Resigned to her fate, Immanuelle turned back to face the witches. “If this is the end, then I die with them.”
There was a shift in the air. The cathedral gave a little tremor and a cold breeze skimmed past the broken windows, stirring up clouds of dust. The darkness thickened, and the few torches that were still lit flickered weakly, doing little to disperse the night’s shadows.
Lilith didn’t lower her hand.
Instead, in a sweeping gesture, the witch turned to face the flock, surveying the masses with those dead black eyes, taking in the room. Her gaze passed over the Prophet cowering behind the altar, the wreckage and the rubble, the corpses that littered the cathedral aisles.
Then her gaze fell to the Moores. Her hand twisted into a grasping claw.
Anna loosed a little cry, clutching Honor with one hand and drawing Glory into her skirts. Martha threw an arm out to shield them as the witch stepped closer, tears rolling down her cheeks though her expression was stoic. But it was Abram who started forward, limping out into the center aisle to place himself between the witch queen and his family. He stood there, silent and defenseless, leaning hard on his cane. Then, on Lilith’s command, a large, bone-faced hound prowled from the ranks of the legion.
It happened so fast, Immanuelle didn’t have the chance to scream.
One moment, Abram was standing alone in the center aisle; the next, he was pinned to the floor, the beast’s jaws closing around the back of his neck with an ugly, gut-twisting snap.
A great roaring filled Immanuelle’s ears. Darkness crept in from the edges of her vision, until she saw nothing but Abram’s lifeless body sprawled out on the floor. All at once, she was back in the cabin, surrounded by walls carved with plagues and promises. She could see the shadow of her mother, working the curses, carving her fate line by line.
Something stirred deep inside her. The sigil carved into her arm began to burn, bleeding so profusely the blood sloughed off her fingers and formed a puddle on the floor at her feet. A great tremor rattled the cathedral. Immanuelle raised her bloody hands and, with a ragged cry, summoned the power of the plagues.
Delilah was the first to fall.
A red tear leaked from the corner of the witch’s right eye, then her left. Blood pooled in the hollows of her ears, droplets dangling from her lobes like little jewels. Delilah sputtered, coughed, then began to choke, retching up mouthfuls of thick black gore with each convulsion. She broke to her knees, twitched twice, then collapsed motionless to the floor.
Blood.
Immanuelle turned on Mercy next. The witch jerked to a halt in the growing puddle of Delilah’s blood, swayed a little on her feet, then dropped to her hands and knees, as if pushed by some invisible force. She tilted her head to stare up into the rafters, her back arching to a near spine-snapping angle. With a strangled cry, the witch hurled herself forward, and her brow cracked against the tiles with a sickening crunch that echoed through the cathedral. She raised her bleeding head, leaned back, and struck the floor again, and again, and again.
Blight.
Jael stepped forward next, and Immanuelle turned to face her. The witch stopped beside her lover, looking ready to strike. But before she had the chance, the power of the curse moved through Immanuelle again. With a pass of her hand, a tide of shadows washed across the cathedral floor, lashing around the witch’s ankles and clawing up her legs, her chest, her cheeks.
Jael managed a single scream before the writhing blackness devoured her.
Darkness.
Immanuelle stepped forward to pick up the gutting blade from where it lay a few feet from the altar’s stairs. She turned to Lilith last and raised the blood-slick blade, cleaving the air between them. “Enough.”
Lilith didn’t heed her. Undeterred, the witch queen stalked down the center aisle, picking her way past the corpses of her fallen coven. She stopped just short of Immanuelle, so close that the gutting blade’s tip nearly pierced into the soft of her belly.
But Lilith didn’t flinch.
Instead, she cupped Immanuelle’s cheek in her cold, pale hand and pressed even closer, the knife carving deep into her stomach as she tipped her forehead to Immanuelle’s. She shuddered violently. Issued a low groan of pain.
The girl peered into the black of Lilith’s eye sockets and felt the forest’s thrall dragging her to senselessness. The sounds of slaughter died into the hiss of wind in the treetops. Shadows edged in from the corners of her vision and Immanuelle heard the woodland call deep within her, the sound like blood rush in her ears. The witch queen eased her thumb back and forth along Immanuelle’s pulse as if measuring the rhythm of her heartbeat, the gesture tender . . . even motherly. Immanuelle could almost imagine the kind of leader she might have been in a time, long ago, before the affliction of her vengeance and bloodlust turned her into the monster she had now become.
Lilith traced a finger along Immanuelle’s lips, then caught her by the neck.
A scream tangled in Immanuelle’s throat as Lilith ripped her off her feet. Choking, she clawed at the witch’s fingers, dangling above the ground as Lilith lifted her higher and higher.
In a panic, Immanuelle raised the gutting knife, slashing blindly. The blade connected first with bone, then flesh, piercing deep into Lilith’s shoulder.
The witch queen let out a shriek that shook the church. Fissures raced along the walls and the roof caved inward. Flock and legion alike fled for the doors as the cathedral collapsed around them. Through the mayhem, Immanuelle heard Ezra shout her name, and then his voice was lost to the tumult like everything else.
Immanuelle’s vision went blurry. She tried to stay conscious, clawing desperately for a last scrap of strength. With a snarl, she ripped the gutting blade from Lilith’s shoulder and raised it high above her head.
This time, her blow struck true.
The blade lodged hilt-deep in Lilith’s chest. The witch stumbled forward, crashed into a nearby pew, and sank to the floor. But to Immanuelle’s horror, no sooner had she hit the ground than the witch was on her feet again. She braced herself on a nearby pew, caught the gutting blade by the hilt, ripped it from her chest, and hurled it down the center aisle.
For a moment, they stood deadlocked, there in the center aisle of the cathedral. Both of them bleeding and wounded, barely able to stay on their feet. And Immanuelle knew then that the end had come and only one of the two of them would walk out of that cathedral.
Lilith raised both hands.
The wood floors began to buckle and ripple; roots burst free of the cathedral’s foundation and slithered—serpentine—down the center aisles. Saplings pressed through the floorboards, growing to maturity in a matter of moments, their branches spreading through the rafters. The crawling roots wrapped themselves around Immanuelle’s ankles, coiling so tight she cried out in pain. She staggered forward, struggling to free herself, but she couldn’t move.
The sigil cut into her forearm screamed with pain, as if she were being branded. She shut her eyes against it, reached into the depths of herself, and unleashed all that she had to give.
The roots slithered from around her ankles, recoiling back toward the breaks in the floorboards they had emerged from. The trees that sprawled overhead bent double, racked by some phantom wind that swept through the cathedral like the beginnings of a summer storm.
Lilith staggered back, pinned to the altar, as a powerful wind stormed around her so violently the skin on her outstretched hand began to slough away from the muscle, and the muscle from the bone. The witch lashed out with a scream.
The force of Lilith’s power ripped Immanuelle off her feet. She careened through the air and crashed to a brutal landing on a heap of upturned roots and floorboards. Her ribs gave a sickening crunch upon impact, and she gasped and struggled, clinging to the cusp of her consciousness.
The wind died to a low wheeze as Lilith pushed off t
he altar and started toward her, threading through the trees the way she did the night they first met. There was light in her eye sockets now—two glowing motes that moved like pupils and homed in on Immanuelle. Her rage was palpable—it turned the air cold and made the trees shudder. The witch’s every step seemed to shake the cathedral down to the crumbling stones of its foundation.
Immanuelle tried and failed to fall back; Lilith was far too quick. The witch leveled her with a single backhanded slap, and Immanuelle struck the floor again. The lights in Lilith’s eyes began to dance and multiply, scattering through the black of her sockets like embers from a windblown campfire. She delivered a cruel kick to Immanuelle’s ribs, and she screamed at the pain, clawing the floorboards for purchase.
There was a soft click, the sound of a bullet sliding into its chamber. Then Ezra’s voice. “Leave her alone.”
The witch turned from Immanuelle, faced Ezra in full. He stood in the gap between two pine trees, peering down the barrel of a gun, a finger curled over the trigger.
Lilith started toward him, one hand raised.
The ground beneath Ezra’s feet began to ripple, trees and roots sprouting through the gaps between broken floorboards, curling around his legs the way they had that day at the pond. He fired on Lilith, but with the roots dragging at his arms, none of the bullets met their mark.
Undeterred, the witch walked toward him. As she neared, one of the roots coiled around Ezra’s neck and ripped him backward so the top of his head nearly touched his spine. He tried to fire again, but a vine wrapped itself around the barrel of the gun and forced it to the floor.
Immanuelle struggled to stand up. The gutting blade was just a few feet away. If she could reach it, she could put the witch down and end this once and for all.
Ezra struggled to speak. “Immanuelle . . . run—”
A bone-faced wolf prowled from behind him, the same one that had taken down Abram, its mouth still slick with his blood. It stalked toward Ezra, jaws slack, ready to lunge, when Immanuelle threw out her hand.
The ground beneath the wolf gaped open, floorboards buckling loose, a landslide of debris tumbling down into a yawning sinkhole. The wolf whimpered, slipped, its claws scrabbling at the floorboards, and plummeted into the void.
Immanuelle pressed to her feet. Every breath sent a bolt of pain through her ribs, but she managed to speak anyway: “Let him go.”
At her command the vines slithered from Ezra, and he half crawled, half lunged away from the sinkhole’s edge, grabbing for his rifle. He raised it to his shoulder and fired on Lilith again, just as she turned back to Immanuelle. The bullet pierced straight through the crook of her collarbone. Lilith stopped . . . then staggered into a nearby tree. Her knees buckled.
“Immanuelle!” Vera stood in the center of the aisle, the gutting knife in her hand. She staggered forward, limping on what looked like a broken leg, and threw it.
The knife careened through the air, flipping several times as it arced overhead. Immanuelle lashed out and snatched it by the hilt a split second before it hit the floor. Then, with a strangled cry, she turned on Lilith and lunged.
The blade lodged, hilt-deep, into the center of the witch’s skull. A great crack cleaved the bone, and then, with the softest whimper, the witch queen collapsed.
Spent, Immanuelle crumpled to the floor beside her, gasping and bleeding, so weak she felt she would never rise again. With the last of her strength, she pressed a hand to the witch’s head, smearing the bone with her blood.
Lilith peered at her, chest heaving. Tendrils of shadow eddied from the cracks in her skull, hanging on the air like smoke. One of her antlers snapped and hit the floor. At last, with a shudder that racked the cathedral to the stones of its foundation, the witch went lifeless.
Slaughter.
CHAPTER FORTY
And on that day, when the dark has passed and the sun has risen again, the sins of the deceivers will be brought to light and the truth will emerge from the shadows.
—THE LAST PROPHESY OF DAVID FORD
THERE WAS SUNLIGHT on Immanuelle’s cheeks when she woke. She opened her eyes and sat up, dizzy and squinting, struggling to process the scene before her.
The cathedral was in ruins. Half the roof had caved in, and fallen beams and debris littered the floors. Trees grew from great gashes in the foundation, their branches stirring when the wind blew. Survivors wandered the wreckage of toppled pews and broken windows, searching for the wounded and trapped. Strewn through the rubble were the corpses of beasts, guardsmen, and the faithful. Among them was Lilith’s body, lying limp in the shadow of the altar.
“Easy.” Ezra was by Immanuelle’s side, bracing a hand against the small of her back as she attempted to stand. “You’re all right. You’re safe now.”
She shut her eyes against the sight of the carnage, feeling faint and sick. The memories of the battle flooded back to her: the legions pouring in through the shattered windows, beasts and demons prowling the aisles of the church, children screaming, women fleeing, Abram pinned to the floor . . .
Abram. Abram.
“Where is he?” Immanuelle demanded, turning to Ezra. “I want to see Abram.”
“Immanuelle—”
“I have to see him. Now.”
The crowd parted before them, members of the flock shuffling aside to give her a clear view. There, lying motionless amidst the wreckage, was Abram. Glory sat tucked into his waist the way she had as a baby, Honor close beside her, weeping. Next to Honor sat Anna, sobbing into the folds of her skirts. Standing over the two of them, stone-faced and motionless, was Martha. When her gaze shifted to Immanuelle, she offered nothing but a slow shake of her head.
Immanuelle tried to stand. She might have fallen if Ezra hadn’t been there to catch her by the arm. She shook him off, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled through the wreckage to the place where Abram’s body lay.
She didn’t want to touch him, for fear of unleashing the power of the curses again. So she simply sat there next to him, one hand clasped over her mouth to muffle her sobs.
“Only now do you see the price of sin. Only now do you understand.” Immanuelle raised her head to see the Prophet staggering from behind the ruined altar, where he’d hidden during the height of the massacre. He raised his voice, calling out to the crowd: “Do you see the evil this girl has brought upon us? She summoned this darkness, called the coven here. Even now, I see the shadow of the Mother in her eyes.”
At this, the survivors of the slaughter murmured among themselves. A few stumbled back toward the walls; others cowered behind broken pews and heaps of rubble. All of them seemed to fear whatever curses Immanuelle would conjure next.
“Look at what this girl has wrought,” continued the Prophet, gesturing to the carnage about them. “Look at the ruin she’s brought upon us.”
“Why don’t you bite your lying tongue?” Ezra snapped, stepping forward. “Can’t you see she’s mourning?”
“That girl mourns nothing but her own demise. She’s a witch.”
“Maybe,” said Ezra, and he looked ready to rip the gutting blade from Lilith’s skull and turn it on his father. “But while you were cowering behind the altar, pleading for your miserable life, Immanuelle fought for Bethel. She mastered the plagues and the Mother’s darkness, which is more than any prophet or saint has been able to do. She saved us all.”
“She didn’t save us,” spat the Prophet. “She brought this evil here in the first place. She confessed as much to me days ago: These plagues were born of her flesh and blood. All of this is because of her.”
He was right. Immanuelle couldn’t deny it. Everything—the blood and the blight, the darkness and the slaughter, Leah’s death and Abram’s—all of it had come to pass because of her. Miriam had died to give her the power to fight back, but all she’d managed to do was hurt the very people she’d want
ed to save.
Immanuelle peered down again at her grandfather, choking back a sob. She started to reach for him, then stopped herself, folding her hands into fists so tight her nails cut into her palms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, not to the Prophet, or to the flock, but to Abram. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Ezra dropped to her side. “You saved us, Immanuelle. All of us are here because of you.”
“Not all of us,” she said, her gaze sweeping across the ruins of the cathedral. The Moores weren’t the only ones in mourning. There were more dead among the debris and rubble. A guardsman lay slumped over a broken pew, surrounded by the corpses of fallen beasts. The body of an old man she recognized as the candle peddler lay pinned beneath a fallen rafter. A few feet from the peddler, one of the Prophet’s brides sat amidst the wreckage, softly singing a lullaby to the lifeless child cradled in her arms.
These were the casualties of a war that could never be won. Immanuelle knew this now. The violence would continue. A new man would claim the title of Prophet. The cathedral would be rebuilt, and the covens of the dead would one day rise again. The war between witch and Prophet, Church and coven, darkness and light, would wage on and on until the day there would be nothing and no one left to mourn.
Was that the fate the Father wanted? Was that what the Mother ordained? Did They send Their children willingly to the slaughter? Could this be Their will?
No.
Gazing around the cathedral—at the corpses crowding the aisles, at Glory sobbing on Abram’s chest, at all the suffering and the senselessness—Immanuelle was certain of one thing: There was no divinity in this violence. No justice. No sanctity. All that ruin and pain had been wrought not from the Mother’s darkness or the Father’s light, but from the sins of man.
They had brought this fate upon themselves. They were complicit in their own damnation.
They did this.
Not the Mother. Not the Father.
The Year of the Witching Page 31