The Source (Witching Savannah, Book 2) (23 page)

“Isn’t it too late?” she asked, her question addressed to me rather than Iris. “I’ve allied myself with the
rebel
families. I have sworn to help them destroy your precious line.” She nodded in the middle sister’s direction. “I’ve tortured your dear Ellen, and I enjoyed every second of it, I might add. Did I mention that Josef and I were the ones who killed her worthless Tucker?”

“You said he was helping you.” Ellen looked up at me as if my words would be the straw that broke her.

Emily laughed. “Oh my dear, I lied. I have some of the most powerful witches in the world supporting me. Why on earth would I need anything from Tucker Perry?” Her eyes narrowed, hardened. “I’m not a desperate lush.” She tossed a glance in Ellen’s direction, and I knew she was looking to see if her barb had hit home. She smiled, satisfied when Ellen winced. She turned back to me. “He was a pawn. I burned his heart out just to keep you off balance.”

“And to take him away from me,” Ellen said from the floor at Peter’s side. Her physical energy had been exhausted. She pressed against the floor with both hands, barely strong enough to keep her upper body from collapsing to the parquet.

“Oh, yes,” Emily said, nodding as she looked down at Ellen, “there was that too.” She paused. “What about what I’ve done to you, Mercy? I’ve toyed with your delicate feelings. I stabbed your fiancé, oh, and speaking of your fiancé, I got you to cheat on him.” She raised her chin, looking down the bridge of her nose at Peter. “Do you hear that, Peter? It’s true. She surrendered herself to that creature. Maybe not physically, but he inserted himself inside her all the same. My whore of a daughter loved it.”

“Shut up,” Peter said, trying to sit up, but still too weak.

“That’s no way to talk to your future mother-in-law,” she said, and then again addressed me. “Tell me,
darling
, is it too late?”

I looked up at her and felt the power of her toxicity. So much anger, revulsion, and hate filled me, but then I stopped and dug deep into myself. In spite of everything, I wanted to find a way to end this. To reach out and rescue her from the darkness. “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Let us help you.”

She snorted. “Living up to the charming name that Ellen hung on you, huh?” Her eyes flashed wide, and her mouth pulled up at one corner into a sneer of disgust. “If I could have named you, it would have been different. I would have called you ‘Abomination,’ for that is what you truly are.” She looked away from me and back to Iris. “I don’t need help. I need you to get out of the way. It’s time for the line to fall. Our old friends have waited long enough,” she said, and then added in a plaintive voice, “and they are so, so hungry.”

“Then I’m sorry, dear one,” Iris said, her voice breaking. “You can no longer hold the power in your possession.” She paused and lifted her head high. “Emily Rose Taylor, I bind you. May the power reject you. May it not claim you as its own.”

“Emily Rose Taylor, I bind you,” Uncle Oliver joined in as Iris repeated the words.

“May the power reject you.” Ellen added her weary voice to the chorus. “May it not claim you as its own.”

“Emily Rose Taylor, Mama,” I said, the word ripping the outer layer from my heart. “I bind you. May the power reject you. May it not claim you as its own.”

“You little bitch,” she said, looking at me through narrowed, venomous eyes, her head held back as if she were regarding something distasteful. “Do you really think you can control me? That any of you can control me? I do not depend on your line for my power. It comes from an altogether different source. One that you fools, you worthless ants can’t even begin to comprehend.”

“You wrong again,” Jilo said, banging her cane. “Jilo can comprehend your dirty magic. She smell it on you. The death. The horror. The desecration you have fused with yo’ soul.”

“ 
‘Desecration’? That’s a mighty big word for you, Jilo. Don’t strain yourself.”

“Oh that right. You all high and mighty and just pissing magic, but they also one other thing you is . . .”

“All right, you old hag, I’ll bite. What’s that?”

“Outnumbered,” Jilo said and raised her cane. An arc of electricity shot out of it, bowing out over Joe and Emily’s heads. Iris took the hint and raised her hand, shooting another bolt of energy. Emmet joined in too, adding another arc, the powers joining together to form a nearly completed cage.

“Last chance, Oli,” Emily said. “You know I was always so fond of you. Come away. Join us. We won’t keep each other ignorant of the greater truths. We won’t place the real power in the hands of the few. With them you are an underling. With us, you will nearly be a god in your own right.”

“Thanks for the offer, sis, but being ‘nearly’ a god sounds like way too much of a time commitment.” He raised his hand to add his energy and complete the cage that the others had formed around Emily, but before he could complete the act, the vile woman descended through the floor and vanished, taking Joe with her.

“Well, I reckon I’ve lost my spot as the black sheep of the family,” Oliver said into our stunned silence.

“Yes,” Iris agreed. “It looks like you have.”

THIRTY-TWO

“Get me away from here,” Ellen said, crossing her bloodied arms across her chest. “I want to go home and shower.”

“Of course,” Iris said. “We’ll get you home right now.” Oliver wrapped Ellen in his jacket, and Iris put her arms around her sister’s shoulders, leading her toward the gaping hole where the black-and-red door had stood.

“I will alert the families to Emily’s return,” Emmet said, “and see to it that she is found and taken someplace where the dark magic she has contracted can be controlled.” Strange, Emmet made it sound like Emily had a disease. Maybe that’s what this type of magic was—a malignancy that ate away at any decency.

“She tricked me into coming here tonight,” Ellen said. “She made me believe that Tucker was still alive. She made a copy of him.” Ellen stopped and looked at the door that was now laid on the floor. “Burn that damned thing.” She looked over at me, her lips twitching.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you. That they did this to you,” I said.

Ellen said nothing. She nodded her head and turned away, letting Iris lead her. Peter tried to stand but couldn’t make it up under his own steam. When I reached out, he wouldn’t take my hand. He wouldn’t meet my eyes either. Oliver came and helped him up. “Let’s get you to your parents’ place,” he said.

“No. No. Take me home to my house,” Peter said. I reached out again to take his hand, and he pulled it away. “Not now, Mercy. Leave me alone for now.”

“He’ll be okay,” Oliver said to me. “I’ll keep an eye on him.” Peter allowed himself to lean on my uncle’s arm. His eyes—emotionally bruised, hurting—grazed mine and then looked away. He hobbled out the doorway, relying on Oliver’s strength far more than I would have liked. He was still in pretty bad shape physically from the injury my mother had inflicted. I couldn’t even allow myself to consider the emotional damage I’d caused him. I knew there was only one way to truly set things right.

“Emmet, I want to thank you. I appreciate all you have done or at least tried to do for me. The ways you’ve tried to protect me and teach me how to use my magic . . .”

“Of course—”

“Wait, Emmet. I need you to hear me.” He fell instantly silent, hanging on my every word, ready for anything I might ask of him. Well, almost anything. “I need you to leave Savannah. I can’t have you near me any longer. You understand?”

“Perhaps better than you do yourself,” he said. His expression was more than stoic—it was emotionless, as if he could shut his feelings down as easily as a normal man takes a breath. He could burn with such passion that I had braced myself for anger, hurt, maybe even hate. I felt shaken by the utter indifference I registered there. He didn’t speak another word. The air just shimmered around him, and then he was gone.

“Look like it jus’ the two of us, then,” Jilo said, her cane thumping with each step she took toward me.

I broke. My legs buckled under me, and I fell to my hands and knees. My hair tumbled down around my face, hiding everything from my sight except the hot tears that dropped from my eyes onto the floor. In one night, I’d undone a lifetime’s worth of love. Even if Peter could forgive me, he would never forget the sight of Emmet and me together. I wasn’t sure Ellen would ever recover from this second horrible loss, and I feared that in her eyes, I would always be a reflection of my mother. No. That monster wasn’t my mother, even if she had given birth to me. “I’ve messed everything up.”

“You can’t take all the credit fo’ that. You had plenty of help. Here now. You come to Jilo.” The old woman of the crossroads used her stick to lower herself to my side, then drew me into her arms. “You go ahead. You cry it out now.” I held her tightly and buried my head in her shoulder. “Get it out, girl. You gonna need to pull it together right quick,” she said, “’cause something tell Jilo that bitch ain’t nowhere near done.”

THIRTY-THREE

Dawn broke over Savannah, scraping the night sky bloody before letting the sun rise over the horizon. I hadn’t slept at all; each time I tried to close my eyes, another horror was projected on my inner lids. I’d spent most of the night on the side porch, staring east and hoping that by the time morning arrived, I would know how to fix things. Daylight had come, but I had grown no wiser.

“Stand a little company?” Ellen’s voice reached out to me. I nodded, grateful to see her up, grateful that she still wanted to speak with me. She came out and joined me on the porch swing. Her face had been scrubbed clean of makeup, and her hair hung damp and unstyled. She wore one of Oliver’s terrycloth robes rather than one of her own silk wraps. We sat there for a few moments, the only sound that of the glider rocking easily beneath us. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Me too.” She raised her face to meet the coming light, to drink it in. “Right here, right now, sitting here with you, I keep thinking it must have been a nightmare. It wasn’t though, was it?”

“No. It happened.” I leaned into her, and she placed her head on my shoulder.

“Was that really her? Was that really my mother?” I felt a sudden burst of hope that this Emily was only an imposter. My childhood dream turned on its head, and I found myself hoping, praying that my true mother had died at my birth. That she had been resting peacefully in Bonaventure for the last two decades.

“I’m afraid so,” Ellen said, and then examined her arms in the morning light. The needle tracks had disappeared, and the bruises had already begun to fade.

“I hate her,” I said.

“To tell you the truth, I really hate the bitch too. Sisters, huh?”

“Yeah, sisters.” I wrapped my arm around hers, careful not to aggravate the bruised tissue. We clasped hands.

“Iris and Oliver are inside. We need to talk before the families start their inquiry.”

“What? Get our stories straight before the long arm of the magical law gets to us?”

“Yes. Precisely that. They can bind us, you know. Iris, Oliver, and me, if they think we have done anything to put the line at risk. They can take away our magic.”

“And what about me? If anyone did anything to hurt the line, it was me.”

Ellen stood and took the quilt from me. She started to fold it. “You are an anchor. They can’t remove you from the line without the risk of bringing the line down, but they could erase your mind. Wipe you clean. Leave your body in place until you expire and the line chooses a new anchor.”

“They could try,” Iris’s voice answered, a cold determination behind her words, “but I will see every last one of them dead and burning in hell first.”

“I second that notion,” Oliver said. “Come on in. I’ve made coffee.”

We followed him into the kitchen. The largest of Ellen’s rose quartz crystals glowed at the center of the table. Next to it sat an old scrapbook or photo album. I suspected that Emily’s return had prompted a search through the old photos. Had Iris spent the night going through them, looking at the old snapshots trying to see if there was something about Emily they had missed? Or had Oliver been trying to figure out whether a different action on his part might have saved his big sister?

Any perceived mistakes of the distant past seemed much less important to me than the ones I’d made myself last night. “How is Peter?” I asked.

“Smarting. That’s how he is,” Oliver said, pouring three mugs of coffee and reaching for an herbal tea bag for me. “I stayed with him until he passed out. He’s probably gonna wake up with a hangover from too much whiskey and skinned knuckles from punching the wall, but he’ll be okay. You two will recover from this. You have a whole lot more working for you than against you.” I wished I could believe that was true. “For now, we need to focus on the matter at hand. There is no doubt that the other anchors felt Emily’s efforts to skirt the line with her Babel spell.”

“How did she do it? How did she catch me up in her spell? I’m an anchor now. I thought witches couldn’t charm me.”

“Witches can’t charm you with the power of the line,” Iris said as she took the seat on my right. “But the magic Emily is channeling comes from a place of pure evil.” I thought of the locket she had placed around my neck. How it had clouded my mind, perverted my judgment. Made me more willing to believe the worst about those who truly loved me.

Oliver gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “The families will be sending representatives to look into what happened here last night. Maybe you could ask the Sandman if he can pick up any rumblings as to whom they are sending and when.”

“He’s gone. Emmet’s gone,” I said. “I sent him away last night.”

“Well, Gingersnap, you did the right thing, but you picked the wrong time to do it.”

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

“We all are,” Ellen said and sighed. “I’ve got to tell you though. If the worst we had to face was losing our powers, I think I could accept that.”

“Yeah, well, speak for yourself, sis. Besides, if the families judge against us, they won’t satisfy themselves with stripping the three of us of our powers. They’ll want to make an example of Mercy.”

“Maybe I deserve to be made an example of.”

“Bullshit.” I had never in my entire life heard a word of profanity come out of Iris. It had the effect of a lightning bolt shooting through the room. Even Oliver kept his trap shut. “Bullshit,” she said again, this time with less vehemence, but still with all the fire. “The families can send whomever they want. Ask any questions they want. We have done nothing wrong.”

“We have disobeyed . . .” Ellen began.

“Whom exactly? Not the line. I feel it.” Her right hand pounded on her chest. “I feel it in here. The line is on our side. It will protect us.”

“I wish I could be as sure as you are,” Oliver said. “They have been looking for an excuse to bring us down ever since the line chose the first Taylor as an anchor. The Taylors take too many liberties. The Taylors push their own agendas. The Taylors aren’t humble enough.”

“Well, that last bit is probably true,” I said.

“And so what if it is? We let our hearts rule our heads. We like to do things big. We are Celts for goodness sake.”

“I agree with Iris.” Ellen took a sip of her coffee. “The line chose Mercy. It cut through Ginny’s deception. We tried to invest its power in Maisie, and it stood up to us. It wanted Mercy, and I have to believe it wanted you for a reason. I say we call their bluff. Tell them exactly what has been going on and let the chips fall where they may.”

“That sounds great in theory, but Mercy has a lot more to lose than any of us, right, Gingersnap?”

Iris nodded in agreement. “Yes, she does,” she answered for me. “That’s why it’s time for us to come clean with her”—she looked at me—“with you. It’s time for us to share everything we know, and even make a few conjectures, because we don’t know everything. I do believe the line chose you for a reason, so it’s time for you to learn exactly who you are.”

She reached out for the album, but Ellen stayed her hand. “I should do this. He was my husband. I’m responsible for bringing him into the family.” Iris squeezed her sister’s hand and let Ellen take control of the book. Ellen slid it over to me, but didn’t take her hand off it. “This belonged to Erik. To your father,” she said. “He always told me that he kept it as a reminder of the evil he’d managed to escape. He led me to believe that it served as a moral touchstone, something to keep him on the right side of humanity. I now believe he thought of it as more of a brag book. A place he could turn when he needed strength to carry out the mission he’d come to complete.”

“Mission?” I asked. It sounded like such a tactical term. Military.

“He had come to fulfill the prophecy that said a child born to a union of our bloodlines would reunite the thirteen families and bring down the line. Honestly, I had never heard of the prediction before we married.”

“I had,” Iris said, “but I thought the story was one of the many fantasies we witches have developed around the line. I said nothing to Ellen. I didn’t want to ruin her happiness. I regret that now. She should have gone into her marriage with her eyes wide open.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it. Knowing wouldn’t have changed a single thing. I believed in Erik. I loved him, even after I found these clippings.” She took her hand off the scrapbook. “Go ahead.”

A shiver of magical energy flooded my fingers as they touched the cover. I could tell that at one time this book had been enchanted to hide what was within it. The magic had long since faded to a mere spark, but I sensed that the spark had belonged to my father. I wanted to stop for a moment. To let myself experience his magic, remembering him the way I did before I opened the cover and had all my remaining illusions shattered. I closed my eyes and felt him, his pride and sense of purpose, and then I opened my eyes and turned the cover.

A photo had been removed from the first page. “That was the picture of your great-grandmother I gave you,” Ellen said. “I don’t know what possessed me to do that. I guess I did it out of relief that I no longer had to hide that Erik was your father. I wanted us to be relieved from all our secrets.”

She was getting her wish today. Below the place where the rectangular photo had been, my father had written my great-grandmother’s name: Maria Orsic. “Who was she?”

“She was not a witch, but she was known as a psychic medium. There are a lot of non-witches who have the sight.”

“Like Claire,” I said, without meaning to say it aloud.

“Yes. I’ve sensed that about her. Maria was different from most psychics though, in that her psyche had somehow developed the capability to travel outside the line’s protection. Out there, where the demons still wait. They began to court her, for lack of a better term. They gave her insights, glimpses of history—hell, they even gave her diagrams for a flying saucer. They convinced her that they were our loving brothers. Aliens from Aldebaran. She, in return, became their evangelist.”

“They deceived her?”

“They played into her need to feel special and superior. It’s one of mankind’s greatest weaknesses—the need to feel superior to others.”

“But witches kind of feel that way, don’t we?”

“Not the witches in
this
family,” Oliver said. “And yes, by that, I mean the four of us sitting here. We may be proud of who we are, proud of our skill with magic, proud of our heritage, but we really don’t think that we are somehow innately superior.”

“And that is coming from our selfish peacock of a bastard brother,” Iris said, a smirk on her lips, but pride showing in her eyes.

“Turn the page,” Ellen said and nodded at the book. I found another photo of Maria, this time sitting in a group of women. Beneath the photo my father’s script recorded their names: Maria, Traute, Sigrun. I gasped as my eyes shot back up to the picture. One of the faces had been burned into my mind long ago . . . I knew her without needing to read her name: Gudrun. Erik had added “
die Vril-Gesellschaft
” beneath the women’s names. I looked up at Ellen, and her expression of sympathy answered my unspoken question. I knew then that Maria had been the leader in an attempt to bring down the line.

I turned back to the album and flipped the page. The next one held two photos of the man I had come to think of as Careu. In the first, he stood next to an old prop-style plane. I felt my pulse thundering in my neck as the face I recognized fell into its familiar context. The next photo showed him, this great American hero, standing flanked on one side by two admiring women, while a man with adoring eyes looked on from the background. Standing before Careu, on the photograph’s right side, stood a man in the process of handing over a sword. He wore a lighter suit with a white kerchief in his pocket. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He had a double chin and wore his hair slicked back. I knew this man. I recognized him from history books. “That’s Hermann Goering,” I said, poking angrily at his face. “He was one of the Nazi leaders.” I felt ill.

Oliver came and squatted down next to me. “Yeah, Gingersnap, I’m afraid it is.” He put his arm around my shoulder, and pulled me in for a kiss on the temple. “Do you need a little break?”

“No. I’ve got to know. How did my great-grandparents meet?”

“They never did,” Ellen said. I looked at her, confused. “Your paternal great-grandparents were both great supporters of eugenics and the goal of building, or as they would have it, rebuilding the master race. Goering and his friends created a special project with this aim. They called it
Lebensborn
, the ‘source of life.’ ” My mind flashed back to the file I’d seen among my Grandfather Taylor’s papers. I realized his interest in the
Lebensborn
program wasn’t a study in historical curiosities, like Iris had told me. The file contained research on his son-in-law, my father.

“Your great-grandparents,” Ellen continued, “each of them donated their genetic materials to the cause for study and duplication. Technological schematics provided by the Aldebaran brothers provided the know-how for your great-grandfather to engineer a process similar to what we now know as in vitro fertilization. The Nazis sought to create a master race, but the Aldebarans wanted to create a thousand Marias. The doctors in the project planted Maria’s fertilized eggs in the wombs of several of the
Lebensborn
mothers. Erik’s father, your grandfather, was one of the children born from this process.”