The Year of the Witching (27 page)

Vera nodded. “In part. But it belongs to you too. For twelve generations, the women of the Ward family practiced their magic there.”

“And is that where you taught her the ways of the witches? How to practice the dark craft?”

“I never taught Miriam anything,” said Vera in vehement denial. “What little she learned, she learned from Lilith and from the Darkwood itself.”

“But why did Lilith bother with my mother in the first place? If she was just a grief-sick girl, then why did the witches even answer her calls?”

“They didn’t,” said Vera, speaking low now. “The only reason the witches showed their faces to her was because she bore you in
her belly. It was your blood running through Miriam’s veins that gave her the power to cast those curses. The witches were drawn by you.”

Immanuelle’s heart stumbled, skipping several beats. “I don’t understand.”

Vera’s voice grew very soft, and for the briefest moment, she stared at Immanuelle with the same tenderness she did the portrait of her son. “Miriam was a brokenhearted farm girl with a vendetta and a vicious temper. And, yes, she carved the sigils, orchestrated the plagues. But the power she siphoned came from you. A babe with the blood of witches running through her veins. All of that nascent power for the taking. You made the perfect vessel.”

Immanuelle sat, stricken, in her chair, trying and failing to speak. In her bones, she knew what Vera said was true, but one detail gave her pause. “If I’m nothing more than a vessel to the witches, why was I given the journal?”

“The witches are evangelists before they are anything else. How else could four foreign girls raise armies so large they rivaled the forces of Bethel? How else did they sow the seeds of discord if not by winning the hearts and souls of the Church’s flock?”

“So they weren’t trying to bait me; they were trying to win my soul?”

Vera nodded. “They want you, Immanuelle—your power, your potential. Lilith would like nothing more than for you to join her, as a sister and servant of the coven. And before the end comes, mark me, they will make you an offer. Invite you into their ranks.”

Immanuelle considered the idea, imagined what it might be like to walk the woods alongside Lilith. She would not be made to fight temptation any longer, or grovel at the feet of the Prophet. She would live free of Protocol and punishment—to roam and do as she pleased. “What happens if I refuse their offer?”

“Then you’ll share in Bethel’s demise.”

Immanuelle straightened in her chair. Her hands stopped shaking. Her shoulders squared. For the first time, she looked Vera dead in the eye. “Is there any way to stop them?”

Vera nodded. “There is one way. A powerful sigil to redirect the energy of the plagues. You’d need to carve it into your arm with a consecrated knife.”

“Like a holy dagger?”

“Yes, but
only
the Prophet’s. You see, a powerful sigil requires a powerful tool to carve it. The blade must be consecrated—imbued with power through prayer or spell casting. There are only a few objects of that nature in Bethel. The Prophet’s holy dagger; the sacred gutting knife; and the sword of David Ford, the first crusader saint, which hangs above the altar in the Prophet’s Cathedral, are the only ones that come to mind. A point from Lilith’s antlers would also suffice. In fact, I suspect that’s what your mother used to carve her sigils in the cabin.”

“So all I have to do is carve the sigil into my arm with a consecrated blade and then it’s over? The plagues will end, and everything will go back to the way it was before?”

“If only,” said Vera with a sad smile. “When you carve the sigil, it will drag the power of the plagues back to its origin place: you. Once you’ve done that—if you’re even capable of surviving such a feat—the power of the plagues will be yours to wield as you wish.”

Immanuelle paused to imagine it: the blight, the blood, and the darkness, and the slaughter to come, hers to wield as weapons. With it, she’d have the leverage she needed to bring the Church to heel, spare Ezra’s life, make the Prophet atone for his sins. She could reign over Bethel if she wanted to, and under her oversight there would be no pyres or purgings. No young girls lying like lambs on the altar for the cutting. No one made to suffer in the squalor of the Outskirts. With power like that, she could raze the
Prophet’s Church to the very stones of its foundation. Build Bethel anew.

“What’s the cost?” she asked, knowing it would be a heavy one. If there was one thing she’d learned thus far, it was that power was never free.

“It’s impossible to say what it will take or when. But know that the price for power like that will be steep. It may claim your life, like it did your mother’s, erode your bones and spread through your body like a cancer. Or perhaps it will manipulate your senses, claim your sanity as recompense. Maybe it will steal the life of your firstborn or make you barren. The only certainty is that one day you’ll be made to pay for the power you’ve taken.”

“And is there a cure for these . . . afflictions?”

“Perhaps, but that would depend entirely upon what you’re afflicted with.”

Immanuelle nodded, first to herself, then to Vera. “Teach me how to do it.”

Vera laughed outright; the sound was harsh and ugly, almost frightening. Across the kitchen, the oven burned so hot Immanuelle could see heat waves distorting the air around it, and the kettle on the burner began to whistle. Froth spilled from its spout and sizzled on the coals below.

“What’s so funny?”

Vera settled herself, dabbing at the corners of her eyes. “The idea that you think that I would damn you to an end like that one.” Her smile died, and all at once she was so serious she seemed almost grave. “Bethel has placed its burdens on the shoulders of little girls for far too long. I already lost my boy. I’m not going to lead you to the same fate he met. Certainly not in some futile attempt to save a place that doesn’t deserve deliverance.”

“There’s still hope for Bethel. There are good people there, and if I don’t help them, they’ll die in the plagues to come.”

“Good people don’t bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.”

“There are children there,” said Immanuelle, trying to make her see. “Little girls, like my sisters, who are innocent in all of this.”

“And I feel for them; I do. But if they suffer it’s not because of the witches or the plagues or you. It’s because their fathers, and their father’s fathers, created this mess. Perhaps you ought to let them answer for it.”

“And do what? Stay here with my hands tied? Turn my back on Bethel, my home?”

“If the worst comes—”

“It will.”

“
If
it comes, then we go,” said Vera. “There are worlds beyond this one, Immanuelle.”

“You mean the heathen cities? Valta and Hebron and Gall and the like?”

“More than just them. The world is vast, and you deserve the chance to see it. We can explore it together, the three of us. A family.” Vera reached across the table, caught her by the hand, and squeezed. “Let me do what I should have done seventeen years ago. Let me take you with me.”

It was a tempting offer, and weeks ago she might have taken Vera up on it. But Immanuelle knew better now. “I can’t turn my back on Bethel or on the people there that I love.”

“That’s what your father said about your mother, years ago, and he burned for it. If you go back to that place, you’ll die there, just like he did.”

“Bethel is my home. If I were to die anywhere, I’d want it to be there. I’m a part of that place and I won’t turn my back on it, or the people that I care about.” She snatched her hand away. “I came here to find a way to fix things, not to run away like you did.”

Vera flinched at the insult. “Immanuelle—”

“Write the sigil. Teach me how to end this and do it quickly. Please. I’m begging you.”

“You know that I can’t do that.”

“Then I’ll go back empty-handed and I’ll die without a fight. One way or another, I’ll return to Bethel. Either I can return with a weapon, a means of defending myself against the plagues and the Church, or I can go back to Bethel defenseless. But I will return. I have to.”

“Their world doesn’t want the likes of you. Don’t you see that? It doesn’t matter what you do, how good you are, or if you save them from the jaws of the Mother herself. You’ll always be an outsider to them. You will never earn their favor or their trust.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“But you’re the one making the sacrifice,” said Vera, nearly shouting now. She reclined back into her seat, ran a hand through her dreadlocks, trying to compose herself. “Let’s say I give you the sigil. How can you hope to defeat four of the most powerful witches that have ever walked the earth when you frighten at the sight of your own shadow?”

“I am not a coward.”

“Maybe not in the face of certain dangers. I mean, you made it here all by yourself. Braved the wilds beyond Bethel without a single soul to turn to. It’s the makings of a hero’s legend . . . but I do wonder if that same bravery extends to the other things you fear.”

“What other things?”

“Damnation. Ill favor with the Father. Ridicule from the Church. The loss of your soul and virtue and good name.” Vera counted each of the strikes on her fingers. “And perhaps, more than anything else, fear of yourself. Fear of your own power. Because that’s what terrifies you the most, isn’t it? Not the Prophet, not the
Church, not Lilith or the plagues, not the wrath of the Father . . . It’s your own power that you’re most afraid of. That’s why you’re suppressing it.”

Immanuelle didn’t know if she was some sort of seer like Ezra and his father, or if her weakness was so apparent that even a near stranger could recognize it, but she flushed with the shame of being so exposed.

Vera’s gaze softened. “If you want to end those plagues, you’re going to have to embrace yourself, all of yourself. Not just the virtues the Church has told you to value. The ugly parts too. Especially the ugly parts. The rage, the greed, the carnality, the temptation, the hunger, the violence, the wickedness. A blood sacrifice won’t mean much if you can’t control the power it affords you. And if you’re half as strong as I think you are, the power will be immense. You saw how your mother succumbed to it.” Vera tapped the journal. “She was mad out of her senses by the end. And when it’s all said and done . . . you may be too. Is that really a sacrifice you’re ready and willing to make?”

“Yes,” said Immanuelle, without a moment’s pause. “I’m ready to see an end to this.”

“You really are your mother’s daughter,” said Vera, and she turned the sketch of Daniel facedown on the table, took up a bit of graphite, and scrawled a small sigil that Immanuelle knew to be the mark of the curse, with a small alteration; a series of forked lines that looked a bit like arrows halved the symbol down the middle. “The plagues were born of your blood. If you carve this mark into your arm, they will return to you.”

“That is, if I’m strong enough to harbor them.”

“You are,” said Vera. “You’ll have to be.”

Immanuelle parted her lips to reply, but the sound of a woman’s scream cut her short. She and Vera were on their feet in an instant, their chairs crashing to the floor behind them. They
snatched the lamp off the table and charged toward the door. The darkness beyond it was nearly impenetrable, broken only by three halos of light. In those halos, men, eight of them, with lanterns and torches raised. All of them wore the uniform of the Prophet’s Guard. Two had hold of Sage, twisting her arms behind her back, forcing her to her knees even as she kicked and struggled.

One of the guardsmen stepped closer, and in the wan torchlight, Immanuelle recognized him. He was Ezra’s older half brother, Saul. The same cruel-eyed commander whom many called the Prophet’s favorite son. To her horror, she saw that he now wore Ezra’s holy dagger around his neck. A sure sign that he either had, or would, replace him as the Prophet’s heir.

“No.” Immanuelle broke toward him, toward Sage, but Vera caught her by the arm and dragged her back.

Four of the Prophet’s guardsmen raised their rifles in unison, fingers curled over the triggers, but Saul waved them off, his gaze fixed on Immanuelle. “Lower your weapons. We bring the girl back to Bethel unharmed.”

He watches me, I know it. In the night, I feel His holy eye upon me, but I am not afraid.

—M
IRIAM
M
OORE

DO YOU BELIEVE
in the Scriptures of your Father and Prophet?” The apostle’s words echoed through the chambers and carried down the dungeon hall.

“Yes,” said Immanuelle.

Apostle Isaac straightened his robes. He was a tall, starved-looking man with a head that was nearly as pale and gaunt as Lilith’s. He looked only half-human, as if—with his robes stripped away—he could skulk among the forest beasts unnoticed. In one hand, he held the Holy Scriptures, in the other a small candle that burned low on its wick. “And do you believe that hellfire meets those who live in reproach of the Father’s law?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever defied the Father’s law?”

Immanuelle nodded. “I have.”

It had been at least ten days since she’d returned to Bethel and more than twelve since the Prophet’s Guard had stormed Vera’s house, ripped her from the arms of the only loyal family she had left, and placed her in contrition. But the stagnant dark of the Haven’s dungeons made her feel like she’d been there far longer.

Immanuelle tried to sleep to pass the hours, but if her nightmares didn’t wake her, then the screams of her fellow inmates did. From the stench of sewage alone, she could tell the cells were crowded to capacity with all of the women and girls held in contrition under penalty of witchcraft. She’d heard the Prophet’s guards murmur about the night raids that had occurred while she was still in Ishmel. In hushed whispers, they spoke of little girls being ripped from the arms of their mothers, homes invaded, dozens of women arrested and marched to the Haven under cover of darkness. At long last, the Prophet’s wrath was made manifest.

During her imprisonment, Immanuelle had been confined to a remote cell of her own. She had seen no one, save Apostle Isaac, and a few of the low-ranking Prophet’s guardsmen, who—every day or so—slipped a bowl of water and a moldy hunk of bread through the bars of her cell. As sick as it was, she had almost come to look forward to these daily interrogations, if only because they interrupted the maddening tedium . . . and the solitude, which was even worse. When she was left alone for too long, time didn’t slow so much as it unraveled. And it was in that strange abstraction of timelessness, where the seconds seemed suspended in the torpor of the infinite, that Immanuelle’s thoughts turned dark. That thing within her—the maelstrom, the monster, the witch—stirred to life.

It made her feel dangerous. It made her feel . . . ready.

Almost all the pieces were in place. She had the reversal sigil and she knew the tool she’d need to cast it: the Prophet’s dagger. Now it was just a matter of securing it, which would be no small feat given her current circumstances. But once she had that blade in her hand, all she needed to do was carve the sigil.

Apostle Isaac drew closer by a half step. “Tell me how you’ve sinned.”

Immanuelle thought back to the beginning of her memories.
To sitting on Abram’s knee in front of a roaring fire, a book of Holy Scriptures lying open in her lap. She remembered stringing syllables together into words, and those words becoming sentences, and the sentences then becoming psalms and stories. Another memory surfaced, a summer day, years ago, when she and Leah had paddled in the muddy shallows of the river, swimming in secret. She remembered how free she’d felt the first time she let the current take her.

Immanuelle’s chains slithered across the cell floor as she straightened and found her voice. “I lived free—from the Protocol, from the Scriptures, from the Prophet’s law. That’s my only sin.”

The apostle frowned. “Is this your confession?”

“Yes.”

“And do you wish to be cleansed of your sin?”

Immanuelle raised her eyes to the apostle’s, squinting against the glow of the candlelight. She thought of muzzles and gutting blades, bridal veils and shackles. She thought of little girls lashed bloody for forgetting to fasten the top buttons of their dresses. She thought of purging pyres and the witches who’d died screaming on them, and of heads mounted on the spikes of the Haven’s gate. She thought of the Prophet’s gaze crawling over her, of Leah writhing and pleading in the torment of her labor until life had left her and she could scream no more. She thought of the reversal sigil, imagined carving it into the bare flesh of her forearm and calling back the plagues.

“I have no sins to cleanse.”

There was silence in the cell, save for the distant echo of footsteps, the rhythmic
drip, drip, drip
of the leak in the corner. Here—far below the earth’s surface—the water still tasted of brine and metal, the taint of the blood curse lingering.

Apostle Isaac paced from one end of the cell to the other. It was a show, Immanuelle realized, the way he moved, the way he
preached the Scriptures and declared her sins. He wanted to plant terror like a seed. “They say you wandered the Darkwood. Is that so?”

Immanuelle lay back against the wet stones, too weak to stand. Hunger gnawed at her like a rat from within, and it was difficult to think past it. “That’s true.”

“They say you have talked to the demons that dwell there.”

Down the hall, the sound of a door grinding open, a girl shrieking for mercy. “I have.”

“They say they answer your calls.”

“Only sometimes.”

The apostle drew closer. “And these creatures, what are their names?”

“You know them already,” said Immanuelle. “You say them at feasts and on cutting days. You burn them in celebration. Lilith, Delilah, Jael, Mercy.”

The apostle’s brows knit together. The candle’s flame danced on its wick. “And was it the witches who ordered you to cast the curses? Is it their magic you conjure?”

Immanuelle didn’t answer. The truth mattered little in these interrogations.

“You are the daughter of Miriam Moore, is that so?”

“It is.”

“Miriam wandered the Darkwood as well. Did she not?”

“She did.”

Something like triumph passed through the apostle’s eyes. “And is it your mother’s god you pray to in the night? Is it her beasts you call to?”

“They weren’t her beasts. They belong to no one.”

“And yet they obey you.”

Immanuelle shook her head. “They heed no one.”

At that, the apostle smiled, as if the two of them shared some
dirty secret. He drew closer, his boots scuffing across the floor, and dropped to a crouch at her side. “But Ezra heeds your every whim, doesn’t he?”

It was the first Immanuelle had heard of him in what felt like weeks. The sound of his name alone was enough to fill her with a heady mix of dread and fear and hope. She wanted to ask if he was still alive, and if so in what condition, but was too afraid for fear of what the apostle’s answer would be.

“Ezra always heeds your call, doesn’t he?” the apostle asked again, annoyed by her silence. “He had a hand in your schemes?”

Immanuelle didn’t know how to answer. If she said no, she would assume full responsibility for all the accusations the apostle leveled against her. The punishment for her crimes would be death by purging, and if she died on the pyre before she had the chance to reverse the plagues, Bethel was all but doomed. But if she answered yes, Ezra could be deemed an accomplice, or even culpable for her transgressions. What would the charge for such a crime be? Conspiracy against the Church, perhaps? Holy treason? The former was a punishment of fifty lashes, the latter death.

But the future prophet couldn’t be executed, could he? Would they dare lay the lash upon his shoulders? Or worse yet, send him to the pyre?

A sharp burning snapped Immanuelle to attention and she yelped, snatching her hand away.

The apostle loomed above her, his candle tipped to the side so the hot wax had spilled onto her hand. “Answer the question, girl.”

Immanuelle picked her words carefully, scraping wax flakes from the back of her hand. “Ezra is my friend. He heeds me as a friend would.”

“And what is the nature of your friendship?”

“He gave me books to read. We talked about poetry and the Scriptures.”

The apostle leaned forward, sneering. When he spoke, his breath was hot against her cheek. “Did you lie with each other?”

She stiffened. “No.”

Whether the apostle believed her or not, Immanuelle couldn’t tell. He stood and turned his back to her, stalking toward the cell door. “You’re a sick, sinful girl, do you know that?”

Immanuelle almost smiled in spite of it all. “So I’ve been told.”

The apostle suddenly doubled back to her and tipped the candle once more. Burning wax splattered across her cheeks and she winced. It was all she could do to keep from weeping, but she refused to give him the pleasure.

“I have a surprise for you,” said the apostle, stepping aside so Immanuelle had a clear view of the hall. The candlelight’s glow illuminated the corridor, and a familiar face soon appeared behind the bars: Martha.

She wore a black wool cloak that she typically reserved for funerals. The hood hung low, casting a shadow over her eyes. “Hello, Immanuelle.”

At the sight of her grandmother, Immanuelle straightened, pressing herself against the cell wall so the cobbles cut into her back. “What do you want from me?”

“That’s no way to greet the woman who raised you,” the apostle chided.

Immanuelle kept her eyes on Martha. Her chains rattled across the floor as she drew back. “She’s no kin to me.”

A damp wind licked down the hallway. The torch flared and Martha’s candle sputtered out. “I was only trying to help you, Immanuelle.”

“
Help
me? You betrayed me.”

“I tried to save you, as best I was able to.”

“You said you’d let me go.”

“I did,” said Martha, drawing closer. “And I have. That’s why you’re here in contrition, to be let go. To be released from your sins and forgiven.”

Apostle Isaac’s lips peeled back into a sneer. He moved toward the door, put a hand on Martha’s shoulder. “And so she will be, upon her confession. The Prophet will make sure of it.”

Martha trembled so violently her candle rattled on its pricket. In a rare moment of weakness, her eyes filled with tears. When she finally spoke it was not to the apostle, but to Immanuelle. “Honor and Glory weep for you in the night. Anna is broken. Abram is so sick with grief he can barely eat.”

Immanuelle squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry. Her family and her tenderness for them had always been her greatest weakness. Martha knew that, perhaps better than anyone else.

“Tomorrow, at your trial, you must confess to your sins. Admit your guilt so that you can be forgiven and allowed to return home to those that love you. To me. Hope is not yet lost, if you’re willing to do that.”

Immanuelle laughed at the proposition. If only Martha knew what she was plotting. The sigil she was planning to carve. In the wake of what she was preparing to do, there would be no seat for her at Abram’s table. No place for her in Bethel, except bound to the stake of a purging pyre. Once she had a consecrated blade in her hand—whether it be the Prophet’s dagger or the sacred gutting knife—she would act. It was only a matter of biding her time. “What if I refuse to repent?”

A tear slipped down Martha’s cheek. “Then may the Father have mercy on your soul.”