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Becki insisted that we go back to the resort to do the hypnosis, saying that she wasn’t sure what might happen if we tried inside the tomb. We could only guess that Victor’s consciousness was out there somewhere as the witches had planned, and we knew he could control the weather, but were unsure what else he was able to manipulate with his mind.
“How does this work?” I asked once we were alone in my room. “Count backward from ten or something, right?”
“No, it’s not even anything as complicated as that,” Becki assured me. “Lay down on the bed and close your eyes.”
I did as she asked, feeling incredibly foolish about the entire situation. I didn’t even believe in past lives, so what the hell was I doing here?
Chasing a mystery, I answered for myself. This was exactly what I’d done my whole life. I’d traipsed the Earth in search of information, and this was just one more story I desperately needed an ending to.
“Relax,” Becki whispered. “Just let your mind wander. I’ll be chanting over you, encouraging things locked away in your soul-mind to come forward. Let any and all thoughts come and go at will. If at any time you need me to stop, tell me and we’ll end it. If you fall asleep, that’s okay, too. The mind will do what it needs to protect itself.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice quivering on that small word.
I let out a long, slow breath, trying to get my heart rate to slow as Becki began mumbling under her breath. I couldn’t make out actual words, and I wasn’t sure she was actually saying any anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
For what felt like hours, Becki chanted, and I breathed deeply, nothing much happening beyond the recital of a to-do list in my head, and random thoughts of how silly I felt going through all of this.
Then, as if a switch had been thrown, silence hit me. Dead silence. No chanting, not even the sound of my own blood rushing through my ears. Just cold, awful, quiet.
I tried to open my eyes, tried to scream for Becki to stop, but I was frozen, locked inside my body.
Was this how Victor had felt all these years? Paralyzed and scared? Knowing he’d done this to himself and regretting it instantly, but unable to break free on his own?
Angry voices invaded my mind, men screaming and thundering down a hallway, dangerously close to me.
“Victor, run!” I yelled, opening my eyes and shoving him from the dining room into the hallway.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him, but I wrenched myself free at the doorway to the rear yard.
It took him a moment to notice that I was no longer at his side, and before he could turn to come back to me, I slammed the door between us, knowing that the only way he would be safe would be to offer myself to the mob come to kill him.
“Claire!” he screamed, his fists battering the stone door as if he meant to break through it.
“I love you,” I whispered, pressing my palm against the rock before turning and running into the fray of men who’d forced their way inside our home.
Pain exploded through me as flames from their torches lit my clothes ablaze, my skin sizzled and cracked in my ears, loud enough to drown out my screams of agony.
My eyes widened at the sight of a sword coming down at me…and then there was nothing.
