Page 78 of A Touch of Flame
Kiara’s lips curved. “I’m so glad. Braden is such a good man. My heart broke for him when Laura died. And now it seems so strange that you’ve hooked up with him. I mean, Laura died the same night you killed those witches. Maybe for that reason, fate brought you together.”
Maeve knew she was to some extent sharing Braden’s wolfness. But at these words, she felt his wolf, or maybe it was her wolf now, come to the fore. Her nostrils flared and her mind sharpened. She could feel some of the fog dissipate around her memories of what happened that night when she’d gone berserk.
She felt oddly outside of herself as she spoke these words. “You’re right. Laura died the same night.”
“What do you mean? Are you remembering what happened?”
“Maybe.” She glanced down at her hands. They were clasped in her lap, the knuckles white. She forced herself to relax.
Kiara rolled onto her side facing Maeve. She reached over and grabbed Maeve’s joined hands. “You can do this. The timing feels right to me. As your friend and as your mentor, you can bring your faulty memory forward.
“You need to see what really happened that night. You’ll never full embrace your future with Braden until you’ve faced and accepted what happened in Veyda’s killing room.”
“Kiara, I know something horrible happened that night, something worse than even taking the lives of those witches.”
“I know. But remembering will set you free to forge a better life here in Five Bridges, a life that might be able to include one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”
These words had an effect. Into the depths of her spirit, she wanted a life with Braden more than anything. She’d been alone since Frank died and living out a nightly, horror-filled existence as she brought people back from the dead.
She’d accepted the role she’d chosen. She valued what she did. But she’d also lived alone in her underground rooms.
Then Braden had come along.
Now, she didn’t want to go back to being alone in her burrow. She carried his children and she wanted to be with him. It seemed to her that the only thing standing in her way was this ever-present fog that covered the central killing platform in Veyda’s now-destroyed building.
As thoughts of Braden took hold of her mind, she forced the fog to roll back.
She was inside Veyda’s killing room once more. She could smell the deaths of the witches. Her killing power had torn through each of their bodies.
But why had she done it? There had to have been a catalyst.
She wanted to see it all.
This time, she moved backward into her memories, before the witches had died. She focused on Veyda.
Once she did, the killing room came into better focus. The platform had lost most of its fog now. She could see the woman’s tortured body, but not her face. A remnant of fog still clung to her features. Maeve kept her newly acquired wolfness in a dominant position over her witch senses. It helped a lot.
She urged the memories to come forward.
She could hear Veyda’s voice in her head, prompting her to do something. But what?
Like a train whistle far away, she heard it, a shrill agonized scream.
The terrified and painful cries of the tortured woman had started peeling her drugged stupor away.
That’s when she’d come to a full awareness of what was happening in the killing room. The drugs Veyda had given her had prevented her from seeing the full horror of what the witch expected of her. These memories, she’d blocked completely.
Until this moment.
The two witches stood on the opposite side of the killing platform. Maeve’s back was to the bank of one-way mirrors.
The witches were painting the poison on the woman’s skin. The poor woman screamed over and over. She writhed, trying to shift away from their tools, but she was strapped down along her arms and legs. Blood and dissolved tissue boiled from the wounds. Maeve couldn’t understand why she was still alive.
Veyda’s voice had entered her mind, the sound serpent-like.My specialty poison. It only affects the skin and muscle, but takes a long time to penetrate the organs. Isn’t it beautiful?
Maeve’s heart had pounded in her chest. The woman screamed and screamed. Her whole body shook. When it looked like she would pass out, the witches backed away to let her recover. The choir of witches, positioned in the risers to the right of Maeve, began to chant.
The woman begged for mercy. She begged to be killed.
