I walked forward, smack into a mirror. “Fuck. What’s this fresh hell?” Trailing my fingers along the mirror, I tried to find my way out, but as far as I could tell, I was inside a box of silver. Silver. A test of metal.
“Honestly, you’d think this would get easier.” Was I supposed to melt the silver? Cast myself into it? I placed my hands on the mirror and willed it to open for me. It obeyed, but I found myself in another octagonal room of glass. I was in a silver hive. I pushed and melted my way forward, until in my frustration, I accidentally broke a mirror.
“I sincerely hope that seven-years-of-bad-luck thing is just an expression,” I said, stepping over the broken glass. I sighed. Another room. This was taking too long. There had to be a better way.
Closing my eyes, I concentrated, opening myself up to the magic in the room. A source of great power surged to my left. Unless I was grossly mistaken, that would be Mother. She was the only thing that made the hair on my arms stand on end. I turned in the direction, focused my power, and pushed. The mirrors shattered as if an invisible wrecking ball had plowed through them. Glass sprayed around me, the ringing cacophony causing me to cover my ears with my hands. When the pieces had settled to the floor, I cheered. A clear passage stretched before me, all the way to another door.
I picked my bare feet through the glass. It did not cut me. I took a deep breath before I opened the door. Surely it would lead to another test, but I wasn’t sure which one. I told myself it didn’t matter. I was ready for whatever Hecate threw my way.
Opening the door, there was no doubt which test I was entering. Water hovered at the threshold in a curtain, like I was looking down into a fish tank instead of vertically into a corridor. I wasn’t an exceptionally strong swimmer, and the sight of a hammerhead shark swimming through the room did nothing to help my anxiety.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured. I poked my foot through the door. The water stayed where it was, hovering in the threshold. With one last deep breath, I stepped in, allowing the door to close behind me. Barefoot, I walked along the bottom of the sea, surrounded by razor-sharp coral and schools of colorful fish. None of the living creatures bothered me, but I couldn’t hold my breath forever. In the distance, I could barely make out the door to the next challenge.
Lungs burning, I started to swim, willing myself to move faster toward the exit. The water pushed me forward at my will, faster and faster, but it was no use. The door seemed to be moving away from me at the same pace as I swam. Desperate for air, spots danced in my vision from lack of oxygen. I couldn’t make it. My body wouldn’t wait.
My lungs contracted, and I inhaled salt water. It washed inside, filling my lungs, and I breathed it out again. In and out. I settled into a rhythm, and that was how I discovered a water witch could breathe underwater. I remembered the bubble that had formed around Kendra. Apparently she hadn’t needed it, except maybe to keep her dress dry. Laughing, I rode a tide of my creation all the way to the now stationary exit.
Almost disappointed to leave my undersea world, I pushed the door open and stepped out of the ocean. My foot landed on exotic green foliage. I coughed the water from my lungs, as the passageway closed behind me. This room was a jungle. The test of a wood witch. I ventured forward.
“Ouch!” I pulled my foot back and eyed the pathway. Thorns. The trail was covered in them. Now that I understood the tests, beating them was simple. With a wave of my hand, the thorns parted, as did the man-eating flowers and the strangler vines that crisscrossed the path. I reached the opposite door in record time.
“Earth,” I said confidently. It was the only test left. I squared my shoulders and opened the last door. I was ready. At least, I thought I was.
Chapter 28
Bad News
I was wrong. I was not ready. Not even close. The floor gave out under me, and I tumbled into total darkness. “Ugh!” The air knocked out of my lungs as I landed on my back somewhere soft. Maybe a bed? I couldn’t tell in the darkness. I tried to raise a hand to blow a flame so I could see, but my knuckles pounded against something hard and smooth. Carefully, I felt around me in the dark. There wasn’t much room. I could only bring my hand to my face by first crossing my arms over my chest and then raising them to my chin. My wind element wouldn’t work. I could not light a flame.
I’d have to explore by touch. I was in a crate. A small pillow cradled my head and hard walls surrounded me in all directions. I patted above me and to the sides, my palms slapping the satin lining of the crate. At first my brain wouldn’t process where I was. It churned on the idea, searching for any other logical conclusion.
“Not a crate,” I said. “A coffin.” Judging by the element of this challenge, I was buried alive.
I should have remained calm. I had, after all, everything I needed to save myself. It wasn’t enough. The memory of my time trapped in the mudslide came back to me. I was there again, crushed under a mountain of mud, skinless and blind. My heart pounded and I broke a sweat. I had to get out. I had to get out, NOW. I slapped the lid above, pounding on it with my fists.
“Help! Help!” I cried until I was hoarse. My hands bruised then bled, and tears streamed down my face. I kicked and scratched, my brain producing pictures of the miles of earth above me. No one could hear me scream. There was no Rick or Julius to rescue me. I gasped for breath, aware I was hyperventilating. Cupping my bloody palms over my face, I concentrated on slowing my breathing. “Just breathe,” I told myself.
The rush of air through my nose and out my mouth helped me find my center. I was not helpless. The earth was mine to command. Slowly, deliberately, I willed the dirt to move from above me to below me. My elevation happened mere inches at a time. I don’t know how long it took. It felt liked I’d been trapped in that box for days. Finally, light showed through a crack in the coffin lid. With one final push, I flipped the lid open and sat up.
So relieved was I to be free of the box, I climbed out onto my shaking and cramped limbs without assessing my surroundings. When I did, the gravestones lined up around me gave me pause. I could feel the dead calling to me under my bare feet. This was a cemetery, but not my cemetery. Not Monk’s Hill. It was someone else’s. Someone much more powerful.
The only door was one to a mausoleum, guarded by an ominous collection of gargoyles and hellhounds. It was cracked slightly, light as if from a flame filtering red and yellow through the opening. I stumbled forward, trembling. I wasn’t cold; I was scared and exhausted. If my ordeal with the elements was the appetizer, facing Hecate herself would be my undoing.
I approached the door anyway, relieved when the statues stayed statues. With my last ounce of strength and courage, I pushed open the heavy stone door.
“Welcome, child,” said an old woman’s voice.
Confused, I passed into a cozy room with a fireplace, candles, and a braided rug. It was homey and welcoming. Hecate, in the image of the old crone, sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire, what looked like knitting in her hands. She smiled at me and put her work aside, pulling a jagged black dagger from her long skirts. I expected her to attack me with it, but she didn’t.
Instead, she held the hilt of the blade out to me. Her smile was yellow and missing teeth. “Congratulations, Grateful Knight, you’ve passed the challenge. Now kill me and take your rightful place.”
Chapter 29
The Old Lady
I’d never spoken to my mother in this form. I’d seen it those times when she’d appeared to me in all three versions of herself, but she’d always settled on the mother in the past. I’d heard it said the crone was her wisest incarnation, but also her most vulnerable. She hunched in her rocker in a black dress with a white lace collar, her fingers knotted and gnarled with age. She looked like a grandma, not a goddess. I struggled to wrap my head around the meaning of her words.
“Just like that? You’re not going to fight me?”
The old woman laughed. “No, I’m not going to fight you. I’d help you if I could. Alas, i
f I stab myself with this thing, it will have no effect.”
“What are you talking about?” Was this a trick? Was my mother taking this form to lure me to my doom? Suspicious, I left three feet of space between us in case she lunged for me with the knife.
“You were always my favorite, Grateful,” she said with a sigh. “No matter what name you went by, or what life you were living, you always chose love. Again and again. Lifetime after lifetime. Whatever temptations fate sent your way, you’d find that man or he’d find you.”
“That man? You mean Rick, my caretaker?”
“Do you know how many caretakers there have been since the history of time?”
“No.”
“Seven. Do you know how many remain?”
I shook my head.
“Five. Two found ways to break the spell after only a few hundred years. Thousands of witches. Thousands of my progeny with the potential to share their immortality—to love and be loved in return, and only five have successfully done so. And of those five, only one has died multiple times defending me and mine, and always comes back to her caretaker, no matter the difficulty. No matter the risk.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I have been the goddess Hecate for millennia.” She raised her hand and gestured around the room. “Perhaps it is time I moved on. Who better than you to take my place?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to take your place. I never did. All I want is to live my life in your good graces, without an army of goblins trying to kill me.”
“You don’t still blame me for the goblins?” She laughed.
I bit my lip, remembering the two women I’d seen on the hill. Now that I was here, my mind finally processed the greater meaning of their presence. Hecate hadn’t sent the goblins to kill me. “It was Bathory,” I murmured.
“And Salome, the earth witch. The vampire Bathory convinced her that her ward wasn’t safe after you killed Tabetha. Salome hired the goblins to kill you. Of course, she might have come to her senses had Bathory not bound her with her blood.”
“No.” My mind reeled. “If it was them from the beginning, why did you mark me?” I looked down at my chest. The scar she’d put there was gone.
“When I saw the way you stood up to me… the fire you had in you… I thought to myself, this is the one Hecate, this is the one to free us from an eternity in this labyrinth. She will be faithful, wise, and stern when duty calls for it.”
“You bluffed to get me to unite the elements. You never intended to kill me,” I mumbled.
She nodded her head slowly and smiled. “If I truly wanted you dead, I’d mark your forehead, not your heart. What type of idiot would mark your heart? Put on a shirt, the mark disappears. Thwarted again.” She tossed up her hands and rolled her eyes. Grinning, she held out the blade to me. “The challenge is done. Get on with it.”
“No.” I took a step back.
“The time for choosing is over. The way back does not exist anymore, and the only way out is by killing me.”
“I don’t want to be a goddess. I just want my life back. What about Rick?”
Her hooded eyes widened. “What about Rick? Don’t you see the gift I am giving you? Accept my role and you can cure him of Tabetha’s mischief. He can be with you, here. He’s immortal. He can exist here permanently.”
“Here. In a stone labyrinth, cut off from our life? From the world?”
“It is the price a woman pays to become a goddess.”
“No.” I shook my head, starting to panic. I did not want to be a goddess. I certainly did not want to spend an eternity in a place like this. “No. I won’t do it. I do not accept.”
She tossed the knife gently in my direction. It clanked on the stone floor and skidded to a stop near my toes. She folded her fingers together and looked at me with the wisdom of a grandmother or a medicine woman, wisdom I could hardly fathom. “Then you will remain here, with me, for eternity.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Life isn’t fair, Grateful. No one promised either of us fair. The universe does not require fair, only balance. Before you resign yourself to spending forever with me here, see what you leave behind.” She stood and ambled toward the fire. With a wave of her hand, the flames danced and bent until an image of what was happening on earth came through on the vapors of heat.
I gasped as I saw Rick’s beast chained to the mud. The goblins had overcome him, and his scaly skin bubbled as if his change back to human form was close at hand. I saw Polina, Salome, and my body still clutched to each other in the circle. The power of the spell glowed a faint blue around us.
“The goblins are unable to penetrate the spell, but your earthly power is fading. You are still human, after all. In time, they will kill you, and Rick will be alone. Salome will recover but your friend Polina will suffer greatly at the hands of the goblins—if they don’t tear her apart and end her immortal existence first. Your familiar will die along with your human body, and your friend Logan…”
I turned my face from the fire to look at her.
“You don’t know what became of Logan, do you?” she asked wickedly. “He tried to run when the goblins came, but poor, weak human that he is, he simply wasn’t fast enough. They’ve captured him and hold him prisoner deep within the forest.”
My heart ached with the knowledge she was telling the truth. “Is he still alive?”
“For now. Goblins have a preference for human flesh. They will keep him alive until their victory celebration. Then they will have him as a main course.”
“No.” I covered my mouth with my hands.
“It’s your choice, Grateful. As the goddess, you could set all of this right. If you took the power from me, you could use it for the greater good. Who would be a more just and fair queen of the dead than you? You were born to do this. No one can do it but you.” Half of the crone’s crooked smile glowed in the firelight, the other half buried in shadow.
When I thought of my life’s purpose, I always thought about my job as a nurse. For me, being there when a patient was at their sickest and caring for them when nobody else could was my purpose. I’d brought people back from the brink of death. That was my purpose. Not this. This was blackmail. I’d been tricked and manipulated.
I looked back at the fire and thought about Rick, suddenly aware again that I was naked. Would I have to spend eternity without pants? Maybe I deserved this. All my friends had helped me get here, and I had failed them.
“Why didn’t you mention Julius?” I asked suddenly. “You showed me the fate of everyone but him.”
The old woman shrugged and brought her fingers to her jaw. She turned from me, taking interest in the fire.
“What are you keeping from me? Julius’s blood still courses through my veins and mine through his. He wouldn’t just leave until I was dead.” Could I even die? Or would I become some vampire/witch hybrid? He’d told me I couldn’t become a vampire, but I could draw on his power. I shared all his abilities, so why did Hecate not want to discuss Julius or our bond?
With her back still to me, I picked up the obsidian blade. “It’s time to end this,” I said.
“That’s right. Straight to the heart, dear.” She pivoted and pulled her dress aside to expose the wrinkled skin over her chest.
The heart. Strange that to kill a goddess required the heart, which I considered the most human of anatomy. But then, she looked human in the light of the fire.
“Close your eyes. I can’t do this with you staring at me,” I said.
She gave a curt nod and did as I requested. I approached and pressed the tip of the blade into her chest. A tiny drop of her blood pooled against the tip.
“It must be hard to be a goddess. Lonely. Isolating. I can understand why you did what you did, luring me here.”
She nodded her head and blinked slowly.
“You manipulated me, Mother, but I forgive you for it. I forgive you for everything.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across her face.
“So, I hope you can forgive me for this.” I sliced the blade against my forearm, quickly and silently, then pressed my blood to her lips. I wrapped my opposite arm around her head and pressed my wound into her mouth until I was sure she had swallowed some of my blood. Then I pushed her away.
“What are you doing?” she yelled, sounding younger than the old crone.
“I’m killing you.” I brought the blade down, plunging it into her heart. I knew I’d hit my mark because the dagger jerked in my hand with each failing beat.
The crone toppled to the floor, the blade withdrawing from her falling body. I tossed the dagger aside and rolled her onto her back. I watched the light drain from her eyes as her blood pooled near my feet.
And that’s when things got weird.
Chapter 30
Opa!
Pure unadulterated power forced my naked body into the center of the room. Once there, I burst into purple flame as if I was an elaborate dish a waiter had doused in brandy and ignited. As hot as the fire blazed, I did not burn. Instead, I expanded in the heat, growing until five rays of light shot out from my body. Each projection represented an element: blue for water, brown for earth, silver for metal, white for air, and green for wood. My purple fire burned down those rays of light and formed a circle around me. I became the cog in a mystical wheel, the five elements revolving around me, feeding me their power. I absorbed it all.
I lifted my hand in front of my face and watched it transform from the smooth skin of a young girl, to the muscular grip of a woman in her prime, to the spotted hand of an elderly crone. They were all different, yet all me. Time had folded in on itself. I’d become the goddess Hecate.
Soon, the room was too small for me. At my will, the walls of the labyrinth fell away, and I stood among the stars, the universe revolving around my hips. The heavens were still a mystery above me, but hell was peculiarly accessible. Tortured souls called to me from below my feet. I had too much going on to acknowledge their pleas. Unimaginable power poured into me, and my mind and my soul grappled with how to contain it, how to control it. The power consumed and confounded me. Past, present, and future converged. Was it today? Yesterday? A million years from now?
Mother May I (Knight Games Book 4) Page 18