Page 89 of The Year of the Witching

Lilith traced a finger along Immanuelle’s lips, then caught her by the neck.

A scream tangled in Immanuelle’s throat as Lilith ripped her off her feet. Choking, she clawed at the witch’s fingers, dangling above the ground as Lilith lifted her higher and higher.

In a panic, Immanuelle raised the gutting knife, slashing blindly. The blade connected first with bone, then flesh, piercing deep into Lilith’s shoulder.

The witch queen let out a shriek that shook the church. Fissures raced along the walls and the roof caved inward. Flock and legion alike fled for the doors as the cathedral collapsed around them. Through the mayhem, Immanuelle heard Ezra shout her name, and then his voice was lost to the tumult like everything else.

Immanuelle’s vision went blurry. She tried to stay conscious, clawing desperately for a last scrap of strength. With a snarl, she ripped the gutting blade from Lilith’s shoulder and raised it high above her head.

This time, her blow struck true.

The blade lodged hilt-deep in Lilith’s chest. The witch stumbled forward, crashed into a nearby pew, and sank to the floor. But to Immanuelle’s horror, no sooner had she hit the groundthan the witch was on her feet again. She braced herself on a nearby pew, caught the gutting blade by the hilt, ripped it from her chest, and hurled it down the center aisle.

For a moment, they stood deadlocked, there in the center aisle of the cathedral. Both of them bleeding and wounded, barely able to stay on their feet. And Immanuelle knew then that the end had come and only one of the two of them would walk out of that cathedral.

Lilith raised both hands.

The wood floors began to buckle and ripple; roots burst free of the cathedral’s foundation and slithered—serpentine—down the center aisles. Saplings pressed through the floorboards, growing to maturity in a matter of moments, their branches spreading through the rafters. The crawling roots wrapped themselves around Immanuelle’s ankles, coiling so tight she cried out in pain. She staggered forward, struggling to free herself, but she couldn’t move.

The sigil cut into her forearm screamed with pain, as if she were being branded. She shut her eyes against it, reached into the depths of herself, and unleashed all that she had to give.

The roots slithered from around her ankles, recoiling back toward the breaks in the floorboards they had emerged from. The trees that sprawled overhead bent double, racked by some phantom wind that swept through the cathedral like the beginnings of a summer storm.

Lilith staggered back, pinned to the altar, as a powerful wind stormed around her so violently the skin on her outstretched hand began to slough away from the muscle, and the muscle from the bone. The witch lashed out with a scream.

The force of Lilith’s power ripped Immanuelle off her feet. She careened through the air and crashed to a brutal landing on a heap of upturned roots and floorboards. Her ribs gave a sickeningcrunch upon impact, and she gasped and struggled, clinging to the cusp of her consciousness.

The wind died to a low wheeze as Lilith pushed off the altar and started toward her, threading through the trees the way she did the night they first met. There was light in her eye sockets now—two glowing motes that moved like pupils and homed in on Immanuelle. Her rage was palpable—it turned the air cold and made the trees shudder. The witch’s every step seemed to shake the cathedral down to the crumbling stones of its foundation.

Immanuelle tried and failed to fall back; Lilith was far too quick. The witch leveled her with a single backhanded slap, and Immanuelle struck the floor again. The lights in Lilith’s eyes began to dance and multiply, scattering through the black of her sockets like embers from a windblown campfire. She delivered a cruel kick to Immanuelle’s ribs, and she screamed at the pain, clawing the floorboards for purchase.

There was a soft click, the sound of a bullet sliding into its chamber. Then Ezra’s voice. “Leave her alone.”

The witch turned from Immanuelle, faced Ezra in full. He stood in the gap between two pine trees, peering down the barrel of a gun, a finger curled over the trigger.

Lilith started toward him, one hand raised.

The ground beneath Ezra’s feet began to ripple, trees and roots sprouting through the gaps between broken floorboards, curling around his legs the way they had that day at the pond. He fired on Lilith, but with the roots dragging at his arms, none of the bullets met their mark.

Undeterred, the witch walked toward him. As she neared, one of the roots coiled around Ezra’s neck and ripped him backward so the top of his head nearly touched his spine. He tried to fire again, but a vine wrapped itself around the barrel of the gun and forced it to the floor.

Immanuelle struggled to stand up. The gutting blade was just a few feet away. If she could reach it, she could put the witch down and end this once and for all.

Ezra struggled to speak. “Immanuelle... run—”

A bone-faced wolf prowled from behind him, the same one that had taken down Abram, its mouth still slick with his blood. It stalked toward Ezra, jaws slack, ready to lunge, when Immanuelle threw out her hand.

The ground beneath the wolf gaped open, floorboards buckling loose, a landslide of debris tumbling down into a yawning sinkhole. The wolf whimpered, slipped, its claws scrabbling at the floorboards, and plummeted into the void.

Immanuelle pressed to her feet. Every breath sent a bolt of pain through her ribs, but she managed to speak anyway: “Let him go.”

At her command the vines slithered from Ezra, and he half crawled, half lunged away from the sinkhole’s edge, grabbing for his rifle. He raised it to his shoulder and fired on Lilith again, just as she turned back to Immanuelle. The bullet pierced straight through the crook of her collarbone. Lilith stopped... then staggered into a nearby tree. Her knees buckled.

“Immanuelle!”Vera stood in the center of the aisle, the gutting knife in her hand. She staggered forward, limping on what looked like a broken leg, and threw it.

The knife careened through the air, flipping several times as it arced overhead. Immanuelle lashed out and snatched it by the hilt a split second before it hit the floor. Then, with a strangled cry, she turned on Lilith and lunged.

The blade lodged, hilt-deep, into the center of the witch’s skull. A great crack cleaved the bone, and then, with the softest whimper, the witch queen collapsed.

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