She opened her mouth to call to him, but made no sound. She closed her eyes and thanked the Gods for a final glimpse of her love, knowing in some broken part of her that he was merely an illusion and, if she ever woke up, she would be alone again.
****
Lydie sat cross-legged on a pile of dirty pillows and blankets streaked with blood. She held a rough-looking gray puppy in her lap. The dog whined fearfully when Oliver entered the room.
"Lydie!" He ran to her, reaching down to scoop her up, but the puppy snarled and bit viciously at his outstretched hand. She looked up at him with glassy eyes and frowned.
"You shouldn't be here, Oliver."
Oliver? She never called him Oliver.
"Lydie, I'm here to spring you, hon. You've got to put the puppy down."
It didn't look like a puppy anymore with yellowed bloodshot eyes and a jaw hanging slack, but ready to spring closed at any moment.
She shut her eyes tight and shook her head no.
"They're coming back today. I can't leave until they come back."
"Who's coming back, sweetie," he asked, trying to keep the alarm from his voice. She looked catatonic. He inched a little closer to her, with every intention of snatching her and racing from the room the moment he could get within arm's reach. His ears were perked for any sound, but again, maddeningly, only silence greeted him, and every part of him knew that he'd walked into a trap and that Lydie, sitting alone in the room, was bait.
Lydie ran her mostly limp hand over the dog's matted hair and rocked slightly back and forth.
Oliver took another step.
"Who's coming back, Lyds?"
She looked at him as if she'd forgotten he was there.
"Mom and Dad." She gazed into the dirt wall as if she could see something beyond and a small smile lit her face. "Coming back today." She sang it and Oliver hated the sound, wanting to clamp his hands over his ears because Lydie sounded insane. He feared that if he spent another second in the room with the snarling dog and the bloody sheets he would go insane too.
Finally, close enough, he reached for her. As his hand brushed the sleeve of her soiled jacket, the dog clamped its teeth onto Oliver's wrist. He muffled his yell and went to jerk his arm away, but the jaws sunk deeper into his flesh and the venom burned as it oozed into his bloodstream. Impossibly, the dog started to thrash and convulse. Its face grew a long snout that warped into a gargoyle-like head with tiny black eyes and a gaping mouth. The dog's spine twisted and popped and wings flapped out for an instant before they were sucked back in, and the skin of the thing ripped open and a larger being started to emerge, all the while holding Oliver's broken and bleeding arm in its mouth. Oliver had dropped to his knees and wanted to beat at the thing's head, but his whole body began to lose strength and his other arm felt like an anvil resting on the ground. The face now looking back at him belonged to Tobias. Black eyes grew larger and white skin streaked with blood as the carcass of the animal fell away from the Vepar's body.
Tobias released Oliver's arm and smiled, moving to a squat beside Lydie who looked at the dog's corpse with the same dazed expression she had offered to Oliver.
Oliver fell onto his back, his arm gushing while black spots dotted his vision. His head struck the earth, but his body no longer seemed solid. Instead, he fell into a bottomless black pit. As he plummeted, Tobias and Lydie and the scene in the room grew further and further away until they vanished completely.
Chapter Thirty
"Sebastian." His name barely sounded from her parched lips. His beautiful perfect face peered down at her, but her visits with the dead had made even her great love suspect as he leaned over her.
"You're nearly healed beautiful, " Sebastian told Abby as she began to come to. He sat in a chair pulled to the edge of the bed, his hands clutching one of hers as it lay mostly lifeless on the sheet.
She wiggled her fingers and gazed at the room. They appeared to be in a tiny cabin.
"How are you alive?" She took her hand from his and reached to touch his face. She rubbed her thumb across his prickly chin and then over his soft lips, all the while staring incredulously into his achingly familiar blue eyes.
"I am. Right now that's the only thing that you have to know. I'm alive and I've been dying every day that we've been apart."
She nodded and, leaning in, he kissed her mouth and then her wet cheeks, pulling her head into his shoulder.
"Where are we?"
"The Chateau," he whispered, nuzzling his face into the palm of her hand. "My dad brought me here when I was a kid, although back then this place was filled with bunk beds, card tables and an old wood-burning stove. I guess the owner's remodeled."
Abby glanced around the room. It was sparsely finished, but tasteful. A tiny alcove held a sink and mini refrigerator, but otherwise the bed and two wing-back chairs were the only furnishings. A single painting of a Lake Michigan sunset hung over the fireplace where Sebastian had built a crackling fire.
"There's so much that we have to talk about. So many questions that I have, and that you have. I can already feel them dying to get out, but let's save that for tomorrow? Okay? Let's just be together tonight because I swear it feels like it's been an eternity..."
She smiled and pressed one of his hands against her cheek. It felt too good to be true. In the weeks since his death, she'd slowly assembled a wall around her grief and encapsulated it in a tiny dark room. In that room lived the impossibility of him ever holding her like this again, but he was, and she could barely stop from biting and clawing and mashing against every piece of him just to prove that he was not a figment of her mind.
He tilted her face up and crushed his mouth against her. They were not careful as they pulled her shirt over her head, ignoring the bandage that covered her left shoulder. She didn't even grimace at the flash of pain, but instead relished it as she tugged at his pants, which he kicked off with a grin before burying his face in her neck. She pushed the blankets away and ripped open his ugly Hawaiian shirt, laughing as the buttons skidded across the floor.
She reached for him and guided him inside her, letting out a sob of pain and pleasure.
"I love you," he whispered.
****
"We have to leave this place," Faustine told Elda and his gaunt face frightened her.
Elda looked at Helena who slept peacefully, the strong medicine stealing her away from even her nightmares.
"How can we?" she asked, helplessly.
"We'll call to Sorciére. It has only been twenty-two days. The doorway can be opened for thirty days after All-Hallows. They will do it for us."
Elda nodded, but looked again, fearfully, at Helena. The doorway took a great deal of strength to pass through and witches could be lost in the space between. Helena could die.
"I will carry her through myself," Faustine said.
****
Abby lay in bed, frozen as she'd done in childhood when some unknown terror pulled her from sleep and left her paralyzed, straining to hear the tiniest sound which might betray some evil lurking close by. She wrapped her arms across her chest so tightly that she could barely breathe and then Sebastian moved next to her. The fingers of his right hand fluttered against her thigh as he shifted in sleep and she nearly screamed at the sensation. The black writhing monster whose eyes had locked onto hers for only a moment rose up in her mind and then faded away.
As her eyes adjusted to the room and her mind remembered the man that she loved lay beside her, the beating of her heart slowed and cooled. Watching the gentle rise and fall of his naked chest soothed her.
Somewhere far away a bird cried out, but otherwise the night lay silent. The room felt thick and hot and she struggled from beneath the heavy feather comforter and sat on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling above the wooden floor. A fire still glowed in the stone fireplace, mostly dying embers and, for a brief hysterical moment, she wanted to douse it in water and suffocate the heat pouring forth. Instead, she stumbled into her te
nnis shoes and, wearing only Sebastian's Hawaiian shirt, crept out of the cabin and stood on the porch. The cool night stole away the last of her sleepy confusion and chilled her instantly.
Overhead the black sky held the tiny pinpricks of a billion stars, but she could barely see them. The stars always seemed to slip further and further into the cosmos as summer gave way to fall and then to winter. Her breath blew a white halo and she took huge gulps of air, but could not seem to satisfy her body's longing for a deeper, fuller breath. She pressed her hands against the porch rail and stared hard into the night, trying with all her power to grasp that Sebastian had not died. He did not rot somewhere in an unmarked grave, ravaged by their shared enemy. Still, she could not shake the terrifying gloom that held her captive in its dark palm. It was if an enormous evil had taken hold of their lives and set into motion events that she could not hope to stop.
She left the porch and walked into the woods, shivering, but needing the cold to soothe her achy body and clear her tired mind. She thought of Oliver and hoped desperately that he lay safe in his bed at Ula having prepared the coven for what surely lay ahead. He would be so happy that Sebastian lived, but would he also be tormented? Abby knew that Oliver's feelings for her moved beyond friendship and she too had felt the stirrings of such things, but none of that seemed real in comparison to her Sebastian.
"I vow to protect him," she said to the silent night. "I will never lose him again."
Through the skeletal trees, she could see the luminescent moon. She jumped onto a low tree branch and crawled all the way to the top, nesting in the crook of a large branch. The bark scraped her bare legs, but she leaned her head against the tree and let her mind wander.
A thousand questions plagued her. Where had he been since All Hallow's Eve? Had the Vepars held him captive and he somehow escaped? Were they, at that very moment, hunting them both? She decided that she would wake him as soon as she returned and they would talk about everything.
When his scream pierced the otherwise quiet night, she nearly fell from the tree. Instead, without a thought, she swung down three branches and then dropped straight to the earth twenty feet below. She landed and ran.
The door to the cabin hung from its hinges. She raced through the doorway, not caring about the danger within. The comforter lay on the floor and the sheets were smeared with mud and several dots of blood.
"Sebastian!" She screamed his name and tore the room apart, but he was gone. She ran back onto the porch and, like before, the monster fell from the sky. It dove at her and reached with taloned claws as if might grab her and carry her away, but she fell back and its claws caught her stomach, ripping through her shirt and into her flesh.
She grabbed for anything and her hand found a ceramic pelican that decorated the front porch. She brought the pelican onto the creature's head. Blood splattered across her face, but the thing swooped away and soared into the night sky.
Abby did not wait. She ran for the forest.
****
The mirror, still concealed behind the heavy velvet draperies, glinted as if cleaned that very day. Its surface swooned in the firelight and Elda kissed Helena gently on the forehead as Faustine cradled her in his arms. He took a deep a breath and fell through the surface of the glass.
Elda pulled a stool in front of the fire and sat, gazing steadily into the lapping flames and praying for their safe passage. Max stood at the window, watching and waiting.
When Faustine returned, he brought three additional witches from Sorciére with him. They stumbled into the room, all disoriented from the gateway, and alert for danger.
Elda knew the three witches, though none of them well. She had not known if Faustine would be successful in bringing help. Though the family of witches knew no boundaries, covens rarely involved themselves deeply in the affairs of others. The fates aligned each witches' life accordingly. To muddle in the life of another might change that witch's destiny.
"Elda." The oldest witch, Galla, crossed the room and clasped Elda's hands tightly in her own. "Our Indra has disappeared as well."
"Indra?" Elda spoke her name and then remembered the volatile Sorciére witch who'd grown so close to Dafne. "They are together then?" Elda wondered aloud.
"There was a human witness. Isabelle," the Sorciére witch Thomas interrupted. "She said that Dafne and Indra were at her home. They left in search of the human called Sebastian. The last this Isabelle saw them, they were walking into a café and a tall very pale man with dark eyes seemed to be following them in."
Elda frowned.
"Not Tobias? How could he follow them to France? How could they not sense him?"
"And why on earth were they looking for Sebastian?" Faustine asked. "Without telling us first?" But Faustine's questions were rhetorical. Elda knew that Faustine did not want to reveal their knowledge of Dafne's deception.
"We must go to the place that Faustine lost Oliver," Galla said. "Though I fear that our fate may already be sealed."
"There are many fates," Faustine replied, unwilling to accept powerlessness.
"Did you know that Indra was hiding something?" Elda asked her.
Galla keenly sensed falseness in witches, but she shook her head no.
"We thought it was All Hallow's, and Indra is always so distant we barely gave it a thought. My first sense happened when Sebastian disappeared. I saw him for a moment very clearly in her mind and then felt her cover the thought. I brushed it off..."
"We all did," the third witch, Demetrius, added. He wore his customary tweed blazer and brown slacks. He clearly had not intended for the day's venture. "It's very clever of them, I think, to put on this craftiness during All Hallow's."
"Treachery is what it is," Thomas snapped, his face growing red.
Galla put her hand on his arm.
"I ignored it in Dafne," Faustine said, bowing his head slightly. "I still cannot condemn her, not without knowing..."
"What is there to know?" Thomas retorted. "Can there ever be a story good enough? A reason valid enough to lie and deceive her own coven? To break the most sacred bond of trust?"
Elda knew that Faustine felt as passionately as Thomas did, but she also knew that he loved Dafne. The bonds that held the coven together were not merely an issue of trust, but mutual love and respect. Faustine never turned against his own, never.
"I think we must move from this place," Galla said. "I feel what came in here, the darkness is still heavy on this castle. And your spells have fallen short. They are not protecting us."
"Should we try to strengthen them?" Elda asked. "Might we create a secure space again?"
Galla looked at Elda with sympathy.
"Dafne compromised your coven, dear, she broke the spells down first. We cannot override something that began from within..."
Elda nodded, trying to hide the hurt from the prying thoughts of the witches around her. She knew they felt it though.
****
Abby stopped at the water's edge. The moon reflected a pale halo in the dark blue surface. She knew that the creature stalked her and would soon come into the lake opening and see her there, vulnerable and nearing death. The warmth in her hand spread out away from her torn stomach and each breath grew harder to take in. She could feel the softness of her insides spilling against her shirt which terrified her, but each time her mind tried to grab hold of the image of organs falling from her ripped body, she chased them away and focused instead on her breath.
Remembering a spell from the Astral Coven's Book of Shadows, she started to whisper the incantation as she recalled it. Knowing that her words were imperfect, but the power of the water would help her, she dropped to her knees in the wet sand. Gradually, the few clouds in the sky began to shift, guided by a soft, cold breeze. Abby felt the sting of air against her hot skin. Slowly the lake grew dark and the moon was all but hidden behind the accumulating clouds of gray. She then shifted her focus to the waters itself, envisioning the hardening of the surface. Her strength had beg
un to abandon her so that the singular focus Elda had been so insistent she find in previous lessons, kept getting lost in the feverish dreams of a slipping mind. She crawled closer to the water until it lapped her knees and shins. Only then did she start to see it wobble and take form. It was barely solid when she began to crawl across it. The surface dipped and undulated beneath her as she squirmed. Slowly she found the center of the lake and collapsed upon it. She lay very still because, in the woods behind her, she heard the winged monster crashing through branches knowing that it had mortally wounded her and did not need to conceal itself.
The water held her and she cloaked herself the way that Oliver had taught her. She imagined that she became the water. Every piece of her body took on the misty blue that surrounded her.
It searched for hours, flying back and forth overhead, swooping close to the water and in and out of the forest. It had begun to make garbled cries that sometimes sounded like a whimpering dog and other times more human. All the while, she felt the blood leaking out of her body and dissipating into the water around her. She thought that she might die at any moment, and thought worse that Sebastian might already have died and, in the stark night, relived his death again and cried soundlessly for the unfairness of the world. After a while, she wished for death, but it did not come and nor could she sleep because if she broke her concentration, the water would become liquid and she had no strength to swim. Eventually the creature went away and, unable to turn over, she pulled herself to the shore using her elbows and scooting her feet. She did not make it, but lost consciousness and the water swallowed her whole.
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