Hex on the Beach

by Melissa Marr

  “Sil…ver,” she gasped out before her eyes rolled back in her head and she spasmed as if I’d stabbed her.

  Aw, shit! My blood was now vampire poison thanks to those damned silver-venom snakes. I’d probably be on the ground next to this witch, if not for all the demon blood I’d consumed. Guess I was too high to feel all the damage done to me, even though what I did feel was brutal enough.

  A sharp whistling sound went off behind me, like a train barreling down the tracks. When I turned, sea spray was swirling so high in the air that it had reached the top of the cliff. It looked like a water spout, if one of those could trail a waterfall behind it like a cape. But this was no natural phenomenon. The sea goddess had reached the top of the cliff.

  Suddenly, my silver poisoning was the least of my problems.

  “You need to leave,” I told Bones, swinging back around. “You and Spade have already been exposed to us for too long. If you don’t go now, you’ll end up marked as sacrifices, too.”

  “Not a bloody chance,” Bones snarled. “And if any of these bitches want to survive the next five minutes, they’ll undo your hex right now or they’ll get this.”

  Another witch suddenly lost her head. I might not have mastered my telekinesis yet, but Bones was surgical with his abilities, if that surgeon was homicidally pissed.

  “Wait, we can do it!” the witch Bones had given his blood to said. “Most of us never wanted to sacrifice kids anyway. We wanted to go after murderers or pedophiles like she said!”

  “How…dare,” another witch rasped. “We honor…old ways.”

  “Times change,” said the witch Spade had given blood to. “I want to live long enough to change with them.”

  “Wise choice,” Bones ground out. “Now, point to the most powerful among you, and be sure to pick those with good survival instincts because if they cross me, you’ll eat your own heart.”

  The witch pointed, and Bones and Spade began giving more of their blood to the witches she’d indicated. At the same time, the dragon abruptly deflated like it was no more than a very elaborate balloon. Then, Denise rose up naked from the remnants of her leftover scales.

  Spade yanked the robe off the witch he was giving his blood to, revealing that she was wearing jeans and a Miley Cyrus shirt under it. Then, he gave Denise her robe. She put it on, grabbed the next witch, and ripped her wrist across the witch’s fangs.

  “No!” Spade said as Denise’s demon-branded blood spurted into the witch’s mouth. Only Ashael’s blood would have been more potent, and one taste gave away the source of Denise’s powers. It also marked Denise as a vampire’s version of a walking drug.

  The witch’s eyes widened as she swallowed. Then, she sucked at Denise’s wrist as if she were starving. When Denise yanked her arm away, the witch howled, “Wait! I need more!”

  “No more. Now, chant away that hex with the rest of them,” Bones said in a steely tone.

  The witch kept screeching for more…until her arm tore free and her own hand reared back and slapped her in the face.

  “I said chant!” Bones roared.

  Even high, being slapped with her own dismembered limb was enough to scare the witch into complying. She began to chant.

  Denise shook her head. “Okay, I should give less of my blood to the next witch,” she said under her breath.

  That aquatic tornado came closer. I tried to back away and suddenly found that I couldn’t. What? This wasn’t the immobility spell acting up again. I could move closer to the writhing, spinning waterspout. I just couldn’t move away from it.

  Denise abruptly stopped giving blood to the other mostly frozen witches, and from her expression, she hadn’t wanted to. Then, the markings on Denise’s forehead started to glow at the same time that my own forehead began to burn.

  “Cat?” Denise said, her widened hazel eyes meeting mine.

  I wanted to scream. I also wanted to hurl every weapon ever created at the towering funnel of water coming ever closer, and I couldn’t. I could do nothing at all. Despite my best efforts, I’d lost and I wasn’t the only one about to pay the price.

  Tears made everything blurry. “I’m so sorry, Denise.”

  Why couldn’t it just be me? Why did it have to be her, too? I’d gone after the witches! She’d done nothing to deserve this!

  Bones was suddenly in front of me, blocking my view of the approaching sea goddess. He picked me up, but when he tried to carry me away, he couldn’t budge me despite his feet digging furrows into the ground from his efforts. Then, his power flared until my skin burned from the residual energy and still, I didn’t move a fraction. Whatever magic that marked me as her sacrifice now anchored me to her path despite Bones pitting all his physical and telekinetic strength against it.

  I might not have been able to leave, but he could.

  “Bones, you have to go now.”

  I couldn’t let him die, too. I’d rather be fed to that watery monstrosity a thousand times than be the cause of that.

  “Please go. Please,” I said, and shoved at him with all my strength. “You can’t let her take you, too.”

  “She’s not getting either of us,” he snarled.

  I wished that were true, but I could only save one of us.

  “It’s okay.” I forced back every screaming emotion enough to crease my face into a smile. “A little thing like death can’t separate us. Not in any way that truly matters, so be the father that Katie needs and leave.”

  My voice rose on that last word, riding on the tears that I refused to shed. I wouldn’t let his last memory be of me crying. In so many ways, I had nothing to cry about. I’d been so, so, so lucky. I’d had more love than I had ever dared to wish for, and I’d take the memory of that with me wherever I went.

  His arms only tightened around me while he kept me locked out of his emotions.

  “I am being the father Katie needs. That’s why I’m not letting this waterlogged bitch take her mother.” Then, he raised his voice. “If either one of them dies, every last one of you will beg for a merciful end, so bloody well chant!”

  The witches’ voices rose until their desperation was clear even if I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then, all I heard was a barrage of gunfire followed by a series of booms that shook the ground hard enough to make cracks appear.

  Spade was unleashing his arsenal.

  “No one stops chanting!” Bones shouted above the din.

  Over his shoulder, I saw the waterspout part and then fall away like a discarded cape. In its place was a seven-foot-tall mostly humanoid woman. Frothy seafoam trailed from her head, reminding me of the Bible verse “it leaves a glistening wake behind, as if the deep had white hair.” Her skin was the color of moonlight on water; not blue, not silvery white, but changing between each color with every glance. And her face…I shuddered even as I fought the urge to kneel.

  Her face was the very essence of the sea; in one moment stunningly beautiful, and the next pitilessly violent.

  The witches’ chants grew until they were louder than the gunfire that had no effect on the sea goddess. Spade may as well have been firing his rounds into the deepest part of the ocean. When the gunfire stopped and all I heard was several futile clicking sounds, I knew Spade had run out of bullets.

  He let out an anguished roar. Then, an assault rifle hurtled toward the sea goddess. It passed through her and disappeared over the cliff. Somehow, that got her attention better than all the bullets had because the swirling twin maelstroms in her face that marked her eyes now settled on Spade.

  “No!” Denise shouted. “Leave, Spade. Hurry!”

  “Like hell,” he snarled, his voice sounding closer. “Wherever you go, I go.” Then, “Crispin, you know what to do.”

  The sea goddess came closer, flowing over the ground like a river rushing over stones. The markings on my forehead that denoted me as her sacrifice kept burning as if they’d been set on fire. I knew it was useless, but I tried to back away again and didn’t ga
in so much as an inch.

  “Last chance!” Bones shouted, his power flashing out in rolling waves that made screams briefly interrupt the witches’ chants. Then, the witches began shouting a single word so loudly that my whole head rang from the sound.

  “Ustap.”

  The goddess looked away from Spade to focus her strange, swirling eyes on me. I shoved at Bones, begging him to leave. He only flared his power out again. The witches’ shouts grew louder, until the ground trembled from them. Still, the goddess didn’t look away from me. Then her arm rose, water falling from her fingers, as she reached for me—

  “Ustap, ustap, ustap!”

  The pain in my forehead stopped with the same abruptness that her arm dropped. Then, she recoiled from me as if I were foul. All of a sudden, I was moving, too, my surroundings blurring from speed as Bones flew us away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “They did it!” I heard Spade shout, followed by Denise’s glad cry. Then, I heard nothing except the wind whistling by as I saw the ground fall away and grow smaller.

  Bones must have decided that flying us in the opposite direction wasn’t enough. Now, he was flying us up and away, too.

  For a few blissful seconds, I didn’t care. All I focused on was the feel of his arms around me, the sweet sting of his hair whipping against my cheek, and his scent, like crème brûlée combined with the finest whiskeys. I didn’t even feel pain from the silver or my many unhealed injuries. I was too happy.

  At last, we were free. All of us.

  Well…not all of us. Ashael had said if we broke the curse, the sea goddess would require a substitutional sacrifice for me and Denise. Morgana had mentioned the same. We had to sacrifice the sister who survived your butchery because our goddess had already been summoned, and lifeblood is required after a summoning.

  The freckled boy’s face flashed in my mind. He was still there, and the sea goddess still needed at least two sacrifices to make up for the ones she’d lost, assuming that Spade had rushed Denise away as soon as she could move, too—and he would have. That meant we’d left a helpless kid alone with a bunch of witches who’d shown no hesitation when it came to murdering innocents to appease their goddess.

  “Bones, we have to go back,” I said.

  Either he couldn’t hear me, or he was ignoring me because he didn’t slow a bit.

  “We have to go back,” I repeated louder, punching his arm for emphasis. “There’s a kid back there they’re going to kill!”

  That earned me a truly impressive curse, but he did do an aerial version of a U-turn. Soon, I saw the battered, half-collapsed side of Alamere Falls again.

  The witches were still there, blue robes fluttering as they scurried about to rebuild the bonfire. That’s all I saw before Bones headed toward the lower part of the trail further down from the bluffs. Once there, he landed, let me go, and then zoomed back up while I yelled at him not to leave me there.

  He ignored me. Soon, I couldn’t see him at all, and now I was a few miles away from the cliff.

  “No, you don’t,” I growled as I ran up the trail.

  Each movement felt like evil pixies were stabbing me inside, but I didn’t slow down. Injured or no, I wasn’t staying behind. The curse was off me now, so I was in no more danger from the sea goddess than Bones. He’d refused to let me face her alone earlier. I’d be damned if I let him do that now.

  Still, it took several aching minutes to climb to the top of the trail, and I passed more than a few robed, headless bodies along the way. From how they were still in the process of shriveling, these looked like very recent deaths. Apparently, Bones had decided to make an entrance.

  I was about to skirt by them when I heard frantic thoughts about staying hidden combined with a rapid heartbeat in the bushes to my right. Most of the witches had been vampires, but there had been a few humans among them. I yanked the thickest part of the bushes aside, and found myself staring into wide, panicked brown eyes.

  “Don’t hurt me!” the freckled boy wailed.

  Thank God that he was still alive, and he’d had the presence of mind to hide, too.

  “Good job,” I told him.

  His eyes darted in every direction, reminding me of a panicked horse. “Stay back. You stay away from me!”

  I was anxious to get to Bones, but I couldn’t leave the kid like this. He had every reason to be freaked out. He’d seen things tonight I hadn’t seen before, and I’d seen a lot. That’s why I didn’t bother telling him to trust me (he wouldn’t) or to calm down (in his state, he couldn’t.) Instead, I fired up the glow in my gaze and put all the power I had left into my voice.

  “You’re okay now,” I said in the resonating tone all vampires had. “You partied with the wrong girls tonight, and they slipped you drugs that made you hallucinate some wild stuff, but you’ll be fine.”

  “Wrong girls…wild stuff,” he repeated in the dazed way of a human under vampiric control.

  “Yes, but none of it was real,” I said, still holding his gaze. “It was just the drugs. Now, you’re safe, and you’ll be going home soon, so you’re not afraid anymore. But for a little while, you’re going to close your eyes and stay right here.”

  “Stay right here,” he repeated, shutting his eyes.

  Good. Now, he’d be calm and stay put until I could come back to get him. I put the thickest part of the bush back in place, concealing him again, and resumed my trek.

  By the time I reached the top of the bluff, the bonfire was lit, the sea goddess was swaying in front of it, and Bones was emitting so much supernatural energy that approaching him felt like walking into an electrical storm.

  “I don’t care which ones you sacrifice, so hurry it up,” he snapped to a black-haired witch with high cheekbones and tawny skin.

  I recognized her as the first witch who’d agreed to undo the hex, and I was struck with an idea.

  “Don’t pick just any witches,” I said. “Point out all of Morgana’s cronies that supported her child sacrifices. If the rest of you really want to change your coven’s ways, now’s your chance.”

  “No!” screamed a forty-something year old witch with parchment-pale skin and iron-colored hair.

  I grunted. “Guess we know which side you were on.”

  Several witches tried to run. Bones’s power flashed out, stopping them faster than the immobility spell. Then, his power reeled them back toward the sea goddess, who let out a noise that must’ve been the watery underworld’s version of “nummy, nummy.”

  “That one, too,” the pretty black-haired witch said, pointing at a witch that was trying to nonchalantly back away toward the trail. “And that one. Her, too.”

  When she was done, Bones held eight witches in front of the sea goddess, far more than the “substitutional” requirement to replace me, Denise, and the kid. Wow, she’d feast tonight.

  A hard thump suddenly sounded to my left. I jumped until I saw that it was only Spade, Denise in his arms, landing near the edge of the bluff.

  “Not finished yet, Crispin?” he asked, calling Bones by his human name as he always did.

  “Almost, Charles,” Bones replied, doing the same. Bones might have chosen his vampire name after rising in a shallow graveyard full of exposed bones, but Spade had chosen his as a reminder that he’d once been referred to only by the tool his prison overseer had assigned him: a spade.

  “Quiet,” said the dark-haired witch. “We’re about to begin.”

  I didn’t want to watch this, but I didn’t trust them enough not to watch, so I stayed where I was and shut my mouth.

  The eight sacrificial witches didn’t. They screamed out threats that abruptly ended when Bones froze their lips as well as their bodies. That made it easy for the dark-haired witch to trace those burning patterns onto their foreheads, marking them as sacrifices. When she was done, she stepped back and the sea goddess surged forward. Then the goddess passed her hand over them, giving each a single touch, before backing away.

  T
hat was it? It hardly looked lethal—

  The witches suddenly collapsed. In the split second it took them to fall to the ground, they had all turned into water, leaving only multiple splashes to hit the rocks instead of their bodies. The splashes were quickly absorbed into the sea goddess, until the former eight witches were nothing more than another sheen of liquid on her glistening form. Then she, too, turned into water that splashed back down the cliff and into the waiting sea.

  I would’ve been less disturbed if she’d opened her mouth and eaten them whole. That, at least, would have left the witches who they were. But she’d reduced them to nothing at all, in less time than it took to blink, and the reality of that hit me like a brick to the head.

  That could have been me and Denise. It was supposed to be us, and the sea goddess had been reaching for me right before the spell broke. She’d come so close to touching me…

  Rage exploded through my subconscious, almost knocking me flat as Bones’s shields cracked and his emotions burst through. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one thinking about how close I’d come to being a splash on the ground that the goddess absorbed.

  Then, that door slammed shut, and I only heard his fury as he said, “You were going to do this to my wife.”

  Death dripped from every word. The black-haired witch trembled as she backed away.

  “We had no choice,” she said in a hoarse tone. “You saw how powerful Morgana was. She ruled us for over four hundred years! Anyone who challenged her was fed to the goddess—”

  “Oh, you’ll wish for such a quick death,” Bones said as his power cracked, whiplike, through the air.

  Her eyes bulged and her neck stretched to an impossible length. So did all the other witches’ necks, until they all resembled taffy being pulled by a machine.

  “Stop!” I cried out.

  Bones swung an amazed look my way. “Why? They meant this for you and Denise. They did this to who knows how many young lads, so they all deserve to die.”