The Temptation (The Secret Circle #6)(19)
Author: L.J. Smith

In a few seconds a gentle breeze blew through her hair and around the circle, fueling the fire with new life.

Next Cassie turned southward. “I call on the Watchtower of the South,” she said. “Powers of Fire, protect us.”

She closed her eyes and felt the heat of the high flames on her face.

Then Cassie turned again. “I call on the Watchtower of the West,” she said. “Powers of Water, protect us.”

The waves in the distance below them crashed loudly upon the shore, and the strong briny smell of the ocean rose up to fill their lungs.

Finally, Cassie faced north. “Watchtower of the North,” she said. “Powers of Earth, protect us.”

The ground beneath their feet suddenly began to quake. The book rumbled. Cassie could feel herself breathing hard. The circle she’d cut into the soil with the dagger split from the rest of the foundation, leaving them standing on an island of ragged dirt.

Then she gazed into the flames that flailed from deep within the pit, and harnessed her energy. This was it. She closed her eyes.

But then someone gasped, and someone else choked.

Cassie opened her eyes and quickly turned around. Alice was charging toward them, and close behind her the rest of the ancestors advanced across the empty lot like an army of ghosts.

“They must have followed me,” Scarlett said.

Cassie’s friends were gasping for air. Sean, Chris, and Doug were the first to collapse, but all of them except Cassie and Scarlett were gripping their necks, suffocating.

Scarlett raised her hands and performed a spell to restore their breath. But by then the ancestors had reached the Circle, close enough to knock Sean, Chris, and Doug out with an even stronger suffocation spell.

Adam and Nick launched an attack, a binding spell to constrain the ancestors’ strength, but Absolom shielded it easily, with the help of Thomas and Samuel. They retaliated with a hard stare that threw both Adam and Nick violently onto the ground. Adam hit the dirt with a thud and was immediately knocked unconscious. Nick landed gruesomely on a protruding beam from the ruined foundation of the house. It stabbed straight through his upper thigh, impaling the flesh like a thick, rusty skewer. He cried out in pain. The sight of his blood weakened Cassie at the knees.

Alice targeted Diana and Deborah. Melanie and Laurel tried to protect them with a defense spell, but all four of them dropped lifelessly beneath Alice’s open hand.

Faye lifted her hands and focused her energy on Alice. She managed to steer Alice back, away from her friends, but only long enough to attract Charlotte’s attention.

Charlotte gestured toward Faye and sent her flying backward into the air. Cassie and Scarlett were the only two Circle members left standing.

The ancestors surrounded them.

“Our brethren,” Alice said. “We left you for last.”

Beatrix grabbed Scarlett by the neck and pulled her face close to her own. “You, we’ll kill,” she said, “while you”—she signaled to Cassie—“watch.”

Absolom placed his palm over Scarlett’s forehead. He whispered words Cassie didn’t recognize.

“Then you’ll be ours,” Alice said to Cassie. “At last.”

“I maledicentibus vobis in mortem,” Absolom mumbled over Scarlett’s forehead. “I maledicentibus vobis in mortem.”

If not for Beatrix holding Scarlett’s thin body up, she would have slid to the ground. Her wide eyes glassed over, and her neck drooped down. Her face became a mask. Cassie understood what she was witnessing all too well: Scarlett was beginning to die.

Cassie raised her arms to harness her energy, to go inward and find a spell, but Alice’s gaze left her mind blank, powerless. Her spells, even her dark magic, were just out of her own reach.

She surveyed the surrounding area. Her friends lay scattered, unmoving. She couldn’t be sure who was alive, if any.

Then Cassie caught sight of something else. The wooden box Timothy had given her. The one he had said not to open until she had no other choice.

This had to be that moment.

Cassie dashed for the box before Alice or any of the ancestors could stop her. She kneeled down beside it, unlatched its hinges, and lifted its top.

Cassie drew back at the sight of its contents.

Rats. Dead rats, piled on top of one another in a mass grave of matted fur and desiccated tails. One whiff of their putrid scent made Cassie gag. She stood up and backed away from the box. Was this some sick joke? Was Timothy on the ancestors’ side all along?

Cassie glanced back at the ancestors still hovering over Scarlett. Alice watched Cassie, unafraid, unthreatened, confident there was nowhere for her to run to.

Then Cassie heard a squeak, followed by a scratching. She peered cautiously over the top of the wooden box. What seemed like a thousand beady, blinking eyes stared back at her. Their bodies began to twist and move, slinking free from their entanglement. Cassie held her breath as the whole herd of them scurried out over the top of their box and raced for the ancestors.

Their long rodent tails dragged behind them as they charged for whatever exposed skin they found—the vulnerable flesh of ankles and calves. Scratching and clawing, the leader of the pack leapt for the nearest target first: Alice. She lifted her hands in defense, but her fingers only provided an easier-to-reach mark.

The rest of the squealing herd hurried up the length of the ancestors’ legs. They bit at their faces, gnawed on the soft, chewy lobes of their ears.

Absolom shrieked and abandoned his spell, thrashing. Beatrix released Scarlett and struggled to shake her limbs free of the teeth-clenching vermin. She flailed like a person on fire.

Samuel scrambled to pick up a broken metal rod from the ground, a remnant of the house’s foundation. He swung it hard and wide in an arc, like a baseball bat, but was successful in fighting off the rats for only a moment before being overcome. He soon fell beneath a hungry, squealing mountain of fur and tails, just like the others.

Cassie rushed to Scarlett. She listened for her breath and felt for her pulse. She was alive, but barely. Cassie strived to concentrate in spite of her surroundings, to recall a spell to restore Scarlett’s energy. She placed her hands over her body and waited for the words to come. When they did, she whispered them softly: “Recuperabit, reddere, renovare.”

Scarlett groaned, then opened her eyes, and the color returned to her cheeks. She took a deep breath and climbed to her feet.

“Oh, my god,” she said, at the horrible sight of the ancestors.

They’d managed to ward off the rats, so they were no longer being devoured, but the damage had been done. Thomas’s clothes had been chewed through to pieces. His skin showed through the shredded cloth, bloody and oozing. All of the ancestors’ skin was pockmarked and pus-filled. The whites of their eyes had yellowed, and their breathing was slack.

Charlotte bent over and coughed, and a black sludge poured out of her mouth.

Cassie noticed the tips of Alice’s fingers were blackening, and so were her lips.

“What’s happening to them?” Scarlett asked.

Absolom and Beatrix were next to double over and retch putrid mucus into a dark, wet pile on the ground.

“The Black Death,” Cassie said.

The rats banded together in a tight pack, eyes ablaze, their mouths foaming with blood. They scurried back to their wooden box, twitching and satisfied.

“Those weren’t just any rats.” Cassie threw the top back over the box and observed the ancestors writhing in pain, heaving, spitting, their limbs rotting to deadened stumps.

“The bubonic plague just came back to bite them,” Cassie said to Scarlett. It looked worse than she’d ever imagined.

But the ancestors weren’t giving up that easily. They crawled across the dirt to clasp hands. They were pooling their energy.

Cassie wouldn’t put it past them to overcome even this. “We have to finish the spell,” she said. “Get everyone together.”

Scarlett helped Diana and Faye up to standing position. Adam, Sean, and the Hendersons rose of their own accord.

Cassie hurried over to Nick. He’d lost a lot of blood, and his skin felt cold to the touch, but his eyes were open. He tried to talk, but Cassie quieted him.

“Just relax,” she said. “You’re going to be okay.” She held her hands over his injury and searched her mind for the right spell.

“I don’t need magic.” Nick’s voice was raspy but forceful. “I only need you.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

Cassie could see that the injury to his leg was serious. Nick was in shock. Magic was the only chance of saving him.

Cassie hovered her free hand over the spear of metal impaled through the flesh, and silently cast a spell: Periculosum metallic tutum esse liberum.

The hole in Nick’s leg opened like a mouth, releasing the metal beam to the air. It rose and fell to his side, into the red pool of his blood.

“I’m okay,” Nick insisted. “I can get up. Don’t waste your energy on me. You have a spell to cast.”

Resanesco, Cassie thought. Resanesco.

Nick stirred as the wound stitched itself sealed, cleanly. Still squeezing Cassie’s hand, he lifted his head just high enough to catch a glimpse of his injury.

“It’s not even as bad as I thought,” he said.

Cassie inhaled a thankful breath. Nick would be okay. She was about to help him up when a new string of words entered her mind.

Let him feel the love I have for him, and let it be enough. She said them to herself silently, just as she had the others.

“Thank you, Cassie,” Nick said, rolling over onto his side. “But I’m really fine.”

“Hurry up!” Scarlett called out. She’d managed to get everyone else in formation. The ancestors were still trying to regain their strength.

Cassie helped Nick to his feet and led him to the Circle. When they stepped into place, the fire began to smolder. Gray smoke rose from its source, darker and darker, until it formed a coal-black cloud overhead.

Cassie picked up her father’s book from its place on the ground. She held it up high for all her friends to see. Then she held it over the fire and allowed the spell to come:

I cast you out, unclean spirit, in the name of goodness.

All sources of light and truth, we appeal to you and your sacred boundless power.

Be gone, darkness. Leave us a dwelling place of light.

We renounce you, all symbols of darkness, demons, and all evil.The fire hissed and sizzled. Red-hot embers shot up like sparkles from the flames.

For a moment Cassie had a thought: What if she didn’t drop the book into the fire? What if the infected rats had accomplished enough to weaken the ancestors? Maybe they were soon to die anyway. Then Cassie and her Circle could have the best of both worlds—she could keep the book without her relatives trying to control it.

One by one, the ancestors climbed to their feet and struggled toward the circle’s perimeter. Their sickened eyes were furious and helpless as they watched and waited for what Cassie would do next. Blood dripped from their noses and ears.

The book called to Cassie. It screamed her name. She pulled it back slightly from the heat of the flames. This book was her past, she thought. It was her last and final connection to her father and to her lineage.

It felt like a living precious diamond in her hands. A one-of-a-kind power. Could she really just cast it away? Destroy it forever?

No. She couldn’t.

She took one giant step back from the fire and hugged the book tightly, embracing it over her heart. It had a heartbeat, too, she realized—its own. And their two hearts beat together as one.

All other sound drifted up and away. Only the book existed to Cassie now. And then he spoke to her.

“Cassandra, my one and only,” he said. Him. Her father.

His voice was like a poison that seized Cassie’s throat.

“Don’t disappoint the long line of witches that brought you here,” he said. “The witches that made you. They are all you have.”

Cassie’s pulse quickened. She couldn’t catch her breath.

“All their knowledge is yours,” he said. “Their power is yours. Don’t throw it away.”

Everything began to spin. Cassie lost all sense of up from down, left from right. Her own body felt like nothing. An empty shell.

“Don’t turn your back on your past,” her father said. “Destroying that book will destroy who you really are.”

Who am I? Cassie thought.

I am Cassandra Blake, child of Alexandra and John, beloved daughter, loving friend.

I am power.

But I can surrender that power to the flames.

If I have power without love, I have nothing.

Something inside Cassie’s mind clicked. If evil was what she really was, who she really was, then so be it. Let evil be destroyed. Let light triumph over darkness once and for all.

A feeling of warmth enveloped her like daybreak.

She shouted the final words of the spell: “Depart, evil spirits. Leave this good and innocent world!”

Cassie lifted the book up and heaved it into the fire. “Depart, Father!” she screamed out. “Depart!”

Her father’s cry rang out for all to hear.

The ancestors could do nothing to stop her. The moment the book hit the flames their bodies stiffened, and as it burned, they burned.

Flames penetrated the ancestors’ chests as if the fire started in their hearts and spread upward and out from there. Their mouths softened as they wailed. Noses liquefied, eyes dissolved. The ground beneath their melting bodies broiled and withered. Alice moved her head from side to side on her shoulders. Her face took on a mournful expression as she stretched her neck and cried out. The grief-stricken sound seemed to ricochet off the moon.

The fire pit popped.

The book glowed orange like a lit coal. From its flame-engulfed pages, Cassie’s father’s scream went quiet. It was their final requiem. Scarlett, Cassie noticed, had begun to tremble. A darkness drained from her eyes and mouth like a black, smoky mist.