Hell Fire

My daughter would die if I failed here. I knew it. Terror lent me speed, and I hurried to the chest of drawers where I kept my spell components. One mistake would be fatal. I didn’t have much time.

I cast the circle and had spoken most of the words when I sensed approaching peril. Corine was asleep upstairs; I ran to rouse her. For some reason, my frantic words made no sound, but she seemed to hear me. She argued with me.

I hugged her fiercely and then shoved her out the back door. I hoped she knew how much I loved her. I went to meet the men who wanted me dead.

My ears rang. I couldn’t hear what they said. There were twelve of them, like a jury of my peers, come to judge me. I didn’t need to see more than the torches. I slammed the door and locked it.

Then I ran back to the circle I’d drawn on the floor. My hands shook as I sealed myself inside it. I had one last thing to do.

Protect her, I begged. Give her the gifts she needs to survive. Let her live as my legacy to the world. I poured everything I was into the working.

The door flew open. A tall man stood in the doorway, and I would never forget his face. May you burn in hell for what you do this night. Turn and burn, you dark one in human skin. Licking flames threw weird shadows around the house that had been our home. Never again. Raising the athame, I gave myself over to the Lady.

And I died.

“Corine!” The voice came from a long way off, desperate, terrified. I didn’t want to heed the hands pummeling me.

At least they seemed to be. No, they were pressing down, not pummeling. Someone was performing CPR. Was I dead? My flesh felt odd and heavy, almost entirely inert.

I felt a mouth over mine, then breath being forced into my lungs. I couldn’t seem to open my eyes. And then I coughed. If dying hurt, living was worse. Butch nuzzled me, whimpering, but I couldn’t lift a hand to reassure him.

Jesse brought me upright. His hands rubbed over my back, and when I finally managed to lift my eyes, I found him looking wretched, almost as bad as I felt. The burn on my left palm felt as though it might never heal.

“You died,” he whispered, raw.

I couldn’t work up any concern over that. “So did my mother. She—she killed herself. Why didn’t she run? We could’ve both—” A sob tore free.

I didn’t need an answer after all. I’d been Cherie Solomon for the last few minutes of her life. She hadn’t run, because the men would’ve come looking, and she’d loved me so much I ached with it. My tears ran freely, slipping down my cheeks. I felt dire and bloodied. All these years, I’d thought she died in the fire.

But the truth was somehow worse. She’d died by her own hand, part of that final spell. I had always assumed they’d come upon her before she finished—and that was why my powers were incomplete. Based on what I’d just seen, that obviously wasn’t true, so the fault must lie in me. I was a faulty vessel.

“Oh God.” With gentle hands, he unfolded my fingers from around her necklace.

It fell from my grasp into his palm. Numbly I noted a new scar: The flower pentacle had been branded into my palm. The wound showed livid and purple with little white blisters around the edges. I’d never seen anything quite like it, and what seemed stranger—I had no other marks on my left hand anymore.

Jesse followed my gaze and registered the change as well. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We should get you to a hospital.”

I shook my head. “That’s fifty miles away. I’ll be fine, but Chance won’t.”

Before he could argue, Butch lifted his head and growled. The heavy chill I’d noticed before the letters appeared on the wall returned. Everything stilled, even the wind. It felt like too much work even to move. Something was coming. I sensed the vibrations in the earth.

Something huge and heavy would burst into this clearing and roar over finding us toying with its trinkets. It must have an awful reason for keeping mementos of the dead and would most likely add us to its collection. I knew I should be frightened, but I felt as though my emotions had been burnt at the sockets.

Was it possible I hadn’t returned all the way? Perhaps I was undead; that would be mightily inconvenient. I pinched myself, just in case. No. It stung a bit.

“Corine, we have to go now. Can you walk?”

I didn’t know. When he pulled me to my feet, I discovered I could, clumsy, stumbling steps. Saldana snagged Butch, who wisely didn’t protest. Before I hardly knew what had happened, he tucked me behind him and drew his weapon. I had a feeling it wouldn’t do us any good against what shared these woods with us, but men always seemed to feel better being proactive.

As we moved through the trees, trying unsuccessfully to be quiet, the distance between reality and me receded. My skin started to feel like my own again. The pain in my palm anchored me, and I tried to banish the memory of my mother’s death. In a way, it was my death too, for that touch had killed me. Only Jesse’s hands and mouth had kept me from slipping away into the dreaming dark.

He appeared to be doing his best to save a life I didn’t want as much as I should right then. Reaction got the best of me. It seemed easier just to wait for the thing to find and eat us, or whatever it did to its victims.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” The insanely deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere. At first, I thought I must be losing my mind. It rumbled all around me, shivering the earth as if with a happy sigh.

I stopped walking and glanced at Jesse, who looked like I felt. “Did you—”

“Hear that? Yeah.”

He spun in a circle as if trying to find the microphones and bass amps. The way dark mist rolled in around us, he might want to check for a smoke machine too. I smiled slightly over that. For someone who was introducing me to Gifted society, he didn’t seem to have run across as much weird stuff as I had.

I wondered if the unseen thing wanted some response. “You aren’t?”

“No,” it rumbled. “You are precious to me. Poor pretty thing. I wondered when you would come back.”

A cold shudder rolled through me, and dead man’s hands slid down my spine. I’d heard those words straight from Mr. McGee, just before he died. Beside me, Jesse froze. Clearly he’d made the connection as well from my recitation of the story.

“You know me?” I forced the words through numb lips.

“Darling child,” the dark thing crooned, “I hid you. Sheltered you. You slept in my arms on blood night.” For a mad moment, I thought we must be speaking to the dark spirit of the wood. My breathing grew labored, fear oozing out my pores in acrid sweat. “I kept your mother’s legacy safe for you.”

The necklace in Saldana’s grasp suddenly seemed tainted. I wanted to grab it from him and throw it as far from us as my pitching arm could manage. He seemed to share the instinct, but after that first twitchy impulse, I shook my head. If there was evil in it, then it had already infected me. I gazed down at my marked palm with a dry, aching throat.

My chest felt as though I might be suffering the beginning stages of a heart attack. “Does that mean you will let us go?”

“Gladly,” it rumbled. “Go from here and do not return. There are others in this place who mean you ill.”

People, I guessed. But sometimes people were the worst monsters of all.

“Let’s go,” Jesse said beneath his breath. He started walking, fingers white-knuckled on his gun, as if to test the offer of free passage.

Butch never even twitched. I was afraid the little dog might have died of fright.

Getting away couldn’t be so easy; it was never a matter of asking nicely not to be devoured. The monster must be playing with us, for I couldn’t be misconstruing the air, thick with hunger and malice. It wanted us in ways I didn’t understand.