by D. G. Swank
Rowan muttered curses under her breath as her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. The engine roared as she pushed the pedal straight to the floor, though I could already tell we’d never be able to outrun them. And we’d likely seen just the beginning of their aggression.
“Can you see them?” Rowan asked in a frantic whisper.
“They all have hoods,” I said, still glancing out the window. What the hell kind of gothic mafia horror movie was happening to us? “There are five of them. No, six. Two in the car in front of us and three in the car behind.” My brain barely registered the shape of a long-barrel gun being lifted in one of the windows, and I ducked again, unable to stop the scream from escaping my throat. “Who wears hoods?”
“Phoebe, can you access anyone?”
“Are you nuts? Do you know anything about how my talent works?” I wasn’t being fair, and I knew it, but her question couldn’t have been more ridiculous. I’d never been able to access talents from ancestors without standing completely still, in total quiet, and pouring all my concentration into the effort.
“I know, Phoebe, but if there were ever a time to try… look, we’re coming up on Galena. I’m going to find the graveyard, and we’ll do circles around it if we have to.”
“Holy shit, Rowan, don’t you think this might be a good time for you to pull out your bag of tricks?” I’d seen Rowan glamour everything from a tiny teacup (into a hairy wolf spider) to an entire field full of grazing cattle (into a used car lot). Her detail was immaculate, and quick.
“They know we’re here and have us boxed in. Even if I make us disappear, they’ll be able to find us.” The car behind us clipped our back bumper again, and she jerked the wheel, swerving us to toward the shoulder. “Besides, they seem to know who we are. They might have someone who can see through my glamour and spot us anyway.”
“But they might not,” I countered, thinking her reasoning was ridiculous. “Try it!”
Her brow furrowed as she gripped the wheel tighter. “I’m doing it but—oh shit!”
One of the SUVs was heading us off, while the other rode inches from our back bumper. My mind raced in time with my heart. Mercifully, when I looked out the windshield, the little town of Galena was directly in our path, complete with its historical buildings, cobblestone streets, innumerable alleys, and in the center of town, just behind the church, its graveyard.
“See if you can hide us in that alley. Straight ahead, right in front of the church,” I bit out from between clenched teeth.
A steely look of determination settled onto Rowan’s face, and she yanked the steering wheel left, just a couple hundred feet from where the first SUV waited ahead, parked now. The alleys were so narrow, built over a century ago to accommodate pedestrian traffic and maybe the occasional pull-cart, that our SUV barely fit between the uneven brick walls. I winced as the side mirror on the passenger side snapped off as we turned. If we survived this, Rowan would probably want to have a funeral for the damn thing. There weren’t many things she loved more than this car.
My teeth clacked together as we hurtled over the cobblestone pavement, and without warning, the engine cut out. I pitched forward, slamming my head on the glove compartment so hard I saw stars.
“Sit. Perfectly. Still,” Rowan said in a nearly silent yet terrified whisper.
“I’m trying,” I muttered, my hand frozen on my throbbing forehead.
“I’m blending us in with these bricks long enough for you to see if any of our dead cousins are buried two blocks down the street,” she responded. For a second, it sounded like she was about to chuck Serenity Mode and start sobbing. “They’re driving in circles. Can you hear them?”
In the dead of night in this sleepy town, the screech of tires from the small-scale tanks on wheels careening through the streets was faint but unmistakable.
“Okay,” Rowan prodded. “Who’s here?”
Right. Ancestors. I forced my shaky breaths to even out and tried to ignore the pain that rattled through my skull.
Borrowing talents from one’s ancestors was more art than skill. There was an element of convincing the dead to let me share their abilities, even if only for a brief moment—but many I asked were grateful for the chance to live again, through my magic. As a child, I’d grown up reporting the activities of the ghosts surrounding and inhabiting our farmhouse as though they were simply living alongside us. To be honest, I couldn’t remember whether they had seemed as real to me as my parents and sisters. Mom thought they’d worked extra hard to make themselves known to me, sensing my talent. When I was nine or ten, she’d sat me down and explained to me that Margaret and Samuel Abbott had passed away long ago. I felt a pang of loss at that news, which lasted only until she’d explained to me that she thought they wanted me to share the talents they’d possessed while they were living.
Magic, she’d said, was more potent than blood, more durable than our fragile bodies, more powerful than even death. It flowed through our family, through the land we lived on, through our memory and our future. Magic was forever, and I was one of the few witches blessed with a magical gift that would allow the talents of the past to live on for generations.
That afternoon long ago, I’d managed to connect my energy to Farren Skellig, buried underneath the ash tree nearest to the house. I’d giggled as her energy joyfully wound its potency through me, and made our plates, cups, and utensils fly around the kitchen. After an hour, I’d set the table for dinner using my talent.
Dad had been so proud, and I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt happier.
Farren had died young of typhus, and had never strengthened her talent much beyond objects heavier than a stoneware plate. I hoped someone a little more advanced was buried in the little churchyard of Galena.
I stilled my body, using every fiber of my being to reach out to the bodies of witches and mages who’d lived and died generations before me, searching for anyone with whom I shared even a scrap of DNA. My lips formed a silent please, and then, like a beacon of light, someone answered me—the spirit of a young man. Young, strong, and angry.
If Rowan and I hadn’t been teetering on the edge of death at the moment, I would have taken the time to get a good read on him—what his name had been, where he’d lived and died, what he’d done, whom he’d loved. With enough time and concentration, I could normally sense an ancestor’s talents and then consider how best to use them. This was not a normal circumstance, though, and the shock waves of the mortal danger Rowan and I were in must have reverberated up through our family tree.
I heard the man’s command in clear, unmistakable language.
The statue. Throw it.
The ghost’s magic burst to life in my veins, making me hot and restless. His magic was powerful, and every muscle in my body strained to both contain it and utilize it. I moaned, clutching fistfuls of hair in my hands, doubling over into myself.
The statue.
I’d only seen the church for a split second in our race through town, but I knew exactly what he meant. A statue, at least ten feet tall, of some Catholic saint, proudly stood guard outside at the base of the church steps.
Suddenly, my consciousness was transferred to my ancestor’s ghost—a first for me—and we hovered together next to the statue. As I focused on moving the copper statue, its feet began to wobble on the base. Another surge of power, and it rose off its base and hovered in the air above the cobblestones.
A second later, the first of the cars—its driver and passengers still shrouded in dark hoods—skidded around the corner and sped down the street directly in front of the church. In the dark, they wouldn’t notice the hovering statue. More of my ancestor’s magic pushed through me, and I turned the statute horizontal to the ground, then hurled it toward them, a copper torpedo that smashed their windshield—and all four of their skulls—into an unrecognizable mess of glass, blood, and bone.
I’d barely had time to register my horror at what I’d done when the second car s
werved, then crashed into the plate glass storefront opposite the church, disabling the vehicle. I felt the life force of one of the second car’s passengers fade away, but the other one was hanging on by a thread. Even though we didn’t share a coven bond with these mages, we could always sense the power of other witches and mages. There were only a few thousand of us magic folk left in North America, and our similarities bonded us more closely than we would have liked at times.
Then, just as suddenly as my consciousness had left my body, it returned. My ancestor’s magic was gone, but its lingering traces made me feel buzzed.
The pain in my skull dissolved at a blessedly rapid rate, and I raised my head to look at Rowan. “They’re dead. All but one.”
She blew out a shaky breath, forcing her lips together as she lifted the glamour from the car. “We have to talk to the survivor. Find out what in the hell is going on.”
I nodded solemnly, watching the hood of the car shed what looked like brick-patterned wallpaper as we started moving toward the end of the alley.
We made the turn onto the street where both smashed cars sat in uncanny stillness, their hoods smoking. Standing at the pedestal in the city square was the specter of my ancestor, a burly bearded man in overalls, watching solemnly.
Thank you, I whispered to him in my head.
He gave me a slow nod, then disappeared.
“The statue?” Rowan asked in part amazement, part fear.
Of course, Rowan couldn’t see him, so I turned my attention to her and focused on our new concern. The Valeria community had one solemn, common duty—to keep our existence secret from everyone else. Making a statue fly through the air and slam itself into an SUV, killing everyone inside, couldn’t exactly be explained away as a force of nature, but there hadn’t been a ton of options. This incident alone would have been worthy of initiating a Protocol Thirteen.
“There’s not a damn tree in sight,” I explained dejectedly, even though I knew she’d probably already worked that out. “But I only did what he told me to do. He was very strong,” I added as though trying to justify what I’d done. “I could barely contain his magic.”
Rowan nodded. She didn’t blame me. She was just scared. We both were. “Let’s find the survivor.”
“In the passenger seat of the second SUV,” I said as we pulled to a stop yards away from the crash and hopped out. Surveillance cameras would hopefully show two women getting out of their car to help victims of a freak accident, and we’d call the police as soon as we left the area to corroborate that.
The black-cloaked figure sat slumped back in the seat, left leg twisted at an impossible angle that made my stomach turn. I leaned in close, trying to see if the person was conscious. It was a woman, with long hair and delicate hands. She was motionless but moaning softly. Death loomed over her, easy enough for any witch with the barest read of her aura to see. My stomach twisted and flipped at the thought that I had caused this. I had killed her, even if she had been the one to knock on death’s door.
“Who are you? What do you want with us?” Rowan hissed from the smashed-out window on the driver’s side.
I knew blood freaked Rowan out. The shock of the situation must have made her capable of ignoring the dead body inches away from her face.
“Not… the end… of this.” Her voice wheezed, reedy and rasping, from beneath the hood. “Now… rises… the darkness.”
My heart sped up as the scream of police sirens pierced the air. I recoiled from the dying woman’s rattling breaths, and as I inserted the space between us, I noticed something shimmering on the hood of her cloak.
“Give me your phone,” I urged, and Rowan cursed as she fumbled it out of her pocket. I leaned back down and snapped a photo of the glittering two-inch symbol embroidered on the hood of the black cloak.
The police were on their way, and there was nothing we could do for her—neither of us had a healing talent—so we left.
We were back in Rowan’s car and peeling out of the downtown area seconds before law enforcement arrived. Just minutes later, we were doing fifty miles an hour with our brights on down the country road, barreling toward Columbus.
While Rowan drove, I studied the photo on her phone. The black fabric of the woman’s hood had been rendered gray by the flash, throwing the embroidery into sharp relief. The stitching was crude, done by an amateur hand, but deliberate.
“There’s a symbol there,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.
“One you recognize?”
I peered at it. Two triangles intersected, one upside down, their points almost meeting in the middle, twisted together. But the points didn’t completely close—instead, they twisted together to form two smaller triangles that nestled in the center of the design. The path of each triangle led into the next, and the next—they were intertwined even though they seemed distinct.
We’d studied runes, magical symbols, even the art of ancient witchcraft and mythology as children. In all the magic history books and journals we’d pored over, I was confident this was nothing I’d ever seen. Not exactly. “Not exactly the same, but it does look familiar, doesn’t it?”
She snuck a glance at the image on her phone. “Makes me think of one of those Celtic crosses we stared at in church every week. The design in the center?”
I tilted my head. “I guess. The knot has three intersecting shapes too, but they’re curved...”
“Right, but you know it’s just a design element for the cross. The cross existed before it ever became symbolic for Christianity. It’s older than Jesus.”
“Probably,” I said, and Rowan grunted.
She glanced over, and her brow furrowed. “You’re the one who’s always saying that if humanity stopped to learn about more than the last two thousand years, we’d all be better off. Is it impossible that this symbol and the little thingy on the cross would be connected?”
I allowed myself a small, quiet laugh about how typical-Rowan this was—thinking she knew more than I did about any given topic, even though I was always the one with my nose in a book. Seven hells, I was a librarian.
But there was no denying that the symbol and what it might mean was significant. Whoever these people were, they clearly felt strongly enough about their cause to wear creepy hoods and try to kill two young women. And like any zealous cult, they even created their own insignia—which would hopefully be a pretty good starting point for identifying them.
Had this group of maniacs stolen the book and our sister, or had they somehow figured out the book was gone and thought we were responsible?
* * *
I took a deep breath, then put a hand on Rowan’s leg.
“We just have to hope the Council can help,” she said, as if trying to reassure herself.
One way or the other, the Council was our best hope now.
Chapter Five
“What the hell happened to you?” A redheaded young man, around Celeste’s age, jogged up to Rowan’s SUV as we pulled up to the Palace Theatre, just on the edge of what passed for “downtown” in Columbus.
“Archer, right?” I thought I remembered seeing him here and there at a few mandatory Valeria community get-togethers.
He nodded, then took in the busted back windows and bullet holes in the door panels. “Good to see you ladies. You all right?”
“We’ve been better,” Rowan said in a dry tone.
“I’d guess so. I’m surprised to see you two at a Protocol Thirteen meeting, and without your sister.”
Rowan and I kept silent, not wanting to answer. Rumor had it that Archer was a gossip. I wouldn’t put it past him to have taken this valet job just so he could try to get information no one else was privy to. Something told me to keep my lips sealed about the evidence of the attack on our way here.
“We haven’t had a Protocol Thirteen in years,” he said. “The second basement is buzzing.”
“Second basement?” I asked with a weary raise of my eyebrow. We’d only returned to conscio
usness for a few hours, but I already felt like I could sleep for a week.
“Yep. Lucia picked this location. Big difference from our last meeting space in an old warehouse.”
I couldn’t help becoming curious at his admissions. Our one and only Small Council appearance had been at a warehouse on the other side of town, and it had been just as rare for our parents to be summoned to meetings. The Small Council kept to itself, usually, and no one in our family had been an elected official for three generations.
We had been to several Valeria community-wide gatherings, however. The last had been a few years ago, when every witch and mage in North America had assembled after the death of our previous leader, Artemis Bishop. We’d gathered to elect our new leader, Lucia Hernandez, in a landslide victory, a position held until death or, more unusually, resignation.
Artemis’s election nearly twenty years ago had caused quite a stir. For centuries, the Valerian Council had been ruled by women, mostly because women were usually stronger magically. But during the eighties, when everyone was paranoid of Satan worshippers, nonmagicals had caught a mage, Liam Harper, performing magic. Innocent of any crime other than carelessness, he had nonetheless been convicted of the unsolved murder of a child.
The magical community had been alarmed and frightened. Many had begged the then-president of the Council, Penelope Holmes, to act on behalf of Liam, but she had refused to intervene, saying that sometimes you had to sacrifice one to protect the many. Her decision had sent a ripple of dissension through our community, which escalated into a deep schism when the imprisoned mage was later murdered for being a supposed Satanic worshipper. After her death a few years later, Artemis had taken advantage of the division and discord when he’d run for office, telling the people they needed a strong leader to bring everyone together and promising that no one would ever be left out to hang—or burn—again.
Artemis’s reign as president had been rocky from start to finish. He’d tried to install more men into positions of power, proclaiming that both councils needed to have equality. With the nonmagic world pushing the same agenda only in reverse, many witches had been reluctant to fight it. But the magically weaker mages were ultimately liabilities, weakening both councils. By the time Artemis died, everyone was eager to return to old traditions, and the cool-tempered Lucia Hernandez had been the perfect witch to straighten things out. Rumor had it she was still cleaning up Artemis’s messes.