Page 58 of The Blood Witch
Jamie’s smile turns sadistic, and she cants her head to the side. “Too bad you were wrong, Lennox.”
No!
A soul-shattering scream tears out of my throat as Jamie’s eye hardens and her finger squeezes the trigger. The sound of the gun discharging drowns out everything, and I shove a raging pulse of magic at Jamie, desperate to stop what she’s trying to do, but my magic slams up against a barrier protecting the dais. This time, when the pain explodes in my body, it’s not from the symbols carved into the stones at my feet, it’s from the bullet that rips through my chest.
Agony tsunamis through me, but the bitch isn’t done. She raises the sharp knife above Elon’s chest and, with no mercy or hesitation, plunges it down through Elon’s heart. He gasps as she buries the blade in his chest, and then I’m forced to witness his body as it relaxes in that horrible way that only death can cause.
I bellow a keening cry so visceral and broken that my magic responds. My heart cries out to Rogan as I pour the loss and need for retribution out of me so forcefully that with a flash and sonic crash, the stones at my feet explode.
My scream is cut off with a gurgle, and I suddenly taste blood in my mouth. I refuse to look down at the damage I know has torn through me, and another splintering crack from behind me spurs me on. I force my body to lumber closer to Jamie. She eyes me, her stare panicked as she starts to chant, shoving her hand in the blood pooling at Elon’s chest and wiping it down her face.
I immediately recognize what she’s doing, and wrath burns through my veins. She’s calling her demon. She’s using Elon as her sacrifice and calling him to take her away. I use everything I have inside of me and shove another pulse of magic at her on a choked scream. Just like with the symbols that comprised my cell, stones erupt in a line at the base of the stairs that lead up to the dais and the altar. I can suddenly feel Jamie and Elon with my magic, and satisfaction hammers through me now that the demon marks protecting her from me are destroyed.
The doors burst open behind me with such force that it throws me forward against the floor, fucking up my effort to try and get to Jamie. Noise and chaos erupt all around me, and I struggle to pull air into my lungs and to find the strength to push myself up off the ground. It was all I could do to stay on my feet after she shot me, and now I’m not sure if I can command the cooperation of my limbs.
Something slams into Jamie, and she’s thrown away from Elon and the altar. I hear Rogan scream, and the sound rakes through my soul and calls to my sorrow.
Stone cuts into me as I drag myself closer to the altar. I need to get to Elon to keep her from using him to escape. I couldn’t protect him when he was alive, but I will in his death. I refuse to let this demon-stained bitch use any more of him than she already has.
Each inch is a struggle, but I grunt and cough and force myself closer. There’s some kind of fight happening behind me, and when I turn to see what’s happening, I’m shocked by what I find. It’s as though the shadows themselves have torn themselves away from the walls and corners of the church and are now fighting the team of Order members who are here to rescue us. Everything moves so fast, there’s so many of them, and I can’t make out faces or pick out Rogan amidst the mayhem.
Rage boils inside of me, and I push even harder to get to Elon.
Come on, body, it’s just a flesh wound, we got this.
Movement catches my eyes, and I see Jamie struggling to get to her feet. I latch on to my magic, but something about the connection is wrong. It’s like my magic is blinking in and out of service. I pull in a deep wet breath and focus on the power that’s always been so steady and strong inside of me. The connection evens out, and I push magic through my body to stop the bleeding as much as possible. I try to repair what I can, and then I take some of what’s left and reach out to Jamie. She’s closing the distance between her and Elon, the demonic chant pouring from her chapped lips. I feel the bones in one of her legs, and with a thought, I crack them to stop her progress.
A pained scream rings through the church, but it quickly gets lost in all the commotion.
“Thought you had won, didn’t you?” I growl out as she goes down, my voice lost in the noise echoing off the walls of the church.
I magically reach for Jamie again, but my access to my ability blinks out, and a fit of choking coughs demands my immediate attention. I hack up blood as I pull myself up to the altar. Magic flicks to life again inside of me, and I waste no time calling to the powdered bones in the piles of ash now all around me. One flick of my wrist has them morphing from piles on the ground to clouds in the air. I shove the remains of the people Jamie has killed at her as she struggles to get up. Ashy mist surrounds her, and I do my best to suffocate her with it while I command another cloud of ash to pull Elon’s body down from the altar.
Jamie screams, and I shove ashes down her throat until all I hear are her coughs and the gagging as she fights a cloud of retribution. I want to do more, to make her suffer more, but I can already feel my access to my magic flickering out again, like my batteries are going out and need to be replaced. I refocus everything I have on getting Elon down to me, and then I ask the ashes to pull us away to the wall under the massive, dirty, stained glass window that marks the front of the church.
I hold onto Elon with every ounce of strength that I have, relieved that I have him now and Jamie can’t get to him anymore. At the same time, I’m completely broken over the fact that she murdered him so senselessly when Rogan was just outside the doors. Power shuts off inside of me again, but we’re almost to the wall and still partially hidden in a fog of ash. I drag us until the stone of the front of the church keeps me from going any further. I stop and check for a pulse. Finding nothing, I try to listen through my wheezing for any sign that Elon’s breathing. His chest doesn’t move, and it’s clear that he’s gone. There’s nothing there.
Tears stream down my face as I try to pull the knife from his chest. It takes me three tries and a serious effort to fight the agony that courses through me from the gunshot wound, but I finally get it out, setting it down beside me in case I need it. I feel my strength wane, and I pull Elon to me and crouch over him protectively, and then every ounce of ability drains out of me like I’m a sieve. It’s as though I bargained with my body to give me everything so I could get to Elon, and now that I have him, there’s nothing left in the tank for me.
In.
Out.
I practically force my lungs to inflate and then deflate, but it’s getting harder. Sounds of the Order winning the fight should spark hope in my bones, but instead, they’re drowned out by my grief and sorrow. I can’t even think about what Rogan will do when he finally finds us, just to discover that he was seconds too late. I block out everything as I hold Elon’s body, my tears dripping down my face and mixing with the blood that’s still pouring out of my chest.
I should feel alarmed, but I find I can’t feel much of anything, and even though I’m trying to tap into my magic, I can’t find any to try and make the blood stop. I’m no Soul Witch, and as much as I wish I could, I can’t repair all the damage or hide all the evidence of the horror that both Elon and I endured in this place at the hands of a power hungry psycho.
I push a lock of dirty hair out of Elon’s face and reach up to close his eyelids. I can’t even look up to see who from the Order has come to the rescue. I feel too ashamed and devastated that I’m the only one left here to find.
“Lennox! Elon!” Rogan bellows out, his powerful voice searching, the hope in it breaking my heart. But like the moth I’ve always been to his flame, I look up, drawn to him even against my will.
He’s going to hate me. Hate that I’m here instead of Elon. And I feel as though I’m being crushed under the weight of that knowledge as my wrecked gaze searches through the fighting and finally lands on a pair of moss-green eyes.
Useless hope surges through me as I take in his face. He’s still searching the church for us, and I wish I could call out that I’m here, but I don’t have it in me. I watch the perfect planes of his face frantically looking as he fights away shadows that dare to get too close to him and the others around him.
I’m here,I whisper in my head, and as though I just screamed it at the top of my lungs, Rogan’s eyes immediately find mine. I see a flash of relief in his gaze before a trio of Order soldiers step in the way, fighting off a handful of shadow creatures who growl and snarl and move as fast as a flash, leaping from here to there in a blink. I know that when Rogan finally gets to me, the relief he’s feeling will get ripped away, and it’s my fault. If I’d only thought of the blood magic earlier...I could have stopped so much.
A demonic snarl tears through the church, and Jamie rises from the literal ashes, floating on the air like some harbinger of doom. Her marks are as bright as the sun itself and, from what I can see, just as hot too. The demon magic is burning through her, reminding me of the way Eleanor started to crumble from the demon curse she accidentally absorbed.
