The Dark

by Cheyenne McCray

  “No!” She screamed and almost doubled over from the pain of the image that burned into her mind.

  Mackenzie sprawled on a floor, her head twisted at an odd angle. Eyes wide, frozen with terror and confusion.

  “Cassia?” Jake grasped her upper arms, but she barely felt his touch or registered the concern in his voice.

  “Mackenzie!” Cassia’s insides wrenched even as her mind tried to reject what she knew was the truth. “No.”

  Almost without thought, she brought her hands up, clenched Jake’s wrists, and entered the transference.

  The only other time she’d traveled through the veil between Otherworlds so fast was when Jake lay dying in her arms.

  On a subconscious level she knew wrenching a conscious Jake through the veil might make him ill, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Their feet left grass and met the concrete floor of the warehouse in an instant. They arrived outside the circle of witches, who were sobbing and crowding around a woman who was sprawled on her back just outside one of the storage rooms.

  Shouts from D’Danann warriors came from various parts of the warehouse as they realized something was horribly wrong.

  A sick sensation twisting her belly, Cassia released Jake and pushed her way between Hannah and Alyssa. Hannah had her arms wrapped around her belly as she rocked to and fro, and Alyssa shook and cried as she held Mackenzie’s pale hand.

  Cassia didn’t need to look at Mackenzie to know she was dead.

  Tears rolled down Cassia’s face, pain ripping her heart and soul to shreds. She dropped the Mystwalker collar, which clattered on the concrete floor and rolled away.

  Sharp odors of Pine-Sol and must seared her senses, overwhelming every other smell—

  Except something black and horrible. Something that didn’t belong.

  Kael came from somewhere in the warehouse and pressed his big form against Cassia, lending her his strength.

  She raised her hands above Mackenzie, and her magic flowed between her palms and her friend’s body. She tried to send healing energy, even though she knew it was too late. If a spark of life had been inside the petite blonde, Cassia could have whisked Mackenzie to Otherworld and begged the Great Guardian for help.

  But not the slightest ember of life remained.

  “Can you do anything?” Silver whispered in a sob.

  Cassia managed to shake her head once as she let her power flow into Mackenzie’s body, questing for answers.

  Blackness met Cassia’s magic.

  It was so dark and powerful that pain hit her like a fist burying itself beneath her rib cage.

  The strength of the dark sorcery flung her away from Mackenzie’s body.

  Cassia’s back slammed against someone’s legs. Jake’s, she thought vaguely, as pain of another kind stabbed her chest like knives.

  She cried out and fought the dizziness that overcame her from the dark sorcery and threatened to render her unconscious.

  Voices called to her as she pushed the spinning nothingness away and crawled on her hands and knees to Mackenzie’s side.

  “Dark sorcery,” she managed to get out in a hoarse voice as she knelt and held her hands over Mackenzie’s body again. As she pushed away the painful barrier of darkness, images assaulted Cassia of Mackenzie’s death. “She—she was murdered with dark sorcery.”

  Gasps joined the sobs of the witches who surrounded Mackenzie. Cassia went deeper with her magic and she closed her eyes.

  As she felt the magic ropes wrap around Mackenzie’s throat, a choking sound squeezed from Cassia’s chest, as if she was the one being strangled. She struggled to see through Mackenzie’s eyes, but everything became a painful blur.

  A dark figure. Two figures?

  Cassia brought her hands to her throat as the choking sensation intensified so badly her own air passages were blocked.

  Dark blotches appeared behind her eyelids as she fought for breath. Hands grasped her as she slumped to the floor.

  Strong hands. Shaking her.

  Light fading away leaving dark.

  A deep male voice calling to her. A voice edged with panic.

  A firm mouth met hers, forcing air into her lungs. Her body refused it. The mouth moved away. Pressure on her chest, then the mouth pressed against hers again.

  Cassia coughed. She drew in another breath of air.

  She blinked, dazed, as she looked up into Jake’s frightened eyes.

  Why was she on her back on the floor? Why was she struggling to breathe?

  She jerked in another harsh breath before darkness shrouded her.

  Cassia didn’t want to wake. Tears rolled down the sides of her face from the corners of her closed eyes as she slowly became aware of her surroundings.

  She was lying on what felt like a thin mattress and a soft pillow beneath her head. The warm, strong hand gripping hers, the welcome body heat, and the masculine scent she loved told her Jake sat on the floor at her side. Still, she couldn’t open her eyes.

  From the smells of sawdust and wood, combined with the witches’ herbs and incenses, she knew she was in the warehouse.

  It was eerily quiet. Enough so that she heard the soft whump of the ceiling fans and the almost indecipherable sound of whispering voices.

  Pain weighted her down, kept her eyelids closed. Her head ached from crying and her throat hurt as if she had been strangled instead of Mackenzie.

  Mackenzie.

  “No,” Cassia whispered, wishing it was a dream but knowing it wasn’t. “No.”

  Callused fingertips brushed her forehead and she forced her eyes open to meet Jake’s gaze. She saw so much love in his eyes that it hurt, and more tears rolled down her face.

  “God, Cassia.” Jake’s voice sounded rough as he gathered her into his strong arms and held her tight in his embrace, and she closed her eyes again. “I’m so sorry.”

  For a long time she cried as Jake cradled her.

  When the tears gradually ebbed, she gave a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at him again. He pressed his lips to her forehead and her heart ached with pain at the loss of one of her Coven sisters.

  How she needed Jake right now, and the comfort of his arms.

  It took some time before she could find the energy to sit up on her own. Jake seemed reluctant to release her as she pushed herself out of his arms so that she was fully on the mattress again.

  “It doesn’t seem real.” She slowly looked around, her gaze traveling over what belongings Jake had in his room. Yesterday—was it only yesterday?—they’d picked up the mess she had made in here with her magic the night before they left for Otherworld.

  She met his eyes again. “Tell me it’s not real.”

  He sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. His jaws were dark with stubble and his eyes showed how exhausted he was.

  “My team did a complete investigation of the—the crime scene,” Jake said with a heavy sigh. “Nothing. We didn’t find a thing. Not even a fingerprint.”

  Cassia hadn’t expected him to. From the power of the magic she’d felt, she was certain every trace of the murder and murderer had been wiped away.

  The heaviness inside her was almost too much to bear.

  Jake continued, “Silver, Rhiannon, all the rest—they tried to get some kind of magical vibes from where it happened, but they didn’t come up with anything.”

  That didn’t surprise Cassia either. What they were dealing with was evil. Evil that shouldn’t exist where it did.

  Amongst the D’Anu.

  Anger, pain, fear, hurt, sadness—the emotions balled so tight inside Cassia that she suddenly felt like she would explode.

  The walls began to shake, the door rattling in its frame as the feelings grew more intense.

  Fierce and terrible anger threatened to rip out of her chest. For a moment, her fury was so powerful that a vision of the warehouse decimated slammed into her.

  A rumble grew as the entire building started to tremble, as if an earthquake s
hook the ground. She grabbed onto her magic with everything she had.

  “Hold on, honey.” Jake stroked her forehead. “It’s not going to do anyone any good if you bring the whole place down on top of us.”

  Cassia nodded and struggled to find her calm center. The calm that had been so elusive since the start of her ascension.

  It took all she had, but she finally grasped a piece of it and let the calm blanket her anger and pain until the rumble of earth and the rattle of the building finally stopped.

  “It’s one of us.” Cassia wiped the backs of her hands across her eyes that felt so swollen they hurt. When she could, she looked at Jake again. “It’s one of us. The D’Anu.”

  To Cassia it didn’t matter that she wasn’t really D’Anu. The witches were her family, a part of her, and she a part of them.

  “The other D’Anu have been talking.” Jake gave another tired sigh. “They think it’s possible Mackenzie could have been the traitor—and that Darkwolf killed her somehow through their connection.”

  Cassia’s scalp prickled as she stared at him. The thought pierced the haze in her brain, but she dismissed it at once.

  She shook her head. “They’re wrong.”

  “Silver’s cauldron was in the storage room,” Jake continued. “They think Mackenzie could have been using it to contact Darkwolf.”

  “One of them knows that isn’t the truth.” Cassia looked away from Jake’s strong features and stared at a knothole on a plain wooden wall. “And as much as they don’t want to believe it was Mackenzie, the others desperately refuse to accept that any of our remaining friends could be a murderer.”

  When Cassia brought her gaze back to Jake, she found him studying her. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I have no doubt.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and over her shoulders, the feel of it against her face and neck heavy and hot with sweat. “But who? My mind wants to reject every single one of the witches I consider.”

  Jake’s expression switched to that of a seasoned cop. “Who do you think it is?”

  “It’s like slamming my head against a wall.” The rage and other emotions churning inside Cassia had started to numb.

  She bent her knees and wrapped her arms around them as she started to rock on the mattress. “I see one image after another of my Coven sisters and it’s as if I’m looking at a one-dimensional photograph.”

  Quiet descended between Cassia and Jake, matching the eerie silence of the warehouse.

  “Mackenzie’s familiar died,” Jake said softly, and Cassia jerked her head up. “The ferret. Kael found him.”

  More blood seemed to drain from her body. “Merlin? How?”

  “The D’Anu think it was the shock of Mackenzie’s death,” Jake said. “Kael took the witches to him after you passed out.”

  Cassia scrambled up and off the mattress. “Kael—”

  No one could speak to him or understand him but her. Maybe he knew the truth. Or something that would help her figure out who the traitorous bitch was. “I need to talk to him.”

  Jake frowned, a confused expression on his face as he got to his feet and stood beside her. “Talk?”

  “Where is he?” She started toward the door, but swayed a little from her sudden movements.

  “Careful.” Jake caught her by her arm. “He’s been waiting outside the door for you to wake, like he’s guarding the room.”

  “Kael,” Cassia called to him in her thoughts as she stilled.

  “Waiting for you, Princess,” Kael responded clearly in her mind. “How do you fare?”

  “We’ve got to talk.” Cassia pulled free of Jake’s grasp and started for the door. She didn’t have time to discuss how she was feeling right this minute. “I need your help to figure this out.”

  “Of course.” Kael was sitting on his haunches just outside the door as she pulled it open.

  Cassia dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around Kael’s neck as she buried her face in his soft fur.

  Waves of magical comfort emanated from him, surrounding her for a moment like a cocoon that could block out all of the horrors of the world.

  “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she whispered in her mind.

  “You would go on, Princess,” he said calmly, and Cassia fought back more tears at the thought of ever losing the closest friend she’d ever had.

  She kept her face against his fur. “How did Merlin die?”

  Kael gave a mental sigh. “I am certain that the manner of his witch’s murder was so horrific that it traveled through Mackenzie and Merlin’s connection.”

  Kael paused. “It appears as though he stopped breathing, as if he, too, was choked to death.”

  A tear escaped, rolling down Cassia’s cheek like a warm droplet of water down a cool windowpane. Chills ran through her body, yet her tears were hot.

  “You stayed behind when Jake and I went to Otherworld,” she said. “Did anything unusual happen?”

  “I sensed nothing.” She imagined Kael mentally frowning. “Except at times I felt such a powerful evil, such dark sorcery, that it was as though the dark goddess herself was here.”

  His frustration was clear. “I attempted to search out this evil, but could never place it. The darkness was elusive.”

  Cassia remained quiet for a moment before she spoke to him in her mind again. “Did you follow any of the witches around during the day?”

  “No.” Kael shook his big furry head. “Do you wish me to now?”

  Again Cassia didn’t speak as she churned the thought over in her mind. “Yes,” she finally said. “I think we have no choice.”

  Alyssa’s owl familiar released his haunting hoot from somewhere in the warehouse. Chills traced Cassia’s spine at the sound of Echo’s cry.

  Jake touched her shoulder and she looked up at him. She’d all but forgotten he was there. “The others are waiting for you in the kitchen,” he said.

  The others. Dear goddess.

  And one of them was a killer.

  Cassia got to her feet, and Jake put his arm around her shoulders. Her steps were unsteady as he guided her through the hallways of the makeshift headquarters toward the kitchen.

  She wanted to jerk out of his hold, turn around, and run back to the room and cry some more. Maybe forever.

  At the same time she wanted to charge into the kitchen and know instantly who the murdering bitch was and—and—

  Do what to her?

  Kill her?

  Put her in a human jail that might not hold her?

  Banish her to some forgotten place in Otherworld?

  Cassia’s throat threatened to close off. Her steps grew heavier and heavier the closer she, Jake, and Kael got to the room where the remaining D’Anu waited.

  When she pushed open the door of the kitchen, a burst of pain, shock, and anger slammed into her.

  And darkness. The darkness was there. Right in the room. A living, breathing thing that filled the entire kitchen.

  Cassia moved her gaze from one D’Anu witch to the next. Sydney had buried her face in her arms on the table. Her Doberman familiar, Chaos, rested his head on her thigh to comfort her.

  Banshee, Hannah’s falcon familiar, perched on Hannah’s shoulder. He and Hannah stared at Cassia. Hannah’s face was pale, but her gaze assessed Cassia as if she was considering Cassia as a suspect.

  Alyssa looked blankly into space, her face white, her gaze unseeing. Echo sat on her shoulder and blinked his wide, golden eyes as he turned his head and looked at every person in the room, as if analyzing them. He even looked down at Alyssa.

  Copper leaned against her blood sister, Silver, who had her arms wrapped around her. They both looked too shaken to move.

  Silver’s python familiar, Polaris, wrapped himself around Silver’s and Copper’s ankles, as if comforting them both. Copper’s bee familiar perched on her ear.

  The sixth remaining witch, Rhiannon, stroked her cocoa-colored cat familiar, Spirit, who had curled hims
elf in her lap.

  Rhiannon stared at Cassia in the same manner Hannah was, as if Cassia could be the murderer.

  Except in Rhiannon’s case, her dark Shadows screamed to get out of her control. Cassia sensed that Rhiannon held them back by a mere thread.

  Were Rhiannon’s Shadows the darkness Cassia felt?

  Cassia looked up at Jake, telling him with her gaze that she needed to be alone with her Coven sisters. He paused before giving a single nod and letting the kitchen door close behind her and Kael.

  The feel of dark sorcery was so strong, so overwhelming. How could she have missed such evil? When they had scried before, she had sensed malice in the room, but not this.

  No, this was residue of murder.

  Everyone remained silent as Cassia slipped into a chair. Kael settled himself on his haunches at her side.

  Instead of the power of their love, Cassia felt her Coven sisters holding their emotions tightly—and alone. They distanced themselves physically and emotionally as if each had cocooned herself in a bubble of protection.

  Everyone except for Copper and Silver, who supported each other as only true sisters could.

  Mackenzie’s murder had shattered the Coven.

  Silver raised her head from Copper’s shoulder. “I can’t believe Mackenzie could have been the traitor.”

  Like almost everyone else at the table. Silver’s eyes were rimmed with red from crying.

  “But one of us?” Copper refused to meet anyone’s gaze. “How could any one of us be a traitor or a murderer?”

  Sydney removed her glasses to wipe tears from her eyes with the heels of her palms.

  “Darkwolf has used transference to get from one place to another.” Sydney coughed and cleared her throat as she settled her glasses back on her face. “Maybe he came here and—and—”

  Cassia said nothing. Instead, she tried to read each and every one of the witches.

  Nothing.

  The room was still shadowed with dark sorcery, but Cassia couldn’t tell where it came from—no, who it came from.

  What good was being a Guardian ascending if she couldn’t read something that should be so simple?

  Hannah looked at Sydney. “Sure, Darkwolf could have used the transference to get in here.”