Witching Tree (Alice Gray Book 1)

67

                 
My voice was nothing more than a whisper.

Ben looked at me with pity in his eyes. I turned away, unwilling to accept the sentiment.

"Tell me."

"She'd been at home, preparing to meet me, when she found an old journal. It called to her, she said. Not with words or sounds, but she couldn't resist its attraction. It sucked her in, took her to that place. She woke up in a bedroom with no windows and no way to escape. Then he came, Jonathan Device."

"Jonathan Device?" Anne interrupted, "He was supposed to be the new coven leader, but he'd disappeared just before the ceremony. It was a great scandal. Hazel stepped up to run the coven in his place, but Gran said the ancestors weren't happy. She wasn't the one that they'd chosen."

"Why'd he leave?" I asked.

"That's where the story gets complicated. Jonathan came up with some conspiracy theory about the coven wanting to control him, wanting to use his power. He told Evelyn that they'd kept him locked up, but he'd escaped and hidden away ever since," Ben continued.

"Not sure that's just a theory, you heard what Hazel said to me, the way she looked at me."

"Don't defend him. Not until you've heard the full story," Ben said, anger reddening his face as his sorted through his memories. "Jonathan believed that your mother was his destined mate. He thought that the strength of her Gray magic would protect her from the destructive force of his own. Like you, Evelyn's power was strong. But it wasn't strong enough. When he saw that she craved his energy, like all the others, he took what she offered under the influence of his magic, and then he threw her away." 

Ben looked away, pain twisting his features. When he met my eyes again, kindness shone out.

"Eventually, Evelyn found me. We were going to raise you together. But my need for vengeance got in the way. I went to the coven. They gathered a posse and met at their circle. Hazel led the prayer. We were supposed to bring him back. She said we could trust her, that she could control her own brother. But she underestimated him. We all did. As soon as he recognised the coven members, Jonathan lost it. He let the force of his magic wash over us, and as desire for his power twisted and corrupted us, he watched and smiled. We were the start of his collection."

I walked over to the window and looked out. It was the closest thing to privacy available in my compact apartment. I didn't want the others to see my fear.

They didn't understand Jonathan, they couldn't.

But I did.

Jonathan had been hunted into madness. He'd kept himself separate to protect others from our power. When they came for him, he turned them inside out, making them ugly on the outside, like their greed corrupted them inside.

They'd be coming for me too. Hazel had shown me that.

He was a monster for what he did to my mother, but the rest? It was self-defence.

I felt a hand on my shoulder before I'd even noticed anyone had approached. I knew who it was without turning. Stephen's minty scent was so familiar and comforting that I leant into it before I could stop myself.

His hand travelled down my arm, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake. Taking my hand, he gave it a reassuring squeeze before he took a small step away putting some space between our bodies.

I met his deep blue eyes with a question. I thought he wanted to be close to me again.

Stephen's eyes darted to the side, I glanced around him following their direction to find the rest of the room still and silent.

All eyes were on us.

One pair of eyes in particular.

The flash of crimson told me that Thomas was on the verge of exploding. Ben put a hand on his arm, but no-one here would be able to restrain him if he lost it now.

He was a vampire for Christ's sake.

"I've found something. Something about the coven that you need to know," Stephen said quickly.

Thomas's body relaxed a fraction, his eyes returning to their usual brown. A collective sigh of relief sounded from around the room. 

"The tree mosaic that the coven use as their circle, it's not what we thought."

"The Tree of Life?"

"That's not what it is," Stephen said, worry drawing lines in his brow. "Did you see what happened to it when they trapped you in its boundaries the last time?"

"It leached my energy," I supplied, shuddering at the memory.

"It took your essence," Stephen corrected, "it took your essence into itself and it gave back knowledge. Knowledge of good and evil."

"Ok."

"Alice, the silver tree, it's not the Tree of Life, it's the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil."

"Ok."

Stephen pushed his glasses up on his head, and let out a massive sigh of exasperation. Looked like I was in for another lecture.

"Right," he said, spearing me with a look so serious that I had to fight a nervous giggle from bubbling out. "Let's start with something everybody has heard of. Even you know of the most famous example of the tree's curse. The Tree of Knowledge bore the fruit that Eve ate in the garden of Eden. It's the reason that people became self-conscious of their nakedness, the reason that they grew lustful and lost their place in Paradise."

"Oh," I said, the weight of understanding finally descending.

The silver tree; the Tree of Knowledge wasn't just the coven's circle. It was the silver tree that had been sent to me five years ago. It was the silver tree-throne that generated and held Jonathan's power.

These three, together, had stripped away my blissful ignorance of the real world, opening my eyes to my magic and the magic that thrived in others.

They had let me see and feel the force of the silver energy, and they had shown me the greed and lust of those around me for that part of my essence that I could never share.

But worse than that, they had shown me my fate.

The fate of my father, Jonathan Device.

Madness.