“Get the demon!” one of the Elementals screeched at Cymbeline. And I was in the game.
I no longer had to voice my Wishes. Who would I be speaking to? I granted my own.
I Wished for Lux to be safe. An empty nothingness, as deep as dread, formed between Cymbeline’s hands. She ran at him with it, and when she got close enough, she seized in shock, like she’d hit an invisible electric fence.
I’d made that; demons didn’t command magic. I was the one who hurt my best friend, my sister.
Three of my coven stood at my side, facing the Elementals who were running out of attacks. “They know they can’t destroy Spirit, but they have eternity to try. Unless we destroy them first.”
“We’re too weak, we don’t have our fifth member,” Una said.
“Sure we do.”
Agana stood with a clump of veins in her hand, rolling them over and over between her fingers, mesmerized.
“She’s gross. I like her,” Una said.
“Agana!” I yelled. Aamon nudged her and she looked at him with stars in her eyes, head tilted adoringly. He pointed at us.
Finally, I had four witches and the two Royal Demons I needed most to finish it. To finish the Elementals. I was consumed with fear at taking the next step.
“The Elementals are occupied,” I said, with a glance at the blood-curdling storm destroying my mother and the happy howls behind it. “We have to move together, as a unit. Del, something to tempt them from their purpose. Una, color what they see with confusion. Agana, call them to us, through their blood. Blind them, with only our blood to guide them.”
“They’ll know what we intend to do,” said Vera, with rare words of advice.
“I know. But we have something to tempt them. They lust after the Lust Demon himself. He only needs to reveal himself to them through our spells and we’ll have them.”
“And me?” Vera asked, painted, cracked lips smiling unnervingly.
“You’re the most crucial of all. You have to Whisper, Vera. To him.” We all looked at Aamon.
“Who is he?” Delcine asked, like he wasn’t there.
“This is Aamon, the Royal Demon of Wrath. If Vera Whispers to Aamon to avenge us, the Elementals don’t stand a chance.”
Screams came from the natural disaster that was the battling Elementals. I couldn’t know whose it was, and I couldn’t care. I couldn’t.
“I have an idea,” Una said, her face grim. “Why doesn’t Vera Whisper to Cymbeline? She wants to be with us, and to live. I bet more than Aamon wants to unleash wrath.”
“If Cymbeline wanted to be here, she would be. She chose them,” Delcine spat. A bitter Witch of Sweets was a force to be reckoned with. I was glad she was on our side and heartbroken that we’d have to fight against our sister. The whole thing was painful enough.
“Celeste,” Lux said quietly. “What do we do with the Elementals when we’ve got them?”
I drew a deep breath. There was no turning back. “I’ll Wish for their magic to inhabit me. If the power of the elements are mine, the Elementals will be only shells.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Agana said. “Empty shells that your little blonde friend can fill with anything she wants.”
We all looked to Cymbeline who was just recovering from trying to attack Lux.
“I can Wish her back,” I whispered, knowing it was no different than Vera Whispering. It wouldn’t be Cymbeline’s choice, it would be me controlling her like she’d been controlled her whole life.
“Like hell,” Una snapped. “Your new girly from The Gone is more powerful anyway.”
“No,” I said, and quieted them. “Cym made a mistake, but we won’t turn on her because of it. None of us do things right the first time, some of us never at all. But we’re not trading up for newer models. Witches, or demons, we’re people. We’re not our mothers.”
Lightning cracked and trees fell. Magic sang in the air around the immortals, and it sounded just dreadful. Like Godzilla-sized cicadas.
“Look. We don’t have much time. There’s nothing my Wishing can’t solve if I put my mind to it. Fine, I’ll leave Cymbeline—we don’t have time to argue. I need to save my strength for them.” The Elementals would take every ounce of energy I had and some I didn’t, but it was the only way.
“Celeste, this is a bad idea. Don’t try to hold all of the Elementals’ power to prove you’re our leader. Don’t do it to show you aren’t scared,” Una pleaded. My heart was filled with love for her then. I put my hand on her cheek, and she let me.
“I’m not trying prove anything, Una. I damn well earned my role in this coven. I have a right to this. I have choices, not just magic.”
Lux gazed at me, lifting a strand of my hair. It sparkled in the moonlight. “You know the way to the light through the dark.”
“If you’re in the dark, I want to stay.”
“Let’s do this shit so I can throw up in peace over you two, okay?” Una slipped a piece of gum in her mouth and pushed through the circle of us. “Hey!” she yelled, but the roaring of the Elementals, lost in their power, drowned her out.
Agana raised a hand in the air slowly and closed it into a fist. All the Elementals stopped, Air and Water falling to the ground in lumps.
“What did you do?” Vera asked Agana.
“I stopped their blood from moving.”
“Ooooookay,” Delcine muttered.
Una stood, her back to us, perfectly still, one hand on her hip. The grass at her feet turned from dull, pre-winter green to white. The air around her lost its darkness, and rolled towards the Elementals in a blank fog. The trees, the sky, the world from Una forward turned a stark white that was as beautiful as it was scary.
“She’s perfect with white,” I said, smiling a little. “All colors, but no color.” Una could confuse with the color white, all the mixed emotions white carries. Emotion—what powered the Water Elemental, ironically.
“White masks the darkness underneath. Did you know nuclear bombers were painted anti-flash white to deflect thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion?” Agana said, staring unblinking into the bleached world.
“Um, no. I didn’t.”
“Heh. Una’s smart,” Delcine said. The Witch of Sweets licked each of her fingertips, her bright red nails flashing, and with each dart of her tongue a dripping, red candy apple appeared on the ground in front of Una, staining the white grass.
“They’ll see right through that, Del.”
“Wait,” she told me.
Una looked to her feet and the apples turned white to match the landscape.
“What’s in them, Delcine?”
The beautiful girl’s jaw clenched. “Bits of The Chains,” she said.
Agana flicked red drops from her fingertips at the apples. “And now Spirit’s blood, too.”
“Good,” Lux injected. I heard his voice so little now, I relished every syllable. “They lust after nothing more than Damaris’s fathomless power. Infused with the color of the unknown, the apples will be irresistible to them.” Without warning, he grabbed me and kissed me hard, stealing my breath, enveloping me with his scent of nothing and The Gone. Then he left to stand with Una. Each step away from me made me feel that our time coming to an end. He picked up the now-white apples, five of them. One for each Elemental, including my mother.
Lux looked unreal in his black suit and blacker hair against the white backdrop, the apples dripping white over his hands. Una, alabaster head to toe as always, disappeared in his shadow. It was a picture of such beauty that I never wanted to forget it and hated that I’d seen it.
The weakened and filthy Elementals, limbs broken and dangling, missing chunks of flesh, hobbled towards Lux like zombies, oblivious to Una or the rest of us. They muttered to themselves, clutching their hair, as if they could remove their thoughts. They stumbled and fell, and got right back up, anything to reach him.
I didn’t know what would happen when they did. I hadn’t thought that far. I couldn’t catch m
y breath, and I wanted to Wish they’d never get to him, but the Lust Demon knew what he was doing. If there was anything he knew, it was about wanting and never obtaining.
“Don’t get wimpy on me now, Stars,” Delcine said, elbowing me. “I know they’re our moms, but they’re something more important than that. Don’t forget what they can do.”
“You’re a lot smarter than they think, Del.”
“All part of the sweet-ass package.”
The whole time Vera had been Whispering into Aamon’s ear. It was easy not to watch because the vision of Lux was so lovely, and the ugliness of watching Aamon and Vera feed off each other was horrible. Vera’s glee at creating such rage in the official Rage Monster from Hell, and Aamon turning it onto the Elementals was nauseating.
I could Wish her to be the Witch of Whispers again. For none of her childhood to be remembered.
I shook my head, my power aching to surface, and put myself back in the moment.
“You’re up,” Agana said to me as the Elementals reached Lux.
My feet had lead weights on the bottom as I approached Lux. He handed the apples to each of the Elementals as they kneeled at his feet. The Elementals kneeled at his feet.
“Are you ready, sweet girl?” Lux asked. I nearly crumpled with fear, but those days were over for me. No weakness. I nodded.
Lux merely held out his empty hands and told our mothers, “Touch them. Obtain that which you desire.”
When they did, it felt like the world imploded. Sound was gone, everything was gone but for Lux and me and the Elementals, the immortal all-powerful beings, quivering and going madder with every second they touched him. He stood as still as always.
“Touch me, Celeste.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, resting my head between his shoulder blades, and said, “I Wish to absorb the power of the Elementals.”
Chapter 32
The Elementals create, nourish, and destroy. All of those things were happening in my body and mind at once, searching for places to fit where my own magic already occupied.
“She can’t live much longer. No way can she survive this.”
“She can survive anything. She has the power of the Elementals now. And she’s got balls. The girl may have shit music taste, but when it comes to magic she’s got it under control.”
“Her heart beats like the sky breathes.”
“Stop being weird, Vera.”
I knew all the voices, but the ones I didn’t hear in my trance were the ones I worried about; Cymbeline. Agana and Aamon. Lux.
Where were they?
That was as much thought as I could muster aside from realizing my body was jerking and jolting like crazy all over the grass. So still in the field, then. From what Delcine said about not being able to survive much longer, I’d guess I’d been that way for hours at least.
“Screw this, I’m getting Lux.”
“Una, no. He can’t see her like this. We have to wait it out.”
“Enough fucking waiting, Delcine! No more waiting! We run The Chains now. We say what happens and when. And I’m not gonna sit here for another hour watching Celeste fucking convulse and froth at the mouth in the middle of a goddamn field!”
“Let her go,” Vera said.
I don’t know how long it was or where Una went, but I came back to semi-consciousness when I smelled the scent of The Gone.
“All right, Gone Boy, do something. This isn’t working. Celeste can’t contain the Elementals.”
“She is not a power of The Chains, she is a power of the heavens.” Vera.
“Shit, that almost made sense, Vera,” Una said. “So this is never going to work. We need to find another way to contain the Elementals. No banishment spells or dissolving potion will be strong enough.”
“And we need to keep Celeste alive while we draw them out of her.”
My head smashed against the ground hard for probably the hundredth time.
“Celeste.” He sounded utterly exhausted. Lux’s hands held my head steady on either side, but my body was jerking too hard for him to keep me that way for long.
“We need a new vessel.”
“What could possibly contain the Elementals if she can’t?” Delcine said. They all sounded miserable. Hopeless.
Lux. “Something from The Gone, maybe. Nothing of this world can do it.”
“But there’s nothing magical in The Gone,” Delcine said.
“A container, not of this world. Something magic,” Una said. “Goddammit, why didn’t we listen to Celeste and let her Wish Cymbeline back to our side before this happened?”
I felt delicate fingertips on my forehead as Lux held my head down, fingernails tracing little circles on my skin. “Because she knew it was the wrong thing to do,” Delcine said.
Una sighed hard. I knew she’d be pacing. “We have five witches now with Agana, but we aren’t the right ones. We need Cymbeline.”
“She can’t speak.”
“She won’t speak. I’ll get her to do it. Agana! Aamon, bring the Witch of Empty Things here!” I was so proud of Una, which made me realize two things: I was snapping out of the trance with Lux and Delcine touching me, and that Una could lead the coven if I died.
I heard a tiny cry when Cymbeline must have seen me.
“You listen to me, E.T.,” Una hissed. “You belong with us. You’re one of us, for better or worse, you got it? You want Celeste to die? Or do you want to take your chances with our bitch mothers who would have goddamn murdered us tonight? Because they sure look like shit right now and Celeste will be just as useless if you don’t fix this.”
“M-me?”
“Yeah, sweet cheeks, you,” Delcine said.
“And Cymbeline?” Una said, voice low and deadly serious. “If you don’t help her? We’ll find a way to contain you, too.”
“I can help,” Vera’s eerie voice chimed in. “I can Whisper to you.”
“No.”
“It’s only what you want to do, Empty Things. Nothing to be afraid of.”
Una’s strong voice. “Do it, Vera. Celeste may not want to do the wrong thing, but it’s the smart thing. Whisper to Cymbeline to create a vessel.”
Cymbeline didn’t make another sound, but I felt the coolness of Vera move away from me. I heard the guttural Whisper, but not the words.
“Yes!” Una shouted. Delcine clapped excitedly.
The clanking of glasses.
“This is what you make?” Una said.
“Let her fill them,” Delcine said.
I could hear myself grunting, groaning, feel the saliva dripping down my cheeks. I heard the girls whispering nervously between themselves, but I didn’t hear Cymbeline. She was busy. And Lux would only talk to me.
“Your stars are too powerful to be taken down this way. You’re my girl and you’re stronger than you think.”
Earth was the first to rumble through my system, like a giant worm burrowing, dirt flying in its wake, but through my body, until it flew from my screaming mouth. A boiling hot tsunami followed, washing any trace of the Earth Elemental out of me, flooding straight through my skin. I rose off the ground and slammed back down on it, my head crashing back into Lux’s hands. A cold gust of wind that started in my toes and filled every fiber of my being on its way out left me smiling, but only long enough for Fire to rage a path through my veins, funneling out and burning my will to live.
“No, no, no, Celeste!” Too many voices to distinguish.
“Holy fuck, she’s turned to ash. Oh, Jesus, what have we done?”
Lux. Silent.
“Leave her, Spirit,” Cymbeline said in her little girl voice.
But nothing happened. I was ash, I was smoke, I was a charred, barely existent thing, and it was all I would ever be. Sobs from all of the girls. Lux’s tears fell to my cheeks, and sizzled there.
All I would ever have of him.
“More,” I wheezed.
“Oh my God!”
“What,
Celeste, more what?”
“Te—” Choke, cough, wheeze. “Tears. Yours.”
“If I heal her, Spirit may stay sealed inside her forever!”
“Do it!”
Lux moaned, I sensed him rocking back and forth with my head in his hands, his tears plunking to my skin. I wanted more, I lusted for them, their coolness on the magma that I’d become. I had more to give, we both did together. I knew my stars were more for just wishing on, that they wrote the stories of our worlds, and carried it on the wind between them. Our story wasn’t done yet. Mine had just begun.
“Celeste, baby.”
My mother. Her voice in my mind.
“Mom,” I croaked. Lux let out a moan that would have slain my heart if it wasn’t boiling lava.
“I’m here, baby, I’ll take care of you.”
“Mom,” I said, stronger. “Get. Out.”
“Only I can heal your spirit from this, baby. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“My spirit is—” Coughing fit, “—whole. Doesn’t need healing.” I snapped my eyes open, too fast. My eyelids melted to cinders.
Gasps all around me. “Her eyes,” Cymbeline said.
“I’m whole. I’m the leader of this coven. Not because I Wished for it, but because I made it so.”
My eyes finally focused, blinking away gray ash. Lux smiled wider than I’d ever seen him smile. His face lit up with joy even if his eyes were dull pools of exhaustion.
“Help me up?” I asked him.
“Oh, Celeste, you can’t. Your legs—”
“Are stronger than they look. Help me up.”
My flesh was both brittle and soft as snow as I moved my arms to wrap around Lux’s neck. My skin was as black as a starless sky. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to standing.
“Oh shit,” Una said, as we both saw a piece of my blackened flesh fall to the ground.
“I need a cigarette,” Delcine said. Even Vera looked like she might throw up. Aamon stared. Only Agana smiled at the sight of me.
The Wind Between Worlds Page 24