Salvador pulls a knife from his pocket, and my mother gives a muffled scream, her hunched figure scuttling into the corner. Rafi and the triplets look on, faces blank and helpless.
“What are you doing?” I cry.
“At the Ascension, I thought it was all over for me, but then you,” he points the dagger at me, grinning. “You had the Fairy make it snow. Genius, really. Your mother always made you sound so dim, but she was wrong. The Ascension was foiled, the moon no longer visible. I looked at your lovely mother, all dressed in white like a bride and…” He pauses. “It dawned on me. A wedding! And I knew the perfect venue.” He points his dagger at the ceiling.
My skin creeps at his voice, as if it were nails on a chalkboard. He’s going to force my mother to marry him, thereby becoming an instant Second upon their joint Ascension. Partners and firstborns are the only ones who can Ascend automatically, they don’t have to be chosen. If he’s her husband, he doesn’t need an elaborate ritual, he just needs a full moon and her blood. My eyes narrow on the dagger in his hand, the reflection of the moon above us glinting off the blade.
“That’s right,” he says, following my gaze. “You did me a favor with the snow, Saskia. In all that chaos, I was able to silence Solina’s powers and drag her here. After that, I only needed Rafi to get you and Luisa to join the party.”
He Silenced my mother’s power? Is that why her control over me broke on the roof?
Luisa’s still cradling Beatriz, who is now weeping silently.
“We won’t have anything to do with this shit!” Luisa screams from the floor. “This is between you and that bitch. Keep me and my friends out of it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, little Junior,” he says. “A Mage union needs a witness and an officiant. You,” he points at me, “will be the witness, and you,” he points at Luisa, “will be an officiant.”
Luisa jumps to her feet, fists bunched. “Like hell I am!”
“Only a Touchmage can bind weddings,” Salvador explains, “and only a Verity Witch can witness, for only she can see the truth.”
He’s not lying. Back in New York, I make a pretty penny during Para wedding season. I didn’t expect to be side hustling at my own mother’s forced wedding, though.
The more Salvador talks, the more Rafi, Alba, and Jan, fight against their restraints. Not Ramon though, he remains as still and blank as death. Jan edges closer to Rafi, his bound fingers grasping at his. Rafi stares ahead, his expression void of all hope. He’s right. There’s nothing any of us can do. Beatriz, Luisa and I on one side of the partition, and Salvador and his ability to silence magic on the other.
Salvador turns to my mother and clasps her trembling chin. “Welcome to your wedding, cariño.” With the silver dagger, he rips away the white silk scarf he was using as a gag, then uses it to wrap it around both of their hands.
“We won’t bother with all the usual pretty pomp, let’s get straight to the action. You,” he points at Luisa. “Pronounce us as Married Mage or your friend dies.”
“Ves a la merda,” she spits, telling Salvador to fuck off.
His face turns to stone as he leans over to where Rafi is still struggling against his binds. Quick as a flash, he cuts a thin line beneath our friend’s eye. Blood trickles down Rafi’s cheek and into his mouth like crimson tears.
Luisa screams. “OK! Just leave him alone.”
“Say the words,” Salvador shouts, turning back to my mother, who’s been struck dumb — either by magic, fear or disbelief.
Luisa puts a shaking hand on the invisible barrier. Salvador puts his palm against hers, and tugs my mother behind him, yanking her up like a bridal ragdoll.
“By the magic of touch, I bind you,” Luisa says.
My mother’s face is frozen in a perpetual mask of horror, her mouth opening and closing silently. Salvador’s powers must be making her weak.
I search deep inside of me for an emotion, a fleeting surge of love, but I feel nothing. I feel as empty as she looks.
“You.” Salvador turns his attention to me next. “The words.”
I gulp. Rafi’s face is still bleeding heavily. We are not getting out of here until this psycho gets what he wants.
I lay my palm against the barrier.
“In truth, I join you,” I say weakly.
Satisfied, Salvador turns to his bride. With a flash of the blade, he cuts my mother’s hand wide open, then his own, grinding their palms together — a crude version of our blood ritual earlier tonight. Blood soaks the silk bind turning it scarlet, pooling at their feet in inky puddles. I absentmindedly wonder if it’s enough to kill her, if I’m witnessing my mother’s death at the hands of the man she told me she loved so dearly just a few days ago.
And yet, I still feel no pity. Just the cold, wet dread of what’s to come.
“Say the Ascension words, Solina,” he growls, his other hand clasping her face in a vice-like grip.
I watch in horror as my mother pronounces herself First and Salvador Second. A blinding light erupts from the moon, drowning the room in white, and the new First collapses in a bloody heap.
Beatriz’s wail is the only sound cutting through the tension of the silent basement. I blink. My mother is on her knees nursing her wounded hand, and Salvador is marveling at his own cut palm as if he can’t believe his dumb luck.
“Let them go now,” Luisa cries.
Salvador shakes his head, tutting, clearly enjoying himself like the fucking madman he is. Another heart-wrenching sob from Beatriz has him twisting his face in exasperation.
“Stop crying, hija,” he says, flexing his fingers. “You have nothing to be sad about. Once I kill Solina, you will be my Second. We will rule the MA together, just like I always promised you.”
Kill Solina? That’s his plan?
My stomach drops like a cannonball. This is the day I watch my mother die.
“How could you do this?” Beatriz wails. “How could you do any of this?”
“Don’t be so ungrateful, Beatriz. If it wasn’t for your affair with that abomination, Solina wouldn’t have had the perfect excuse to call off our wedding. Even though I took care of it.”
“Took care of it?” Beatriz says, her voice a mere whisper. “Papa? What did you do?”
Luisa gives me a somber look as the truth seeps in, and slowly we start to connect the dots. Now I understand what my mother and Salvador were talking about in Maribel’s office.
“Our bloodline is meant to rule,” Salvador shouts at Beatriz through the glass-like division. “You almost squandered that for some winged hijo de puta.”
“Xavi,” Beatriz says his name like a prayer. Her eyes dance wildly across the basement as the realization sets it. “You killed Xavi?”
“What was I meant to do? Let you destroy everything I’ve built? You know that mating with a Shifter is a mark of shame.”
Beatriz’s face is pale beneath the magical moon, her face crisscrossed with streaks of black mascara and tears. She doesn’t make a sound.
I should be, though. I should be screaming as Salvador holds the knife to the throat of his new bride. I should be banging on the partition, even though it’s futile, and I know I can’t stop him. I should be crying and trying to save my mother. But I’m not. So it’s me Solina stares at as the tip of the Silencer’s blade pushes into her flesh, and a piercing wail rocks the room.
But the cry doesn’t come from my mother.
“ENOUGH,” Beatriz roars, her palms stretched out towards her father.
With a splintering crash, the forcefield separating us from our parents shatters at our feet into a million slivers of crystal.
Chapter Thirty
Salvador drops my mother and lunges at his daughter, but he’s too late. Light is emanating off Beatriz, something akin to lightning shooting up her limbs and cracking on her fingertips.
Luisa gasps loudly, and I notice Beatriz is elevated off the ground a good ten inches, her hair flowing in an imaginary wind.
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I’ve never heard of a Witch do this before!
Salvador holds his hands out further, trying to cancel his daughter’s magic, but instead bright threads of lightning shoot out of Beatriz’s fingers and wrap around his wrists like handcuffs. She tugs, and he falls to his knees.
“Hija, what is happening?”
Her voice is calm now — much scarier than her sobs.
“I inherited Mother’s powers after you drove her mad.”
“Impossible,” Salvador says under his breath.
But he’s wrong, even I’ve heard of this. Sometimes, Mage magic can pass onto one’s kin when they die, or if it’s taken from them. Beatriz’s mom was sectioned years ago. Has Beatriz been harnessing her powers ever since? Is this what her mother was sending her in exchange for Beatriz’s crow messenger dreams?
Luisa and I look at one another, too afraid to move or make a sound.
“You broke her, Papa,” Beatriz says. “You Silenced her for too long. Why? Were you hoping her magic would go to you?”
“She was ill. She went crazy!”
His untruths ring in my ears. “He’s lying.”
Salvador drops his head. “I just wanted to clear the MA path for you, hija. I love you.”
“If that were true, you’d have left me with a mother,” Beatriz roars, the light in her hands crackling audibly. “And you wouldn’t have killed the only man I ever loved!”
Salvador tries to stand, but with a high-pitched scream, Beatriz throws herself at him. She grabs on to his head, grasping his hair, a fist on either side of his temples. A flash of white light blinds me. I turn away, unable to see anything. The only sound is that of Salvador’s whimpers as he collapses to the ground.
When I turn back, he’s shaking, curled up like a dying cockroach. Lightning crackles around his temples, his eyes glowing white in the dim light of the room as they roll back into his head. Beatriz towers over him as he slowly stills, the occasional finger twitching, then his face turns as white as the fake moon above us.
Beatriz takes a shaky breath and swallows, her gaze fixed on the crumpled form of her father.
“Help us,” Rafi shouts.
While Beatriz and her father were fighting, Luisa has untied Rafi and is now pulling at the wire wrapped around Alba’s wrists.
“We need the knife,” I mutter, searching the blood-speckled floor.
My mother is still on the ground, but unlike Salvador, she’s breathing. Did Beatriz just kill her father? I don’t have time to think about it. We need to get the hell out of here!
“I’ve got my powers back,” Rafi says, joining Luisa and carefully directing a thin flame to melt the wire around Alba’s wrists. He does the same with Ramon, and as Jan breaks free, he wraps his arms around Rafi’s neck and kisses him full on the lips.
I go to say something corny, but before I have a chance, something rushes past me. A glint of silver, a rustle of white, an ear-splitting scream.
The room fills with the sharp scent of blood. My mother has plunged Salvador’s dagger into Beatriz’s chest.
There’s a scream, blurred shapes in the dark, arms and legs tangling as they fall to the ground – my mother’s white pantsuit wrapping around Beatriz’s black gown as she drives the blade in deeper.
Beatriz’s blood mixes with that of my mother’s, dripping onto her father’s body on the ground. The world has gone blurry, everything is muffled, there’s so much magic in the room it’s making me feel intoxicated. I can’t think straight. I can only watch.
My mother is still screaming as Rafi races forward, blasting her backward with a gush of wind, crashing her against the wall. Luisa is already on her knees besides Beatriz, ripping at the hem of her dress. She goes to wrap it around our friend’s wound, then looks up with a start.
“Watch out!” she screams.
My head whips up, pulling me out of my daze. My mother has scrambled back to her feet and is running towards Beatriz, the knife gripped in her slippery fist. Salvador must be dead if she’s regained all her energy so fast.
I grab her arm and pull her back.
“Move, Saskia!” my mother hisses, her face pressed against mine. Her eyes shine black in the dim light, her teeth bared. “We have to kill her. It’s still a full moon. Salvador’s dead. If we don’t kill Beatriz his power will transfer, and his daughter will automatically become my Second.”
My mother grips my wrist, and her magic instantly floods into my bloodstream, the sharp jabs of compliance and control itching beneath my skin. I kick out before it fully takes its hold.
Rafi straightens up and runs over, but with an arc of her hand, Solina sends him flying back. That’s new. She must have grown more powerful as the new First.
She tries to grab my arm again, but I sidestep her, making her slip on the slick red floor.
“Saskia,” she screams. “I’m doing this for you. Beatriz has to die. You don’t understand.”
Luisa is pressing down on our friend’s wound.
“Stop her,” she cries. “She’s missed Beatriz’s vital organs, but I can’t staunch the bleeding much longer!”
My mother grins at the update, and swipes at me again, but this time Jan grabs her arms as Rafi and Alba rush forward. Ramon doesn’t move, but there are still four of us. Surely between us we can overpower her?
Holding my mother’s arms back, Jan and I try to wrestle the knife out of her hand. She breaks free and grabs hold of Alba’s hair, pulling her to the ground so we all fall in a heap. I attempt to pull Jan back up, but my mother is slashing out at him with the other hand. He twists, narrowly avoiding the blade.
“Don’t let her hands touch you!” I cry.
Too late. With a sparkling flash, my mother grasps Jan’s arm. Immediately his expression grows vacant, his body coiling with anger. Except this time his rage is not directed at Solina. The Nox pulls his sister up by the scruff of her collar and hits her across the face. She cries out, falling to the ground, her eyes wide with shock and pain.
“Move,” Solina screams, pushing past me, clutching the dagger.
I have no time to stop her as Jan, his mind ravaged with Solina’s magic, goes to strike me. I try and hold him back, but he’s too strong. Then a feral battle cry rings out, and we all stop.
Ramon is no longer standing still.
“No one fucks con mi familia!” His scream echoes through the room.
Like a giant woken from his slumber, he rushes forward, raking his hands through the air, black smoke erupting from the palms of his hands.
The Nox work with the dead, and Ramon is their anchor — the eye of a death storm. He has called forward the power of the departed, and it’s them who are coursing through him in the form of ashen mist.
With a feeble whimper, my mother drops the knife as wisps of smoke wind across her body. She tries to cry out, but as she parts her lips, the black mist enters her mouth, her nose, her ears. Silenced and rendered powerless, she’s now nothing but a weak fly trapped in a web of her own making.
Hell pulsates through Ramon, despair, and torment leaking off him like a black fog. His siblings, Jan and Alba, look up from the ground, their faces pale with horror as knotted cords of the deepest blackest smoke spin my mother around and slowly lift her into the air. She can’t move, she can’t utter a sound. The ropes tighten, cutting into her skin, as she hangs limp in the air glowing beneath the magical moon.
With a loud thump, Jan slumps to the floor as Solina’s hold over him is severed, but Ramon isn’t finished yet.
“Saskia?” he asks. “Your call.”
“I’ll leave her to you. I’m done.”
I join Rafi and Luisa, and together the three of us help Beatriz to her feet.
Solina’s head flops to the side, her blood-soaked hair hanging limply to the ground, but her eyes are bulging wide. She’s trying to communicate.
“Let her speak,” Beatriz says, her voice hoarse but unwavering. “Let’s hear what our powerful First has to say.”
>
I nod at Ramon, and wisps of smoke unravel at my mother’s lips.
“Don’t you dare leave me like this, Saskia,” my mother hisses through clenched teeth.
“I told you. I’m done with your shit, Mother.”
“We need to get you help,” Luisa whispers to Beatriz, carrying her out with Rafi’s help. Beatriz gives the crumpled form of her father one last look over her shoulder, her jaw set tight with anger, before slowly being helped up the stairs.
I walk up to my mother, our faces inches from one another. She can’t move, she can’t even turn her head, but her eyes flash with vicious hate.
“Weak. You were always weak! And disloyal,” she spits at me. “Why couldn’t you just go forward with the Ascension?”
Ramon looms at my side, palms pointed outwards towards my mom. “Do you want her dead?”
The black mist tightens around her like a thick rope, and she cries out. I think of all the pain she’s caused me, and how many more lives she could ruin by being the head of all Mages.
“No,” I croak. “I don’t want the burden of her death on my hands.” I lean in closer to her. “But things are going to change. Beatriz is Second now and has inherited both her mother and father’s powers. Which means you will be ruled by a formidable Dreamchasing Silencer for the rest of your life. No rest, day or night. You will be docile. Controlled. Every flame doused and still. Let’s see how you like it.”
I turn to walk away.
“You ungrateful child! I made you,” my mother hisses. “And I can unmake you just as easily.”
I spin around. “You know what really kills you, Mother? It’s that no matter how many times you break me, I never stay broken. I always reform, stronger than before.”
“Stronger?” she snarls. “All I see is weakness, Saskia. You’re the weakest de la Cruz Witch in eight generations.”
“I might be a weak Witch…” I lean in, my breath hot on her cheek. “But I’m a fucking strong woman. And that’s something you will never be able to take away from me.”
“Life is all about sacrifice and choices, Saskia.” Her voice is small, fragile, unsure. “I made difficult ones, for you and for me. You have to choose what’s right.”
Witches of Barcelona: A Dark, Funny & Sexy Urban Paranormal Romance Series (Blood Web Chronicles Book 2) Page 22