Nausea roiled my insides. I gagged a dry heave. This was the vision Celestina saw. This was the moment she’d been afraid of. It had nothing to do with me! I’d kept my promise! How could I have known Zephora would have appeared and manipulated events to make Celestina believe I’d deceived her?
My niece tried to scream, but only a soundless hiss escaped her mouth. She cradled her mother’s head in her lap. “Mom?” she asked, tugging her, as though trying to rouse her from a deep sleep. “Mom?” She pressed a pair of fingers against her neck. “Oh, my God! She’s not breathing! This can’t be happening.” She set a fiery gaze on mine. “You promised!”
I shook my head, shocked that she believed me capable of such a horrendous act, especially after I’d sworn not to kill her mother. “It’s not what you think.”
A moment later, Alexis’s body and heart exploded into dust.
My niece screeched, jumped backwards, and covered her face with her hands for a brief moment before pulling them away. Tears spilled from her eyes.
As I spun toward her, I once more saw Zephora step into view. Her beaming smile broadened as she unlatched the gate to enter the backyard. I went over to Celestina, but as I hovered over my niece, her eyes closed, and I reached out for her.
She looked at me as though in a hallucinogenic state, unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. “You really did it.” Her voice sounded far away, as though she’d spoken through a tube extending from one end of the yard to the other, despite the fact that I stood mere inches from her.
“Celie?” Once more, my voice came out hoarse. “Celie? I didn’t do this!”
A metal latch closed in the alley behind us.
Celestina craned her neck in that direction.
Zephora strolled toward us as though she’d been taking a leisurely journey through the neighborhood to smell the flowers…past midnight!
Her eyes connected with Celestina’s, and my niece’s jagged breathing straightened out, relaxed.
“Don’t listen to anything she says,” I wheezed, unable to bring my voice above an even tone. If I’d managed to do otherwise, maybe one of the neighbors would have heard me and dialed the police. Nevertheless, my voice didn’t register anywhere above a firm voice, not even close to a shout. It shocked me that everything that had happened, other than the barking dogs, more or less occurred in silence.
Celestina didn’t swallow in an attempt to speak. She didn’t even blink. She just stared at Zephora.
I looked over my shoulder in hopes that Nolan might soon appear, but I didn’t see him anywhere. It figured now that I trusted him, he wasn’t anywhere to be found, not that I blamed him.
I spun back to Zephora, worried that she might attempt to end my life as well. “Why did you do this?”
A meek smile came to her lips. “I did nothing.” She shook her head, emotionally distressed. “Terrible loss and misery seems to follow you everywhere you go.” She cocked her head to the side, as though trying to determine the rationale behind her statement. A sorrowful expression flitted across her face as she lowered her head. “So, you have killed another,” she said, unsurprised. “Why you insist on taking such barbaric actions, I shall never comprehend.” She looked up at me. “You have murdered your grandmother, your mother, and now your own twin sister.” She sighed, as though she couldn’t bear the thought of asking her next words. “Have you no decency, no goodness in your heart?”
My mouth hung open at the accusation. I swallowed in order to form my response.
“I presume your niece is next?”
“Why?” asked Celestina. She stomped a foot into the ground. “You promised,” she said softly as more tears left her eyes. She swallowed continually as though she couldn’t get saliva down her throat. “You…” Her voice disappeared as more tears sprung forth. “I trusted you.”
“Didn’t you see why your mom did to the woman and her dog?” I asked her. “I couldn’t help them. I don’t even have any magic. Look around. Do you see any burnt grass? No. Because Zephora stole my powers before I left your house. So when your mom came at me, I defended myself. You’ve got to believe me. Only Zephora has the power to do something like this. I couldn’t…rip out…” I couldn’t utter another word. My stomach still felt queasy, and thinking about what happened to Alexis made pangs hit my stomach.
“Please believe me,” I finally managed to say to my niece. “I promised. Remember?” My voice intensified, hardened. “I promised you, Celestina. And I kept my promise. Look into my eyes, and you’ll see the truth. Look at me.”
“No…” Celestina plugged her palms into the ground and backed away. “You are a murderer.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You’ve killed everyone in our family.”
“That’s not true.”
“You killed your Grams.”
“Yes, but—”
“You killed Granny.”
“Okay, but you’ve got to understand—”
“And you killed Mom.”
“I did not!”
Zephora sniffed with annoyance. “Why must you continue to desecrate your family? Why do you insist on ending our line? I’ve heard about your propensity for black magic. Have you forged a bond with Satan?”
I felt my niece slipping away from me and heading toward the darkness that had corrupted Delphine and Alexis. My heart sank and all the energy left my body. “No, please, Celie, she’s lying. Don’t listen to her. Please, just, please listen—”
“No.” She shook her head, her mouth sputtering as she tried to snatch each breath. “You promised,” she squeaked more than said. “I believed in you.”
“I didn’t break my promise—” I sensed that no matter how much I tried to convince her, Celestina wouldn’t believe anything I said. It seemed she had already made up her mind. That possibility made my nerves throttle under my flesh, made my breath come quick, made my heart clench in pain.
“I told you what would happen,” she said, “and you promised not to hurt her.”
“I kept my word. I’m not lying, Celie.” While searching her eyes, I watched her harden her defenses, as though letting her affection for me go adrift. Sensing a distance growing between us, I didn’t want to see her slip away. “Please believe me. I didn’t lie to you.”
Zephora stepped forward until she made her way between my niece and I. She set her disapproving gaze on mine. “You have done enough damage, have you not? Now you want to torment your last family member with more lies?” She turned to Celestina. “There is no further reason to spend one moment more than necessary on your heartless aunt, is there?”
“Celie, I—”
“Stop calling me that!” she shrieked, slamming fists against her thighs. “You don’t have the right to call me that,” she said in a low yet cold tone. She stormed up to me and halted mere inches from me. Although her chest rose and fell with every furious breath, she evened out her tone: “You are dead to me!”
“No, don’t say that.” My soul hit the ground, and it felt like a steamroller had swept across it, stamping my spirit into the ground, crushing it, obliterating it. “Don’t say—”
“If you come near me again,” she said with dead eyes, “I will kill you!”
To see her turn vicious sent a dagger into my heart. How could she feel this way? Didn’t she know how much I loved her, how much I needed her in my life? Hadn’t I expressed that time after time in both my words and my actions? “But, Celie, I—”
“Did you hear me?” she asked in a deep, feverish voice. “You don’t get to call me that. Not anymore, Serena! Try it, and I’ll break your neck.” Her eyes turned ruthless. “Better yet, I’ll tear your heart out—” My niece got to her feet in one fluid motion. She walked away from me…and headed toward Zephora.
Just as she stepped away from me, I reached out and clutched her palm. “Please don’t do this, Celie. You don’t know—”
She whipped her hand to the side, releasing her hand from my grasp. “I’m done with you.”
“No!” My shrieking cry sounded like it belonged to a heartbroken woman, someone who’d lost the one thing she held most dear in her life. As she released my hand, I fell in a heap on the ground, beside my dead sister’s ashes. “You can’t mean it.”
“Come here, my dear!” Zephora called out to Celestina.
I reached out to them, but heeding my niece’s warning, I didn’t want to stir any more animosity than already existed inside her. She had already passed the point of listening with an open mind. Besides, her mother had just died…at my hands, or so she thought. I gave her credit for not trying to end my life without a second thought. But how she could enter Zephora’s sphere of influence?
At the same time, how could she believe anything I’d say? She’d watched me kill Grams and Delphine. She’d foreseen this event years ago. So how could she think otherwise? How could anything I’d say persuade her to believe me? It all added up to one thing: I killed her mother. I’d broken my promise. She couldn’t trust me. She could only trust…an evil woman who wanted to use her, control her, force her to indentured servitude. I fell forward, the weight of my heavy heart dragging me to the ground.
As Celestina passed up Zephora and headed for the alley, out of earshot, the sorceress turned back to me with a blank expression. “You truly are the perfect foil. Since you acquired your abilities, I set events into motion that would end with this very result.” She flashed a creepy grin. “Thank you for making it sooo easy, Serena.” Her smile broadened. “I could not have done it without you!”
Then she turned around and placed a hand on Celestina’s back, but immediately withdrew it as though showing even the slightest act of humanity toward my niece repulsed her. She guided my niece toward the front of the yard.
As I watched the ancient sorceress lead my niece away before disappearing from view, only two thoughts entered my mind. First, I would kill Zephora. I would end her life, and she would never return to Earth. And second, I would convince Celestina that I hadn’t betrayed her trust. I would make her believe in me again because, if I failed, well, I just couldn’t live in that type of world.
Also by Sydney Bristow
Nightwish
Silverthorn
www.sydneybristowauthor.com
Bloodstone Page 26