Morrigan's Bite (Crow's Curse Book 2), page 5
The door to the attic crept open. Sorin stood there, watching me with soft hazel eyes. “Hey,” he said. “How’d it go?”
I lifted one shoulder. “Meh. I had fun with air and earth. Fire is untouchable. And I turned Jen’s water into blood.”
Sorin burst out into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“When Jen was introduced to the elements, she turned earth into a cow patty.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“You heard me. Jen turned perfectly good earth into cow shit. It reeked.”
“Well, shit is less disturbing than blood...”
“But a lot less funny.” He walked into the circle and flopped down beside me. “Don’t worry about Jen. She’s easily flustered.”
“I feel bad about it,” I said.
“Look,” he said. “You feel bad about pretty much everything. Stop that.”
I glanced at him. “Is that the next lecture? A self-esteem seminar?”
“Kind of.” He scooted closer beside me. “I’m supposed to introduce you to spirit.”
I side-eyed him. “Like...ghosts and such?”
“Nope. Spirit is the spark of the divine, however you picture it. It’s the connection that we have with it. He lifted his hand, and it glowed green. I notice that his watch had stopped, and so had time. Even the dust motes in the air stilled.
“Stopping time is a power of spirit?” I asked.
“And many more powers, the oddball ones, are assigned to it, too. Shit like raising the dead and casting out demons and stuff. But I didn’t get any of those.” His eyes crinkled.
“It’s still pretty impressive.”
“It took a long time to learn how to use it. Until I finally figured it out, I wondered why exams in school seemed to take forever.”
I bobbed my head. “I’ve had that sensation. But I’m pretty sure that’s because I was just anxious.”
“Someday, we’ll figure out how to turn anxiety into a superpower,” he mused. “But until then, spirit invites you to open to the universal divine will, to accept that you are the right person in the right place and time.” He extended his hand to me.
I took it. His hand was warm and alive. His pulse beat steadily through his palm.
“But what if I don’t believe in a higher power?” I whispered. “I always considered myself an atheist. And this...I don’t know what to believe.”
“You don’t have to believe in anything,” he said. “All it matters is that spirit believes in you.”
He turned his face toward mine and kissed me. It was a slow, soft kiss full of yearning and hope. I kissed him back, sliding closer to him. Being this close to him made me feel human once again. Like I was a person with a future, not a nightmare on legs with crows screeching in my ear.
My fingers slipped up to his collar, idly tracing his jaw. His hands slid down to the small of my back, tightening around me. I could hear his heart thundering in my head, and I realized with a start that my fingers were tracing his carotid artery.
I broke away from the kiss and looked up at him.
“Garnet. What’s wrong?” He brushed my lips with his thumb.
“I...don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “Not ever.”
He pushed my hair back from my face. “You won’t. I trust you.”
“But I don’t trust me,” I said.
“I want you. I want to be with you.” When he looked at me, I knew he saw me. Garnet. Not a goddess or some veiled queue of past lives. Just me, fractured as I was.
“I do, too,” I whispered. “But I can’t risk it.”
“We will find a way,” he said, with such certainty that it sounded like law.
I wanted to believe him. For that stopped moment in time, I let that hope rise in my chest. Maybe, maybe it was possible.
CHAPTER 5: THE VOW
We worked with the elements until the night fell deep and soft as velvet. I could tell that Sorin was growing tired, and we decided to adjourn a couple of hours before dawn. Mercifully, I turned nothing to shit and caused no more damage to Sorin’s house. The sky was still dark as we walked back to the coven house, and the neighborhood was steeped in that silence that always reigned before the world woke. Elation sang through me, and my fingers still tingled with magic. Crows perched on a power line overhead, chattering among themselves. It seemed they were just as hopeful as I was. One fluttered down to perch on my elbow and deposit a treasure into my open hand: a broken house key. I smiled and thanked her for it.
“Does that happen a lot?” Sorin asked.
I nodded, pocketing the key. “They’ve brought me gifts, ever since I was little.”
“They knew you were magical before you did.”
We walked through the garden, back into the kitchen of the house. Sorin carried the plant Reese had conjured, to put in the kitchen window. Maybe it would become something culinary. The light above the stove was on, and mail and newspapers were stacked on the kitchen table. I glanced down, my gaze snagged by the newspaper headline.
“Oh,” I said.
I reached for the newspaper, unfolding it. My face was on the front page, a picture from my hospital ID badge. The headline read: Riverpointe Surgeon Still Missing. My heart lurched into my throat as I scanned the story. I had vanished from the hospital, the victim of a suspected kidnapping, and the police had no leads. I flipped through the newspaper, finding a short story about a body found at the docks, a middle-aged man who had just lost his restaurant to hard economic times. The paper reported his death as a suicide. No mention of foul play. Relief churned with fear in my gut.
“Garnet?” Sorin asked.
I looked up. “I can’t stay here,” I blurted. “I have to go back.”
“You’re not ready,” he said. “The Asra will come for you.”
“Then they’ll come for me,” I said, lifting my chin. “I scared them off before.”
“They’ll be better organized, have a plan. They will learn from their mistakes.” Sorin shook his head. “They’ll use Emily to come up with a containment spell, some way to bind you. And if they have you, if they have your power, they’ll be unstoppable.”
I shook my head and paced the kitchen floor. “I can’t stay here forever, Sorin. I have friends, family. They think something horrible has happened to me.”
“And something horrible has happened to you.” Sorin grasped my hand in a protective gesture. “But you need time, time to marshal your strength before going back.”
I felt strong enough. I did. But I knew that he was right. No matter how powerful I seemed as I accessed the Morrigan’s power, I was still in a vulnerable state, a new vampire.
“I can’t live in the basement forever,” I said to him.
“You won’t have to. I swear. Give us some time to figure out how to protect you.”
My gaze flickered back to the spread-out newspaper, at my smiling human face. When that picture was taken, I thought I knew how the world operated and my destiny within it. Now, all of my plans were destroyed. I didn’t know who or what I was anymore. But it sure didn’t mean I’d be living in the witches’ basement forever, slurping on cow blood from a thermos and taking my almost non-existent pulse.
I intended to take control. Shitty things had happened to me, but I was going to master my power and come out from that basement swinging.
Even if it was the last thing I did.
A bang sounded from the front of the house, sharp as a gunshot. It took me a moment to realize that it was the sound of the front door crashing open. I whirled, feeling blood rising in my chest and my fingers curling into talons. Sorin assumed a fighter’s stance, green light playing over his fists.
Witches plowed into the house in a flurry of shouts. They flooded into the hallway, then to the kitchen. Ariane was in the lead, fairly shimmering with wrath. Jen cleared the kitchen table with a swipe of her arm, sending the newspapers and unopened mail fluttering to the floor. To my horror, Melanie and Reese hauled a young man in and laid him down on the table. It was Max.
I shoved my way to the table to take his pulse. I couldn’t find one. I pressed my ear to his chest and heard nothing. I lifted my head to stare down at him. He was pale, anemic looking. I pulled up his lip, and his gums were pale.
“What happened to him?” Sorin demanded.
“Max was attacked by vamps,” Ariane said grimly. “He was at the grocery store, getting cat food, when he called, convinced he was being followed. When we got there, we found him like this, stuffed into a freezer in the frozen food section.”
I gazed down at the young man. Gently, I pulled the collar of his shirt back. Two perfectly clean puncture marks were pressed into his throat.
“I told him not to go off the island,” Melanie said. “Running water would protect him...but he loves that damn grocery store in the University District because it has the best deals on cat food.”
“He’s dead,” I whispered.
Jen swore and punched the toaster. Reese stood solemnly at Max’s head, pressing his hand on the crown of the dead man’s head. His lips moved in silent prayer.
Jen spun to me. “Can’t you do something for him?”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m so sorry.”
Melanie looked upon me with wide eyes. “Can’t you...like...turn him into a vampire?”
Ariane’s head jerked around. “No. Absolutely not.”
Melanie lifted her chin. “We can’t just let him go like this!”
“He’s already dead,” Sorin said. He put his hand on Melanie’s shoulder, and she shrugged him off.
Melanie stared at me, hope and anger and despair mixing in her expression. “You can do it. I know you can.”
I took a step back. “I don’t know how,” I confessed. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
Melanie looked down at Max and bowed her head. Her shoulder trembled.
Ariane stood beside her. “You know he wouldn’t have wanted that. He hated the Asra, and he would never forgive us.”
Melanie buried her face in her hands. “Who’s going to tell his cats?”
I retreated to the back door, watching in silence as the witches folded Max’s hands over his chest. They wrapped him in a sheet strewn with herbs, whispering over him. I felt like an intruder in some private witch ritual.
I slipped back to the garden, and Sorin caught my sleeve. “Stay,” he said.
I did as I was told, standing in the back of the garden as they brought Max’s body to the charred fire pit. They laid him into it, and Ariane summoned up a fire between her hands. Words washed over me, spoken by the witches in reverence of Max. I didn’t really know him well, but I knew that he was a kind man who fed the neighborhood cats. My heart ached for their loss, for the cruel way he’d died at the hands of the Asra.
I felt something brush my leg, and I looked down. Pirate Cat gazed at the fire, and it reflected in his good eye. I reached down to stroke his back, my vision blurring. I hoped someone would step up to take care of them.
Gradually, I became aware of more cats, slipping in the garden, peering in from the alley. There were a couple dozen, at least, summoned by this fire and this death. Their small shadows watched, and I could feel the ache in the droop of their ears.
“We release his soul to the eternal light,” Ariane said, her face cast in twisting shadow as she placed the ball of fire on Max’s chest. The fire raced up and down his body, shimmering with supernatural heat. I stepped back further, feeling the cold wall of the iron gate at my back. In moments, Max’s body was consumed, fragmenting into ash and wormlike embers at the bottom of the fire pit.
The sky was lightening to the east, a paler shade of night. I exchanged glances with Sorin. He nodded at me. I gave a last pet to Pirate Cat and slipped away to the basement.
The vampires were sending a message, I was convinced. Though the vampires and witches had been at war for years, the vampires were looking for me now, and they’d escalated the violence. I had to get away from this place. It was the only way that I could protect the Lusine. And Sorin. And the cats that stalked the alley. All of them were at risk in my presence, and I couldn’t allow any more tragedy to rain down on this house.
I wrapped myself in my blanket, folding the dark around me.
This would happen no more, I vowed. The bloodshed would end with me.
I WAS SOON TO BE MARRIED to Ferenc, and I had mixed feelings.
I still knew nothing about the man who had asked for my hand. Only that my father had granted it quickly, and that plans for the wedding surged forward without any direction from me. I endured hours of pin-struck dress fittings, while my mother directed all my earthly possessions to be packed for my new residence. A seemingly endless parade of goods and gifts flooded in for me to gaze upon: furniture and textiles and silverware. I began to wonder exactly what kind of place this suitor lived in—did he live in a cave with nothing, and these things were needed to furnish it?
Perhaps, as far as I could tell, as there was no mention of where he lived. My father made a wedding present to him of Csejte Castle—he was apparently that relieved to be rid of me—which was something of a comfort to me. I knew that place, and it felt like my own territory that we would reside in. Ferenc had, shockingly, even been willing to take our family name, as it held greater prestige. It seemed to me that he was ingratiating himself to my father, and that I had little to do with the whole thing.
I thought that, until the letters and gifts began to arrive.
An older woman brought me an intricately-carved wooden box. Her posture was bowed, and her face creased. She smelled of wormwood. She announced herself as Gitta, Ferenc’s seneschal. Her mouth crinkled when she smiled upon me, but something about her eyes was cold and untouched by the smile.
“Ferenc adores you,” she whispered to me. And I did not know what to think of that. Ferenc didn’t know me.
I placed the box on my bureau and stared at it for several days before I finally opened it. It was engraved with a pattern of leaves, intertwined around the celestial moon phases. Inside, it was lined with velvet, and a thick ruby necklace lay glittering within. I gasped when I saw it. It was wider than my hand, more of a collar than any necklace I’d seen before, dripping gems down my throat to my cleavage. I put it on and modeled it in front of a mirror. They shone bright as blood against my pale skin. It seemed as if I’d completed some kind of transaction when I put it on, though, as if I were bought and paid for, like a horse.
I took it off and pulled a piece of parchment from the box. It was a note from Ferenc. His writing was curiously old-fashioned, his penmanship perfect.
My dear Erzebet,
I hope this letter finds you well. Please accept this token of my undying affection. I look forward to seeing you wearing it on our wedding day.
I am always yours,
Ferenc
I wadded the note up and flung it across the room. He was treating me like a dress-up doll. I wished that Dalma were here, that I could talk with her about this, that I could bring her with me to my new home.
But I was alone, alone with Ferenc’s presents.
They came in a steady stream, sometimes only days apart. Gitta brought most of them, watching me with an appraising eye. Ferenc sent a horse, a massive glossy black warhorse that made me smile in spite of myself. He was not a horse for a lady. Horses for ladies were slender-legged creatures prone to breaking ankles and taking mincing steps. When the warhorse arrived, the stable boys gawked and called him a monster; he towered above the other stallions. But Gitta handled him easily, and I was not afraid. I named him Lazlo, “glorious ruler,” for he looked like a king among the others.
I slipped away to the stables after dark to bring him apples. I ran my fingers over his nose and whispered to him, feeding him the fruit from the palm of my hand.
“What is he like?” I murmured to the horse. I wondered at the man who would send a lady a warhorse.
The horse chuffled at me and did not answer. But I saddled him and rode him through the forest the next day. He moved with an inexorable power, crashing through the woods like thunder. He liked to run, just as much as I loved flying through the woods. A pang in my heart echoed as I did so, thinking of poor Dalma. But I could not stop myself from this last pleasure that I allowed myself, this bit of freedom before becoming yoked to an unknown destiny.
And part of me, thinking of my uncertain future, wished that I would fall from the horse and break my neck, as well. It might be better than what I faced, wouldn’t it? It was not lost on me that these gifts were given while I was within my father’s house, within his view. Likely, they were meant to impress him.
But there was something I loved about his presents, and I felt that on some level, he understood me. He understood that I desired the power and freedom of a warhorse, and there was something to appreciate about that.
He wrote me long letters and short notes. He described the horses he kept, and Lazlo’s lineage. He wrote about his love of the forest and the gardens he created. He did not speak, as men do, of tiresome conquests and riches. He rose in my estimation through those letters; he seemed to be making an effort to reveal himself to me, to convince me that he was a worthy mate. I had been in court enough to know that men did not do this. They might send some presents, but they did not write what amounted to love letters.
Cautiously, I wrote back. I thanked him for the gifts. I wrote of my childhood memories of Csejte Castle in the summers. I did not censor myself in the least; I spoke my mind. I was beginning to know this man who I’d only met once, during a night of horror.
The gifts continued. Gitta brought me books from Ferenc’s library, ancient texts that I had never read before, containing translated stories of goddesses and gods battling on Earth, books written by alchemists and astronomers. I paged through them with a critical eye; I was a well-educated woman, but my tutors were convinced that there were certain topics not appropriate for women. Ferenc seemed to share none of these sensibilities, so I devoured all he sent.
