"I killed you once my love, don't make me do it again."
Lila smiled at the man in front of her, a devious smirk plastered upon his lips, a hint of deception lingering in his eyes. She'd always loved that look.
"I don't believe you."
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The Pennsylvania backroads had never felt quite so cruel to Lila James. It was, at one point in time, a very long time ago, her home. The only home that she had ever and would ever, truly have. She'd managed to stay away for upwards of two long and gruesome centuries, but something was drawing her back. She'd made a promise to some very important people that she would never return unless invited— and she had a feeling that her dreams were an invitation from a powerful source of magic. She had plenty of enemies all around the globe who would happily stop at nothing until she met her ultimate demise, but Lila had never been afraid of death before. Before now.
As she pulled her car down the familiar gravel road, she began to pass the decrepit buildings she knew so long ago. Most of them were the same, run by the families who lived here, and died here, and couldn't find it in themselves to leave. They passed their burdens onto their family that lived after them, a fate Lila wouldn't wish on anyone. Despite the town's dreariness and decay, Lila couldn't find it in herself to hate it. She couldn't even find it in herself to hate the people who pushed her away.
The red house was home.
Everything about it was the same, except for the little white fence that was hardly white still. Years of harsh winters and grossly hot summers had done the job of making it look only partially completed. Lila remembered building the house, or more so compelling others to do it for her. Everything had been exactly how she'd wanted it to be. Three bedrooms, for herself and the children she so desperately wished to have, regrettably so because they would grow old and die, and she would not. The house was beautiful. It hurt her to see it so... ruined.
"Home sweet home," Lila muttered to herself as she stepped out of her car. It was an old car that she had stolen from a friend fifty years before, although she couldn't consider them friends any longer. That bridge had been burnt.
Before Lila could reach the door, it swung open. Lila felt a brush of cold air swirl around her and she sighed, it was not a good sign. As she tried to step into her home she felt the magic push her back, refusing her entry. She squinted her eyes and tried to push her way through again, to no avail.
"You've got to be kidding me," she said.
The sound of laughter struck her from behind, "I'm afraid I haven't been much for joking in quite some time." Lila turned quickly at the unfamiliar voice. Behind her stood a woman, perhaps nearing thirty, with golden hair that lay in waves down her back. She had a familiarity to her that Lila could not place. "Wondering why you can't get in to your own home?"
"I am a little curious, yes."
The woman laughed again, which only sent Lila into a fit of rage that she tried hard to conceal. Either the woman had no idea who she was speaking to, or she thought she was powerful enough that she didn't need to be afraid. In all the years Lila spent jumping from body to body, unable to kill her soul, she had never once met her match. She doubted this woman standing before her would be the one able to beat her, but she'd be careful not to take her chances considering the past month she'd had.
"Well," the woman began, a devious smile planted upon her lips, "it's been a few hundred years since you'd returned, and considering all of your grandchildren have died... we thought it was about time somebody deserving got the title to your house. You couldn't possibly believe the trouble we went to to prove you were dead so we could claim the house as our own."
Lila stumbled back a few feet, she had heard only one thing— her grandchildren, dead. It was impossible, her youngest grandchild of great distance, had just had a daughter, if they were all dead it would mean one thing. They were murdered.
The woman stepped towards Lila slowly, "I know you must be taken by the news. You see, we needed a reason to get you here but we also needed a reason to get you to stay. Killing a child was a bit beneath us... but we needed to get our point across."
"You killed my family line to prove a point?" Lila forced out. Her hands were clenched so tightly that she drew blood to the surface of her palms. The pain was the only thing keeping her from ripping the woman's head off from her fragile little body.
"It's hard, wouldn't you say? Hard to find the one thing a creature with no remorse and unstoppable power, would be weakened by? And then it hit me, just like that. The only thing you have ever loved was your daughter, and when she died you could not help but love her children, and her children's children, and so on. So we decided to kill them all. Leave you with nothing to keep you motivated to live."
"Why?"
The woman pulled out a white oak stake from the inside of her leather jacket, juggling it between one hand and the other.
It was Lila's turn to laugh, "That won't kill me you dumb bitch. That will only kill an Original, and I am far more powerful than all of them combined. Is that why you really brought me here, to try and kill me?"
mille soles virtute the words rang out through Lila's mind. She looked at the woman before her, whose mouth stayed shut, a smile still lingering on her lips. Adiuro te dolore et cruciatu as the words continued, Lila felt an unbearable pain consume her entire body, as if her insides were quite literally being torn apart. Omni vita occidisti
"No," Lila gasped out as she tumbled over. Her red hair spread across the ground as she hit it with a bone breaking force. Lila closed her eyes and focused on the woman standing in front of her. Take the oak, and shove it through your heart— she sent the thought to the woman, who refused to move.
"Trying to get into my head, are you?" The woman laughed. "My family has spent generation after generation, looking for a way to end you."
The pain inside of Lila's body continued unrelentingly, growing worse by the second. Et hodie quoque annuncians, sempiternum erit vobis condemnabitur. Lila suddenly recognized the chant, the chant that a line of Bennett witches had created a thousand years ago, but the woman— the witch before her, was no Bennett.
The woman walked towards Lila's writhing body and knelt down before her, a gentle hand swiping across her face as blood poured out of her eyes.
Through the pain Lila tried to speak, "You can't kill me. I will come back and destroy you and every family of yours to ever be born, anywhere, even in another thousand years they will continue to die."
"Aren't you curious as to why you have been hunted and killed so many times this month?" the woman asked. It was almost as if Lila forgot about the seething pain that condemned her, and suddenly the woman had her full attention. "You've died a hundred times, waking up in an innocent person's body each time, stealing people's souls and energies just to stay alive... and while your counterparts have had to stay hidden in the shadows, fearful of hunters, you have got to live and take whatever you pleased. I think that is hardly fair. So we created a hunter that would find you and kill you again, and again, until eventually you came back here, right where we needed you."
It was true, Lila had been tortured and killed six times— waking up in a new body, in a new life, each time. It was more bodies than she had occupied in one hundred years. She had known somebody was out to get her, to end her, but she had never thought they would lure her back here, to her home.
"You—"
"What?" the woman laughed. "I'm not going to kill you today. I just wanted to give you a warning, that we have created a being so powerful, it will end you. And no matter how many times you die, it will find you, and when we find a way to end you for good— which we will, you will feel the death of the thousands of people you have killed as we stick a blade through your cold, dead, heart."
In an unnoticeable instant, the pain stopped, and Lila woke in a dark and cold place, wet seeping through the ground and on to her clothes. She didn't know she had gotten there, or where the woman outside of her home had gone, all she knew was that something felt different, and there was only one person who could help her.
