Becoming a goddess cannot be explained in human language. There are no words for the sensation of one’s atoms exploding like supernovas or the intimate oneness that occurs with the life force of a single cell. The experience was overwhelming. So much so that I almost forgot what I’d planned to do with my new power. I’d become this for a reason.
The memory came to me on a warm breeze through the universe.
Love.
It would be romantic to say it was Rick who tethered me to reality. Our love was a strong and beautiful thing, certainly worth a stop on the road to immortality. But he was not the only checkpoint in my spiritual expansion. My sisterhood with Polina, the witch who had helped me get here at great personal sacrifice, also anchored me to the world, as did my friendship with Logan. Even Julius, whose bond had saved my life, and Poe, whose love mimicked a kick in the pants more frequently than a hug, crossed my mind, as did Michelle and my father.
I was loved, and I loved others.
In a state of infinite possibilities, it came down to this. All that mattered was love. Expanding further, moving beyond the plane I was in, took me farther away from love. And so, as painful as it was to do so, I stopped becoming the goddess and turned away from the increasing power.
I had promises to keep.
With everything I had, I concentrated on returning to the ones I loved. To do so, I had to contract and stretch the tethers that bound me to the wheel in the labyrinth. I was relieved when the magic obeyed. I arrived in the forest outside the goblin battle. Not exactly where I’d expected to be. I’d focused on Rick, but defiantly my magic brought me here.
Ahhh! Logan’s screams drew my attention and I walked to a clearing nearby. He was bound to an oak tree, two platinum-headed goblins poking him with daggers and drinking his blood.
“Leave him!” I said, but the words came out jumbled, like I was speaking in a different language.
The silver heads turned to face me. “Who are you?” the female asked, drawing her bow and pointing a silver arrow in my direction. I recognized her, although her existence seemed insignificant now.
The male she was with pointed his dagger at me. He couldn’t operate a bow because he was missing a hand.
“Tobias,” I said and took a step toward him.
The female wrinkled her nose and released the arrow. It hit me squarely in the stomach. I laughed at the faint tickle of silver before my power melted and absorbed it.
With a deep breath, I sent a gust of wind in their direction, careful to avoid Logan. The goblins shrieked and blew apart piece by piece, raining silver chunks at Logan’s feet.
Logan’s heart fluttered in panic. I could hear it like the beat of hummingbird wings inside his chest. He kicked and pressed himself against the tree to escape me.
“Relax,” I said softly, although it was clear he didn’t understand me. I waved a hand and the branch of the tree reached down and broke the silver chains binding him.
He shielded his eyes and looked in my direction. “Grateful? Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, but he shook his head. He didn’t understand me.
Poe and Hildegard landed in a branch of the tree. “Thank you, my queen,” Poe said reverently.
I bowed my head slightly in acknowledgment as a cry of pain rang out from the hillside. With one look back at Logan and Poe, I changed course. With some effort, I concentrated on Rick and transported myself to his side. On the edge of the battlefield, he’d succumbed to his human form again and was naked and shivering under a crisscross of goblin chains that sizzled against his flesh. Julius, pale and bleeding, frantically fought the goblins, his efforts to protect my lifeless body increasingly less effective. The goblins were winning. Time to turn the tables.
Stretching my arms to my sides, I focused all my anger on the goblin army. I didn’t simply draw on one element, but all of them. I released a blast of energy embodying all my hatred for their kind.
I’d never really understood that word smote. Like in the biblical sense… the angel of the lord smote him. By context, I could have guessed it was bad, but not until this moment on the mountain did I actually get it. I smote the goblins. I didn’t just kill them. All that was left of an entire legion were a few smoking silver parts. The rest? Obliterated, their shadows burned into the hillside.
Julius recoiled at the destruction, then scrambled to face me, falling on his knees and bowing. I almost laughed at his reaction, but I realized I must not look like me, considering my body was still here, huddled in the circle.
“You are free,” I said to him in my jumbled language. I clipped the metaphysical string I could see holding him to me, well, to my human form.
He jerked as if a giant weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but he stayed where he was.
My human body, now safe from goblin harm, huddled within a dying spell, pitched forward in the web of Polina and Salome’s arms. We were holding each other up by force of will, but we wouldn’t last forever. I was on borrowed time, and there were things I needed to do.
My attention turned to my caretaker. With a blink of my eye, the chains binding him dissolved and blew away. He didn’t get up. Probably couldn’t. He rolled his head to look at me, and his eyes widened in the glow of what I’d become. I was ready to give him what Tabetha had taken: his memories and his element.
But as I approached, I saw myself reflected in his eyes. I flickered in his pupils like a candle flame. The image I saw was humanoid and made of light, with tendrils of power trailing behind her like wings. I looked like an angel. I was made of light.
The memory of Monk’s Hill, when Polina had showed me Rick’s transformation, flashed through my mind. It all made sense. It wasn’t an angel who had given Rick his magical element; it was me. And in order to replace what Rick had lost, I had to go back to the time and place of its loss.
But first, I wanted him to know who I was. I lowered my lips to Rick’s ear and gave him our history with one word. “Remember.” His eyes fluttered against my light, and I cupped his cheek in my hand.
Concentrating on 1698, on the moment I’d seen the angel complete Rick’s spell, I left him on the hillside of Mount Coffin and passed through time and space to the day of my first death. I funneled down from the sky, eyeing my burned and crispy corpse bound to the stake in front of Monk’s Hill Chapel with an odd detachment. I willed the fire underneath her to extinguish.
Rick’s prone body shivered in the dirt at the base of the hill, and I rushed to his side. It took effort to hold myself here. I felt stretched, like I was tethered to the labyrinth by an elastic band that was being twisted, drawing me back.
Rick blinked at me, his mind unable to absorb who I was or what I was. Cupping his face in my hands, I could see my mistake. When Isabella, my first incarnation, had completed the caretaker spell, she had failed to provide Rick with a mentor. His element was there, buried deep inside, a product of the caretaker spell, but he had no one to draw it out. There were so few caretakers, after all. She might have done it herself had she lived long enough, but instead she left it to me, the future version of herself.
Tabetha’s spell, the persigranate she’d forced on Rick, had targeted me. She’d ordered him to forget me, but I was part of the spell that had made him a caretaker. When he forgot me, he also forgot how to access his power. I had completed the spell, not in 1698, but today, when I’d traveled back in time to bestow a final gift on him.
“Become,” I said. The word came out jumbled as before, but he understood. His eyes widened, and a current of energy flowed between us. In that tether of energy, I coaxed the earth element from his heart. “Become,” I said again, more softly.
“I will,” he said.
I pressed a kiss to his lips. It was necessarily short. The gravitational pull the universe had on me was too strong to deny any longer. Arms outstretched, I returned the way I’d come, in a column of light.
* * * * *
With a painful jolt, I arrived in the labyr
inth at the exact moment I’d stabbed Hecate. It took concentration to fix myself firmly in that place and time. At the center of the wheel of elements, I worked again to contain myself to fit inside the room. The stone walls seemed suffocating after my journey through time and space.
What I was about to try was dangerous. If I survived, I wasn’t sure what life might be like. Would I still have my mind? Would I ever see the people I loved again?
I turned in the direction of the metal element and focused all my intentions on Polina. “Return,” I whispered, and I cut the silver ray of light between it and me. I repeated the incantation with earth, focusing on Salome. “Return,” I said again. The brown element didn’t leave me exactly, but I could feel it split and dull. When I got to wood and water, I focused on the old crone lying dead on the floor near my feet. “Return,” I said. The blue and green elements broke off from me and floated into the old woman’s body.
Wind I kept for myself.
When I was done with this process, I pulled the wheel inside, grunting with the effort and used all my magic to extinguish the purple flame. I knelt beside the old crone. She wasn’t breathing, but that was what I expected. She had to die for me to take her role, even temporarily.
I tipped her head back and started CPR. Two big breaths, then thirty chest compressions. I counted in my head 1 and 2 and 3… I’d given her vampire blood—Julius’s blood in mine. If my theory was correct, it would heal her torn heart. All I had to do was get it to beat again. If I could bring her back, there was a chance it would reverse the spell and return Hecate’s power to the proper place.
I continued CPR, focusing my intention, my power, on healing the wound I’d caused. I was the goddess, but I couldn’t raise the dead. Still, when the crone had told me I needed to stab her in the heart, I realized that when I became the goddess, she would become human. Human hearts could heal. Human hearts could stop and be made to beat again.
Gasp! Hecate opened her eyes, and the breath of life filled her lungs. With her inhale, each of the five elements plucked from my chest and floated into her gaping maw. Earth, metal, wood, water, and even wind, although I felt a portion of the last stick to my insides like a coating of tar.
By her second breath, the room didn’t feel claustrophobic anymore, but then, I was small again, human and witch. I waited, wondering if my minutes were numbered. Would she destroy me for my insolence? Keep me prisoner here for eternity?
It didn’t matter. I had done what I was supposed to do. I believed with my whole heart I’d done the right thing.
The old crone rose from the floor without any deference for gravity. She did not bend or use her knees. She floated from lying to standing in one unnatural and horrific movement. The vibration was back, her three forms shifting, fighting for control. The crone was still there, as was the mother, but this time Hecate settled on the maiden.
Her wide-eyed innocence took me aback. She looked young, maybe seventeen, with a dark braid over one shoulder, and a sheath dress that accentuated her smooth skin and straight spine.
“You didn’t follow through,” she said through full red lips.
“I couldn’t. I never wanted the power, just to make things right again. I won’t become the goddess. I won’t take your immortality. I don’t want it.”
“Am I to understand you sacrificed yourself and denied the lure of power to save the people you loved?”
“Yes. That’s right. This existence isn’t for me.”
“Yet, here you are.” She folded her hands in front of her.
“You can keep me here until my body dies, I suppose.” I frowned. “Maybe forever. I don’t actually know how souls work. But if you do, I don’t think it will get you what you want.”
“No? Tell me, Grateful Knight, what it is you believe I want.”
“You want a friend, a sister, and a daughter. You want someone to care for you and to understand that tiny bit of you that remembers being human.”
She batted her long eyelashes at me. “An interesting hypothesis.”
“I’m pretty sure death isn’t the answer, even for a goddess.”
“You were always my favorite, Grateful Knight.” Her form shifted again from the maiden into the confident middle-aged woman I called the mother. “I have tested you, and you have failed.”
I stiffened. “What are the consequences of failing?
She grinned and in the next moment we were in the jungle outside her labyrinth. I was still naked, and I hugged myself in the chilly climate. “Your consequence is that you go back where you came from.”
I breathed a shaky exhale of relief.
“And Grateful, keep to one element from now on.”
“Of course.”
She placed her hands on my shoulders and flooded me with warmth, and then leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. In the blink of an eye, I was flat on my back on the hillside in Washington, clothed in the torn, gritty rags I’d been wearing during the spell, and staring up at five extremely concerned faces.
Polina and Salome gasped in witchy unison and looked at each other as if they’d just witnessed a miracle.
“What?” I asked.
“You were dead,” they said together.
I laughed. “I wasn’t dead.” I made it sound like the mere thought was ridiculous.
Logan raised his eyebrows. “Damn, you are hard to kill.”
“The hardest.” I pushed myself to a seated position.
Julius offered me his hand. “Not just hard to kill. As good dead as alive.”
“You stayed,” I said to the vampire, allowing him to help me up. “I broke the bond. You don’t have to help me anymore.”
“You did, and I don’t,” he admitted. “I stayed… for political reasons.”
“Thank you,” I said softly.
He looked away.
And finally, there was Rick.
My caretaker opened his arms, and I stepped into his embrace. He kissed my forehead, my cheek, my hair. “Take of me,” he said, offering his throat.
I pulled back slightly. “Rick, do you remember? Us from before?”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Everything, mi cielo. You are my sky, my beginning and my end.”
I blinked back tears as he lowered his lips to mine.
Chapter 31
Full Circle
Salome took her leave of us on the hillside, anxious to get back to the life she’d neglected under Bathory’s compulsion. Her previous concerns about me seemed moot now that I no longer housed Tabetha’s element. I wasn’t sure who would take over as Salem’s witch, but we both agreed to help whoever Mother called to the task. I didn’t fully trust Salome and never would, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt that her choices concerning the goblins were made under Bathory’s control.
The rest of us returned to the hotel to pack our things.
Later, in her room, I confronted my half-sister for her selfless involvement. “I owe you one,” I said to Polina.
She snorted. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than one.” She pointed at her milky eye.
“Yes, I do,” I said seriously. “Anything. Anytime.”
A single tear pooled in the corner of her lower lid, and I pulled her into a tight hug.
“We’re driving the hearse back to New Hampshire. We could take a detour and drop you off in Smuggler’s Notch if you want.”
She shook her head. “No offense, but I’m not up for a long car ride. A little gold dust and Hildie and I will be home within the hour.” She patted the bag on her hip.
I kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll phone you when I’m back home.”
She smiled. With a whistle around her thumb and middle finger, she called Hildegard. The snowy white owl barreled through the open window and landed on her shoulder. A blur of black feathers wasn’t far behind. Poe. My raven landed on my outstretched arm, dejected.
“I’ll miss you, Hildie, my darling. Remember, I am only a ni
ght’s flight away,” Poe said. His voice cracked with emotion. I raised an eyebrow. My smart aleck, pain-in-the-ass familiar had an honest-to-goodness crush.
For her part, Hildegard squawked her goodbye as owl and owner stepped into the tiny bathroom. With one last wave through the door, there was a flash of gold, a flush of water, and they were gone.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” I said to Poe. “I mean, the germs alone.” I shook my head.
Poe sniffled. “The gold dust? At least she’s not stuck riding in a hearse across the country with a wind witch who can’t fly.” He rolled his eyes.
I lowered my arm, sending him flapping to the dresser. “A wind witch who can’t fly,” I mimicked through a grimace and flipped him the finger. Asshole.
There was a knock at the door, and I crossed to open it. Logan.
“We’re all packed. The sun is rising so Julius is already locked in the coffin. Rick’s got your stuff loaded. I can take the first shift if you want,” Logan said.
He scratched the scruffy beard that had formed over the length of our journey while he waited for an answer. I took two steps, threw my arms around him, and kissed him squarely on the cheek.
“What was that for?”
“For abandoning your business, spending your money, and risking your life… for me. Thank you, Logan. I owe you one.”
He snorted. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than one!”
I laughed. “You know, Polina said the exact same thing.”
“Hmm. Maybe that redhead has a brain in her skull after all.”
“Logan, are you blushing? Do you have a crush on Polina?”
He shook his head vehemently. “You’re a great friend, Grateful, but your kind are crazy-ass bitches.”
“Understandable.”
Mother May I (Knight Games Book 4) Page 19