A quick burst of air rushes toward me, forcing up my chin. I gasp at its ferocity, shaken my mother would call upon her magic so quickly. She uses it against me with complete apathy, interested in only dominating me.
As one of the only remaining spirit users in this coven, Mamá handles the elements with experienced ease, and she wants me to know she will use them against me if I do not show respect and obey orders.
“I said,” I begin, grinding my teeth as I speak, “I am not surprised he is alive. He is a witch.” I know this will upset her, but I can no longer bite my tongue.
Abuela narrows her eyes, brow creasing. She is annoyed I would point out the obvious, but at the same time, I am certain she expected my reaction. Witches do not harm other witches. They live by an unwritten code to maintain the peace. This is also why Mamá has found so many eager witches willing to help her hunt her own daughter.
While I am surprised they are agreeing to hunt me, I am not shocked by their treatment of Will. I know they do not see him as a witch, as one of them, even though their spell has ensured this. He may be severed from his vampire half, but he is still a hybrid in their eyes. He can do nothing to change their minds or to redeem earlier actions. He will forever be the enemy, regardless if he deserves such status.
I imagine that is why he has been treated so poorly. Not only do they hate him for what he is, but they also are using him to test my limits. What happens when they use magic against a former hybrid? How much can Will and I withstand before we break? They will find their answers by harming him, not me. Not until I deserve punishment. Unfortunately, Will cannot handle any more of their tests.
“What was your plan when you found him?” Abuela asks. “Were you planning to escape?”
I do not look at them, and I do not respond. They do not need me to admit my intention. They know I will escape the moment I am given the opportunity to do so, regardless of any plan set by Malik. I am supposed to wait for him, for them, but if I find another door, I will walk through it in order to save us.
I wonder if Mamá planned for this encounter. Why else would she have not spelled me to my room like she has done so many other times I have upset her? She could have easily prevented an escape, but she did not even try to keep me in line. Already, I have failed a test.
Now, she is certain where my loyalties lie—and they are not with her, this coven, or these unfamiliar witches. I am loyal to the vampires, to those who deserve my trust and respect. They are my family now, not Mamá or Abuela or anyone else.
“¡Respóndeme!” Abuela shouts, and I wince at her scream as if her words could actually lash me. Her voice echoes in this small space, bouncing off the stone walls, amplifying her presence as I cower on the ground, fearing I will see the worst of her.
“No!” I yell, knowing she will not believe my answer. It does not matter what I say or what I do. My grandmother will make an example of this moment.
“Mentirosa,” Abuela says.
I shake my head and whisper, “I am not lying.”
Again, I lie. I lie to save myself from her torture, even though I know that to be a worthless cause. My grandmother has planned every moment of this day. She returned from her trip to find her coven in shambles. Mamá was supposed to protect us in my grandmother’s absence; she was supposed to take care of my unfortunate situation, because I was a blemish on our picture-perfect family. But she failed.
Now Abuela is cleaning up my mother’s mess, and she is making a spectacle of it. Choosing Liv as her sacrifice was all part of their plan. They knew I could not refuse to help my former best friend. I played right into her plan, and now she is playing into mine. We both fancy ourselves the cats in this game, but eventually, someone must be the mouse. I refuse to be the weaker person.
“You know what you must do,” Abuela says.
Although she looks at me, I know my grandmother is speaking to Mamá. Now I see my family for what they are, and like the rest, she is a coward. She will force my mother to torture me as retribution for a crime I never actually committed. I might have fancied the idea of escaping, but that was not part of the plan.
I do not bother trying to convince her that my intentions were only to find Will, to make sure he was okay, because even though these words are true, she will never believe them.
Mamá stares at me, and I meet her gaze. I want her to look me in the eye as she strikes me down. Mamá has only struck me in anger once and it was with deep regret. I wonder how she will live with herself as she commits untold violence against me, her daughter, a witch, because of the order from her elder. I hope her guilt eats her alive.
A quick flash of guilt pierces her eyes, and I think she is going to cry. But almost as soon as these emotions overwhelm her, they are gone. She no longer stares at me like a mother stares at her wounded child. Instead, she looks at me with regret. But fake sympathy does not deceive me. She is not regretful of what is to come but of what I am.
She firmly believes my decisions have brought me to this moment, and that I deserve every slice of misery cast my way. She might be right. Maybe I do. I did choose to become a vampire, but I did it for all the wrong reasons. I did it to protect them, when I should have been focused on protecting me. Because there is nothing worse than being a witch and sacrificing yourself for those who would burn you at the stake.
I feel the sudden rush of elements erupt within the room. At first, I welcome the heat. It stifles the bitter cold, but too quickly, a sheen of sweat coats my skin. I swipe at my forehead. The humidity is making it hard to breathe, and the lack of oxygen is making me sleepy. My eyelids are heavy, my limbs weak.
I rest against the stone wall, lolling my head back to look at Mamá. Her eyes are emotionless pits, and the reality of that smacks me in the face. She does not care that she is using her magic to torture me. She just wants me to fall in line, to submit to her will. But I refuse.
My T-shirt is soaked through, and the heat is becoming almost unbearable. I ache to remove my jacket, but I will not. I do not want them to know just how seriously their elemental control is affecting me.
I try taking long, deep breaths, but the air is stifling. I think my tenacity angers Mamá, because she frowns and snaps her fingers. Almost immediately, the heat dissipates, and it is replaced by a burst of icy air. My breath releases as puffy steam before my eyes, clouding my vision as I try to maintain my tormentor’s gaze.
Lip quivering, I shake violently, squeezing my hands into balls to protect my fingers. I shove them into my pockets, searching for warmth.
Beside me, Will is also freezing. His teeth are chattering so loudly, I can hear nothing else but the sound of bone clinking against bone. Several inches separate us, and I scoot to press up against him. I realize combining body heat is a useless feat when paired against a witch’s magic, but my body moves on its own. I am responding on a cellular level to my mother’s torture, and I have submitted to fight-or-flight responses.
“Enough! This is child’s play,” Abuela says. “Teach her a lesson, or I will.”
The threat hangs heavy in the air, and I pray Mamá will not leave me to Abuela’s anger. She will be vicious in her attacks, torturing me as she did Will. My grandmother will not stop until I beg her for mercy, and I cannot yield. I am too stubborn to grant her that. Together, we are a recipe for death and disaster.
The first time Mamá calls upon air, she uses it to whip me, but it does not hurt. It does not even leave a mark. I frown, wondering if the cold is playing tricks on my mind. Sadly, it is not. Mamá is holding back, and when it becomes obvious she is being lenient, Abuela loses her temper.
Furious, my grandmother uses her air magic to assault Mamá. It slams into her torso, and my mother shrieks. Trying to break her fall, she trips over her feet and lands on the ground in a fumbling heap. My grandmother’s air magic moves her body with such ease, it is as if my mother were as empty and light as a tumbleweed on a hot, dry day.
My mother looks frail, weaker than I hav
e ever seen her before. When I was a child, she looked so powerful, so formidable to me. As I would sneak around aimlessly in the night in search of souls we deemed evil, I feared her reaction. I never wanted her to discover my secrets, but I do not worry about that anymore.
As I look at her now, where she cowers on the ground beside me, I do not envy her position in this coven. Thanks to her mistreatment, there is a part of me—small but undeniably ruthless—that wants to ask her how it feels to be the center of this unwanted attention. I want her to glance my way, because I yearn to see that acknowledgment in her eyes. I want to witness the moment she recognizes that in the eyes of her high priestess, she has fallen to my level. I want to watch as she bears that truth.
But she does not look at me. With legs bent awkwardly beneath her, Mamá pushes herself upright and looks at my grandmother in disbelief. I wonder if this is the first time she has ever used her magic in anger before. I think about Holland’s warning. Have they already gone mad? Perhaps I am too late. Maybe the darkness coursing through their veins already has its hold over them.
Abuela has never liked my mother—and she has never been shy about her feelings for her—but she tolerated her for Papá’s sake. After he died, she was kind to her as a courtesy to me, the person she ordered to be the future leader of her coven. Now that the black magic has seeped into her pores, she is losing sight of what is right and what is wrong. I know I must stop this before she is too far gone.
“Stop!” I scream. “Can’t you see what this magic is doing to you?”
Abuela faces me, her eyes so dark, they look black. Maybe they are. I do not know if it is the basement’s dim lighting or if the dark magic has worked its way to her mind. Once it gains control, do the victims of black magic change appearances too? Will everyone who looks at her bear witness to its mark? I know too little about the black arts, and Holland seems light-years away from aiding me.
“You were always weak,” Abuela says, spitting her words at me with such shame and disgrace.
I fold under her accusation, her words worming their way into my heart. In true familial fashion, my grandmother knows just what to say to truly hurt me.
After Papá died, I admitted to her that I feared I would fall victim to a vampire too, that I would be too weak to survive an attack. I was young when I said this—too young to be showing signs of any real power—but now that I am older, when I think about the concerns I had back then, I wonder if I was already showing signs of spirit. Was my fear a vision? I had nightmares for years after Papá died, but Mamá said they were just the result of an overactive imagination. She doubted me—even then.
If only I could go back and comfort that young girl, I would tell her the truth about the people she loves. I would save her the greatest disappointment of her life—watching as she is forsaken by her coven for offering the very last thing she could to protect them: her mortality.
“I am not weak,” I whisper.
“¿Qué? ¿Qué dijiste?” Abuela asks, seething. I know she heard me, but I repeat myself.
“¡Dije que no soy débil!” I scream.
A blast of air magic presses against my chest, and I am pushed upright. I skid against the ground, my jeans bunching at my bottom as I press against the dirt, trying to slow my progression backward. I am pushed back until my back is flush against the wall, and it sends a rush of fear through my entire body. My limbs stiffen, my mind spinning, and my blood is rushing behind my eyes.
The invisible force pinning me in place presses harder and harder against me, working its way up my torso, inch by inch. It spreads like a fire, catching rapidly and stealing all sense of calm. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I fear it will break through my rib cage and plop onto the ground before me. I will simply stare at the bruised flesh, taking in my last gulps of life, while my grandmother laughs.
The magic she uses against me has reached my jaw now, and stretching my joints to their absolute limit, it pushes my head backward at an awkward angle until I hear a familiar crack. If Abuela pushes much farther, she will snap my neck clean off.
My limbs are held out beside me, with my left arm resting against Will. I cannot move. Frozen in place, I screech as the pressure becomes too much to bear. A final gasp, an instinctual reaction, releases the last bit of air in my lungs, and the magic compresses even tighter against my rib cage. Too tight within its grasp, I cannot breathe. I cannot suck in even a small gasp, and my body begins to convulse as it screams silently for oxygen.
I am dying. I know this to be true. I feel the agony of my body alerting me to this reality, even though I can do nothing to ease its suffering.
At the hands of my grandmother, I am dying, and everyone is just watching this happen.
“Stop!” Will shouts.
He grunts loudly as he pushes himself off the ground and charges my grandmother. Unfortunately, he is too weak, and she anticipated his devotion to me.
The moment she releases me, I fall to the floor, chest heaving as I gasp for air. It flows freely, my lungs sucking up oxygen so greedily, it is excruciating. I squeeze my eyes shut at the first painful sensation, and I hold my breath to make it stop. But that only makes my chest hurt more.
I know I must breathe slowly, but it hurts so bad, I do not even want to take a single gulp of air. Finally, when I cannot hold my breath any longer, I suck in a sharp burst. I hack, chest convulsing, and dig my nails into the dirt.
I suck in another breath. I taste grit, but I do not care. I welcome the grainy texture and earthy aroma, because it means I am alive. I survived. I am breathing, and I will be okay.
I open my eyes and try to blink away my blurry vision. It feels like a lifetime passes before I can see again. My chest calms, my breath comes in short, shallow streams. And I react to what is happening only feet away from me.
Finally, I see him. Will is across the room, screaming, as he takes the full brunt of my grandmother’s fury. He is bleeding, with thick streams of dark crimson running down his face. His teeth are stained pink, and he spits up a sopping heap of something green and sticky. It coats his chin, splattering his already dirty T-shirt.
I scream. A brain-piercing bellow erupts from deep within my chest. I have no control over it or over the fear that engulfs me as I watch my grandmother murder Will. It is a screeching sound that would certainly send wolves running in the other direction.
I do not stop screaming until Abuela faces me, eyes flaring, chest heaving. Dimly lit by the light that dangles from the ceiling at the bottom of the steps, I see Abuela clearly. Her skin is pale, with black veins spreading like spider webs over her bony curves. As I look at her, squinting to ensure my mind is not playing tricks on me, I see it move, spreading farther, threading through her tissue until it connects again at the other side. It completely envelops her, flooding her with raw, dark power.
Realizing what is happening, that the dark magic is taking control, I scream, but this only angers her more. Her hands are balled into fists at her sides, and she throws one in my direction, fisting the air with her frustration over what I have done. I distracted her. I prevented her from killing Will. And she plans to make me pay for this.
Again, I am assaulted by her magic, but this time, I hear something snap in my chest. A sharp, stabbing pain erupts in my core, and I howl as the pain grows more violent with each passing second. I fight the agony, curling my body into a ball on the ground, waiting for Abuela to cease her brutal attack. I cradle my chest, shrieking when I irritate my wound as I hold on to my body, desperately trying to protect myself too tightly.
Deep within my core, I sense the darkness lurking. Where the vampire once resided, there is an emptiness, and it is hungry. It sparks to life, sizzling within my chest, and it feels eerily familiar to me.
The darkness hums, and the longer I focus on it—teasing, tempting, pulling it from where it slumbers—it begins to awaken. It swarms within me, threatening to expand until I can no longer contain it, but I hold on to it, using it to sh
ield myself, to cocoon my body in its embrace. Its warmth washes over me, lingering on my freshly broken bones, and I feel as though they are mended. I jerk, shrieking as my ribs snap back into place. But the pain dulls quickly, and it is replaced by a hot, sticky hunger for vengeance.
My grandmother finally ceases her attack when the door to the basement opens, flooding the stairs with light. I dare a peek, watching as someone rushes downstairs and shouts something at my grandmother.
Time slows as I stare at Liv. Has she been here the whole time? Has she heard my screams? Has she just listened as I begged for my grandmother to leave us be?
She looks at me, pity flashing behind her eyes, but the moment she notices my mother cowering on the floor, her pity is replaced by her resentment for all that I am. She believes I did this, and I do not correct her. I do not bother telling her that the enemy she must fear is the leader of this coven. She will soon discover that herself.
Liv rushes to Mamá, helping her to her feet, allowing my mother to rest against her small frame until she regains her composure and strength. Mamá does not look at me; she does not dare to witness what Abuela has done.
Commotion from upstairs catches my attention, but I look to Will, not caring about what the witches fear. I wonder if he feels the same darkness within him.
He is sitting upright, leaning against the wall. With the back of his hand, he wipes away the blood that cakes his nose and spits a mouthful on the ground beside him. In the darkness, it looks black. He sees it too and glances at me. His eyes are dark, his lids heavy, and I know he is on the brink of death.
Something flashes between us, a look of unity that we do not want to accept.
Because we both know we will not survive another night at the hands of these witches.
Chapter Nine
The witches are worried about something, and they are trying desperately to hide it from Will and me. They speak in frantic, hushed tones, but I sense their rising fear, their outrage. I want to listen closely, focus on their whispers, but all I can think about is how the burning agony in my side is suddenly only a dull ache.
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