by Nancy Holder
The others looked just as shaken and confused as she felt. “Time to finish this,” she muttered, turning to face Holly and her demons.
“We’ll kill you and then her and then all the rest,” the demons chortled. “There are too many of us for you to stop.”
“I can stop you and I will,” she countered. “Holly, Holly, sweetheart. You must come back. Fight them, fight, fight!”
The face slowly began to contort back from a demonic one, to Holly’s. The head lulled to the side, and Tante Cecile held her breath, hoping that Holly had heard her and was coming back to them.
Irritated, Holly realized that someone else was calling to her. She tried to put her hand over her eyes, but her hand wouldn’t move. Panicked, she opened her eyes and looked down. She was wearing some quite white thing, and her arms were pinned inside it. The words fight, fight, echoed inside her head.
She panicked. Are we under attack? How could she fight if her arms were tied?
She muttered a couple of words, and the jacket fell off her. That was better; now that she could move her arms, she swung the left one slowly forward. Good. Now, what about a fight?
She closed her eyes. It would have to wait.
She needed a nap.
The straitjacket fell from Holly moments before her face changed back to its demonic appearance. A hideous snarling demon came to the front. Holly’s arm jerked upward awkwardly, as though she were a marionette. Slowly her finger extended toward Tante Cecile.
“Muerte,” the voice hissed.
Nicole watched in horror as Tante Cecile fell to the ground, clutching her chest. Her skin was ashen, and her lips stood out like a bruise. Her eyes bulged in terror and suddenly fixed, rolling back into her head.
Silvana began to scream.
Nicole took a step toward what used to be Holly. “I command you to release my cousin!” she cried, her voice shaking with wrath.
For a moment the world seemed to slow, and she could feel power, real power, rushing through her like a hot wind. The witchblood sang in her veins, and for one moment she understood all too well what it was like to be Holly.
“You will release her,” she thundered, her voice exploding the windows.
“My, my, how the rose has blossomed,” James chuckled.
Nicole gasped and spun around, her concentration shattered.
THIRTEEN
LAPIS LAZULI
Air and water, earth and fire
All tools of our ire
Death and destruction are what we bring
The only chorus that we sing
Goddess, Priestess, now we plead
Both our souls and bodies feed
High Priestess, watch over all us keep
Wake now from your hateful sleep
James and Eli stood leering just outside the front window of Dan’s cabin. Shards of glass were still falling.
“What do you want, James?” Nicole demanded, although where moments before her voice had been trembling with power, now it was trembling with fear.
“I should think that would be rather obvious,” he answered, allowing his eyes to travel the length of her body.
She flushed, but stood her ground. “Get out.”
He gave her a mocking bow. “But, of course, honey. I just came to deliver a friendly warning.”
He and Eli turned to go. Against her better instincts she asked, “What?”
He turned back to her. “Oh, it’s just that Eli’s dad has amassed quite an army of the Deveraux dead. He’ll be attacking you in, oh”—he checked his watch— “about fifteen minutes.” With that, he turned and he and Eli disappeared into the darkness.
Nicole’s legs started to buckle, and Philippe caught her. She glanced around the room at the stricken faces. All of them were staring at her except for Silvana, who was weeping over the body of her aunt and Holly, who was laughing at the sight. The noise was too much for her. She waved a hand in the air and it was as though she had hit the “mute” button on the TV. Silvana still cried and Holly still laughed, but she couldn’t hear them.
Philippe lowered her slowly to the ground and she clung to his arm. In fifteen minutes they were all going to be as dead as Tante Cecile.
Holly heard explosions. She opened her eyes groggily, aware that she was having to fight to do so. Where am I? In a flash it came back, the Dreamtime, the demons. Had she made it home? She glanced slowly around. She could feel taloned fingers wrestling with her, ripping at the borders of her consciousness.
Her eyes fell on Silvana. The girl was hunched over Tante Cecile, sobbing. Is Tante Cecile sleeping? Holly wondered. From the way the body lay, she would guess the older woman was actually dead. She heard them scrabbling at her mind, gnawing at the edges like rats. She heard their little claws clicking around. Everyone was looking at Nicole. Everyone but Silvana. Silvana’s hair was getting wet from her tears.
Holly began to laugh.
“What are we going to do?” Amanda asked, bewildered and shaken.
“I don’t know,” Nicole admitted as she held her head in her hands.
Alonzo came in from the other room. Then, suddenly in their midst, stood a woman Nicole had never seen before. Given how the rest of the evening had gone, she wasn’t surprised.
Anne-Louise Montrachet stood unsmiling. “You need our help.”
Nicole stared at Amanda. “Who is this?”
Amanda’s jaw was set in a tight line, but there was no disguising the look of relief in her eyes. “Anne-Louise. She’s from the Mother Coven.”
Nicole nodded and turned back to Anne-Louise. The other woman nodded cursorily at her. She doesn’t like us much, Nicole thought.
“You’re safe for now. The wards will hold.”
Nicole raised an eyebrow questioningly. Before she could ask, though, Amanda told her, “She’s good at that sort of thing.”
“The best,” Anne-Louise answered. “But that doesn’t matter. Michael Deveraux’s army is coming. There’s going to be a battle.”
Amanda took a deep breath. Tommy appeared from the other room, came to her side, and held her. He said to the woman, “Did you bring help?”
Anne-Louise nodded. “We will do what we can.”
“I only pray to the Goddess that it is enough,” Tommy said quietly.
In the distance, footfalls rumbled and birds shrieked. The ground began to shake.
The others looked at one another, then at Anne-Louise.
But Anne-Louise was staring at Holly, whose face had resumed its demonic cast.
“We may have to … to kill her,” she murmured.
Amanda and Nicole stared at her.
“They’re coming,” Pablo announced.
The dead marched for Michael Deveraux. From the graveyards they rose, their burial garments caked with mud and decomposition. From the bay they fought their way through shipwrecks and kelp beds to break the surface, needing no air, and crawled up the embankments. As they marched through the dark-ness—and then through the rain—parts of them detached and were abandoned: arms, ribs, in a few cases, heads.
In the terrible rain and the thickly forested gullies, monsters broke loose from other dimensions and tumbled toward the cliff where Michael Deveraux waited. Flurries of falcons blackened the moon; imps rode winged nightmares whose talons dripped poison and blood.
They converged on the hillside where Michael waited, his arms spread, chanting in ancient languages. Demons in full armor raised their spears and shields to him. Enormous creatures—scaled, fanged, horned— lumbered through the mud, the white-blue lightning strobing on their teeth and red, glowing eyes.
Hovering above the bacchanal, Fantasme screeched and capered with eagerness for the battle to begin.
Laurent stood beside Michael, his arms crossed, nodding his approval as the army massed. They were a short distance from the shaman’s cabin, where the witches were no doubt quaking with fear.
“This is going to be over fast,” Michael said smugly.
&nbs
p; Laurent raised one brow. “Where are your son and James Moore? They should be at your side.” He cleared his throat and added, “I warned you to watch him.”
Michael concealed his embarrassment; he didn’t know where they were, and Laurent was correct: They should be here. It was galling to endure Eli’s obvious lack of respect for his own father and his High Priest as well. It could also prove disastrous—if Laurent decided Michael was too weak to act as the head of the Supreme Coven, he could simply wait for another generation of Deveraux to grow up, and select one of them.
Damn you, Jeraud, he thought. Why did you have to be the rebellious one?
You would have made a fine leader.
Laurent raised a hand, and the sky above them burst with light, creating a vortex of energy that swirled and throbbed. From it fell more warriors, including knights on horseback and men in modern combat gear: the Deveraux dead of generations past. Scores of them descended from the vortex, joining the army at the base of the cliff. None spoke, but their armor clanked and their weapons knocked against their sides as they looked silently up at Michael.
Michael had not forgotten that Holly had been able to raise an army of her own dead. Nor that she had managed to defeat him with it. Taking the battle to the water had not deterred her.
But this time, she’s not here, he thought.
In the cabin, Anne-Louise invoked the Goddess, and from a wavering mist just outside the cabin, the warriors of the Mother Coven took their form.
They were knights in armor, and soldiers, and amazons and Valkyries. But they were not fully solid.
Nicole glanced at Anne-Louise, who looked both embarrassed and frustrated until she realized Nicole was looking at her. Then she raised her chin and continued her chant.
More fighters appeared—there were hundreds— each as insubstantial as the others.
She stopped, then turned her attention to Holly, encasing her in a bubble of green energy. Holly cocked her head as if she didn’t understand what was happening, then erupted into screams and began to throw herself against the barrier. “Let me out of here, witch!” she shrieked. “I’ll kill you!”
Amanda pressed her face against Tommy’s chest. Then she squared her shoulders resolutely and said to Nicole, “We’re in charge now, Nicki. It’s up to us.”
She held out her hand. Nicole placed her palm over Amanda’s, and two thirds of their lily brand were joined. Energy sizzled up and down their arms.
Together they faced the doorway. Dan and Uncle Richard joined them.
Then the cabin began to shake with the force of the rain and the wind outside, and Tommy whispered to Amanda, “I love you.”
“Attack!” Michael shouted, and the dead swarmed toward the little cabin of the shaman.
From his vantage point atop a spectral tank, he watched his forces swarming toward their ghostly opponents. Mother Coven forces, he thought, sneering. Of very little use.
Sure enough, the enemy was engaged, and the massacre began. The warriors of the Mother Coven simply weren’t as strong as his own troops. Some of the Mother Coven fighters put up a struggle, but many simply faded from existence, or disappeared in a shower of sparks. Before long, his monsters, zombies, and demons had cut a swath through them and were converging on the cabin.
He chuckled, and Duc Laurent, standing on the tank beside him, wagged a finger. “Don’t get too cocky,” he warned. “The witches have not yet shown themselves.”
Holly, whispered the woman inside her head. Holly, we can save you.
“Go away,” Holly hissed. “Go away, go away!”
She burst into fresh laughter. As the people who had imprisoned her looked at her, she flung out her arms and shouted, “I foreswear you, all of you! Go to the Devil! Go to hell!”
“Oh, my God,” Richard murmured as the magical barrier his daughters had erected began to wobble. Flashes of magic burst at the shield over the broken window, and at the covers over all the other windows. The door was about to give way.
All the magic users in the room were at work, strengthening the wards while outside, the soldiers of the Mother Coven were being eliminated. The battle was perhaps thirty seconds old, yet it was nearly lost.
Richard flexed his arms, ready for whatever came next, hoping there was something he could do to hurt the enemy before they took him down.
“I can’t deal with this anymore,” Kari cried as she crumpled into a ball. The others glanced at her, wondering when she had woken up.
“I should have given her a stronger tranquilizer,” Armand muttered.
Then a light flashed to the right of her, became a portal, and James and Eli tumbled into the room.
“Grab them!” Philippe shouted.
Richard rushed at the two men but was flung across the room by James before he could get anywhere near them. Tommy tried next as Dan, Amanda, and Nicole aimed magical energy at them.
James and Eli deflected it all easily. Laughing, they both strode to Nicole, grabbed her arms and, before anyone else realized what was happening, they tossed her into the portal and barreled in after her.
It disappeared.
“No!” Philippe shouted. “No!”
Then the cabin exploded.
The tank rocked with the explosion. Michael was laughing so hard, he nearly fell off, and Laurent had to steady him.
“Mop it up!” he shouted to his warriors. “Take ’em out!” He grabbed his ghostly ancestor’s arm to keep his balance and said, “To quote the kids, ‘This rocks!’”
“Indeed,” Laurent agreed.
Despite the rain, the forest had caught fire. The trees showered sizzling branches on the ruins of the structure. Smoke clouded his vision, and Michael strained to see if there were any survivors.
The tank rolled through the mud. “Alors,” Laurent said loudly. He pointed. “Look!”
Michael’s mouth dropped open.
Hovering above the destroyed cabin floor, a green sphere held a single inhabitant who was pounding against it.
Holly.
Her face was a contorted mass of terror. She was shrieking wildly.
Laurent snapped his fingers at her, and she collapsed to the bottom of the sphere.
He and Michael climbed down from the tank and slogged over the bodies of dead demons and deanimated corpses as they made their way to the sphere.
Holly looked up at them. Her terror grew.
As well it should, Michael thought, preparing to annihilate her. He raised his hands.
“Make it stop,” she whimpered. “Make it stop.”
“Oh, I will,” he assured her. He began to conjure a fireball.
Then Laurent held up a hand.
“Attends.” He leaned toward Holly. “Do you know who we are?”
She shook her head. “Make it stop. Make it stopmakeitstopmakeitstop!” She threw back her head and screamed, “Help me!”
The two Deveraux stared at each other in wonder.
“Well.” Michael raised his brows. Then he turned back to Holly Cathers, the strongest Cahors witch since Isabeau. “All right,” he said brightly. “I think we can work out some arrangement, Holly.”
They ran through the forest as the evil army pursued them. Lightning and fire crackled over the heads of Tommy and Amanda as they raced for their lives.
“Who else?” Amanda gasped. “Who else made it?” She caught her breath as another scream of agony pierced the chaos around them. “Did you hear that? They’re still torturing Holly!”
He raised a hand. “Look! It’s Philippe!”
“Philippe!” she cried. She allowed Tommy to drag her along as they caught up with Philippe, who embraced them both.
“Is Pablo with you?” he demanded, looking wildly around.
“No. And what about my dad?” Amanda murmured. “And what about Sasha?”
In the distance, Holly screamed again. Amanda cried out and turned in her direction. Tommy held her fast.
“We can’t go back for her,” Tommy said. “We c
an’t go back.”
“He’s right, petite,” Philippe said, his face bloodless, his eyes filled with sorrow. “For now, we must stay alive, so we can save the others.”
Tears streamed down Amanda’s face as she turned back around.
Someday I will, she promised Holly. I will come back for you. And for Nicole, too. I swear I will.
Or I’ll die trying.
* * *
From her perch in the mists of time, Pandion, the lady hawk of the Cahors, stirred from her perch and rose above time and perdition; above those damned and doomed to struggle and strive. She was the mystical symbol of the strongest witchblood line in all of human history, and as she soared and danced in the sky, she heard the screech of her immortal enemy, the hawk of the Deveraux, whose name was Fantasme.
Just as certainly as if they were enshrined in marble effigies, the players of life’s pageant held their poses, frozen against rainbow-hued chronicles of what had already happened in the tangled tale of Cahors and Deveraux, and what would come to pass.
Worries were like mice to Pandion; fears were greater prey. She was of witchblood the greatest of all familiars, and so her motives could never be said to be purely good. The hunt stirred the blood; the pursuit was what propelled her essence from one century to the next. So it was with witchery and warlockhood— indeed, with all coventry—passions and hatreds, ambitions and thwarted dreams, kept the great Houses alive, whether they knew it or not.
And so, because Pandion so loved the Cahors, she was determined to rout their complacencies. They must not content themselves with small victories only, or they would fade with time. All would be dust.
This could not happen to those whom she was sworn to serve.
And so Pandion swooped and danced against the moon, celestial home of the Goddess, and prayed for obstacles, for thorns, for snares. Else, the most beloved of all witches—Holly Cathers, the heiress apparent of the throne of Cahors—would succumb to the tortures of Michael Deveraux, and all would be lost.