Page 35 of Brave Spirit (Bound Spirit #6)

Callie

P arking outside a cabin that appears to have been long abandoned, I have a stray thought that if this were a horror movie, this would be the moment when I’d be yelling at the dumb blonde not to go inside.

My father is many things, but the bastard isn’t stupid.

Based on all the research we took from his personal library before I burnt it to the ground, I know he at least has a basic understanding of what I’m capable of.

He knows what I am, and he’ll have planned for it.

I turn off the engine and stare at the cabin illuminated by my car’s headlights.

Sensing my fear and anxiety, my magic surges through me, and I practice my breathing exercises as I redirect it into my arcane focus.

I grip the stone hanging around my neck, the magic inside warm and almost pulsing against my palm.

It’s as if it remembers what it had to do to keep me alive, and it’s both angry and scared that it no longer has free rein to protect me. I’m now the one in control—mostly.

“Why are we just sitting here?” Neva complains, gripping the door handle. “My daughter and your boyfriend are inside with your lunatic father. You need to save them.”

Gritting my teeth, I close my eyes and do another round of breathing exercises that my nan taught me.

I can’t go in full warrior witch mode, as the guys like to call it.

Letting that side take control can lead to devastating consequences.

I need to be the one in control so I can think beyond rage and justice to outsmart the bastard.

There’s also a part of me that wants to be fully in control when I take my father’s life.

It won’t be the avatar of the goddess who enacts the justice he rightfully deserves for all he’s done to me.

It will be me, the daughter he abused for years, who stands up against him. I’m not powerless anymore.

Releasing a deep breath, I open my eyes and release my necklace.

My heart thunders in my chest as apprehension eats away at me, but this is as in control as I’m going to get.

Also, the bastard wouldn’t miss the sound of a car approaching in the complete silence that seems to encompass the small clearing in the dense forest. It’s as if even the nocturnal wildlife knows to avoid the pure evil that hides inside.

Better not keep the bastard waiting.

When I get out of the car, Neva mutters, “Finally,” under her breath, and quickly exits to lead me inside the doomed cabin.

Neva is the least of my concerns, so I don’t bother replying.

With each step, time feels like a strange dichotomy of moving too fast while also seeming to be an endless second.

It’s the moment before my life will change forever.

I’ve thought of facing my father countless times, what I would say, what I would do, and how he would finally pay for every one of his sick, abusive experiments to break the binding spell on my magic.

Now it’s time to face him, and it’s nothing how I imagined. I wanted him to feel all the terror he inflicted on me, but now other lives hang in the balance. Before I can do anything, I have to save Felix and Gina—I’m getting really tired of saving her life.

As soon as I enter the cabin, Neva’s neck twists in a quick jerk, followed by a sharp pop, and she collapses to the floor like a marionette with cut strings. Without preamble, or a single word, the former coven leader joins the ranks of the dead.

Involuntarily, I flinch over the sound of breaking bones—the memories of my own torture too close to the surface.

Thrown off guard, I stare at her lifeless corpse.

I never liked the woman, but for some reason, the unceremonious way she died rocks my confidence.

I didn’t even get the chance to attempt to save her.

“Don’t bother trying to bring her back. I’ll just break her neck again,” the voice that haunts my nightmares states matter-of-factly.

Bile climbs up my throat, and my body begins to shake as I fight against sinking into the abyss of my past. With a wavering voice, I respond, “Your magic is supposed to be bound.”

“I don’t need mine when I have access to yours,” he explains, like a professor dealing with a particularly dense student.

My gaze snaps to him, and it’s a struggle to not throw up as my fears give way to terror. I wish I could say that my memories made him grander than reality, but he looks exactly as I remember.

With the veneer of his charm stripped away, his demeanor is calm, calculating, and in control. He’s dressed in an expensive, well-tailored suit, and his dark brown hair is gelled perfectly in place. Around his neck hangs a stone the same size and unearthly blue as my own.

What keeps me frozen in place is a familiar knife that he holds to Felix’s throat—a knife already edged in blood.

Felix, stripped down to his dress slacks, breathes in shallow pants. His green eyes are bright with tears and filled with apology as if it was a failing on his part to get kidnapped in the first place.

“Now, daughter,” the bastard begins after giving me a moment to fully grasp the stakes at hand, “do exactly as I say, and your boyfriend will live. Defy me in any way—” He drags the knife’s edge across Felix’s bare chest in a shallow cut.

Vibrant crimson beads bloom along the knife’s path and slowly drip down Felix’s torso. “The next cut won’t be as shallow.”

“You bastard,” I shriek, my control slipping as a wince of pain flashes across Felix’s face.

More magic pours into me, the ancient power of the goddess sizzling through my veins, beckoning me to succumb to it.

Sudden wind begins to howl outside, slamming into the weathered walls of the cabin and shaking its very foundation.

A storm brews overhead, and heavy thumps of rain are accompanied by flashes of lightning and the quick boom of thunder.

“Careful, daughter,” the bastard warns without a hint of fear.

“Lose control, and you’ll only hurt yourself.

The Lyncas arcane focus protects me from any magic you attempt to wield against me, and this knife is enchanted with your blood.

No modern medicine can heal these cuts. Only magic, and only I know the spell. ”

“Callie, don’t listen to him!” Felix shouts, struggling within my father’s grasp. “I’ve always been on borrowed time. Don’t save me. Kill him!”

The first sign of frustration burns in my father’s clear gray eyes, and he stabs Felix in the shoulder. “Silence! There are worse things than death, and I know them all. Speak again, human, and I’ll bleed you slowly until you beg for death.”

Felix screams in pain, tears dripping down his face as the knife is ripped out of his shoulder and returned to his neck. Streams of blood pour from the wound, and his skin starts growing alarmingly pale.

“Stop, please,” I beg, shaking uncontrollably as I watch the life start to drain from Felix. “Please, let me heal him, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“No,” the bastard answers, clutching Felix in a tight grip. “You perform better with motivation. Now, I suggest you stop interrupting me if you want to save your human before he bleeds out.”

When I nod meekly, his demeanor returns to one of cold confidence.

“It’s quite simple. I’ve protected my dear Helina’s spirit since she was tragically stolen from me inside the Lyncas arcane focus.

Fortunately, even as a toddler, you had enough magic in your blood to activate it. We will trade a life for a life.”

He lifts his chin to gesture to the open room left of us. Too focused on immediate events, I hadn’t observed our surroundings beyond the entryway. My stomach sinks when my gaze follows the lines of the half rotten wood floor to what was once likely a cozy living room.

Old furniture is shoved to the edges of the room, and in its center lies Gina’s cold, dead body.

Surrounding her are ashes poured in intricate, arcane symbols and the flickering light of blood-red candles.

Not even her spirit remains, demanding answers for her untimely demise.

From all the ceremony, I know what he’s going to ask me to do before he says it.

However, based on the gray hue of her skin, the rigidness of her body, and the complete lack of magic within her, I know Gina’s body is too far gone to heal.

Neva is fresh enough, but do I want to admit that?

My nan’s voice whispers in my mind, reminding me why the dead need to stay dead.

Putting a soul in another’s body would steal their life and the rights of the living to mourn them.

The bastard starts to explain how to extract my mother’s soul from the Lyncas stone fully intact.

It’s a complex spell of visualization and verbal components, but his voice fades into the background as I watch Neva’s soul rise from her body.

Her confusion is only momentary, her eyes shifting around the room until they land on her daughter’s stiff body.

She screams and runs toward Gina, half falling through the raised floorboards.

Dropping to her knees, she begs the goddess to bring her daughter back, while her ghostly fingers go through Gina’s arm.

Neva’s face has the familiar strain of emotions that no longer has a living body to express them.

Her mouth stretches wide as wailing grief pours out of her, but she no longer has tear ducts to cry with, nor a body to hold her dead daughter in her arms.

I give her my tears, my heart breaking for the tragic scene before me. Neva and Gina were cruel and selfish, but Gina was barely eighteen, she had a lifetime ahead to change, and Neva loved her daughter fiercely. Now, two more lives are lost because my father refuses to let go.

My father stops mid-monologue of how everything will be better once my mother is back to give me an incredulous stare. “You can’t possibly be grieving that obnoxious twit. She was barely a witch and had great disdain for you.”