Witch's Curse (The Bone Coven Chronicles Book 1)

by Jenna Wolfhart

“Zoe, come on,” Dorian said in a harsh whisper, his fingers snaking around my arm and clenching tight. “You can do this. Draw it. My rune isn’t strong enough to banish five at once.”

  The demons loomed over us, their mouths opening in unison. Dorian cried out when they went at him first, his back arching before he crumpled to the floor. With a swift jump, he was back on his feet, but he’d taken a massive hit. He growled and threw a Blast at their shifting forms, but it did nothing to slow them down.

  My heart shook in my chest as my hand continued to fight against me. I couldn’t do this. We were going to lose. We were going to die and all because of me.

  From somewhere deep inside me, my shadow magic began to simmer. Let me help you, it whispered into my ears. We can destroy these demons. For a moment, I fought against it. This magic was dark. It was dangerous. But so were these demons. If I didn’t do something—fast—we wouldn’t survive. With a slight sigh, I opened my mind and let the magic come alive.

  Power surged through me like a storm, biting and cold. Wind whipped past me. I gritted my teeth, vision blurring from the magic tumbling through me and into the room. It was like I was a vortex that had cracked open, and the shadow magic channeling through me was rough and fierce. This was nothing like any of the bone magic I’d done in the past—or tried to do. That magic had felt soft and gentle. This made me tremble in fear.

  Then, slowly, the magic dropped into a simmering thing. Still harsh and cold, but calmer.

  One of the demons rushed at me then, giving me a closer view than I’d ever had before. It was dark, eyeless, and noseless, with a black circle where its mouth should be. It had no features. Everything was an oval blur of shifting shadows. And then it made a sound. A whiffing breathy sound like it was sniffing me. Smelling my blood.

  Smelling my fear.

  But my shadow magic could not be quietened. It could not be shaken. It was in control now, whether I liked it or not. And it rushed from my hand, coils of black smoke that snaked around the demon. It climbed up its body, squeezing tight around its dark and shifting form. A chunk of its wing sliced off and crashed to the floor.

  The demon roared, and the ground underneath me began to quake. I stumbled back, widening my eyes as the black magic continued to tighten around the beast. The roar turned into a piercing scream as the creature writhed against the binds. Pieces of its body fell to the floor, vanishing in puffs of bitter smoke. This was far more than a banishment. It was something greater, something that was destroying it in a way I’d never seen before.

  I turned to the second demon, shooting out the black coils before moving to the next, and then the next. All around me, my magic swirled, and the ground shook beneath my feet. It felt electric. Almost too electric. It intoxicated me, making me high from the power streaming through my blood. I dropped back my head, letting the euphoria overtake me as the demons vanished one by one.

  When they were gone, my body hummed with desire. I didn’t want the feeling to end. Power whipped around me, tempting me with its song. Use me, it said in my mind. Taste me, it said as it whispered across my skin. Make me destroy the vampire.

  On that last hissed word, my eyes popped open. The magical storm disappeared in a blink, and it left me reeling. My breath heaved from my lungs, and my body ached with need. It was as if I’d run a full marathon, and if I didn’t keep on moving, I’d end up broken on the ground.

  I tasted the magic on my tongue. I heard it whistling in my ears. It was everywhere around me, waiting for the moment when I would once again give in to its call.

  I wanted more. I needed more.

  But it was as dangerous as I’d always feared. Maybe even more so. Because it wanted me to destroy Dorian.

  Chapter 26

  Dorian strode toward me with the fire blazing behind him. Orange flames licked at the curtains, turning the ceiling a charcoal black. Smoke billowed around us, but my boots were rooted to the spot when I saw the flickering light reflect a harsh glint in his eye. He shook his head, and a bitter laugh escaped from his throat as he twirled his dagger in his hand. “I knew it. This entire fucking time you’ve been hiding the truth from me. You’re a Shadow.”

  My hands fell to my sides, all of my relief deflating from my chest. Even though I’d saved us, I’d done so at the expense of losing one of the only people in the world who was on my side. And only with the kind of powers I never wanted to touch.

  “I’m not like them,” I said.

  “Not like them?” He raised an eyebrow, stalking across the room until he loomed before me. “You’ve spent all this time fearing and doubting me. Hell, probably even hating me. All because I didn’t come forth with the truth about myself right off the bat. And yet, you’ve been hiding something just as important.”

  I blinked, taking a step back and wishing I could rewind to an earlier time. “I know, and I’m sorry. But a Shadow is not who I really am.”

  He laughed and gestured at the trashed room. “Don’t you get it, Zoe? Look at what your magic has done. And the way you’ve deceived me is exactly how Shadows are. They hide in the darkness, obscuring themselves from view. That’s what you’ve done, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.” He took a step away from me, his entire face hard and devoid of all emotion. “I can’t believe I’ve bent over backwards for you, trying my best to convince you to trust me when you’ve been doing just the same. Worse, really, when you think about it. Because at least I actually came out with the truth.”

  My heart thumped hard. His words hurt me more than I wanted to admit, mostly because he was right. I shouldn’t have kept the truth from him.

  He looked at me with disdain now and a little bit of fear, like my shadow magic tainted me in a way that nothing else could. And I had to admit, I couldn’t blame him, especially when my powers had just turned this room upside down. And when they had asked me to destroy him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, dropping my hands to my sides and hearing my voice crack. As much as we’d spent these past few days at constant odds, I didn’t want him to look at me like I was his enemy. We’d become a team, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him turning his back on me. Not now. “I don’t know what else I can say.”

  “There is nothing.” He shoved his dagger into his sheath and strode past me toward the door. “The fire is growing, and there’s nothing here for us now. I’ll take you back to your grandmother, and then we’ll decide what to do from there.”

  I squeezed my hands into fists. “So, you’re still going to help me.”

  He paused, but he didn’t glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  Back at Dorian’s apartment, we found Laura kneeling in front of the refrigerator. The tiny light reflected on her wide-eyed face, and she swallowed hard before turning to face us. “Sorry. I was hungry.”

  Dorian strode past her and pushed the refrigerator shut with the toe of his boot, his shoulders bristling with tension. “Enough staring at the blood bags. When’s the last time either of you ate?”

  I shrugged, but he didn’t look my way to catch the movement. He was still two notches above angry, and we’d spent the entire car ride back in uncomfortable silence. That was, until I’d tried explaining things again. At that point, he’d shut me down hard, blasting Metallica over the speakers to drown out the sound of my voice.

  “Yesterday,” Laura said, glancing out the window at the gray light of a morning dawning underneath a sky full of dark and rolling clouds. “I usually have breakfast right about now…”

  With a frown, Dorian grabbed his hat and trench coat and swung open the door. “I’m going to go get you some breakfast. Stay here and stay out of my fridge.”

  “But should you be going out into the daylight?” I couldn’t help but ask. “You know, because you’re a vampire.”

  He froze halfway out the door, but he still wouldn’t look my way. “Hear that thunder? It's a cloudy day. And I’ll be better out there than in here.”

  Ouch.

&n
bsp; The door slammed, reverberating in my boots. With a sigh, I plopped onto the floor and spread out on my back, staring up at the water-clogged ceiling overhead. The stains were black and blue, just like my heart. I knew he needed time, but I wasn’t sure that would be enough. Would he ever forgive me for hiding the truth?

  “What’s going on with you two?” Laura lowered herself to the floor and stretched out by my side. “I thought you made up after your big vampire discovery fight.”

  I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. “Things didn’t go well on our little trip to the Enforcer’s house. We ran into some demons, and all hell broke loose, both between us and with the beasts.”

  “So, it was a trap,” she said, shifting sideways to prop her chin on her fist. “Find anything that could help us track him down?”

  “No. We’re back at square one. Again.” Groaning, I pushed my fingers to my skull and tried to think. There must be something I was missing. A clue. A piece of information I’d overlooked. “I was hoping there’d be some kind of notebook on his desk or emails on his computer. Anything. Hell, there might have been, but the whole place went up in flames before we could find anything. Literally.”

  Laura suddenly sat up, her long hair curtaining her face. “Speaking of, I noticed you left those documents from Professor Wagner’s office here. I took a look at them when I woke up earlier because I was getting antsy and needed something to do. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Erg. Professor Wagner. The space between my eyes felt tight, like a tension headache had begun to settle in. I still hadn’t had a chance to move forward on Alice’s case, mostly because I’d spent the past twenty-four hours running from murderous vampires and trying to track down a dangerous warlock. Money no longer seemed important, not when compared to saving Grams’s life. There was no time for me to focus on this right now. I would just have to tell Alice I’d failed.

  Laura pushed up from the floor and grabbed the documents from Dorian’s desk. She pointed at one of the pages, her tongue tucked between her teeth. “I noticed that you had a scanned page of a Blood Coven grimoire here. I’ve never seen these runes, but I recognized the way they draw double lines on the right edge. Every blood rune does that. It’s supposed to be their signature mark.”

  My exhaustion disappeared in a blink as I sat up to stare at Laura. Where the hell had this come from? Yeah, she’d told me she thought she had blood magic running through her veins, but she still didn’t have a mark to prove it. Or a trainer to teach her. So, how did she know all of this?

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Her face flushed. “How do I know about these runes, right? Well, I told you. I think I’m a blood mage, so I’ve been studying up for awhile. You’d be surprised at what you can find in online repositories.”

  “Don’t look embarrassed,” I said softly. “I think it’s kick-ass that you’ve been trying to understand this stuff. Hell, you’re doing way better than I am.”

  “Well, there’s more.” She shuffled through the pages before she found what she was looking for. “There’s a rune here called Bind and while it’s difficult to make sense of most of the instructions, it sounds like there is a way to bind demons to oneself. Something about draining blood, removing bones, and giving sacrifices. Also, and this is the really weird part, I think it’s saying that this is one of four binding spells. Complete all four, and the warlock retains the magic of all covens, essentially making him a master of bone, blood, shadow, and sun all at once.”

  “What?” I jumped from the floor and rushed to her side. “Show me where it says this.”

  Laura pointed to the middle of the page where several rows of hand-written scribbles were scrawled underneath a rune that looked almost identical to the one I’d found on Professor Wagner’s office floor. My mind reeled from this new development, the pieces of the puzzle fitting together in an impossible way.

  I grabbed my phone from my pocket and flicked through my photos until it landed on the rune. “Look at this. It’s the same, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah. That’s the binding rune alright.” She held the phone up to her eyes and swallowed hard. “Where the hell did you find this?”

  “Professor Wagner’s office,” I said.

  “Shit.” Laura pressed her hand to her chest and shook her head. “What does this mean? He’s been binding demons to himself? I thought this guy was just a wacky professor who liked hunting down rare books.”

  “He’s clearly more than that.” Frowning, I continued to read the scanned page of the grimoire, trying to make sense of some of the blurry words. The letters looked like they’d been dipped in water, and most of them looked vaguely like Latin. Important details? I couldn’t be sure. “Think about it. Sacrificing humans to demons. Draining blood. Removing bones. Binding to demons in a way that means you can control when they appear and disappear with no need for a rune. Does that sound like anything to you?”

  She nodded. “It sounds like what’s been happening with the Dogaru clan blood bags, but I thought Enforcer Vincent was behind all that? And the Magister?”

  I dropped the documents onto the desk and paced from one end of the small apartment to the other. “I’m not sure how it all fits together yet, but it’s clearly connected. Someone was in the alley with Vincent that night, the same man who was watching my place. I bet it was Wagner. And he mentioned trying to find a shadow grimoire.” I sucked in a sharp breath at the realization. “They’re trying to complete the full spell. Master of blood, bone, shadow, and sun.”

  “It does seem connected,” Laura said, though her tone sounded doubtful. “But why did Vincent try to get the council killed by vampires? And why has he been targeting you?”

  While I didn’t understand why he’d tried to take down the council, I had a feeling I knew why he’d come after me. Somehow, he’d discovered that I was a Shadow. He must have thought I knew where the book was, and as fate would have it, I was pretty sure I did. When I’d flipped through the grimoire Grams had given me, I’d spotted a spell called Bind. The book was still in my jacket pocket, but I didn’t want to bring it out now. Laura still didn’t know about my true nature, and after Dorian’s reaction, I definitely wasn’t about to share the news with anyone else.

  Cursing Grams had been an attempt to set his trap. He must have known I’d go after him. All he had to do was wait and unleash his demons on my soul until I caved in and gave him the book. He just hadn’t been counting on the fact that I could win.

  The apartment door cracked open, and Dorian strode into the room with two paper bags of fast food. The crispy scent of french fries swirled into my nose, and my stomach growled like a lion on the prowl. But as soon as I made a step toward him, he frowned. His eyes flicked from me to Laura before turning back onto me again.

  “What’s going on? Has something happened?”

  Laura and I launched into the story at once, our words spilling on top of each other. Even though we still had no idea where Vincent had gone, we had more information about his motives and intentions than we ever had before. When we’d finally said all we could, Dorian frowned and stalked to his desk, snatching the scanned page from the stack.

  His eyes flew across the words, his expression darkening. “I don’t suppose you two managed to translate the Latin here, did you?”

  Laura and I glanced at each other. Could Dorian read it, just like I’d suspected?

  “That’s what I thought.” He threw the paper onto the pile and dropped his head back to stare up at the ceiling, his vein pulsing in his thick neck. “There’s a warning in there, because magic like this always comes with a price. In this case, Vincent is not only binding demons to himself. He’s weakening the veil between realms.”

  Chapter 27

  “He’s weakening the veil between realms?” Suddenly, I felt like I needed to sit. This was far worse than I’d thought. Vincent had not only kicked off a feud with the vampires, but he was risking everything our coven had fought for in the demon war, that so many mages
had died for. The veil had weakened then, too, and demons had threatened to pour into our world. They would have destroyed humanity as we knew it.

  And we almost weren’t able to stop it.

  We needed to find Vincent and fast. Not only to save my Grams but to save the entire world.

  “Laura,” I said, jerking my thumb at the curtain separating the living room from the bedroom. “Would you mind checking on Grams?”

  “What, now?” She furrowed her eyebrows. “Right after Dorian has dropped this massive bombshell about the fucking demon apocalypse?”

  “Please.” My gaze caught hers, and understanding flashed between us. She could see in my eyes what I was truly asking. I needed a moment alone with Dorian. Even though she didn’t know why and even though the timing sucked ass, she just gave a nod and walked away. No longer did I crave the bag of food Dorian had brought back for us. I couldn’t be hungry now, not when I was hiding something so important from my best friend.

  Dorian strode toward the window and perched on the cracked ledge, his gaze firmly locked on anything other than my face. “What is it that you want to ask me, Zoe?”

  “Would you help me read some Latin?” I kept my voice low and quiet, but I didn’t hold back the urgency that I felt deep down in my gut. Dorian sounded tired and defeated, but I wouldn’t let him give up. Not when we’d come so far. We knew what we were working against now, and all we needed was to track a man down by using my shadow magic. And this time, I wouldn’t let it take control of my body and my mind. I would be the one in control instead.

  Dorian shifted toward me and met my gaze for the first time since we’d left Vincent’s house. The emotion swirling in his eyes wasn’t the anger I’d expected. It was something else. A mixture of pain, sadness, and dread. Had I really made him feel that terrible? Had my deceit really hurt him that much? We’d only known each other for a few days, after all.

  “You have a grimoire you’d like me to take a look at, don’t you?” He gave a nod and held out a hand. “Let me see it.”