Maggie Shayne: Mark of the Witch

Her full lips parted, and she whispered two words. “Help him.”

“Who? The priest?”

The beautiful woman lowered her eyes to look down, into the swirling orange and yellow depths at the demon I’d just seen.

“Him?”

“Help him.”

“But I don’t … I don’t know how. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How am I—Wait. Wait!” I reached my hand toward the iron kettle as if I could grab hold of the image inside, but it was fading. The cauldron turned slowly black again. “At least tell me your name!” But it was useless. She was gone.

Lilia .

The wind died with a soft sound that might have been nothing more than its final gasping breeze. I stayed on the floor, lowered my head to the carpet and tried to hold back the crying jag that was fighting to bust out.

Great. I’m being sacrificed again .

I stood near the cliff, not on the edge yet, but tied between two posts nearby, arms raised and stretched to either side. The goddess position again. Memories—yeah, memories, not illusions—flooded my brain. I heard a crack and felt the brutal slash of a whip slicing my back, and it was as real as anything I’ve ever felt in my life. And far more painful. It went on until the cutting, burning pain was everywhere all at once. I was shaking all over in agony. It was unbearable, and I longed to pass out, but I didn’t.

I screamed until my voice was gone and I could scream no more. My faith went with it, severed along with the ropes that held me as the soldiers cut me down and retied my hands behind my bleeding back. Then I—no, we—were marched closer to the edge of the cliff. I’d seen him again, that other man near the rocks, where soldiers held him. He was more battered and beaten than we were. He’d been forced to watch as we’d been whipped, and he was being forced to watch still, as we were about to be sent plummeting to our deaths on the rocks far, far below. He struggled, though he had to be near death. Hell of a man, that one. Too bad they probably killed him right after us.

I looked sideways at my sister Lilia. She was the youngest, and I was amazed at how straight she stood. How proudly she held her head. She looked like royalty. I was crying softly, almost silently, unlike my other sister, Magdalena, who was loud and sloppy. But little Lilia, the one we’d always thought of as the weakest of us, had been as cruelly tortured as we had, and yet she was the strong one now.

We were at the cliff’s edge.

Wakeupwakeupwakeup!

I felt those warm, familiar hands at my back. And again I had that totally fucked-up feeling of liking his touch. His palms warm on my skin, carefully not touching the raw ruin of my flesh. My toes curled instinctively to grip the smooth stone beneath my feet, trying to hang on.

I was going to die on those rocks down there. With my sisters.

Again.

Tomas had parked his Volvo across the street from Indira Simon’s apartment building, where he had a beautiful view of her windows, and spent the entire night there, trying to keep watch, hoping he would know if something went wrong. He saw other tenants come and go, and at one point, while out stretching his legs, he caught the door before it swung closed and jammed the latch, so he could get in if necessary.

Yes, he’d thought Father Dom was two-thirds of the way to insanity with his obsessive predictions about this demon and its witches. Until he’d seen that subway video. And met her . That woman was something else. He could feel it just by looking into her eyes. And when she’d swung her arm in anger, a burst of genuine power had erupted from her.

She’d been as surprised by that as he had.

And now everything he’d been so sure was just the outrageous exaggerations of an aging priest with delusions of grandeur seemed like it just might be real, after all. Which threw everything else he thought he’d known into question.

His crisis of faith, his decision to leave the church, all of that, he’d decided, had to be put aside until this was finished. Because if he’d been wrong—well, he couldn’t undo that. But he could carry out this mission for Dom, at least far enough to make sure it really was just part of an old man’s ramblings. Maybe generations of old men. The rest … the rest could wait.

He knew already that some things Dom had told him were utterly false. Things about her. She was not evil. No demon’s whore. Not that one. She hadn’t tried to seduce him or ensorcell him as Dom had predicted she would. She’d run from him instead.

But he’d followed. Because he had a feeling that just wouldn’t leave him alone. Clearly some of the things Dom had believed in for so long were true. Were, perhaps, unfolding as had been predicted. And the most important thing that meant to Tomas was that she might be in danger. So while this would be his final mission as a priest, it was still his mission—and he was still a priest. And he intended to do it right. Maybe that would assuage his guilt over leaving the collar behind, and for not believing in Dom’s obsession until now.

He had expected that he might catch a glimpse of Indy moving around behind her apartment windows, though the drapes were drawn. He had not expected to see her on the building’s rooftop just before dawn.

When he caught sight of her up there his heart almost stopped. She was standing near the brick safety wall, which reached almost to her bare shoulders, her hands along the top of it, the wind blowing through her hair. It looked as if she was getting ready to climb up.

“God, save her,” he whispered.

He was out of the car instantly, racing to the building’s door and yanking it open, glad he’d thought far enough ahead to disable the lock. He took the stairs two at a time all the way to the roof. Then he slid to a stop. She was standing on the wall now, completely naked. Wobbling dangerously, she held her arms behind her back as if they were tied there, even though they weren’t. It was still dark, but there was something staining her back—crisscrossing stripes with scarlet rivulets running from them. And something else, a tattoo on her lower back. Three rows of symbols.

Was that cuneiform?

God, what had happened to her? And what was he supposed to do?

Waking a sleepwalker was a bad idea—especially when they were standing seventy feet off the ground. But he couldn’t just let this play out and hope she didn’t plummet to her death.

Quietly, he approached from behind. She was standing still, her short hair riffled by the wind, her skin pebbling with goose bumps in the cold. She had to be freezing. It was the second of November, for crying out loud. As he crept slowly nearer, she leaned forward, arching her back. No more time. Tomas lunged, snapping his arms around her just above hip level, which was as high as he could reach. The momentum of her body tried to pull him over with her, but he braced one foot against the brick wall and jerked her backward, hard. He landed on his back on the rooftop with her butt on his chest and her lower back against his face. No sooner had he begun to release his pent-up breath in a sigh of relief than she was scrambling off him and onto her feet, turning to look down at him, stark accusation in her huge black eyes.

“Atta bal ata u anaku mut amât!” she shouted.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed straight down, as if her legs had dissolved beneath her.

Tomas got onto his feet. She’d bled on his clothes. On his face. Her back was cut to ribbons. Bending, he gathered her carefully into his arms, then turned to carry her back down to her apartment.