Last Grave (9781101593172)

by Debbie Viguié

  “We seek to restore the cave to its old form,” Giselle intoned.

  Around the circle, the cloaked figures stretched out their arms and clasped hands. The mingling of their energies would make them stronger.

  Samantha grimaced but took the hand of the person on her right. She stretched her hand toward Trina, but she did not allow their hands to actually touch. In the darkness, it would be hard to tell that from just looking.

  More lines appeared in the dirt, radiating from the mound like the spokes of a wheel to each person standing in the circle. They began to shimmer and pulse with energy. Giselle began chanting.

  Samantha gave up any sense of subtlety and was pulling energy from the earth below her and the witch beside her.

  “What on earth?” she heard the witch beside her mutter in a deep, male voice.

  Giselle stopped in midsentence. “Who here works at cross-purposes to us?” she demanded.

  Samantha remained still, motionless. She had learned from experience that it was better to wait and see who was accused than to give yourself away. There was a strong chance Giselle would pick someone else.

  “I do,” Trina said, stepping forward and lowering her hood. “What we’re doing is wrong. Thousands of people could get hurt, killed. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” she asked as she moved her head, clearly trying to reach the hearts and minds of the cloaked figures around them.

  Samantha could sense it wasn’t going to work. Unlike Jill, the others were here of their own free will. And unlike Salem, they knew what it was they were there to do.

  Samantha wrapped the fingers of her free hand around her athame, waiting, ready.

  Giselle laughed. “I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself very much alone.”

  Trina lifted her chin even higher. “I’m not alone. I have my coven brothers and sisters, and they will support me because they know in their hearts that what we’re doing is wrong and will have very deadly consequences.”

  The witch who had been standing on Trina’s left lunged forward, athame in hand, and prepared to plunge it into Trina’s back.

  Samantha threw her own athame and it buried itself in the attacker’s chest. That was the signal everyone seemed to be waiting for. In a moment, fireballs were streaking through the night.

  Samantha hadn’t been sure how many of the witches would actually fight. She was dismayed when she realized the answer was all of them.

  Two witches leaped on her, bringing her to the ground. One began to stab at her with an athame while the other put his hand on her stomach and began pulling something out of her. For a moment Samantha thought he was trying to grab energy from her, but it felt different, strange.

  Suddenly her mouth became very dry and her skin felt sunburned all over. She fought against them both, sending energy blasts into them. It did no good. Both witches just seemed to absorb what she sent at them.

  Samantha’s lips felt incredibly chapped, and a moment later she smelled blood as they split.

  He’s pulling all the water out of me, dehydrating me, she realized. She redoubled her efforts, determined not to end up as a petrified corpse in the middle of the Redwoods.

  She threw her hands up toward the sky like she had seen Giselle do. Lightning came down, hit her. The electricity rushing through her body hurt worse than anything she’d ever known. But the resultant shock threw the two witches clear of her.

  She could feel her body begin its rapid healing, desperately trying to fix the damage as fast as it could. She needed water and badly, but that would have to wait. She stumbled over to the one who had been doing that to her, and while he was still on the ground recovering from the electrocution, she broke his neck.

  The other witch, she stabbed through the heart with her athame. The dagger was supposed to be a ritual tool to help focus energy. In a pinch, though, it killed someone pretty quick.

  The energy she had soaked up before the coven had arrived was gone, the majority of it focused on healing her body. She needed more fast.

  And then something the ghost had said came back to her. In the end, we’re all just energy. She looked around with new eyes, and instead of seeing ghosts, shadows of people that had once lived, she saw energy. And with crystal clarity she knew what she had to do. “Show me the ghosts,” she whispered.

  And then the spirits were swirling around her, reenacting their death throes. Trapped energy.

  “What is going on?” the ghost who had kissed her demanded as he strode up to her.

  She thrust her hand into the middle of his chest and pulled the energy into herself.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, voice rising in panic.

  “Saving the world,” she said. “And stopping you from hurting anyone else is an added bonus.”

  He thrashed and screamed, but rapidly faded until she could barely see him and could no longer hear him. She closed her eyes, gave one last pull, and all the energy was hers. She could feel the moment he left and knew that it was forever.

  She opened her eyes and directed a lightning bolt at a witch battling Trina across the clearing. It struck the man in the chest, and he fell to the ground dead.

  Samantha spun and plunged her hand into another ghost, draining it as well. She used it to down another witch. Trina saw and immediately began to copy her. The ones they were battling had yet to figure out what they were doing. Samantha waded into a small cluster of them. She slashed the throat of one woman with her athame and stopped the heart of another with a well-placed jolt.

  She saw Giselle leave the circle, Jill on her heels.

  “No!” Samantha screamed, heading for them.

  Two more witches ran toward her, and she yanked out their intestines. Just like my younger self did to the witch at the Boardwalk, she realized as she ran past them.

  She paused in front of the ghost of the little girl she had seen before. She was a recording only, not sentient like the young man had been. But as the last of the energy drained from her into Samantha, something stirred in her eyes and she looked up at Samantha.

  “Thank you,” the ghost child whispered.

  Samantha nodded and then drained the energy of the girl’s ghost attacker.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trina go down, and she ran to her. The FBI agent had her stomach slashed open, and her eyes were starting to roll back in her head.

  Samantha killed the witch who had done it before he could attack Trina again.

  “You’re going to be okay!” Samantha told Trina.

  Trina handed Samantha car keys. “Go stop them. Don’t worry. Enough energy here to help heal me.”

  Samantha shook her head fiercely. “We drained all the ghosts.”

  “The old ones, not the new ones.”

  Samantha turned and looked. Everywhere in the circle, ghosts were standing up from their bodies wearing various expressions ranging from vacant stares to bewildered frowns.

  “Go get ’em,” she whispered to Trina, and then Samantha crammed her shoes on her feet and took off at a run.

  She had paid attention to the way they had come to get to the grove. Trina had told her everyone parked in the same place. It was close and isolated. Giselle would be heading for the Hell Hole Cave, and she would need her car to get her and Jill there quickly.

  I’m coming, Jill. Hold on.

  Samantha ran with everything she had in her, hoping she could catch the others before they made it to the cars. Tree branches reached out for her, trying to entangle her. She pushed them back with small, measured bursts of energy. When roots reared up to try to trip her, she leaped over them.

  An enormous felled tree suddenly appeared across her path. Samantha knew it hadn’t been there earlier. Going around would take too much time. Climbing over it would present its own challenges.

  It’s not real, just an illusion. She was wi
lling to bet everything on that. So, she ran straight into it and then through it. As she emerged on the other side, she fought the urge to shout with triumph. Her instincts had been right. It had been nothing more than a mirage.

  A fireball exploded into a tree two feet away from her, and she forced herself to keep running. She couldn’t see Giselle and she was willing to bet Giselle couldn’t see her either.

  The closer they got to the cars, the more fireballs whizzed around her. She knew she was gaining. She could feel it.

  Then a wall of energy seemed to hit her hard, propelling her backward. She flew through the air and landed on her back with a grunt. She jumped to her feet, her own hands forming fireballs that she then had to release out to her sides. She couldn’t risk hurting Jill.

  She made it to the parking area just in time to see a silver car speeding away. Samantha slid into Trina’s car and floored it. Tires squealed as they sought to gain a purchase on the ground beneath.

  Giselle knew the roads better than she did. Samantha could see her taillights ahead of her, but she could never quite catch up to her. Every time she pushed the accelerator too hard, they’d hit another sharp turn and her car would swerve out of control.

  For a moment she panicked, thinking she’d lost the other car. She rounded two more turns and then saw it parked off to the side of the road. Samantha parked her car and leaped out. Giselle and Jill were already gone.

  Samantha ran up the side of the mountain and reached the Hell Hole Cave. She stared at the opening. There was no grate partially covering it now, but that made it no less frightening. She touched the rock inside and could feel the subtle vibrations. Giselle and Jill had gone inside. Samantha couldn’t risk trying to incapacitate Giselle from where she was because it might hurt or even kill Jill, depending on where they were in the climb and how completely Giselle had control over her mind.

  Samantha was going to have to go in after them. She formed a ball of light with her hands and dropped it into the cave so that she’d be able to see what she was doing.

  Samantha got down onto her stomach and shimmied backward into the cave opening. The way was narrow, and when she’d gone just a couple of feet, she couldn’t see outside anymore. She felt completely claustrophobic and wanted nothing more than to crawl back out.

  You can do this. You have to, she told herself. She forced herself to keep backing up, scooting over rocks. Then she reached a place where she could stand up. She turned to look around. The reddish brown rock had a few salamanders crawling over it. She kept going but tripped painfully over some tree roots in mud. She came to a rope that led down to what had to be an eighty-foot drop. She held her breath as she climbed down.

  The walls closed in again, and she had to twist sideways to get between them. When she emerged into another larger cavern, her heart was racing. She wondered how far the cave extended. She guessed that depended a lot on when the cave was created. The older it was, the farther it should go, free of rock slides.

  At last she made it to the cavern of clay faces, and she shuddered. There were only a handful there, leading her to believe this couldn’t be the modern form of the cave. Also, there was no guestbook to sign. On the far end, another incredibly narrow passageway led deeper into the earth.

  After she squeezed through a particularly tight place, the tunnel seemed to open up again. It was still steep, but at least it was slightly wider.

  If something happens to this cave, I’ll never make it out alive, she realized.

  Her shins and ankles were completely bruised, but her body was too busy still working on the other injuries to be of any help. She started limping. And then, at last, she heard something ahead of her in the darkness.

  She paused and listened.

  Footsteps. She had to be getting closer to Giselle and Jill. She dimmed the light as much as she could and continued to move forward as carefully and quietly as possible.

  The rocks on either side brushed against her shoulders, and she had to start walking stooped over because the ceiling was getting lower. Another long slope presented itself, and she started down it, twisted her ankle, and fell hard.

  She slid down the rock slope on her chest, trying not to scream in pain. When she landed at the bottom, she pushed herself up off the ground with arms that were shaking uncontrollably.

  Why had Giselle come here? They hadn’t completed the ritual. There was no guarantee this cave as it was would get her within earshot of the demon.

  “Do it!”

  She jerked, smacking her head against the rock, startled at the sudden command. It was Giselle’s voice and it was close by. She crept forward slowly, praying she wouldn’t be discovered. She reached up to touch her cross necklace only to realize she had lost it somewhere, probably when she had been sliding on her chest.

  Although it wasn’t as precious to her as the one that witches in Salem had stolen months earlier, it had still made her feel better and she mourned its loss.

  Maybe there was nothing really down here. She hoped that was the case as she tried to creep up on Giselle. A dim light appeared ahead. That one would belong to Giselle and Jill. Samantha extinguished her own and felt her way slowly along the ground.

  Finally, she could see the two figures, haloed by the light. Jill was holding the tablet and staring at it intently. The smell of sulfur assaulted Samantha’s nostrils, and she began to pinch her nose shut, struggling not to sneeze.

  And she could feel something down there in the bowels of the mountain, something that wasn’t human.

  The hair rose on the back of her neck. The legend was right. There was something trapped down here. She couldn’t let Giselle unleash it on the world.

  Jill began to speak haltingly. Samantha didn’t recognize the language. The words were supposed to be spoken within hearing of the creature that was trapped. Could it hear them? To the best of her knowledge, there hadn’t yet been another earthquake after the ceremony in the grove. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “That’s right; keep going!” Giselle shrieked. “As loud as you can!”

  The witch was so focused on listening to Jill reading that she didn’t see Samantha coming until she was on top of her. Samantha snatched the tablet from Jill’s hands and did the only thing she could think of. She smashed the tablet against the rocks, and it shattered into a hundred pieces.

  Giselle turned on her with an angry shout and pushed her hands against the walls, making them vibrate.

  She’ll bring the whole cave down on top of us, Samantha realized in horror. A moment later, though, she realized that wasn’t their biggest problem.

  An earthquake was coming. Here in the bowels of the earth, she could feel it so clearly and plainly. And this wasn’t going to be a small quake. This was going to be the one this coven had been trying to cause for days. This time they would return the cave to the oldest form they needed to, so they could see and hear the creature and it could see and hear them.

  Samantha prayed there was no other way of releasing it than through the words on the tablet she had smashed.

  If Giselle was smart, she made a copy of them.

  Giselle laughed again.

  The energy was swirling, building, it was ready to rip free.

  It was coming. The mother of all earthquakes was coming. And it was going to rip apart earth and flesh and even time itself.

  “Can’t you feel it?” Giselle screamed above the rising roar. Her grin was wide, but her eyes held horror and something more, pleading.

  Samantha blinked. She remembered the moment the grove had shown her, the one the ghost had said was important and had changed things. Trina had told her the coven had been fairly low-key until very recently.

  And the pleading look Giselle was giving her she’d seen before, in the eyes of someone who was possessed. And suddenly everything she’d done made sense. She’d had several chances to kill Sam
antha and had been about to do it when she’d vanish or run off.

  And as the energy of the earthquake, the result of the greatest timequake ever conjured, continued to build and swirl around them, Samantha knew that Giselle wasn’t behind it all. She was just a puppet. And somewhere, the invisible puppet master was pulling her strings. That was how she could do the magic she was doing when it was so destructive to her.

  The puppet master doesn’t care if he destroys his puppet.

  “We have to get out of here!” Samantha screamed.

  “It’s too late for that now,” Giselle said.

  “I don’t want to die here. Not now, not like this. They’ll never find our bodies.” As panic flooded Samantha, she realized that there was truly only one thing she could do. But in order to do it, she was going to have to be calm and centered. And she was going to have to remember the two rules: Magic was easy and magic cost.

  But Giselle, or whoever was controlling her, wasn’t going to let it be that easy.

  Giselle lunged at her with a blade, and in the tight quarters, Samantha was forced to take the blow. She fell backward and Giselle fell on top of her, gouging at her eyes with her fingernails, biting and slashing at her.

  And then Samantha managed to get ahold of her arm and pin it between them. They thrashed around on the ground, smashing into the stone walls and breaking each other’s bones. And then Samantha got hold of the knife and stabbed the witch through the stomach with it.

  Just like she made Robin do to me.

  Samantha pushed the witch off her and Giselle landed, half propped up by an outcropping of rock as around them the earth rumbled and the thing beyond them in the dark continued to growl.

  She looked at Giselle. The woman was dying, her blood rushing out all over. But her eyes were clear.

  “Someone possessed you, made you do all this, didn’t they?” Samantha asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t want to,” Giselle said. “Thank you for putting an end to it.”

  The energy around them was still swirling, building, but Samantha didn’t have the heart to tell that to her.

  “The last grave. What does it mean?” Giselle asked.