The Witches of the Glass Castle (The Witches of the Glass Castle Series Book 1) (20 page)

Mia succumbed to his request.

They descended Colt’s stone stairwell and emerged into the dark Hunter corridor. In silence, they paced swiftly along it. Mia presumed that they were heading back towards the Arcana wing, but instead Dino led her to a bolted oak door. He slid the bolt across and opened the door, which led out into the courtyard.

‘Dino!’ Mia held back as her brother stepped into the pouring rain. ‘It’s a thunder storm! Where exactly do you plan on going?’

He glared at her. ‘Follow me.’

She folded her arms. ‘No way. Not until you tell me where you’re taking me.’

Dino reached through the doorway and grabbed her arm, yanking her into the lashing rain. She wriggled to free herself but he held her tightly, dragging her across the courtyard.

Mia stumbled to keep up with him as they passed beneath the arched hedge and emerged into the gardens.

‘Let go of me!’ she cried. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

Dino stopped walking for a moment. ‘Lost my mind? No. Quite the opposite.’

‘We’re getting soaked out here!’ As the water drenched Mia’s
skin and hair, she began to realise that it was no ordinary rain. It was Colt. She could sense him in every drop. And he was in pain. Mia dug her heels into the mud and tugged her arm free.

‘I need to go!’ she cried
, overcome with the urgency to find Colt. She spun around, but before she took a step Dino was in front of her, blocking her path.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You have to come with me.’

‘Dino, not now!’

‘It has to be now.’ He grabbed her arm again.

‘Stop it!’ she yelled at him. She shoved him forcefully, but he remained glued to the spot.

‘Keep walking,’ he barked.

The rain continued to plummet down, streaming through the garden and forming fast flowing rivers.

‘You don’t understand!’ Mia wailed.

‘No,
you
don’t understand!’ he shouted back at her. ‘I need you.’

Mia
took a shaky breath. ‘OK,’ she reasoned with him. ‘You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me anything. What do you need me for?’

‘I need to rid myself of you,’ Dino
explained.

She gawped at him. ‘What does that mea
n?’

‘I need to free myself from humanity,’ he rambled on. ‘You’re my humanity, Mia. You’re what
makes me human. If I can rid myself of you, then I’ll be free.’

Mortified, Mia clouted him around the head. ‘You’re talking like a psychopath!’ she exclaimed.

‘No.’ He shook his head, causing a spout of rain to spew from his ebony hair. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s the only way. Come with me.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you!’

In one swoop Dino hoisted her up and carried her across the garden, just as he had done when she was a little child – except, now, his intentions were sinister.

Mia kicked and screamed, but Dino heard and felt nothing. One way or another, this would end tonight.

Colt tore through the grounds, his fury focused into every stride. The sky rumbled above and the rain lashed down upon him. It was as though he had opened up a wound that would not stop bleeding. With each step he took, the ground quivered beneath him. He wanted revenge, and he intended to get it.

Like a tornado, Colt burst into the castle. He charged towards Wendolyn’s private chamber. But the chamber door swung open before he had even reached it. Wendolyn stood in the doorway wearing a pale-blue dressing gown over a floor-length cotton nightgown. Her white hair was combed and swept to the side.

‘Come in,’ Wendolyn beckoned. She ushered Colt into the c
hamber and guided him to a throne-like chair that stood in front of a smouldering log fire.

Shaking, he sat down and gripped the velvet arms of the chair.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Wendolyn told him kindly. She busied herself around the fireplace, heaping wood on to the glinting embers.

Colt shivered as his body adjusted to the change in temperature. The crackling flames warmed his wet clothes.

‘You’ll catch a chill,’ Wendolyn fussed. She bustled over to him carrying a fluffy towel. Without warning, she began towel drying his hair like a mother caring for a toddler. Colt let her, his body numb and his face blank. She used a corner of the towel to blot the water from his face, as though she were wiping away a tear. Rain, tears – it was all the same to Colt.

‘Lotan is dead,’ he sai
d at last, his voice cracking.

Wendolyn hung the
towel on the fire grate.

‘I
know,’ she replied.

‘Murdered,’ Colt elaborated. He stared i
nto the fire, watching the flames dance up into the chimney.

‘Yes,’ Wendolyn nodded her head sombrely. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry is no use to me,’ he said brusquely.

‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ Wendolyn took a seat opposite him. She lowered herself into the chair slowly, her aged bones stiff and tired.

‘The rival Hunters attacked,’ Colt went on. ‘They killed my brothers…’ He stopped talking and covered his face with his hands.

Wendolyn nodded in an unspoken understanding. ‘May I?’ she asked, aware of his struggle to speak.

Colt knew that she was asking to read his thoughts.

‘Go ahead.’ It would certainly be easier than saying it aloud. Although, by reading his thoughts, there was a chance that Wendolyn would find out about his bond with Mia. But Colt didn’t care.

Moments later Wendolyn’s expression turned grave. ‘Their leader is ascending?’ she checked, almost in disbelief.

‘According to Lotan, yes.’

Wendolyn concentrated once more on something beyond their verbal communication. ‘Dino,’ she uttered regretfully. ‘They must change him in order to complete their coven.’

‘But why?’ Colt practically hollered. ‘What do such powerful Hunters want with a young Arcana? A useless Arcana, scarcely in his first weeks!’

Wendolyn’s gaze rested on the fire. ‘It’s much easier to turn a young witch. Their alliance has not yet been sealed.’

‘Why him?’ Colt spat
.

‘Who can say why a witch’s power is sought after
…’

‘He has
no great power!’ Colt scoffed. ‘I request permission to kill him.’

‘No,’ Wendolyn denied him outright. ‘You will not harm the boy.’

‘Why not?’ Colt raged. ‘The Hunters will turn him, and their leader will use his power to ascend! It’s either the boy or all of us.’

‘No, Colt,’
Wendolyn repeated, unwavering. ‘Harming the boy is not an option.’

‘It’s
our only option!’

‘Your judgment is impaired by your desire to seek revenge.’

‘And?’

‘And, you are forbidden to attack an Arcana.’

‘He’s a Hunter!’ Colt argued.

‘No, he is not. Not yet. We will stop the transformation.’

‘How?’ Colt demanded.

‘To become a Hunter, Dino will need to sacrifice his
ties with humanity…’ she trailed off, as though a realisation had suddenly dawned on her.

There was no need to vocalise it because the same thought was crossing Colt’s mind.

‘His sister,’ he murmured. In a split second Colt was gone. His feet barely skimmed the floor as he raced to his bedchamber.

Exploding through his bedroom door, his heart leapt to his throat. The room was empty.

‘Mia!’ he called. He flung the bedcovers back as though perhaps she was unnoticed beneath them. The four candles lay sideways on the crimson carpet, overturned from where Dino had trampled through them just a short while earlier.

Colt darted to the window, looking down upon the grounds. He knotted his hands through his hair. She was nowhere in sight.

In a flurry, he turned and darted back down the stone staircase. Speeding through the castle, he made a beeline for Mia’s bedroom. From the other direction, Wendolyn was heading the same way.

‘He’s taken her!’ Colt exclaimed. He flung open Mia’s bedroom door. The room was empty.

‘Perhaps not,’ Wendolyn reasoned, puffing as she reached the room. ‘Perhaps she is with friends.’

‘No. He’s taken her,’ Colt choked. ‘I can’t sense her.’

The colour drained from Wendolyn’s lined face.

‘I request permissio
n to kill him,’ Colt hissed through clenched teeth.

‘
No
!
’ Wendolyn scolded. ‘Under no circumstances will you hurt the boy. Do you understand me?’

Colt snarled.

A new voice broke through the tension. A girl’s voice, but not Mia’s.

‘Wendolyn!’ Kizzy cried, galloping up the staircase in her oversized dungarees. ‘You need to come, quick! Dino has locked Benny Blue in the library! Blue says Dino’s gone mad!’

Wendolyn turned to Colt. ‘The spare key is in my bedchamber,’ she told him. ‘Go!’

Colt vanished in a flash. Minutes later he joined them at the library, brass key in hand.

Hastily, Wendolyn unlocked the door and Blue burst out. In a garble, he told her everything he knew. Including how Dino had been searching for the books on ascension.

‘It’s as I feared,’ Wendolyn muttered grimly.

‘I think Dino is being p-possessed by a Hunter named Tol,’ Blue explained.

At the mention of the name, Wendolyn froze. ‘Tol?’

Blue nodded his head.

Wendolyn’s face fell
. ‘Then I’m afraid things are worse than I had imagined,’ she said. ‘We must act fast. I need to contact Cassandra and Madeline Bicks.’

‘Dino’s family?’ Blue looked on, wide-eyed.

‘Yes. I will require their assistance.’

Colt fidgeted restlessly at the library door. ‘Let me go,’ he implored Wendolyn. ‘I won’t kill the boy.’ At that point, he didn’t know if he was lying or not. And he didn’t care, either. All he cared about was finding Mia.

‘Go,’ Wendolyn said. ‘Find them. Try to stop the sacrifice. But be careful – if Tol
is
ascending, his power will be beyond what you have experienced before.’

‘I’ll stop it,’ Colt swore.

‘I meanwhile will search for ways to protect Dino from Tol’s power. We must release him from the hold Tol has over him.’

‘Will that stop Tol?’ Kizzy pressed.

‘No. For that we will need Cassandra and Madeline. She turned to the Hunter. ‘Colt, delay the sacrifice for as long as you can.’

‘There will be no s
acrifice,’ Colt vowed. And with that final statement, he was gone.

Colt paced agitatedly around the flooded courtyard, confused as to which direction to go. His rain continued to spill relentlessly from the oppressive purple sky. Distressed, he stood at the mercy of
the downpour, lost. It was surreal; he had brought the rain more times than he could remember, and had crossed through that courtyard near enough every day of his life, but never had he felt so frantic and afraid.

Attempting to track Mia in a downpour this torrential was an impossible task. The sheer quantity of water had swallowed every other scent in the surrounding area. Ironically, the more unsuccessful Colt was, the wilder the storm became.

He growled viciously, his frustration rising by the second. His eyes were as black as soot. Even the whites of his eyes were now swollen jet black.

‘Compose y
ourself,’ he reprimanded. But it was an unattainable wish. He had lost all control, and could not regain it.

Fury drove him now – it cons
umed him. He was addicted to it, fuelled by the urge to destroy whatever was misfortunate enough to cross his path. He longed to make a kill, to satisfy the savage demon inside of him.

There was only one thing that held him back, only one thing left that stopped him from surrendering to the darkness. He needed to find Mia. And the only way he could do that was by beating the anger that absorbed him.

I can’t do it! I have never been able to control it. How can I expect to overcome it this time?

‘But…
she
did,’ he said aloud, suddenly recounting his run-in with Mia earlier that day. She had brought him back from the brink of ferocity with the greatest of ease.

He closed his eyes, savouring the pleasure of envisioning her. With immaculate precision, he pictured every detail of her face: the curve of her cheekbone, the cherry red of her lips, her slate-grey eyes, and the dimple of her smile. With a wave of relief, he felt his rasping breath steady somewhat.

Stay with me
, he asked the image that resided in his mind’s eye.

‘Don’t,’ he muttered out loud, his eyes still closed.

Strangely, he found himself reciting the conversation that had sedated him only twelve hours before. The words were a wonderful comfort; it was as though she were right there at his side, scolding him from her own lips.

‘What a
peculiar thing to yearn for a lecture!’ he realised.

The rain, though still present, had started to relent.

Spurred on by the effectiveness of his ramblings, Colt persisted to run though their earlier conversation. ‘I will never love you,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Then never kiss me…’ Colt opened his eyes. He rolled the words over one more time. ‘Then never kiss me,’ he repeated.

And then, he picked up a scent. It was faint and distant, but it was Mia.

Colt jerked his head in the direction of the forest. The night was eerily quiet, but Colt knew that it was rife with activity. He would stop at nothing to uncover it.

He began to run, empowering the wind to work alongside him. It aided his legs, heightening their speed until they were nothing more than a blur. Tearing through the land like a bullet, he weaved in and out of the tre
es, leaving only a deep-set trail in his wake.

That night Colt ran faster than even he imagined possible. Lives depended on him, and this time he wouldn’t be late.

A large diamond shape had been drawn into the boggy mud. Tol stood at the northerly point, while his two robed minions stood at east and west. Dino took his post at the southern point. In his arms, Dino clasped Mia in front of him. She struggled, but he restrained her so closely to him that her movements hardly made any impact at all.

Dino peered over her head at Tol’s sneering fa
ce opposite them. The grotesque man seemed morbidly fascinated by the siblings.

‘What a sight,’ Tol leered menacingly. ‘How very similar you look.’

‘Actually, we look nothing alike,’ Mia shot back boldly.

Dino tightened his grip on her, as though he were punishing her for speaking out of line.

‘Ouch!’ Mia grumbled. She lowered her voice for only Dino’s ears. ‘Snap out of it, Dino. You’ve been brainwashed by that…monster!’

He heard her, but her words barely registered. His attention was too focused on Tol to be distracted by his sister.

Tol’s snake eyes flickered between the members of his coven, and then, like clockwork, the three men began chanting in an unfamiliar tongue.

‘I can’t believe you’re really going through with this,’ Mia hissed under her breath. ‘I was wrong about you. You’re not my brother – you’re just an evil demon, like them.’

‘Exactly,’ Dino whispered back into her ear. ‘This is who I am.’

Mia kicked back against his shin, but it caused no reaction. He was numb to it.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she spat. ‘It’s not who are you. Being who you are would be too convenient an excuse, and I’m not letting you get off that easily. Who you are is my brother, and you’re going to kill me. I want you to feel very, very guilty. You are officially the worst brother in the whole world.’ She kicked him again.

Dino blocked out the sound of Mia’s voice
and listened instead to the monotone chanting of the coven.