Witch & Curse Page 24

  “Yes,” he said to the Coven Master.

  “Very well. And you will swear a blood oath to that.” He gestured for a black-robed acolyte to come forward. The young warlock carried a splendidly jeweled athame on a black pillow and presented it to Michael, who sliced open his wrist and dripped it on the burned flesh of his son.

  He’ll die eventually, Michael thought, and though he meant Sir William, he realized it was also true of Jer. But by then, I’ll have what I want.

  Sir William chuckled and dipped his head forward, receiving the oath with great formality. Michael smiled to himself, pleased with his own cleverness.

  “Very well, Michael, leader of the Deveraux Coven. You have sworn allegiance to me,” he said in a muffled voice.

  Then his hands moved forward to throw back his hood, and Sir William raised his head.

  Michael caught his breath and fell to his knees.

  Before him sat not Sir William Moore, but the Horned God himself. The King of Hell, the Lord of the Flies, the Devil. . . .

  “Your family is mine now,” the demon said, chuckling. “For ever.”

  And from the piteous ruin of his aching body, Jer Deveraux wailed, “No.”

  In her room in the Anderson home, Holly dreamed.

  I am Isabeau, and I am Holly, and he . . .

  He is alive, with my parents, and we are on the river. Tina is laughing.

  See how the sun dances on her hair.

  See how the sun dances in Jer’s eyes. The ghosts are at rest. At rest. At rest . . . oh, my God, Kari’s right.

  I killed him.

  Tears slid down her cheeks. On cat’s paws, Bast crept respectfully toward her and breathed on her cheek.

  What do you want? she blinked with her large cat eyes.

  “Bring him back,” Holly wailed.

  And then she opened her own eyes, fully awake.

  Clenching her fists, she said to Bast, “I will bring him back. If I have to work at it my whole life. . . .”

  The cat meowed, whether in agreement or in protest, Holly couldn’t tell.

  Holly sat up, weary to her bones, numb with grief . . .

  . . . and ready to begin.

  At her window, a gray hawk hovered. A lady hawk.

  “Spirit of Pandion,” she whispered, “will you help me?”

  The bird screeched once, cocked its head at her, and did not fly away.

  In her room in the Anderson home, Holly dreamed.

  Curse

  To my daughter, Belle, who is magical.

  —Nancy Holder

  To my husband, Scott, and the magic of true love.

  —Debbie Viguié

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my wonderful coauthor, Debbie, and her husband, Scott, for being friends I can count on. Thanks to our Simon & Schuster family, Lisa Clancy, Micol Ostow, and Lisa Gribbin. To my agent and his assistant, Howard Morhaim and Neeraja Viswanathan, my gratitude always.

  —N. H.

  Thanks to my coauthor and mentor, Nancy, for being such an inspiring writer and a dear friend. Thank you also to all the people without whom this would not be possible, most especially Termineditor Lisa. Thank you to all those who have offered me encouragement and shared the joy and pain of creativity: Chris Harrington, Marissa Smeyne, Teresa Snook, Amanda Goodsell, and Lorin Heller. Thank you also to George and Greta Viguié, the parents of my beloved husband. Without you he would not be the man he is.

  —D. V.

  Part One

  Waxing

  “When the moon in the sky begins to swell, all the world grows with her,

  planning, scheming, waiting. It is at this time that the womb grows ripe

  and all dark purposes are set in motion.”

  —Marcus the Great, 410

  ONE

  SINGING MOON

  We shout our defiance to the skies

  To the sun shining in our eyes

  The House of Deveraux has power

  And it grows with every passing hour

  Attend, anon, each Cahors Witch

  For words alone can make us rich

  The Crone bids us listen each hour

  For words bring knowledge and knowledge power

  Holly and Amanda: Seattle, the first moon after Lammas

  In Autumn of the Coventry year, one reaps exactly what one sows, multiplied sevenfold. It is as true of the souls of the dead as it is of sheaves of grain and clusters of grapes.

  A full year had passed since Holly Cathers’s parents had drowned, and her best friend, Tina Davis-Chin, with them, whitewater rafting on the Colorado River. Death had invaded the Anderson home in Seattle, taking Marie-Claire, the sister of Holly’s father. Marie-Claire Cathers-Anderson lay rotting in one of the two plots she and her husband, Richard, had purchased together once upon a romantic dream of eternity. The reality of her adultery made it very hard for Uncle Richard to hope for another, better place where she waited for him—a fact that he told Holly often, now that he had taken to drinking late at night.

  Tina’s mother, Barbara Davis-Chin, lay sick in Marin County General back in San Francisco. She had once been an ER doc there with Holly’s mom. Now that Holly had learned of the witchery world and taken her place at the head of her own coven, she knew Barbara’s condition had been no accident.

  Barbara’s illness was Michael’s first attack on us because he wanted me here in Seattle. I had planned to live with Barbara, but he needed me here . . . because he wanted to kill me.

  Bolts of lightning sizzled overhead amid cascades of icy cold rain. Supercharged volts fanned out like search parties as their many-armed, air-splitting zigzags slammed in to the earth. Holly felt very vulnerable in the family station wagon, a slow-moving duck wading through the puddles. Three blocks from Kari Hardwicke’s place, she got out of the station wagon and ran the rest of the way.

  Heavily warded, Holly wore a cloak of invisibility that Tante Cecile, a voodoo practitioner, and Dan Carter, a northwest Native American shaman, had worked together to create. She had taken to wearing it whenever she had to go out. The cloak was by no means perfect, often losing its power to conceal her, but Holly had worn it faithfully ever since they had gifted her with it less than a week after the battle of the Black Fire last Beltane.

  The coven was waiting for her at Kari’s grad student apartment, which was located in a funky reconverted Queen Anne mansion near the University of Washington at Seattle. Kari was the one who had demanded the coven convene for a Circle. Last night at three A.M.—the Dark Hour of the Soul—she had suddenly awakened from a terrible nightmare that she could not remember. Drawn to the window, she had watched in horror as monsters dove past her turret room—huge, jet-black creatures that she was almost certain were oversized falcons.

  Falcons were the totem of the Deveraux family.

  If Michael Deveraux had returned to Seattle, and if on top of that, he had found a way to rescue his evil son, Eli, the Cathers/Anderson Coven was in deep and possibly fatal trouble. Michael Deveraux longed to conclude the blood feud begun by the Cathers and Deveraux ancestors so many centuries ago. That vendetta demanded no less than the death of every Cathers witch alive—namely Holly and her cousins, Amanda and Nicole.

  As leader of the Cathers/Anderson Coven, it fell to Holly to protect them all and to save herself.

  She had very little in the way of weaponry. She had known she was a witch for less than a year, while the Deveraux had never forgotten that their ancient lineage ranked them among the most hated and feared warlocks of all time. While her last name was Cathers, her ancestors had been of the noble witch house of Cahors, of medieval France. Over time their identity had been lost along with their real name. Holly believed that her father had known about the witch blood that ran in his veins, but she wasn’t certain of that. She did know he had broken with the Seattle branch of the family, and it was only upon his death that Holly had learned he’d had a sister, and that she, Holly, had cousins.

  Holly wondered wha
t he would think if he knew she had reluctantly embraced her witch blood, and that she now led a full coven. Never mind that that coven was a ragtag mélange of traditions and powers, consisting of Amanda; Amanda’s friend Tommy Nagai; Cecile Beaufrere, voodoo practitioner, and her daughter, Silvana; and the remnants of Jer’s Rebel Coven—Eddie Hinook and his lover, Kialish Carter, and Jer’s former lover, Kari Hardwicke. Kialish’s father was the shaman who had helped with her cloak, but he had not formally joined the Circle.

  The Cathers/Anderson Coven was like a tiny paper boat in an ocean, when compared to the forces of evil massed against it.

  Lightning arced directly overhead, interrupting her worrying. It seemed these days she was always worried.

  Along the street, faces glanced anxiously through rain-blurred windows as Holly ran past them. The inhabitants no doubt enjoyed a measure of comfort in the knowledge that lightning rods protected their houses. But Holly knew that if Michael Deveraux sent the lightning, no conventional protection would save a building from being burned to the ground.

  “Goddess, breathe blessings on me,” she murmured as she kept to the shadows and moved her fingers firmly shrouded in the cloak. “Protect my Circle. Protect me.”

  It had become her mantra . . . and sometimes, the only thing that kept her from panicking completely.

  Every night, I go to sleep wondering if Michael Deveraux has returned to Seattle . . .

  . . . and if I’ll wake up the next morning.

  In her anxiety over Holly’s arrival, Amanda Anderson placed her face and hands against the cold window pane in the turret room of Kari Hardwicke’s apartment. The scar crossing her right palm would give her away as a Cathers witch to any knowing set of eyes, be they bird or warlock; remembering that, she plucked her hands quickly from the glass and cradled them both against her chest.

  Behind her, Tante—”Aunt,” in French—Cecile Beaufrere and her daughter, Silvana, bustled around the apartment checking on the wards they and Dan Carter had helped Holly and Amanda install. The two had closed up their New Orleans house and moved back to Seattle to help Holly’s coven fight the Deveraux. For their own personal protection, mother and daughter had woven amulets of silver and glass beads into the cornrows of their soft black hair, and they looked like Nubian warriors preparing for a great hunt.

  “It would be better if Nicole were here,” Silvana murmured. “The three Cathers witches united make stronger magic than just Holly and Amanda.” Proof of that lay in the fact that each of the three bore a segment of the Cahors symbol, the lily, burned into her palm. Placed together, the cousins were stronger magically than they were separately.

  But the three were only two in the current incarnation of the Circle. They had been reduced to two immediately after the Battle of the Black Fire. The reality of what they were doing had hit Amanda’s sister, Nicole, too hard. She had run away, leaving Seattle behind, and the two remaining Cathers witches had no idea where she was.

  While it was difficult for Amanda to blame her sister, it left everyone else weak and vulnerable to any potential attacks by the Deveraux. Holly had convinced the coven to spend the summer training, growing in the Art, and trying to work with Jer’s followers. And all during that summer, they saw no trace of Michael Deveraux, head of the Deveraux Coven and Jer’s father, whom Jer himself had repudiated. Nor had they seen Michael’s older son, Eli, who had been carried off, burning with Black Fire, by an enormous magical falcon.

  No one had seen a Deveraux since.

  The screech of a bird echoed through the thunder. Holly glanced up, squinting through the rain. A flock of blackbirds soared and cartwheeled, tempest-tossed, their eyes flashing, their blue-black wings beating back the storm.

  They were falcons.

  Holly hurried on, reaching the apartment without alerting the birds—or so it appeared, and so she prayed—and Amanda opened the door before Holly could knock. Like Holly, Amanda had matured, her face thinner, her mousy hair streaked through with summer highlights. She was no longer the “boring” twin to Nicole’s vibrant drama. She was steady and wise—in magical terms, a priestess. Holly was grateful to her core for Amanda’s presence.

  “Were you . . . did you get here okay?” Amanda asked, taking in Holly’s sopping wet appearance.

  “The car was too much of a target,” Holly said. “I came on foot.”

  “Don’t you own a broom yet?” That was Kari, who was terrified. Holly forgave her her snide comment, but she was tired of all the snipes Kari had shot her way over the past months.

  She hates me, Holly thought. She blames me for Jer’s death.

  She’s right I killed him.

  Holly cleared her throat as the others assembled, all facing her. They looked at her expectantly, as if she would know what to do now. The truth was, she had no idea.

  “We need to form a circle. Who will be our Long Arm of the Law tonight?” she asked, gazing at the three men in their midst. As was common in many Wiccan traditions, in Holly’s coven the women performed the magic while the men kept the circle safe from harm. She who conducted the rite was the coven’s designated High Priestess. Her male counterpart was called the Long Arm of the Law. In the Cathers/Anderson Coven, he cut all harm with a very splendid old sword, which Tante Cecile had located in an antique shop and the coven had infused with magic.

  “I’ll serve,” Tommy said, inclining his head.

  “Then kneel,” Holly instructed him, “and receive my blessing.”

  He got down on his knees. Amanda came forward with a beautifully carved bone dipper of oil in which floated Holly’s favorite magical herb, rosemary. The herb was associated with remembrance; it boggled Holly that her family had carried Cahors witch blood in their veins for centuries, and yet the memory had been lost.

  Holly moved her hands over the oil, silently invoking the Goddess, while Silvana presented the sword to the circle and placed it between Tommy’s clasped hands. It was made of bronze, and extremely heavy. Runes and sigils had been carved into the hilt and etched in acid on the blade, but no one in the coven—not even Kari, who, as a graduate student, was steeped in the knowledge of various magic traditions and folkways—had been able to translate or decipher any of them.

  Tommy breathed deeply, becoming one with the sword and with Holly’s own rhythmic breaths. The rest took their places around Holly and Tommy in the circle, forming a living, single magical being.

  We’re one, Holly thought. We have a power the Deveraux do not. Through love, we are trying to break down our barriers and work fully together. Their system is based on power, wresting it away from others and holding on to it at all costs. And I have to believe that love is stronger than that.

  “I bless your brow, for wisdom’s sake,” she said, making a pentagram with oil on his forehead.

  “I bless your eyes, for good vision and sharp sight.” She dotted each closed eyelid with more oil.

  “I bless your sense of smell, for detection of hellish sulfur.” She ran a line of oil down his nose.

  She blessed his mouth, that he might call out a warning in case of attack. She blessed his heart, for courage, and his arms, for the strength to wield his sword well against trespassers.

  Then she deliberately placed her thumb on the sharp edge of the sword, wincing as she cut herself. Drops of blood ran down the blade, feeding it.

  Love might be the coin of the realm, but blood still fed the circle. The Cahors had not been a gentle house; in their day they had been just as ruthless as the Deveraux. What Holly hoped for was evolution, a chance to reinvent her family’s path. Since so much had been lost in the intervening centuries, she was trying to find the balance between new magical forms and the traditions her coven must observe in order for the magic to work. It was slow going, a process of trial and error . . . but if Michael was back to threaten them, she would have to do whatever it took to keep her people safe, no matter how “unevolved” it was.

  But this was not the time for such ruminations; she
quickly finished Tommy’s anointing.

  “I bless you from crown to heel, Tommy. Rise, my Long Arm of the Law, and embrace your priestess.”

  Tommy stood tall as Holly handed the dipper back to Amanda. Then she put her arms around him, careful not to touch the sword with her body, and kissed him gently on the lips.

  She took a step backward, and Tommy said, “I will sever any snares our enemies have set.”

  “Blessed be,” the circle murmured.

  Amanda and Kari let go of each other’s hands, allowing Tommy to pass.

  “I will smite our enemies’ imps and familiars, be they invisible or disguised,” he continued.

  “Blessed be,” the circle said again.

  With great effort, he raised the sword toward the ceiling.

  “And I—”

  A terrible scream shattered the moment. Something flashed, glowing green. Wind whipped through the room, frigid and solid like ice. The stench of sulfur invaded the space.

  Tommy staggered backward. “Look!” Kari screamed, pointing.

  Grunting, Tommy jabbed the sword tip toward the ceiling. The glow was pierced; a phosphorescent, semiliquid stream of green tumbled around the sword tip and dripped onto the floor. Kari jumped away from it, and the rest of the circle struggled to keep their hands clasped.

  The glow vibrated, then faded.

  “Oh, my God,” Kari gasped.

  Skewered on the tip of the sword was the likeness of a falcon jerking in its death throes. It was not a real bird, but a magical representation; the green glow thickened and became blood, steaming and fresh. Tommy’s hands were coated with it, and it was dripping onto the floor.

  As Holly stared in dread fascination, the bird’s mouth dropped open. A disembodied voice echoed throughout the room:

  “You Cahors whores, you’ll be dead by midsummer.”

  With one last shudder, the bird stopped moving. Its eyes stared dully out at the circle.