Coffin Girls (Elegantly Undead: Book 1 of the Coffin Girls Witch Vampire Series) (17 page)

“
Mon Dieu
! Anais! It’s me, Raulf,” he cried out once
he’d changed back to human form.

Anais continued screaming as though someone was skewering
her and roasting her flesh alive. “Anais, it’s me. I’m here. Conall is going to
get those witches to help you. Miss Suzette and your sisters will come too.
Hold on, Anais, we’ll get you out of this hell.” Tears flooded his vision as he
stared at the love of his heart, thrashing uncontrollably on the mattress,
screaming out in torturous agony.

“Anais, you hear me! Don’t you fucking dare let go!”

It was the most emasculating experience he’d had yet. Raulf
sat on the edge of the bed, where her flaying legs couldn’t reach and watch
powerlessly while she continued to agonizing yelling. He prayed that help would
arrive soon. Now!

Just when Raulf was about to run out and go and carry the
help back himself, the witches arrived with the anxious faces of the entire
household in tow. Then he spotted Conall – a man charged and wolf attacked. He
growled, paws on the chest of the witch you put her there. He’d seen the
sheets, smelled the sex and knew what had led to the state that Anais was in.
In fact, it all began when she first came into contact with the fucking
bastard! Raulf, the wolf, took a deep sniff of the witch, a cold nose swiping
against his throat. But before he could take that fatal bite, V and Niul had
him in stronghold and hauled him off. He changed back into human form cursing.

“Now’s not the time, Raulf. Whatever issue you have with
Conall can wait.” V’s voice was firm, her tone clipped.

“My issue is that it all started with him. Her attacks,”
Raulf waved an arm at the direction of the cabin, “it started with him. And do
you know what?” He paused, breath huffing from rage, “they had sex in there
before this newest episode – he’s fucking poison to her and as I chose her,
he’s gonna be my next meal.”

“What you need to do now, my brother is cool the fuck down.”
V tightened her hold on Raulf as did Niul. “The only thing any of us are going
to do now is concentrate on helping her. Am I clear?”

Raulf looked at V’s bared fangs and shot her a sardonic
look, “You will never scare me, V. But you’re right – the witch and I will have
a little heart to heart later.” Raulf looked over at Conall, “Anything happens
to her, I’ll come after you. I’ll rip your throat out and feed you to the
wolves.”

Conall nodded, “If she dies, you won’t have to come after
me, I’d go with you – I’d have earned it.”

“Okay, now let’s join the rest shall we in seeing how we can
address the real issue at hand?” V was already with the others at the slave
quarters before she finished her directive. 

The slave quarters couldn’t hold them all but Raulf didn’t
care; he squeezed himself into a corner near the bed and watched the sisters
perform a magickal scan.  Miss Suzette threw him the pants she’d brought
along. He realised that she knew him well enough to have guessed what would
happen. Transfixed on the grim scene in front of him, he forgot about his
nudity until she jabbed him in the ribs as a reminder. He put it on, grabbing
it from the floor where it had fallen, when she ribbed him.

The vampires were huddled on the small porch and steps,
eerily still as they waited and observed. Miss Suzette was alternating between
prayers on her rosary and prayers to the voodoo Goddess. Conall was calling to
the witch Goddess as his sisters moved around the bed, chanting loudly. Their
arms rose and fell, hands moved over and above Anais’ shaking form on the bed.
It was a din of the strangest kind even for the bayous of New Orleans. And it
didn’t take a genius to figure out that they didn’t know what was wrong or what
to do – they were taking chances.

A voice interrupted the chaos and Raulf’s muttered
expletives. Sylvain came forward and addressed the witch sisters. “I know
what’s happening.”

Breaths were collectively held, only the echoes of Anais’
now completely hoarse, wounded shouts reverberated off the walls.

Sylvain repeated, “I know what it is. We have to move fast. She
doesn’t have much time left.”

For once, no one argued. Propelled by a desperate need to
save her, everyone followed Sylvain’s rapid directives. They moved with
supernatural speed to remove the bed and prepare the protection circle. Sylvain
took the lead, a gold halo surrounding him as he chanted in a strange language
that no one else seemed to know. Sylvain stood at the top end of the circle,
Conall at the other and his sisters and Miss Suzette in between. Different
magicks, Sylvain’s obviously unique kind, mingled with voodoo and witchcraft.
None knowing what the other was doing came together with the singular purpose
of saving Anais’ life.

At last, Anais was still. Sylvain proceeded to address the
rest of them. “The worst has passed. I’ve seen something similar happen only
once. Ages ago, long before man had took control of this land. It wasn’t
something I thought I’d see again.” Sylvain should have been drained,
exhausted, after the incredible feat of magick he’d just led and performed, yet
the only sign of any distress was the grim tightening of the lines of his
mouth, the concern in his eyes.

He still had their attention as they waited for further
enlightenment, “Anais’ powers are very powerful, very pure magick – royal witch
magick and they were bound by very dark magick.” His sought out Conall and
noted the shock.

“How can that be? We are all alive and accounted for?”
Conall’s expression was incredulous.

“All but one.” Fianna reminded her brother while Sylvain
nodded in agreement at the connection she’d made. Fianna felt the weight of it
and sat down on the edges of the circle, where Anais now lay still as though in
a deep slumber. “If you’re right, Sylvain, then this changes much.”

“What are you talking about? Come on! We’re here too, you
know!” V’s frustration was eating at her. She’d had to watch witches take over
the protection of her sister twice now. She’d had to watch her maker and friend
writhe in agony while she could only stand and do nothing.

“She’s not out of the woods yet. We’ve only kept the magick
at bay for the time being and it could come back at any moment. I’ll give you
the shortened version now and then I’ll explain fully when Anais is with us.
You need the context so that we can progress to the next stage, the unbinding
stage.” The three witch sisters visibly shuddered at the implications of his
statement. The others offered grim nods.

“Many years ago, when religion came to the land that is now
known as Europe, a royal princess was taken captive and her powers were bound.
She had the purest of witch magick yet her capturers thought of her as a
heretic. I happened to pass by the area where she was being held and witnessed
her passing as her bound magick ate at her very being, her very soul, while
trying to escape the bonds that had been placed on it. I was too late to help
but I witnessed how she was at the end and her aura, her symptoms were what
we’d just seen Anais display.”

Dragging a hand over his face, as though to wipe away the
ghastly memory, he continued, “I found out later, from a powerful friend who
was also a secret practitioner of witchcraft that the princess had been
consumed by the white magick trapped inside of her. You see, all things have
good and evil to them. Today this principle is more commonly referred to as the
ying-yang.”

Comprehension dawned on the faces on the non-witches, just
as he’d hoped it would. The intricacies of magick were very hard to describe to
those who did not live the craft.

Rose interrupted the tale, “So the white magick, when
trapped inside her, began to separate from her.”

Conall interjected to further clarify. “All magick needs to
be honed and nurtured by the one gifted with it. Through practice and learning,
they grow, mature and become integrated into one. To bind magick is to not only
stop the person from using it but often an act of punishment for evil deeds
done. Binding magick is not done lightly. Depending on the power of the witch
it can easily progress from uncomfortable punishment to cruel torture. The
stronger the magick that is bound, the more dire the consequences are for the
witch.”

“So, Anais has the main honcho version of magick and is now
going through the mother of all tortures?” V’s question reflected their
unspoken fear. When Conall nodded, she swore like a swamp rat. 

Sylvain tipped his head in acknowledgment, “It’s that
serious. My friend informed me that the magick bound inside the princess slowly
ate at her from the inside in its attempt to seek an escape, to seek light. It
first devoured her physically and then her soul. I also found out that it is
the same friend who had bound her magick with the dark kind. He’d been the
mastermind behind the plan to take over the kingdom and instrumental in the
attempts to wipe out the craft under the guise of religion. He hoped to be one
of the few with noted power left in the land. Needless to say, I made sure that
he died a death as close to the horror that he’d inflicted on that poor
innocent girl.”

Conall sat down amidst his sisters and cast his gaze over
the intrigued, motley group that constituted Anais’ friends and family. He
pointed at the unnaturally still body of the woman he’d spent hours loving not
so long ago. “If what Sylvain says is true and I have no reason to doubt his
experience or his thinking, then Anais is the descendent of Claire. Before our
births,” he waved at his siblings, “two generations before, the union between
triplet witches was broken. One of the babies, Claire, was kidnapped and not
seen since. We never knew what happened to her. It was the time of the witch
vampire war and it was presumed that she’d been killed as many witches were
slaughtered for sport by their vampire enemies. From Anais’ existence, it seems
as if Claire had survived long enough to birth a child or children and that
Anais is descendent from her. It is the only explanation because all other
within the royal bloodline can be accounted for, even the princess that Sylvain
spoke of.”

“So dark magick’s been used to bind my baby’s powers?” Miss
Suzette’s eyes were red-rimmed from crying and the distress seeing what her
baby, Anais, was going through. “Someone has gotten past me and harmed my
baby?”

“Yes. We don’t know who or how but I recognize the scent. It
is very powerful and well masked with vampire magick. Anais’ own turning has been
aiding in its disguise.” Sylvain laid a hand on Anais’ heart in the middle of
the circle, where she lay still, naked and as pale as death. “I can sense it.
You will too,” he nodded at the witches in the room. “Think of the different
magicks inside of her as layers and it will be easier to identify. Up until
now, you’ve been looking for a magick and have hit a brick wall every time
because what you were really dealing with was multiple magicks intertwined and
battling within her, disguising each other.”

“That makes sense,” Ida acknowledged, flopping next to
Fianna on the edge of the circle, “whenever we thought we’d identified the
source of the binding as light, when we went to unravel it, it came up as dark
and vice versa.”

“So what do we do?” Conall asked of his friend, anxiety
written all over him. “You’re the only one that has come across this type of
situation before.”

“We need to peel back the layer of vampire magick to reveal
the others, much like peeling an onion. When we have it exposed, we need to
channel our combined magickal energy to Anais’ magickal core and help her fight
the binding. It is the only way and therein lays the risk. Only she can fight
it. On top of all of that, we have to do it now or risk losing her anyway when
her white magick next attacks the binding. We’ve only managed to stall the
attack on her but it won’t hold indefinitely. If the imprisoned magick does not
find liberation, it will consume her from the inside out in self-preservation.
Conall is correct, with Anais not having had any training, let alone
acknowledgment of her powers, the magick sees itself as a separate entity in an
unwelcoming vessel.”

A grim smile curved Sylvain’s lips, “Good thing I was so
traumatized by the princess’s death that I memorized the counter-spell from the
tome of the witch just before I killed him. I’d hoped never to have to use it
but now I’m glad I tucked that bit of information away.”

They split up into task teams. The witches were gathered in the
slave quarters going over the spell that Sylvain had committed to heart.
Occasional obscenities were expelled by Conall as they worked through the
challenges brought by doing a spell cast from medieval Europe in modern New
Orleans. Miss Suzette was amongst the witches as was Raulf, insisting that
their own magick, bayou-born, could provide further input into a solution. The
witches agreed with their thinking, adding that they were to contribute towards
the channeling of good magickal energy to Anais during the unbinding.

“This is the first time I’ve truly felt that being a vampire
sucks.” Marie grumbled, pink streaks stained her cheeks where tears had fallen
mere moments ago as she watched her friend battle for her life. “I get that
they say that the dark vampire magick may negate the good magick or be drawn
into the dark magick that binds her but I can’t help but wish that we could do
more than just errands.”

“Don’t see it that way. What we’re doing is needed and it
frees them,” V flicked her head in the direction of the witches, “to figure out
how to approach the spell. From what Sylvain said, time is critical and in this
way, we do help. But you’re right. It does suck. I wish we could do more too. I
wish that it was as simple as a vampire turning. If it was, we could give her
some blood and she’d heal.”

“Well, why don’t we?” Sophie’s question drew raised and
questioning stares from her friends. She responded to their tacit skepticism,
waving an arm towards the slave quarters where the witches were gathered in
spell dichotomy. “They are powerful witches and obviously have Anais’s best
interests at heart. For that I’ll be eternally grateful, regardless of the
outcome. We, however, have something they don’t. We have her love and she has
ours. V, you mentioned blood and you’re onto something there. We share her
blood and she ours. That is a connection that nothing can alter. Witch magick
is old and strong but vampire blood is just as old and powerful and I’m willing
to bet that the love we share, the blood we share, is stronger than any witch
dark, white or royal magick.”