by Sarah Kleck
Toy? I felt the blood freeze in my veins, which she acknowledged with a satisfied smile.
“Well, my little toy . . . let’s not waste any more time.” She rolled up the sleeves of her tightly fitting cloak so far that her left arm was exposed to the elbow.
What happened next made my jaw drop. I watched in disbelief as Morgana took a small, black dagger from her pocket, grasped it in her right hand, turned the inside of her left arm up and, with an ecstatic smile, slit her lower arm open along its entire length. A burst of dark-red blood poured out of the gaping wound, ran along her downward-pointing fingers and dripped onto the ground. Morgana laughed when she noticed my horror at her self-mutilation.
“Now it’s your turn, dear,” she said. “Not to worry, the dagger isn’t meant for you. I just want to . . . produce a small work of art for you.” Work of art? Why didn’t she just kill me so this cruel game would be over! “I need you to undress for that,” she said as if she were about to perform a medical examination. Considering what stood before me, I was incapable of moving. Disappointed by my lack of cooperation, Morgana angrily pursed her lips before raising her eyebrows and casually nodding to one of her subjects.
“Undress, slut,” the nearest cloak-wearer ordered and came at me and suddenly pushed me so hard that I fell to the ground. While looking down on me with his flashing black button eyes, he greedily licked his misshapen, sore-covered lips.
“Oh dear,” Morgana said in a cheery voice. “We mustn’t be impolite. After all, Evelyn is our guest.” She gave me a friendly wink. “Now, please, would you take your clothes off, dear?” I was rigid with fear and even if I had known what to say, I wouldn’t have been able to utter a single word. “You’re not hard of hearing, are you?” Morgana asked when I didn’t react, and she again nodded at the damnatus who’d pushed me into the dirt. The smug smile spreading over his ugly face made me gag. What would this disgusting creature do to me? Slowly and calmly, as if he enjoyed every moment of what was about to happen, he approached me. He bent over me, licking his repulsive lips once again, and reached out his sore-covered hands to pull the sweater over my head. I shrank back.
“So you want to play a little, do you?” he said with a dangerous undertone while moving toward me.
Play? This had gone beyond play long ago. This creature wanted to hurt me—hurt me badly. I knew that. I began to boil inside. No! I would not simply allow this hideous monster to touch me! It would have to kill me for that! I tensed my muscles, waited till the scarface had come close enough, angled my right leg, and kicked with full strength against his chest. He stumbled for a moment, couldn’t maintain his balance, and fell to the ground, causing the attending cloak-wearers to break out in scornful laughter. Completely confused, he lay there on the muddy ground for a moment, then an enraged, hate-filled expression took over his disfigured face.
“You will regret that, you bitch!” he said through his half-rotten teeth while scrambling to his feet. It was clear this would end badly if I didn’t find a way to render the monster harmless once and for all. I frantically looked around for something to use as a weapon. I noticed a broken branch a few steps away from me, a branch as long as my arm and about twice as thick. The horrible creature was getting close, and I dove with lightning speed for the branch, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and attempted to regain my balance. Damn! That thing was heavier than I expected. Surprised by my fast reaction, the damnatus also changed direction and charged me, burning with rage. Adrenaline pumped through me. I focused on my attacker, raised the branch as high as I could, waited for the right moment, and, when the scarface was close enough, hit him in the face. The hood of his soiled cloak slipped off his misshapen head to reveal countless scars, warts, and pustulant sores from which a repulsive odor of decay emanated. I gagged violently but forced myself not to vomit. When the creature landed on his hands and knees, he was again rewarded with ringing laughter from the bystanders. His eyes narrowed to thin slits as he angrily stared at me. I had humiliated him—twice—and for that he’d kill me . . . or worse. I could see it in his black eyes. If I valued my life, I had to finish him off before he got on his feet again. A violent surge of resolve ricocheted through my body. I grasped the branch firmly, charged the kneeling figure, struck him with full force on his head, lifted the branch again, and struck even harder. And again. And again and again. Until his limbs stopped twitching.
Morgana’s ringing laughter tore me from my blood frenzy. “It would appear we’ve caught a little tigress,” she said, amused, and slowly approached me. Neither she nor the surrounding damnati seemed particularly bothered by the corpse with the bashed-in skull. Death and mutilation were obviously part of their daily fare. “But enough horseplay,” Morgana said seriously. “We don’t have forever. At least not all of us.” There was a hint of a smile on her voluptuous lips. “Put that down,” she said gently, pointing at the blood-stained branch I was still clutching as if my life depended on it. When I didn’t react, she smiled, lifted a hand, and slowly started bringing it down. As she did so, I could feel the branch becoming heavier and heavier in my hands until, when Morgana had almost completely dropped her hand, I had to let it go. “Come to me,” she said with an inviting gesture. This time she didn’t even wait to see if I’d follow her command. Unable to resist, I was dragged across the ground by an invisible force that seemed to follow Morgana’s hand motion until I was lying at her feet. “You’re about to become a little tired,” she said and pressed her index finger on my forehead. I was immediately overcome by an unstoppable exhaustion as Morgana’s magic flowed relentlessly through my body. I fought it with all my strength, but it was hopeless.
A burning pain flashed through my body, bringing me back to consciousness. I opened my eyes and looked myself over. Morgana was bent over my naked body, intently drawing a five-pointed star on my abdomen. Where did she get the red color from? I drew in my breath as if suffering a seizure and watched how she squeezed the bleeding wound on her lower arm and used her pointy index finger to smear the warm blood onto my body. Panicked, I attempted to pull back to escape Morgana’s diabolical ritual, tried to struggle with my arms and legs, to kick her, to keep her from me . . . but my body refused to obey my mind’s commands. Morgana had paralyzed me with her cruel magic—I was at her mercy.
“Muladhara,” she mumbled in a strange, dark sing-song, drawing another line. Was that a . . . pentagram? Something wasn’t right about it. Was it . . . upside down? It was. While Morgana enclosed the strange symbol in a circle, I noticed that instead of one tip, two tips pointed upward. At that very moment, a sudden, brutal pain shot through me, almost causing me to lose my mind. I’d never felt anything like it before—it felt as if my insides were being torn to pieces and a part of them was violently pulled from my body. In my unbearable torment, a passionate, bright red suddenly flared before my inner eye, but when it extinguished a moment later, I knew that this red glow was a part of me that Morgana had taken for herself. As if to confirm my fears, the witch bent her head back and moaned lustfully. Then she moved her blood-soaked fingers a hand’s width below my navel. Morgana began to draw another inverted pentagram after she had again pressed her index finger into the bleeding wound in her arm. I helplessly watched in panic as she enclosed the second pentagram in a circle. Again, I endured the ghastly torment of this unimaginable pain. I suffered pure agony.
“Svadhisthana,” Morgana whispered as if in a trance, whereupon a lively orange appeared in my mind, only to die like the red before it. Now that Morgana had severed and torn out another part of my innate self, I became aware with infinite sadness that these pieces inside me that she tore to bits to incorporate into herself, these sacred shreds that she claimed by force, were parts of . . . my soul. While I felt as if I were standing in flames, she moaned again, ecstatic, and moved with her pitiless claws over my belly to the depression between my ribs—the solar plexus.
“Manipura,” she mumbled while I ha
d to endure another part of my soul being transferred to her after a yellow light like sunshine was extinguished.
“Anahata,” Morgana relentlessly continued after she had drawn the fourth pentagram—right over my heart—and she made the resulting flare of saturated green, this part of my innate being, her own.
The bright sky blue she tore from my throat with a croaked “Vishuddha” caused me more torment than I would have imagined in my worst nightmares. I gasped.
“Ajnya.” The witch closed the circle around the sixth pentagram on my forehead and, as the remainder of my soul was rent asunder with the flaring up and extinction of a dark blue, I knew what dying felt like. No. Dying would have been a release. This was worse. Far worse. Morgana tore my innermost self, piece by piece, from my body and bound it to herself—for all eternity. I would be her slave until she tired of me. At the moment when she had completed her diabolical witchcraft, not even death would liberate me. I gasped with pain and exhaustion as she began to draw another pentagram on my limp body. The seventh—above my forehead. I was at the end of my strength, and I surrendered to my fate. The last part of my maimed soul was being detached from my mind and body. Darkness encroached a little more with every line of the seventh pentagram that she drew with her blood at the roots of my hair. An eternal darkness with none of the peace darkness brings when one closes one’s eyes to sink into a deep sleep. No. This darkness was simply the absence of light—the certainty the sun would never shine again. A horrifying blackness from which there was no escape. I had nothing left to put forward against it.
Suddenly, I sensed a strange energy in a part of my foggy brain. A wild, unbridled force whose anger and hatred I felt down to the tips of my toes. The air began to crackle, and sparks flew about me and made my hair stand on end. I barely managed to open my eyes and look into Morgana’s frightened face. She, too, must have felt this uncontrolled, raging power as it approached us like a destructive force of nature. A violent gust seized my body and pulled it from Morgana’s grasp. I was thrown into the air and slammed against a tree, and again I lost consciousness.
When a bright, searing bolt of lightning struck the middle of the clearing, I came to. I managed to open my eyes with a tremendous effort. Despite my blurred vision, I was able to discern two shapes among the hideous creatures whose cloaks fluttered in the wind. One of the two struck in a blind rage with a mighty sword at the countless scarfaces who came charging. I saw heads severed and rolling like marbles on the muddy ground. I strained my eyes. Colin! I recognized his face. Another searing lightning bolt struck, though it did not appear to come from above, like normal lightning. Rather, it appeared as if the buzzing electrical sparks that were flying about all over were gathering around the second figure, next to Colin, among the hundreds of black cloaks. The sparks congealed into a bright golden lightning bolt on the chest of the second warrior before he threw back his head, spread his arms, and unleashed a wild energy that ripped apart at least fifty of the scarfaced cloak-wearers.
“There you are!” Morgana was suddenly over me, glaring at me with her hate-filled eyes. She grabbed me roughly by the hair, yanking my head down.
“No!” a desperate, pain-filled voice screamed. I recognized that voice instantly, despite the sadness and incomprehension distorting it. Jared! He was here.
“We’re not done with each other yet,” Morgana said with a dark smile, pressed her index finger into the bleeding wound in her lower arm, and hastily drew a circle to complete the seventh pentagram. “Sahasrara,” she said, almost crying out the strange word.
I gasped when a purple light became extinct with a final flicker and an unimaginable, consuming pain spread inside me. A pain that surpassed my powers of imagination and even my worst nightmares. It was as if I were freezing, burning, suffocating, and being ripped apart all at once.
Then there was complete silence as I sank into a deep, cruel darkness.
CHAPTER 21
“Very good, Jared. As I see, you’ve understood,” Morgana said with a self-satisfied smile. “I’m very proud of you, my boy. You do honor to your ancestors.”
“What’s going on here?” I heard Karen Mayflower say.
“I think it would be best if Jared explained it to you,” Morgana said.
“Jared?” Karen uttered, close to tears.
“Morgana has bound Evelyn’s soul to herself,” he said, full of pain. “I can’t kill her without also killing Evelyn.” The finality of this fact resonated in each of his words.
“You’re such a clever boy, Jared,” Morgana said. “So we have a classic stalemate, I would say,” she said cheerily and clapped her hands.
“How is she?” Colin asked with a harsh voice.
“Oh, she can hear you,” Morgana said, almost euphoric. “I’m keeping her just barely under the surface.” She gently shook my shoulder as if waking a sleeping child. “Open your eyes, my love.” I felt the darkness clear away and slowly found I was able to sense my body again. Bit by bit, I returned to the light, but I was painfully aware that Morgana could plunge me back into darkness at any time. I was nothing more than a puppet whose strings were held by her hands. I was lying in Morgana’s arms while she stroked my head with her long, slender fingers. My naked body was enshrouded in the stinking black cloak of some dead damnatus.
“Evelyn,” Jared whispered, barely audibly. “I am so sorry.” I thought I could hear his heart break in his words.
“What are you waiting for, Jared? Kill her,” Mayflower said, staring at Morgana, full of hatred.
“If only it were that simple, my dear,” Morgana said, clearly enjoying the turn of events. “Jared loves Evelyn. Can’t you see that?” She looked at Karen with contempt. “It’s just as it was with Merlin and Nimue. The two loved each other so much”—she breathed in dramatically and crossed her hands over her heart—“that I would have almost gone soft.” Suddenly, the dark smile returned to her face. “But only almost.” She gave me a warm look and again stroked my hair with her fingers. “You, my child, are almost like Nimue. Too bad you’re just as stupid as she was.” Morgana inhaled deeply. “She should have stayed in Avalon but instead decided to become a human to be with Merlin.” Judging from the expression of her face, Morgana was completely disgusted. “The Lady of the Lake voluntarily trades immortality for a life as a housewife and mother.” She snorted contemptuously. “I’ve never seen anything so pathetic.” She looked at Jared. “My dear boy, did you know that it was the Order itself who blamed Nimue for Merlin’s death?” she asked, smiling. “To keep Merlin’s descendants away from Nimue’s, they invented a story according to which Nimue lured Merlin into a cave and killed him there. Rather unimaginative, if you ask me.” Jared closed his eyes, tormented at Morgana’s words. Again the witch smiled triumphantly.
Karen Mayflower, who had been half hidden behind Jared and Colin, suddenly appeared to boil over with rage. Eyes wide, she clenched her teeth, drew a shimmering, dark-blue dagger and rushed Morgana. “Die, witch!” she angrily shrieked, aiming the dagger at Morgana’s heart.
“No!” Jared cried, ran forward, and deflected the dagger at the last second, so it barely missed Morgana’s heart but instead dug into her arm. The witch cried out in pain, pushed me away from her, and pulled the dagger out of her flesh. Then she directed her evil, dark eyes at Karen, lifted her other hand, and slowly clenched it into a fist. Karen opened her eyes in horror and clasped her throat with both hands. Aiden, who stood a bit farther back with other members of the Circle, kept in check by several damnati, managed to tear himself loose and rush to his mother’s aid. But before he’d even come close, Morgana raised her free hand so her palm was facing Aiden, who, as if grabbed by an invisible force, was hurled through the air and smashed against a tree, where he lay motionless on the ground. Karen Mayflower’s face had taken on a reddish-blue tinge in the meantime, and the tighter Morgana clenched her hand, the more Karen struggled. Then Morgana suddenl
y loosened her fist, and Karen collapsed, bent over forward, groaning, and took in several deep, strained breaths.
“No,” Morgana said. “I will not kill you, High Priestess. I’ll let you live so you can see everything firsthand.”
“What do you want?” Jared shouted.
“No reason to get upset, my boy,” Morgana, who had settled down beside me, said. “But the question is superfluous. I think you know very well what I’m after,” she said with unholy laughter. Then she straightened herself and took on a businesslike tone. “I will grant you a chance to save the girl.”
Jared was silent for a moment, then lowered his eyes. “What must I do?” he asked.
“No, Jared! Don’t do it!” I cried out.
“Silence!” Morgana said, as night immediately engulfed me once again. I no longer felt my body, could not speak or move. She had not entirely taken my vision and hearing, so I was able to watch events unfold through a veil of threatening darkness. It was obvious Morgana wanted me to see what would happen next.
“I will release Evelyn’s soul if in return you promise to give me something of yourself.”