Bitter Demons

44. I'm Sorry, Mother

Pain thundered through my skull. I opened my eyes and tried to bring my hands up to my aching head, but I couldn't move. My arms and legs were stick-straight, like a board, and I struggled to free myself from whatever magic held me in place. They had dressed me in a white dress just like the one Caroline had been wearing the day we found her.

The room was dark. Candlelight flickered across the stone ceiling. Voices whispered all around me and I turned my head to see a room full of witches dressed in black velvet robes that shimmered in the light. These robes were very different from the ones I'd seen the night of Brooke's initiation ceremony, but the room was the same.

"Let me go," I said.

A witch cackled near my ear, her voice ancient and gravelly. She ran her long, crooked fingernail across the scratch on my cheek and I winced. In her other hand, she held my necklace, its blue pendant swinging back and forth as she held it up for me to see.

"Who are you?" I asked. Panic rose up in my chest. Without that necklace, I was on my own. Aerden wouldn't come for me this time.

The witch narrowed her red eyes at me. Her withered face cracked as she brought her lips into a gruesome smile. Her teeth were blackened and rotting, and I could smell the decay in her breath. She was old. Much older than any human should be.

"I am the one who should have had your throne," she said.

At the sound of her voice, every witch in the room grew dead silent. The anticipation in the air was dense, and the hairs on my arm stood up.

"I am the one who has waited all these years to find you so I could finally take back what was rightfully mine." Her voice echoed in the small ritual room.

I wanted to close my eyes and find that this was all just some bad dream. How could I have been so stupid? Going out to the barn alone was careless. My eyes searched the room, counting. Twenty-five robed figures plus the head witch. The red-eyed crow. There was no way I could take them all, even if I did have use of my arms and legs.

My body was positioned over the portal to the shadow world. I hovered in the air about four feet from the blue stone. The scene was eerily similar to Brooke's initiation and the thought of what these women might want to do to me left me gasping for air.

"When I was a young girl, about your age, a group of women came to my small town of Peachville," the old witch said. "They knew some of us girls had special... talents. We were recruited and evaluated. Judged for our merit and our abilities. In every test, I was the top of my class. I was the one the Order of Shadows chose to lead this town as their Prima. I was to be the first one initiated and joined with the powerful demon who came through this portal."

The witch clapped her hands together and I jumped, feeling dizzy and frightened. "Everything was set. The choice had been made," she said, circling me. "A week before the ceremony was to take place, your wretched, thieving ancestor found me in the woods practicing some spells from a book I'd found among the Order's things. I was a curious child. I hadn't done anything wrong. But Clara, she ran to the women of the Order and told them what happened. Doing magic outside of training was strictly forbidden at the time, but I knew what I was doing. I wasn't going to hurt anyone. I just wanted to see if I could figure out the magic."

The old witch leaned in close to my face; her rotting breath turned my stomach. "You have her eyes," she said. "That same superior look that says I'm better than you. I deserve more. She deserved to pay for betraying me. I visited Clara's room that night and cast a hex spell on her. She grew sick with a fever and nearly died. Probably would have if it hadn't been for the healer who discovered the spell. One of the women in the Order had a gift for sniffing out hexes, and once the women learned what I had done to a fellow witch and potential member, they banished me from the training."

Her story sent shivers up and down my spine. She'd come here for vengeance, and in that moment, I knew she wasn't planning to let me live. I could hear the hatred in her tone when she talked about Clara, the first Prima.

"She stole everything from me," she said. "And I've worked my entire life to get it back. I've built this family, this coven on my own. We're more powerful than most witches ever dream of becoming. I took that book of dark magic and built a life around it, using soul stones to steal the power of other witches and drink it down so that I could have eternal life and unimaginable power."

I swallowed and my mouth felt like it was filled with sand. The witch's story had my head all turned around. Had she really been carrying this hatred in her heart for a hundred years?

"I searched for years to find a way to take back what should have been mine," she said. "And eighteen years ago, I found it. An ancient spell that allows a coven to transfer the Prima blood-line from one family to another. I wanted it so badly, I could taste it."

She licked her cracked lips and raised her hands high in the air. Flames shot from her fingertips as she let out an angry, high-pitched scream of frustration. "I almost had it all those years ago when your mother was a young woman," she said. "In order for the transfer to work, there must only be one living member left in the Prima blood-line. Your mother was an only child, so I arranged for the death of her parents in a car accident."

I thought of how Zara had said the Order suspected foul-play. I felt sick.

"With them out of the way, I only had to sit back and wait for little Claire to take over her role as Prima. That's when I took her, just as I took you tonight."

Oh, god, my mother. I listened to her story, my mind racing to make sense of it all. My flesh crawled as she came close to me, putting her hands on both sides of my face.

"Only, I never counted on you," she said in a hoarse whisper. "Mommy's little secret. Your mother got pregnant by a married man and out of shame, kept her growing belly hidden with clever glamours. When she gave birth, she sent you away, ashamed to tell anyone about her mistake. Even as she lay here, looking so much the same way you do right now, she never told anyone she'd had a baby. An heir to the line."

I struggled against the magic holding me down, but it was no use. I squeezed my eyes closed. This couldn't be happening."

I spilled her blood on this very floor, thinking that I would finally take up my throne. When the spell didn't work and your mother's body lay lifeless and spent, I knew that someday I would find her heir and the Prima line would be mine. Our family would rule this town the way it was always meant to be ruled."

The room seemed to spin out of control. All these years, I'd wondered what happened to my mother. Now, I was living it myself. I was going to die just as she had died. Tears ran down the side of my eyes and into my hair.

Footsteps on the stone stairs made every head in the room turn in anticipation.

I prayed for Jackson or Zara or an army of women from the Order. Please. I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not tonight.

A girl in a black robe, shorter than most of the women in the room. Her hair was jet black, her skin pale. Her eyes were the purest color of blue.

"You're late, Mary Anne," a woman called from the corner of the room.

Mary Anne stood at the bottom of the stairs, her blue eyes fixed on me for a moment. I wanted to tell her to run. To get help. But then, she turned her gaze to the woman in the corner.

"I'm sorry, mother," she said.