The witches—some doe eyed and frightful, others glaring determinedly toward the forest—latched on to every word. Even so, my ability to make a coherent speech was beginning to fall flat. Dominic’s incoming army weighed on my mind, the anxiety of it all egged on by the trees’ updates.
“Protect one another,” I said. “Defend each other. I love you all.”
A clamorous crash echoed through the town square from the forest, and the coven drew in a collective gasp as we felt the trees nearest to the square dissolve into mourning. Dominic was powering through the woods with no regard for the nature around him. The glimmer of his ghosts was now visible through the shadows, growing brighter and brighter as Dominic’s army advanced on the square. Moans of his demons met my ears, and the disturbing drag of their decaying feet across the dirt was more than enough to set my teeth on edge.
They’re here, I said to Gwenlyn, hoping that the rest of the coven would arrive soon. We were outnumbered, plain and simple.
Gwenlyn’s response was terse. Nearly there.
The first ghost stepped out from the tree line. It was Carter, Dominic’s replacement for Ronan, and his shimmery face stretched into a wide grin at the sight of such a small number of witches lined up to greet him.
“Oh, you have to be joking,” he called out gleefully across the square. “Just look at you! How many of you are there? Fifteen? If that! Dear God, what a laugh.”
“Joke’s on you, bitch,” I said. I raised the pistol, took aim, and fired. The blue bullet shot across the square, smacking Carter right between the eyes. It seemed impeccable aim was another happy benefit of being the pistol’s master. Just as Ronan had, Carter disintegrated with a surge of blue light, leaving no sign that a ghost had ever occupied the space.
There was a beat of silence, and then Dominic’s army erupted from the trees. Ghosts and demons alike hurtled across the stretch of grass between the forest and the yew tree, a tidal wave of hate and dark magic. I fired shot after shot, taking out nine or ten ghosts in the front line. Beside me, Karma and a few other witches worked furiously with the voodoo dolls. Demons stumbled over one another, tripped up by Karma’s witchcraft, or halted in their progression to seize one another by the throats. Tree roots shot up from the ground in a firework show of sod and dirt, wrapping around the decomposing ankles of another group of demons and holding them fast. Dark clouds gathered as another witch summoned a lightning storm. Great bolts struck the ground, frying a few more members of the undead. Unfortunately, there was no way to stall the oncoming swarm of ghosts.
There was no sign of Dominic yet. As the ghosts closed in on us, encircling the yew tree, I kept an eye out for him. I didn’t expect to see him, not until he thought his ghosts and demons had control of the situation, but if he did decide to show his face, I wanted to be the first person aware of his presence.
The witches and the ghosts clashed together in a spectacle of auras and attack spells. The spirit of a young woman, her shadowy eyes set with malicious intent, and another of a lean, muscled teenaged boy leapt up to my bench on either side of me. I flung out a force field—another ability that I had gained from one of my coven—blasting them away, then shot each of them with the handgun. A wild feeling of pleasure rushed through me as the ghosts vanished, and I whirled around to pistol whip another attacker.
Below me, a gaggle of ghosts had overwhelmed Karma. She had dropped her voodoo doll in an attempt to subdue them, but despite a number of vicious attack spells, the ghosts were closing in on her. One of them had managed to lace an arm around Karma’s neck, dragging her away from my position. As Karma’s face reddened, I took a flying leap from the bench, surging through the spirits, and pushed the barrel of the gun to the forehead of Karma’s captor.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to play nicely?” I asked, and pulled the trigger before the ghost had the opportunity to answer.
Karma, now free, drew in a deep gasp but wasted no time in conjuring another aggressive attack spell. As the hex expelled the spirits from Karma’s personal space, I gifted each of them with a bullet to the face, my mouth twisting upward in a satisfied smirk.
“You’re enjoying this too much!” Karma called over her shoulder as she danced off to defend another witch.
She was only half right. I relished every single shot of the handgun, knowing that each recoil represented one more ghost that had been sent back to the otherworld where it belonged. On the other hand, no matter how many times I fired the pistol, it seemed that more spirits appeared to take the place of the ones that had fallen. The coven was doing better than I expected, but as I fought through the throng of ghosts and demons, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the witches already looked exhausted. I shoved a demon into the trunk of the yew tree, not bothering to watch as the fire devoured the corpse, and shot one of the spirits that was harassing Laurel in the back of the head. I spared a glimpse for Laurel’s relieved expression, then rushed to the other side of the yew tree to break up another mob. Despite how quickly I moved, I couldn’t be everywhere. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I jammed my elbow into a demon’s neck. Its head detached and rolled off, and I held back a surge of nausea as the decapitated body ambled off. I raised the gun and put the corpse out of its misery.
“Morgan!”
I spun around at the sound of Gwenlyn’s voice, relieved that it had reached me through my ears rather than my mind. The remainder of the coven charged toward the yew tree from the top of the high street, with Gwenlyn and Malia in the lead. Gwenlyn whooped with perverse delight as she joined the fray. Somewhere along her route to the town square, she had acquired a baseball bat, which she now swung heavily through the first demon that dared approached her. The metal bat made quick work of the demon’s rib cage, effectively dismantling it. The demon crumpled, and Gwenlyn leapt over it to aim another swing at the head of her next victim. At Gwenlyn’s side, Malia fought with slightly more finesse. It appeared that she had enchanted a number of throwing knives to damage ghosts and demons alike. With every toss, her daggers either tore through the tendons of a demon or ripped a black hole through the silvery glow of a ghost, only to boomerang back to Malia’s hand to be thrown again.
The two halves of the coven met near the inferno of the yew tree, and as Gwenlyn cleaved a demon in two with her baseball bat, saving another witch from its clammy grasp, a wave of confidence in my family rushed over me.
“Nice of you to join us!” I shouted to Gwenlyn, firing a shot over her shoulder to dispatch one particularly overweight ghost.
“I got here as fast as I could,” she called back and swung the bat upward, between the legs of another demon. It collapsed on top of her, and she shoved it off with a disgusted groan. “Take me to dinner first. Sheesh.”
I laughed, dancing around Gwenlyn to fire at will. My hand was already sore from the kick of the gun, but I pulled the trigger over and over, ignoring my cramping muscles. Nearby, Malia and Laurel fought back to back, nearly invisible within their swirl of witchcraft. Karma had retrieved one of her voodoo dolls. She now stood on the bench beneath the yew tree, protected by a three hundred sixty-degree force field, calmly manipulating the demons closest to her into disassembling each other.
“Morgan!” she called out to me. She pointed across the way, toward the tree line. “Your boyfriend’s here.”
I craned my neck to take a look. Sure enough, Dominic had finally appeared from the shadowy depths of the woods, and he was not alone. A fresh group of demons accompanied him, but they formed a strange barrier around something that I couldn’t see.
“Karma, what are they protecting?” I shouted over the din, taking aim at yet another advancing ghost.
Karma peered off into the distance. “Oh, you’ll never believe this.”
“What?”
“It’s his mother and sister.”
A demon’s head snapped back as I fired a bullet through its gaping nasal cavity. “Seriously? Dominic must still think he can sacrifice us to help them.
Let them get as close to the yew tree as possible, then take out the demons. Leave Dominic to me.”
Karma nodded, keeping a keen eye on Dominic’s advancing battalion. The demons surrounding Dominic’s family steadily marched forward, but the coven followed my lead in pretending not to notice them. Dominic himself lingered behind his fresh soldiers. Was it fear that inspired him to stay away from the battle, or did he have something even more malevolent up his sleeve? Whatever the case, I kept Dominic in my peripheral vision, waiting for the best possible moment to catch him by surprise.
As the demons approached the brawl, another witch stepped up to the bench to join Karma. Together, voodoo dolls in hand, they began to trim down the number of demons protecting Dominic and his family. I body slammed another demon into the yew tree, and another swell of satisfaction ripped through me at the sight of the fire consuming its corpse. When I glanced back at Dominic’s shield, I caught a glimpse of his mother and sister through the wall of bodies. Karma had taken down enough of Dominic’s puppets for a gap to appear in his defense. They were close now, only five or so yards from the base of the burning yew tree. I leapt up to Karma’s bench in the hopes of a better angle and raised the pistol. I closed one eye, peered over the front sight of the handgun, and, with an ease that almost shocked me, fired two shots.
As each bullet found its mark, an alarming amount of things happened at once. My ancient runes grew to an intensity that nearly blinded me, Dominic let out an anguished howl of disbelief, and the yew tree’s fiery trunk split open to reveal the same portal to the otherworld that had once transported me to the gloomy bank of that gray river. It seemed so long ago that Dominic had made the mistake of trading me for his family, like another era entirely, so when his mother and sister, whose names I had never learned, embraced the portal with no hesitation, it felt as though a cycle had been completed. In the last moment before the two women vanished, I saw their gaunt, drawn faces revert to their original selves. They had been beautiful women, but the reversal of death was more of a curse than a blessing, and the look of divine relief upon their newly angelic faces was enough for me to know that I had done them a favor. They stepped forward, allowing the yew tree to swallow them, and the portal closed, once again leaving Dominic Dobbes alone in the mortal world.
Distracted by the drama, I didn’t notice that another spirit had set its sights on me until it had wrapped its arms around my legs and pulled. My feet swept out from under me, and Karma made a wild grab to rescue me, but there was no stopping gravity. My torso landed heavily on the stone bench, and I heard the unmistakable crunch of cracking ribs. I gasped, which only exacerbated the paralyzing pain in my midsection, but managed to jam the pistol up beneath the offending ghost’s throat and pull the trigger. As the spirit dematerialized, I let my head fall back onto the burnt brown grass near the yew tree, holding my damaged ribs with my free hand.
Karma jumped down from the bench, warding off another ghost with a fresh attack spell. She kneeled next to me as I tried to sit up. I drew in shallow, ragged breaths since the pain in my chest was too intense to consider doing anything else. Karma conjured a healing spell of her own making, and her lilac-colored aura began to swirl around me.
“Punctured lung,” she said, as I feebly angled the handgun to shoot a demon that had risen behind her.
“Super.” I gasped with the effort of forcing words out. “You can fix it in the next ten seconds, right?”
“Sure.”
Severe injuries took longer to heal. Not only did Karma have to focus on the punctured lung but my various broken ribs as well. She drew on the coven’s collective power, both of her hands pressed to either side of my torso. I winced as the witchcraft worked, arranging bones and repairing the tissue of my lungs, but tried to stay alert and aware of the battle around us. More than once, I fired the pistol, but I was not prepared for the moment of violence that accosted us next.
Gwenlyn’s baseball bat swung through the air, connecting with Karma’s skull. The light left her eyes in under a second, and she slumped over before the healing spell had a chance to finish its work. I could breathe properly now, but my ribs still throbbed with a dull ache. Trapped under Karma’s weight, I tipped my head back to see who had wielded Gwenlyn’s bat so mercilessly, but something told me I already knew the culprit.
Dominic stood above me, grinning maniacally, the blood-covered baseball bat swinging from his hand. He looked no more alive than his walking corpses, drained by the power he had expended in keeping his army intact. I raised the gun, aiming at him upside down, but Dominic was too quick this time. He swung the bat like a golf club, knocking the pistol from my hands. I heard it land with a thump in the grass.
Unarmed, my only chance at survival was to get as far away from Dominic as possible. In one swift movement, I wrenched my legs out from beneath Karma’s limp body, forbidding myself from wondering if she was dead or not, and swung around to face Dominic. I expected him to attack again, but he only watched with a distantly amused expression as I used the nearby bench to pull myself up to standing.
“What did you do to Gwenlyn?” I asked, one hand hugging my tender midsection. The battle still raged around us, but no one paid us any mind. Ghosts, demons, and witches blew by in a blur of action, and yet it was the bloodied bat in Dominic’s grasp that worried me the most.
“That pathetic brat?” Dominic flipped the bat up in the air and caught it again. “I dispatched her with her own weapon of choice.” He brandished the bat with a wicked smirk. “With any luck, she’ll never be able to stand again.”
Forgetting that I was still injured, I launched myself at Dominic with an attack spell at the tips of my fingers. Dodging his last-second swing of the bat, I landed a witchcraft-infused punch to the base of his throat. He made a savage gagging sound, and the spell left a red burn on the skin of his neck, but that didn’t stop him from tossing the bat aside. I barely got my other hand up in time to block his incoming blow, and when his fist connected with my forearm, I realized just how out of my league I was. A close-range hand-to-hand fight wasn't exactly ideal for a woman of my size.
I ducked under Dominic’s next punch, aiming a jab to his solar plexus. As he doubled over, breathless, I bent down to grab a handful of dirt and tossed it into his face. He roared in frustration, wiping at his eyes, but when I tried to dart away, his hand shot out faster than I could imagine. His fingers closed around my wrist, and he drew me closer until my body was locked against his. No matter how I twisted or turned, I couldn’t free myself from Dominic’s vise grip. Then, in a movement so abrupt that I didn’t see it coming, he slammed his forehead against mine. I sagged in his grip, my vision doubling.
“No more,” he hissed, and his arms tightened around my waist to support my weight. I blinked rapidly, trying to free myself of the daze of Dominic’s headbutt. “You’re dead to me, Morgan Summers,” Dominic went on. “And soon, you’ll be dead to the world.”
His stale breath washed over me. This was not the way I wanted to go, trapped in the arms of a sociopathic warlock with mommy issues, but the end seemed dangerously close, and I prayed that the coven was strong enough to make it out of this alive on their own. As for me, I knew my chances of survival were slim to none, especially now that I had stripped Dominic of everything he had worked so hard for. His hands made their way up to my throat, and a rotten pleasure gleamed in his blue eyes as his fingers began to contract around my neck. I refused to close my eyes, staring defiantly into Dominic’s face as my airway sealed off.
“Hey, dumbass,” a tenacious voice said to our right.
Dominic’s fingers loosened ever so slightly, his attention wandering away from me, and when I glanced over to see who had managed to distract him, I sucked in a tiny, restricted gasp of absolute relief.
Gwenlyn stood atop the stone bench, a glorious heroine framed against the backdrop of the fiery rage of the yew tree. In her outstretched hand, she held the beast’s pistol in line with Dominic’s head, and the
scar on her forearm seared with the incandescence of ancient witchcraft.
“Lights out,” she said.
And fired the gun.
Chapter Ten
In Which Yew Hollow Finds Peace
“I am not wearing a flower crown, Laurel,” I said, pushing away the wreath of pink roses and baby’s breath that Laurel was trying to bestow upon my head.
“Please? I made them for everyone.”
“Yes, but everyone else’s is white. Why is mine pink?”
“Because we’re honoring you, of course.”
“Mm-hmm.”
In the week following the battle beneath the yew tree, the coven had been too busy cleaning up the wreckage in the town square to put together the official ceremony of inducting a new coven leader. There had been too much to do. With Dominic’s death, the ghosts had vanished and the demons abandoned their borrowed bodies, leaving the coven with the distasteful responsibility of reburying the corpses. It took a few days to figure out who belonged in which grave, even with the help of our witchcraft, and we cast a protection ward over the cemetery just in case there were any residual effects of Dominic’s curse. In the end, I was glad that we had gone to the trouble of returning those poor souls to their resting places. It seemed only fair after Dominic had interrupted their eternal slumber.
Dominic, on the other hand, did not receive such a respectful sendoff. Gwenlyn’s bullet had torn a path of destruction clear through his brain, killing him instantly, but unlike the ghosts, he didn’t disappear into the otherworld. We cremated his body, but the coven agreed as a whole that no one wanted his ashes anywhere near Yew Hollow. A few of the witches volunteered to drive out to the coast, where they unceremoniously discarded his remains in the ocean. No one offered him peace in the afterlife. Personally, I hoped that Dominic would spend the rest of forever on that darkest level of the otherworld with those manic voices repeating his sins to him over and over again.
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