a child from you. He wasn’t even human anymore; a demon possessed a human so that he could come to you and appear mortal. Once he’d gotten you pregnant and the child had been born, he would have slit your throat.”
“He loved me,” I whispered defensively, as if I was trying to convince myself as well as the monster prowling nearby.
“You were fucking a demon, Katia. One whose sole purpose was to get between your pretty thighs and impregnate you,” he hissed as he knelt down, touching the circle that protected me. “Once he’d ensured you were pregnant with his child, and it had been born, you would have died by his hand. So yes, I had the coven kill him. I enjoyed giving the order, too. I heard that John bled for hours, and he never once thought of you or cried out your name as he lay there, dying.”
“You were jealous, and if he was a demon, then you are no better than he was.” I turned away from him so he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes. My hands trembled as I stood there with the vial in one, smoothing over my skin as if I’d still worn the chemise with the other. I pushed the pain away, burying it so deep inside of me that it was absorbed by the seal so I could focus. “You wanted her to be me, didn’t you?”
I nodded in the direction of Flora’s corpse. “You wanted it to be me you were fucking, and you couldn’t have me, could you? In every life I lived before, I was yours. Except this one. In this one, I was already his. What does that tell you?” I asked with a soft smile playing across my lips. I tipped up the vial, intending to drink it, which would render the circle broken and let him in, but his voice stopped me.
“That I should have fucked you anyway, and you would have forgotten all about him, sweet witch. You’re right, you are mine. It matters little what you come back as, because when you do, you are mine in every way. You love me, even now. You don’t like it, but you do. You crave me, don’t you?”
“I hate you, and I know that once the circle is broken, I am dead. But know this, Lucian; when I die, it will be with purpose. I have watched you kill them all, every single one of them. I have watched you manipulate their families. I have seen and heard the lies you spread about all of my incarnations. Most of them didn’t discover what you were doing until it was almost too late. I learned from them. I know what they did and where they failed. This time when I die, it will set wheels that you cannot stop into motion.”
I’d moved to the edge of the circle and watched as he knelt in front of me on the wet grass, his breath fanning my naked pussy as he stared up hungrily. The heat of it shot through me, rendering me stupid with how much I needed him to touch me. It had to be killing him to be this close to me, and yet I was so far out of his reach.
“I want to taste your sweet pussy—let me,” he whispered huskily, his tone filled with need. “I want to hear my name on your lips as I take you further to the heavens than that demon could ever get you to reach. He was a monster, one who only wanted a child from you. I’m a man. One who wants to show you what heaven is like. I want to feel your body against mine, feel it trembling as you find your pleasure. Let me have you,” he crooned seductively.
I lowered myself in front of him and smiled coldly. “Touch me,” I called softly, my own voice mirroring his need, yet I was in control. “Come get me if you can.”
“Come closer; let me show you what your body was made for. Let me love you.”
“I had love, you took i
t away,” I bit out, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You, you’re not a man. You are a monster who hunts me through space and time. You always leave my corpse behind in a pretty glass box covered in runes that you hope will stop my curses when you’ve finished. That’s not love; love is giving yourself to someone and discovering they’re flawed, but you love them anyway, because you make them a better person. You don’t know what love is. You, Lucian, will never know true love. You want her because she discovered what you are, because she preferred death over your touch. You hunt her because you’re a monster.”
We stood up slowly together, eyes fixed on each other until we were face-to-face again.
“You still love me every time. Every time you come back to me, Katarina. You are mine, and when you love me, you give me every piece of you. You hold nothing back from me. That darkness inside of you? It binds you to me. It is what brings you back to me. Your love, though, your love cannot be forced or taken; it’s given, because no matter how much time has passed, you are mine. Your love is the purest thing you have, and when you give it, you move mountains to protect it.”
“I am Katia, not your Katarina! I loved him, not you. I loved him more than I could ever love you! He didn’t want me dead!”
“He did, he wanted your body to bear him a child, and then he’d have cut your throat while it suckled your breast. He was a vile being, lower than anything that exists here. And you fucked him! You are mine, every part of you belongs to me, and you gave it to a demon!”
I lifted the vial and stared at him.
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