Page 67 of Blood Sacrifice

“I told you we would meet again.” I stopped when a woman stepped into the hallway.

“Cybele?” I asked in disbelief. We had been friends when I was travelling across Europe, but some of the humans still thought they were living through the era of the witch trials. She had lost her life trying to save an innocent woman who had been accused of enchanting a weak man who had cheated on his wife.

Her smile was as bright as it had been in life. “The very same.” She stepped forward to drag me into a hug. “You have made every single one of us proud.”

She was the reason I had started the network that was the foundation for the organisation I ran today. I never wanted another witch to lose her life because of prejudice and jealousy.

“I missed you,” I replied.

“I was watching from this side of the great mystery of life. You saved so many lives by the sacrifices you made. That is a legacy that will last many lifetimes.” Cybele hugged me again.

She led me into a large room filled with magical instruments, a massive cauldron bubbling in the middle of the room.

I poked her, and her brow creased when she frowned at me. “Is there a reason you poked me?”

“You’re dead. I thought my finger would go through your ghost,” I replied.

“This is Purgatory. Souls have form here, and we even have clothes.” She snapped her fingers and her outfit changed. She wiggled her eyebrows and wrinkled her nose, making me smile. “Now, we have limited time to fix this problem you’ve found yourself in.”

“I’m dead, Cybele. There’s no fixing something as permanent as that.”

“Nonsense, your friend is currently working on keeping you alive.” She glanced at me. “I like her, she reminds me of a young me.”

“It was one of the reasons I let her into my inner circle,” I replied. From the moment I had met Maia, her personality reminded me of Cybele and her love of life and creating mischief.

“Come, we have already started to brew the potion,” Mother priestess said. “Our seers saw your path colliding with Aisha and there was only one way it was going to end. Her jealousy would never allow her to walk away without causing harm.”

“Salvator,” I whispered, knowing that losing his mate could possibly kill him.

“That boy was the black knight destined to protect you. Fate knew your path and that you would need someone strong enough to destroy the established boundaries.” Mother priestess stood staring into a massive mirror on the wall.

Shadows moved inside it, and I realised it allowed her to see what was happening in the Earth realm. I desperately wanted to go and see if it would allow me to view anything.

“Let me look at that wound,” Cybele said, beckoning me toward her.

“I’m dead,” I pointed out again. “Do you not need to heal the physical?” Considering these women had been here for decades or centuries, they demonstrated that dead meant no longer alive in the Earth realm.

Cybele shot me a look that I had forgotten. It was the one that said I didn’t recognise her genius. It had been a shitty day, so I sunk into a seat close to the cauldron and closed my eyes.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

“Amelia is excellent at sensing when witches pass into this realm,” Cybele replied, making me jolt when she placed a coldcompress on my side. “We knew it would be you since we have been keeping track of you since you arrived in Peru.”

“Your friend Maia is to be admired,” mother priestess said, watching the world through her mirror. “She is still working tirelessly to save you. If she had been born earlier, she could have been recruited into our temple.”

“I doubt she would have the obedience required for temple work,” I said with a laugh. “Maia tends to view magic through her own perception.”

“I have been here a long time, keeping watch over the children I was given since I had none by birth,” mother priestess replied. “In that time, I have seen magic evolve with every generation born. Once it was a set pattern of symbols and words, but now it responds to the needs of the witch casting.”

New gifts had emerged over the past hundred and fifty years. I had foreseen the vampire Tasha mating with a wolf and them having children. Tasha had contained magic in her that ran through her maternal lineage, something that would have been frowned upon by the magical community in bygone times. The species were interbreeding and creating new abilities and gifts. Nature survived through evolution and adaptation, and magic was no different. Witches needed to find more to rely on than ancient spells and crystals. I had collected grimoires from all over the world, trained with shamans and witches from different regions, and discovered my own brand of magic along the way that no longer resembled what I had been taught.

“We all have the potential to learn and evolve,” I replied. “I found teachers on my journey, those willing to share knowledge and help me.”

She turned to face me. “I know, we helped guide them to you. Every step of your journey, we have been with you.”

Everything started to make sense. I had believed in synchronicity and events unfolded as directed by fate. Now I hadfound my way here, I realised that even in death, these women had found a purpose, and I could do the same.

“Did you know it would end the way it did?” I asked. “That my own sister would be the one who ended my life?”

---