Page 43 of The Blood Witch
My question pulls Jamie’s sick attention from Elon to me. He stops seizing, foam dripping from his mouth as soon as her eerie teal glare is turned in my direction, but I shutter any relief I feel and put a stopper on all of my emotions.
I stand at the barrier to my cage, my entire body tense, wishing I could check and see if Elon is okay. I clench my fists, trying and failing not to show my distress.
“Your grandmother was chatty too. Pretty sure she saw me coming, but by the time I realized that, it was too late,” she tells me cryptically, her head canted to the side as she examines me like I’m a specimen under a microscope. “I’m too smart to fall for it again,” she adds and then returns to whatever she’s setting up around the altar.
So much for theget her talkingeffort.
Dammit, didn’t Oprah do a show about what to do if someone abducts you? I’m pretty surenever let them take you to the second locationwas definitely a big one she preached, but that ship has sailed, crashed, and sunk to the deepest depths of the vast and frigid ocean. No diamond-dropping old lady is going to be the heroine of this story—or at least I’m ninety-six percent sure that’s not going to happen.
I know there’s more that I’ve been taught from one article or season ofSVUover the years, likemake them look at you like you’re a person, but the bitch is already calling me by my name, so I don’t know how else to do that. I could maybe try and be her friend, but I doubt that’s going to make her want my magic any less. She killed her cousin, for fuck’s sake, I don’t think being in thefriendcategory is going to make me any safer than herfamilycategory was.
I watch Jamie silently as I try to figure out my next move, darting looks at Elon to make sure he’s still breathing. Jamie said everything was going to go down on the harvest moon, so I’m not sure if she’s just getting ready for that or if she’s doing something else, but I watch her every move as though it will reveal the countermove to undo it all.
“Do you know we come from elves and fairies?” Jamie declares randomly, and I cross my fingers that there’s some major evil-monologuing coming my way, anything to try to distract and prolong whatever is about to happen.
“I mean, not directly, but we have our magic because of them. Their wars were pissing off other races of magical creatures, so they brought humans into the mix, gave them abilities, and asked them to take out the fae and the elves so everyone could live their lives without all the bullshit. I never knew that,” she admits. “I found it in an old ass forgotten book when I was looking for ways to get my magic back,” she declares as she wipes down the altar with a rag and some substance in a bottle that she pulled out of her bag.
I wait for the astringent scent of cleaner to hit me, but instead I catch an earthy smell that makes me think she’s using oil or something on her rag and not a detergent of any kind.
“Apparently, the first witches had all kinds of magic, but when we got tired of serving others and turned on the powers that be, they all got together and tried to take what we had away, but when that didn’t work, they fucked upourmagic by breaking it into pieces. That’s where the separate branches come from, and then those branches broke into even more lines over time, and here we fucking are, shadows of what we once were,” she announces, gesturing all around her. “The little bitches shut their world off from ours, but I’ll change that when I make everything right again,” she mumbles matter-of-factly.
Jamie looks over at me as she pulls a lighter from her back pocket and checks to make sure it’s working. She moves around the dais, lighting candles one by one, and the smell of blood in the room grows stronger. My stomach churns uneasily, and I rub at my legs to try to combat the cold trying to settle in them.
“It’s amazing what you can find in books. The information that people forget is important or the pieces you can put together if you just look hard enough. Fate has guided us all to this. It wants the branches returned to one,” Jamie purrs, as though fate’s scratching behind her ears and telling her she’s agood girl.
I roll my eyes.
Jamie itches one of her demon marks on her cheek like it’s calling her out by drawing attention to it. Fate didn’t guide shit for this nutjob, but a demon sure as fuck might have traded the information she was looking for, or where to find it, for the right price.
“Mmmmmm, it’s time,” she announces, and the declaration makes my blood run cold, and my heart leaps from relatively calmtooh shitin a millisecond.
Time for what?
I look around, my gaze a silent plea.
Please don’t tell me it’s time for me to die.
13
Ilook at Elon as though he’ll tell me what’s happening with a glance, but he’s not looking anywhere other than at his feet.
Shit. That’s probably a bad sign.
With a smile that could giveanyversion of the Joker a run for his money, Jamie reaches into the bag and pulls out something brown, furry, and squirming. I barely have time to identify it as a hare before Jamie twists its head, the sickening crack of bones reverberating through me, the sound making me feel sick. The poor animal immediately goes slack in her cruel grip, and I look away when she holds its lifeless body above her and starts to chant as blood drips down onto her face from the carcass.
It all happens so fast that I stand there as shock ricochets through me. How is she talking about books and elves one minute and then emotionlessly killing the next? It’s a dichotomy I can’t wrap my mind around or make any sense of. Is this how it starts, is this the ritual she uses to kill us and rip our magic away? My heart hammers in my chest, and I debate arming myself with a bone and giving my little skull weapons away or waiting and trying to keep them a surprise.
I don’t recognize the language she’s speaking as any form of Mancer I’ve ever heard or magically recognize. It’s not Latin either, but something more guttural and brutish. The flames of the candles she lit earlier flicker, but I don’t see or feel a breeze anywhere. With each growled word, the light in the church grows dimmer and dimmer as though the sun has gone down and the moon has forgotten to rise.
It all feels unnatural and alarming, every hair on my body standing on end in rejection of this atmosphere creeping in all around me. Jamie drops the hare, the body even more collateral damage that’s been used and now forgotten in her madness. Her chanting grows more animated. I can hear the plea in it, and I realize what she’s doing. She’s summoning. Every mark on her body starts to glow red hot. I can even see the ones that are supposed to be hidden beneath clothing as they begin to singe the fabric covering them. She’s more demon marks than skin, and I’m horrified by what I see.
Dread climbs up my body as a black mist starts to amass around her. The stupidity of what she’s doing is next level, but it’s clear she’s beyond giving any fucks. I grit through the pain that strikes through me when I magically reach out to the bone powder I abandoned in my cell earlier. I call it to circle around me and infuse it with as much protection as I can before my body succumbs to the pain. Panting from exertion, I kneel down within my circle before my weak legs can give out on me.
I look over at Elon, hoping he has some way to protect himself from whatever Jamie’s pulling here. He’s huddled in the corner between his wall and the demon marks trapping him, his eyes fixed on nothing as though he knows what’s coming and has zero interest in seeing it. I should have taken that as my cue to look away, but instead I make the mistake of looking back at the woman holding us captive. Shock flashes through me as the black cloud billowing around her has taken on more of a shape.
I don’t know what I expect, horns, wings, just a regular looking human-esque being, but I’m not really prepared for what looks like the fully formed smog monster fromFernGully. Well, if that smog monster made you freeze in fear and fight not to piss your pants. The thick, acrid smoke-being pushes its way into Jamie’s mouth, shoving her head back with unforgiving brutality and forcing her to endure what looks like a painful invasion. It pours down her throat, and I watch as she gags and chokes on the presence. Tears spill down her cheeks as she inhales evil, and I’m sickened by the relief I see on her face when the thing is fully consumed by her.
She writhes and moans and begins to rub up on herself as more thick smoke starts to move over her, touching and testing and making her demon marks burn like solar flares. I look away when the darkness dips into her pants, not wanting any more of this fucked up shit burned into my mind than there already is. The symbols on the ground around me start to glow eerily, and I watch them like they’re a snake about to strike at any moment. Jamie’s moans start to morph into whimpers, and then her whimpers become screams. I trace the almost invisible line of bone dust around me and try to think of happier times to block out the sound of her pain.
