Abandoned (Book Two of the Castle Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (12 page)

“I don’t think you are. This is your third placement this year, and it’s the same goddamn story.”
 

It always was, Hailey could have told him. Sleeping on screened porches instead of real rooms, food that was expired or far too scanty, being hungry so often, and the roving hands of her foster brothers. It was all the same story––one she had given up on telling.

“If we can’t find another place that’s willing to overlook all this crap, we’re going to have to send you to the juvenile detention hall.”
 

She had heard of Parkhill. The other foster kids talked about it like it was prison. The lights never went off. They could strap you to the bed if they thought you were going to be disruptive. They could put you in solitary. Hailey thought that she should have been scared, but the fear just wasn’t there anymore. She wondered if she would ever feel anything again.
 

The sound she made must have sounded like a laugh. Whatever it was, it made her caseworker’s face turn red. Moving faster than Hailey ever thought he could, he leaned over the desk and landed a hard slap to her small face.
 

She stared at him, he stared at her. Now that his fit of rage was over, he looked startled, almost terrified of what he had done.

Hailey had been struck before, and she would be struck again, but there was something about it this time that hurt––inside.
 

“If you’re not careful, you are going to end up getting yourself funneled straight into the prison system after you graduate. Girls like you don’t last long on the street. We are trying to find solutions for you, and you just keep ruining them. Look at how infuriating you are. Does it not occur to you to try a little harder?” The man’s voice droned on and on. Finally, he stood, shaking his head in disgust. “Stay there. I have to pick up the files from downstairs, and we’ll start over. Maybe this time you’ll find a family that’s willing to put up with your shit.”

He walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Her face still flaming from his blow, Hailey sat numbly in the plastic chair.
 

Finally she slumped over, wrapping her hands around her stomach and curling in on herself. She had been in the system for six years already. It would be another three before she could get out. Eighteen looked so far away, so impossibly far away, but it terrified her as well. After eighteen, there would be no one looking after her, no one who remembered her, who knew she was alive.
 

All she owned in the world was in a battered duffel by her side. She knew where her pocket knife was. It had slyly been honed to razor sharpness on the bottom of one her last foster family’s bowls. She knew how easy it would be. No more foster homes. No more fear. Before she knew what was happening, her fingers were wrapped around the knife’s handle. The blade was wickedly sharp. It probably wouldn’t hurt at all.
 

Behind her, she could feel eyes watching her. She knew they were yellow, and they were watching with approval.
 

Yes, yes, this was what she needed to do.
 

She brushed the sharp blade over the white skin of her wrist, and she paused.

The thing behind her hissed in anger, but she sat still.

She looked at her wrist.

She could remember a hand on it. The hand was larger than her own, holding it tenderly. Almost in a daze, she watched as an enormous man with bright blue eyes lifted her wrist and turned it so that he could kiss the palm.

He looked around, as if saddened by what he saw, and then he looked at her again.

“You know I’m waiting, little fox. Come find me.”
 

She rose from the chair slowly. In the past, her case worker had come back in and hurried her to his car. Now Hailey knew she wasn’t in the past. She turned to see the demon.

Stripped of its human form, it was foul. It had the shape of a primitive ape, enormous and hairy, but its head was that of a warthog. It snarled at her, full of hate, but she didn’t hesitate.

She moved fast and without doubt, driving the sharp knife into its eye. The thing howled with pain before disappearing.

She didn’t care. She walked quickly towards the door, certain that she would not see the dull and dreary hallway of the Child Services building.
 

Hailey had someone she needed to find.

• • • • •

The rain was bucketing down hard, obscuring the fine details. It still wasn’t enough. Piers could still hear the cries of the dying Wiccans around him. He could still smell the smoldering fires that had only recently been drenched by rain.

Piers hadn’t slept for almost four days. Everything had taken on an unreal quality. His vision felt dim, and whenever he needed to turn over another body, it got dimmer. He thought that there must be an end of bodies. There must be a time when it was over.

He wondered if this was Hell, if the Templars were right after all.

He entered a timber house, and found a pair of young girls curled on the hearth, dead. At least it had been quick. They were small. He could carry them both to rest under the hastily-erected shelter outside. The shelter was still miserable and wet, but it offered a little dignity for the rows of figures that lay underneath it, covered in whatever shrouds could be found.

There were others like him moving among the dead. They looked as dazed as he was. Sometimes they fell down in the mud. Then they had to be hauled away to rest themselves. Piers wondered if rest would ever come. He wondered if he would ever close his eyes without seeing the wreck of Costain again.
 

He settled the two girls on the ground, drawing a single blanket over their still faces.
 

He wanted to cry. He knew that there were tears inside him somewhere, but if he started, he would never stop. Instead he staggered to his feet, because there was still work to be done. This is work that would always need doing. Wiccans would never hide well enough.

He frowned when he saw a young woman with flaming red hair looking around. If he’d had more rest, he would have seen that her clothes marked her as an outlander. At the moment, he could only see that she was on her feet and unhurt. Something inside him warmed at the sight of her. Though he knew there was still work to be done, he stumbled towards her.

“Mistress, mistress, are you well? Did you survive the attack?”

She spun towards the sound of his voice. With no reserve at all, she wrapped her arms around him tightly.

“Oh Piers, oh my darling. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

For a long moment, he stood as still as a post. Something about this woman, barely more than a girl, soothed him. She took away the distant howl of battle and vengeance.
 

“Mistress, if you’re not well, we can take you to a healer.”

She stepped back, wiping tears out of her eyes.

“No, I swear to you, Piers, I’m fine. I am. I just…I suspected…well, I didn’t expect this.”

Piers shook his head.

“No one did, mistress. Costain was perhaps the best defended and best hidden community in the Isles. No one expected this.”

The woman nodded as if she understood something. She took his hand again. When she met his gaze, Piers realized that she had the brightest green eyes he had ever seen.

“It will get better than this, all right? You are going to survive this, and you will live a very long time. This is a dark day, but every one after this will get better.”

He wanted to pull his hand from hers and spit. He wanted to drag her to the shelter to see the bodies laid out. Some of the slain were only a few years old. He wanted to rage at her words. The Templar attack on Costain was more than a dark day.

Instead, he only stood there and drew from the strength that seemed to come from this woman. He wasn’t better. He wasn’t stronger. But he could go on. He glanced at the surrounding devastation. Every day would get better? How?

When Piers looked up, he wasn’t surprised to find she was gone.

When he turned around, he almost expected to see the pig-ape monster behind him. Almost casually, he drew his sword and struck off its head.

A SHRILL HOWL filled the air. Hailey’s first instinct was to hold her hand over her ears, but then she realized where she was. She was in the forest. Beside her, Piers was stumbling, obviously still disoriented. Though her first instinct was to rush to him, she didn’t.

The man possessed by the demon was crouched down low, black blood flowing through his stained hands. She saw where one eye had been. She saw where his neck had been brutally slashed. The demon fumbled and faltered, but then it raised itself up again. It opened its mouth as if to speak, but then it roared again instead, something that made Hailey’s skin crawl.

It moved toward Julie and Miles.

In an instant, Hailey understood what it wanted. Its current vessel was injured, so it needed a new one. For some reason, neither she nor Piers would do.

Hailey acted without thinking. She laid her hand against Piers’s cheek, drawing power from him faster than she ever had before. But she didn’t need fire. She needed cold this time. Cold had been Kieran’s power. Now she called it up.

She threw herself towards the thing and wrapped her arms around it.
 

It turned to her, but before it could strike, she froze it. She pictured bands of ice appearing out of thin air, wrapping around the thing’s chest and holding it immobile. She imagined those bands of ice tightening further and further until the thing screamed. She was touching it, and even through the thing’s clothes, it made her palms burn.
 

But she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t let it hurt anyone. She knew that she had to hold on.

Help would come.

She knew that, and despite her own cries of pain, despite the howls of the trapped demon in front of her, a strange feeling descended over her. To her shock, she realized it was peace. A deep tranquility filled her, something she had been searching for her entire life without knowing.

With a roar that threatened to drown out even the demon’s howls, Piers rose up with his sword bared. He struck the demon’s head from its body just as she let go. With his second sword, he pinned the writhing, twitching body to the ground.

Hailey stumbled away from the monster. Her palms burned. She glanced down. They were black with the demon’s blood. She felt light-headed, but she still managed to get to Julie’s side. To her relief, both of the missing Wiccans were still breathing. They seemed miraculously unharmed. She turned with a smile to Piers.

He wasn’t smiling, his eyes wide and focused on her.

“Hailey, Hailey are you all right?”

She started to reply that of course she was. She was fine. She was exhausted, but they had won. They had defeated a demon. They had saved Julie and Miles. Nothing else mattered.

She thought she was going to say that.
 

Instead, brilliant colors danced in her vision. She became aware of a burning heat that started in her hands and swept through the rest of her body. Hailey cried out and fell hard to the ground.

Piers was by her side instantly, calling her name. But when she looked up at him, he looked like he was at the top of a well. The light behind him was bright and blinding. As she fell, it began
 
to dim. Before the darkness claimed her, she wondered if she would ever see the light again.

PIERS KNEW THAT the coven needed him. He knew that people were terrified about the approach of a demon so close to the Castle. Further research had shown that the man the demon possessed was a Templar. Fear ran high. People were restless and uneasy. They had banded together in the two weeks since the attacks, but there was still very much a sense of unease throughout.

But Piers couldn’t bring himself to care.
 

The only time he had ever felt this defeated was when he and his friends had arrived at Costain. This time there was just one casualty, but it was Hailey.

The door to the infirmary opened. Julie came in with a tray of soup and sandwiches for him.

“I know you’re not feeling too fond of the stuff right now, but you need to eat. No questions. Mathias says that he’s going to kick you out if you don’t.”

Mechanically, Piers bit into the food, tasting none of it.

In her narrow bed, Hailey breathed softly and far too lightly. Sometimes, panicked, he was convinced she had stopped breathing entirely. They had cleaned the demon’s blood off of her as soon as they had gotten her back to the coven. Mathias, the head healer, had taken him aside.

“Demon’s blood is corrosive and deadly. It might take her years to heal from it. She might never heal at all.”

Piers had thanked the man for his frankness. But there was no way that Hailey was going to be a thin ghost in a bed. There was no way she would leave him.

The healers managed to sustain her, but little more. Sometimes he paced in the hall, but more often than not, he sat by her bed, holding her small hand.

Julie hesitated before leaving.

“She’s a brilliant girl. If anyone’s going to pull through this, it’s her.”

“I know.”
 

Piers tried to offer her a smile. The coven members who knew Hailey came in and out to wish her well. He was happy to see them, happy to see that there were so many who were concerned for her.

Julie squeezed his shoulder on her way out the door.

“They’re doing everything they can for her. There’s nothing more you can do.”

Julie couldn’t see it, but her words made Piers flinch.

He had been hiding from the truth for two weeks now, but he couldn’t keep it up. He had put it off, but the truth stared at him like that demon. He knew what he needed to do, even if the heart he thought he had buried at Costain cried out against it.
 

He swallowed hard, pulling out the phone in his pocket.

Stephan had returned to the Magus Corps a week ago, carrying a full report about the demon and the unexpected Templar activity in the area. He answered on the second ring.