The Oath (20 page)

We were sky-borne again. I didn’t even scream this time. What was the point? I just needed to bide my time until I could get back to the lake. Xavier had to leave me sometime. I saw Gran’s house come into view, and then Xavier was pounding on the door. He sure could move fast with those wings of his. Gran opened the door, and her face paled. She ushered us into the house and started barking out orders. Xavier carried me to the library where a roaring fire waited. He didn’t blink, just stripped me out of my wet clothes. I knew I should be embarrassed that I was sitting naked on the rug, but I wasn’t. I was past caring at this point. The heat didn’t even register.

A soft, fleecy throw was draped around me. My skin felt so sensitive, I shuddered at the touch of the fleece. I was completely tuned to The Elements, and it affected every thought, every touch, every sense I had. My blood burned with power. It was too much, and I needed to release it soon or I would combust. I knew it without understanding why I knew it, but it was true nonetheless. If Xavier had just left me in the lake, all would have been fine. I could have released the power building within me when I died.

I tried to stand, my intention to run back to the lake, but Xavier’s hands held me down. I struggled and soon found myself stretched out on the floor, Xavier completely covering me. He wouldn’t let me go, and I screamed my frustration. The windows shook with the force of my anger, but he held on. I twisted, bucked beneath him. I needed to go back into the Water. My skin was on fire, and there was no relief except for the water.

My gran sank down on her knees beside me. She rubbed something on my forehead and then started to chant. I paid her no attention, my sole focus on getting free from Xavier’s iron grip. The longer Gran chanted, the less I struggled. I blinked, and my eyes zeroed in on the face above me. Terrified. Why was he so afraid?

“Melinda?” Gran sounded like she whispered my name. “Melinda?”

“What?” I grouched. I could barely hear anyone. It sounded like they were far away.

“Thank God,” Xavier whispered.

“Don’t let her up,” Gran warned. “She’s still under their spell. I can’t break it. Only a Coven leader can break it.”

“CJ’s a Coven Mistress.” Jeff. My head swiveled to see him hovering by the door.

“CJ’s part of the Coven they’re meant to build,” Xavier informed my Gran.

“I’m not the Coven Mistress for my town,” CJ denied. I turned my head farther left and saw her and Ethan standing behind and to the left of Gran.

“You don’t need to lead the members of that Coven,” Xavier bit out. “Only the Coven you are going to build to fight the darkness coming. You have to accept responsibility for it. I didn’t know what part you played in this before, but now I understand. You are the Coven Mistress.”

“I’m not!” CJ shouted. I could tell she was shouting by the violent waving of her hands, but to me she sounded like she was miles away. Why was it so hard to hear anyone?

“If you don’t accept your responsibility, Melinda will die,” Gran told her grimly. “She has consumed the power of The Elements. She’s not meant to hold that much power. It’s eating her alive from the inside. Only a true Coven Mistress, one chosen by the Elements themselves, can harness the power of all of them. She’s only carrying three, and they’re killing her. Are you going to stand there and watch her die?”

CJ closed her eyes, and her shoulders slumped. “No, I won’t let her die. Tell me what to do.”

Gran motioned her over, and CJ took a sitting position beside her. Gran looked at me. “Melinda, can you hear me?”

I nodded. My throat was on fire, and talking had become hard.

“In order for CJ to help you, you need to accept her as your Coven Mistress.”

I frowned. My family were not part of a Coven. We never had been. Why was Gran asking this of me now? She knew how I felt about binding my powers to a Coven.

“Melinda, you’re dying,” Gran whispered. “If you don’t accept her and do it now, you will die!”

That’s what I wanted. I wanted to die. I heard Xavier curse and then tell them about my suspicions about how Jenny died. “They must have used the same spell on her.”

“It’s not a spell.” Gran’s face paled. “It’s a curse.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Xavier sounded desperate.

Something odd happened. CJ stood, her honey colored eyes growing darker until they looked like pools of liquid gold. She extended her right hand, palm down toward me. “Get up,” she ordered Xavier. He started to argue until he saw her eyes. He jumped backward faster than a cat does when firecrackers goes off near it.

“Do you accept me as your Mistress?” She stared into my eyes, and I found myself nodding. Why not? I wasn’t going to be here much longer anyway. She nodded and started to speak.

“Winds of change, water of life

I summon thee.

Mother of all,

bring your power unto me.”

The power that had been consuming me, burning me alive on the inside, left me in a rush of wind. It pushed into CJ, and she staggered under the weight, but she stayed upright. Her eyes glowed, pulsed with an unholy light, but they stayed golden. She took a deep, steadying breath. She shuddered, but remained standing under the weight of the magic flowing through her.

“I call upon the four watchtowers

to guide me this night.

To the guardian of the east,

I ask for your strength.

The guardian of the North,

I ask for your will.

The guardian of the West,

I ask for your stability.

And the guardian of the South,

I ask for your mercy.

Help me save my child in this unholy fight.

Bring her darkness unto me

and forever let it be.”

The fog in my brain cleared, and I blinked rapidly. Noise rushed back, and my entire body shook from cold. CJ started to fall, but Ethan caught her. Jeff glanced at CJ, but rushed to me and covered me with the throw. He put his hands on my head, and I felt a warm, pulsing heat spread from my head to my toes, warming me. So Fire
was
his Element. As soon as he was done, he stepped away and hurried to where CJ lay on the floor.

Xavier took his place beside me and Gran. He pulled me to him and nearly crushed me in a hug meant to break bones. What was going on? I felt a little fuzzy on the details.

“What happened?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong with CJ?”

“Don’t you remember?” Gran asked, distraught.

“No. What’s wrong with her?”

“You don’t even remember that?” Gran exclaimed. “Sweetheart, you almost died. CJ saved your life.”

“What?” I glanced back over to where CJ lay unconscious on the floor. “I think you need to call Dr. Swanson, Gran. She doesn’t look so good.”

“I already did,” Ethan said, his tone as grim as Dad’s the night he’d told me Jenny died. “If he doesn’t get here soon, I’m not sure it’ll do any good.”

“What happened?” I asked again, looking directly at Xavier this time. “Tell me what happened.”

“I heard you, Melinda. Your feelings were flashing like neon lights on my radar, and when I found you, you’d sunk to the bottom of the lake.” He crushed me to him again before continuing. “I pulled you out of the water, but you kept trying to go back in, so I brought you home, hoping your grandmother might know what’s going on.”

“Melinda, you’d taken three of the five Elements into you at the same time,” Gran finished the story. “It was a curse that meant to kill you one way or another. If the power didn’t burn you alive, then you were instructed to drown yourself in the lake.”

My eyes widened. Those bloody little…it was the same thing they did to Jenny.

“Why can’t I remember?” I demanded.

“I think the power fried your memory,” Jeff said. “Our bodies aren’t built to withstand that kind of power. Your brain was working to try and survive, so it did what it needed to do. I suspect you’d have lost a lot more of your memories if CJ hadn’t intervened. She’s a true Coven Mistress, chosen by the Elements, and can withstand all their power at once. This is the first time she’s done that, though. It took more out of her than I thought possible.”

Red saved me? I stared at her pale face and felt overwhelmed. I’d been plotting the deaths of all the wannabes, and then someone I barely knew risked her life for mine? Even I understood the irony there. She’d saved me, and now I had a debt to repay. “Will she be okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Ethan growled. “She wasn’t ready for this!”

“Xavier, is there anything you can do to help her?” I asked, staring up into his eyes. They were like rivers of black ice tonight, staring down at me. I shivered, despite the abundance of warmth Jeff had bathed me in.

Xavier nodded and stood. He knelt down beside of CJ and put his hand on her head, much the same as Jeff had me. Murmuring in words of that ancient, beautiful language, he began to glow. It wasn’t a fiery white light or anything like that, but his body seemed to shimmer in the firelight, a soft haze that made him look like he glowed more than anything else. After a moment, he leaned back. “She should be okay now, but she’ll sleep for several hours. You may want to put her to bed until the doctor gets here, though.” Ethan picked her up and carried her upstairs, Jeff on his heels.

“Thank you,” I said.

Xavier smiled at me, his fingers lightly running down my cheek. “I owed her.”

“Is there anything you can do to help recover my memories?” I asked Gran. I needed to know what happened, why I was out there on the shoreline in a black dress and no shoes. Where were my clothes from this morning?

She pursed her lips. “I have a memory potion I sometimes use on people with amnesia, but if Jeff is right, and your memories were burned away, there may be no way to recover them.”

“Let’s try,” I said.

“Okay. Why don’t you go take a hot shower and put on some warm, dry clothes? It wouldn’t do for your father to show up and see you naked with Xavier in the room.”

My eyes widened at the thought. He’d throttle Xavier, or worse.

Xavier laughed at my expression. “Come on, Rose, let’s get you cleaned up.”

When I stood up, I gasped. Pain hit my legs and my side. I looked down and saw I was bleeding. It looked like someone had stabbed me. Xavier cursed and laid his hand on the wound. A burning sensation hit me, and then the pain stopped. When he pulled his hand away, the wound was gone. He repeated the process to the cuts on my legs, three in all. I had no clue how I got the wounds and only shrugged when he asked. Hopefully, Gran’s potion could explain this.

I let Xavier pick me up and followed Gran upstairs. I didn’t know what I was more worried about – Dad exploding at my extracurricular activities, or Dad meeting Xavier.

Chapter Twenty-Four

~ Memories ~

The potion Gran gave me was the nastiest, foulest tasting gunk I’d ever tasted. I wanted to gag the minute it hit my tongue, but I forced it down. If this could help me recover my memories, I was all in. Xavier laughed at my scrunched up expression. Ignoring him for the moment, I went and curled up under the covers in my bed. I was still cold. Jeff’s heat burst had probably kept me from dying of hypothermia, but it was dissipating now. The cold was returning. The hot shower helped too, but I needed warmth to maintain my body temperature.

The potion started to work, and I felt my eyes grow heavy. I let them fall shut and started to think about this morning. I remembered waking up and following my nose downstairs to the smell of bacon. That was all I could remember earlier. Everything after that was gone. I knew trying to force the memories to the surface wouldn’t work, so I just relaxed my body and let myself think about going down to breakfast this morning.

Soon, I was remembering bits and pieces of my conversation with Gran, Sebastian showing up, giving me coffee, and then taking me to the school where everyone else waited for us. I vaguely remembered my Chemistry teacher, Mr. Simon reading something from a book. I zeroed in on that, letting it wrap around my thoughts. He was speaking in an old language, one that sounded like the one Xavier spoke. I repeated the words he said, hoping Xavier would understand. I put no intent behind the words, only spoke them for clarification. If there was no intent, then the spell, or curse as Gran called it, wouldn’t activate.

It looked like a moving picture in my head. I saw myself strip and pull on the black dress. I stepped up to the table and began to mix things together. One by one, they all came up and sliced a cut across the palms of their hands, letting the blood drip into the mixture I had made. I took the mixture and…my memory jumped to another point. I stood in the middle of some sort of drawn circle with ancient sigils drawn throughout. I called upon the five Elements, took them in. My knees buckled under the weight, and I screamed in pain.

Sebastian, Mandy, Brandon, Wes, Lori, and Madison were all chanting behind me. I didn’t understand the words. I whispered them out loud, hoping either Gran or Xavier would know what they meant. My body shook, both in the memory and now. Someone told me to stand, and I did, not understanding why I obeyed, especially when I hurt so much I was on the verge of passing out. Words came out of my mouth, words in Xavier’s language. I repeated them. The room began to shake. I saw a blue light begin to outline a door against the far wall. The light got bigger and brighter, and I kept chanting, my words mirroring the words of the others this time.

An explosion and a crash that sounded like thunder rocked the room. I fell.

Then I was at the lake. I opened my eyes and sat up. My memories had gaps, things I probably would never be able to recover, but I understood enough to know what happened to me. And they were going to pay for it.