The Year of the Witching(23)

Immanuelle reached to them and tried to call out, her voice warbling, lost to the waters.

And then—just as she was surrendering to the darkness—she ascended again, breaking the surface with a gasp. Across the waters of the pond the distant tree line blurred and doubled. The witch was gone. She was alone.

In Bethel, it was a sin to swim. It was not modest or prudent to enter the water, for it was deemed the demons’ domain. But Leah had taught Immanuelle in secret one summer, when they were both young and bold. The two of them had bobbed up and down in the shallows of the stream, plugging their noses and paddling until Immanuelle learned to breathe between strokes.

And it was Leah whom Immanuelle thought of now, as she paddled and kicked, following the glow of her lantern back to the pond’s shore. A deep-moving current pulled at her ankles, and every stroke was a struggle. When she finally made it back to the shallows, she crawled up the bank on her hands and knees and collapsed, retching sludge into the shore.

Her sin had saved her.

As she pressed off her belly, arms shaking, she glimpsed two bare feet stride through the shadows of the underbrush and step into the pale halo of the lamplight. Pushing wet curls from her eyes, she peered up to see a form that was feminine—yet bestial—looming over her.

She—for Immanuelle was certain it was a “she”—had a tall, crude shape. Her legs were long and slender, her arms low-slung, fingertips skimming her knees. And she was naked, so much so that not even a fur of modesty covered her groin. But it was not her nakedness that drew Immanuelle’s eye so much as the deer skull that perched atop her thin, pale neck. A crown of bone.

Her name rose to Immanuelle’s lips like a curse. “Lilith.”

The Beast huffed hard. Steam churned through the cracks of her skull, coiling around her antlers.

Immanuelle squatted low to the mud. Even in her terror, she had the good sense to know a queen when she saw one. She dropped her gaze, her heart pounding so hard within her chest it hurt. And there she lay, prostrate in the muck and shadow, her breath hitching, her tears cutting tracks through the grime and pond sludge on her cheeks.

She was going to die there; she was sure of it. She was going to die like the others who’d been fool enough to cross into the woods at night. She had no faith that she would reach the heavens—not after all of her sins and folly—but she prayed anyway.

The Beast’s feet shifted. Her bare toes clutched the mud as she lowered herself to a crouch. Immanuelle risked a glance upward. That great skull head angled to the side, a motion so human, even girlish, that for a fleeting moment, Immanuelle was reminded of Glory.

The Beast raised a hand that looked only loosely human. With fingers that were long and impossibly thin, she skimmed along the bridge of Immanuelle’s nose, then slipped down to the dip of her cupid’s bow.

Transfixed, Immanuelle searched for Lilith’s eyes, staring into the fearsome skull’s black, empty sockets. But she found nothing within them but steam and swirling shadows.

Her knees went weak beneath her.

Lilith wrapped a giant, cold hand around her wrist and dragged her to her feet. The wind shuddered through the forest, and the trees seemed to bow and tremble in her wake. The waters of the pond churned and surged, and fog flooded the clearing, swirling around her ankles. As the creature raised a hand to tuck a curl behind Immanuelle’s ear, something like a sob broke from her lips.

Then pain pierced through her stomach once more, and Immanuelle doubled over, barely staying on her feet. Again, she begged for salvation—this time out loud—calling to the Father, then to the Mother, and finally to Lilith herself, whatever gods might deign to listen.

But there was no response, nothing. Nothing but the burning pain in her belly.

And as Immanuelle’s knees weakened beneath her, a trail of blood slicked down her leg, threading along the slope of her calf and slipping down to her ankle, where it disappeared into the water pooling at her feet.

All at once, the pond stilled.

The wind calmed, and the trees ceased their thrashing.

Lilith retreated slowly into the shadows, dipping her skull low to avoid catching the branches with her antlers. As she did so, Immanuelle could have sworn she saw something briefly flicker in the blacks of her sockets. And then the witch was gone.



* * *





IMMANUELLE RAN. BUT with every step, every lunge she took through brush and bracken, the pain in her stomach grew sharper, and the darkness grew thicker, and the forest seemed to swallow her up, dragging her back ten feet for every five she sprinted. Overhead, the branches arched into a strange kaleidoscope, moonlight splintering, shadows smearing, stars flickering in the black.

But she ran onward, even as the darkness dragged at her ankles, drawing her back to the forest’s heart. She saw a distant light in the darkness. The dull glow of candle-warmed windows. The Moore farmhouse peered through the gaps between trees.

Pain carved through her belly and a great roaring filled her ears as the shadows rose around her. The last thing Immanuelle saw, before the night swallowed her, was the bright eye of the moon, winking through the trees.





CHAPTER NINE





With the bloodletting comes the power of the heavens and hells. For an iron offering buys atonement, in all of its many forms.

—THE HOLY SCRIPTURES