Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Forty-Three: Vision Made Manifest

Abraham waterwalked us to the pond, but he did not surface himself. I was fighting the disorientation and the urge to vomit the millisecond I was conscious of the shift in place, but he embraced me beneath the murky water and then gave me a huge vampirical shove toward the surface. I swam to shore and lay still in the mud for a long moment, recovering for what I must do next.

The problem was, I didn't know exactly how I was going to get it done, and that was terrifying.

I was terrified  I would fail. I was terrified I would cost all the vampires their lives. I knew Abraham and Maeve would be watching and waiting, but I wasn't sure either could mop up alone if I made a mess of it. I was equally unsure, if something happened to me, that they could fightthe others together. 

Maeve might cut her losses and fold back into the Coven. And Abraham? I knew there was a beef between Evander and Abraham, and now I knew partly what the problem was. It was Abraham's unique nature that Evander mistrusted, and Abraham knew it. Abraham might simply swim away back to the life he preferred in France, with the mysterious witch Angelique.

But terror wears itself out in the brave, and I told myself I was that. As I lay on the shore steeling myself, as the pounding in my ears abated, I could hear the violent sounds of cracking, thundering, and splintering nearby. As if a summer storm whirled inside the forest, inside the trees themselves. Though the sound was strange, I could picture the cause.

Werewolves tearing up trees and splintering them for kindling.

I didn't have any time to lose. I sat up and spared a dollop of energy for a drying spell. Just in case Ciara knew that Abraham could waterwalk. I didn't want to alert anyone to his presence, because it seemed that Abraham was at his best when he could make a dramatic entrance.

I walked quite calmly into the woods, to the site of sacrifice.

The wolves and the witches were so busy setting their ritual that I was able to get quite close to them without notice. I skirted their site and found myself behind two old-timey trucks whose headlights shone into the woods, where witches walked widdershins and wolves stacked the timbers of destruction.

Without searching, I knew exactly where Evander's staked corpse was. His absence of magic created a yearning in me that drew me as if his lifeless form were a black hole and I was a celestial body caught in his gravity.

I stood behind the back of one of the trucks and became possessed by a sudden and genuine urge to rip the lid off one particular coffin and wake my vampire. I vaulted myself into the truck bed, but the lid of Evander's coffin was nailed shut. It was only as I worked a small amount of magic to remove the nails that the witches sensed me. I managed to get the coffin lid off and my hands around the shorn stake just as two wolves grabbed me.

I had magic—plenty of it, now. Maeve was right—Abraham was possessed of some truly unholy potential—like a magical superconductor—and he had charged me up. I probably could have zapped both wolves across the clearing, but I had no attention for them.

All of my focus was upon Evander's bloody but beautiful remains. My hands on that stake in his heart. All of my magic condensed into a one-word spell.

Beat. 

Beat. Beat. Beat.

The wolves were trying to tear me from him, force me out of the truck bed, but the stake had become like the vampire. And I had become like the stake.

Me, my vampire, and the weapon between—we were one eternal, immovable work of art.

I commanded all my magic into the stake. It became the conduit of my soul, and it caused a miracle to happen. A thing that simply shouldn't. A thing that went against all the lore, all the reports, all the teachings, all the experience.