Hush (Witches & Warlocks Book 2) (17 page)

I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself if I find out Daya hurt her.

We wander through the now familiar hallways and I can tell we’re heading out to the courtyard. I think it’s still late autumn, but the morning is cold. Frost crunches under our feet and my breath puffs in little bursts in front of my face. The whole place is dried grass and dead leaves and empty branches scratching out against the brilliant morning sky.

Bo and the other hollow remnants filter into the space, some walking as they did in life, others passing through the walls, and others still scuttling on the ground in some awful version of a human spider. For the first time in a long time, I’m nervous. I search the group for Celine, but I don’t see her.

“Help them pass on.” Daya’s now familiar voice scrapes out into the space, as cold as the ground.

“Where’s Celine?” I’ve played her games long enough. It was one thing to blindly follow her orders when it wasn’t hurting anyone except maybe me. But now? With Celine gone and Daya certain to be the reason? We’re playing a totally different game now.

“Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Oh come off it.”

Daya’s whole demeanor changes. “You didn’t think I knew what you were doing? Setting up your wards, letting the girl try and filter your magic. Child, you’re a fool. Celine was a little girl when she died. That’s not a lot of time to learn much about the way things work.”

My whole world comes crashing down around my ears. I can’t stand to hear her say anything negative about Celine, even though I probably was foolish for believing the girl knew how to outsmart Daya. “Where is she?” Even my voice is crackling with energy, that awesome twist of dark and light energy, both ready and eager to come to life and do my bidding.

“Help these hollows pass on and I’ll tell you. Don’t you think they’ve suffered long enough?”

I want to roll my eyes. These hollows deserve some time spent suffering. Celine? She’s not deserved one thing that’s happened to her along the way. Hell, I want to keep fighting, but if I have even a small chance of helping Celine by following Daya’s orders, well that girl deserves to have someone fight for her. “You know I can’t do it without drawing energy from another source. I’ve never done it without killing someone.”

Something wicked works its way across Daya’s face, and I can’t help but remember how much I don’t know about this woman. “Then use them.”

With a wave of her fingers, she slides open a door on the other side of the courtyard. The hollow remnants chitter and chatter, echoing Daya’s words in their horror movie voices, laughing and cackling, filling the courtyard and my mind with the sound. My head is filled with too many voices.

Two figures stumble out of the doorway across the courtyard, drawn forward by Daya’s magic. The remnants scuttle and cavort, jerking through a macabre dance, laughing as they point and continue to chant: “Use them.”

My heart stops.

Stumbling towards me like two men doomed for the gallows, are Noah and Luke. And behind her, chained to a wall with magic stained a vicious red, is Celine. Her tear-streaked face contorts when she sees me. “Stay true to you, Zoe! Stay true!” The magic holding her back lashes out and whips her across the face, leaving an angry mark on her cheek. She cries out, and rope-like magic snakes into her mouth, silencing her. She’s choking and gagging on it and I set my jaw.

I turn to Daya. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“This is what you wanted, girl.” I almost can’t hear her over the howling and cavorting of the hollow remnants.  “You think dark magic is as simple as killing vagrants? Strangers on the street? The real stuff, the powerful stuff, comes with a heavy price. You really want to understand it? That knowledge comes at quite a high cost.”

Luke laughs, his muscles straining as he fights each step forward, his body controlled by Daya’s magic. “Haven’t changed your act much over the years, have you?”

Daya ignores him and stays focused on me. “You’re right, you know. You won’t be whole until you can learn to integrate both parts of yourself into your identity. And you won’t be strong enough to fight Lucy until you’re whole.”

I just stare at Daya. There’s no way I can sacrifice Noah and Luke to help these remnants pass on, it doesn’t matter if my life depends on it or not. I just shake my head and turn back to my friends. They’re not being pulled forward anymore. They’re just standing a few feet from me, bodies straining with their attempts to pull free from Daya’s magic. And behind them is Celine, tears streaming down her face. Despite it, she shakes her head, her final message to me, despite her pain, is to stay strong.

A hollow remnant - one who still looks like little boy with wiry arms and legs and eyes darker than anything I’ve ever seen - jumps onto my back and clings to my shoulders. His body is weightless and burns where it presses into mine. “It’ll feel so good. When you kill ‘em. Just flex your magic and watch ‘em fall.” He leans into my ear and I feel his cold lips brushing the skin at my neck. “You’re gonna love it.”

This isn’t what I want to be. I want to be strong, not cold. Whole, not broken. Can’t I marry the two parts of myself without compromising who I am? Won’t giving into my dark magic just swing the pendulum to the other side? If I’m all light, without dark, then I’m not whole, but if I’m all dark, without light, well I’m not whole then either, am I?  And sacrificing the two people - my eyes fall on Celine -
three
people who actually mean something to me? That’s letting the pendulum swing so far it just shatters the opposite wall.

“No.”

Daya steps forward, gathering her energy into her hands, flexing them and flaring them and her magic snaps and pops, heavy with threat. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“In order to be whole, I’ve gotta be balanced. If I kill my friends, that’s not balance.”

“And killing strangers is?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. What I do know is that sacrificing my friends for my own personal gain is wrong. It goes against who I am. And that’s not balanced.”

Daya lifts her hand, her magic popping like an electrical storm. “Well, then I’ll kill them myself.”

I don’t have time to ask myself why Daya wants Luke and Noah dead. Why she has Celine chained to a wall and choking on hateful magic. I just leap in front of them, calling on my tiger and chanting a series of protection spells. Golden light flares around them, a huge shield of energy.

“Cessabis magicae!” My magic flares like a fountain, showering sparks onto the cold ground, and shatters the controlling spell Daya has on Noah and Luke.

I spin and find myself facing Daya again. She flings a fireball that whizzes past my face, singeing my hair, and smashes into the ground, sputtering out when it hits the frosted grass. So, now what? Now I have to kill Daya in order to get out of killing my friends?

The courtyard is boiling with movement and energy. The remnants are flailing and cackling. Magic is flaring. My tiger is roaring and pacing and Noah’s joins her, followed by Luke’s dragon. And when a wolf joins them, I know it’s Celine’s.

Freed from Daya’s spell, Luke steps up to my side and Noah stands tall near the other. Without thinking, I reach out and clasp their hands and something strange happens the moment we’re all connected.

Wind swirls around our feet, racing up our body and standing our hair on end. There’s the pop and woompf that comes when magic starts doing its thing without being told and then, oh my gosh, it’s like when a watercolor gets wet and all the colors bleed into each other. Noah’s magic and Luke’s magic rush through my body and collide in my very center and then …  I don’t know … it’s like my magic reaches out and wraps up both of them and melds it all together and now we’re one. Celine steps in front of us, energy surging around her little body, her hair whipping around her face, magic streaming from her fingertips.

And if that doesn’t make sense, then good. Because I don’t understand it either.

The courtyard falls silent. Daya lets her magic dissipate, the fire enveloping her hand contracting until it no longer exists at all. She waves her hands and flares her fingers. “Relegant religuiae,” she says, and the hollow remnants disappear.

Noah, Luke, and I, we’re still holding hands in the middle of the courtyard and all I know is that I don’t want them to let go. There’s a strength and a comfort with us unified like this and I don’t want to go back to being un-whole. Whatever that means.

“Well done, Zoe.” Daya steps towards us. I want to move away from her, but the men keep me steady, each of them squeezing my hand and keeping me in place. “You’ve completed the Trinity.”

Excuse me? What?

She must see the confusion on my face because she smiles and shakes her head. “Like I said, you need to accept that there are people who know more about what’s going on than you do and trust them to make the right decisions for you.”

I look at Luke and Noah in turn because I’ll be damned if there’s yet another big conspiracy surrounding me that they’re in on. I’ll never forgive them if that’s the case. Luckily for them, they look just as confused as I am.

Celine turns and smiles at the three of us and I hope someday I get to experience the love I see on her face. I don’t think many people do. Tears are brimming in her eyes, which are glowing with that autumnal light. They’re so bright, they should be hard to look at, but they’re not. They dart from Luke to Noah and then back to me before she runs up and wraps her arms around Noah. “I love you little brother,” she says.

And then there’s wind and warmth and this moment of pure joy and way before I’m ready, Celine is gone. From out of nowhere and from everywhere, her voice sounds one last time. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

And then, her voice is in my head, just a tiny little whisper, the last bit of my friend before she passes out of my world. “Thank you.”

Chapter Twenty

“You guys can let go now.” Daya indicates our still clasped hands. “I’m sure you don’t want to, but you’re gonna have to let go someday. Now’s as good a time as any.”

Reluctantly, we unwind our fingers and let go of each other’s hands. Oddly enough, that feeling of connection and completion doesn’t go away now that we’re no longer touching. It’s like I can still feel them, their energy, connected to me. I swipe away the tears trailing down my cheeks and Noah does the same.

“This way,” says Daya and takes off towards the doors that held Luke and Noah just moments ago without turning back to see if we obey. We do, of course, following her like confused little ducklings. At least, I hope we’re ducklings, and not lambs being led to the slaughter. I trail my fingers across the wall that held Celine, saying my own little goodbye and somehow I’m certain she hears me.

Daya winds us through the labyrinthine hallways and we end up in a room that has to be hers. It’s like this room sucked all of the color out of the rest of the ranch. There are plush chairs set on either side of an overstuffed sofa and for just a split second, I resent my spartan cell, but I don’t give that thought room to grow because I met the most beautiful little creature in that room. A child who will forever change the way I see things. Daya indicates that we’re to sit on the couch as she lowers herself into one of the armchairs. Noah and I sink into the couch while Luke leans against the wall near the door, arms crossed, glowering.

“Sometimes,” Daya pauses and swallows. She looks down, as if she’s searching for the right words and thinks she dropped them in her lap. “Sometimes,” she continues with a flourish of her hands, “weapons must be forged. I’m sure the steel despises the blacksmith’s hammer…” She trails off and shakes her head. “And the heat of the flame…”

“How about,” says Luke, “you stop trying to dress this all up and tell us what’s going on.”

Beside me, Noah nods and leans back, his shoulder brushing mine and I have a moment where I’m excited that he’s touching me and yes, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s absurd to have that thought right now. “I’m with Luke,” says Noah, “and that’s saying a lot.” He shifts just a little, creating more space between us.

Daya takes a long breath in through her nose and lets it out through her mouth. “A war is brewing.” She folds her hands in her lap. “A war between the supernatural creatures of the world. Although I suppose it’d be more apt to say that war is eminent. It’s upon us.”

Daya’s earlier confused little speech about blacksmiths makes sense. “And we’re the weapons? Me and Noah and Luke?”

Daya nods. “You were the hardest to forge. Everything hinged on creating you in such a precise way. The men were easy. They’re the points of the trinity, the opposing forces. Good,” she nods towards Noah, “and evil.” She jerks her head towards Luke.

“And me?”

“You are the balance between them. The counterweight. You are equal measures of both.”

“Then is Lucy on our side? Is that why she hid me? So she could further your cause? Make it easier to ‘create me in such a precise way?” I’m boiling. If she’s saying she manipulated my entire life so I could be some pawn in her war… My jaw clenches and I clamp my lips into a thin little line.

“No, my dear,” she says and her tone is unctuous enough to make me question my closed mouth. “Lucy is most definitely
not
on our side. Let’s just say, pretend for a moment, that I wanted a witch who could change death into life and life into death, but she had to live a life that kept her balanced on the knife’s edge of morality. And I couldn’t create that balance if I raised her with all the other witches and warlocks I was trying to raise to be either good or evil but nothing in between. And let’s just say that I leaked enough information about our plans that Lucy thought the best way to render our plan useless was to keep you alive and powerless.”

“So
you
are behind …” I hold my hands out, not sure what words sums up the entirety of my life. “...all this.”

“Yes, my dear. And now, because of
all this,
” Daya waves her hand in an approximation of my earlier movement, “I have the weapons I need to win this war.”