All Spell is Breaking Loose: Lexi Balefire: Matchmaking Witch (Fate Weaver Book 2)

by Welling, ReGina

  After that, we spoke little as we gathered matching black packs from the trunk and, dressed identically in black jeans and hoodies, made our way down the slippery hill toward the bottom of the waterfall. There would be no rainbow today.

  The soft echo of a breaking branch reached my ears, but I could see nothing behind us save for a squirrel racing from tree to tree. Pearled mist muted and distorted the sounds of the forest, and we slogged through rain-soaked foliage toward the spot where Sylvana pressed the knot and revealed the hidden trail. She took the lead, her back straight, looking neither left nor right and I wondered if she was battling the memory of that blue flash from our last visit.

  Time plays tricks on your mind, stretching and winding back on itself during times of duress. This was one of those times. The minutes felt like hours and also like mere seconds as we approached the compound and our first test of the day. Sylvana pulled the powder out of her bag and motioned toward the door, kept dry by a thatched overhang. "Here we go. Let's see if forensics and magic can work together."

  Starting with the locations she'd touched last time, my mother applied the powder with one of my old blush brushes. She must have watched some TV to get the technique right because her hands moved in an expert motion that spread the lightest layer of powder over the largest amount of surface area. Once the colored dust coated the door, she turned her attention to the frame.

  "If memory serves, there should be five touch points."

  "Six if you count the bad one from last time. You remember where it was, right?" Every time the scene replayed in my mind, I cringed.

  "Trust me; I'm not likely to forget."

  "Shouldn't it be glowing by now?" I strained to see any evidence our spelled powder was working. "Maybe it's not dark enough." I lifted my arms and stretched the material of my sweatshirt to block as much of the misty gray light as I could.

  "There, do you see it?" Sylvan leaned closer to the door. "It's working." As her breath fell on the powder, the effect became more pronounced, and I could see five separate areas of glowing green taking shape.

  "Blow on them. Just lightly." I ordered and watched each small fiery brand flare to life. "Do you think it makes a difference which order you touch them in?"

  "Deosil to raise energy, widdershins to banish. That's how it works. Are you ready?"

  Holding my breath, I nodded, and Sylvana pressed a finger to the first lighted spot. Then the next and clockwise navigated the pattern, skipping the mark that had sent her flying last time. My hands were shaking. Hers were solid as a rock, and I decided her level of courage was something to aspire to.

  For the space between one breath and another, nothing happened. Then the door simply clicked open, and my knees turned weak. It was time to go and find my birthright. The Stone of Blood hung heavy and channeled a bit of the Balefire heat where it rested in the valley between my breasts; its chain and its essence both mingling with that of the golden compass around my neck.

  Would the stone protect me or condemn me for going against my grandmother's wishes and retrieving what was rightfully mine? Had she truly hoped to keep it from me in the first place, and if so, why? I discovered I didn't much care; I wouldn't waste an ounce of my time trying to answer those questions until I had the bow safely in my possession.

  Providing I survived the experience, of course. The pull from the bow was stronger than anything I'd ever felt before. Standing still under its influence was not an option, and I wondered whether, if I tried it, my feet would skid helplessly along the floor as it dragged me closer.

  "It's straight ahead." My voice sounded loud though I'd spoken the words softly into air made heavy by magic. "And close." Arms reach if I could trust my senses. Sylvana's hand clamped on my shoulder. We'd agreed that maintaining constant contact would be the wisest course of action, but I'd already almost forgotten she was there in my haste to answer the call of the Bow of Destiny. I felt it there, close by and aware, like a living thing, speaking to my soul and beckoning me forward.

  It couldn't be this easy, could it?

  I managed two steps deeper into the hold and got my answer when I ceased to exist. My body lost touch with its senses, leaving nothing to anchor my mind to the physical plane. Was this what it felt like to die? I screamed into the void and kept screaming until it started to seem a little silly. First, since I had no ears, I couldn't hear myself anyway, and then, what was the point? This must be one of the tests Sylvana had warned me about--the testing of body, mind, and soul.

  Clearly, this was the test of my mind, meant for me to think my way through the problem. But how? A spell? No. According to Salem, my magic came from my blood and was merely directed by my conscious mind, which was all that was left to me now.

  Panic tried to rise again, but I tamped it down ruthlessly. Logic and hysteria cannot occupy the same space, and only one of those two things would help me now. I did what I always do when I'm uncertain. I made a list. Flix would be laughing at me right now if he knew.

  What did I have to work with? My thoughts, memories, and imagination. Not a lot, but better than nothing. The pool of my magic had gone with my body--I knew even before I tried reaching for it--but it's better to explore all options. Magic would not be added to the list.

  With nothing more to help me, I explored the only option I could conjure into my head. Maybe I could remember my body back into being.

  Starting with my toes, I imagined them in the tiniest detail. The texture of the skin, the curving sharpness of nail, the cracking sound the big one on the right makes when I bend it just so. Memories locked into my cells flooded forth. The feel of mud squishing between my toes, the heat of sand on the delicate arches, the heels down motion of riding a bike.

  Ankles, calves, knees and thighs--I traced the path across the body I had taken for granted, examining each glimpse of the past and building the flesh anew, inch by solid inch. Even the elbows I've always thought were too bony got my focused attention.

  I can't tell you how long it took, other than that it seemed like eons before I finished experiencing my body in a way I'd never imagined--until it felt settled and whole and fully mine in a way I'd never experienced before. As tests go, this had been an unexpectedly positive one given that it had been thought up by a wicked witch.

  Sylvana's hand clutched my shoulder painfully, and I welcomed the sensation until I heard her labored breathing. Turning, I caught her as she fell and cradled her to the floor.

  "I'm okay. I just need a minute." Faint and wheezy, her voice shook, and her eyes fluttered closed. Stroking sweat-tangled hair from her damp forehead, I held her until the tremors slowed and finally stopped, then rummaged around in my pack for a bottle of water.

  Her lips, when I raised the bottle to them, were darker than their typical red--so dark they seemed almost black against skin so pale it was nearly translucent. She brushed off my questions about what had happened to her and scrambled to her feet.

  "We'll talk about it later. After this is all over."

  If the bow hadn't been filling my head with its persistent call, I would have recognized the lie for what it was.

  "Are you ready to move forward?" Power sparked through my body, renewed and enhanced with an electric flare of energy. I felt like I could take on the world while Sylvana still looked a little shaky. "Stay close; I'll protect you." Not too shaky to shoot me a glare that burned.

  With her hand again on my shoulder, we kept walking, and I got my first good look at the hold proper. I'd come in here expecting to encounter a museum-like space--something cataloged, organized--with shelves or cases to store the magical items deemed too dangerous to be left in the free world. The reality was quite different. It looked like a trash dump. Magical items had been tossed hither and yon with no thought for where they landed on the dirt floors. Who knew there were so many dangerous things that needed to be isolated from the world. What evil could old Legos accomplish? Or had someone banished them here to keep from stepping on them with bare
feet in the dark of night?

  I reached to brush a harmless twig off of a shining golden halo, and Sylvana pulled my hand back. "Don't touch that. It's all that's left of a tree known as Job's Tears. The wood is full of tiny slivers, and if one of them pierces your skin, you will have to face seven deadly trials. Very dangerous. Epically so." She used the water bottle she still carried to nudge the bit of wood deeper into the pile where an unwary hand would be less likely to make contact.

  "It should have been sealed in an urn and buried. This place has gone to the dogs since I was here last. Clara would be unamused." I found the statement odd, but didn't have time to think more about it when Sylvana asked, "Which way?"

  Everywhere. That's how it felt to me. How was I supposed to pinpoint a single direction when the bow crowded my senses?

  The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Which, of course, I had the answer to tied around my neck. "The compass!" I pulled the gold chain from beneath my shirt and tried to orient on the bow. "Dead ahead. No, we've passed it." Beads of sweat dampened my brow as I concentrated. The hands of the compass spun around in circles. "Lot of help that was. It's everywhere at once. Should we just keep going and hope I can figure it out when we get closer?" There was only one path through the mess, so forward was our only option. If I ever got the chance, I'd ask Delta why she bothered giving me so useless a tool.

  "Lead on," Sylvana said, and at the same time, I thought I heard my name called from a great distance.

  "Did you hear that?" I stopped to listen.

  "Hear what?"

  "It must have been an echo." Moving on, I tried not to get distracted by the volume of stuff or the fact that my fingers itched to tidy up the mess.

  The second trial hit as unexpectedly as the first and came in the form of an attack of conscience. I felt my eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, but didn't remember closing my eyes as a wave of memories flooded past my shuttered lids. Not my memories, I realized quickly, but those of my friends and family--and along with the memories I felt their emotional reactions to things I had done or said, starting with the most painful.

  "I hate you." Terra's heart had broken when I tossed the words at her in a youthful moment of rebellion, and now her pain broke mine as well. To me, it had been a passing fit of pique; to her a knife in the gut thrown by a careless hand. The parade of pain lasted long enough to send me to my knees with the agony of regret for the hurt that returned to me and was now burned into my soul. A black mark, a stain branding me with one word.

  Wicked.

  That was me. Wicked to the bone because I'd been born that way. The best thing I could do would be to lay down here and die before I hurt more people just by being in their lives. Look what I had done to Kin. We'd shared true love's kiss, and then I'd pushed him away until he finally got the message. I was damaged goods, a liability, and I should have never gotten tangled up with him in the first place. He deserved so much more than my withered, black heart had to give. Letting him push me away had been my gift to him.

  Tears burned acid tracks down my cheeks, across my throat, and into the valley where the Stone of Blood rested against my skin. Salty wetness seeped along the setting to charge the bloodstone with the essence of my sorrow and pull from it that which gives my family purpose. The life-affirming spark of the Balefire that lives within its keepers.

  Those who are truly wicked never experience regret. As the words rang through my head, their truth caused the bloodstone to flare with light and heat and conviction. Floodgates unlocked, I now experienced another spate of memories--ones that showed the joy, love, and compassion I felt for my family and theirs for me.

  Kin. I saw inside his heart. A heart open and full of the kind of love that would make a man do stupid and awesome things. I'd hurt him deeply, but the flame and spark remained. There was hope for us yet.

  Glowing in the fire cast by the Stone of Blood, I rose to my feet as though lifted by an unseen hand and recognized the universal truth that we prove our potential based on our choices. Life is lived in the balance, not in the extremes, and accepting love is almost as important as giving it.

  The vision faded away but left a lingering mark on my soul.

  Sylvana huddled beside me, her back hunched against a weight doing its level best to bear her to the ground. Streaks of white threaded through her chestnut hair and veins dark with blood coursed just under her skin. Whatever vision she'd just seen had clearly been worse than mine, and I knew that if I didn't help her, she might never come back from the place where her mind had strayed.

  Reaching down, I lifted her as though she weighed nothing, rested her head against my shoulder and whispered into her ear. "Don't leave me again, I need you. Come back to me. You saved me. You helped me. You're not wicked. Come back, Mom."

  An eternity passed before her body twitched and relaxed into my embrace. She felt frail as a bird in my arms, her heart beating in double time. "That's it now. Listen to my voice and come back." My tears continued to charge the bloodstone as I used it and my words like a beacon to guide her back. No matter what she had done or failed to do in the past, she was mine. My mother, my blood, my family, and I would not let her go.

  "I'm okay," Sylvana said. "Don't let me go." She clung to me, and I held her until I felt strength returning to her limbs and gently set her back on her feet. It hurt my heart to see her so diminished.

  "I think I should go on alone. This is becoming too much for you."

  "I said I'm fine," She snapped at me then her face softened slightly. "Sorry. I don't like being coddled." Stubborn witch. Runs in the family. "We're close now, I can feel it. I said I would help you get the bow and that's what I plan to do."

  "It's all around me; I can hear it singing." Pulling out the compass once more, I checked the direction, and this time the needle remained steady. "This way," I pointed to the right where I could see a pale light ahead.

  "There, do you see it?" My body hummed with taut energy that strained toward the reason we'd come here. Forgetting Sylvana for the moment, I ran toward the Bow of Destiny.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My headlong flight carried me through a door that slammed shut behind us and right up to the edge of a chasm separating an island pillar topped by a stone pedestal from the center of the room. In a pool of pink and golden light--sunset colors--the Bow of Destiny rested on the dais. So close and almost out of reach. No more than four feet of echoing space was all that stood between me and the narrow ledge on which the pedestal rested.

  With a running start, I could make the leap, right? I gathered myself to try.

  "Lexi, no! Wait." Sylvana put out a cautioning hand. "Not yet. There might be wards." She reached down to scrape a scant handful of soil from the dirt floor, which she then tossed toward the stone plinth.

  Sure enough, the soil hit an invisible wall before scattering down into the black depths of the chasm. Right where I would have ended up if I'd taken that leap. Relief shuddered over me with a touch of the warm fuzzies and a hint of the wobbly knees. My mom had my back. She'd saved my life. If not for her quick thinking, I'd be falling through inky blackness.

  "Now what?" The bow wanted me with a visceral need, a tug in my bones that I had to strive to ignore. "I can't just walk away; it won't let me."

  "I--we didn't come all this way for nothing." Sylvana, seeming more energized now than she had since we walked through the door, pulled the pack off her back and dropped, cross-legged to the ground. "Sit." She ordered, and I did while she rummaged through the contingency spells we'd packed only hours before.

  Nimble fingers delved into the bag's contents, and Sylvana laid out a vial containing a clear vision potion and several of the spell jars we'd hoped not to have to use.

  "Bottoms up." She quaffed half the potion and handed the bottle to me. Why couldn't these things ever taste like cherry cola? Was it some kind of rule that a potion had to have the texture and flavor of dismal swamp? I gagged, but kept the liquid down and felt it's fet
id warmth spread through me. Slowly, my sense of sight intensified and expanded.

  "It's working." I know it's uncool to jump up and down in celebration of being a witch, but there are times when I badly want to.

  Still seated, we simultaneously turned our gazes toward where the bow rested. "Well, would you look at that." A curtain of rippling shadow circled the center island to a height slightly above waist-high level. Angled inward at the top, the shimmer formed a conical shield that could be scaled, but only with delicate precision. Had I leaped without looking, the slant of the shield would have funneled me into the deep. As it was, there was no way I could cross the barrier unless I could fly, and I wasn't sure I could. Salem hadn't covered that part of my education yet, and I'd felt the question was too silly to ask. Until now.

  "That whole flying on a broomstick thing, that's a myth, right?"

  "Irrelevant. This is a physical challenge. The first was mental; the second had to do with matters of the soul, and this one is purely physical. No magical means allowed."

  "So I'm supposed to what? Jump across a four-foot void at an upward trajectory and land on a dime? Exactly what in our short history together would lead you to believe I have anything close to that level of athletic ability?"

  "There might be another way." Rising with some of her former grace, Sylvana's face glowed white against the darkness around her eyes. Her lips, still almost black, pursed as she strode around the rim of the chasm. I'd hoped that with the return of her vitality, her features would go back to normal; the crazed witch look gave me the creeps.

  "What other way?" I scanned the area above the plinth to see if there was a rope to swing on. Playing Tarzan sounded slightly better than the only other possibility that came to mind, and I figured it was a more viable solution than me attempting to pole vault across. A mental image of which made me shudder over the sheer number of ways that could go wrong.

  "Remember how we accessed the path to the repository? There's probably a switch somewhere."