Relish: A Vicious Feast Book 2 (35 page)

A blast of energy shoves me backward. With nothing to stop me, I continue to fly away from Moira. Then she appears behind me and captures my head in her hands. Electricity zings from her fingertips into my temples and I lose consciousness.

When I gasp for breath and open my eyes, I’m on the ground writhing in pain. Women chant around me. The ground rattles with their stomping and distant drumbeats.

I told you I’d bring you back,
Moira’s voice slashes through all the noise around me.

“You honestly think I can’t beat you this way?” I ask through gritted teeth. The pain in my belly is actually Moira clawing her way out.

“Darling?” My mother replaces the image of the old woman with the blade. “You can do this. Fight her.”

I know she’s dead, that this is just Moira messing with me, but hope still spreads in me at the sight of her worried face so much like my own hovering above mine.

“Mother?” I rake my fingers along the ground, gathering all my strength to get my next words out. “I need you to knock me out.”

Doubt replaces her worry for a brief instant before she places her hand over my eyes and shuts them. When I open my eye again I’m back in the white space I created. Reality is with the patch. Alternates have both my eyes open. Grounding myself in that knowledge, I don’t bother searching for Moira because I know she’s behind me. As she places her hands on both sides of my head, presumably to send me back to that night she defeated me, I wrap my fingers around her wrists and bow my body forward, using the momentum to flip her over. She lands on her back with a loud
oof
as the breath is knocked out of her.

“You can still stop this,” I say, breathing hard. I feel my powers surging in me, but having just gotten back all my memories, I still don’t have the strength of will to harness them effectively. Moira is at a clear advantage if I don’t think of something fast.

“And lose out on all your powers?” She gets up slowly.

“You and I know you’re not doing this because you want to become the Vessel.”

With a wry stare, she flips her hair over her shoulder. “What do you know?”

“I hurt you. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Only years later.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming at her. “Only because I was stuck in an alternate universe. Did you really have to possess me?”

“It’s genius if I do say so myself.”

“In front of everybody?”

“What better way to ruin a party?”

She’s riling me up. It’s in the spark of vindictiveness in her eyes. “Moira, please. Don’t force me to have to kill you.”

Her eyebrow arches at that. “And who says I’m not the one who’ll kill you?”

“You were my best friend. I still consider you to be.”

“And yet you still stole him from me even after knowing that I loved him.”

“I should have handled things better.”

The twisting of her lips tells me I’m saying all the wrong things. “You could have just left him to me.”

“Moira!” I shove my fingers through my hair, yanking at the strands in frustration. “I get it. This is all my fault. But you have to accept that he doesn’t love you.”

Stupid words. For the split second when I see the pain in her eyes, I regret what I said. She bites on the corner of her lip until it bleeds then swipes at the blood with her thumb. She rubs the drop across her palm. I realize what spell she’s casting too late and don’t react fast enough.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-N
INE
F
IGHT

I’m running in the woods at a brutal and punishing pace. Pines blur past me. Prickly bushes cut into the soft skin of my calves and arms. Low hanging branches smack my face, shredding my cheeks. The sun has set and the gloom grows. Soon I won’t have much light to help me navigate. My insides twist, begging me to stop and puke out my guts. But I can’t. If I do the man running after me will catch up and the dagger in his hand will sink into my flesh. The cycle will keep repeating itself if that happens before I can find a way to break Moira’s spell.

Damn her.

She put me in a
Groundhog Day
loop of nightmarish proportions. I should have countered the spell before she had a chance to complete it. My reflexes are shit. Years ago I would have beat her ass, hands down. Not using my powers makes me hella rusty. I can’t even recall the right spells. Like, right now, I need an extraction spell and what keeps popping up is a cherry-picking spell. How the two are related, I have no idea.

Annoyed, I swallow down the bitterness climbing my throat and pick up my pace. The hard, cold ground bites into my bare feet without mercy. The frigid night air freezes my lungs little by little with each ragged inhalation. I have to come up with something or risk dying again only to revive in the same situation I find myself in. The dying part isn’t a cakewalk either. Being stabbed to death isn’t the most pleasant experience.

The worst part? Because where Moira is concerned there is always a worst part. I glance over my shoulder at my father. I don’t recognize the maniacal look on his face. Gone is the handsome man I looked up to and admired. The one chasing me with the intent to kill isn’t the powerful ruler I once knew.

I quickly realize that when it comes to the dreams, Moira has a particularly unique sadistic streak. I guess I should be thankful she didn’t use Luka’s image for my murderer. Maybe that’s because Luka is still alive and my father isn’t. My heart clenches, more from a great sense of loss than from the strain of running. My lungs burn like a furnace. Despite the cold, sweat drenches my skin. My dress clings to my body, suffocating me further.

“Father!” I call out. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Die, you whore!” he yells. Moira’s words, not his, and they cut doubly as deep.

I face forward again, afraid of slamming into a tree. Shivers roll through me. Apparently, in this dream scenario, my father discovered my relationship with Luka and isn’t taking too kindly to it. I doubt he would have taken it to this extreme in real life, but like I said, Moira and her unique sense of sadism. I actually have to commend her for this. Makes me want to twist her head off all the more.

I’d like to see you try
, she says in my head.

“Fuck you, Moira!” I scream into the darkening sky.

She laughs.

Reaching my limit, I search for a viable place to escape too. The stand of trees is so thick I barely have any room to move forward as it is. Then in my periphery I spot a clearing.

Seeing my chance, I veer toward it, slipping into a skid. I use my hands to pivot myself up and scramble. When I reach the opening in the woods, I turn and brace myself. The blade my father is holding comes down, slashing at my forearms. I whimper. It all seems so real, even the hate in his eyes. I grit my teeth against the curses begging to come out and step back. Then I kick out, catching my father in the stomach. As he doubles over, I spread my hands out, letting the blood from my wounds saturate the ground. I gather energy in my palms and bring them together so they can form a ball of light with sparks arching from it. Taking a deep breath, I chant:

Powers that be,

Come to me.

Take the devil in my veins

And wrap it in chains.

Powers that be,

Set me free.

I’m on my second repetition when my father stands to his full height. With an evil sneer, he brings the dagger up above his hand. A frightening yell leaves his lips as he runs toward me. Shaking, I choke out the third recitation and drop to my knees, slamming the ball of power into the ground. The undergrowth ripples outward. It knocks my father backward until he hits his head on a rock when he lands. The sickening thud roils in my gut. I shut my eyes, but the image of my father lying dead on the forest floor is forever branded in my brain.

Slow clapping forces me to open my eyes. I’m in the white expanse again. A place I now know as my mind. Moira and I are fighting for control over it. My body is currently asleep in the tower and will not wake until one of us wins. I can’t let this go on much longer. God only knows how much this battle is damaging my psyche.

“Bravo.” Moira smiles down at me, still clapping like I’d just finished a performance of a lifetime. “Took you five tries but you finally managed to get out of there. How did it feel to have dear ol’ dad stabbing you to death? I particularly liked him calling you a ‘whore’ the entire time.”

I swipe at the blood streaming down my cheek with the heel of my hand and push up to my feet. “I never thought of you as a sick bitch, but now I have my doubts.”

She laughs, throwing her head back. When she looks at me again, she says, “People change. You should know that since you’re the one who stabbed me in the back. All that time I was asking you what you thought of Luka. Little did I know you were lusting after him too.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” Fire burns in her eyes. “Let me tell you what’s not fair. You sharing your feelings with someone and being rejected then having your best friend tell you the guy who rejected you is in love with her on the same night.”

I wince at the way she spits out “best friend.” The venom in her voice poisons my insides quicker than any snake bite.

“I get it,” I say, picking my words this time. “I’m sorry. If I’d known this is how things would turn out I—”

“You would have what?” she cuts me off, surging forward. There isn’t any chance of winning against her in this state. She’s too pissed to listen. So I clamp down on my next words. It seems like she isn’t finished yet anyway. “Kept your relationship with Luka a secret while I pined after him and then when you think I’ve finally recovered that’s when you’ll tell me? What a load of shit that is.”

“Do you really want to go down this road?” I know I should be careful, but my anger is taking over again—my father’s advice be damned. “Instead of staying and talking things out, you ran away to train somewhere else.”

“Yeah!” Her eyes grow wide and wild. “I needed to get away. You think I would stay to watch the two of you being all lovey-dovey with each other? Hell no. Instead I put all that energy mastering the one spell I needed to possess you.”

Like what I did in the forest, I spread my arms wide. “Then why don’t you just kill me? Why put me through all this shit?”

Moira crosses her arms, leering at me. “And miss out on all the fun of torturing you first?”

Running out of patience, I bare my teeth and charge her. She isn’t prepared for the move because the spell she began to cast is cut off mid-chant. I grab fistfuls of her auburn hair and yank as hard as I can. She screams and imitates the move. Like two children, we’re locked in a hair pulling battle. It’s stupid, I know, but Moira is in a blind place. She won’t see reason no matter what I say. So instead of letting her cast me into yet another twisted scenario, we’re having this all out now.

She pushes me back, but not until I take a chunk of her hair with me. I let the strands fall from my fingers. She growls and rushes me. I step aside and push her to the ground. When she lands, I’m straddling her in seconds. Through her struggling I manage to pin her arms to her sides. Then I slam my forehead against hers. She cries out, twisting her face away. A sob climbs up her throat and tears overflow from her eyes. I let her go so she covers her face with her hands and sit back on my heels. Breathing hard, I watch her cry, my heart breaking. Soon my own tears are crawling down my face, mixing with the blood there.

“I don’t want to fight you, Moira,” I whisper. “I was wrong. I was stupid for hurting you that way. But I honestly don’t know what I could have done right to spare you any pain.”

She pauses then lowers her hands. The hate in her eyes continues to burn. “You could have just stepped aside and left him to me.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Then you’re not really my friend. You never were!”

Her accusation stabs into me. “I was your friend, Moira. You have to know that. I just didn’t realize until Luka confessed that I had feelings for him too. The night you took him away to confess your feelings I couldn’t sit still. I didn’t know why. Then when he found me in the ballroom and told me he loved me, I understood.” Streams of my heartache continue to flow, droplets landing on Moira’s chest. “I guess I’m selfish because I didn’t want to lose you and deny my feelings for Luka. But I lost you anyway. I should have been a better friend. I should have come to where you were and made amends. I should have tried harder.”

“A little too late,” she says through clenched teeth. Her fingers sink into my thighs. I hiss at the pain but don’t move to disentangle her hold.

“Then let me make it up to you.”

“How?”

“You tell me.”

“Give me Luka.”

I suck in a breath then let it out slowly. “If I do that, can you guarantee he will love you?”

“I can try,” but her assertion sounds weak between us. A new wave of tears well up. “I can try, damn it!”

Even if I don’t believe her, I pull her digging hands from my thighs and get up. I reach down and she takes my hand. I yank her to her feet and shake my head, my heart heavy. “If you honestly think you can get Luka to fall in love with you, I will step aside.”

Hope replaces the hate in her gaze. “You’d do that for me?”

No. But I don’t tell her that. I swallow down the gut wrenching agony eating at me and force myself to smile. I stuff all my memories of Luka into a deep, dark place.

“Yes,” I choke out.

With trembling fingers, I take her hands in mine and close my eye. I take in a deep breath and recall the spell. Once the words arrive, I gather all my strength to let go so my mind can make way for Moira to take over.

Powers that be,

Listen to my plea.

I open my mind and my heart,

For the one I love to have a fresh start.