Strega (Strega Series) (26 page)

Our three elders joined hands and lifted them to the sky, reciting the chant to call upon Diana. Soon, a brilliant blue light so bright, so powerful, shone down upon us and filled the sacred clearing. The pure, heavenly light infused us all with Diana's blessings, and rejuvenated the hunters among us. Like all the other children, my power had yet to emerge. But on those nights more than ever, I wished for it.

When the light faded, I found myself alone at the edge of the clearing. Everyone had disappeared. The moon's brilliant face was still visible from that space, but it had shifted. I was twelve, no longer watching myself but feeling myself cling to a giant tree. I watched three women emerge from the forest into the clearing. One of them was my mother. I remembered it. I'd often follow her to that space on the nights she'd hunt, just to see her depart.

They gathered beside the altar and gave reverence to Diana, preparing to enter the shadows and destroy our enemies. As they joined hands, they formed a triquetra of power, and radiated the same brilliant blue light that had shone down upon us all during ritual. My mother sensed for our enemies. Precognition was her power then, too. Her sister Arathia cloaked them from view, and they disappeared from sight. Nerinai transported them through the forest with great speed. A giant gust of wind rustled through the trees and I knew they were gone. I ran after them to feel the rush of power in their wake. I knew I'd never catch them.

When I reached the edge of the forest, early dawn blanketed the meadow with warm orange light. The air was cool, and fallen leaves from the oaks had turned brown and were scattered across the quiet landscape. On the hill beyond the meadow, a woman stood looking out over the olive fields. It was my mother.

I was fourteen. I ran to her, already gripped by sorrow from this unfolding memory.

When I got to her, she was crying. She took my hand and held it against her chest, as if I could take her pain away. I felt her skin. Her touch. I smelled her hair, smoky from autumn burning. She pulled me into her arms and held me tight, and we both cried.

I knew what caused her pain. The place that was once her home, a place she loved and longed for, was gone. The Etruscan city of Falerii was now a land stripped of its soul. There, a great darkness dwelled. The emptiness of a conquered city, and the horrifying memories she could not erase, cast an ugly shadow over a land once filled with vitality, promise, and love. I never knew this place. She and my father left it before I was born. But that day, as we held each other tight, I knew I had lost something too.

My mother and father had planned to leave Falerii. The Roman threat was growing, closing in on surrounding lands. They knew they could not stay. But it was not the Romans that forced them to leave so abruptly. It was a different threat. One that rose from the shadows, unsuspected and wretched, and gave them no time to prepare. No time to say goodbye. Her name was Invidia.

She was a sister Strega. Beloved by my mother. Part of her sacred circle. Trusted and loved by all of her sisters. No one saw that her heart was filled with bitter poison. Devious and cruel, driven by venomous envy, Invidia unleashed her hate upon them. In one night, in a bloody rampage, she turned against her sisters and killed them all. All to stop a prophecy from coming to pass. To stop the Triune from being born.

Nights before, Diana had come to the Strega of Falerii to share this great prophecy. She did not often descend from the heavens. In her presence, my mother and her sisters were humbled. Diana's devoted daughters gathered in sacred circles across Etruscan lands, but she had chosen to come to them.

Surrounded by a halo of heavenly light, Diana foretold the coming of the Triune. A blessed one among Strega, sent by Diana herself, the Triune would soon be born to a Strega in their circle. This blessed child would grow to possess great power and even greater responsibility. Diana sensed a new, surreptitious force of evil beginning to rise. One that threatened to obliterate all Strega. And only the Triune would possess the power to overthrow it.

Upon hearing this prophecy, Invidia silently filled with rage, poisoned by her jealousy of this unborn child that would one day possess power greater than her own. She grew evermore determined to stop the prophecy, to prevent the Triune from ever being born. She killed her pregnant sisters first, and with unspeakable brutality, convinced that one of them carried the blessed Triune. And with this blood on her hands, with this jealous fury boiling inside her, she could not stop. And she did not stop until all of her sisters were dead.

Invidia believed that my mother died with the rest. She would have died if my father had not found her and taken her far away. Together, they found a new home here in Vulci. But I always knew that a part of her had died in Falerii. She held onto her memories of home, sisters, friends. Tormented by loss. Betrayed by the one that took it all from her.

The night my mother fled from Falerii, she had a vision that revealed the dark truth. Invidia's blood was poison. Though born to Larthia—a beloved Strega—Invidia was corrupted by darkness. Her father was a wicked fiend, and deceived Larthia. He was a demon. A shapeshifter. And he appeared to Larthia as her husband. The night she was impregnated by his demonic seed, Larthia had a dream of her husband by the river. When she awoke to find that he was gone, she feared that he was in danger. She went to the river and found his decaying body washed up on its banks.

Larthia never knew what killed her husband, or what fathered her child, until she took her last breath. The night Invidia was born, her soulless father returned. He killed Larthia, leaving Invidia abandoned, to be raised by Larthia's sister Strega. His malevolent plan unfolded precisely as he wished. To conceive a Strega's child with his pungent blood, one that would be raised among Strega, to one day destroy them.

In her vision, my mother saw it all. Invidia was the rising force of evil that Diana had foreseen. An evil that only the Triune could have defeated. And Invidia had killed her sisters to defy the prophecy. Invidia possessed more power than my mother or any of her sisters, and she was born with a darkness inside her that would one day turn against all Strega.

In my arms, my mother's body grew rigid with fear. The sun was torn from the sky as dark clouds rolled in. With them, years rolled on and I grew taller. I was eighteen, looking out over the fields as bolts of lightning descended from the stormy night sky.

"She is coming for you, Velia," my mother said as her face paled like a ghost. "You must run!"

With a stiff finger, she pointed to the dark hillside below. The wind tore across the dark landscape, and my beautiful red dress swirled around my legs. My mother faded from my vision, slipping away into the wind. I was afraid to face what I knew was behind me.

A dark figure stood on the edge of the gloomy hill. Her chilling shape was illuminated only by distant lightning. She pulled down her hood to reveal her hauntingly beautiful face. Blood red lips. Dark, flowing hair. Eyes as black as night. Invidia.

As my eyes settled upon her, she began to change. Her beauty faded and her skin grew sallow. Her eyes sunk and hollowed. The flesh disappeared from her bones until she was only a skeleton beneath a tattered black cloak. Then she withered into black ash that spun like a cyclone where she stood.

I ran for the forest, desperate to disappear among the trees and hold onto the last moments of my life. The cloud of black smoke whirled behind me, fast and furious. Invidia was so close I could feel her suffocating me. In an instant, she was upon me. A whirling blackness, she pulled my body down to the ground.

She materialized and clutched my face with both skeletal hands, her hideously demonic form hovering over me. She held up her dark athame
—as blackened as her soul—but before she could plunge it into my chest, I slipped from her grasp. I pushed myself to my feet and ran as fast as I could to escape her.

"Velia!" I heard his beautiful, tortured voice call to me. He was near. The man I loved more than life itself. The man I would have done anything to protect. In that life, his name was Zertur. But I knew him now as Vince. He was searching for me, to protect me. He knew I was in danger. I ran toward the sound of his voice.

On his knees, ravaged by Invidia's demonic beasts that had overtaken the forest, Zertur crawled to me in desperation, shouting my name, warning me that the insidious shadow was close behind me. I ran to him, as desperate to save him as he was to save me.

Gathering all the power he had left, he threw his chest out, bellowing as his arms cut through the air and brought down one last bolt of fiery blue lightning. But the swirling black enigma evaded the bolt, and instead it struck a nearby tree. Bright orange flames consumed its lush foliage, leaving behind a scorched skeleton. Invidia quickly materialized, shouting to her beastly minions to attack him one last time. Before I could get to him, they mauled him before my eyes.

Invidia clutched me by the throat. I struggled to break free from her grasp, but I could not escape. Forced to watch my love die, unable to save him, I felt the cold tip of Invidia's dark athame plunge into my back. As it sank deeper into my flesh, I dropped to my knees. Life drained from my body as I reached for Zertur, knowing that I could not save him. Knowing that he'd tried desperately to save me. He called for me as I watched him die. And in his devastated face I saw my own death.

Ruth withdrew a vial of smelling salts from under my nose. I sat up gasping for air and knocked it from her hands. Its contents spilled onto the floor as the glass shattered. Each breath I took after that burned like a blazing fire in my lungs. Ruth reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet. Violent crashes, one after the other, sounded from beyond the curtain, and I knew from the look of terror on her face that we were in danger.

I had no time to pull myself together. Ruth's presence baffled me. I didn't know how long I was out, but I was sure it wasn't long enough for her to have arrived from Italy on a commercial flight. Celia was her only other possible mode of transportation, and she was not there. And Luci was gone.

Ruth was silent as she dragged me to the far corner of the room. We waded through billows of smoke from candles she'd just doused. Aside from the dim glow of a stone fountain, we were in the dark. She kept a tight grip on me as we crouched down in the corner. In that moment, I knew that to anyone else, we were invisible. She mumbled words so quickly that I couldn't understand them, and threw a fine powder around us. Like smoke, it filled the air and settled on our clothing, hair, and skin, infusing us with its earthy scent. I was so terrified that I hardly noticed the cimaruta violently quivering against my chest. Ruth and I stared straight ahead and waited for what was coming.

They poured into the room like a pack of rats. Dressed in black, they slipped into the shadows of the dark room, barely detectable but for their pale white skin. They were at once beautiful and terrifying. There were at least ten of them, and each of their faces was flawless, like a sculpture carved in the image of a god. Their eyes, striking and alluring like a cat. Their lips, plump and fervent. Perfect creatures on the outside, their convincing fa
çade would have deceived anyone else. But Ruth knew better, and I myself was finally beginning to understand. They were demons. And they'd come for me.

I feared that if Ruth's grasp on me was disrupted at all, that I would lose her protection and be revealed to them. I remained silent and still, and gripped Ruth with both hands, holding onto her for my life.

Skulking like animals on the hunt, these demons crept through the room, covering every square inch. Then suddenly they stopped. Hovering over the place where moments before I'd been lying on the floor, they were suddenly overcome like animals that had caught the scent of blood. In that moment, they morphed into hideousness. Their faces became those of wild beasts, primitive and horrifying. They turned over pillows, lowered their faces to the ground like dogs fixed on a scent, and moved the scattered salt crystals and shards of glass with their intermittently perfect and then gnarled hands.

Then, these terrible creatures came determinedly in our direction. They tracked us to that corner, sensing us, smelling us, growing more determined the closer they got. And soon, they hovered over us. I was afraid to breathe. Afraid to blink. Just inches away, I watched their coarse black fur expand and recede with each ravenous breath. Their eyes were ablaze with sinister fire. They could have reached out and destroyed us. I feared that however strong Ruth's power of translucence was, it was not strong enough.

Just then, their determination faltered. They began to retreat as if they'd suddenly lost our trail. Their faces reverted from ferocity to beauty, and before they turned away, I saw a face that I recognized. I'd disliked him from the moment he barged into Mr. Baker's office. My instincts were right. It was Ron.

In a blaze of fire, a new figure entered the room. My grip on Ruth tightened. The predatory eyes surrounding us suddenly turned toward this new demon. As he emerged from the withering flames, his subordinates obediently bowed before him. He was beautiful like them, with flawless skin and dressed in obscuring black. Like a missing piece finally settling into place, this demon joined his sinister counterparts and brought clarity to the muddled picture. Until that moment, he'd been out of context. Unrecognizable. It was Shaun. He was alive. All his injuries had vanished, and he stood there as perfect as the rest, completely unmarred.