by D L Blade
I looked around again at the people walking around in their lost state and asked, “What did you mean by me being here before?”
“Of course you don’t remember. After they hung you at the Gallows, you came here. You’re bound to your coven, so your spirit doesn’t truly move on unless they all do.”
I thought about how Caleb had finally found a way to bring me back nineteen years ago, and how difficult it must have been for him to find my soul. It could only be done by a special kind of magic. It was a magic that could have only been done once.
Was I doomed to be in this place forever? If I were truly bound to the earth, and now my body was dead again, what was going to happen to me? What about these souls that were stuck here?
“I’m sorry. I tried. I tried and I failed,” I told her.
She smiled for the first time since I’d stopped her. “You can still watch over them.”
“How?” I asked.
She smiled one last time and faded into the crowd, without answering me. I now stood alone.
I knelt on a grassy lawn near a tree. When I looked ahead through the crowd of people in front of me, I could see through them like a window had been opened for me to look through. There lay my body in Joel’s backyard, with Dorian holding me in his arms. And he was weeping.
I wished they could hear or see me so I could comfort them in their pain. Lily buried her face in Joel’s chest, sobbing over the loss of her niece.
I really was gone.
Caleb
“No!” I gasped. Every part of my being prayed I didn’t just feel that. I eyed the coven and their eyes grew wide.
“Oh, my God!” Leah screamed. She held her chest and we all screamed out in agony, feeling a deep sense of sorrow and pain we hadn’t experienced since the Witch Trials.
We felt it. We felt her die.
“Let’s go. We need to move. Now,” I yelled to the coven as we filed outside and into Leah’s car.
Joel had just texted me that he was teleporting Mercy and Dorian to his home after they escaped. But moments after, we felt her life taken from us. Had something gone wrong inside the portal?
I drove as fast as I could, not caring if a cop tried to pull us over. Not caring about the hundreds of laws that I was breaking to get there.
“Caleb, she’s already gone. Slow down before you kill someone,” Ezra said.
I ignored him. I had to get there.
We pulled into the driveway, jumped out, and hurried inside. We didn’t see anyone in the kitchen, or even the family room. “Joel?” I yelled. The voice that followed wasn’t his. It was Lily’s.
“Caleb, come quickly.”
Once we entered the backyard, the first body I saw was Bradley, laying lifeless on the floor with a hole in his chest, his motionless heart on the ground beside him. I cringed, but my attention immediately pulled to Lily sobbing under a willow tree. She and Joel held each other tightly. They knelt next to Dorian, whose back was facing us. When we walked around to face him, he held Mercy’s lifeless and bloodied body in his arms. Lily held onto the dagger tightly in her hand. She placed it on the ground when we ran over to her.
“No!” I screamed, kneeling beside them, the coven following behind me.
I felt numb. We couldn’t lose her again.
We all held hands, sobbing and shaking, our hearts aching over her loss. Not again.
I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m so sorry, Mercy. I am so, so sorry.” I leaned back. Everyone kissed her head and we sat in near silence. The only sounds were those of agony-filled weeping.
I looked up at the coven. “We’re bringing her back.” I didn’t even think about my words. I knew what we had to do, but I had to convince the other three it was our duty to do it. We had to.
“We can’t, Caleb,” Ezra said. “The spell won’t work again, but we can keep looking until we find another way.”
I shook my head. “There is another way.”
Their eyes met mine, and I knew they were confused. I was the only one who knew another way to bring her back. When I had found the spell to resurrect her eighteen years ago, the Shaman who helped make the spell had used the last remaining bark of the original tree on Gallows Hill. The same tree that took the lives of our fellow Salem witches centuries ago. Once it was gone, there’d be no more left. But he explained something else to me. He explained that if this were to happen again, a sacrifice would need to be made. It was the only way to give her enough power and magic to bring her back.
“Leah, Ezra, Simon,” I said, pausing for a moment to gather the words. “Our powers are the only thing that can bring her back.”
Leah lowered her brow. “Then we join hands and conjure whatever spell we have to in order to share our powers with her. Just tell us the spell, and we’ll do it.”
I shook my head. “Sharing our powers won’t be enough.”
Simon looked up, his eyes widening. He understood.
He turned to Leah. “We have to give up our elements.”
Leah’s breathing picked up pace. “If we give up our elements, we die.”
I nodded slowly, and she nodded back in understanding.
“Well, we’ve lived a long life. I think I’ve done everything on my bucket list,” Ezra said. We chuckled quietly to ourselves, everyone shedding a tear at the realization that we were all on the same page. Spirit couldn’t be taken from the earth again, and Mercy was the only one strong enough to hold on to all five elements.
“Okay,” Leah said, nodding again and wiping her eyes.
Simon gripped Leah’s hand, and Ezra grabbed mine.
Lily and Joel stood and we embraced them and said our goodbyes. Lily leaned toward me. “We will find a way to make this right somehow.”
I squeezed her hand, and the four of us gathered around Mercy’s body. Dorian laid her down gently. He had been quiet the entire time as tears rolled down his face. Before he stood, he leaned closer to me and said, “Thank you.”
He stood back with the others while Leah, Simon, and Ezra knelt with me. All four of us gripped our hands together in a circle, and I chanted the spell the witch doctor had taught me years ago. They mimicked the chant, and I felt my power as it radiated inside of me. It was more powerful than I had ever felt.
We stopped chanting, and Leah lifted her hands above her head. “I am Water. I give you my power.”
Simon followed her lead. “I am Air. I give you my power.”
“I am Earth. I give you my power,” Ezra said.
Finally, I spoke my last words. “I am Fire. I give you my power.”
As soon as the last word left my lips, we all collapsed to the ground.
Mercy
My eyes opened and I looked at the grey clouds forming above. My eyes watered, and I rubbed the tears away before I sat up and saw my coven laying down on their backs, circling me on the grass.
I had seen everything. I saw what they did for me, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. They couldn’t see me or hear me scream for them to stop. I couldn’t get them to stop.
I felt the warmth of Fire, the flow of Water, the comfort of Earth, and the fresh breath of Air within me, circling my soul. They circled Spirit as if the five of us were one. My body didn’t just conjure the power, it was the power. All five elements were inside me.
Their vessels, the bodies that walked with them, lay dead, but were they really dead if the elements that gave each one life to begin with were still empowered and thriving?
I looked to my right, and Dorian knelt with me. He reached out his hand, and I clasped it in mine.
Caleb’s body was a few feet from where I knelt, and I inched toward him, dragging my knees against the prickly grass. After I placed the back of my fingers to his cheek, caressing his skin, I looked at the others.
“Joel?” I said. He had stood silently by the tree, holding on to Lily, waiting for me to speak. His and Lily’s eyes were puffy and red from crying when they had thought I was gone fo
rever.
This wasn’t a moment to embrace each other and celebrate because I was alive.
No.
An evil man lay dead behind us with his heart ripped out. A man Lily loved, and she now knew he had lied to her to get to me.
Four of my friends, my family, my coven, lay dead before us. They had sacrificed themselves for me. There was nothing to rejoice in this moment.
Joel was now by my side, and Dorian moved over, allowing Joel to bring me to my feet. “We need to find four coffins,” I said. “The three of us will perform a spell that will preserve their bodies until the day I find a way to bring them back.”
Joel nodded. “My spell book has one, but it’s dark, Mercy. It’s dark magic, and I’ve never performed it before. The spell will last as long as their spirit is tied to the earth.”
“Then we do it,” I said.
I didn’t care that it was dark magic. They were not leaving me.
“We’ll keep the coffins locked in our family’s mausoleum on 34th Street in Salem,” I said. “We’ll do it tonight before their bodies decompose.”
Lily sauntered toward me and brought me in for a hug. I squeezed her tightly in my arms while the tears I held back now fell freely down my face.
“You’re alive. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but it does to me. I couldn’t lose you, too,” Lily said as she released me and turned to face Joel. “We need to do the spell now. I’ll help you gather what’s needed.”
Lily and Joel went into his house, and I turned to face Dorian, who was now by my side.
“It’s gone,” I said, pointing to my chest.
He tilted his head slightly. “What’s gone?”
“The spell. When I died, the spell died with me.”
It took him a second to realize what I was saying. Then, his eyes grew wide. “How do you feel?” A faint smile pulled at his lips.
I walked closer to him and brought my hands to his cheeks, caressing his jawline with my fingers. A tear rolled down my face, and he wiped it with his hand.
I trailed my fingers down to his neck, gripping the hair on the back of his head and pulling him closer to me until our lips touched. He gently placed his hands on each side of my face, pulling us deeper into our kiss. The kiss was passionate, loving, and filled with centuries of undying love. The feeling in my heart showed me that I could never take it away again.
I wanted to embrace the emotions my body was screaming for, but my heart also ached for the loss of my family and a man I, too, had loved.
I would search for a way to bring my coven back, and I would continue the mission to save this world from creatures like Maurice. He was still out there. Kylan’s spirit was still out there, also, and lives would be lost as long as they walked this earth.
But in this moment, it was just us.
Me and Dorian.
And I was in love with him.
Maurice
I looked down at a pile of ash at my doorstep and shrugged.
Jade.
A slight panic rose in my chest, followed by anger. Would Jade be so stupid to have let Mercy go?
I turned toward the limo outside my home and held up my finger, signaling to Clara that I would be a minute. I couldn’t see her through the tinted windows, but I assumed she had seen me, knowing that crazy bitch was always watching my and everyone else’s every move.
I walked into my house and sniffed. Not like it would have mattered. Mercy was still under that infuriating spell her uncle had cast upon her to mask her intoxicating scent.
I walked down the hall and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the safe’s door standing wide open.
My nostrils flared.
Where the hell is Julian?
When I neared my bedroom where we were keeping Mercy, I saw that Mercy was, indeed, gone. Her unlocked chains lie on the bed, and the syringe filled with the drugs I’d had Jade administer to her was full.
If Jade weren’t already dead, I’d kill her.
I balled my hand into a fist, feeling the pressure build around my eyes, and my fangs protruded. I hissed as Clara walked into the bedroom.
“While you were playing house with her, she should have been locked up in a cage,” she said in a huff. “Doesn’t matter anymore. We got what we needed from her.”
“You got what you needed from her.” My jaw tightened. “I wasn’t done with her. Not by a long shot.”
Clara walked past me and picked up the syringe. “You really are a sadistic son of a bitch.” She squeezed the syringe and emptied its liquid contents onto the floor. “But we have more pressing matters to address.” She tossed the syringe into the trashcan in the corner of the room.
I followed her, and as we neared the front door, Julian entered the foyer. “She’s at the factory. We have her bound in stall number five.”
“Good,” Clara said. “Vampire trials for the potion will start tomorrow. Our test subjects are going to be brought to the office at seven in the morning.” She turned to Julian. “Maurice is in charge, and you’ll obey him from now on. Once the subjects are brought in, we will proceed with the ceremony. Be there at nine,” Clara ordered. “Oh, and Maurice?” She turned back to me.
I looked to her and waited for her order.
“I expect a proper goodbye before Kylan leaves Cami’s body and takes over mine.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all my beta readers, editor, book cover designer, and the support from everyone who read book one, so I could make book two possible. I also want to give a special thank you to my family, who supported me throughout my writing journey.
There will be a book three coming out within the next year, which will conclude The Chosen Coven series.
About the Author
Diana Lundblade grew up in California and studied at the California Healing Arts College, going on to work as a massage therapist for thirteen years. Diana now lives in Colorado, where she worked as a real estate agent for a time, before deciding to concentrate on her family and writing.
Diana always loved writing, concentrating on poetry rather than prose when she was younger. That changed, however, when she had a dream one night and decided to write a book about it. In her spare time, Diana enjoys a wide variety of hobbies, including reading, writing, attending rock concerts, and spending time outdoors with her family, camping and going on outings.
In the future, Diana hopes that she can continue to write exciting novels that will captivate her readers and bring them into the worlds that she creates using her imagination.