Omens Bite, page 19
“Witch!”
The comforter was snatched off and an air-conditioned gust blew across Hunter’s bare legs. She sucked in a breath and snapped awake. Algae-green eyes and a crown of orange starfish and blush-pink seashells met Hunter’s bleary-eyed gaze. She blinked away the sleepy haze that clouded her vision and squinted up at the glowing azure goddess.
“I turn my back for one night and you forsake me?”
Hunter’s jaw bobbed, but her cloudy mind couldn’t find the words to calm the enraged sea queen.
Amphitrite’s nostrils flared and her skirts tangled around her ankles in an invisible current. “You have nothing to say for yourself?”
Hunter pushed herself up and folded her naked legs against her chest. “I’m sorry—”
“You’re sorry?” Amphitrite’s hair cascaded down her back in a Sargasso-brown waterfall as she tipped her chin toward the ceiling and laughed.
Hunter clapped her hands over her ears as the howl punched through the small room like a tornado siren. The goddess closed her mouth and the sound ceased, leaving behind a ringing shadow that tumbled through Hunter’s ears.
“You are mine!” The unseen raging current tossed the goddess’s skirts and pushed her from the dresser at one end of Hunter’s small bedroom to the nightstand at the other and back again. “I am always here for you. Always watching.” Water splashed as she smacked her blue palm against the top of the dresser.
Goose bumps exploded across Hunter’s flesh and she hugged her legs tightly against her body. She’d gotten good at being small and invisible, but no amount of silence could keep her from Amphitrite’s ire.
“But Tyr…” A sigh rushed from between Amphitrite’s lips with a spray of salt as she wiped her hand along the dresser and brushed invisible specks of lint from her fingertips. “He is nowhere to be found.”
Hunter held her breath as Amphitrite opened the top dresser drawer.
“It’s clear he never cared for you the way I do. Yet you still call to him.” With a flick of her slender blue wrist, Hunter’s socks and underwear leapt from the drawer and landed in a pile at the goddess’s feet. “What have I done wrong? What am I lacking?” She reached inside the nearly empty drawer and Hunter clutched her legs closer to keep from lunging forward. “Shh, shh,” Amphitrite whispered into the drawer and pulled out the swollen and bloated crimson spellbook. “There, there my sweet.” She cooed and nuzzled the kitten-belly-soft cover against her cheek before taking a deep breath and narrowing her gaze on Hunter. “I have given you everything, Witch.” She stroked the book’s scarlet spine as she spoke. “And like any keeper, I can take it all away.” Water dripped from Amphitrite’s hand, painting the book’s soft fur a deep, brick red. “Is that what you want?”
Panic galloped through Hunter’s chest. She’d seen the power of water, the power of her goddess. Hunter couldn’t sit back and watch that book end up a puddle on the floor. It contained a way to cure the trees, to stop the next creature from entering Goodeville. It had to. Hunter dug her jagged nails into her skin and pressed her teeth against her bottom lip. If she’d only performed the spell last night. She could remember it and cast it again at the remaining three trees. But how could she focus after what she’d seen last night? After what she’d done.
Hunter shook her head as bile exhaled a bitter breath against her tongue. “I’m sorry,” she blurted again. “I was upset. That man, he—” Acid pricked the back of her throat and she clamped her mouth shut.
“That man was a gift.” Amphitrite floated to Hunter and set the book on her nightstand. “All mortals are gifts. Like fruit.” She twirled her fingers through the air. “To be plucked and consumed for our enjoyment and nourishment.”
Hunter’s spine stiffened and she relaxed her hold on her legs. “My friends are mortals. Jax is mortal.” Once again, she shook her head, her tangled hair brushing against her shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Amphitrite sat on the edge of Hunter’s bed and ran her hands over her skirts. “With time, Witch, you will learn.”
“No. I won’t.” Hunter rested her legs against her sheets and forced her chest to rise and fall with slow and steady breaths. “People aren’t fruit. What happened last night won’t happen again.”
Amphitrite leaned toward Hunter. “What happened last night was a mistake.”
“Was it?!” Hunter’s body shook, not with fear but with anger. She should have fought harder, and never forsaken her god. “You brought me there. You pushed me! We could have helped Chuck. We could have stopped him without more death.”
Amphitrite slithered closer. “You expect the trees to cower to the ants? You expect your precious Mother Moon to bow to the tide?” Water leaked from her skin and dappled the sheets. “Mortals are vessels of want and need and seduction and lies. Help them?” Her lips twisted into a grimace as she eyed Hunter. “Your kind has mingled with theirs for too long.”
A chuckle rolled across Hunter’s tongue. “You’re still mad, aren’t you?”
Amphitrite’s face stilled, her features wet and unreadable.
Hunter combed her hand through her hair and tilted her chin. “I mean, your anger was on full display when you snatched Polyphemus from this realm and locked him back in Tartarus, but I wanted to put that behind me. I wanted to fix the gates and heal the trees and move on with my life, but you…” Hunter brushed away droplets of water that hadn’t yet soaked into the sheets. “You don’t want the same thing. You like your pain.” Water rained from Amphitrite’s glowing skin and dripped off the side of the bed. “You want to keep punishing mortals because you can’t punish your husband.” The invisible rapids returned around Amphitrite’s legs and tossed cool spray into the air around them. “He’s a cheater. He’s a liar. He’s a horrible snake bastard, but you have to let it go. You have to—”
A frigid spike pierced Hunter’s chest. The familiar cold burn sucked the air from her lungs and wrapped her heart in ice. Her eyes flew to her chest and Amphitrite’s slender arm plunged through her sternum like a stake.
“Do not speak of my husband. You are the sand beneath his feet. Small. Worthless.” Water sprayed Hunter’s face as Amphitrite hissed the words through clenched teeth. “No one speaks ill of Poseidon, the god of the sea!”
Flashes of white burst across Hunter’s vision as she grabbed her goddess’s forearm. Hunter yanked and briny water sprayed between her fingers, but Amphitrite’s grip on Hunter’s heart did not loosen. Swirls of glowing blue and spots of endless black painted Hunter’s sight as she collapsed against the bed.
“You will learn, Hunter Goode.” Amphitrite was a salty storm thundering overhead. “You will learn your place and you will thank me when I’m through.”
Hunter choked and sputtered on the salt water that flooded her mouth, but the pressure in her chest kept her from coughing. This was another lesson taught with hate and fear and pain. Amphitrite, great goddess of the sea, was no different than the mortal Kirk Whitfield.
Hunter’s hands and feet tingled, and her breaths twitched in and out of her lungs, sharp and short. The pain in her chest was like the burning sun. She could no longer fight it. She’d been at war since her mother died. This small apartment had been her only safe space, and Amphitrite had destroyed it.
Hunter stopped the battle. Her arms splayed at her sides, her right hand smacking her bedside table. Her ring clinked against the wood and her fingertips dusted the warm and fat cover of her spellbook. Adrenaline spiked beneath her skin as she walked her hand up the cover and dug her fingers into the bloated heat.
Amphitrite’s wet hair brushed Hunter’s cheeks as the goddess brought herself closer to Hunter. “Yes, Witch. Stop your fight.” The torrential sea rain had given way to a light sprinkle as Amphitrite’s voice softened to a purr. “Give in and your pain will end, and we can start anew.”
Hunter plunged her hand deeper into the cover. Blood gushed around her fingertips, still warm from the magic of the book. It bubbled against her skin and a hot ache of power rolled through her body as she noiselessly whispered to the blur of rain and cerulean above her.
“Tell me again, Witch.” Amphitrite leaned closer, her pink eyelashes dancing in an unseen current. “Did you say surrender?”
Hunter pulled the rage from the pit of her stomach where it slept like a dragon. “Inferno!” Flames erupted from her skin in a wild blaze.
Amphitrite’s scream was the screech of tires as she tore her hand from Hunter’s chest and flew backward. The splash of an anchor into the sea, and Amphitrite vanished, leaving behind thick clouds of white steam. Hunter clutched her chest and sucked in breath after breath before she smoothed her hands over her skin. Satisfied the roar of magic had left her undamaged, she pushed herself from the bed.
Blood dripped from her fingertips and its metallic tang clung to the steam-filled air. Hunter smeared red across her nightstand as she pawed through the white clouds. Her fingers found the Lamy pen, its smooth sides and metal nib. She followed the trail of red back to the book and sank the pen into the crimson pulsing from the cover. She lifted her wet shirt and balled the fabric in her hand as she fished the pen from the blood.
“Begone Amphitrite!” Hunter screamed and stabbed the pen’s metal point into her left hip. Blood trailed down her legs as she carved a line to her sternum and down to her right hip bone. “I call upon the strength of my blood, my ancestors, to banish you!” Tears streaked her face and dotted her feet while she sliced the arm of the pentagram across her stomach. “I banish you from my body. I banish you from my mind. Begone Amphitrite!” Blood painted her flesh as she tore her skin and closed the pentagram. “You have no power over me!”
The pen fell from Hunter’s trembling fingers as she reached through the steam for the book and plunged her hand into its warm depths. She cupped her hand and lifted a pool of scarlet from the fleshy cover. Blood dripped from between her fingers and soaked the carpet as she brought the handful to her stomach. “As I command it, so mote it be!” Hunter clapped her palm against her etched flesh. White light burst from the wounds. Hunter released a guttural shriek as her skin sizzled.
The white blaze ceased, and the sulfuric scent of burnt hair and flesh twisted in the steam. Hunter let out a shuddering breath and, with shaking fingers, traced the pentagram, now a painless ropy scar, bright pink against her fair skin. As much as she yearned to collapse onto the firm mattress and wet sheets and close her eyes until tomorrow, she knew she couldn’t. Her body was once again safe, as it had been with Tyr, but her home …
The steam began to dissipate as Hunter grabbed the spellbook and stepped up onto her bed. The blood warmed the book, swirling and burbling from the cover each time Hunter dipped in her fingers. She flattened her palm against the wall and started to draw the same pentagram she’d carved into her flesh.
“Begone Amphitrite. I call upon the strength of this mortal’s blood and his ancestors to banish you. I banish you from this room. I banish you from this—”
“Satan!”
Hunter whirled around. The book slid from her blood-soaked hands, bounced off the bed, and landed at Jana Ashley’s feet. Blood splattered across the lace hem of Jax’s mom’s floral-patterned housedress and stained her fluffy yellow slippers with splotches of red.
Hunter froze. She hadn’t heard Mrs. Ashley come in or thought about what the past half hour must have sounded like from outside of the small apartment.
The color drained from Jana’s cheeks as she clapped her hands over her mouth and muffled another scream of Satan! Mrs. Ashley scrambled backward. Her back hit the wall with a dull thud, yet her feet kept striking the ground, kept trying to move her far, far away from the young witch who stood motionless in a room dripping with blood.
Hunter wiped her hands on her wet shirt, but only managed to spread the crimson farther up her arms. “Mrs. Ashley.” She stepped off the bed and held her hands up as she approached. “I can explain—”
Jana clutched the gold crucifix around her neck. “Stay back, Satan!” She pressed her body against the wall and turned her head from Hunter and the partial pentagram painted in blood on the wall. “Please, Lord God, protect me! Fill me with Your holy presence. Protect me from this evil, O God.”
Hunter stepped forward and Jana pinched her eyes tightly shut. “I am safe in Your shadow, Lord God. I am safe in this home built with Your love.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks as she brought the cross to her lips and muttered against it.
Hunter’s stomach tensed and a brick lodged in her throat. Jana Ashley had only wanted to comfort her. And in return, Hunter had done this. All of this. She stared down at the blood crusted under her fingernails and flaking against the backs of her hands. If this got out …
Hunter grabbed her backpack and stuffed it with clothes, her phone, and the healing spellbook before shoving her feet into the nearest pair of boots.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Mrs. Ashley.
Hunter ran from the room, through the open front door, and into the morning sunlight.
Twenty-two
Ivy tickled Hunter’s back and the sharp thorns of a rosebush scratched her thighs as she crouched, next door to Jax’s, in Barbara Ritter’s foliage. Hunter wiggled out of her blood-soaked clothes and into the mismatched black-and-red-checkered shorts and blue pinstriped tee she’d grabbed from her room before bolting. No, it wasn’t her room anymore. Not after what Jax’s mom had walked in on.
“Jax.” Hunter breathed as she took a half-empty water bottle from her bag and poured the contents onto her still-damp sleep shirt. She’d lose her best friend for sure. He wouldn’t understand what she’d had to do to keep herself safe, and she could never explain all the blood. But more than that, this was evidence. They would point to it and call it proof that Hunter wasn’t a harmless kitchen witch who mixed herbs and spices and only told people what they wanted to hear. They would say Hunter was a real witch, a bad witch, a Satanist, and a murderer. The type of evildoer that altered minds and perverted hearts and would snatch babies if they got too close.
Kirk would get the chance to burn her after all. And after what she’d done …
Hunter swallowed past the lump in her throat as she scrubbed the dried blood from her body and peeked through a gap in the bushes at the garage apartment and its open front door. If only she could get back in there and scrub the room from baseboards to ceiling until it sparkled in all of its beige glory like it had the day she’d moved in.
An idea fluttered in Hunter’s chest. She squatted down and dug through the front pocket of her backpack until she found the small silver pouch her mother placed in her backpack at the beginning of every semester. She opened it and dumped the contents into her palm. Dried cloves and calendula blossoms piled in her hand on a wave of spice.
Hunter’s heart longed for her mother. She would know just what to do. Hunter brought the handful to her nose and inhaled the woodiness of the dried plants. If her mom were here, none of this would have happened. She closed her fingers over the cloves and calendula. But there was no use in thinking about what didn’t exist. The only thing that mattered was here and now. She’d clean up her mess before Mrs. Ashley gathered her wits and tore out of the house, revitalized by the wrath of God.
With her free hand, Hunter brushed the shriveled leaves and rose petals from the ground in front of her and drew a pentagram in the soft dirt. She poured the cloves and calendula from her palm into the middle of the five-pointed star and took the warm book of blood from her backpack.
“The rest is for the trees,” she promised herself before she pressed her fingers into the healed cover. Red spurted around her nails and she tipped the book over to dribble a stream of blood onto the dried plants. She dabbed her fingers into the puddle and painted her palms with crimson that sizzled and popped as it coaxed the magic from her skin. It wasn’t lost on her that the very thing she’d needed to erase from her room had the potential to energize the spell. That was life—full of contradictions.
Hunter held her palms over the inactive spell and chewed on her bottom lip. Clove was for … purification? She shook her head. That wasn’t right. She should have paid more attention when Mercy blathered on and on about plants and their properties. That’s what she really needed—help from her sister. It was second to her mother’s, but her mother was no longer here.
Again, she peeked through to the garage apartment. No change.
“Think, Hunter, think.” She closed her eyes and imagined her sister. Mercy’s encyclopedias of plants, the cleaning spells they used to attempt in order to get out of chores, and all the times Mag had bored Hunter to tears reciting everything she knew about—
Hunter’s eyelids fluttered open and a grin lifted her cheeks.
Clean up my mess. Set the room right. Clean up my mess. Set the room right.
Her intention played on a loop in her head as she swept her hands in a counterclockwise circle over the pentagram.
“Clove, please drive away
What I did today.
Clean this hostile energy,
And take it far away from me.”
As Hunter cast her spell, the small pool of blood bubbled and stretched. It slid from the center of the pentagram and flooded the lines of the star. Hunter continued. Her heartbeat quickened as her palms heated and the edges of the cloves and calendula blossoms started to smolder.
“Calendula is purity,
I beseech you, hear my plea.
Scrub this mess I’ve made, make it sparkle, make it free
From blood and pain and all negativity.”
Smoke drifted from the burning plants. It followed her hands, swirling under them like a tornado. As she stood, the smoke thickened, and the funnel grew. It stretched from the earth to her waist. She continued to sweep her hands in a counterclockwise motion over the gray cyclone as she lifted them above her head. The smoke swelled until it eclipsed Hunter and blew away the blossoms from the nearby roses.
