When Maeve said she could hold her own, it was a gigantic understatement. The power she had was astounding to me – for an untrained witch, she had more power than River and Penelope put together – and she made quick work of the hunters.
I waited for the detective to turn up in the group, but he never came, and that made me more nervous than if he had faced me head on.
Maeve takes my hand again and we take a slow, deliberate stroll through the neighbourhood, tempting them to try and catch us off-guard, but after an hour of rounding the block, I let my guard down a little.
My cell phone rings out and I jump. My nerves are on overload.
“Hello,” I say, lifting it to my ear. “Tavis! Thank God! How many of us are there left?”
“Zhavia, Katia, Max and Jonah stuck together and made it to Max’s old place. They’re staying there until we find somewhere. River, Penelope, Cleo and Amalie are with me… Theo, River’s been shot… she’s bleeding a lot and she’s barely able to remain conscious… Cleo has been shot in the arm, Penelope in the leg, and Amalie protected herself with a charm.” There’s detest in his voice that Amalie could be so selfish. “It’s bad, Theo. Knox and I got separated, and I can’t get through to him. His phone is dead. What do we do?”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Tavis so defeated. His usually strong voice is weak and trembling and his ability to lead us has fallen.
I close my eyes and listen to him breathe. In my head, I see a place we could go, but the thought of it makes my chest constrict. Still, it’s the only viable option…
“There’s a house not too far from here, it’s called Raven-Hill Manor…” I give him the directions to the place where my childhood ended and tell him we’re on our way.
We steal an orange pick-up truck from the neighbourhood and set off, watching for hunters as we go.
When we arrive, the front door is broken open and Tavis has River inside, sprawled out on the couch. She’s covered in her own blood, unconscious and the holes in her top tell me where the shots hit her… most are superficial – handgun wounds in her legs and arms – but the one in her chest, sprawled out in a circular pattern, is a shotgun wound that hit a main artery. I call Katia and explain her state and wounds.
She has less than twenty minutes before she bleeds out.
I find Tavis in the kitchen, his face tear-streaked and his shirt bloodied.
“I know that Katia is on her way, but I don’t know if she’s going to make it.” He barely looks at me as he rifles through the cupboards for anything he could use to clean her wounds. “There’s salt, that has cleaning properties, right? And Vodka, or maybe –”
I stop his hands from searching.
“Tavis, stop. River needs us to be smart about this. We need to stop the bleeding. If we don’t… she’s dead.”
“How? How do we do that?”
“Together,” I tell him. “All of us, we can heal her if we put our magic together.”
“It’ll drain us! What if the hunters come?” Amalie says, leaning against the door with a scowl. “We’re going to die for River of all people?”
“Oh my God, would you just shut the fuck up? Because I don’t know about anybody else, but I have had just about enough of listening to you yap, Amalie!” I yell at her. “We’re not letting River die because you’re a selfish bitch! You know what? Screw you! If they do come, I’m not protecting you, and I doubt anyone else will either. In fact, I’ll throw you to them and you’ll be slaughtered while we run. Sacrificed for the good of the coven!”
It’s an empty threat, but she backs off.
“And don’t worry about draining yourself, you don’t need to help us. We’re stronger without your negative energy!” I push past her, nudging her shoulder as I go.
“What the hell happened to you?” I hear Tavis ask her as he too nudges past her.
We fill the others in on the plan, and while Maeve has no idea how to help in a healing ritual, she offers to join hands and let us take some of her energy.
Forming a circle around the couch, we follow Katia’s instructions, and begin the chants for health. They’re not easy to do and require a lot of focus. I’m the pinnacle point and it’s exhilarating to have their collective magic flood into me. I feel high, rushed off my feet by the sheer magnitude of power.
I let their hands drop from mine and they fall to the ground, exhausted.
“Sana!” I push the power through my hand and command the wounds to heal. We watch in amazement as the bullets in her body rise out of her and float in the air as her skin fuses back together as much as it can… but it’s not enough.
The fragment of the shell that’s killing her refuses to leave so easily.
“Sana!” I command again, but to no avail. “Something’s wrong. It won’t work!”
“What do we do?” Tavis asks frantically.
A crazy idea pops into my head. It’s reckless and something we’ve always been taught not to do… But staring down at my dying friend, I can’t find another option. I reach my hand into the air and yell out, “Sanctus!”
Around me, time slows almost to a stop. I’m the only one moving at normal speed. It’s a dangerous game to play, and the history books are filled with horror stories about witches who meddled with time and got stuck. I look around me and couldn’t imagine a worse fate than not being able to get back to natural speed.
I have to hurry. The more time I spend in this spell, the more chance I have of being stuck here.
Rushing over to River, I kneel down at her side and watch the blood slowly leave her body. Katia can see blood-type and other things that help her heal. I can’t do any of that, but I wonder if I can see the bullet…
I place my hand on her shoulder and close my eyes. Like an episode of CSI, I examine the wound and see exactly how far in the bullet, and I see why it won’t come out.
It’s stuck under the debris of her collarbone.
Envisioning the bone, I mend it in my mind and tighten my grip on her shoulder. “Sana!”
I watch as pieces of the bone slot back into place, freeing the destructive metal from its prison. The bullet fragments slot out her slowly and land in my hand.
Still, the wound doesn’t heal over. All of the blood spewing from the artery is making it hard for the spell to take effect. I need to stop the bleeding.
The only way to do that is to cauterize the wound, and that type of pain could cause River’s already weak body to slip into shock.
I weigh up my options. If I do nothing, River will bleed out and die… If I cauterize the wound, she could die.
Looking at my hand, I imagine I’m holding the hot poker in it again, but instead of trying to heat the cool end of the iron, I focus on my index finger. I can feel my skin bubbling on the surface and the end of my finger turns a vibrant red. Steam comes from my skin, and it’s time.
I push my finger into River’s wound. “Sana!”
The wound sears and heals. I breathe a sigh of relief as her skin moulds back into place and the possibility of her bleeding out is no longer a worry.
…But her heart rate is.
I end the spell and watch everyone else catch up with me.
“Her body is in shock, she needs help!” I listen to her heart and it’s in a lot of trouble. “I think she’s having a heart attack.”
Just as I say it, Katia comes crashing through the door. I’m practically knocked off my feet as she takes over and I’m so thankful she’s here. She drops a bag of supplies beside her.
“The hospital was on the way here, so we stocked up on a few things,” Max tells me.
“Her hearts stopped!” Katia gets to work on chest compressions and all I can do is hold a hand to my mouth.
“No!” Penelope yells. “She can’t die!”
Amalie looks unaffected by everything and all I want to do is break her in two. River and Penelope were my friends long before Maeve and I ever knew each other existed, and watching one of them die isn’t some
thing I ever thought would happen.
Katia stops pushing on her chest and Penelope freaks out.
“What’re you doing? Why are you stopping?” She asks, running frantic hands through her hair.
“There’s nothing else I can do, Penelope. She needs a defibrillator! Damn it, she needs a real doctor! I’m just –”
Maeve moves past her and kneels beside River’s body. She holds out her hand and continues the compressions, refusing to give up, and then, she closes her eyes and lays an open palm over River’s chest. Electricity forms around her skin and she presses down, hard.
River takes a huge intake of air and bolts up-right.
“I never went to witch school, but I learned a few things that came in handy,” Maeve says, sitting back with a relieved smile.
I let out a breath that I didn’t realize I was holding and sink to the ground while everybody stares, mouths gaping, at Maeve.
There’s still so many of us we don’t know the fate of, and more of us that we do – the bodies of each member of the underground flash through my mind and I wonder what my page in the Raven-Hill history books would say.
Theodora Blackthorn, commander of the underground – she got them all killed and did it all without once picking up the blade.
I head back to the kitchen, take a deep breath and sit at the table with my head in my hands.
Tavis follows me in.
“I have something for you,” he tells me, dropping the Raven-Hill chest on the table. “I thought it might come in handy. I know I was against getting it, but when the bank got raided, I noticed a few of the hunters bypassed the fighting and ransacked the place. I think they were looking for this…”
As he talks, his cell phone blares.
He reaches in his pocket and whispers Knox’s name, but as he stares down at the screen, his face is distraught.
He turns the phone and my eyes widen, on the screen I see Knox, captured and bound with hunters around him, laughing, as they beat the crap out of him.
Detective Jacobian flips the camera to front-facing and smiles at me. “Come alone, witch, or your boyfriend dies…”
The call cuts out, and my heart drops…
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“What’s going on?” Maeve asks, meeting us in the kitchen.
Tavis fills her in while I have a debate in my mind. Knox is more than just my boyfriend, he’s a pinnacle cog in the underground machine, and more so, he knows a lot about my past, my family, and everything else – including this location, and if they beat that out of him, the rest of us are dead too.
I’m scared of dying – I realized that when I watched the hunters rip my friends to shreds – but I’m more scared of living as a coward; hiding for my life while others die for me.
“I’m going!” I declare.
Sure, the Raven-Hill line will end tonight, but when my name goes in the history books, I won’t be remembered as a scared little girl who sacrificed the safety of her coven for the sake of a name that wasn’t even hers.
“You can’t do this, Theo. If you go in there, the Jacobian hunters will kill you, no questions asked.” He makes sense, but I don’t listen because I’m Theodora Blackthorn and I have never done the smart thing before, so why would I start now?
“They have the person that I –” I stop myself. “They have Knox. Either way, they’re going to try to kill me at some point and at least this way, I might be able to save his life and take a few of those sons of bitches with me.”
I grab the chest from the table and go down on a bended knee to search for my weapon of choice. The gold flecks ignite through its holder as I touch it and I feel its power radiate through me; the knife of Karelia Raven-Hill.
With a smirk, I lift it into the air and pull it from its leather prison. It’s glowing bright and suddenly my lineage flashes in my mind like a scene from an action movie; every Raven-Hill witch – man or woman – who had ever wielded and died by the knife. I see them all fighting and beating back the Jacobian hunters, demons and even the witches.
It’s nice to know that I’m not the first of my family to deny the hierarchy of the high-councils.
Pain shoots through me unexpectedly and I suck in an breath of air and drop to the floor, knife in hand.
“It’s not just a weapon,” I scream through the burning pricks attacking my skin. “It’s undiluted power and it’s mine. It’s Raven-Hill power and it’s all in me.”
My skin sears and I have to scream hard and loud to get myself through it. It’s shrill, terror filled and I can stand the sound of it about as much as I can stand the pain causing it. I guard my own ears from my voice as blackness invades my sights and I’m close to passing out.
“What’s happening to me?” I look up to find Maeve with a hand covering her mouth and eyes wide. My heart rate picks up. She doesn’t speak and neither does Tavis. They just stand there, shocked, mouth gaping and unmoving.
As quickly as the pain began, it dissipates. I stand to my feet and move past them to a mirror, already knowing what I would find and yet still being surprised by the sight. Deep golden markings and spirals cover my entire left arm, shoulder and parts of my neck. Half of my face is painted in newly made golden specks that mimic freckles and shine when hit with the light blaring through the cracked window of the manor. My left eye is no longer green. Its luminescent gold; glimmering like molten coins. I don’t check anywhere else because I know by the leftover tingling sensation of burning that my entire left side is marked by the power of the knife.
“Whoa!” Maeve gushes. “You look –”
“Beautiful,” Tavis finishes.
My heart gives an involuntary flutter and my eyes catch his. I avert my gaze, feeling my cheeks warm under his stare.
“It’s time,” I tell them. “Should we just say goodbye now? Just in case I --”
“No!” Maeve bellows. “Are you insane? Saying goodbye means I accept this and I don’t. You have to know this is a trap. You’re signing your own death warrant and I refuse to be a part of that. If you do this, you’re doing it without my support.” She storms from the room, slamming the door behind her.
“Mine too.” He sighs.
“Tavis, its Knox! He’s like a brother to you! He helps keep this place going… and he’s important to me.”
“And what about me, huh?” He snaps. “How do you think I’m going to cope with both of you dead?”
“I don’t know,” I speak, honestly. “If things go my way, you won’t have to live without him… just me.”
“And that’s supposed to be better?” He scoffs. “Theo, you’re my…friend. I care about you!”
“I care about you –”
“No you don’t! You clearly don’t give a damn about me because if you had any feelings toward me whatsoever, you wouldn’t be going on a suicide mission,” he bites.
“Are you kidding?” I bite back. “If it was you that they’d taken and not Knox, I would be doing the exact same thing, like I would for anyone in this coven. He’s not just my boyfriend, Tavis. Knox is one of us!”
“I don’t want to lose you like this. I don't want to lose you at all, Theo.” He swallows hard. “I know we need to save Knox, but give me a little bit of time, ok? I can get the coven back together and amped up for the fight.”
“ They’re exhausted! They’re injured… most of them are dead!” I lift my arms and bring them down to my side with a slap. “Trained or not, hyped or not, if we take them in there… they will all die.”
“Okay then Maeve and I will –”
“No! I need you here and I need you alive because chances are, I’m not coming back from this and I need you to fight when I’m gone otherwise everything we’ve done will have been for nothing. There’re still kids being sacrificed by their councils. They need a hero…” I swallow the lump in my throat and push back the terrified tears emerging in my eyes. “That hero is you, Tavis... and I have to do this alone.”
“I can’t run this thing
on my own, Theo. I can’t protect them all …”
“You can,” I say, taking his hand. “Look at what you’ve accomplished; learning to fight, teaching, creating a whole underground coven yourself... You have watched people die you love die! You lost Mateo and felt your heart break into a million pieces… but you still got up every morning and made sure that we kept going! Tavis, you’re the strongest person I know…”
He moves closer to me and presses his nose on mine. I feel the wetness on his cheeks and my heart aches for him as he whispers, “please… don’t do this.”
“I have to…” I sigh, pushing my hands through his hair and finally letting the tears run free. I shouldn’t be in this position with him, but it’s like he’s a magnet and I’m a helpless hunk of metal unable to resist. “Tavis —”
His lips crash to mine and suddenly I’m lost in him. Part of me knows that I should pull back and walk away from him but the rest of me thinks this may be our last moments together before my untimely death and that’s the part that wins out as I question, is it possible to love two people at the same time?
With a swift move, I’m in the air and my legs wrap themselves around his tense torso. My mouth doesn’t leave his to do much other than breathe as he carries me up the stairs and drops me on the bed in the closest room he could find. His body covers mine as clothes are discarded to the floor. He breaks our kiss and moves his lips to my neck. Lifting his head, his golden brown eyes collide with mine and I gasp for air.
All we do is make-out, but it feels like more. The scenery of the rustic, abandoned manor, the smell of the pouring rain outside and the dim light coming from the lit candles make it seem like we’re in a different time than our own and I think for a moment that we might be. My head spins and my surrounding images blur and change before my eyes. I can still feel Tavis’ kisses on my body but now, they feel like light breezes against my skin.
“Are you okay?” His voice is distant whispers in my ear as my vision takes form.
***
His body moves up and down in even breaths as he sleeps. He looks so perfect asleep, mainly because he can’t shoot off that smartass mouth of his in his slumberous state. I smile and place a kiss on the edge of his lips.
SACRIFICIUM (THE UNDERGROUND Book 1) Page 26