Page 60 of First Bite
Chapter Twenty-Four
Braden, Zac, Logan, and Cole moved robotically into the room, never even looking at me. There was nothing behind their eyes. They were blank. My heart plummeted into my stomach at the realization that my only hopes of being rescued were standing across the way, looking like they’d all just had a lobotomy.
“Cole! Braden!” I shouted as I squirmed with every ounce of energy I could muster. “Help me!”
“They are quite unable to help you, darling,” the witch said as she walked up to Zac and brushed his hair away from his forehead and rubbed her thumb across his cheek. “They certainly are remarkable, aren’t they? What a lucky woman I am to be able to raise their children.”
“Get yourfuckinghands off of him!” I screamed, tears starting to stream out of my eyes as I struggled to move
“Well, then. I think it’s time we began the ritual,” she said, positioning herself in front of the brass bowl.
She raised her hands into the air, closed her eyes, and started chanting along with the druid-looking men who stood around the building. Her head fell back as they all started chanting more and more loudly.
The sensation I began to feel was almost like tingling in my bones. I thrashed as much as I could, screaming for my guys to snap out of their daze, but nothing worked. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that if I didn’t fight my hardest, we weren’t going to get out of here.
More smoke rose from the bowl as the woman’s incantation intensified, and the tingling in my bones began to feel like an energetic vibration. It was as if something was being shaken loose from inside me, and I was trying desperately to stop it.
The louder they chanted, the more the feeling was magnified. My ears started to ring, and the next thing I knew, I was out of my body, floating above myself and watching the scene before me.
“You must fight back,” a woman with a crystal-clear voice said to me, floating with her feet inches off the ground. I could see through her, but I recognized her immediately.
“Morgana?”
“Yes, Elle,” she said as she moved to me, bringing me to float at her side next to my physical body.
“Am I dead?” I asked in disbelief.
“No, you are very much alive,” she said. “But you don’t have a lot of time. You must fight her spell.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t even move on that table,” I said with panic.
“Use the magic you have deep inside. Access it. Harness it. Fight her,” she insisted as she stared directly into my eyes.
“I don’t have magic. I can’t do it. I don’t know how,” I said, my mind reeling.“She is trying to dampen your magic, Elle. Listen to me! Dig down deep. Will this to happen. I will help you from this side of the veil, but you have to try your hardest, do you understand? You cannot let her have access to your magic!”
“My magic? I don’t understa—”
“Do as I say, child!” Morgana demanded as fury flashed on her face at my hesitation. “She is pure evil. I will help you from here, but you must do it quickly.”
She placed her ghostly hands over my chest and abdomen. “I’m going to put you back now. Fight!”
As she began to chant, I felt myself fading, slowly coming into my physical body. As I opened my eyes, the vibration I had felt in my bones before had tripled in force. I wasn’t sure how Morgana expected me to access the magic she was referring to, but I knew that her spirit was helping me from wherever I just was, and I wasn’t going to waste any time.
I closed my eyes and visualized the magic in my body, starting from the top of my head all the way down to the tips of my toes. As I focused on it, I felt something within me react. The vibrations seem to lessen, and my willpower began to grow.
I heard the frustration in the witch’s voice as she chanted even louder. I felt energy surge from my bones, and I tried to focus it into my hand and chest. I actually felt a special kind of raw power building inside me the harder I focused, thinking about what would happen to my vampires and me if I didn’t fight my hardest.
“Don’t try to fight me!” the witch screamed.
The moment she broke her incantation, all of the power that I was focusing on building shot to my hands and chest, breaking through whatever invisible force had pinned me down. I flung myself off of the slab toward the witch who stood with wide eyes and a look of total shock.
“Get back!” I said as I put my hands up at her, and invisible force shooting from my palms at the woman, knocking her back against the wall and tipping over her table.
As soon as the brass bowl hit the ground, all of my vampires seemed to snap immediately out of whatever hold they’d been under. Braden came to in an absolute rage, and the others vamped out instantly, ready to fight.
The robed men huddled around the witch as my vampires flocked to them, tearing them apart one by one. The witch vanished with a snap of her fingers and manifested next to me. She grabbed me by the back of my neck and clutched her other hand around my forehead, squeezing my head tightly as she spoke quickly and incoherently in an ancient language under her breath. My guys spun around in time for my body to go limp, and they stood there watching with fear as if I’d had a gun held to my head.
“None of you are foolish enough to put her life at risk,” she spat angrily.
