Chapter 28
AN: This is it. The big one. And a cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers. PLEASE REVIEW!!! I LOVE YOU FOR IT!!!
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"Double, bubble, toil and trouble," Mary chanted, putting the finishing touches on the Circle. Then, she laughed to herself. "Sorry, Shakespeare." She tucked the worn stick of white chalk into her sleeve, sitting back on her heels to survey her masterpiece.
The Circle was wide, nearly ten feet in diameter. She'd needed it to be big; she had to have room to move. The elemental runes at each corner practically hummed with energy, and if she closed her eyes, Mary could see the pulsating purple light that rose above the smooth continuous line that made up the Circle, creating a metaphysical wall between her and the outside world. The Goddess symbol in the center of the Circle was covered, of course, by the body that lay sprawled on the floor.
Mary let her gaze fall to the boy, whom she had dragged from the window and left at the center of her magical Circle. He was lying on his back, arms flung up above his head where she'd dropped them, body limp with a kind of gangly ease. Conscious, he had a sort of unpredictable grace, she'd noted: he was like a long-limbed puppy who could go from wild, unforeseeable movement to complete, barely-contained stillness in an instant. Not like the girl. No, she moved differently, Mary thought. She was all curvy, sinuous prowl when it came to movement, like a snake or a well-fed tiger. The wolf she could become was quiet and soft, a flash of fang in the dark. It made Mary slightly uneasy, and she was not lying when she decided she was glad the girl was gone.
"Enough waiting," Mary said aloud. She slid into a cross-legged seated position, checking her watch. She had forty-five minutes to destroy Reid Garwin.
Mary rested her hands on her knees, palms up, fingers light and loose. She closed her eyes, unconsciously straightening her spine as she fell into an easy meditative state. This was not the hard part. This was something she had learned years before.
Shhh. In. Out. Breathe. Air. Oxygen. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Focus. Focus the power.
Focus it on the boy.
Reid. Garwin. Boy. Teenager. Seventeen. Son of Ipswich. Boy. Blond. Blue eyes. Sharp. Fast. Powerful, but untrained. Not in control. Be in control. Have control over Reid. Seventeen. Eighteen today. Birthday. Birth. Power. Gaining power. Has power now, but gaining more. Dangerous. Addicted. Not in control. Under control. Bring him under control.
Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Concentrate.
Position. Attune. Position.
With a deep, cleansing breath, Mary opened her eyes. A smile lit her face at the sight of Reid's body, now lying straight with his arms at his sides.
It was a simple thing, moving the arms, but it showed that she had perfect control over herself and over him, his unconscious mind, when he was not around to fight her.
Bending towards him across her lap, Mary stared at the boy's face. At the fine, white-blond hair falling across his forehead. His lashes, dark crescents against his pale, defined cheekbones. Narrow, elegant nose. A high-class nose. Finely-cut, expressive mouth, naturally curving up at the corners in the faintest hint of a smile. Down to the chin, sharp and determined, and the long, still throat. Chest, covered with bloody cloth, but moving steadily as his lungs breathed life into that still, silent statue. She made herself look hard, look close, take in every detail. In order to do this, in order to command him in the way she was going to attempt, she had to know him as well as she knew herself. She had to be him.
Mary reached out a hand, touching his finger. Moving up to the back of his hand, tracing the knuckles, feeling the smooth, raised bump of a small scar between his thumb and forefinger. Thin, strong fingers; thin, strong wrist. The muscle in his arm was lean and corded, muscle gained from swimming and climbing rather than lifting weights or pushups. The hair was sparse, for a man, and bleached by the sun. She smiled to herself. What sun? He must have gone around outside quite a bit to get this much out of the cloudy Massachusetts sky.
Sitting back, Mary closed her eyes, keeping one hand resting lightly on Reid's forearm.
"Goddess, Lady of the Wild, my Lady Sappho, hear your daughter's cry," she began in a low murmur. "Be with me, Lady, let me walk your path. Lend your power and your grace to my ritual, and commence this day with your might. I come before you to send the Power from this mortal, this man, and bequeath it to your daughters. Help me, Goddess. Help me." Mary felt an electric pulse rush through her body, making her cry out in ecstasy as it traveled through her palm into Reid's body, which gave a slow, rolling spasm. "Fire, Water, Earth and Air, be with me! Lend me your strength!"
There was an inaudible crack, a non-sound that Mary felt, and heard, in her bones.
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"She's started."
"What?" The Priestess, Teresa, repeated herself.
"She's started the ritual." Caleb looked from the woman to the house, almost wildly.
"What do you mean, she's started? We still have forty-five minutes!"
"It'll take her that long to get ready. She'll be setting the Circle now, and maybe meditating."
"Then do something," Kat hissed. "Do something magic! Get us in there!" Teresa glanced at the werewolf, noticing that she'd asked them to get her inside, as opposed to get him out. The Priestess couldn't help but be a little impressed at her bravery.
"We're doing our best. Mary is using a Bind that she stole upon her escape. She's got the door set with a Grace."
"Ok, you're gonna have to speak a li'l English," Kat replied, folding her arms. Teresa let one of the younger women answer.
"A Bind is used to spread a spell. Like, if you have a protection spell on a single room, but you don't have the supplies or the energy to do a spell on the whole house, you could use a Bind to spread the spell throughout the house and hold it. A Grace is a magical lock; you set it on a door and, uh, program it to let certain people in or out. Basically, she's set the Grace and she's using the Bind to spread it over the whole property."
"You know we can throw stuff in there, right? She's only got the, um, Grace, set against humans," Tyler put in. The woman nodded, a little shyly. Kat was looking at her hard. Caleb noticed, and gave the dark-haired girl a questioning look. Kat shook her head, the odd look still on her face.
"Do I know you," she asked the coven member. The witch, instead of shaking her head like Caleb expected her to, got an even stranger look than Kat's on her face: guilt.
"No," she said quickly. Recognition hit Kat like a train, and she gasped.
"You!"
"Alyssa, what is she talking about," Teresa asked, frowning at the younger woman.
"It was you! In the dream! You told me… you told me to wake up," Kat said, sounding shocked. Everyone save the two young women looked completely confused.
"Um," said Alyssa. The High Priestess crossed her arms.
"You what?"
"It was an accident! I was just… I was looking for Mary, and they were so close, and there was so much emotion, I found her instead! I knew that she was about to get shot, so I used the accidental mental link to wake her up." Teresa sighed.
"What have I told you about- Never mind. We'll discuss this later," she decided, sounding for all the world like a school teacher. Alyssa gulped, and shrugged at Kat, who gave her the slightest hint of a smile. The others were all looking at the three women, confusion on their faces.
"Never mind," Kat said to Caleb, Pogue, Tyler and the girls. "I'll tell you later." If I'm around to tell.
"So," Caleb said brightly, breaking the grimness in the air, "let's break that spell, huh?"
Kat watched the house.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
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"The time has come," Mary said calmly, moving to place her hands flat over Reid's chest. "Goddess, your daughter is ready."
And she began to pray, silently, over the boy.
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"Guys, come ON!"
"We're almost through," Pogue grunted. Kat was pacing.
"'Almost' isn't good enough," she snapped moodily. The past half hour had been spent watching the Sons and the Priestesses stand around looking like they weren't doing a thing, knowing she couldn't help, not even wanting to throw something at the house. A bomb would have been nice, but they had no bomb. Her threat about the gun had been pretty much empty, as Mary was nowhere near the window, and Kat had never actually shot a handgun in her life. The closest thing she'd done was shooting a 12 gauge in the canyon near her uncle's house when she was eleven.
"Shut up and let us work," Caleb said, sounding aggravated. Kat sighed. She knew she deserved it, but she still felt like punching something. Someone. Caleb. No, he had done nothing but what he could do. Punching Mary. Punching wasn't enough, though. Stabbing. Skewering. Disemboweling. Gutting. Beheading. Filleting. That's what the bitch deserves, to be skinned like a fish. No tartar sauce, either. Served raw, like sushi. God, I could use some sushi right now. Fucking starved, and it's all. Her. Fault.
Kat became aware of the strange looks being given her by Kate and Sarah, and realized that she had been muttering these thoughts aloud. She glared at them, unable to stop herself, and rubbed the cuts on her palms until the pain made her breath come easier.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
The invisible clock ticked away in her mind, counting down the seconds. Minutes. That was all they had, now. Fifteen minutes until Reid was dead.
"Shit," one of the priestesses said. "She's-" And then the woman broke off, glancing at Kat.
"What? She's what?"
She was answered by a scream.
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Mary sucked in a breath, shuddering with it as the body beneath her hands let out a high, ripped cry, almost a shriek, and convulsed. The chanting she had begun a minute before grew louder, struggling to compete with the agonized screams that seemed to tear themselves from the very center of the unconscious boy before her. Echoes of the pain he was feeling shook her to the core, but she held on. This was the hard part. This was the part that would test everything she was, and she would not be found wanting.
Reid convulsed again, back straining, fingers clenching and unclenching. Still unconscious, his body twisted and jerked as torrents of liquid fire flooded into him in waves, never relenting. Somewhere in the darkness of his consciousness, Reid huddled in a corner of his own blackness and cried with the pain, hands fisted over his ears to drown out the ever-present clock, the clock that counted down, down, down.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
His eyes snapped open.
"Will me your power," Mary hissed through her teeth, face white as bone. There was a flash, and he saw his nightmare, the face from his nightmare, the bones…
Reid couldn't even answer, but he shook his head hard enough to snap it against the floor with a sharp cracking sound that, for a moment, silenced the damning clock. Another wave. He screamed again, somehow finding the strength to let out the sound. His throat felt raw and sore, and he wondered blindly how long he had been screaming. Whatever part of him that had pride enough to think that screaming was weak had long since been crushed by the pain.
"Will me your power, and it will stop," the witch told him, her hair whipping down and lashing across her white, white face like blood on chalk. He did not even realize that his own face was damp with tears.
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Kat fought. She fought like a wildcat, like a wolf. It took all three of the boys to hold her back, and all three of them were bleeding by the time they calmed her down enough to talk to her.
"Kat! Kat, you fucking bitch, listen to me!" It was Tyler, of all people, his voice unaccustomedly harsh, who got through to her. "Throwing yourself at that shield is not gonna help him! It's only gonna get you hurt!" The brief silence in which he had spoken was torn apart by another gutwrenching scream from inside the house, and Kat jerked, but did not try to fight again. This time, she didn't fall into sobs. Instead, she didn't look at them at all. Didn't move. Didn't even seem to breathe. Cautiously, the three Sons let go of the werewolf, ready to jump in again should she make it necessary, but Kat simply knelt there.
"Kat?" Caleb bent to look into her face, and drew back. Pogue and Tyler returned to their places beside the priestesses, anxiously glancing back at the girl as they poured their power into the effort. Caleb stumbled a little, rising to his feet, and backed away from the teenaged werewolf. The look on her face did not match any of the looks he'd seen from her before. It wasn't pain, or loss, or grief, or rage, or hate. It wasn't murderous, or wicked.
It was blank.
Utter deadness.
Her eyes were flat, cold, emotionless. Nothing there. Slowly, without looking up, so lowly that Caleb could barely hear her over the continued screaming, Kat spoke.
"She's a dead woman."
Caleb had heard death threats before. He'd heard them made in jest, and he'd made them in jest, and he'd had them made against him in all seriousness. He'd heard Kat herself threaten to kill before, and she'd sounded like she meant it… but now, chills were running down his spine. There was no teenage girl in those words, no friend, no human. There was killer. Caleb, hearing that, had no doubts whatsoever that this creature kneeling in front of him would carry out her threat. There was no more mercy inside what had been, and perhaps would be again, Kat Teague.
He went back to his place, and put his mind to magic.
And, with barely a sound, the invisible wall around the house… cracked.
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"Do it! Will me your power!"
Tick. Tock.
"SAY IT!"
Tick. Tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock, tick, tock, ticktockticktockticktocktick
Silence.
Suspended, Reid viewed the scene. Time was stopped. There was no time. He saw himself lying there, a glowing mass of purpleblueclear light writhing in slow motion on his chest: ascension. Mary, kneeling by his body, shouting silently, slow motion. Everything slow motion. Outside, the wall failing, the magic failing, Caleb and Pogue and Tyler and Sarah and Kate and women and oh, oh, Kat, Kat crouching, blank-faced, hunter-faced, Kat with murder in her heart.
"Run, Reid," Caleb shouting, because the wall was down, the wall was broken but it was too late, too late, power, oh the power, oh god and Kat, Kat looking up, Kat seeing a ghost in the air and smiling because she was ready to die and Kat saying, "Do it."
Kat. Kitty Teague. "Kill her," she said, slow motion, no sound, all lips and cold, animal eyes. Proud, vicious Kat.
"Get out of there! Run!" Caleb screaming it, Tyler joining in, running for the house. Kat, still and silent in the road, kneeling on the pavement, smiling.
"Kill her."
And in a press of heat and light, Reid was back in his body and screaming and burning like the sun, and then a soft, soft wave of pressure that sent Mary flying into the wall, sent the boys who were running for the house sailing backwards through the air to crash into the street. A millisecond of calm, and then-