A twig snapped nearby and Lydie spun around, crying out, and simultaneously sending a jagged bolt of flame across the dry earth below them. It lit the woods for an instant and, to Helena's horror, a shape loomed in the distance. The man wore a dark hood, but Helena caught the red glow of his eyes.
"Lydie, run," she commanded , pushing Lydie with the force of her power toward the castle. Lydie took flight, running so fast that her legs carried her into the air, but then she touched down and disappeared into the trees. Helena again called upon her element and then she whispered an incantation to the moon that it light the island, but darken her. She felt her own shape dim as the woods and water beyond lit up. Where the man stood, she now saw only a gnarled tree.
She felt nothing, no presence, but also no lack of presence. The transmitter that endlessly sent signals into her body had grown silent. She thought of the nothing and then she remembered Lydie and fled to the castle.
****
Lydie raced through the castle doors and slammed them behind her, running halfway down the hall before the darkness hit her. Every candle in the castle had been extinguished. She started to scream, but instead shoved her fist into her mouth and pressed her back against the wall, sliding towards the library where she might disappear into a secret passageway and hide from whomever or whatever had breached the coven's barriers.
In the familiar terrifying darkness, all the fear of her childhood rushed back at her.
She sat again in the tiny cubby the night her mother and father were murdered. She heard their cries and pleas as the Vepars dragged them from the cottage and ransacked the house in search of her. She smelled her parent's blood as it filled the air and mixed with scents of pine and the cinnamon cookies her mother had baked just that evening.
Like that night, when the fear became more than she could face, Lydie closed her eyes. The darkness, like an old friend, wrapped close around her.
****
"I will light the fire. Might you fan the smoke?" Faustine asked Elda who stood in the cave staring up at the stars. She looked younger in the moonlight and he felt an old desire awakening in his body.
Once upon a time, they had loved each other with a passion that he believed would endure all things. They never chose to reveal their intimacy to others, but instead kept it as a beautiful treasure meant only for their two hearts. In those days, they both put Ula before themselves. They agreed that physical love could not interfere with their work as witches. He wondered now if they would have been better off marrying and wrapping the whole of their coven within their love instead.
"Yes, I will go up," she told him and began to float up toward the sky, perching on the rock ledge.
He blew fire into the cave floor and its flames danced up into the heavens, concealing Elda from his view. He knew that she would be calling out now to the other five witches, the smoke signals reaching to them at the far corners of the earth.
When Elda returned, they rocked together, their energies feeding the fire. It grew bigger and brighter and eventually witches began to traipse out of the tunnel behind them. All five arrived, their black cloaks billowing as they merged into a circle around the flames, their arms linked and their heads bowed. Faustine did not have to describe the unrest at his coven. The other witches had only to pick it out of the flames.
No one spoke. They communicated through the fire and both Elda and Faustine paid keen attention to the thoughts of the ancient witches who had come to offer their wisdom. The witch who spoke to the spirit of the Great Mother knew that the deception had come from within their coven, and Faustine felt tremendous pain as he accepted this truth. He realized that Elda had already suspected as much and, furthermore, she knew that it was Dafne who had deceived them
****
Helena felt along the castle walls, her bare feet sticking to the floor beneath her.. She wanted to call out to Lydie, but her body vibrated with a message of danger. She bit her tongue and moved slowly through the darkness. Never in all of her years at Ula had all the candles extinguished.
When she found the door to the tincture room, she slipped inside, closing it softly behind her. She whispered an incantation, sealing the door with darkness, so that when she created light within the room, it would not be seen from outside.
"Fire of sun, light of moon I call you
Light of moon, fire of sun I call you
Let this room illumine, let this room illumine"
She held fast to the stone about her neck as she spoke, willing the power of the air to send her call into the elements. Gradually the room lit until she could see the bottles of tinctures lining the walls.
She searched quickly, grabbing several, including the venom antidote, an invisibility potion and a poultice, which could be ripped and thrown into the face of an enemy to render them temporarily blind. She filled a small satchel with several poisonous tinctures and tied it about her waist. She grabbed a calming elixir and drank it quickly, welcoming the immediate sensation of peace that fell over her. Death came swiftly to those who panicked.
Lydie's scream pierced her thoughts and Helena darkened the room before running into the hallway and smacking into something large. She fell back and hit her head against the stone wall, crashing to the floor where several tinctures smashed as she landed upon them. The glass from the bottles cut into her back and, for a moment, she felt paralyzed as the liquids merged with her blood.
The dark figure paused and something wriggled in its arms. Helena sensed Lydie directly in front of her, thrashing in the arms of her captor. The young witch tried to scream, but her cries were muffled. Helena struggled to sit, her hands mashing into glass and blood, but her body had grown heavy. She heard Lydie's strangled screams grow further away and she felt the poison race towards her heart.
Chapter 27
Abby knocked on the door of the stone cottage, noticing the darkened windows. All of the cottages looked vacant. No one answered.
She went to another cottage and then another. She knocked on doors and peeked in windows. In the cottage where she'd seen the woman with the child Ebony the week before, she saw darkened rooms.
Still, she sensed human life nearby, and something else—fear. Abby tried the door—locked. The door appeared old and heavy so Abby picked a lake-facing window near the rear of the cottage. She took off her sweater and wrapped it around her elbow, slamming it hard against the glass. It shattered easily and stung Abby's arm for only a moment before the pain subsided. She crawled through the window and into a child's bedroom painted with fairies and strung with garlands of pink and green lace.
"Is anyone home?" Abby called out. She moved cautiously, stopping to listen and feel what lay ahead. The cottage held another bedroom—the mother's—a tiny kitchen and living room combined, and one small bathroom. No attic. She continued to call out as she walked, but no one called back.
She started to leave, thinking that perhaps she had sensed the remnants of the people there instead of an actual person when she heard the tiniest sigh from below her. It barely registered and any human brain would have written it off as the sounds of the house or the wind outside, but Abby knew it to be breath. There was a basement beneath the cottage and someone was in it.
She moved back through the cottage lifting rugs and looking beneath furniture. She found the trap door in Ebony's bedroom concealed beneath a large wooden doll house. When she lifted the door, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps scurrying away. She also felt the woman's fear as she dropped into the space.
The woman from the grocery store cowered in the far corner of the crawl space, a single candle clutched in her white-knuckled hand. She opened her mouth as if to scream and Abby held up her hands.
"Please don't be afraid of me. I swear, I'm here to help. Let me help you."
The woman did not scream, but her gaze darted around the small space as if seeking an escape route.
"My name is Abby," Abby told her, extending a hand.
At the mention of h
er name, the woman's gray eyes grew larger and less afraid.
"Abigail Daniels?" the woman asked in a husky voice that sounded like she had been crying.
Abby cocked her head to the side and studied the woman.
"You know me?"
The woman nodded.
"Of you. I knew Sydney. Sydney was a very close friend."
Abby smiled and relaxed as the woman finally began to make her way, hunched, over to the floor opening.
"Let's get out of here," Abby said. "It's creepy."
The woman laughed quietly.
"That's exactly how Sydney described it."
Abby hoisted herself out of the space. The woman carefully replaced the door and slid the doll house over it.
"Why were you hiding?" Abby asked, walking back toward the kitchen with the woman behind her.
The woman looked around nervously and then stared out the window for a long time, watching the woods.
"I don't believe that we're safe here," she said at last.
"Has someone tried to hurt you? And I hope you don't mind my asking, but where is your child?"
Dismay colored the woman's features, but then she seemed to think better of it.
"I have not been attacked, but I'm sure that others have. My daughter was taken to a safe place where she will be protected."
"Protected from whom? And what others?"
"I don't think we should discuss it here. We're not safe."
Abby sighed, exasperated, and was tempted to tell the woman of her powers so that she might rest easy.
"I know you're not ordinary," the woman replied. "But your enemies are mine as well."
"Where is safe then?" Abby asked finally. "And what is your name?"
"Gwen," the woman said, running a hand nervously through her tousled blonde hair and glancing again toward the forest.
"I kept hearing things in there last night. Screams and then this strange crying, but not like a human cry—an animal cry."
Abby wondered if the woman might be losing her mind, but knew that she only wanted to believe that.
"Do you think someone was hurt in there?"
"No," the woman whispered. "I think it was the cries of the dead."
****
Elda picked up the message first.
'There's something wrong at your coven,' the elder witch, Hatha, projected the thought to Elda and Faustine.
Faustine brushed over it. He already knew as much, but Elda recognized it for what it was—an urgent warning.
"Now?"
The witch nodded gravely and immediately the fire began to die as Elda and then Faustine allowed themselves to be pulled back to their astral bodies. They came to on the floor of the dungeon in complete darkness.
"Where is the light? The candles have all been extinguished," Faustine whispered, sitting up and immediately casting a glow in front of them. He allowed it to fill the room and they followed it into the hallway and up the dungeon stairs. The castle lay quiet, but the air felt chilled and disturbed. Something malevolent had been in the castle and its vestige remained.
Faustine reached out to the spell that lit the candles. Someone or something had tampered with the coven's protective barriers. He sought the missing pieces and began to pull the energy back together. A few of the candles lit and then went out.
"Forget the spell, Faustine. Just give them fire."
He did so and the hallway grew bright, the lights flickering and at times going out. Far down the hall, they both saw the pool of red spreading on the stone floor.
Elda ran to the spot where it trailed into the room of elixirs and pushed the door in, nearly falling over Helena who had crawled back to the door before slipping into unconsciousness. Elda could see the weak rise and fall of her chest.
"I will take her to the Healing Room. You must go to the tower and find Lydie." Elda's voice cracked on Lydie's name. She scooped Helena into her arms and rushed out of the room. Faustine stood paralyzed, his eyes taking in broken bottles and blood spatter, his brain trying to wrench him back one hundred years to a similar scene.
"There's no time for such nonsense," he chastised himself, and hurried towards the tower, searching for Lydie's presence behind every closed door that he passed, but knowing in his heart that every room lay empty.
****
Abby and Gwen drove. They did not have a destination in mind. Gwen insisted movement was their safest choice so Abby filled her little car with gas and chose a long stretch of country road.
"My heart has been broken since Sydney's death," Gwen started, clasping her knees and leaning her head toward the dashboard. She shook it from side to side as if still in disbelief.
"Mine too."
Abby stared ahead and tried to forget the image of Sydney's dead, bloated face.
"Sydney started the group. I mean, technically it started long before her, but she restarted it, if you will. She was definitely the longest standing member and the most knowledgeable."
"The group?" Abby asked.
"Yeah, the Asemaa. I'm not exactly sure what it means—something to do with tobacco."
"A smoker's group? Really?"
Gwen laughed.
"No, a group that studies witches."
Abby turned and looked sharply at Gwen, but could see that the woman was entirely serious.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I know that you are a witch, Abby. I know that Sydney's mother was a witch. I know about the coven of Ula, though not very much. Sydney devoted her life to compiling information about your...kind. Sorry, I just don't know what else to call you. Anyway, she wasn't the first and she didn't make up the name Asemaa. It came from a man who knew of witches and of their connection with Trager. She never told me much about him. She called him Gibbs, though that was his last name. Gibbs told Sydney that the men who founded the group were tobacco traders and they used their routes to meet and share information."
"Why would this man be interested in witches?"
"I don't really know. Sydney spent a lot of time trying to trace the group's beginnings, but never found any more than Gibbs had told her. She devoted a lot of time to her research, but you know Sydney, she didn't exactly savor sitting in a dark library reading all day."
"To tell you the truth, I can't believe I never knew about any of this. I spent time with Sydney every summer and I never got even a whiff of this group."
Gwen waved the comment away.
"Sydney took a lot of pains to hide it. Not from you per se, but from Harold especially. She intended to tell you. She wanted to wait until she felt that you were ready and, after she met Rod, she got pretty distracted for a while. For a couple of years the group cooled off and our meetings became a lot more sporadic. But she got really excited about it all again last year. She had a dream about your grandmother. Arlene demanded that she return to the witch studies and implied that something very important was going to happen."
Abby drew in a deep breath and watched silently as the bare trees whizzed by.
"She kept a lot of her information at the loft. In fact, she bought the loft for Rod because of that secret room. She thought it was perfect. Before that she kept it all in a storage unit, but that scared her because anyone could break in and take it. Rod didn't even know about the room. I think it was the only thing that she ever lied to him about..."
"Why would she need to protect it? I mean, other than the obvious reasons like who the Hell believes in witches to begin with and if they found out she was researching them they'd all think she was bat shit crazy."
Gwen smiled.
"Well, she was, but that's hardly the point. She knew that Vepars hunted witches and could trace bloodlines. It was the curse more than anything though. The curse on Trager that was valuable, and if that information got into the wrong hands then witches would die and humans would die and Vepars would have access to power greater than they'd ever known."
Abby realized that she'd begun to press hard on the gas and
let up. She took a couple of slow breaths and cleared her running thoughts.
"After the dream, Sydney insisted we return to twice monthly meetings and hinted about a big 'tell all' with you. I think she decided that if you carried the witches' blood, then telling you might begin the process of discovery and, if you didn't, you could become part of the Asemaa."
"She planned to tell me?"
Abby wondered how differently things might have gone if Sydney had only told her. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying. Gwen reached over and rested a warm hand on her knee.
"I'm sorry, honey. You meant so much to Sydney, I hope you know that."
Abby nodded through her tears and then wiped them hard with her sleeve and continued.
"So you're saying that Sydney discovered a curse on Trager that has something to do with me?"
"I think so, yes. I think that the Asemaa originally discovered the curse, but I believe something bad happened to most of them." The woman shuddered.
"How long ago did Sydney form this group?"
"I knew her when we were little girls. We played in the woods between our houses. Even then Sydney knew stuff, weird stuff that I only half believed. When she came back later, I was the first she let in on her secret and then slowly we added four more. We had six in all. Two of them, Karl and Meghan, live in the cottages with me. Stephen lives in town and Lorna is further north. We met twice a month usually at the cottages and shared what we had uncovered in the previous weeks. In the beginning I didn't take it very seriously. You know, I thought that Sydney was probably embellishing some of it, but then she introduced me to Adora."
"Adora?" Abby asked, startled by the name of the witch who had helped Sebastian's sister Claire.
"Yes, she had come to Sydney, believe it or not, looking for information about the curse. Most of Sydney's documents came from her predecessor and, though she'd read all of it and taken a library of notes, she still didn't really understand it. In fact, we've spent most of the last five years trying to unearth the origin of the curse."
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 54