Page 62 of Samhain Savior
At first, I couldn’t imagine whose blood it would need. After all, it had stood sentinel in the church spire for almost three hundred years. With Nathaniel gone, was there anyone around whose blood would open it?
I’d considered Persephone, but dismissed it just as quickly. Something about it didn’t feel right. Nathanial had been a Guardian, just like Phips, but my gut was telling me that the blood lock didn’t belong to the Nathaniel’s family line.
My next instinct had been to consider the maker. After all, Phips was the one who had made the golden box where we’d discovered the letter. It made sense that the person who had created this golden orb would be the one whose blood would open the lock.
It was the best option I had, so when the opportunity presented itself, I had fled the church, on a mission to open the orb and retrieve the piece of the Fallen Key that I just knew would belong to me.
Thank goodness for egomaniacal demons who loved listening to the sound of their own voices.
Which led me here, to the gates of Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, searching for a single grave in the middle of a freaking supernatural hurricane. I rushed down the sidewalk, barely pausing, I rushed through the ornate iron gate and up the concrete steps, the stone slick with rain and fallen leaves.
“Where are you?” I whispered, my eyes darting around the cemetery, looking for the headstone I’d seen on the flyer in the church vestibule. Shem Drowne, the man who had designed the weathervane was buried nearby, and if I could find his grave, perhaps I had a chance of opening the orb and retrievingmypiece of the Key.
Following the curving pathways, I frantically searched, the heavy rain hampering my movement as it soaked through my cloak and into the ridiculous dress.
Finally, I found it, just as it has appeared in the photo, two rounded tablets, their words and carvings withered with age.
As I approached, the whipping wind came to a sudden halt, the world seeming to freeze as the storm around me died an immediate death.
“That can’t be good,” I muttered, watching as the steel-gray storm clouds faded before my very eyes, revealing the watery blue sky of autumn in New England.
Dropping to my knees, I ran my fingers over the scalloped edge, the stone rough beneath my fingertips. Grave robbing was not something I took lightly, and as much as the throbbing in my chest was pushing me find any way I could to open the orb, I still felt guilty about it.
“Forgive me for disturbing your rest, my friend.”
I leaned forward, burrowing my fingers into the sodden grass at the base of the stone, but before I could even begin to dig, I felt a presence behind me, and I gasped as a blade was pressed against my throat.
“Don’t move.”
The voice was instantly recognizable, and I shuddered at the idea that the witch, Helena, was the one who had found me.
Of all the members of the Order who could have come to end my life, why did it have to beher?
“I won’t let you do this,” I whispered, my hands held before me as Pandora thrashed in her pouch against my chest. At my throat, the collar began to pulse, the magic it contained sensing the threat. Tilting my head, I pressed my body forward as far as I could without slicing my own throat, desperate to lay eyes on the weathervane where it lay in the grass beside me.
She was here to take it. Just like Archer, she wanted it for herself.
But it wasmine.
“I have been hunting you down for far too long to let you get away now,” she hissed, her hand threading roughly into my hair and yanking my head backward, forcing me to look at her horrifically scarred face. Panicked, I shifted on my knees, moving until I could feel the weathervane under my knee, needing to know it was still there, still in my possession. “You are the final piece. Now we can finally destroy the Veil and take our rightful place as rulers on this plane. Belial will be most pleased.”
“Belial?” I asked, my eyes darting around the empty cemetery, looking for something, anything, that could be used to help me escape. In all my years of running, this was the first time a member of the Order had actually gotten their hands on me.
“Your education is so lacking,” she tutted, the blade pressing harder to the underside of my jaw. Against my chest, Pandora squealed, as though she could feel the same discomfort I felt as the wickedly sharp edge dug into my flesh. The collar, however, ceased its pulsing, going eerily still, and I frowned at the loss. I wanted to reach up and touch it, reassure myself that it was still there, still a part of me, even if I didn’t understand why. “I will never understand his obsession with you. A failed witch with a demon for an owner. Pathetic.”
“No one owns me,” I protested, unsure why that was the part of her statement that stuck out to me.
“That collar at your throat says otherwise.”
Her words stopped me cold.
What that what the collar was? Ownership? I understood why Archer had placed it there when we’d first met; he’d thought I was a witch of the Order, and didn’t want me fleeing from him.
But now that he knew the truth about me? Why hadn’t he removed it? He had told me he was working against the Order, then how come he seemed to know their members by name?
And why, if the collar was a mark of my imprisonment as Helena was implying, did it feel like it belonged around my throat like a badge of honor?
Confusion swirled in my mind, my thoughts jumbled and tossed like leaves in an autumn gale. I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, and the only person I might have asked was unlikely to tell me the truth after I’d run from him.
