The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(85)

What kind of monster did something like this?

She reached the first clothed body. A boy who looked to be about five years old. Probably the one Lucian had told her about. Dread sank into her as she moved on, shivering as the gate came fully into view.

It was a narrow thing made of iron. No wider than her own front door, and wedged between two massive oaks, their bark entirely covered by black moss. The lock was a metallic rope woven in and out of the bars—she could see a strand of silver, a strand of gold, and a strand of rose lead, which was smart. A good way to bind the potion. The triple strength of the metals combined with the other ingredients would make it harder to break.

But someone must think it could be broken. Someone must believe they could free the wraith, and that the monster would be grateful enough for the many sacrifices brought to this gate that it would do its releaser’s bidding.

Kellan joined her, and they stepped closer, their harsh breathing the only sound.

Blue stared at the bodies that lay just in front of the gate. One was a young boy with a thatch of curly black hair not much different than Kellan’s. One was a slender girl with long brown hair and pale skin.

Ana.

Blue’s heart broke, and the last shred of hope she’d been desperately clinging to dissolved. She fell to her knees beside Ana’s body and carefully smoothed the girl’s hair away from her face.

“Her arms,” Kellan breathed, and Blue looked down.

Ana’s arms had been torn open, two perfect circles with jagged edges. Blood stained her arms, though the rest of her skin was incredibly pale.

“She was drained,” Kellan said. Neither one of them needed help remembering the stories. The wraith had once been a witch who longed for more power than she had, and so she’d begun drinking the blood of innocents, taking their lives, their energy for her own. It had increased her power, but it had also turned her from fully human into a wraith who needed blood to survive.

The stories said the mark of the wraith was a circle with jagged edges—teeth marks. The blood would be drained from the body, leaving the skin gray and translucent. Any doubt that the blood wraith was killing again, and indeed from the look of some of these bones had been killing for the past sixteen years of its imprisonment, was gone.

“They should have just killed the wraith,” Blue said, anger warming her voice. “Destroyed it like the monster it is, and then this would never have happened.”

“I think they tried,” Kellan said. “But it was too powerful. The best they could do was contain it.”

Blue straightened Ana, holding her nose when a wave of sickly sweet decay hit her.

“Leave her be, Blue. We know the truth now. We should go.”

“It’s disrespectful.” Blue swallowed past the tears, the anger. “Leaving her like this. She should at least look like she’s at peace, instead of being discarded like she was nothing.”

She tried to fix Ana’s dress, to have it lie over her body gracefully like it would had she been given a proper burial. Something pricked Blue’s finger, and she drew back, shaking her hand as blood welled.

“All right. It’s all right.” Kellan sank to the ground beside her. “I’ll help.”

He gently combed Ana’s hair to lie neatly around her and then worked on smoothing her dress. Blue watched Ana’s face, a strange buzzing gathering in her blood and heading toward her hands.

She turned her head and stared at the gaping maw of the Wilds. At the gate and the threads of metal that held it closed.

A shadow detached itself from the darkness behind a clump of vines, and the buzzing within Blue became a scream of pain and power as a shimmering, smokelike human shape undulated closer. The dark pits where its eyes would have been were fixed on Blue.

The bells on the road behind them rustled gently, a soft melody that sounded like wind chimes. The wraith moved closer, and the bells rang faster, their clappers striking their iron sides with relentless fury. A wild, discordant song swirled into the air, filling Blue’s senses with rage and longing as she locked eyes with the wraith.

She needed to touch the monster. To press her skin to the gate and reach through it. The need was a craving—a powerful ache rising from some dark, unfathomable place within her—and it would not be denied. The monster would know pain then. It would know punishment for its heinous crimes. All she had to do was touch it. Her magic, usually an ember in her palm, was liquid fire in her veins. If she could just wrap her magic around the wraith, she could destroy the monster. She was sure of it.

“Blue, no!”

Kellan slammed into her, knocking her to the ground and wrapping himself around her. She blinked and stared around her in confusion.

When had she stood to her feet? Why had her hand been a breath away from the lock at the gate? She didn’t realize she’d actually been reaching for it.

The wraith opened its mouth and wailed, a scream of fury and anguish that scraped the air like a sword, blending with the bells, a storm of anguished rage trapped in its prison.

Kellan pulled back, his eyes wild. “What were you doing?”

“I don’t know!” She looked over his shoulder as the wraith rushed for the gate, its wail shaking the ground beneath her. “I don’t even remember standing up and moving toward the gate.”

“We’re leaving.” Kellan rolled them away from the gate and then climbed to his feet, keeping her hand securely in his.