by A. J. Locke
I took a step closer and crouched down again so I could meet Nova’s gaze. “You took the soul of a little girl and sold it for power, and what have you done with it all these years? Sat in the Underground telling junkies where you saw them getting their next fix? What have you truly gained? Do you have love? Friendships? A happy, fulfilling life? Or are you a psychotic, lonely piece of shit? Yeah, I think that’s it. I see the Savages, I see the darkness that’s risen, and now I know that it was you who cast this fate upon me. I will not yield to death, nor will I let anyone else succumb to it just to pay your debt. I will fix this, and you will be the one who ends up suffering the most.” I stood up. Nova’s eyes never left my face.
“Oh, how wrong you are,” she whispered, tears still sliding down her cheeks. “How you will cry and scream when you realize there is nothing you can do. You are the Grave Martyr, my dove. You will try to save the world, but lose your soul.”
“Selene…” Kyo said. I was shaking with rage but I turned away, retrieved my phone from my upturned bag and called Micah, asking him to get Tielle to dispatch a Task Force to my location immediately. And to make sure they had immobilizing powder.
“I’m so sorry, Selene,” Nova kept saying. “I have failed you so terribly. You and my mother…oh how I failed you.”
“My grandmother,” I said sharply, turning to her. “What are you talking about?” But I already knew. I knew.
“You weren’t enough,” Nova said pathetically. “Your soul wasn’t enough for what I asked for but never received…so I bargained away your grandmother’s soul too.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I could be home right now wrapped in Micah’s arms, drinking as many cups of hot chocolate as I wanted because Ethan would keep them coming, but instead I was scaling the wall to Sacred Heart cemetery and going to see Magda. Micah, Ethan, and Kyo had preferred that I be home right now, but I told them that sitting still with the events of today weighing on me would not go well. I couldn’t say for sure why I decided to come here, but here I was.
I wanted to think, yet at the same time I wanted to block everything out. I wanted to go with the part of me that couldn’t believe what had happened and convince myself that it had been an awful dream. But the part of me that remained hyper aware, the part of me that couldn’t turn off anything to do with Revath, the Savages, and my mother trying to kill me, wasn’t allowing me to block this out. And I didn’t know how to deal with it.
I slipped into the crypt that led to Magda, pushed the lid off the coffin, and headed down the dark steps, using the flashlight on my phone. My heart was beating fast. I don’t think it had stopped beating fast since I saw Nova appear in Central Park and learned all those horrible truths about what she had done.
Finally, I made it to Magda. She looked up at me from behind her table with a slightly raised eyebrow.
“We were not scheduled to work today, girl,” she said.
“I know.” I stood there facing her, my body tight with tension, my hands balled into fists.
“Such agitation. Hmm.” She came over to me and looked up into my face, her eyes scrutinizing. “What has brought you here, child?”
“Don’t you know? Can’t you feel it?” I turned away and started pacing in the middle of the small space, running my fingers through my hair. I stopped and turned to her. She remained where she was standing and said nothing, though her eyes were on me. “You knew Ilyse, you knew my grandmother, Amelia. But what of my mother, Nova? Did my grandmother ever speak of her?”
“She has come for your soul, hasn’t she?”
“You know about Revath? About what Nova did? Not just to me but to my grandmother too?” I was having an impossible time trying to grapple with the knowledge that my grandmother’s soul was not at peace. It was in pieces.
“Yes,” she said. “Amelia came to me seeking a way to undo Nova’s deal, to save your soul. She cared not for her own soul, but she wished for the curse not to be upon you.”
“But you didn’t find a way. If you did, Revath wouldn’t be here reaping more souls than the one she’s owed.”
Magda remained quiet.
My body started shaking. I didn’t know any being stronger than Magda who could help me in the ways I needed help. If she had nothing to offer my grandmother years ago, then she had nothing to offer me now.
I sunk down to the ground, not feeling as though I could stand. Storm Shadow came over and ran her ghostly body against my leg. Snake Eyes had slithered out from some pocket of darkness and was peering out from behind Magda. The giant ghost snake dwarfed her already small stature, but she still managed to come across as imposing standing in front of it.
“What do I do?” I whispered. “My mother sold our souls to gain power, and when I died last year the debt was supposed to be paid. But I was revived. So now Revath is here creating Savages, taking their souls, and letting them slaughter people. Then she will come for me.” A surge of anger went through me, and I pounded my first against the ground. “How could Nova do that? How could she do that to her mother and child?”
“You came here seeking answers,” Magda said. “A way to keep your soul and put the darkness to rest.”
“But you have no answers,” I said, staring off into the shadows.
“You are on a path where you must find your own way, your own answers,” Magda said.
“This is so much bigger, so much worse than anything I have ever dealt with,” I said. “I don’t see a way out of this.” I dropped my head into my hands and released a heavy sigh. Part of me wanted to stay in this dank, stifling hole and let the world fall apart above me, but I knew I would never do that. Not when there were still people I cared about out there, not to mention everyone else. All the innocent people who didn’t deserve to suffer…but already were.
Something occurred to me and I looked up at Magda.
“How did Revath get here before? She came through the open necromancer circle now, but before, when Nova made a deal with her, how did she do it?”
Magda smiled. “Now you are asking a question that I can answer,” she said. “Revath was summoned.”
“Summoned,” I repeated. I looked at the ghost animals. “That’s what you said you did with Stormy and Snake Eyes.”
“Summoning is an art known to few, and requires runes that are not easy to acquire,” Magda said. “And it is a very dangerous thing to do with one such as Revath. The rules of making a deal are not one to be taken lightly.”
“How is it done?”
“Once the rune circle is drawn and activated, the rune calls forth one from the other side and traps them for a short amount of time,” Magda said. “You then ask for what you want, and offer your payment. If it is accepted, you get what you want and lose what you offered. If the payment is not enough, once the circle is deactivated, you die.”
“What?” I said with a sharp intake of breath.
“Yes, child. They will kill you where you stand if your bargain is not to their liking.”
“Terrible,” I said. “But what’s stopping them from killing you even if they accept your bargain?”
“Such are the rules of the summoning runes,” Magda said. “Those runes and the power imbued in them were forged by dead mages from long, long ago. Once used, the rules have to be obeyed by all involved. That’s why the rune circle does not last long and the window to make a deal is small. It is dangerous. They do not always want souls.”
“Well, that’s what Revath wanted,” I said. “And Nova gave her two. But Revath apparently didn’t give her what she asked for. Doesn’t that mean she broke the rules?”
“It appears Revath was cunning enough to get what she wanted without giving in equal,” Magda said.
“It’s all so terrible,” I said. “Right now my grandmother is…” I took a shuddering breath. I couldn’t finish the sentence, the thought. Or else my anger at Nova would overtake me and I’d want to go find her and throttle her. She’d deserve it, but it wouldn’t get me an
ywhere. It didn’t help that the dark energy I took from Brian was more than happy to fuel my anger, making it even stronger.
“I don’t suppose I can make a counter deal with Revath.”
Magda shook her head.
It was the answer I expected but it still felt like a blow of disappointment. “So what Nova said is true then. It’s too late…”
“Time will tell what is late, and what is not,” Magda said in a way that was not at all enlightening.
I sighed. So I now understood how Nova had made a deal with Revath, but it didn’t help me know what to do now. How the hell could I save those Savages if I couldn’t save myself?
And what about Kyo? I wasn’t sure what position I would be in to help him find his body given the current terror that had fallen, but I was still standing, still breathing, so I still had work to do.
I looked at Magda. She had just been more forthcoming with information than she had ever been, so I might as well take my chances. I just hoped what I was about to say would not get me killed.
“What do you know about dead warlocks and what happened to them three hundred years ago?”
Magda’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh child, what have you gone and gotten yourself into now?”
I pushed down the thrill of fear those words had elicited and rose to my feet. “I know everything,” I said. “And I’m trying to figure out where the warlock bodies are. You are powerful, and knowledgeable, if anyone would know anything, you would.”
“You flatter me,” Magda said, a small smile playing on her lips. “Do you suppose if I knew that I would tell you? Do you know how foolish it is to ask such dangerous questions, girl?”
“I am not foolish for trying to right a wrong that has stayed hidden far too long,” I said. “And it seems I am going to die anyway, so I might as well try to do something good before that happens. So, do you know anything?” I stood there on edge, ready to run and make a feeble attempt at escaping whatever she attacked me with for asking about the dead witches’ deepest, darkest secret.
Magda stared at me for an unnervingly long time, then walked behind her worktable and picked something up from the shadows in the corner. My eyes widened slightly when I saw that what she held was a tiny skull.
“I was not always what I am now,” she said. The skull lay in the palm of one hand while her other hand rested gently on top of it. She fixed those dark eyes on me. “I was once in a position where my choices were not mine to make.”
“You had to kill your son,” I said. “But you didn’t want to.”
Magda turned to her table and picked up a small pouch. She removed a rune from it. It was a round, dark green rune that was wrapped with threads of gold. I frowned as I stared at it because it was giving me a feeling of familiarity. Where had I seen a rune like that before?
“In my youth I was discouraged from carrying a child because of my stature,” she said. “It was thought that child-bearing could be fatal to myself and my child. But as we do when we are young and looking for the world to give us everything we want, I fell in love and conceived his child…”
I was listening enraptured. This was the most Magda had ever spoken about herself. I had never gotten so much as the smallest morsel of personal information about her before. I even tried looking her up online even though all I had was a first name that I strongly suspected was not the name she was given at birth. Needless to say, searches for “Magda, little person” yielded nothing helpful.
Magda stared at the rune in her hand as she continued speaking. “I ran away, not even telling the father, because I knew I would not be allowed to see the pregnancy through; they would force me to terminate it. I was able to stay hidden until I had him. It was just me and a woman in the village I was hiding in who considered herself a midwife. She helped me deliver my boy.”
The smallest, briefest, smile graced Magda’s face before it was gone. It was a sad smile.
“I got to have him all to myself for two days. Then my family found me. They were horrified when they saw the infant.”
“Horrified?” I questioned. “Why?”
“He had…disabilities. It was clear he would not lead a normal life. Not that I cared, I wanted my child regardless of anything. At that point, I had already taken his magic. Put it into this rune. I intended to give him up then get him back. I was going to keep my son…” She closed her eyes as though steadying herself against the onslaught of memories she had fought to lock away.
“But your family did not let you,” I said, voice soft.
“Because of his setbacks, they thought it best to end his life as opposed to letting me give him up then adopt him,” she said. “Nothing I said could convince them otherwise. I was prepared to dedicate my life to taking care of my son, but they were not prepared to let me. They took me away from that village and ended his life. Four days on this earth were all my son saw. I didn’t kill my son. He was taken from me.”
“That’s horrible,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
“It is nothing you need to apologize for,” she said. “The ones who should have apologized to me, I already dealt with.”
Another thrill of fear went through me. I wondered if some of the skulls that were always present here belonged to the people who had killed her son. Her own family.
“But you could have exposed them, you could have shown the world what your ancestors did and what dead witches today are still upholding.”
“To what end?” she asked. “There are hardly any souls to return to those warlock bodies.”
“That may be true, but that’s no reason to keep hiding the truth.”
“We are standing on cobwebs,” Magda said, voice low. “On boxes full of bones, and the dark memories of the true legacy of the dead witches. There are not enough warlocks left…”
“But there are some,” I pressed. “Some warlock ghosts still exist.” Enough for Tielle to gain a boost in her recovery from the attack from Isabelle’s beastie. There was no way she should have survived that and I was willing to bet that my hunch that she had used warlock magic to help herself heal was true.
“Perhaps,” Magda said. “But not enough to be worth fighting for. Not enough to upheave our entire history. Not enough to expose secrets that have stayed hidden for so long. I do not align with the mainstream dead witches. After what was done to me, I will not be a part of their ranks. That is how I have chosen to reject them and their horrendous legacy. I have other uses for my time and my power.”
I looked around the dirt-packed room full of bones, runes, and not nearly enough air to breathe comfortably. I didn’t question Magda on what the other uses for her time and power were. She had put her son’s skull and the rune away and was standing before me once more.
“But if the dead witches stopped taking their son’s magic, a new generation of dead warlocks could rise. It doesn’t have to be just about the warlocks of the past.”
“I will not stop you should you choose to bring old bones to light,” Magda said. “For you will have consequence enough to deal with that you will need no aid in your downfall.”
I frowned. “It doesn’t have to end like that.”
“No, it doesn’t. But you are not walking toward light, girl, for all the desires you have to leave the shadowed path behind. With this, and with your soul being hunted, make sure you have the strength, power, and the will to go against forces you have little hope of beating.”
* * *
I surfaced from the crypt, pushed the lid back into place, and left the mausoleum, feeling refreshed by the cool wind against my skin. What I didn’t feel was that I had gotten any useful guidance. The summoning information was great, but didn’t help me now. But if I was being honest, I had come here knowing full well that I might leave with nothing or very little. I had long learned that Magda did not give answers unless she wanted to. She could very well know how to stop Revath from taking my soul, but unless she saw a reason to share that information, I would never know.
>
Magda was powerful and frustratingly tight-lipped about who she was and why she was reaping power and biding her time below a graveyard. It would have been nice if I could have thought of her as the ace in my pocket, a source of strength I could call on if I needed to, but I couldn’t.
So now I guess I’d go home, curl up in Micah’s arms, and let Ethan medicate me with hot chocolate.
I heard a snarl, deep, throaty, and human, behind me.
Or not.
I hadn’t yet made it to the graveyard wall. I turned around, knowing what I would find, but still jolted with fear when I became face to face with a Savage. It wasn’t a PTF officer though. He was an older man, thin, with wrinkled skin and sparse hair, but the tension he held himself with, and the beastly expression on his face, was not one to take lightly. Revath had created more Savages, taken more souls. Not good. I started to back up. The wall wasn’t too far away. I could scale it and run back to my car and drive away.
But the old Savage had another idea. He attacked.
I dove to the side and rolled, jumping back up to my feet and quickly turning around to keep eyes on the Savage. He was coming at me again, and I wasn’t able to avoid being slammed to the ground. He snapped his teeth viciously, inches away from my face, as though in anticipation of using them to tear the skin off my flesh. He bore down on me with an almost overwhelming power; it felt as though my chest was going to cave in. I struggled, but was not able to push him off me. But he soon released me himself, though only to rear up with his arms above his head and screech. He still straddled my waist and I knew he was preparing for those arms to bury themselves in my body. I wouldn’t die, but I did not want to experience what it would be like to have a gaping hole gouged into my chest. Shit, shit, and fuck.
My dead magic was more than ready to help me out of this deadly situation. I didn’t want to do to this man what I did to Brian, but it didn’t seem as though I had a choice. I wanted to live, even if it meant a further slip into the darkness and more death by my hands.