The Year of the Witching(67)

Wrath.

After all, it was he who put Leah on that pyre. If he hadn’t lusted for her when she was so young—just a girl doing her penance in the Haven—if he hadn’t allowed himself to cow to his own sick depravity, then she would have never fallen pregnant before her cutting. Nor would she have been forced to keep such a horrible secret. If the Prophet hadn’t been trying to cover for his own sin, they would have sought Martha’s aid far earlier, and if they had done that, then maybe, just maybe, Leah would be alive today. But instead, he let her bleed, let her suffer for his sin. But the blame didn’t end with him.

No.

This was the great shame of Bethel: complacency and complicity that were responsible for the deaths of generations of girls. It was the sickness that placed the pride of men before the innocents they were sworn to protect. It was a structure that exploited the weakest among them for the benefit of those born to power.

It made Immanuelle want to scream. Made her want to fall to her knees and carve the dirt with sigils and curses and the promise of plagues. It made her want to tear the cathedral apart, brick by brick. Burn the chapels and the Haven, the great manors of the apostles, set the pastures and farms alight. Her rage was such that she felt it would never be sated unless Bethel was brought to its knees. And that frightened her.

Immanuelle walked, adopting the pace of the other mourners who circled the outskirts of the fire. Ezra didn’t offer his condolences as he fell into step beside her. He didn’t say anything at all, and for a little while they just walked in silence, shoulder to shoulder, stalling every few moments to watch the flames. Immanuelle was aware of the gazes that followed them as they went. Martha tracked them from across the pyre. A few paces from her, the Prophet and his brood of apostles stood watching.

Let them talk, Immanuelle thought to herself. In the end, it wouldn’t make a difference, and she was certain that the end was coming quickly. Her attempts to break the curse had failed. Her prayers to the Father went unanswered. They had nothing now; there was no one to save them, and no way to keep the coming plagues at bay. Soon darkness would be upon them, and after darkness—slaughter. And sometimes she thought, in light of everything—the lies, the secrets, the killings, the sin—slaughter was exactly what they deserved.

But that was just her anger speaking. That was just the grief.

Bethel didn’t deserve this, any more than she deserved to be a vessel of these plagues. There were still innocents living within its borders—Glory, Honor, the people of the Outskirts, men and women who had no choice in their fate. It was for them that Immanuelle had to find an answer to these plagues, a way to stop them. And she’d spent the days after Leah’s death searching for just that, knowing that if she failed, Bethel would pay a steep price.

What she needed was someone to turn to, an authority on the dark craft and the ways of the witches. Someone who understood the Darkwood and the secret to containing its power. A person who knew what Miriam had done and had an idea of how to break the curse she cast all those years ago. She needed a witch or, at the very least, an informant who walked a similar path. And the way Immanuelle saw it, there was but one person left to turn to: her grandmother Vera Ward.

She was the true tie between Miriam and the powers of the dark. The same sigils scrawled into the pages of her mother’s journal and the walls of the cabin in the woods were carved into the foundation stones of Vera’s house. It was plain to Immanuelle, given the path on the cusp of the Ward land, that it was Vera who first led Miriam to the cabin for sanctuary. Vera who saw her through the winter. And, perhaps, it was Vera who first introduced Miriam to the power of the plagues. After all, where else would the wayward daughter of an apostle have stumbled upon such evil? How would she have discovered the ways of witches if not through Vera, a known witch herself?

That was why Immanuelle needed to find her grandmother, to discover if she knew how to stop the plagues that she’d been complicit in creating. Because if anyone knew what Miriam had done in the woods all those years ago, or how to stop it, Immanuelle knew it must be her.

But to find Vera before the next plague struck, she would need to leave Bethel and do it soon. A small part of her wondered whether her departure was for the best. Maybe if she left, the horrors of the plagues would leave with her and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be. Bethel would be saved.

But something told her that Lilith, in all her power and years of wisdom, would not be foiled so easily. The plagues were intended to destroy Bethel, and a jaunt through the Hallowed Gate wouldn’t be enough to end them. She would have to find another way.

Across the fire, the Prophet parted from the throng of his apostles and began to walk alone, wading through the crowds. But his gaze wasn’t on the flames.

It was on Immanuelle.

The day of her confession, the Prophet warned her that the Father was always watching, but it seemed that He wasn’t the only one. Whenever she was near, the Prophet’s gaze fell to her. At the cathedral, it followed her through the pews. During his Sabbath sermons, she’d often feel as if he was preaching only to her. Even when she was in the privacy of her bedroom, when the night was dark and the house was quiet, his presence seemed to haunt her.

Immanuelle walked a little faster, dropping her voice to a whisper. “How is Leah’s baby? I haven’t heard any word of her since the night she was born.”

“She’s alive,” Ezra murmured, as if that was the most that could be said for her.