by Anne Malcom
And maybe that’s what the result would be. My death.
I frowned around the cave in distaste. It was dimly lit with a flickering torch hanging suspended midair. Obviously enchanted, but you’d think they’d use their magic for a little more than a fire. I mean, even the cavemen managed that. For witches who were meant to be big and bad and scary, you think they’d be able to jazz up a cave that stank and where filth scattered the floor, both animal and human. The stench of it was beyond pure human excrement, something danker and darker and just all around bad.
It was the unnatural kind of scent of enduring life when death was waiting. Had been waiting for too long. It was similar to the cave I’d just left in New York, though the smell was more rancid in here.
There wasn’t a question of the soulless creature I’d encountered in the sewers. It was more of a benevolent evil. This was another beast entirely.
I circled the woman in the dim light, thankful at least I didn’t get to see her properly, even with my eyesight.
“Seriously?” I asked, glancing around the cave. “You couldn’t put up a painting, maybe a rug, some throw pillows. A scented candle, or twelve?” I asked.
I tilted my head at the witch who was standing in the middle of the room, just staring, not even really registering me waltzing into her abode without so much as a knock. It was unnerving, that empty stare that was full of pure malice and pure evil.
I’d landed in Albania a few hours before, and after procuring myself a vehicle—okay, stealing, but rentals were such a bitch to organize—I’d driven to the place up in the winding and unyielding landscape that seemed like civilization and time itself had forgotten.
I hadn’t needed a map.
No, the imprint Ambrogio had left on my mind gave me the directions, so I hadn’t even hesitated pulling off the road and onto a dirt track that led up to a cave overlooking the tumultuous ocean.
The sky had gone from clear to gray and stormy between my journey from the car to the cave itself.
Like nature had known what was coming and what was in store for me, so it decided to set the best backdrop for it.
I wasn’t exactly scared for the meeting.
I didn’t get scared.
I was rather excited. She wasn’t even meant to be the most powerful of them all, and I got to do this by myself. I was so sick of having to drag the Scooby Gang around with me, especially the one with the thundering heartbeat.
The one thing that had dampened my mood was the fact that the muddied trail in the cave had ruined my boots.
Yes, I most likely should not have worn the brand-new thigh-high Choos with laces all the way up to the top of my thigh, but I had wanted to look all badass warrior princess and give off a ‘save the world’ vibe.
You couldn’t save the world in flats.
That was just crazy talk.
I had given a curious glance to the whimpering and dirty human in the corner, her wide eyes focusing on me as her heartbeat pumped like a hummingbird, the scent of death lingering around her from the injuries she’d sustained.
Her black hair tumbled down her back, matted with blood and grime, meaning she’d been staying at casa shithole for a while. The ripped and filthy bloodstained nightgown she was wearing told me she would not be giving them a good review on Trip Advisor.
If she survived, that was.
Which was doubtful.
I moved my eyes back to the witch in the middle of the room, still doing that still and standing thing that was rather fucking unnerving.
The human was going to die.
They did that.
No point in bothering myself with that can of worms.
My eyebrow raised as I scanned her still form, not betraying the unease at the depth of her stare, not unlike the one I’d been subjected to by the origin of all vampires.
And the stench of the magic in the cave was almost enough to choke on.
Luckily I didn’t have to breathe.
“So you’re one of the ones who have been causing all this trouble for me.” I drew my gaze up, then down. “Do many people tell you you’re shorter in person? Oh no, wait, my bad. You probably haven’t been seeing many people considering the whole ‘locked up for eternity’ thing. Is that a touchy subject, me bringing it up?” I asked apologetically.
I idly wondered how the human got there if she had indeed been trapped like the general state of the place betrayed.
But then I had other things to worry about at that present. And since the other two sisters had been set free, maybe they could bring her things. I’d have asked for a better wardrobe selection and an iPad.
I expected the wall of magic that hit me with the pain of a thousand knives. Was hoping for it, actually, but that didn’t make experiencing it any more fun. It was a lot less fun, if I was honest.
I had planned on staying upright but must have underestimated the amount of pain this bitch could unleash. Either I didn’t remember her sister’s wrath properly or this one was a hell of a lot more powerful.
I had a feeling it was the latter, which didn’t make me super happy.
She did have the fashion sense of her sister, which didn’t make me super happy either.
“Could just one villain dress like Cersei in Game of Thrones, for the love of God. One?” I asked through the pain as the beautiful yet terribly dressed woman approached.
She must have been told that it was all about the long black dresses, covered in lace and far too Morticia Addams for my liking. Only one person could rock that look.
Morticia Addams.
A lance of pain echoed through the bones in my face as her long, clawed hand fastened on my chin, the nails puncturing the skin and drawing blood.
“You disgusting excuse for a creature,” she hissed. “You dare come into our home with your arrogance and your stupidity? You will pay for that with your death, and that will give us our freedom.” Her eyes blackened. “And I will get vengeance for the sister of mine that you took from this world. It is all the more pity that she cannot exact it herself when we snatch her back from the grave. For we have done so before and so we shall do it again.”
It was then it flickered, whatever glamour she was projecting to make her skin iridescent and flawless and her golden hair trail down her back in shiny curls.
In its place were gray, scraggly knots, crawling with things that looked alive. Her skin was marked with sores and wrinkles, drooping with age and evil and most likely whatever curse put them there in the first place.
I made a mental note to look up the person who did that and send them a fruit basket or something.
Her words registered through the pain and the image of her hideous face. “You know, I could recommend a great night cream for those wrinkles. Botox works too,” I said through gritted teeth. “Though, I would have thought if you were going to go full ham and break all the laws of nature, dealing in the death magic that got you locked up here in the first place, you’d at least make sure it was worth your while, you know, for the complexion. Seems a waste otherwise.”
More pain.
A lot of it.
“He said you’d be like this,” she whispered. “Warned us that the prophesized one was not great like the original ones of our kind. Like Malena. Though he expects a queen out of you.”
She pushed me back with a flick of her wrist and a fresh wave of unnatural power. She circled me, the skirts of her dress trailing along the dirty ground.
“He said a queen like you is what he wants. But he doesn’t know prophecy. Of course, he knows what we need him to know. What he needs to know in order to bring you here to us. To give us what we need.”
I idly wondered about the man she was speaking of. Rick came to mind, what with his continued insistences that I become his queen. Though it didn’t make a lot of sense that he’d go to all of this trouble to fight a rebellion if he was behind it.
Then again, stranger things had happened.
And it was a lot more logica
l than whoever the faceless leader of this coup d’état was being the second man who wanted me to be his queen.
I mean, I was queen material in that I’d rock the shit out of a crown and would look good on a throne, but that was about it.
Plus, the only way I’d look good on a throne was if it was mine and mine alone.
I was like Joey from Friends. I didn’t share food. Or thrones.
Not that I even wanted a throne. They seemed far more trouble than they were worth.
You could still wear a crown as an accessory instead of a responsibility. And it looked so much better.
A fresh wave of pain as my spine lifted and snapped brutally at the unnatural angle.
I didn’t make a sound.
The snapping of my spine was nothing, really. No big.
It was the dirty and cold magic flowing through my veins and chasing out whatever residual warmth Thorne’s blood had given me that was uncomfortable to say the least.
Dying was uncomfortable.
I’d been doing it far too often for my liking. And these witch bitches were too responsible for it for my liking as well.
“But he has this hope that I can break you.” She paused. “Which I can. It’s laughable how easy such a feat is. And then when I break you, I could chip off whatever humanity you have inside you that attached to your core like coral on a reef. The process would be painful for you, to say the least.
“I’ll give you an example, just so you can see the mercy I’ll grant you with a death slightly less painful. Though not completely, considering the revenge needed for the loss of my sister.” Her mask slipped once more as her fury overtook her need for glamour.
Then I didn’t see anything because she started.
Maybe I did cry out that time.
Or maybe it was something inside my soul that screamed that shrill and haunting scream that echoes through the edges of the cave and polluted the air,
It was familiar, that scream.
Until I realized where it came from. The years became nothing but moments as her scream came into stark reality and my soul recognized it in a way I hadn’t before. It was the same as the human woman’s my brothers had murdered. Not before they took away everything she had inside her with their depraved acts.
I used to think that such a thing wasn’t possible for vampires. Maybe because I believed we had no soul to be ripped out from us, or mostly because, despite my penchant for sympathizing with them, I did believe we were better than them.
Not in all ways.
Not even in a lot.
And our betterness characterized by our lack of souls making us less vulnerable was arguable at best.
Yes, I had thought that her soulless scream was not likely something an immortal could reproduce because of the sheer strength it would take for a creature to find that in an immortal. And I didn’t think such creatures existed.
But the witch’s clawed hand reached into my deepest core with ease and began the process of ripping off whatever had grown there, whatever had been put there by Thorne.
It was the most excruciating feeling of my life.
Then it stopped and I sagged onto the floor in an unceremonious heap of blessed relief.
She waited with a smugness I could taste in the air, along with the rancid stench of death, for me to yank myself up with every inch of will I had.
But I did it.
She let me too. In a way that bullies let people get up purely so they could knock them down again. With that sick sort of sadism that didn’t have a greater purpose.
I always thought torturing something or someone in itself wasn’t the mark of a truly rotten soul, not if it was for a reason.
Information, revenge, foreplay.
A prevailing goal for inflicting the pain.
No, the mark of that rotten soul was when the torture was for nothing more than sport. Like that child with the ant and the magnifying glass. Doing it because the process of hurting someone rather than the result that came from it was what excited them.
And I could see the light in her eyes from the brokenness she was creating.
“You see,” she said, grinning and circling me. “I can do it. Take it away from you. Take it all away in pain and suffering until there is nothing left but the cold shell. The perfect cold shell in which he planned to make a queen.”
I could sense the truth to her words. The part of me she’d been working on, chipping away from, felt empty, cold. In a way that was reminiscent of the murderous vampire I’d been after Jonathan. When human life, death and happiness, and unhappiness, meant nothing. But it was deeper than that too. It was the same kind of coldness that might have me turning into the child with the magnifying glass. And questioning if I’d been that child all along without realizing it.
“It’s not that I can’t do it,” she continued. I idly wondered where the rest of the crew was and if they had tried to find me, then idly wondered if I cared.
“It’s that I will need your blood—mixed with his blood, of course—to get me out of here. But it’s through you that his blood must be spilled. It must be the one who was fated to drain the mate, just like in the beginning, that will bring about the end.”
Her smiling eyes had everything clicking.
I knew what she was talking about, the legend of the origin story coming to mind.
So he drained the blood from his one true love, sending her to the heavens to become somewhat of a goddess in eternal life.
Not quite living, not quite dead.
Deathless.
I glared at her. “You need a brain check more than you need a cut, style and color if you think that’s gonna happen, bitch,” I hissed. The prospect of having the emptiness inside of Thorne’s chest be permanent and because of me filled me with enough dread to push past whatever residual pain remained from her dark magic.
Whether she had been expecting the strike or not, I didn’t know. She was taunting me surely, but she also thought herself to be the best evil witch since sliced Medusa, so the pride that cometh before the fall was that much sweeter.
My punch hit her squarely in the chest with a crunch of bone not as loud as I would’ve liked but still satisfying, sending her across the cave to hit the wall.
The human, who I’d all but forgotten in the whole torture process, let out a little whimper and scuttled back against the wall.
I glanced at her. “Chill, girl, I got this.”
I grinned at the thump of her body against the unyielding stone and the release of the fist of magic that had remained.
My punch had cut through that too, but it was powered by the strong desire to have Thorne’s vibrating heart a constant state around me, even when it wasn’t physically around me. It took her magic for me to realize I could still hear it. Whatever connection we had through blood, the distance of it didn’t matter; I knew he was still walking around, possibly stomping around and swearing at that point, but still alive, his heart still beating.
And that’s what gave me strength, in addition to the fact that I was already strong.
I may have tricked myself into thinking I hated him, but I hadn’t realized that real love—the ugly, brutal and forever kind—well, it was hate too.
I walked over to her, confidently despite the huge effort it took to make the steps. She’d weakened me beyond my comprehension, and the fire at the back of my throat crying out for blood was sudden and intense.
But I ignored it.
“You see, it’s okay for me to threaten Thorne with death and dismemberment because he really pissed me off, and he deserves a little bit of that and maybe some roughhousing. From me.” I bent down and encircled her neck to lift her by it. The wave of discomfort that came with the contact of her icy skin almost had me dropping her on instinct. But I endured, even though my entire body rebelled at having such an unnatural and rotten creature in my hands.
That was saying a lot since I’d handled a lot of unnatural and rotten creatures in my time, myself
included.
But this was beyond anything. I could taste the blackness of her soul, like tar, the deeds she’d committed to get the control over the underworld as she had, more than even a vampire could comprehend. Evil, depraved acts that marked her soul forever.
Deals with the Devil were common. A lot more common than people thought. And the deals were usually dependent on the soul that was offered. Hades liked a nice juicy black soul like I enjoyed a full-bodied red and a tenderloin. But it was the purest of souls that were most valuable to him.
This blackened, mangled, and hideous thing wouldn’t have even been accepted by the Lord of the Underworld himself.
Which was precisely how she remained as she was for as long as she had. She’d made her own deal, turned herself into the devil in order to escape the clutches of the one who should have welcomed her into his fiery embrace centuries before.
I steeled myself, clutching onto my fury and determination. “See, you don’t threaten a girl’s man. I’m thinking a few hundred years in a cave will make you forget the etiquette of such things, so I’ll remind you. I would love to do it in a drawn-out manner that would fit the lifetimes worth of crimes you’ve committed, including to fashion and general taste levels everywhere. But I’ve got things to do, more witches to kill, and touching you is making me really, really need to be doused with industrial cleaner, or at least take a bath in Chanel No 5,” I told her, squeezing harder and preparing to rip her head off.
“I wouldn’t even like to imagine where someone like you goes after this. But please say hey to the reaper for me,” I requested happily.
Then I ripped her head off.
I stumbled back only slightly with the force leaving her touch gave me. Then I regarded the headless corpse. It had taken a lot to lead up to this, and everyone had turned it into such a big thing, built it up. It felt somewhat anticlimactic. Like Christmas. All the fanfare and preparation and it was over in the blink of an eye.
Or the ripping of a head.
“Ding, dong, the witch is dead,” I chanted in the empty cave.
Then the cave wasn’t empty, the vibrating and familiarity of a comforting heartbeat echoing through the walls and my body.