Page 37 of The Arcane Taste of the Witchwood Boys (The Witchwood Boys #4)

Kate

The following morning, I wake up to blood all over the walls. The air is cold and strange. Fog drifts in through the open windows, and all I can smell is iron and salt. Something is very, very wrong.

I climb out of bed and race down the stairs, slipping in red, and find all three of my men around the kitchen table. They look okay, but the smell of our minty salve is pungent and it’s like… everything is calm, but it feels like the air is screaming.

I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m frantic, looking between them as they all turn to stare at me. Tanner is the first to smile and hold out his arms, but I won’t go to him. Not until they explain to me what happened.

“I attacked you.” It’s not even a question. I’m not asking Tanner. I’m telling him. I’m not asking Brooks. I’m not asking Marlowe. I’m speaking the absolute truth. I tried to eat them. I almost did. Maybe. This is a lot of blood, and the salve jar on the table is empty.

My shadow grabs onto my shoulder with one hand and points past me at the barren cabinets on the walls behind the men.

They have no shadows.

I go very still. Very quiet. Brooks notices me noticing and sighs, pouring me a cup of coffee and offering it out. I take it carefully and move into the kitchen to sit tentatively on Tanner’s lap.

“I ate them? What does this mean?” I ask, closing my eyes as Tanner wraps me in his arms and encases me in his warmth. His stubble is rough against my smooth cheek as he leans in, smelling like a cool breeze, like confidence, like surety.

“It’s not a big deal. Makes it harder to cast certain spells, but it’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened.” Tanner nuzzles against me as Marlowe butters a piece of toast and sets it on my plate, like all the windows in the house aren’t open. Like it isn’t freakishly early in the morning. Like our house isn’t covered in blood.

“Give me some time, and I’ll figure it out,” Brooks promises, and I trust that he’ll have no problem coming up with a spell to restore our shadows. It’s just the timing part that I’m worried about.

“I should be upfront and let you know that we all took turns on you last night while you were asleep.” Marlowe taps his fingers angrily against the surface of the table, but he can’t hide the quiver in his voice. He can’t hide the fear.

I stare at him, thinking about all the ways our shadows assist us in casting spells. This is going to fucking cripple our coven. But Tanner’s right: it’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened.

Instead of their shadows, I could’ve eaten them . I could be waking up alone in this house, dressed in the blood of the people that love me most and facing an endless cycle of suffering. Sing the world to sleep. Wake it up. Consume everything.

That’s when I make my decision, sitting there on Tanner’s lap and sipping Brooks’ coffee and eating Marlowe’s toast. They’re all bleeding from their noses. I bite and sip and cuddle. I let them tell me that everything is going to be okay.

On the next moonless night, I’ll make use of all the knowledge I gained from Brooks these past few months.

For the last time, I’ll run.

I’ve waited long enough.

Two weeks later…

The world flips and spins, depositing me into the darkness of the Witchwoods by myself. It’s as disconcerting as it always is, especially when I feel my coven bond pinched through the narrow channel of the gate. I hate it. I want immediately to go back, to throw myself at my coven and ask for help.

But I’ve been asking for help, and now we’re out of time.

I stand there in the woods, staring at the Witch’s Tree, and I know what I have to do. I agreed to pay a price, and there are no take-backs in magic. If I don’t pay, the sale doesn’t go through. The men will lose their lives. I can make it through this fine, but I can’t take them with me.

I make the final decision for all of us.

I’m already dressed in my leather pants and iron mask, my bone collar and my boots and my hat. I shed the cloaking cloak, letting the mass of shadows writhe on the forest floor. Something hoots nearby, and I smile ruefully as I unfurl my wings.

I don’t have to worry that it’s the Hag.

I am the Hag.

I start by visiting the cottage, collecting all of the spell ingredients I’ll need. The men have left this place incredibly well-stocked, so it’s easy for me to find something that the three of them gathered together. See? Complete coven participation. These ingredients will wear the magic of North, South, East, and West.

Easy.

And those people the men pushed through the gate? I didn’t eat all of them. Some of them I just killed. I’ll drag the bodies to the Witch’s Tree, use my magic to carve the earth around it until I’ve got a moat. I’ll fill it with their blood. Dozens of human sacrifices given to me by my own coven.

This spell practically wrote itself.

I just can’t get caught by the guys before I finish this. Can you imagine their reactions? If they decide to sneak in here to check on me and find me in the middle of a spell to close the gate, I’ll be in a world of trouble. I’m chuckling through the entirety of my daunting task, like I’m not dragging corpses across the ground and feeling my stomach rumble with hunger.

Like I’m not damning myself to a lonely hell.

I carefully remove my clit piercing and feel the power of the curse surge through me. Before I lose consciousness, I throw myself into the worst task, the worst decision—the hardest decision—I’ve ever had to make.

I carve a circle into the soil around the tree, and then I push the roots into the bodies, cutting through them and filling the moat with red. I kneel down in front of the hole in the Witch’s Tree and prepare myself to cast a spell that I wrote all by myself.

It’s a good one, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have downplayed myself with Brooks and said that Georgia was smarter than me? I mean, she is, but I’m not bad. This is going to work. I’m sure of it.

“ I bathe in the fiery embers from the south,” I begin, using a technique that Brooks described to us during a lesson. If one or more coven members have somehow been separated from the others, you can call their magic and ask permission to use it.

I was told not to do this unless I had to, because the other person doesn’t actually have the opportunity to say no. It’s less of an ask and more like a tell.

Like a violation.

I violate those men by stealing their magic with words and drawing it into my moat of blood and bones. My chanting continues.

“ A terrible wind howls straight from the East, and I summon a tidal wave from the West. Forgive me, spirits of water and earth. Pardon me, phantoms of fire and air.”

The forest spirits are going wild on the branches surrounding the clearing, crying for me to stop, begging me.

“ Oh no, he’ll come if she keeps singing,” they whimper, and I just assume they mean one of the men. A one-eyed toad watches from a decaying log, hissing its displeasure.

I stand up and begin to dance, my bone necklace clanking. All of the magic my hat has eaten recently comes spiraling out of it in the form of colorful smoke. Shapes appear above my head, little Victorian houses made of clouds. Bats. Cats. All designs coming from my personal idea of what it means to be a witch, but it’s a beautiful sight.

Or, it would be if the wind didn’t start to howl, if it wasn’t cold, and the woods didn’t creak. If the blood in my moat didn’t glitter and boil.

The evergreen needles of the Witch’s Tree spark and then catch flames. I stumble to a stop and then hit my knees, looking up as my only path to the men burns.

I break our coven apart, and prevent them from casting any spells to come after me.

I don’t just need this gate closed: I need it destroyed. I was given what I was given from the curse in exchange for this exact scenario. To be alone. To know what it means to suffer.

An eye appears in the hole of the trunk, and I nearly scream. I choke the sound down as a hand reaches out of the opening with long, clawed fingers. Black as my shadow. Wicked. Sharp. With a groan, something begins to push its way free.

A head emerges with curled horns. A square pupil in a single red eye that’s bigger than my head. The monster shoves and digs its way free of the trunk, much larger than should be physically possible. Distorting space and time. Breaking the laws of the universe.

A creature, like a satyr or… a demon, squats in front of me, separated only by a moat of blood.

It stares me down, and I almost choke to death on my own tongue. What am I looking at? It’s the thing that pokes back, isn’t it? It’s the gate. This thing, whatever it is, is the gate.

Not the tree, but the goat-headed demon that lives inside of it. It’s easily ten times bigger than I am, with clawed feet and hands and a vicious white smile of dull, blunt teeth. It says nothing. It doesn’t seem as if it’s capable of speech at all, something esoteric and arcane and wrong.

Rotten.

Watching it emerge from the tree was like watching the inverse of a birth. Everything about this is uncanny and dangerous. Lethal. Unnerving.

The black goat turns its head to see me better, leaning in close with its one eye to study me.

I’m terrified, wondering if I haven’t made the biggest mistake of my entire life. Why didn’t I talk to Brooks, Tanner, and Marlowe about this? What the fuck am I doing?!

I have no clue how this all works, and I’m convinced for several minutes there that I’ve just signed a contract with something—the devil? please no—that I might not be able to get out of.

I’m breathing hard, watching the thing adjust itself with creaky limbs and an alien stare that bites into my soul.

“I… was trying to destroy the gate,” I whisper, barely able to breathe. The monster’s breath is hot and putrid, like raw meat and blood. It reeks of violence, and it feels on the verge of a rampage. I need to tread carefully here. “Not just close it, but destroy it forever.”

The demon—or whatever it is—laughs at me, and I feel not like a player with a chessboard, but like a single piece. The ring on my hand throbs, and I take it off before a bad memory can surface. I don’t need to trap the hunger any longer. I can let go here. It’s over.

I set the ring down, and the demon turns its head to peer at it. It reaches out with a huge, clawed hand, picks the jewelry up, and then swallows it with a too-long tongue. It has a shadow of its own, and my horned one is absolutely petrified by the sight of it.

What have I done? What the actual fuck have I done?

“ An unholy divorce,” it chokes out in a voice like spatter, like gore, like heat and power and eternity. This thing is taunting me, testing me, but I have to stay strong. Regardless of what this monster is, if I close the gate, I’m immortal, and the men are safe.

That’s all that matters.

“I… yes.” I can feel tears on my face, but not out of fear for this thing, whatever it is, but for the absurdity of this moment. It’s not just a curse, I understand that. Anyone would think I’m lucky, getting to see my lovers again, being able to raise them from the dead.

I was given a gift. By the Hag Wytch. And by this demon, dark and strange as it is.

I am a witch, and I will close this gate.

The demon laughs, and several snakes fall out of the burning tree, bodies crashing into the moat of blood and spattering it everywhere. I’m covered in it. Birds fall, feathers singed. Giant moths crash to the ground. The entire tree is burning, from the canopy down to the roots.

I have never been so scared in all my life. Never.

I don’t know how this thing knows, but it knows.

I dig my nails into my leather-clad thighs and try not to scream. That’ll come later. I have to get this done first, and then I can feel everything I need to feel.

“Burn it down, please,” I whisper, pleading with something that isn’t of this world.

“ Bitter Wytch,” the creature says with a laugh that causes its blunt teeth to chatter like a skeleton. It reaches up and plucks a shiny red pomegranate from the burning branches, offering it out to me. “Eat.”

I stare at the fruit in its hand, and then I reach out and take it.

And so, the demon and I sit there together in silence, eating pomegranates while the tree burns.

It takes hours, but then it’s done. There’s nothing but a pile of dust that settles into the blood moat and turns it to stone.

I close my eyes briefly, and when I open them, the demon is gone and I’m all alone.

The lullaby stirs in my throat, and then along with fresh tears, I shed my song. I put the Witchwoods to sleep and then I hunt.

Miserable. Hungry. Alone.

Always and forever alone.