Something Wicked (23 page)

Then She came.

Somehow I managed to put the stirrup cup down before I could drop it. I didn’t even try to stand. Leaving a very still Ben and maybe reality behind, I just crawled over to where my sister still bowed. I probably should have bent my head, too, but I couldn’t help peeking. I grasped for Diana’s hand, the way I used to as a child when something was too scary. Her hand closed around mine, just the same.

Solid.
Real.

The same Sibyl’s Cave surrounded us. I wore the same clothes. Ben and Vic remained motionless and silent, like a video on pause. But this was a reality—or vision, or hallucination—where I could hold my sister’s hand, and that was enough for me to accept it with all my heart.

“Hail, Hekate Light Bringer,” whispered Diana. “Hail, Hekate of the Earth.”

Except what I heard was
Hekate Phosphoros
and
Hekate Cthonia.
I just understood what they meant, here.

The Goddess emerged very slowly from the tunnel, cloaked completely in black, a flickering torch burning in each withered hand. Her form was that of a stooped old woman, but Her presence filled the chamber—hell, filled the rock around us, filled the lake beyond us, filled the world.

“Hail, Hekate of the Night,” said Diana. “Hail, Hekate the Messenger.”
Hekate Nykterian. Hekate Angelos.

The old Goddess wore a rope belt with a scythe-shaped knife hanging from it, and a ring of keys, and an equal-armed cross like the kind I’d seen in Greece. Without having to be told, I understood that the knife was a sign of midwifery. The keys were to unlock the doors to the underworld. The cross represented crossroads. Choices….

She stopped before She’d come close enough for me to see under Her hooded cloak and glimpse Her face, even kneeling like I was.

“Welcome, Katie Trillo,” She said. “I am old. I am forgotten. Why dost thou seek Me now?” At one point, She sounded like a teenager. Suddenly, Her voice was that of an old woman. Then when She spoke my name, She sounded like my mother.

And Her powerful presence wasn’t at all like someone who felt old—not in any decrepit way—
or
forgotten.

“Hekate of the Three Ways,” whispered Diana.
Hekate Trevia.

“But…you aren’t forgotten,” I told her. “There are women seeking goddess grails, to help reawaken you.”

“Why dost thou seek Me?”
Her voice reverberated off the tunnel walls. Okay. Rule one? Don’t contradict a goddess.
“What dost thou wish?”

“Hekate Queen,” whispered Diana.
Hekate Basileia.

I meant to ask Her to lift the curse. Really I did. I’d only had two real goals on this quest to find Her, all along—locate the grail and lift the curse. But instead, I found myself standing—and not bowed, either. I found myself straightening my back, squaring my shoulders, lifting my chin and glaring at my matron Goddess.

And what I said was,
“Give. Them. Back.”

The silence around us seemed to echo the force of my demand. Hekate only stood, ageless, faceless, unmoving.

So I stepped closer, shaking with fury. “I said,
give them back!
Diana. Mom. Dad. Ben’s parents. It’s not fair that they’re gone. It’s not!”

The Dark Goddess, torchlight playing across Her cloak, quietly said, “No.”

“You took them!”
And I guess I really was a bad guy, because I ran at Her, and I pushed Her.
Hard.
If She’d really been an old lady, She probably would have fallen just as hard. She could have maybe broken a hip or an arm in the impact.

Instead, it was like pushing rock.

So I started to hit her. Stupid, girly hits, sure, but blows all the same, pounding against her shoulders and arms, at one point punching her in the withered breast. “You’re the one who took them! You can give them back to me.
I want them back!
”

“No,” she repeated, placing Her torches into sconces at either side of the tunnel. Then Her arms encircled me despite my blows, like a mother gently holding an enraged toddler. Her cloak wrapped me like a blanket. “No, it is not fair.”

I sank to my knees, my arms around her old waist. I wept into her blackness, and she held me, and I finally, finally let go. After not just weeks but years, I let go. At least a little.

“Loss will always hurt,” she promised me in my mother’s voice. When I craned my neck up I could see under her cowl, and she wore my mommy’s face, too, and I missed her more than ever. “Loss of a parent. A sibling. A lover. A child. A pet. That pain, my darling, is the shadow side of love.”

“But you can change that!”

She shook her head, and at some point in the movement her face became my old YaYa’s. “There is no birth without death, no love without pain.”

She stroked my hair, and now she looked like Diana. Maiden, Mother and Crone.
Hekate Triformus.

“I am life, and death, and the struggle between them,” Hekate said. “I am promise, and fulfillment, and betrayal. I am the alpha and the omega, and everything between. I am not only the path, but its destination and its desertion. But
I did not kill them,
my darling.”

Her withered hand found my chin and tipped my face upward toward Hers—and now She was an old woman my eyes didn’t recognize, but my heart knew instantly.
She was Goddess.
“And neither did you.”

I gasped, not so much in shock as in acknowledgment. How long had I carried this darkness with me, this fear? It was a fear as old as my childish curse of a second-grade rival, as old as the loss of my parents. Even now, despite an almost physical yearning to believe Her, I couldn’t just accept Her reassurance.

“But if I’m really a witch, I should have been able to save them.” I couldn’t have just been…helpless.

Better to be guilty, to be wicked, than to be helpless.

“There has to be something I could have done and didn’t do, or something I did that I shouldn’t have, or—”

Hekate shook Her head, Her wisdom as irrefutable as the earth’s power echoing through me. “You take too much on yourself, Katie. You expect too much of yourself. You are not evil. You are not negligent. And you are not helpless. You are human. Mend what you can—and be done with it.”

And what I could mend…

That’s when I knew what I had to do—and this time, on a soul-deep level. She waited, expectant.

So I spread my arms, leaned back from her, and said, “I free you, Ben and Victor Fisher, of my curse.”

A rush of strength straightened my spine and squared my shoulders, far stronger than rage had. My whole body shuddered with power.

“I no longer wish you agony or despair—let anything that comes to you be of your own making. I no longer call death to you, because death needs no incentive. Your suffering is your own, and your peace is your own. Your happiness is your own, and your misery is your own.”

I took a deep, deep breath.

My Lady nodded Her encouragement.

“I call upon Hekate, the Dark Goddess, to release you from any downfall that I wished upon you, Ben and Victor Fisher. In the name of the Queen of the Night, I free you. In the name of the Goddess of the Crossroads, I free you. In the name of Her, my own namesake, I lift my curse and remove my will over your destinies.

“So mote it be!”

Hekate swept a cloaked arm outward, and I swear that thunder shook the earth around us. Mist and shadow swirled around me, faster and faster. As if from a distance, I saw Hekate turn and make Her slow way down the tunnel, Her dogs loping ahead—and Diana holding Her elbow.

My sister looked over her shoulder, one last time, with an encouraging smile. I almost called out to her, but I stopped myself. It was past time for her to go, wasn’t it?

And it wasn’t like she’d ever be completely gone.

A final reminder floated back toward me from the darkness. “I am only as strong as my children,” the Goddess chided. “I need your strength….”

And then I was kneeling beside Ben and the stone bench, the jug still in my hands.

“—don’t even know what’s in there!” he exclaimed, as if I’d only just drunk from the grail. “It could be a ritual poison, for all you know, or something that’s turned toxic over the centuries.”

“It’s water,” I reassured him, warmed by his concern. “Don’t—”

But maybe he had reason to worry.

“Ben!” I screamed.

Just as Victor emerged from the shadows and drove a knife, two-handed, into Ben’s back.

A
n ungodly cry ripped from Ben’s throat as he arched impossibly back, pinned on his brother’s blade—the same kind of knife that had killed their parents.

So much for shoelaces.

“Thanks for lifting the curse,” said Victor, grinning, with a freakish giggle. How he could know I had was the least of my concerns.

I jumped to my feet beside him, my right hand—my projective hand—thrust into the space between me, Ben and Victor. The power of this place, of the grail, of the ages and of Hekate Herself ripped through me—and out of me, straight at him.

“I bind you, Victor Fisher!”

His glee faltered as he realized that there were other kinds of magic than curses—and that binding spells don’t carry anywhere near the karmic backlash.

Ben had slumped sideways, seeming to fight the hurt that moaned from his throat. His dark eyes, glazed with pain, held me, but he didn’t protest.

He’d chosen, hadn’t he? Me over his brother.

But at what cost?

“Harm no one else,” I continued, grasping at the repetition, the desperation that had made my curse such a doozy. “I bind you, Victor Fisher! Work no more evil!”

He shook his head.
“No!”

Ben was dragging himself slowly up the rock wall to his feet, despite the knife still protruding from his back. Victor had to be stopped. So I spread my fingers, lifted my face and shouted:

“In the name of Hekate, the Dark Goddess, and in the memory of my dead sister,
I! Bind! You!
”

The magic shuddered through me, rippled through the cave, popped my ears. And then, with a cutting look to show Victor just how helpless he was now, I turned to Ben.

That Ben was conscious was a good sign, though lying down would be safer. Minimal blood stained his dirty, pale shirt, so if the knife had pierced anything vital, it was putting pressure on the laceration. That was why we should leave it in him, despite the ick factor, until we got him to a hospital.

True, Victor stood between us and the way out. But that wouldn’t last long.

Ben’s breathing sounded shaky from pain, but not labored. The hand he stretched outward in protest when Victor lunged at us trembled uselessly.

I didn’t move an inch, like in a game of chicken. “You can’t hurt us.”

I believed it.

But instead of us, Victor grabbed the ceramic jar at my feet.
The Hekate Grail.

For a moment, my certainty faltered. Hadn’t the spell worked, even in this sacred cave? After all this,
would Victor destroy the goddess grail?

But instead of harming it, he lifted it over his head, tipped it back—and put its spout to his lips.

“No!” I screamed, horrified by his blasphemy.

Then I remembered what Diana had told me.
Trust Her….

So instead of trying to wrestle the jar away from Victor, I spread my hands and took a step back.

Let anything that comes to you be of your own making.
There is a serious, serious difference, karma-wise, between hurting someone—and simply watching while they hurt themselves.

“Vic,” gasped Ben, his teeth clenched, his neck strained in agony. He stood hunched from a pain he couldn’t escape, his eyes bottomless with fury and betrayal.
“No….”

At first, Victor’s expression was one of complete bliss. He closed his eyes. I could practically
see
the power sliding through him with each gulp. It flushed his skin, straightened his spine. He made me think of a patient after a morphine shot.

Was that how I’d looked?

Then Victor’s eyes opened wide—and he began to tremble.

It started subtly, like the chills of mild hypothermia, but graduated into full-body shudders. In moments, he was convulsing. His complexion took on a bluish, waxy look. His lips and eyes began to swell. His breath began to wheeze in his throat, in his chest.

Anaphylactic shock, maybe. Or maybe just the power of one pissed-off Goddess.

Then Victor’s screams started—insane, unbalanced screams. Pissed-off goddess, it is.

“Can you…” moaned Ben, under Victor’s wails. He didn’t finish the request, but I knew what he wanted. Despite the fact that his brother had murdered Diana and literally stabbed him in the back, Ben wanted me to
help
the bastard?

I guess that’s what made Ben one of the good guys.

And, honestly, what made me
not.

Because when Victor dropped the grail, I dove for
that,
not for him. The round jar plummeted for the stone floor. I dropped with it, slid across the rock, stretched both hands in front of me—

And I caught it.

I caught it, and I cradled it in my arms, while Victor—still screaming—took off for the entrance to the cave.

Ben staggered after him.

“Ben!” Now I ran after him, grail in hand. “Stop!”

I caught up to him fast enough. But when I tried to slow him, with a hand to his arm, Ben wrenched free of my touch—and cried out from the movement. The knife, protruding from the back of his shoulder, was its own kind of blasphemy.

“He’s dangerous,” I protested. “And you’re hurt!”

Ben stumbled on. His second guess earlier, that the moon had to reach a certain height in the sky, must have been the right one. Sheets of silver moonlight, filtered with the shadow of leaves, lit our way back toward the boat.

“He’s…dying,” Ben gasped. I didn’t bother to ask how he could know that.
Twins.

Instead, I got in front of him to argue. “He did it to himself!”

Bent almost double now, Ben glared, then tried to go around me. He didn’t have the balance to make it. He stopped, panting through what had to be excruciating pain, and strained his face upward to meet my gaze with his own.

“He’s my brother, and
he needs help.
Oh, God.”

He said that last part because ahead, the screaming stopped in an echoing splash.

Ben staggered in that direction, bumping into me as he went, moaning when he did, and kept going. I knew he would go in after Victor. It didn’t matter that Ben wasn’t moving one arm, that he would probably drown, himself.

The watery tunnel that had brought us in from the lake must have been a dangerous enough swim for someone who was sane. Or at least sane-ish.

No way could Victor make it back out like this.

Damn, damn, damn! “You stay here,” I ordered him, running past. “And for heaven’s sake, sit down! Watch the grail. I’ll get him.”

I put down the precious Hekate jar. And, my steps turning into strides, then a full-out run, I passed the rowboat we’d pulled from the lake water—and I dove into the basin of the submerged tunnel.

The echo vanished under the surface of the cold water. I pushed water behind me with both hands, glad I no longer wore the cast, and kicked my feet. And I squinted through the murkiness, trying to see something, anything, in the dark.

Half spells rhymed through my head.
By the power of the night, help me save a life tonight.

And,
I will find him, I will save him, from the madness Goddess gave him.

I had to surface then, gasping for breath, walled in by narrowing cave walls and sheets of moonlight. “Victor!” I called, treading water.

My voice, and the splish of water, echoed back at me. No screams. No struggles. Nothing.

I reached upward and hit my hand against the ceiling. Again, I had the illusion of the rock closing in on me.

“Ben!” I called. But would I really tell him I’d failed?

Still nothing.

Damn!

I dove again, deeper this time—but I stopped with the rhymes. For magic to work takes knowing, and daring, and silence. But it also takes will.

No way was my heart in this enough to accomplish it with a spell.

For Ben, I had to do it the old-fashioned way. By flailing through the water.

I surfaced, gasped more air. “Ben! I can’t find him!”

Nothing. For all I knew, Ben had gone into shock—or worse. He needed medical intervention. I was wasting time on my sister’s murderer.

But I’d promised. So damn it to hell, I dove again.

And again.

Until my hand hit a warm, limp body.

Thank goodness the water was no more than eight feet deep, here. Victor’s body was heavy, unwieldy. I had to push hard off of the submerged tunnel floor to get us both to the surface, scissoring my legs with all my strength. We emerged into a patch of darkness under the heavy rock overhang, his curly, wet head slumped forward in the water, deathly still.

And for a second, just a microsecond, I thought—
I could leave him.

Diana had always said, better to smack someone across the face than to work a spell against them. By that logic, better to leave a psychopathic killer to drown than to magic him to death—with my magic, anyway. Hekate’s vengeance was her own.

I thought it, and for that microsecond, I was tempted. So maybe I’d never be a good guy.

But I knew I couldn’t be a bad guy anymore, either.

As a nurse, I knew mouth-to-mouth and CPR. And after Red Cross lifesaving courses, I knew how to breathe for someone while swimming them to safety. So I wrestled his face out of the water, despite continuously sinking myself, despite swallowing water. I turned him so that he would float on his back—

And the knife hilt in his shoulder bumped my arm.

Ben!

Idiot.
Idiot!
He’d gone in after his brother anyway.

The collision of possible realities nearly deafened me, sickened me, panicked me. I’d almost let him die. If I’d chosen the dark path at this crossroads,
I would have let Ben die!

But there was no time to dwell on that, because I still had no guarantee he’d live. So I snapped into my lifesaving training. I tipped his head back while treading water. I took a deep, deep breath, then covered his lips and breathed into his mouth. Twice.

Then I swam for shore like all the hounds of hell were after me. It seemed to take so long, too horribly long….

Then I remembered that I wasn’t exactly helpless.

“By the power of the night,” I whispered weakly, between gasps for air. “Let me save a life tonight.”

And this time, I willed it with everything I had. Here in the Sibyl’s Cave, that was a whole freaking lot of power.

Ben began to choke on lake water, alive, alive, alive.

Ben had breathed so much lake that coughs racked him. He vomited water, despite his need to hold still against the knife. I tore his new shirt into strips to stabilize the weapon, then somehow managed to half drag him into the rowboat.

“Wait…” he moaned.

“Shut up,” I said, and this time I meant it. Then I realized that I had to push the boat—now weighed down with him—back into the water. Oh, hell. I met his dark told-you-so gaze, then simply did it. With a lot of pushing, a lot of straining, a lot of scraping and a whole lot of praying.

Lady, help me. Help me. Help me….

Finally, the boat floated. I climbed in. But we were facing the wrong direction, and I couldn’t make the oars work right.

“You need to…” Ben, who was half lying and half sitting on the bottom, propping himself with the elbow of his good arm on the seat, tried to extend the hand on his hurt side to point out the oarlock thingie—and passed out, just like that.

This time, need meant
need.

Somehow, I got the oars in place. Somehow, with much splashing and cursing and bumping against the tunnel walls, I got the damned boat turned around—but at least I knew why the oarlocks were there, because twice I fumbled an oar, and they kept it from falling into the water. I’d barely managed any speed before the tunnel ceiling descended onto us, so I had to pull us along, finding crevices and handholds in the rock ceiling. I’d done so much magic in the last hour, even that seemed to fail me. So it fell to the prayer.
Help me. Help me….

Every straining inch of the way. Afraid that at any moment, Victor would rear out of the water and finish his job.

Afraid Ben would die…and it would be my fault for bringing him here in the first place.

What seemed like forever later, sweating and exhausted, I heard the sound of waves lapping against rock. I managed to pull us free of the overhang and sit up. I rowed us farther into the water, just in case Victor lurked out there to leap on top of us—I would believe he’d drowned when I saw the body—but then I stopped to check Ben’s vitals. “Ben, please!”

“Still here,” he muttered. His pulse wasn’t great, but I didn’t expect more. If he was talking, he was breathing. So I gave his cheek a teary kiss, sank back onto my seat in the prow of the boat and put my back into rowing us to the closest shore.

It still took me too damned long, especially compared to how easy he’d made it look. I could barely row a straight line. My strokes were shorter. My back ached, and my arms trembled from exhaustion. I looked up at the moon. Without the breath to speak, I thought,
If you let him die…

But She was only as strong as Her children.

So somehow, I gathered the last threads of energy I could, siphoning them out of the lake, stealing them out of the moon. “By the power,” I gasped, still rowing. “Of the night. Help me…save this life—”

The searchlight hit us then. A man’s voice blared at us through a megaphone, commanding something, but he spoke Italian.
“Poliziotti,”
he said. I only stopped rowing long enough to scream, “Someone’s hurt! He needs help!
Aiutilo!
”

Then I started rowing again, or whatever you’d call my poor excuse for it, aiming roughly for the shore. There were more shouts in that direction, and then—

Then, with a splash, a figure reared out of the water!

If I could have gotten the oar out of its lock, I would have clubbed him. Luckily, I couldn’t. Not just yet.

“Sit tight,” advised an unusually deep, pretentious voice. Then he began to swim, pushing the boat toward the shore. “And don’t,” he gasped, “hit me.”

“Hi, Al,” Ben managed.

“I left my equipment…on shore,” Al complained. “If someone…steals it…”