The Year of the Witching(26)

“She left for the Holy Grounds with Mother for a birthing,” said Glory, stumbling over the words. “Apostle Isaac’s sixth wife went into—”

“What of Abram? Where is he?”

“I-in his workshop.”

“Fetch him,” she said, and when the girl didn’t move, she gave her a little shove in the right direction. “Now!”

Ezra stepped forward then, frowning down at her. “Are you all right?”

Immanuelle nodded, tried to answer him, but trailed off into silence as she stared down at her bloodstained hand. She felt that pull again, the phantom force that had dragged her from her body mere moments before—not at all unlike the lure of the woods. “I’m . . .”

Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood.

Blood.

“Immanuelle—”

“Thank you for the book.” With that, Immanuelle turned and broke toward the farmhouse, cutting through the pastures in a full run. It was empty, as Glory had said it would be, and Immanuelle rushed through the parlor and bounded upstairs to her bedroom. At the foot of her bed, she dropped to her knees, slipped a hand beneath her mattress, and withdrew the journal. She opened it there on the floor, smearing the pages with blood as she tore past them to the final entry: Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter. Blood—

Blood.

Of course.

Shock turned to dread, and dread turned to horror as Immanuelle read the words, realizing their significance for the first time. The journal. The list. The drawings of the forest and their witches. Miriam’s words weren’t the ramblings of a madwoman. They were warnings of what was yet to come.

Four warnings. Four witches. Four plagues, and the first had come upon them.

“Immanuelle, what the—” Ezra stepped into her bedroom, dropped to a crouch at her side. His gaze went from her to the journal lying open in her lap. “What’s that?”

Immanuelle snapped the journal shut, tossed it back into her hope chest, and closed it. She turned to offer Ezra some passing excuse, but the sound of church bells cut her short. Twelve tolls in quick succession, a pause, and then more bells ringing across Bethel as others took up the alarm call. And so, the first of the plagues began.





CHAPTER TEN





Love is an act of loyalty.

—THE HOLY SCRIPTURES





IMMANUELLE SAT ON the mule cart alongside Martha, staring out across the dying plains as they rolled down the main road toward the Holy Grounds. The air was thick with the stench of gore, and the drone of blood-fat mosquitoes was so loud it almost drowned the sound of the cart’s wheels rattling.

In the ancient times—when the daughters of the Dark Mother had waged war against the Father’s flock—there had been battles on the plains. Immanuelle recalled the stories her teachers told at school, tales of wounded men and blood-soaked battlefields that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Immanuelle thought of those stories as they rode toward the cathedral, crossing through the dying farmsteads of the Glades and past miles of gore-blackened cornfields. In the weeks since the blood plague had struck, the tainted waters had seeped into the soil, infecting the earth and killing the crops.

The whole world had gone red and rotten.

Immanuelle’s throat ached. She hadn’t had a sip to drink since sunup. The Moore household rationed water now—everyone did—but still, there wasn’t enough to go around. Clean water could not be found anywhere within Bethel’s borders, and rumor had it that the Church’s stores were all but depleted.

To Immanuelle’s surprise, Martha tugged at the reins, steering the mule toward the Outskirts, a sprawling shanty village that cowered in the shadow of the southern wood. Most Bethelans avoided the Outskirts, for fear of the sinners who dwelled there in shame and squalor.

“Blood flooding in the Holy Grounds,” said Martha, to explain why she’d decided to take the long way to the cathedral. “The roads there are impassable.”

The cart pulled past a series of shacks so bowed and decrepit they looked as if they were one good gust away from collapsing into a heap of sticks. As they drew toward the center of the village, Immanuelle spotted the small, dilapidated church where those in the Outskirts gathered to worship on the Sabbath when the rest of Bethel assembled at the cathedral. The building had a short, crooked steeple and a single stained-glass window that depicted a woman in a black veil, who Immanuelle assumed was a saint or angel, though she wore no diadem. It wasn’t until the cart drew nearer that she recognized the woman for who she was: the Dark Mother.

In the frescoes painted across the cathedral’s vaulted ceilings, the Goddess was always depicted as a wretch, all twisted limbs and clawed fingers, lips smeared with the blood of crusaders she’d devoured in battle. But in this portrait, the Dark Mother looked beautiful, even gentle. Her skin was a deep shade of ebony, almost as dark as Her veil, but Her eyes were moon pale and wide. She didn’t look like the damned Goddess of witches and hells. No, in this depiction, She appeared more mortal than monster . . . and somehow, that was worse.

The cart rattled on. A few shirtless boys ran barefoot through the muck of the streets. As Martha and Immanuelle approached, they stopped their games and froze, owl-eyed and silent as the mule cart rumbled past.