I couldn’t let her do it.
Drawing every ounce of my magic to me, I visualized myself as a bright flame. Heat poured over me, through me. The cords that held me dissolved into ash at my touch. Just as knife touched flesh, I threw my astral self around Lilith.
She/I screamed.
I was back in my physical body. Flames consumed me, scorching every inch of skin. Searing pain caused me to drop the knife. I doubled over, my arms around my waist. I clutched frantically at my womb. All I wanted was for the burning sensation to stop.
No, I thought, not me. Lilith. Lilith was trying to use my own body’s sensations to stop my attack on Her.
I had to push on. Let the heat penetrate deeply, completely. Accept the pain, not fight it. Easier said than done, however. I’d never hurt so much in my entire life. I felt like I was being ripped apart. Despite the agony, I held on to the vision of Lilith trapped inside my body, surrounded by a bubble of impenetrable fire.
That’s when the guardian struck. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me upright. I took a page out of William’s book and balled my hands into a fist and gave her a good punch in the stomach. She looked surprised. Then mad.
I was in big trouble.
Twelfth House
Keywords:
Atonement, Imprisonment, Escape
That’s when the cavalry kicked the door down.
The sound of shattering wood broke my concentration. On the astral plane, the image of Lilith shimmered momentarily. The guardian paused in mid-motion, like a robot awaiting a command.
I never thought I’d be so grateful to see Mátyás. Or Rosa and a very bruised priest/bowman, for that matter. They made a fairly tattered-looking army. Besides Rosa’s blackened eyes, the bowman had a light slash across his forehead, and Mátyás’s throat was wrapped in gauze.
Some rescue, I thought. But then I remembered they were here to kill us.
As if following some unspoken command, the archer nocked an arrow and took aim. The nasty-looking tip pointed right at me. The archer let the tension go. The guardian lifted her hand. I saw a ripple on the surface of the bubble. The arrow disappeared.
“Did we get them?” It was Mátyás.
I saw Rosa’s hands pressed against the wall of the circle. “No,” she was saying. “It’s solid.”
“If it’s my father’s magic, I can break it,” Mátyás said confidently, though his voice was scratched and rough. He punched at the barrier, only to have his fist forcibly repelled. He nearly fell back onto his ass.
Which I might have found a bit amusing, except I was too busy fighting for my life. The guardian chose that moment to launch herself at me. She rammed the full force of her shield against my body, knocking me to the floor. Inside, I heard an evil chuckle. The muscles of my throat seemed to constrict on their own. I gasped for breath.
The guardian, meanwhile, moved to stand over Sebastian where he’d fallen.
Your death, Lilith hissed in my internal ear. Is a sacrifice I will savor.
I clawed at my own throat desperately, trying to pry loose hands that weren’t there. The harder I pushed, it seemed, the stronger she became. I gasped for air as her grip tightened. I glanced over at Sebastian, hoping for a knight-in-shining-armor Hollywood hero moment from him. But he didn’t stir. He looked as dead as I was about to become.
The guardian reached to pick up the knife I/Lilith had dropped when I took back control of my body. With Lilith s voice, the guardian said, “His death will give me the power to manifest; yours will be my release.”
No! I wouldn’t let that happen. I tore and kicked at her like a madwoman.
The next thing I knew, an arrow came sailing within an inch of my head. “How could you possibly miss?” Mátyás shouted. “They’re three feet in front of you.”
“It’s like shooting through water. I’ll have to adjust my aim.”
“This is our last arrow dipped in holy water,” Rosa said, handing it reverently to the archer. “We must pray that the sanctity of our righteousness will conquer their wicked magic.”
Aim for the Guardian, I tried to say, but it came out more like “Ah.”
A dark curtain formed at the edges of my vision. My magical eyes could see the circle imprisoning Lilith beginning to fade.
This was it. I was going to die.
As it happened, just then, the arrow hit me right in the calf. It missed bone but tore through muscle with a shock. In the pain, my anger and desperation slipped away. I forgot, for a split second, about Lilith’s invisible death grip on my throat. I stopped fighting her. Her grip loosened, or rather, the ethereal fingers that had been digging into my throat were no longer quite as solid as they had been.
When I stopped pushing, she lost power. The guardian, alerted to the shift in power, pierced me with a menacing glare, but the jig was up. Lilith had been feeding on my anger and fear.
So I stopped giving it to her.
I took a deep breath and, despite the pain in my leg, I willed myself to be calm. It was like taking the air away from a fire. The guardian slumped limply, like a marionette released from its strings. The spooky glowing red eyes in the south, which had watched the whole battle, winked and then extinguished.
I took in another slow, calming breath, and the east guardian began to flicker. Her physical form dissipated into mist and returned to its place on the circle. I released the tension in my shoulders. I trusted myself to have the power, the strength I needed. Just me. Not any Goddess, other than the one I was.
A moment of twinkle, and then, with a pop, the guardian was gone. I could feel Lilith resuming her place deep inside me. Contained, for now.
This was the time to cast the spell of illusion on the Vatican agents.
I looked over at Sebastian, who, to my surprise, was looking back at me. I thought he was a goner after all the power Lilith had taken from him. I reached my hand out. If we were going to die, we should at least be together.
When he took my hand in his, something happened.
I felt stronger. Strong enough to control Lilith to use Her power as my own. Her power had become mine. I could feel it rippling through my aura. I put my hand on my stomach and pushed with our combined power. White-hot fire poured from my fingers, encircling her in a flaming prison. Her frustrated screams shook my belly, but the spell held.
The strength of the circle worked to my advantage. Lilith and Sebastian had made the interior almost invisible to those on the outside. They could barely see us. Thus, it was a matter of projecting the image of the arrow hitting home, stabbing me through the heart. Thanks to Lilith, Sebastian already looked dead, but I added the image of the previous arrow sticking out of his chest. To complete the illusion, I visualized the circle collapsing in on itself with a bang.
“Are they dead?” I heard Rosa ask.
“They look dead,” the bowman said.
“Something’s not right,” Mátyás said as he approached the edge of the circle. “There’s still something here. Some kind of power.”
“It’s residue,” Rosa said.
“Grab the book and let’s go,” the bowman said.
I’d have to let Mátyás inside. As he approached, I allowed a spiral to form in the circle. It popped open like a lens when his foot crossed the threshold. I snapped it shut behind him, confident the others couldn’t see due to the opacity of the magic Lilith and Sebastian had woven into the circle’s creation. Once inside, I couldn’t maintain the illusion. Mátyás scanned the scene. His father lay crumpled to one side of the altar. I sat on the floor beside him, holding his hand, with an arrow sticking out of my leg. We were both naked.
The bloodied knife lay within reach. As I moved toward it, Mátyás’s boot slapped down on the blade.
“This is an interesting situation,” he said with a slow, ugly smile.
“Take the book,” I told him.
“I could kill you both.”
“You could,” I observed, trying to sound casual. Meanwhile, Lilith raged insid
e me. Her talons jabbed against the wall of fire I had surrounded her with, slashing along my intestines. All I’d have to do was let go. She’d rise and swallow Mátyás whole. And probably kill me in the process.
Mátyás knelt down and looked at his father’s wan, gaunt face. Sebastian had passed out again from the effort of joining our power for the spell. Mátyás surprised me by smoothing a stray lock of hair back into place. It was a kind, almost loving gesture. “Or I could let him die in his own way,” he said softly, almost to himself. Then he shook his head, as though trying to banish an unpleasant thought. “Not that he deserves my sympathy. I offered my throat, and he nearly killed me. All I wanted was for us to be a family.”
“He wants that, too; I’m sure of it,” I said. “He was sick, Mátyás, from the sun. He couldn’t stop himself. He felt terrible about it, he told me so.”
Mátyás’s mouth screwed into a painful, thin line. I could tell he wanted to believe me, but a century of hate stood in the way. “Yet he left me lying in a pool of my own blood in the middle of the garage floor for the Vatican to find. Somehow that doesn’t seem like the act of a loving father. I mean, for chrissake”—his voice broke with barely contained emotions—“he could have at least propped me up against a wall. How about a blanket in case I went into shock, eh?”
I winced. “We didn’t have time, Mátyás. We thought the Vatican agents were hot on your heels. They would have killed us.”
Mátyás raised his hand, forestalling any more argument from me. “It doesn’t matter. My father already gave me his answer. He doesn’t want peace between us, except for the eternal kind. And he can have it. Fortunately, without the spell, he won’t last. It will be very painful and humiliating for him to know he was too impotent to save his own damn life.
“And you,” he said turning to me, his eyes wild and glassy like an injured animal’s. “He’ll kill you to try to save himself. It’s all very poetic. I hate to ruin the beauty of it by stabbing you in the heart.”
Well, me, too.
He stood and picked up the grimoire from the coffee table. His finger reached out to snuff one of the candles on the altar. He contemplated the arrangement with a smirk, as though considering messing it up. Like a child, he knocked a few things to the floor, crushing the vial that had held the formula beneath his heel. “Even if I’ve miscalculated and you two manage to survive somehow, I’ll still get what I want once I hand this over. Mother will get her Papal exorcism.”
Standing in front of the circle’s wall, he glanced at me. I obliged by opening the portal between the worlds. He stepped through. “It’s over,” he told the Vatican agents. “They’re as good as dead. I have the spell. Let’s go.”
If the agents noticed Mátyás’s semantic lapse, they didn’t say anything. I held onto the image of us lying dead until they walked out the door. Mátyás paused, glancing back. His gaze lingered for a moment on the prone body of his father, and the door closed behind him with a click.
I squeezed Sebastian’s hand but got no response. Giving me his reserves had finally exhausted him. He lay completely still, not breathing. His skin was as clammy and cold as death. Of course, he didn’t have to breathe, and ever since the spell wore off, he’d lost his body heat, but it was still disconcerting. “Are you dead? I mean, more?”
“Ugh,” he murmured.
That sounded positive.
I felt even more encouraged when he lifted his head, but the look in his eyes was wild. He bared his fangs. “You let him take the book,” he said. “Mátyás is right. I’m as good as dead.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” I said. I sat up so that I could get a good look at my leg. I wanted to pull the arrow out, but I didn’t want to rupture anything important in the process. At least this shaft was significantly slimmer than the one the bowman had used when he’d impaled Sebastian to the wall earlier. I might be able to break off the ends.
When I glanced around to see if I could find anything to use as a bandage, I noticed Sebastian still gazing at me forlornly.
“You finished the incantation, Sebastian,” I said. “You drank. All we have to do is raise the energy to charge the ritual.”
He lay his head down, as though defeated. “How are we going to do that?”
“I think Lilith was right. We need to perform the Great Rite.”
“Seriously?” The floor muffled his laugh. “Garnet, I don’t think I can.”
I gave him an affectionate smile. “We’ll just have to take it slowly.”
Sebastian tipped his head up to look me in the eye. “I’m going to have to feed, Garnet.”
“I know,” I said. “You can take from me.”
“But… you hate that. And you’re already wounded.”
We both stared at the arrow in my leg.
“Any ideas?” I asked him.
Sebastian sat up. I noticed his elbows shaking under the strain, but he set his jaw fiercely.
“Let’s make a tourniquet to start with,” he said, reaching for my hastily discarded shirt. He used his fangs to start a tear at the hem and tore it into strips. He handed the pieces to me, and I knotted them together until we had a fair-sized bandage. We saved out a smaller section for the tourniquet.
Sebastian expertly constricted the tourniquet so that the skin prickled as though it was falling asleep. Just as I was wondering if he’d learned these skills on the battlefield, he said, “Wartime experience.”
His eyes lingered on the small amount of blood clotting on either side of the arrow. I had to say that the wound was surprisingly clean, considering how much it hurt.
“Ready?” he asked, grasping the arrow.
I nodded.
He snapped the arrow. I screamed. The walls around Lilith expanded. I quickly reined them in with a steady, calm breath.
Sebastian used the rest of our makeshift bandage to field dress my leg. Once that was finished, he released the tourniquet. Despite my pride, I whimpered.
He winced in sympathy and said, “Are you sure you’re up for sex?”
“I’m good,” I gasped. Besides, I was certain I could siphon some of the sex magic energy to heal my leg and cement my control over Lilith.
“We’re going to have to share,” I told Sebastian. “I’ll need some of your magic if I’m going to keep Lilith contained.”
“And yourself from passing out.”
“There is that,” I agreed with a smile.
“And you think sex will do that?”
“Not just sex. Magic sex. And, yes, I do.” I’d moved close enough to kiss him, so I did. I let my lips linger softly on his. Our breath mingled, and a tingle that was more than pleasure ran down the length of my body. Sebastian noticed it, too. Our gazes locked, and we both knew this would work.
My fingers traced the line of his jaw as his hands ran through the short mop of my hair. I spread my hands across the expanse of his chest while Sebastian massaged my shoulders.
We moved in harmony; each action had a perfect reaction. I kissed each of his battle scars. He counted the freckles on my back. His tongue pressed into me, and mine enveloped him.
Despite his concerns, he rose admirably to the occasion.
“You’re beautiful, Garnet,” he said when we paused to take a breath.
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing about you.”
Lilith pushed against her restraints. I maneuvered Sebastian so that he could easily enter me. Even as I gasped with pleasure, Lilith recoiled at his nearness. We began to move together in slow, even strokes. As the urgency rose, so did the power. Sebastian was more than just my lover at this moment. He became the conduit for the God, whose strength matched that of the Goddess.
Me.
Lilith and I were equals now. Or would have been, had not Lilith’s strength been sapped by weaving the spell of binding and her attempt to manifest. I had the upper hand.
I clutched at Sebastian’s shoulders, driving him deeper. I could feel his skin heating with our passion. He had
begun to heal. I kissed along the line of his collarbone. His lips pressed against my throat, but he held them there as if waiting for permission.
I began to weave the spell by imagining Lilith trapped like a djinni in a bottle. She could not escape into the world, and I would have control over her power if I chose. When I felt I had the image secure in my mind, I put my hand on the back of Sebastian’s neck, cradling him closer. I arched my body to meet each of Sebastian’s thrusts.
He understood my meaning.
The bite surprised me, even so. There was only the tiniest flash of a pinprick, and then, only ecstasy. Power roiled and flashed in the air around us. I felt my heart pound through the spot where his teeth sank into my flesh, matching the rhythm of our bodies.
We came in a clap of thunder. Magic surrounded us, binding us.
* * * *
Spent, we lay tangled together, unable to move. It was sunrise, and we were still inside the circle. I wondered if its magic could protect him if the formula failed. I stretched my wounded leg experimentally. It twinged, but it definitely felt much better than it should. I could feel Lilith’s power sleeping inside me, so I knew at least some of the spell had worked.
Sebastian stood up. The Great Rite had returned his physical strength, as well. Using the wand, he traversed the circle in the reverse direction, counterclockwise. I took Lilith’s knife and limped the perimeter, releasing the power she’d raised. The curtain lifted. The living room came slowly back into focus, and, with it, the first rays of sun peeking over the horizon.
I squeezed Sebastian’s hand when I’d finished. “The circle is open,” he said.
“But unbroken,” I continued.
“Merry meet,” we said in unison, “Merry part, and merry meet again.”
Beside me, Sebastian tensed as light continued to fill the sky. The sunrise was a combination of pink and green. It spread slowly across the cornfields, touching the rows with gold. Sebastian took in a hiss of breath, and I held tightly to his hand. I had faith. Our sex and our ritual had healed something in me I hadn’t even realized was broken. Saying the words of closing again with someone I trusted so profoundly reminded me why I’d fought so hard for the coven in the first place.
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