The Darkness Within (35 page)

“Sister?” They couldn’t really be related.

“Just an expression. We
were
in the same coven, after all.”

“What?” Dylan and Shannon said, giving each other confused looks.

Mirabella laughed again. “Oh yes, she did that stupid little spell to bind herself to your pathetic coven, too, but the binding ritual she and I had was much different. It required blood, and a huge sacrifice.”

“What kind of sacrifice?” I asked, knowing someone must have died for their evil ways.

“Funny you should ask, Sam.” Mirabella walked over and patted my cheek. I smacked her hand away, but she thought that was funny, too. “It’s a shame when a young girl dies from such a tragic disease. Cancer is such a nasty thing, and to think your treatments didn’t work. Not even a little. Did you ever wonder why? Did you think God had abandoned you?”

My blood felt like it was boiling in my veins. How did she know so much about my illness?

“Hmm,” she said. “I do hope those doctors were giving you the right treatments. You know how careless medical professionals can get when they’re understaffed and overworked.”

“What are you saying, Mirabella?” Ethan said through clenched teeth.

“I’m saying the reason Sam was so unfortunate in her battle against cancer was because I had a better use for her body than she did.”

“You needed a sacrifice, and you chose me.” I swallowed hard, remembering all the times the doctors had been baffled by how unresponsive my body was to the treatments. “What did you do? Make the doctors think they’d administered the treatment? Make
me
think they’d administered the treatment?”

“Yes, and sometimes no.” She smiled. “I had to make it look somewhat real. I simply made sure what they were giving you would make you sick the way chemotherapy would have. A little spell to induce vomiting at first, then some tainted medications. It was all quite simple, and I had my sacrifice.”

I could’ve thrown up now. I might have gotten better. I might have lived a normal life, but Nora and Mirabella had made sure that hadn’t happened. I wanted to rip her head off with my bare hands. I wished I was still the witch killer Nora had made me into. I had the perfect witch to drain right here.

Ethan lashed out, throwing his hands forward and knocking Mirabella with a blast of magic.

She hurtled into the wall and slumped on the floor, but she didn’t stay down. “Now, now, Ethan. That’s no way to treat your host.”

We were all stunned Ethan’s spell had actually worked. He didn’t have much magic left. Our delayed reaction was all Mirabella needed. She threw strands of green energy at us, binding our magic and keeping us held in our own little prisons. It was a lot like the spell Nora had used on Shannon in the diner, the one I’d broken by pouring salt on the ring that held her. Only I was trapped now too, and there was no salt in the cottage. I struggled within the confines of the green snake coiled around me.

“Does it look familiar, Dylan?” Mirabella taunted. “It should. It’s the dark magic I took from you.” Dylan fought against the magic holding him, but it was obvious he was no match for it. Mirabella walked over to Ethan. “We have one last session to finish. I need that last bit of magic inside you.” She raised her hands palms up, and Ethan floated to the fountain in the basement. “I was going to do this alone, but I think it will be more fun with you all watching. Especially you, Sam. Say good-bye to your magical boyfriend. He’ll be an empty shell when I’m finished with him.”

“Don’t touch him!” I was filled with rage, and my magic swelled in response. Only it was powerless against the binding. My feet left the ground, and I floated through the door and back into the basement. Shannon and Dylan were right behind me. Mirabella shut the door and cast a spell to seal the house shut. She wasn’t taking any chances of us getting away now.

“Enjoy the show, Sam.” Mirabella smiled at me before taking Ethan’s hands. His eyes met mine briefly before the spell pushed them shut. Tears streaked my cheeks. She was going to kill Ethan, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. What was the point of being a witch when I had no power to save the one person I loved? I sobbed uncontrollably, barely able to breathe. I knew the spell wouldn’t take as long this time. Ethan was already almost drained from the previous session. I was folding in on myself when the house shook like it had been rammed by a herd of stampeding rhinos.

“What was that?” Shannon asked as the house was hit again.

I swallowed hard. “It has to be the other coven. They must have found us.” Thanks to me. It wasn’t enough that I was losing Ethan. I was going to get the rest of us killed, too.

“We have to do something. If they get in here, they’ll kill us.” Shannon’s voice cracked with fear.

I didn’t think my mind was capable of rational thoughts, but a plan started forming. “We’re dead either way. But if they get in, there’s a chance they’ll go after Mirabella. She seems to think they’re after dark magic—like she is. If they see she has it, they may focus on her and we could get free.”

“How?” Shannon tugged on the binding spell. “We’re trapped.”

“We have to break free somehow.” I looked at Dylan, but he turned away. That was it! “You’ve used dark magic before. You know how to control it. Dylan, it has to be you.”

“No.” He shook his head, looking like a terrified toddler. “If I try, it might consume me again.”

“Then we’ll bring you back. Dylan, look at me.” He slowly raised his head. “I won’t let you go. I won’t let this magic take you. We’re family. I promise we’ll keep you safe.”

“Please.” Shannon’s voice shook with tears. “Dylan, you’re our only hope. We need you. You’re our leader.” After all their fights for dominance, I knew that last comment meant something to Dylan. I hoped it would be enough.

He didn’t say a word for several seconds. The house kept being bombarded. Ethan and Mirabella were deep within the spell. I knew Mirabella wouldn’t stop unless she was forced to, and the attack on the cottage was probably making her work even faster. Dylan looked like he’d given up, but then I saw the green energy around him loosen. He was pushing it away. He sank down and wiggled out of its grasp. As soon as he was free, his eyes met mine.

“Thank you,” I said.

He moved toward me, his hands pulling the green magic away from me just enough that I could slip free like he had. He did the same for Shannon, and just in time, too. The house shook so hard we fell to the floor. This was it. We had to stop Mirabella and get ready to fight the other coven. Without Ethan, I didn’t think we stood a chance, but I wasn’t giving up.

“Can you get these green bindings around Mirabella?” I asked.

“Yeah, but if I could control them, then so can she. We’d be fueling her dark magic.”

Bad idea. “Send them out of here. Get them far away where she can’t use them.”

He nodded. With a swipe of his hand, the magic swirled in circles, getting smaller with each turn until it burned itself out. Was that possible? Did he get rid of the magic for good? Without sending it anywhere? I almost smiled, but I didn’t have time to because Ethan fell to the floor.

“Ethan!” I rushed to him, knowing the spell was complete. Mirabella had his magic. The only question was, had taking it killed Ethan? I cradled his head in my lap. “Dylan, help me.”

“No, Dylan. Stay where you are.” Mirabella waved her hand, creating an invisible barrier between Dylan and us. Shannon rushed toward Mirabella, but Mirabella cast another spell that froze her in place. With them taken care of for now, she smiled down at me. “You suspected me from the start, didn’t you?”

“Is Ethan still alive?” I couldn’t find a pulse on him.

“I asked you a question, Samantha. I expect an answer.”

I sent a wave of magic to Ethan, telling it to cure whatever was harming him. It was all I could do for him, my best shot at saving his life. But if I didn’t get rid of Mirabella, we’d all be dead. I stood up, gently placing Ethan’s head on a couch cushion. “Listen, you psychotic bitch.”

She laughed. “I think you mean
witch
, dear.”

“No, I mean bitch. I
did
suspect you from the start. I saw right through your act. You think you’re so great at fooling people, but you never fooled me. I didn’t drink your tea.”

“You should have. I laced it with dark magic to help you see things my way.”

So it
had
been her. “I sort of thought you might be the one behind the dark magic in the tea, but why were you drinking it, too?”

“No harm in drinking the dark magic that had come from me. For all of you, on the other hand…”

Yeah,
bitch
had definitely been the right word. “So, now what? You kill us all? Because in case you haven’t noticed…” I paused and closed my eyes. I had no clue if I was making things worse or giving us the only chance to get out of here alive, but I focused my magic on tearing down the barrier around the house. Everything got so
quiet, we could actually hear the
click
of the lock on the sliding-glass door. I opened my eyes again. “We have company.”

Mr. Ryan burst into the basement with the rest of his coven following behind him. I almost expected him to come straight at me and kill me on the spot. But instead, he glanced in my direction before blasting Mirabella with magic. She flew into the fountain, and the water gushed out of the fountain and swirled around her in a wet prison. “That won’t hold her for long, and she has too much dark magic for us to defeat her on our own.” It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me.

“What?” I said.

“Sam, we need you and your coven to join with us. Just temporarily, nothing permanent. Together, we can get rid of Mirabella for good.” He was Mr. Ryan again. The same guy who’d stopped Shannon from ripping my hair out in the stairwell a few months ago.

“Is this a trick?” How could I trust him after everything? After he’d fooled me into believing he was only human? After he’d tracked me down?

“I know we’re asking a lot of you, but we need you to trust us.” He stepped closer and looked me in the eyes. “You know me, Sam. I may not have told you I’m a witch, but I’m asking you to see how alike we really are. I’m here to help you. We all are. We’ve been trying to do that from the start. You don’t know what we’ve gone through to get past Mirabella’s spells to get here. All that dark magic she used…”

Dylan and Shannon were free from the spells Mirabella had cast on them. That could’ve been part of the trick, too, but something inside me said it wasn’t. Something in my gut said that Mr. Ryan’s coven hadn’t used any dark magic on us. Mirabella sensed we didn’t trust them and she used that against us, lying and making them out to be the bad guys. I nodded at Mr. Ryan. “Let’s do it.”

We all formed a circle. Shannon, Dylan, and I mingled with the other coven, like we were part of them, which we soon would be if we succeeded before Mirabella broke free. Mr. Ryan led the spell to bind our powers. It was different than the one Dylan had used, and I realized this binding was more of a temporary partnership or joining of forces in a common goal. And that goal was to kill Mirabella.

We had just finished when we were all thrown into the wall. Mirabella was free.

37

I
STUMBLED
to my feet, but my body felt like it had been shattered. Mirabella was ridiculously strong. I had the power of two witches inside me, but she had more than that. Ethan had been at least the second witch whose magic she’d stolen, and I didn’t doubt there had been more I didn’t know about.

“Grab my hand,” Mr. Ryan said. I took it without question. We all joined hands, which made Mirabella laugh.

“Touching,” she said. “But even together, you are no match for my dark magic. You weaklings never understood that white magic isn’t anywhere near as powerful.”

I looked at Ethan lying motionless on the floor. “My magic isn’t all white,” I lied. “You thought Ethan was the powerful one, but you were wrong. I’m the one you should’ve targeted. I think maybe deep down you knew that. That’s why you feared me and how suspicious I was of you. Isn’t that right, Mirabella?” I squeezed Mr. Ryan’s hand, and surprisingly I heard his voice in my head.
You lead. We’ll follow
. We were all connected. One power. One witch killer. I’d never wanted to do this again, but I still knew how. One more for the money—or whatever that old expression was.

I stepped toward Mirabella, and instead of fighting, she stepped back. I’d stunned her with my lack of fear. “Do you want to know how I killed all those witches?” As I got closer, I noticed Ethan’s hand twitch. He was alive. I could bring him in on this, let him take Mirabella’s
power and be a witch again, but then he’d be the one filled with dark magic. I couldn’t let him go through that. I’d rather he not have any power at all.

“You think I’m just going to let you kill me?” Mirabella laughed, but her voice shook.

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

She lashed out, hitting us with a blast of magic. We stumbled but stayed on our feet. She tried again, but I raised my hand to block her spell. The rest of the group covered me as I got closer. I had her within reach when little green spots formed in the air around her. The dark magic Dylan had made disappear was back. He hadn’t gotten rid of it, and now it was settling back into Mirabella, making her stronger. I grabbed her neck and pushed my palm to her chest. She fought me, but I pulled at her magic. It burned as I pulled it out of her.