The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (121 page)

Read The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection Online

Authors: L. J. Smith

Tags: #Young Adult, #Fantasy, #Romance, #Vampires, #Juvenile Fiction, #Teenage Girls, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Love & Romance, #Witchcraft, #Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Social Issues, #Young Adult Fiction, #love, #Dating & Sex, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection
2.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“These robes are handmade,” Laurel said. “They’re beautiful.” They were pagan ritual robes of various styles, from many different centuries. Black, red, green, purple. There were twelve of them in all, one for each member of the Circle.
Once everyone else had put one on, there was one robe left. It was white with gold trim. The creases in its pristine cloth were crisp and sharp.
“That one’s yours, Cassie,” Diana said. “It goes to the spell master leading the ritual.”
Cassie felt lofty and proud as she slipped one arm, and then the other, through the robe’s soft cotton sleeves. Faye reached for the black-handled dagger.
“An Athame,” she said, sliding the blade from its sheath. “It’s so old, and solid. And sharp.”
“A what?” Sean asked.
Laurel took the dagger from Faye’s hands and examined it. “The Athame knife is reserved for special ceremonies and rituals,” she said. “It’s used for summoning or banishing spirit entities.”
Deborah reached for the knife, but Laurel wouldn’t give it up.
“If it’s a proper Athame,” she continued, “when it’s used to draw the circle at the beginning of a ritual, it can cast away negative energies like a shield.”
“Well, it had better be a proper Athame then, because that’s exactly what we’re going to need,” Scarlett said. She flipped through the different forms of incense that came out of the box. “Golden copal, dragon’s blood, pine and cedar,” she said. “This Timothy guy didn’t leave anything out.”
Melanie gathered together a multicolored heap of crystals. They were all different shapes and sizes. She pointed out a stack of flesh-colored candles. “Those are incredibly rare,” she said. “Made with tallow, the fat from cows or sheep.”
Nick picked up the wooden spade. “I’ll do the digging,” he said. “For the fire pit.”
Cassie observed the medieval-looking tool in his hand. It resembled an axe, with a T handle, pointed toward the tip.
Adam reached for the logs, which were seasoned oak, and the vial of liquid that would be used as lighter fluid. “I’ll help,” he said to Nick. The two of them calculated what would be the center point of the foundation.
Diana, Faye, and Cassie each put on one of the Master Tools.
Cassie looked up at the almost-full moon. It looked like an oddly formed egg, an imperfect oval. She listened to the waves crashing at the base of the cliff they stood upon. In her arms she clutched the book. It felt warm against her skin, needy and alive, like a loving child.
It isn’t real,
she told herself. The affection she felt emitting from the book wasn’t love; it was darkness, temptation, the embodiment of everything she had to fight against.
She set the book down for the moment, inside Timothy’s now-empty box, and focused on her friends as they prepared the spell.
Laurel held the instructions with both hands as Melanie laid out the proper formation of crystals to enhance the flow of energy from the ground to the air. Sean, Chris, and Doug lit the candles and incense, cleansing the space with swinging censers.
Nick’s hands and arms grew filthy as he dug a deep circular pit into the ground. Adam and Deborah lined it with a crosshatch of logs.
Diana came into view, beautiful and majestic in her sunlight-colored robe and sparkling diadem. Faye gleamed in red beneath the moon, with the garter tight around her leg.
Cassie imagined what she looked like in her white and gold robe, with the silver bracelet shining upon her arm. She wished she could see herself in this imperative moment, as she and her friends were on the brink of rewriting the course of their history—their future.
Cassie gripped the dagger’s cool handle and stabbed it into the hard, dry dirt. She drew a deep circle around the ruined foundation, encircling the wood-filled pit with a wide ring.
Silently, everyone stepped inside to the inner perimeter of the circle, and Cassie closed it shut.
Adam handed Cassie the vial of clear fluid. Cassie lifted its cap and poured its contents out over the logs. Next Adam handed her a lit match. She held it up to her eyes for only a second before letting it slip from her fingers.
The fire blazed into flames not unlike wild demons newly unleashed from the ground.
Cassie turned toward the eastern sky and held up both her arms. “I call on the Watchtower of the East,” she shouted. “Powers of Air, protect us.”
In a few seconds a gentle breeze blew through her hair and around the circle, fueling the fire with new life.
Next Cassie turned southward. “I call on the Watchtower of the South,” she said. “Powers of Fire, protect us.”
She closed her eyes and felt the heat of the high flames on her face.
Then Cassie turned again. “I call on the Watchtower of the West,” she said. “Powers of Water, protect us.”
The waves in the distance below them crashed loudly upon the shore, and the strong briny smell of the ocean rose up to fill their lungs.
Finally, Cassie faced north. “Watchtower of the North,” she said. “Powers of Earth, protect us.”
The ground beneath their feet suddenly began to quake. The book rumbled. Cassie could feel herself breathing hard. The circle she’d cut into the soil with the dagger split from the rest of the foundation, leaving them standing on an island of ragged dirt.
Then she gazed into the flames that flailed from deep within the pit, and harnessed her energy. This was it. She closed her eyes.
But then someone gasped, and someone else choked.
Cassie opened her eyes and quickly turned around. Alice was charging toward them, and close behind her the rest of the ancestors advanced across the empty lot like an army of ghosts.
“They must have followed me,” Scarlett said.
Cassie’s friends were gasping for air. Sean, Chris, and Doug were the first to collapse, but all of them except Cassie and Scarlett were gripping their necks, suffocating.
Scarlett raised her hands and performed a spell to restore their breath. But by then the ancestors had reached the Circle, close enough to knock Sean, Chris, and Doug out with an even stronger suffocation spell.
Adam and Nick launched an attack, a binding spell to constrain the ancestors’ strength, but Absolom shielded it easily, with the help of Thomas and Samuel. They retaliated with a hard stare that threw both Adam and Nick violently onto the ground. Adam hit the dirt with a
thud
and was immediately knocked unconscious. Nick landed gruesomely on a protruding beam from the ruined foundation of the house. It stabbed straight through his upper thigh, impaling the flesh like a thick, rusty skewer. He cried out in pain. The sight of his blood weakened Cassie at the knees.
Alice targeted Diana and Deborah. Melanie and Laurel tried to protect them with a defense spell, but all four of them dropped lifelessly beneath Alice’s open hand.
Faye lifted her hands and focused her energy on Alice. She managed to steer Alice back, away from her friends, but only long enough to attract Charlotte’s attention.
Charlotte gestured toward Faye and sent her flying backward into the air. Cassie and Scarlett were the only two Circle members left standing.
The ancestors surrounded them.
“Our brethren,” Alice said. “We left you for last.”
Beatrix grabbed Scarlett by the neck and pulled her face close to her own. “You, we’ll kill,” she said, “while you”—she signaled to Cassie—“watch.”
Absolom placed his palm over Scarlett’s forehead. He whispered words Cassie didn’t recognize.
“Then you’ll be ours,” Alice said to Cassie. “At last.”
“I maledicentibus vobis in mortem,”
Absolom mumbled over Scarlett’s forehead.
“I maledicentibus vobis in mortem
.”
If not for Beatrix holding Scarlett’s thin body up, she would have slid to the ground. Her wide eyes glassed over, and her neck drooped down. Her face became a mask. Cassie understood what she was witnessing all too well: Scarlett was beginning to die.
Cassie raised her arms to harness her energy, to go inward and find a spell, but Alice’s gaze left her mind blank, powerless. Her spells, even her dark magic, were just out of her own reach.
She surveyed the surrounding area. Her friends lay scattered, unmoving. She couldn’t be sure who was alive, if any.
Then Cassie caught sight of something else. The wooden box Timothy had given her. The one he had said not to open until she had no other choice.
This had to be that moment.
Cassie dashed for the box before Alice or any of the ancestors could stop her. She kneeled down beside it, unlatched its hinges, and lifted its top.
Cassie drew back at the sight of its contents.
Rats. Dead rats, piled on top of one another in a mass grave of matted fur and desiccated tails. One whiff of their putrid scent made Cassie gag. She stood up and backed away from the box. Was this some sick joke? Was Timothy on the ancestors’ side all along?
Cassie glanced back at the ancestors still hovering over Scarlett. Alice watched Cassie, unafraid, unthreatened, confident there was nowhere for her to run to.
Then Cassie heard a squeak, followed by a scratching. She peered cautiously over the top of the wooden box. What seemed like a thousand beady, blinking eyes stared back at her. Their bodies began to twist and move, slinking free from their entanglement. Cassie held her breath as the whole herd of them scurried out over the top of their box and raced for the ancestors.
Their long rodent tails dragged behind them as they charged for whatever exposed skin they found—the vulnerable flesh of ankles and calves. Scratching and clawing, the leader of the pack leapt for the nearest target first: Alice. She lifted her hands in defense, but her fingers only provided an easier-to-reach mark.
The rest of the squealing herd hurried up the length of the ancestors’ legs. They bit at their faces, gnawed on the soft, chewy lobes of their ears.
Absolom shrieked and abandoned his spell, thrashing. Beatrix released Scarlett and struggled to shake her limbs free of the teeth-clenching vermin. She flailed like a person on fire.
Samuel scrambled to pick up a broken metal rod from the ground, a remnant of the house’s foundation. He swung it hard and wide in an arc, like a baseball bat, but was successful in fighting off the rats for only a moment before being overcome. He soon fell beneath a hungry, squealing mountain of fur and tails, just like the others.
Cassie rushed to Scarlett. She listened for her breath and felt for her pulse. She was alive, but barely. Cassie strived to concentrate in spite of her surroundings, to recall a spell to restore Scarlett’s energy. She placed her hands over her body and waited for the words to come. When they did, she whispered them softly:
“Recuperabit, reddere, renovare.”
Scarlett groaned, then opened her eyes, and the color returned to her cheeks. She took a deep breath and climbed to her feet.
“Oh, my god,” she said, at the horrible sight of the ancestors.
They’d managed to ward off the rats, so they were no longer being devoured, but the damage had been done. Thomas’s clothes had been chewed through to pieces. His skin showed through the shredded cloth, bloody and oozing. All of the ancestors’ skin was pockmarked and pus-filled. The whites of their eyes had yellowed, and their breathing was slack.
Charlotte bent over and coughed, and a black sludge poured out of her mouth.
Cassie noticed the tips of Alice’s fingers were blackening, and so were her lips.
“What’s happening to them?” Scarlett asked.
Absolom and Beatrix were next to double over and retch putrid mucus into a dark, wet pile on the ground.
“The Black Death,” Cassie said.
The rats banded together in a tight pack, eyes ablaze, their mouths foaming with blood. They scurried back to their wooden box, twitching and satisfied.
“Those weren’t just any rats.” Cassie threw the top back over the box and observed the ancestors writhing in pain, heaving, spitting, their limbs rotting to deadened stumps.
“The bubonic plague just came back to bite them,” Cassie said to Scarlett. It looked worse than she’d ever imagined.
But the ancestors weren’t giving up that easily. They crawled across the dirt to clasp hands. They were pooling their energy.
Cassie wouldn’t put it past them to overcome even this. “We have to finish the spell,” she said. “Get everyone together.”
Scarlett helped Diana and Faye up to standing position. Adam, Sean, and the Hendersons rose of their own accord.
Cassie hurried over to Nick. He’d lost a lot of blood, and his skin felt cold to the touch, but his eyes were open. He tried to talk, but Cassie quieted him.
“Just relax,” she said. “You’re going to be okay.” She held her hands over his injury and searched her mind for the right spell.
“I don’t need magic.” Nick’s voice was raspy but forceful. “I only need you.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

Other books

Nothing by Chance by Richard Bach
Magic Binds by Ilona Andrews
Mozart’s Blood by Louise Marley
Least Likely To Survive by Biesiada, Lisa
Deadly Neighbors by Cynthia Hickey
The Wanderer by Mika Waltari