Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(4)

“Don’t tell me you’re grossed out,” Remy said.

“No,” I said, perhaps a little too defensively. “So, what do you plan on doing with this thing?”

“We are going to wake it up.” Remy cracked his knuckles. “You’ve been a good student; you’ve already learned more than I thought you would.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing until I was told what it was.”

“Maybe not, but your soul did. Your soul was telling you what to do, guiding your hands and mind. Like when you gave your blood to those snakes and made them grow. That was the kind of blood magick only learned practitioners use.”

“Because I’m a high magician.”

“Exactly. Now, imagine what you could do with some serious training—some serious discipline.” He clasped his hands together and smiled. “But I think your training has been going along well, and now it’s time to graduate you. So, we’re going to bring this cat back from the jaws of death.”

I turned my eyes on the cat again, then frowned. “How?”

Remy took a deep breath and circled around the cat, and around me. “What is blood magick?” he asked.

“It’s about using your own energy to empower your magick.”

“Yes, but it’s so much more than that.”

A question had risen into my throat. I had to swallow it down to prevent it from manifesting. Asking Remy how it was he maintained his pseudo-immortality probably wasn’t going to be part of his lesson plan for the day, but maybe he was leading up to it? If he was, I wasn’t about to spoil it by asking a question out of turn.

“So, you’re telling me you can bring this cat back from the dead,” I said.

“I can,” he said, “But what I want to find out today is if you can, using high magick instead of a recited incantation with several witches, which is how this sort of thing is usually done.”

“What… by thinking it?”

He came full circle and stood in front of me again. “Yes, and by adding a little blood to the mix.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This seems dangerous.”

“Blood magick is just as much about the blood itself as it is about intent. If you hesitate, if you aren’t sure, the magick won’t work.”

I stared at the cat again. “What would we have to do?”

“Just do what you would usually do, and try to bring this cat back from the jaws of oblivion… before it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“Wait too long and the spirit departs.”

I nodded and knelt to retrieve my knife from its ankle sheath. I gripped the handle tightly in my hand and drew the knife up, but kept my knee against the floor. I stared at the cat’s cold, rigid body and pressed my lips into a tight line. Slowly, I lined the edge of the knife up with the palm of my left hand.

What I was about to do shouldn’t have been natural. Magick itself was the most natural thing in the world—in the universe. Its power was limitless, assuming you knew how to wield it. You could do anything. But just because you could didn’t mean you should. Binding people against their will, killing people outright with magick, and reversing death’s decision, were the kinds of acts that would take a witch down a dark path.

What made me draw the knife along my palm and split the flesh was Remy himself. He had lived over two hundred years, had cheated death time and again with magick, and he was still here. No angry God had come to strike him down, no great curse had come over him. Maybe he was privy to some secret I didn’t yet know.

I hoped that was the case.

Drop after drop of crimson blood fell upon the carcass, sinking into its dull fur. I shut my eyes and imagined the cat starting to twitch as its heart began to beat once more. I felt its blood beginning to warm and could almost hear it slowly oozing through dead veins and arteries, gradually moving faster and faster. A strong wind slammed against the ballroom’s windows, stealing my attention and making my eyes snap open.

Through the glass panels in the door itself, I saw waves of dark leaves relentlessly strike, one after the other, causing the door to rattle on its hinges. Something about this wasn’t right. It was as if the wind itself were objecting to what I was about to do, howling for me to stop, go no further. My heart started to pound with a kind of ferociousness I hadn’t known was even possible.

“Madison,” Remy said, and I turned my eyes upon the cat… but it wasn’t there.

“What the hell!” I yelled. “Where is it?”

“I’ll find it.”

I scanned the room and caught Remy moving around in my periphery while the wind continued to batter against the door. “I shouldn’t have done this,” I said. “I shouldn’t have tried to do it!”

“Madison, here,” Remy said.

When I saw him, he was standing close to the small stack of paint buckets by the exterior door that the wind was hitting from the outside. A low, growling sound came from behind the paint cans. I almost didn’t dare approach, but I was too curious not to. Stupid, sure, but mostly curious. I had brought this creature back from the dead. I wanted to see what it looked like, what it sounded like, and more importantly, what it wanted.

But Remy put his hand up, gesturing for me to stop. “Wait,” he said, and he knelt. He extended his other hand out to the stack of painting equipment and began rubbing his index finger and thumb together. “Here kitty,” he said, “No one’s going to hurt you.”