by Kaia Bennett
Keith leaned forward in his chair. I stared daggers at the guards watching this spectacle.
Yes, I am a monster. There’s no changing that now. Take a good look.
“Evie, as an empath and lost witch, you had a whole set of abilities you didn’t know how to use.” The priest drew me out of my staring contest with Cade.
His voice soothed, like the warm waters of the spring. Healing. Safe. “Empaths are as vulnerable as they are powerful. Your mind is like a witch’s womb, child. It gives the gift of understanding, but comes with pain. You wanted to live, and you wanted to heal the man you latched onto for survival.
“The danger of trying to loosen the shackles of a troubled mind, however, especially without proper training, is that you come to wear the shackles yourself. You gave him the seeds of your compassion, but you also took on his anger and bloodlust. What the rites did was realign your separate beings. In so many ways, you both were hurting long before you stumbled into this bond. How could you not when you each come from long lines of pain and violence? There was much to untangle, which is why no other coven would’ve been able to handle your healing. But now, the hard part is done.”
“The hard part?” I scoffed. “You say that after you tell us we came all this way for nothing. What are we supposed to do now that you’re done with us?”
“It’s for you to decide.” Yana’s voice didn’t lack compassion. The simple words made me want to tear out her throat all the same. “We armed our circle to the fullest because, in so many ways, your minds were the biggest barrier to making a true choice, not one made out of duress or fear. You, Evie, needed to survive, and witches since time innumerable have had to use our bodies and minds as battlefields. But, we also have our yearnings, our dark desires. Long ago we were predators and not the prey. There is no shame in what you’ve done or who you are, and you’ve finally come to accept this.”
“You,” the priestess pointed her gaze at me and focused on the space in front of my heart, pressure sharp as a needle sinking into the muscle. “I see the witch’s mark on you. In this place, there are no secrets. We ward this lodge to ensure all who enter the inner sanctum do so without intent to cause harm. When asked a question, neither side of this table can lie.”
I cast my scrutiny around the room, looking for the source of all this useless fucking magick. I chuckled. “All these powerful wards to protect something so powerless in the face of one vampire’s mistake. You must be proud of yourselves.”
I wouldn’t look at Evie, couldn’t. She’d been the first person to reveal the truth about my past. Another accident. A witch hidden in the shadows of my memory stirred up by the tempest at my side. Maybe I’d been weak all along.
The priestess seemed unfazed by my dig at her power. “You speak from a place of heartache and shame. A witch unlocked that for you. A witch nurtured you, if only for a short time. You’ve known love before, and loss, Jesse Oldman. Vampires usually don’t bear this mark unless turned, and this is no accident. Your kind shuns things like love and compassion in favor of power. Now, you know that was a choice made for you, made against you, like Evie’s slain forbearers. Every decision you’ve made in your life has been a selfish one, until you gave your gift to the witch.”
My gift? Yeah, it’s a real present to be turned. To never have a family and outlive everyone you love. It’s a real gift to have a maker like Eamon. Or to die of V-Sep.
“Life is a gift Jesse. So is death.” For a startling moment I wondered if she could hear my thoughts. I figured she couldn’t if she had me explain why I’d come here. Still, her perception rankled. “Every step you’ve taken since you turned Evie has brought you here, where you made the choice to let the man you were die, so that some part of Evie could live. And, while it would hurt you, you can still choose to let her go.”
“You said we can’t break our bond,” Evie breathed. “You said we chose each other.”
“Yes. Think of it like—” Keith thought for a moment, searching for the right words in the conical ceiling. “Think of it like a marriage of the spirit. You want to annul it. You can’t, there is no way to undo what’s been done. When my wife died, those threads didn’t cease to exist. I carry her with me everywhere. If Yana and I parted, I would live the rest of my days feeling her absence, because I gave her a piece of me. But while you can’t erase a thing, you can cast it aside. You can divorce yourselves from each other and choose to move separately through the world.”
“Great? When does that happen? Next full moon?”
The priest gave me a tragic smile. I hated the compassion in his eyes. I hated the slither of kindness and warmth I felt across my throbbing forehead.
“No, child. There is no rite for this,” he continued. “It’s simply a parting of ways. You’ll always feel the tug, the strongest tug I’ve ever seen. But, now that you’ve cleansed yourself of the parasitic nature of your bond, you can shut each other out of your minds. You don’t have to share a bed just to feel like you can breathe again. Your blood will be sweet to each other, inspire lust, but it won’t inspire the torment that heralded your meeting, the bloodlust that has cost so many lives. Vampire, witch, wolf, and human alike. You’ll just live on, like so many of us do when our hearts are broken.”
I have no one to blame but myself.
It’s done. Evie squeezed my hand. We’ll figure out what to do next. After.
“That wasn’t the only reason Masilda sent us here.” Evie’s whisper reminded me of yet another thing that would be affected by these lying witches. She inhaled deep and squared her shoulders. “My family’s in witness protection. Jesse gave up everything to bring me here, including his father’s protection. Josh is packless because he wanted to help lost witches like me. Vaughn… Vaughn is maybe finally starting to heal the wounds suffered by a cruel maker and the loss of his brother. I’ve—we’ve come a long way and we have enemies. But your coven is strong enough to shield us from them. I ask that you grant us asylum.” She looked at me and smiled with sad resignation. “All of us.”
There’s no way that’s gonna work. Her parents are going to kill me and Vaughn in our sleep.
When the two were silent for a long moment, I looked at them. The room vibrated with words unspoken, words I knew would be the final nail in the coffin of this journey.
“I’m sorry. I truly am,” Yana began, striking the hammer home. “I didn’t know what to expect when Masilda told us about you. She said you were strong, Evie, but she didn’t say how strong.”
Keith nodded when she struggled to continue. “You were still blocked by trauma then, and could’ve been expressing his hunger as your own. Maybe she didn’t know that this is your true nature and not the side effects of your bond with Jesse. Now it’s clear you are two powerful spirits housed in one body, both vampire and witch. I’m not sure even the old texts mention a turned witch who became so fully vampire—”
“I need you stop musing over me like a lab rat and just tell me why I can’t stay here!” Evie’s temper flared, the last straw of her torment finally landing. “Tell me why I can’t call my parents and my brother and tell them that I’m safe and that I can send for them. I’m a witch, I have been my whole life, and this is where witches belong! I’m a sister calling to you for aid.”
Those words made the priestess duck her head so that the tears streaming down her face splattered against the table. The priest wove his fingers through hers and swallowed, blinking back tears of his own.
“We’ll always answer the call of a sister or brother, Evie,” he whispered. “But it won’t always be the answer you want. Or something we can even provide.”
“You’re something else now, Evie, and this land is bound with wards of energy and blood. Your energy is cyclical like a witch’s, but your being is not. You’re as much vampire as you ever were a witch. I don’t know enough to say if this would weaken our wards for sure, but I suspect it’s so, and that’s enough for me to deny your request for asylum.”
&nb
sp; “Your suspicion is enough to leave her out there, defenseless?” I spat. Yana’s guilt made her pause and wipe her tears away with the back of her hand.
“I know only that she can pass for a witch in energy some of the time, but she can’t be bound to this land by blood as a vampire. Witches have to be bound to the land to be part of the coven. Neither you, or your friends could stay here either, Jesse. Our wards protect us from your kind. We allow admittance on the full moon because it helps power our wards and give us strength, it helps us balance the give and take of our natures. We’re able to heal some of the torment in our lineage. So, when the witch is high in you, Evie, and the vampire is dark, we can allow you in for a short time, but we’re not Masilda. We’ve survived this long because we don’t take unnecessary risks.”
Evie released my hand and stepped forward. “You say that like you’ve almost convinced yourself you don’t have an alternative. But, you’re a powerful coven. You keep your wolves bound to old coven laws and you feed your sacred circles with energy every month. You say you suspect, and you think, and don’t know for sure. But, a weaker coven took me in when I had no one to help me and tried. How many times have you put your own protection first? How many times have you left this coven to seek out the lost and bring them home?”
Silence.
“I’m proof that it’s not so easy to keep blood and energy pure anymore. Masilda is proof that you can do the right thing even if you’ve been hurt, or are scared. Even if you’ve suffered loss. She lets her wolves roam free because they’re not just tools for her wards. They’re family.”
Evie’s voice and shoulders shook with the strain. I reached out to rest my hands on her shoulders and pulled her against me, to give her strength. The wolves ducked their heads, and I realized that Evie had been right. This had happened before, this denial of a petition for safety, and not everyone had agreed with the verdict of the high priest and priestess. Not everyone felt like family here.
“I don’t doubt that you’re good people.” Evie steadied her voice with a short breath. “I know you want to keep your coven safe and you have every right to refuse me. I just can’t imagine doing the same if I were you. I don’t have the option of weighing my survival out like pieces on a chessboard. So, I’m gonna take a page from the ‘wily bitch’s’ book. Like Masilda, I’m going to use what I’ve been given to build something that will keep me and my crew safe. And you’re going to show me how to do it.”
Every stare behind the table snapped to Evie’s face in shock.
“You? A bond witch? You want to—”
“Yes.” Evie nodded at Elizabeth’s question. “A bond witch is going to learn how to create her own wards, and you’re going to teach me. I know that’s a call you can answer, at least for as long as the witch in me is high.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” the priest breathed. His surprise made my pride in Evie curdle with doubt. “To maintain wards requires great strength and great responsibility. You need the help of a coven, of wolves who give us their beasts until we release them on the full moon. To create them from scratch? We’d have to study the histories, but I’ve never heard of the bound doing so.”
Evie huffed out a laugh.
“You’re not leaving me much of a choice. If I’m nothing else, I’m part witch. I have to heed my brothers’ and sisters’ call.”
Evie reached up and touched the hand resting on her right shoulder, then tilted her head to glance at me.
“I have to protect all the parts of me, be it vampire or witch. I have to protect my mate.”
I choose you, Jesse Oldman. I choose you.
Yana closed her eyes like a long-suffering queen. “I don’t have high hopes for this endeavor, child.”
Evie’s irises shivered, her pupils dilating with feral anger as she turned back to the table.
“But.” The low, warning rumble of the wolves ceased. I guessed Evie’s rising threat ceased, too. The older woman opened her eyes, peering at Evie through hooded lids. Assessing. “That’s not enough to deny your request. We’ll teach you what we know, to the fullest, every day you’re able. I swear it.”
“I swear it,” echoed the priest.
Evie nodded at them. “Thank you. I want to start today.”
“Shit.” Yana huffed out with one long breath that made Keith chuckle. Then she smiled with admiration. “They say the best punishment a mother can receive is to have a daughter just like her. Come then, daughter. We’ll begin my punishment now if that’s your wish. Your mate must join the rest of his kind and leave the coven by noon. Daniel,”—she motioned to the shy wolf to her left—“and Bailey,”—she motioned to the door—“will guide you back to your camp at dusk, Evie, just as they’ll guide Jesse out now.”
I turned Evie around and pulled her into my embrace, swinging the door of my mind open for her. Every window, every closet, every drawer of the house I’d built with Oldman lies and the blood of my victims. I opened myself fully and showed her all the things I would tear down and rebuild for her, the way she would build her own wards for me.
I don’t deserve you, but I choose you, Evelyn Marie Pierce. I choose you.
I’m glad you’ve accepted your fate. Her mind teased like her fingers on my cheek. I promised you would never be free of me.
I chuckled against her mouth, then bit her lip, just hard enough to draw blood to last me till dusk. She pulled away, stroked my face. Haunted shadows danced in her eyes. Her smile tempered by sadness, but something in my expression made her smile. She couldn’t hide her fear, the doubt she had in her abilities, and how much weight bore down on her shoulders. I couldn’t let her carry that weight alone. I kissed her again, this time striding through her open mind with certainty. A vampire with a full invitation across the threshold.
I’m born to survive, Evie. My bloodline is strong and so am I. I’ve got your back. I’ll keep you safe until we can make this work. And we will. We will make this work, baby.
“I know,” she whispered. Cade marched down from the steps of the platform housing the banquet table.
I kissed Evie’s forehead, then she retreated a step. Cade came between us to guard his charges, which now included Evie. Daniel and Adam took up stances on either side of me, waiting for me to turn around. I walked backward, watching my mate spin and follow Yana and Keith out of the side door adjacent to the banquet table.
I twisted around and let the wolves guide me away, listening to Evie’s thoughts fade with every step she took deeper into the wards.
39
A week of training during the day, and hunting for land that would meet Evie’s needs at night, led us several miles away from the Willmore coven. Vaughn leaned an arm against a tree, I took a seat on a log. Stark, still in wolf form after guiding us, laid down and panted, while watching the perimeter.
“More trees. Cool.” Vaughn squinted through cigarette smoke, thoroughly unimpressed. “Glad we ran here in a hurry.”
Evie wiped sweat from her brow and grinned.
“Yeah, I know it doesn’t look like much, but this spot and the surrounding area, has everything we need. Good soil for growing food—”
“I’m gonna fucking vomit.” Vaughn grimaced in disgust at the ‘food’ she referred to and I barely succeeded in hiding mine.
Dead things. Vegetables. Canned goods. Stuff the always-helpful Cade made sure he delivered once a week, now that our crew had become permanent residents, and the other vampires had vacated the area until next full moon.
If I never see another stalk of broccoli in my life, it’ll be too soon.
“There’s a clearing nearby so we can set up our tent. A short walk to the east there’s a stream and the energy is great. It’s a good place to salt and sow.”
“Salt and sow what?” I raised eyebrow.
“Consecrate,” she offered, like I should understand her meaning. “I’ve been hanging around witches too much. Salt is blood, sowing is fucking. We have to bleed and fuck so the la
nd knows what’s up, then we can start the hard part. Building the wards.”
Vaughn perked up at this. “I can salt and sow right now, little priestess, where do you want it?”
Evie rolled her eyes while I laughed and licked my lips, wondering where the priestess-in-training would place us when she fed her rising appetites.
“Me and Jesse, Vaughn. He’s my consort, it’s his seed and blood I need. The… other stuff comes later. Much later, if I can’t get my shit together. The number of herbs I need to know about alone—”
“So then, you’re saying we can watch.” Vaughn waved a hand between Stark and himself. The wolf closed his mouth and tilted his head, first at Vaughn, and then at Evie, like he wanted an answer, too.
Stark and Vaughn were getting along better now, mostly because each had mellowed in their own ways since the full moon. I’d seen them racing through the grounds with the quads just to combat the boredom, and shooting the shit a few times when I went to gather up supplies, or meet Evie at the coven. The bloodlust in Vaughn and I calmed, thanks to Evie’s blood. Thanks to no more sightings of black helicopters, and Evie’s days inside the coven, Stark had stopped changing every day. The human version of the detective had a better grip on his emotions. Stark in wolf form didn’t snap at Vaughn.
Much.
I’d seen Vaughn throw his arm around Stark once on their way to the stream, like friends, like he used to do with Liam. I had to wipe a smile off my face. Had me feeling like a bitch, all nostalgic and sappy.
“We’ll fuck on that bridge when we come to it,” Evie answered Vaughn with a hand wave. “From what I can tell, Vaughn, you’re getting plenty as it is, and you’ve got your bloodlust in check. That’s good, since I think we’re going to be exposed out here for a while.”
Vaughn grinned at this pronouncement and I wondered if that was the smile his human face had made before Eamon. Damn near boyish instead of malicious. A strange point of pride for him had been taking the quads up on their connections in town. Between the circle and his tryst with Stark, and an underground den for discreet feedings that Cade knew about, my brother hadn’t killed in a week. He could still indulge in pain and feed if he wanted. But now, his trysts were for fun or for hunger with willing parties, not because of his demons.