Hex on the Beach by Kelley Armstrong
Chapter Fourteen
“They did it!” I heard Spade shout, followed by Denise’s glad cry. Then, I heard nothing except the wind whistling by as I saw the ground fall away and grow smaller.
Bones must have decided that flying us in the opposite direction wasn’t enough. Now, he was flying us up and away, too.
For a few blissful seconds, I didn’t care. All I focused on was the feel of his arms around me, the sweet sting of his hair whipping against my cheek, and his scent, like crème brûlée combined with the finest whiskeys. I didn’t even feel pain from the silver or my many unhealed injuries. I was too happy.
At last, we were free. All of us.
Well…not all of us. Ashael had said if we broke the curse, the sea goddess would require a substitutional sacrifice for me and Denise. Morgana had mentioned the same. We had to sacrifice the sister who survived your butchery because our goddess had already been summoned, and lifeblood is required after a summoning.
The freckled boy’s face flashed in my mind. He was still there, and the sea goddess still needed at least two sacrifices to make up for the ones she’d lost, assuming that Spade had rushed Denise away as soon as she could move, too—and he would have. That meant we’d left a helpless kid alone with a bunch of witches who’d shown no hesitation when it came to murdering innocents to appease their goddess.
“Bones, we have to go back,” I said.
Either he couldn’t hear me, or he was ignoring me because he didn’t slow a bit.
“We have to go back,” I repeated louder, punching his arm for emphasis. “There’s a kid back there they’re going to kill!”
That earned me a truly impressive curse, but he did do an aerial version of a U-turn. Soon, I saw the battered, half-collapsed side of Alamere Falls again.
The witches were still there, blue robes fluttering as they scurried about to rebuild the bonfire. That’s all I saw before Bones headed toward the lower part of the trail further down from the bluffs. Once there, he landed, let me go, and then zoomed back up while I yelled at him not to leave me there.
He ignored me. Soon, I couldn’t see him at all, and now I was a few miles away from the cliff.
“No, you don’t,” I growled as I ran up the trail.
Each movement felt like evil pixies were stabbing me inside, but I didn’t slow down. Injured or no, I wasn’t staying behind. The curse was off me now, so I was in no more danger from the sea goddess than Bones. He’d refused to let me face her alone earlier. I’d be damned if I let him do that now.
Still, it took several aching minutes to climb to the top of the trail, and I passed more than a few robed, headless bodies along the way. From how they were still in the process of shriveling, these looked like very recent deaths. Apparently, Bones had decided to make an entrance.
I was about to skirt by them when I heard frantic thoughts about staying hidden combined with a rapid heartbeat in the bushes to my right. Most of the witches had been vampires, but there had been a few humans among them. I yanked the thickest part of the bushes aside, and found myself staring into wide, panicked brown eyes.
“Don’t hurt me!” the freckled boy wailed.
Thank God that he was still alive, and he’d had the presence of mind to hide, too.
“Good job,” I told him.
His eyes darted in every direction, reminding me of a panicked horse. “Stay back. You stay away from me!”
I was anxious to get to Bones, but I couldn’t leave the kid like this. He had every reason to be freaked out. He’d seen things tonight I hadn’t seen before, and I’d seen a lot. That’s why I didn’t bother telling him to trust me (he wouldn’t) or to calm down (in his state, he couldn’t.) Instead, I fired up the glow in my gaze and put all the power I had left into my voice.
“You’re okay now,” I said in the resonating tone all vampires had. “You partied with the wrong girls tonight, and they slipped you drugs that made you hallucinate some wild stuff, but you’ll be fine.”
“Wrong girls…wild stuff,” he repeated in the dazed way of a human under vampiric control.
“Yes, but none of it was real,” I said, still holding his gaze. “It was just the drugs. Now, you’re safe, and you’ll be going home soon, so you’re not afraid anymore. But for a little while, you’re going to close your eyes and stay right here.”
“Stay right here,” he repeated, shutting his eyes.
Good. Now, he’d be calm and stay put until I could come back to get him. I put the thickest part of the bush back in place, concealing him again, and resumed my trek.
By the time I reached the top of the bluff, the bonfire was lit, the sea goddess was swaying in front of it, and Bones was emitting so much supernatural energy that approaching him felt like walking into an electrical storm.
“I don’t care which ones you sacrifice, so hurry it up,” he snapped to a black-haired witch with high cheekbones and tawny skin.
I recognized her as the first witch who’d agreed to undo the hex, and I was struck with an idea.
“Don’t pick just any witches,” I said. “Point out all of Morgana’s cronies that supported her child sacrifices. If the rest of you really want to change your coven’s ways, now’s your chance.”
“No!” screamed a forty-something year old witch with parchment-pale skin and iron-colored hair.
I grunted. “Guess we know which side you were on.”
Several witches tried to run. Bones’s power flashed out, stopping them faster than the immobility spell. Then, his power reeled them back toward the sea goddess, who let out a noise that must’ve been the watery underworld’s version of “nummy, nummy.”
“That one, too,” the pretty black-haired witch said, pointing at a witch that was trying to nonchalantly back away toward the trail. “And that one. Her, too.”
When she was done, Bones held eight witches in front of the sea goddess, far more than the “substitutional” requirement to replace me, Denise, and the kid. Wow, she’d feast tonight.
A hard thump suddenly sounded to my left. I jumped until I saw that it was only Spade, Denise in his arms, landing near the edge of the bluff.
“Not finished yet, Crispin?” he asked, calling Bones by his human name as he always did.
“Almost, Charles,” Bones replied, doing the same. Bones might have chosen his vampire name after rising in a shallow graveyard full of exposed bones, but Spade had chosen his as a reminder that he’d once been referred to only by the tool his prison overseer had assigned him: a spade.
“Quiet,” said the dark-haired witch. “We’re about to begin.”
I didn’t want to watch this, but I didn’t trust them enough not to watch, so I stayed where I was and shut my mouth.
The eight sacrificial witches didn’t. They screamed out threats that abruptly ended when Bones froze their lips as well as their bodies. That made it easy for the dark-haired witch to trace those burning patterns onto their foreheads, marking them as sacrifices. When she was done, she stepped back and the sea goddess surged forward. Then the goddess passed her hand over them, giving each a single touch, before backing away.
That was it? It hardly looked lethal—
The witches suddenly collapsed. In the split second it took them to fall to the ground, they had all turned into water, leaving only multiple splashes to hit the rocks instead of their bodies. The splashes were quickly absorbed into the sea goddess, until the former eight witches were nothing more than another sheen of liquid on her glistening form. Then she, too, turned into water that splashed back down the cliff and into the waiting sea.
I would’ve been less disturbed if she’d opened her mouth and eaten them whole. That, at least, would have left the witches who they were. But she’d reduced them to nothing at all, in less time than it took to blink, and the reality of that hit me like a brick to the head.
That could have been me and Denise. It was supposed to be us, and the sea goddess had been reaching for me right before the spell broke. She’d come so close to touching me…
Rage exploded through my subconscious, almost knocking me flat as Bones’s shields cracked and his emotions burst through. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one thinking about how close I’d come to being a splash on the ground that the goddess absorbed.
Then, that door slammed shut, and I only heard his fury as he said, “You were going to do this to my wife.”
Death dripped from every word. The black-haired witch trembled as she backed away.
“We had no choice,” she said in a hoarse tone. “You saw how powerful Morgana was. She ruled us for over four hundred years! Anyone who challenged her was fed to the goddess—”
“Oh, you’ll wish for such a quick death,” Bones said as his power cracked, whiplike, through the air.
Her eyes bulged and her neck stretched to an impossible length. So did all the other witches’ necks, until they all resembled taffy being pulled by a machine.
“Stop!” I cried out.
Bones swung an amazed look my way. “Why? They meant this for you and Denise. They did this to who knows how many young lads, so they all deserve to die.”
“They do, but then none of them will be left to tell other covens like theirs that the sacrifice of innocents stops now,” I said in as strong a tone as I could manage. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could speak, let alone stand, so I had to make this count. “We found this group through their magic. In the same way, we can find the others, too, so they all need to know that we’ll be checking up on them to make sure that covens only sacrifice the worst of the worst of humanity from now on.”
Bones’s face was set in hard, unreadable planes, but for an instant, his shields cracked again, and I felt admiration threading through his vengeance-fueled rage. He recognized the logic of letting them live to warn the others about changing their ways even though he really, really wanted to kill them.
“Very well.” If death had dripped from his other words, now reluctance coated his tone. “With these terms, you may live.”
The witches’ necks stopped stretching. The ones that were vampires recovered in a few seconds, but the few humans among them dropped to the ground, dead. Then, the black-haired witch gave a solemn nod first at me, and then at Bones.
“We’ll do things differently from now on, and we’ll make sure that we’re not the only coven, or you won’t have to find the others through magic because I’ll tell you where they are.”
With that, a cloud of smoke poofed out. In the moments it took to clear, all of the witches had disappeared. Even their dead were now gone, and I blinked in disbelief.
“If they had the ability to teleport themselves out of here, why didn’t they leave before now?”
“Because that’s not teleportation,” drawled a familiar voice.
No one had been sitting on the edge of the makeshift stone bonfire seconds ago. Now, Ashael perched there as comfortably as if he were getting ready to toast some marshmallows.
“That’s a parlor trick,” he went on. “It stuns the senses for a few seconds so it looks as if they’ve teleported away when in reality, they scurried out of here as fast as they could run. Still, it takes a bit of doing to momentarily daze vampire senses. Before they absorbed residual power from their goddess’ feeding, they couldn’t have pulled off such a trick.”
That explained why they hadn’t done it before, but I got why they did it now. “Fake” teleportation or no, it had still worked in getting them out of here before Bones changed his mind about letting them live.
“Ashael.” Bones said his name as if it tasted sour. “Been loitering about, watching this whole time, have you?”
“Of course not,” Ashael said with mock indignation. “My presence would have violated my race’s treaty with the other gods. I would never do that, just as I would never add a dollop of magic to the witches’ hex-dissolving-spell because the silly birds couldn’t conjure up enough power to do it on their own.”
My jaw dropped. Ashael had topped off the witches’ undoing spell in time to save us?
Denise ran across the bluffs and threw her arms around him. “You beautiful, beautiful demon!” she choked out.
Ashael laughed as he patted her back. “I am, but as I said, I would never do such a thing. That’s against the rules, and an obedient fellow like me always follows the rules.”
“Of course you do,” Denise said, laughing as she pulled away. “My mistake.”
Ashael winked at her, and then held out a tiny glass bottle to me. “Drink this before they cut the silver out of you. It’ll help.”
I grimaced. “Thanks, but if that’s more of your blood—”
Ashael was gone before I finished the sentence. Bones and Spade exchanged a look, and then Bones flew over to the stone bonfire and plucked the bottle off its ledge.
“Not blood,” he said after pulling out the stopper and sniffing the bottle’s contents. “Smells like flowers.”
It could smell like fresh manure, and I’d still drink it if it wasn’t more demon blood. Nothing against their kind, but I’d had enough of being high. Still, maybe I’d be lucky and Ashael had brought me the vampire version of Novocaine. If so, I’d never forget his birthday, assuming demons celebrated birthdays.
“If this stuff makes me pass out, or if the silver extraction does, the kid that the witches brought here is down the path in the bushes,” I said. “He’s bruised, but otherwise fine, and I gave him a new memory of what happened tonight.”
“We’ll see him home safely,” Spade said. “Now, let Crispin tend to you. You look ghastly, Cat.”
I let out a pained huff. “Thanks.”
“Cat.”
Denise came over and knelt in front of me. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. We just stared at each other, and then we started to laugh because otherwise, we might have cried. We’d both been through so much these past few days that it would take time to fully process everything. All I knew right now was that I had the best friend in the world. Oh, and that I’d never forget this girls’ getaway.
“Same time next year?” I quipped.
“Over my dead body,” Spade muttered, but Denise laughed again.
“Sure, only next time, I pick the location and venue.”
“Deal,” I said and hugged her, ignoring her protest that she didn’t want to hurt me.
“Everything’s at maximum pain anyway, so don’t worry.”
“Speaking of that.” Bones knelt next to me. “We need to get that silver out of you, luv. Want to try Ashael’s potion first?”
I took the bottle and downed it. It tasted like rosewater and I didn’t feel high, so Bones was right: it wasn’t more demon blood. Hmm. Wonder what it was and how it was supposed to help. So far, I didn’t feel anything…
Hey, I didn’t feel anything. I poked myself in the ribs, which should have doubled me over since most of them still hadn’t healed, but all I felt was the give where my finger pressed in.
“It’s the magical version of anesthesia,” I said with relief. “I can’t feel anything, so go ahead and cut away.”
Bones’s cell phone started vibrating. So did Spade’s. Bones ignored his, but Spade pulled his cell out and glanced at it. Then, he let out a sardonic grunt.
“It’s Ian, texting over and over to say something’s wrong with Cat and Denise, and to call him at once.”
“It took him three days to listen to our messages?” Denise shook her head. “Remind me not to call him in an emergency again.”
I only laughed. Sure, I’d almost died, plus I had a gruesome supernatural surgery in front of me, but now that I was free of pain, free of a deadly spell, free of the fear that I’d doomed my best friend, and free to go home with the man I loved, I was in the best mood ever.
“Yeah, well, better late than never, right?”