Last Grave (9781101593172) (22 page)

“Never.”

She moved to the door, not trusting herself to say anything more.

“You want some company?”

She shook her head and cleared her throat. “No. This is something I have to do alone.”

*  *  *

Half an hour later, Samantha was inside the graveyard, wishing she were anywhere else. She reached the row of graves she was looking for and stopped. Her mother was buried in her own plot, purchased long before her death. She had visited that grave when she had returned to Salem a few months before. Abigail, the former high priestess, also had a grave separate and apart a few rows away. The coven that Samantha had infiltrated had successfully raised the woman from the dead, hoping to use her to help summon the demon that had destroyed Abigail and the rest of Samantha's coven. Samantha shuddered as she remembered the horror of being part of the resurrection process and magically bound, unable to stop it and instead compelled to give her energy to aid it.

How ironic it was that the two women who had seemed most indomitable, most sure of their own immortality, had been the only two who had planned ahead for their deaths. The rest of the coven was buried here, in this row. The tombstones had pentagrams in enclosed circles placed at the top. It was ridiculous. Real witches never used that symbol, shunning it at best as a joke and at worst as a Christian artifact. But then, whoever had buried these people, who'd had the tombstones made, had not been a witch.

She began to walk, turning her face away to look straight ahead. She didn't read the names as she passed grave after grave. She didn't have to.

The dead were calling out to her. She could hear them, feel them. There was John, whom she'd always thought had to be the oldest man in the world and whose dentures had once fallen out during a very serious ritual, much to his chagrin. Louisa, who taught kindergarten. Kym, who had purple hair before it was popular. Byron, who had spent the most time instructing the younger witches with a harsh word and a cruel hand. Samantha resisted the urge to spit on his grave as she passed it. It was his voice that had haunted so many of her nightmares, commanding her to turn and keep turning, spilling her own blood in a circle of protection as a hellhound charged at her.

Fiona had run a candy store. When Samantha first heard the story of Hansel and Gretel, she had thought it was a true story about Fiona. Up until the part about the children burning the witch in the oven. Fiona was far too clever to have been caught that way. Instead she met her fate at the hands of a demon.

Finally, she came to the last grave, and it was as silent as mortals imagined graves to be. No voice called out to her; no memories stirred. A chill ran up and down her spine, and fear knotted in the pit of her stomach.

She forced herself to turn until she was standing, facing the tombstone.

Desdemona Castor.

The last grave was hers.

She crashed to her knees, sick and dizzy all at once. How had this happened? Why was there a grave with her name? No one was even supposed to know that name. She had kept it hidden for so long.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she was digging into the earth, clawing at it. She was sobbing. There was so much dirt. It would take so much time to dig up the grave.

Not for a witch,
she realized.

Energy thrummed through her body as she plunged her hands down hard onto the earth. It erupted upward and outward in a shower of rocks and dirt that rained over the entire area, leaving the grave uncovered.

Samantha struggled to her feet and stared down at the wooden coffin.
Her coffin
. At least, it was meant to have been.

She stretched out her hand, compelling the lid to raise as she braced herself for what she would see inside. The hinges groaned as the coffin opened. When it had revealed its secret, she felt her heart begin to pound.

She jumped down into the coffin and picked up the single sheet of paper. There was so much power radiating off of it that merely holding it caused her entire arm to shake. It was a picture of her stolen cross necklace. Beneath it someone had left her a message written in blood.

Come and get it.

Her mind went numb. Someone knew who she was. Someone had been planning this for a long, long time. Who could it have been? It was someone who had known her as a child; she could feel it.

And standing there in the empty coffin, Samantha suddenly realized she was inside her own mind again, staring at the hallway of doors. The girls she had met were sobbing, crying, pleading with her.

She walked toward door number twelve, always glowing, always pulsing with red light streaming out from underneath. The other girls didn't know who could have done this, but Twelve would.

She shook off the small hands that grabbed at her clothes, trying to hold her back. At last she stood in front of the door they had warned her about for so long. It was time.

“I have to remember who I was,” Samantha insisted as she reached toward the doorknob.

Before she could touch it, the door flew open on its own and a girl in a black cloak stepped out. “No,” the girl rebuked her. “You have to remember who you
are
.”

And she remembered . . . everything.

And when she climbed out of the grave, she moved her hands to form the energy ball that would become her cat. And when she was finished, she looked down at Freaky, who was no longer a furry black kitten but instead a sleek black panther. Freaky's eyes were glowing red. Just like Desdemona knew hers were.

Don't miss the next novel in the

Witch Hunt series by Debbie Viguié,

Circle of Blood

Coming from Signet in 2014

The room was dark. No one was home, but that didn't mean that she was alone. Shadows slithered down the walls and voices whispered all around her. They told her to stop, told her that she was a fool and that she didn't know what she was doing. Something deep inside her was thrashing like a dying animal and it took everything she had to keep her concentration.

Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, she sliced her hand open with a butcher knife she'd gotten from the kitchen. It wasn't a ceremonial object, but the important part wasn't the blade itself; it was the blood. Her blood.

She smeared the blood on the floor around her until it formed a circle. When it was completed, she wiped her hand on her skirt and took a deep breath.

It was now or never. If she didn't do this she'd be a prisoner forever, and she wanted so desperately to be free. But the thing that slithered around inside her hated the very word. It made her hands shake so badly she almost couldn't light the candles that were around her.

On top of the circle she placed two candles. One was blue for protection. The other was yellow for memory. Then she lit a white candle and placed it inside the circle in front of her. The candle represented her, her higher self, who she wished to be.

Next she lit three black candles and placed one behind the white candle and the other two to the left and right of it. Black candles repelled negativity and were used for protection and binding.

Her hands were shaking so badly now that she knocked over the third candle. She quickly snuffed the flame that leaped to life on the carpet. And she understood exactly what the thing clawing at her stomach wanted. If it couldn't have her, it would kill her.

But she wouldn't let it, not today of all days. It was her birthday. She was thirteen. Mr. and Mrs. Ryan were at work but they had already given her the present she had asked for. She picked up the necklace that had been sitting next to her on the floor. It was a silver cross, and they hadn't even balked when she'd asked for it to be made for her based on a centuries-old design.

She twisted the top of it off, revealing a tiny hidden chamber in the heart of the cross. It wasn't large, but it didn't have to be.

She shuddered as she felt the shadows reaching out to her, touching her with icy hands that inspired dread and sorrow and terror, as they always did. But now, for the first time, they also inspired anger.

She wouldn't let them control and manipulate her anymore. Everyone was dead; her mother, Abigail . . . all killed when their coven had tried raising that demon, which had destroyed them.

She would not be joining them. She was choosing life. A new life. New family, new religion. Even a new name.

“I put away the old self, the old life. I renounce the witchcraft and the acts of evil I have witnessed and participated in.”

Around her she could hear screaming. Inside her belly the creature that had been with her for what felt like a lifetime writhed in agony. It needed her fear, her will to survive, and she was going to deny it those things.

“I seal myself to God and as Christ shed his blood on the cross, I too shed my blood on this image of the cross to bind my life to him.”

She lifted her injured hand and squeezed three drops of blood into the hidden chamber of the cross. Three, a holy number, a sacred number to so many different peoples. She screwed the top of the cross back on and put it around her neck.

She could feel heat radiating from the cross into her skin.

“I turn my back on the darkness.”

Things were throwing themselves at her now, but her circle of protection kept them at bay. There was howling and scratching outside the circle. Inside the circle the thing within her was making her sick, trying to confound her mind so she couldn't remember what it was she was doing, so she couldn't remember how to rid herself of it once and for all.

“I choose a new life, a new world. And nothing of the old belongs in it. I am no longer Desdemona Castor. I choose to forget the evil that she has done. I am Samantha Ryan. Behold, I am become new.”

She blew out the white and black candles and then immediately doubled over in pain. She wretched and something black oozed out of her mouth and slid across the floor, seeking escape. She picked up the blue candle and set fire to the black slime incinerating it. And slowly the screams faded from her mind.

When it was gone she blew out the flame on the blue candle and then the yellow candle. Yellow, for memory. Very deliberately, she took the knife and cut the candle in half. The two pieces toppled to the floor and she slid to the ground as tears of relief burst from her.

*  *  *

Desdemona Castor sat up with a shriek. She had been dreaming about the moment where she ceased to be, and the impostor known as Samantha Ryan had taken her place. She put her legs over the side of the bed and put her hands together, forming a ball of energy between them that grew and twisted until finally Freaky, in the form of a sleek black panther, was sitting on the ground staring at her with eyes that glowed red. She reached out to pet his head as she shook off the remnants of the nightmare.

“Never again,” she promised the big cat.

They were in an abandoned house on the outskirts of New Orleans. A little magic when they arrived the night before had made it habitable and obscured them from detection. On the nightstand was a picture of the cross necklace from her nightmare.
Come and get it
was written in blood on it. The cross had been stolen by witches months before, when she was a homicide detective in Boston and had still been going by the name Samantha Ryan.

Whoever had stolen it had left the picture for her in a grave in Salem, taunting her, daring her to come and find them. When she did, she would destroy both the cross and the witch who had stolen it.

The night before, when they had arrived in New Orleans, she had attempted a summoning spell to bring the witch to her. It had failed. The witch in question was either very powerful or had taken precautions against such spells. It was no matter; Desdemona would find her and when she did, and nothing on earth would save the witch who had crossed her.

Desdemona rose and got dressed. It was time to hunt a witch.

*  *  *

An hour later she was haunting the dark streets of the French Quarter. The bars and clubs had emptied and the shadows reigned supreme. She stalked through them, unafraid of anything that might be lurking within. No mere mortal was a match for her, and few witches had enough power to pose any kind of threat.

A gunshot rang out through the air, and she tensed. She started to turn toward the sound, but she forced herself to continue walking on her path. She wasn't a cop; that was the usurper's job and self-identity, not hers. That wasn't who she truly was. Local police could handle the human drama just fine. Besides, what did she care?

As she walked, she searched for evidence of the witch she was seeking. She would head to the Garden District next if she couldn't find what she was looking for. Witches, by their very nature, loved places steeped in history. A police car sped by a few minutes later, followed by an ambulance.

The streets were grimy, and without throngs of people the place felt desolate. She stepped over a puddle that seemed to be congealing blood. The energy in the place was palpable and so very different from other places she had been.

There was no sense of the earth beneath her, just concrete. Instead the energy was pulsing off the buildings, the collected fears and dreams of so many creative and desperate people. Life was one big party until you died, and here sex, death, and jazz seemed to permeate the air.

It was nearly dawn when she finally felt power shimmering in the air. She walked into a small café that was open for early-morning breakfast. She took a table and her eyes zeroed in on an older man with gray hair who was engrossed in his breakfast. She ordered beignets and coffee.

When they came a few minutes later she was still closely watching the man. So far he had refused to acknowledge her presence even though he most surely had felt her power as well.

She considered confronting him then and there, but the importance of keeping magic a secret had been well drilled into her as a child. She had once blinded a schoolyard bully, only to be tortured by her mother as punishment. She could wait until the man left the café.

The coffee was only lukewarm, but she had no need of distracting herself by yelling at the waiter. Instead, keeping her eyes focused on her quarry, she wrapped her hand around the cup and pushed energy out of her body through her hand and into the cup. She could hear the liquid begin to boil, and she released it.

Twenty minutes later she was finished eating. He finally got up and exited the café in another ten minutes. She waited a beat and then rose to follow him.

She stayed about a block behind. He couldn't help but know that she was following him. She would let him choose the place of their confrontation. She could feel power vibrating through her and struggled to hold it back. Finally she saw him turn up an alleyway between two buildings.

She tensed, the energy ebbing and flowing through her. She debated briefly about how to enter the alleyway in case he was waiting to ambush her. Finally she took it slowly, hand raised, fire dancing along her fingertips.

She stopped a couple of feet in.

The man was standing over the body of someone else sprawled on the ground. The stench of blood filled the air and she could feel the person on the ground as he died.

She stared with narrowed eyes at the man she'd been following. He just shrugged his shoulders and looked at her with steely eyes. “And what, then, is it you'll be wanting of me?” he asked in a lilting Irish accent.

“What are you?”

“A man, last I checked,” he said, a smile twisting his lips.

“Are you a witch?”

“Druid, actually,” he said shortly.

A surge of power rippled through the air, followed by a gasp and the sound of shattering glass.

Desdemona turned impatiently. There, standing behind her, was one of the magic users whose life she had spared back in Salem, a young girl with flaming red hair who was shaking uncontrollably, a broken vase with fresh flowers at her feet.

“Please, please don't kill me,” the girl begged.

Desdemona turned back. The man had vanished, and she recognized instantly the body of the dead guy and blinked in surprise.

It was her waiter from the café.