Intertwined

Chapter Twenty-Four

"Give them to me," Mattias hissed.

His instruction had me standing up, looking over the fire to see what he was up to. Part of me was happy to ignore the incoming death, all the while, the instinct to prepare for attack strengthened.

Both Bryson and Randy placed two thin cylinders with corks plunging the top in Mattias's glowing green hand. The bottles should have been clear, but red danced around inside them, staining the glass with a translucent shade of pink. My stomach flexed as if I had been punched there. Acid rose in my throat. The liquid sloshed around thickly.

Mattias sighed before popping the cork of the first one off. He covered the hole with his finger, turned it over, and then used that finger that was drenched in blood to mark a line vertically, from his hairline to the ridge of his eyebrow. He did the same with the other vile, but this time, tunning the line vertically, temple to temple. It was clear from the staining of the red, that it was blood. Most definitely the blood from the murders.

I should have seen the paper sooner, but I only saw it when he did. Mattias looked down at a torn out page. It was folded and refolded several times, creases marked it in ever direction. He folded it again and shoved it into his back pocket. He goes back for the viles, reopening them and putting them to his lips. My body cringed away, backing into the invisible wall. He swallowed one vile, and then the next. Using both his hands, he snapped one of the empty viles in half. The tiny clink of the glass snapping left a long and sharp serrated edge. Before I could assume that he was going to use the makeshift knife to slit my throat, he plunged it deep into the index finger of his left hand. The way the skin gave didn't look natural, almost like his skin was thicker and more force was needed to break the skin.

Moving fast, he drew a circle of his blood around the meeting point between the two bloodied lines. His eyes went dark and I couldn't tell if it was from excitement, or fear. Mattias took a deep breath, effectively calming himself.

"I am at your alter, Covenhead," he sighed.

The fire between us raised and danced. Almost like his words were a command to the world, to the Earth.

I couldn't hear what he was saying, only watching as his lips oved, while Marleene was letting out cries and pleads for Mattias to stop. The sound was ripping up from her throat, and chills ran up and down my spine. I could feel the reverbaration her vocal cords made, and I was a good two yards away from her.

Marleene took in a breath and I could hear Mattias spouting off that same language that I'd heard several time before. He was chanting. The page in his hand made sense. Not for a second did I dismiss that I was in the middle of a blood ritual, but it didn't click until I heard thew words.

I started to shake, waiting in total fear for the feeling of death to color me. Waiting immanently for the ending. For the first time ever, the first time in my life, everything was clear. I could feel see and hear everything with crisp understanding.

I had no idea what it was like to die. I'd only known that over the last few months, I'd waited on it. I knew that Marie was going to die before she did. I didn;t need that supernatural sense to tell, I could see it on her face. But it was the day before when I though that I could have been wrong the entire time. I remembered the day after she'd gone.

"Why?" I questioned, tears starting brimming over. I'd been alone in the hospital for hours, Rosie hadn't made it into town yet. "She was perfect yesterday. She was sitting up and telling me she felt fine. She spoke normally and there wasn't—why? She was getting better."

The doctor held me at a distance, looking into my eyes and frowning. He looked almost like he was going to cry himself. "What she experienced is a phenomenon we call terminal lucidity. It's a phenomenon that can happen before someone passes. They have this last surge of energy before they pass. It's very common, and I'm sorry you had to experience that."

Terminal lucidity.

That was what was happening to me right now. I could feel the wind as it passed sharply over my skin, I could see deep into the fire, and I could hear Mattias's words as if I was standing right next to him, because my body was giving its last hurrah before my demise.

My intent on what Mattias was chanting was the reason I looked back to him. The words cut off with a choking sound. He fell back, twitching and gasping on the floor. Instead of whines of pain, he laughed, hard and throaty. I watched as bones broke through his skin and his body started to distort puffing and deflating. He was becoming a wolf, or worse.

Bryson and Randy fell and started the same, but less gruesome.

Mattias went quite and only the sound of bones breaking was evident.

James was at my side at once. His face red and blotchy, his eyes glossy, he kicked one of the bones far out into the forest. He was breathless. My body automatically relaxed.

"Run! Go! Now!" James cried.

I started off, but instead of lunging deep into the forest, I ran to Marleene. I figeted with the ties, trying my hardest to unknot them.

"You fucking idiot. Did you not hear him? Get the fuck out of here!" Marleene hissed.

"Remember what happened the first time you told me to run?" I said, geting one sting lose, allowing for the entirety of the thread to fall to the ground.

Marleene shoved me into the forest, "Go. Run to Lyall's or something. Get to the pack, they can protect you. I need to get that vessel."

"But you said—"

"Go!" both Marleene and James shouted.

I forced my legs to move. I forced myself to listen. I wasn't three lunges into the forest when pain, assaulting pain rummaged in my head. It was like nails scraping through my skull, ripping at the soft tissue of my brain. It was pressure that broke through into real pain. I could never understand why people said 'its just pressure, not pain' because this was pressure and it was pain. I fell to my knees, clutching my head at the temples.

Not so fast, my banshee. A voice said. It scratch and echoed so loud.

"Em!" Marleene called, but I could only barley hear her through the pain and the loud laughing of the voice.

Mattias gave over his body, and so my magic can connect with my soul. Just give me a few moments and then you'll be without a body, and I will have my own once again. The sound didn't come from outside, it was a screaming torment inside my head.

"Do... You... Not... Hear... Him!?" I cried to no one in particular.

"Who?" Marleene gasped, I could feel her presence around me, but nothing more than that.

Go ahead, Emerson, Tell them who I am.

"The Covenhead," I hissed.