A Wicked Hunger (Creatures of Darkness 1) (21 page)

“You can’t seriously be considering drinking this.” Mace glowered at the inky-liquid-filled chalice on the table, surrounded by five white candles.

Cora offered him an uncertain glance from where she sat on the medieval-looking bench, wringing her fingers.

Standing sentinel next to her, Mace had been working to bury a deep sense of foreboding ever since Saraphine had closed the store and escorted them to this eclectic back room where she’d begun brewing a mysterious concoction.

The room was rather spacious, the ceiling vaulted. The back wall housed a nook with a large wood fire pit.
Over that, flames licked the underside of a bulbous black cauldron hanging by a metal bar that had been stabbed into either side of the grey brick alcove.

For the last two hours, he had watched
Saraphine toss random ingredients into the boiling water. At first, all had seemed innocent: tea leaves, mandrake, honey. Then came the bones, dried tongue—hopefully from some kind of animal—and a white powdery substance before she had transferring a small amount to the metal chalice.

The final ingredient was a drop of Cora’s own blood.

Mace gritted his teeth as she blithely pricked her own finger and offered her essence to the chalice. He was nearly fed up with this absurd indulgence, but at his every protest, Cora insisted she see this through.

“If I’m truly a witch, I should know for sure, shouldn’t I?” she reasoned, licking clean the small wound on her finger.

Mace cleared his suddenly dry throat, struggling to erase
from his expression all traces of desire to take that task from her. Hunger had been fiercely gnawing at him since this morning, as if he hadn’t eaten in a week rather than a day.

“And I should have use of whatever
powers
comes with it,” she continued, eyeing the chalice warily. 

Saraphine
took a seat on a tattered green armchair across from Cora. “This spell isn’t to unbind your magic, mind you.”

“Then what th
e hell is it for?” Mace bit out.

“It’s so I can get at the truth of the situation, so I can determine whether I should help her or not.”

For the umpteenth time, and without checking his tone, Mace argued the judgment of placing their trust in this baby witch, only to receive the same impatient, scathing glare from both of them.

“If she’s a baby witch, then I’m a fetus, Mace,” Cora said, rolling her eyes.

Allowing a small amount of his insecurity to seep into his voice, Mace admitted, “My instincts are screaming to protect you from this.”

She exhaled on a lengthy sigh, focusing a blank stare on the chalice. “I know. Sensing things like that from you seems to be coming easier.”

He claimed the seat next to her and slipped his hand into hers. “Then don’t do this. You don’t need magic. I’ll protect you always.”

Her features twisted as if pained, and his heart churned to retract whichever of his words had caused
it. 

Her shoulders hunched. “I know you mean that, Mason, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but in my experience, I can’t rely on others. And magic, if it truly exists at all, could have saved me from some very painful situations.”

At that, Mace relented. Cora was the definition of a survivor. She would use whatever means was at her disposal in the pursuit of self-preservation. He couldn’t blame her for that. It was the nature of all things to try and better the odds of survival, genetically imprinted into every living molecule on Earth.

He couldn’t ask her to handicap herself if there was even a small chance magic might benefit her in some way. And yet, he couldn’t shake his apprehension.

Without a second glance, Cora clasped the chalice between both palms and brought it to her lips. A breath of hesitation sent a shiver over the surface of the dark liquid before she gulped it down. 

Cora held back a disgusted heave, her esophagus fighting to keep the liquid down. Bile mixed with the rising fluid, burning. Scorching! She grabbed her throat, sucking fire-laced oxygen into her lungs. Her eyes watered, tears spilling in quick succession as she gasped, the inferno increasing.

“What have you done, witch?” Mace shot to his feet, lunging for Saraphine.

A ghost of his writhing fury burst through her, mingling with the agonizing heat that rose another degree, making it impossible for her to do anything but draw sharp, arduous breaths. With each one, the temperature notched higher till she thought acid was eating away her insides.

Looking monstrous, Mace had Saraphine around the neck, her feet off the ground. With a rasp, she whimpered as her legs thrashed wildly. Mace would kill her, Cora realized, as the fire in her spiked to an unbearable degree. It began to migrate from her throat to her chest, bombarding her heart and making each pulse pound acid into her veins. She fell from the couch, clutching her torso, her lungs failing.

There was a distant thud,
then Mace hovered over her. Oh goddess, had he killed Saraphine? Should she care? Her mind rebelled against all thought, pain slicing through her brain to the forefront.

“Cora! Breathe!” Mace ordered, as if she hadn’t been trying. She’d never seen him look so helpless.

Saraphine came into view behind Mace, her eyes wide. “You must relax,” she said earnestly. “Stop fighting and let the spell take you. The pain will ease when you do.”

Cora bared her teeth on a suffocated growl, her stomach revolting. Pain was all there could be, all the world was made of, and all it had to offer. Pain was life, and life was overrated. Perhaps it was time to die already, and allow that circling grain of sand to make its final descent.

A torrent of desperate worry rode the edges of her mind. It belonged to Mace and was possibly the purest emotion she had ever experienced. His concern broke her heart and managed to unravel a small piece of the barbed wire that had grown like a weed around it. When that spiky cage had come into existence, she wasn’t sure, but she did know it was tightly rusted into place, and small cracks from Mason’s love couldn’t fully dismantle the structure now.

Still, as she gazed into his tormented eyes, her muscles relaxed and precious air invaded her lungs. With another thick breath, and another, the fire began to diminish till finally it was little more than smoldering embers.

Sitting up, she shot an accusatory glance at Saraphine.

“Don’t be mad. It was a cleansing pyre spell, part of the truth ceremony. You’d never have done it if I’d have warned you.”

“I might have surprised you,” she wheezed, trying to pull herself off the ground.

Mace hurriedly helped her onto the couch,
then turned on Saraphine with a scowl. “You did that to her on purpose?”

“It was necessary.”

“The only thing necessary is death and taxes. Everything else is negotiable.”

“I’m fine now, Mace.” Cora resisted clutching her chest where the inferno still simmered. “Let’s just get this over with so we can go home.” Through gritted teeth, she added, “What’s next,
Saraphine?”

Sheepishly,
Saraphine rubbed her neck. On closer inspection, Cora noticed a slight bruise forming. Before, she would have berated Mace for that. Now any semblance of empathy was gone, and she just raised an impatient brow at the girl.

Saraphine
took her place across from Cora and hesitantly held out her hands. “Place your palms face down on mine.”

Cora warily did as asked.

“The potion you ingested opened your aura to mine. Now I’ll chant a spell that will allow the truth to be known.”

Mason’s impatience crawled through Cora’s mind, mingling with her own. It didn’t help that she was beginning to feel idiotic about this whole thing.

Saraphine closed her eyes and started her chant in a low timbre. “Show me the truth, by the power of three. By the power of three, I conjure truth unto me.” She repeated the chant several times, till the words started to run together.

After about the twelfth repetition with nothing happening, Cora rolled her eyes and shot an apologetic glance at Mace. Mace replied with a frustrated frown.

She supposed her desperation to understand her odd predicament, and maybe even her past, had tempted her to take this fantasy further than she should have.

She was about to withdraw her hands when
Saraphine’s eyes flashed opened and an explosion of color crashed through Cora’s mind. Her muscles tensed, her spine arching as though from an electric jolt. Vision failed her before piercing light blinded her. Images flashed in quick succession, too fast for her to get a lock on any one.

She strained to focus.

Blurred figures stood out. Two of them, no three. The third was smaller than the others. A child.

Me
.

Her parents crouched next to a crying seven-year-old Cora…covered by blood. The dimly lit room came into view. Blood stained the walls in violent patterns. The expressions on her parent’s faces caused Cora’s adult heart to sink into the darkest pit of her stomach.

They were terrified…of their own child.

“She killed him,” her mother whispered, breathless and a little hysterical. “She killed him.”

Cora’s tiny lungs worked harder on a sob.

“I can’t believe it.” Her father darted disbelieving gazes around the room. “She’s too young to be this powerful.”

“But she is. And they won’t care that she can’t control it. They’ll take her.”

“What happened, exactly? Her Father demanded. “Whose blood is this?”

“Adam was watching over her.”

“You left her with Adam?”

“You act as though I had a choice!”

Her father’s shoulders hunched. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Last I knew they were playing blocks on the floor. I came running when I heard Coraline screaming. Adam’s guts were still dripping from the walls when I came in.” She pulled Cora on to her lap, bouncing her. “Hush, hush now.”

Cora clutched her mother and buried her face in her chest.

“Look here.” Her father retrieved a pair of shredded jeans from the middle of the room and snatched a key from the belt loop.

Her mother paled. “We’re to run then?”

“What else can we do?”

The scene flashed forward in time. Cora lay asleep on the floor in a bundle of blankets. Next to her, her mother’s stomach swelled with the
first signs of pregnancy.

Her father leaned against the far wall. Worry lines creased his forehead. “They’ll find us if we don’t do something,” he said.

“But bind her? She’ll be defenseless. You do remember the fang marks on her shoulder just after we found her that night, don’t you?”

“I remember,” her father sighed. “That rat deserved what he got, no doubt about it. But she still can’t control her power. She casts spells in her sleep. They’ll find us if we don’t. Besides, we’ll be able to protect her long enough to find a coven that’ll take us.”

“But, her memories too? It’s so extreme.”

“She’s traumatized. That’s why she hasn’t spoken since it happened. When she’s older, ready to train, we’ll unbind her, but I want to bury that memory forever. I want our daughter back.”

Her mother turned thoughtful. “Very well.”

The scene shifted again, and panic flared.

Darkness slammed around her as the building collapsed, separating her from her family and trapping her under a load of debris. Cora didn’t need to be reminded of this painful memory. She knew what was to come. Days of being trapped, nearly starving, crying for her mother and father. Eventually, she managed to clamber free of the rubble and stumbled through the ruins, searching. She didn’t want to relive this.

She was shown no pity, and the memory played through.

She climbed over mountains of torn chunks of sheetrock, broken glass, fallen beams, all the while kicking up dust. It entered her lungs, making it hard to breathe. Eventually, her hacking turned painful. 

A shaft of light in the distance gave her strength to move her wobbly legs forward. It could be a way out. Maybe her parents had already found it and were waiting for her there.