Page 95 of Filthy Little Witch
“Not hungry,” I replied.
“We’re worried about you.” She reached out to grab my hand. “Atlas and Wes will?—”
“I don’t care what Atlas and Wes do,” I snarled.
Bridge raised an eyebrow. “You’re full of shit. And if you keep this up, I will help Tita tie you to a chair and shovel food down your gullet.”
She was joking, but I didn’t laugh. This endless nothing inside of me was more than Atlas and Wes leaving. Their absence stung, sure, but the numbness had been there as soon as we got home. It could have been why they had to leave in the first place. Tita served us pie, and I put on a good show of saying the right things and trying to look happy, but I knew she wasn’t convinced.
The next day, I hit rock bottom. When I tried to ground in the woods, my one piece of solace in this infinite droll of existence, the magic wouldn’t come. I called to the ancestors, I beckoned the trees and the earth for help, but I got no response. I opened my eyes and stared at my hands, flexing my fingers as if that would somehow make them work. But when I focused my energy and tried to shoot magic from my palms, nothing happened.
“No.” I tried again. Same result. I fell to my knees as a sob poured out of my throat, the first real emotion I’d felt in four weeks. This wasn’t exhaustion or depletion. This was my own idiocy. I’d fucked with fate. I’d fucked with a spell that was banned because of what it cost, and here were the consequences. My warriors, gone. My magic, gone. My soul in pieces.
And it was all my fault.
I banged my hands into the ground until my knuckles bled. I screamed at the heavens and God and Michael and anyone listening. I decried the ancestors and the fates. How fucked up was it that they’d put me in this situation, forced me to act, and then punished me for what I’d done?
Anger into faith. Faith into action.
Tita would tell me to pray about it. She would tell me to light candles and appeal to the Virgin. And hadn’t that been precisely what I’d done in my darkest hour? Hadn’t that been my last resort when I didn’t know how to get the demon out of Wes, and I didn’t think I was strong enough to carry on?
Would it work now?
I clasped my hands together and said my prayers, three times for each of them, calling out to The Virgin and God and St. Michael. I wanted to feel that rush of divinity again. I waited for their wisdom and ethereal grace. But it never came. Nothing came.
Royally pissed, I slammed my fists down, smashing them into a snarled, decaying log, and suddenly, an enormous blast shot out of me. A tremendous wave of obsidian decimated the wood, sending bits of earth into the air, propelling me onto my back. It was like a valve had been loosened, and whatever was inside steamed out in a boiling wave of fury.
Blinking, I stared at the wreckage, unsure of what I’d done.
Black. Darkness. The demon.
I was truly screwed. Even if Atlas and Wes never came back, I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t draw from the earth. I couldn’t harness my birthright. Whatever I had now was uncontrollable and rotten, now perverted by my own arrogance and recklessness. What happened in St. Michaels had created a void inside me that nothing could fill, and the only people who brought me peace, who understood, were gone.
I thought about keeping it to myself and disappearing in the night like Wes. But that didn’t sit right with me for a multitude of reasons. I’d taken an oath of loyalty to my coven and the MC. I’d sworn my fealty in blood and magic. If I had nothing else, at least I had my word.
“It shot out of me like the first time a witch discovers her magic,” I told Gullveig and Hella the next day. “Except it was black. Not white.”
They blinked at each other, mouths open and eyebrows halfway up their foreheads.
“Has that ever happened before?” Hella asked.
“No,” I replied, digging my nails into my palms to keep from exploding. Even sitting there, I sensed it well inside of me, drawing from the absence of my warriors, feeding on the desolation and weakness.
“I think we’re outside of our element here,” Gullveig said as she rubbed a hand over her face.
I agreed.
Week five brought a visit from our friends in the national chapter of the Royal Bastards MC. Hellsing was the resident demon whisperer in Louisiana. He and Lilith were friends, having learned the craft together in their childhoods. He’d been tasked with a run-through of our territory and wanted to stop in to visit.
Hellsing was tall with long dark hair and a piercing gaze that unsettled me, but as soon as it connected with mine, I sensed the power inside him. He had exorcised even the worst hell spawn and managed to keep his soul intact. After dinner, he approached me before I had a chance to hide.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said, nodding toward the back door.
I didn’t see how I had any other choice, so I went with him, hugging myself against the chilling autumn air. Winter would descend soon, and even though it didn’t get bitterly cold in North Carolina, I sensed the world dying in my molecules. Perhaps I sympathized.
He was quiet for the first few minutes as we wandered into the woods, the sounds of crunching leaves under our boots providing a backdrop to my pounding heart. Finally, once we were out of earshot from the estate, he pushed his hands into his pockets and turned to face me.
“Gullveig tells me you’re having trouble with your magic,” he said.
