To Hell and Back by L.B. Gilbert
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Naveen watched Ravenna as she moved around the table they had set up in the desert. Behind her, his leader counseled the men. It would be difficult returning to Sheol like this. But he agreed with Rhys. Valeria belonged to him, and therefore to the clan as well. And no one took what was theirs.
The witch opened a jar. It was full of pufferfish poison, distilled and dried into powder form.
He’d had a hell of a time finding it, but it hadn’t been the most challenging ingredient. No, that had been the fresh tomar—powder from a meteorite that had fallen to Earth.
He didn’t trust the witch at all, but he knew enough about the dark rites to know Ravenna wasn’t trying to lead them astray. She was genuinely trying to get her daughter back.
His cheek twitched, and he wondered for the millionth time whether Valeria would have been safer had she remained with her biological parents, the Delavordos.
Rhys had put him and Tanik in charge of keeping tabs on all their possible enemies, so he knew more about them than the rest of the clan. Enough to be uncertain.
It had taken some digging to confirm Ravenna’s story about the surrogacy, but he had. Everyone thought Salvador Delavordo was the only child they had to survive to full-term. The fact that Lucia and Fulgencio also had a daughter was a well-kept secret. To everyone who knew about the surrogate, it appeared as if the couple had given up on finding their lost child. But Naveen had contacts all over the world.
Lucia and Fulgencio had never stopped searching for their lost child. Their search was quiet, and, to the unwary, deadly. It didn’t make sense unless one knew what Valeria could do.
It must have been terrible, the urge to turn over every stone on earth in search of their baby, but not being able to for fear of painting a target on her back.
When he learned that, the sympathy he had for Ravenna dwindled to almost nothing. But he did not doubt that she’d do or say something to make her status go back up. It had happened several times already.
He forced his attention to the witch’s hands. She was mixing a foul concoction, something pungent enough to make him take several steps back.
On second thought, perhaps it was best to give the witch room. He turned his attention to the desert.
The sky overhead was full of stars. Earth had only one moon, but despite the homogeneity of the night sky, he still enjoyed the view. Toward the end in Sheol, they could no longer see the stars. They had been permanently blotted out by the dust and grime that rose after the land had been scorched.
“How did you find this place?”
He turned at the sound of the witch’s voice.
She flicked him a glance. “The layer between worlds is thinner here. I’ve already probed. To my knowledge, this is the best possible place to open a door out of this world. So how did you find it?”
Ravenna stopped mixing, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “I’m trying to punch a hole in the universe—the least you can do is tell me what you know.”
Naveen was amused, but only for a second because he knew what was required to do what they had asked.
“This is where we came through from Sheol.” He lifted a hand at the landscape. “There was no habitation, no town or villages nearby at the time. It’s easier in inhospitable environments, like the desert or the northern and southern poles. The more life there in the landscape, the thicker the shield.”
Ravenna nodded. “That makes sense. I have been all over the world, you know, and made it a point to visit all the charged spots—Stonehenge, the Devil’s tower, the Harz mountains in northern Germany. The air vibrated as if it were out of sync, responding to some kind of oscillation on the other side.”
She held out a small flat stone charm fixed to a long leather thong. “This is spelled to Valeria’s DNA. I took it from the hairbrush in her room. She grew a bit too comfortable in her time here. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been any hair to find. I thought I taught her better than that.”
He took the necklace, studying it with a frown. The small carved heart was made of quartz that had been polished to a brilliant shine.
“Unless you already know where you’re going?” the witch snapped.
He chose not to take offense at her tone. “We have a strong suspect, but this will help. Thank you.”
Ravenna inclined her head and went back to her mixing, the brittle edge of hers a little more apparent. He knew why she was on edge, of course, although Rhys had not realized what would happen yet.
If his leader suspected, he’d hesitate. Not out of sympathy to the witch, but because the outcome would hurt Valeria and Rhys would never consciously do that.
Pity welled up despite himself. He stepped closer, letting his footsteps make noise so he wouldn’t startle her, interrupting the potion-making.
“I know what has to happen to open this door—that you lied to Rhys. You can’t do this spell without fueling it with death.”
Ravenna was a skilled witch—she was recreating a spell she had seen only as leftover residue. But she wasn’t an Elemental. She didn’t know how to alter it to work another way.
The diamond glitter of tears appeared in Ravenna’s dark eyes, but she didn’t say anything.
He bent to speak in her ear. “We will get her back. When we do, she will know of your sacrifice.”
She put the jar she was mixing aside. “I know he thinks I used her,” Ravenna said quietly. “He doesn’t understand what I had to become to keep her safe, to hide her from those people.”
He wasn’t sure if she meant the cross-bearing witches or Valeria’s family. Regardless of which, he would bet self-preservation had been the bigger goal. But in light of what she was about to do, he held his tongue.
Ravenna bent to reach the Swiss army knife he’d provided. She turned to make sure Rhys wasn’t watching. Once she confirmed the coast was clear, she pricked her thumb, squeezing her fingers to make the blood well into thick drops. Seven fell into the jar.
“Just get her back,” Ravenna said quietly. “And when you tell her who I really was, make sure she knows that I never meant to hurt her.”
She raised her head, the firelight making her appear younger than her years. “I was frightened, and I did what I thought was best.”