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Then suddenly, the pain stops.
The chanting stops.
The world goes painfully silent and still.
Then whatever power was holding me up dissipates and I’m falling.
I land on the ground in a heap, raising my head enough to see Jeremias step toward me. His feet are cloven hooves.
“You are saved, my child.”
“Wake up, Lenore.”
My eyes flutter open.
I’m lying on my side on a patch of damp moss, staring at Jeremias, who is sitting on a fallen tree trunk that is absolutely writhing with insects.
I’ve been in and out of consciousness for what seems like an infinite amount of time. Sometimes I come to and I’m sitting up against a tree, the bark rough on my back. Other times I’m sitting in front of the ocean, watching the waves, hugging my knees. Or lying down on the sand.
It is always dark. Forever night. There is never a moon.
I don’t even know if I am still alive.
“You are alive,” Jeremias says. “And you are healed. It’s time for you to accept what’s happened to you.”
I swallow, and for once I don’t taste my own blood.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply and my lungs aren’t bubbling or leaking. Slowly I push myself up so I’m sitting, keeping my legs together because I’m back in Solon’s black robe, naked underneath.
I’m scared to look, to see that wound.
“Go ahead,” Jeremias says. I glance at him and his nose changes from something small and petite, to something red and bulbous, then long and aquiline. Always changing. Why?
But I don’t ask him that. Instead, I take in another deep, beautifully clear breath, smelling sea salt and fresh air, and then I open the collar of my robe just enough to look at my chest.
There are ugly gashes between my breasts, dark red and scabbing over.
But they are scabbing over.
The wounds have closed.
“How?” I ask, looking at Jeremias. “How is this possible?”
He grins, his teeth changing shape as he bares them at me. One moment the smile looks friendly, the next it looks predatory. “Magic,” he says lightly. “Of course.”
Right. Magic. No matter what has happened to me in the last few months, coming to terms with the fact that magic is real, that it’s something that exists in this world, and all worlds, that some humans can possess it so casually, easily, is something I still have a hard time wrapping my head around.
The fact that I myself have magic? Forget it.
“You disappoint me, Lenore,” he says, observing me carefully. “You’re the only daughter who has turned her back on who she is.”
I stare at him sharply. “What do you mean, only daughter? You have more than me?”
His grin is both proud and malicious. “Oh. Precious soul. How ego-centric you are in your thinking. I suppose it’s all gone to your head hasn’t it, that you’re the daughter of Jeremias. Well, perhaps that’s warranted. You are the only half-witch, half-vampire with the bloodline that you have. But you are not my only child. I have many.”
“How many?” I ask, intrigued, and a little frightened, at the idea of having brothers and sisters through him.
He shrugs. “A lot.”
I was raised an only child. To think that I have siblings feels like a door to a whole other world just opened. I suppose it has.
“Are any of them…normal?”
He laughs. It’s raspy and metallic and makes my jaw clench. “Normal? No more normal than you. Tell me, Lenore, are you ashamed of being a witch?”
I swallow hard. “No.”
“But you lie. Why?”
“Why do I lie?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know…”
“You’re afraid of me. Still. After all I’ve done for you. I’ve saved your life twice now, doesn’t that earn me your trust? I don’t expect you to love me, dear daughter, but I do expect your respect.”
I rub my lips together, my eyes coasting over the wound, wondering if I’ll have scars for the first time in a long time, or if one day it’ll be like nothing happened. But of course, I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that the beast lives inside Solon.
Now that I know what he’s capable of.
Now that I know that it wants me dead.
I push that out of my head. I’m not ready to think about that yet, about what it means for us. I don’t want to face it.
“How did you heal me?” I ask again. “What ritual was that? Whose blood was that? What were the animal things in the trees, the skeleton hybrids?”
“Disciples.”
“Like your apprentices?”
“No,” he says mildly. “They don’t belong to me.”
“Who do they belong to?”
“The Dark One,” Jeremias says, fixing his eyes on me in a cold stare, chin raised, as if daring me to make some sort of joke. But I don’t find anything humorous in the name. Instead, the name shoots fear right to the base of my skull, awakening panic in my lizard brain.
