The Bitterwine Oath Read online

  “We were able to stop the Eviction,” Maggie said. “Before the witching hour, we rounded up the Shadowed victims and brought them to the sanctuary to keep them safe. But the Woodwalkers were able to breech our defenses, possess the boys, and start the pilgrimage back to the sacred glade. The only reason they couldn’t evict their souls is because we were able to keep a few of the boys’ bodies captive. They struggled the whole time—”

  “Which is why there were signs of violence on the corpses,” I whispered, understanding.

  “Right.” Maggie nodded. “The Woodwalkers needed all twelve victims to undo the curse and complete the Claiming. Magic requires symmetry. They failed, but when they vacated the bodies, they killed the boys on their way out. It’s like an arrow wound…tearing out the arrowhead causes far more damage than the initial injury. We didn’t realize that the boys’ lives were already forfeited until everything was said and done. This time, we desperately need to stop the Possession from taking place, or nothing will change.”

  I swallowed a bad taste coming up my throat and gripped the carved arms of my chair, waiting for the herds of questions trampling through my mind to form an orderly queue. The Wardens’ answers only seemed to spawn more. “Why do the Woodwalkers have to bring them back to the cabin in the sacred glade?” I asked. “Isn’t that Malachi’s, like, special spot?”

  “Malachi used it, but it didn’t belong to her,” Abuela Sofia explained from the Blood Warden table. “It’s a place of ancient power. When Malachi abandoned it, the Woodwalkers took it for their own. We haven’t been able to reclaim it since.”

  “Why don’t you just take the Shadowed boys out of San Solano?” I asked.

  “We tried last time,” Miss Maggie said, staring off into the past. “Actually, Kerry tried. She drove Roger McElroy out of town.”

  “The high school quarterback, right?” I asked, leafing through my mental trove of newspaper clippings and conspiracy websites. Roger was one of the most famous victims of the 1971 massacre, a star student and athlete with a heart of gold. So much promise. Investigators had referred to him when differentiating the motives behind the two massacres. Clearly, the second massacre was not an act of revenge for the boys’ evil deeds. How could it be, when Roger McElroy was respectful to everyone, and they couldn’t unearth a single grievance against him no matter how deep they dug?

  Maggie nodded gravely. “But Roger starting seizing right before they crossed the county line. He would have died if she’d kept driving. A part of him already belonged to the Woodwalker, and that part rebelled against any effort to save the rest of him.”

  “What about getting all the young guys out of San Solano before they’re Shadowed?” I asked. “Before the dark moon, tell them there’s a hunting or paintball retreat and bus them out of here.”

  “That’s hundreds of people, hon,” Maggie replied. “And the Woodwalkers would just pick others. They’d settle for less prime real estate.”

  “Then evacuate the whole town!” I said, losing patience. “Use your beguiling spell thing to make them leave.”

  “Our magic doesn’t work outside of San Solano,” Cynthia said. “It’s tied to the sacred place in the woods, its origin point. There’s a chance we could get people to leave, but we couldn’t stop them from coming to their wits and turning right around.”

  “Then tell them the truth!” I cried.

  Lindsey’s younger cousin snorted, which won her disapproving looks from her family. “What?” she asked innocently. “No one would believe us.”

  “Shut up, Gabby,” Lindsey snapped.

  “She’s coming to terms with everything for the first time,” Sofia told Gabby patiently. “You had to ask these questions, too.”

  “You’re right, Abuela,” Gabby said, hunching her shoulders. “Sorry, Nat. I guess since you have the triad of gifts, I expected you to, like, get it right away.”

  “This is a special situation,” Maggie said. “The better we help Natalie understand this, the sooner she can hop into the saddle.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to corral my whirling thoughts. “Why every fifty years?” I asked. “Why not every hundred? Or every year on the same day?”

  “We can’t say for sure,” Maggie said. “But in the Old Testament, there’s a holy year that occurs every fifty. During that year, there’s a day of atonement, of settling disputes and forgiving debts. For these creatures, it’s the opposite. It’s a night of vengeance. That’s the only significance we’ve been able to attach to the date.”

  “Hold up,” I said, kneading my temples. “You’re mixing magic and the Bible?”

  “Magic spellbooks were used in early Christendom,” Maggie replied, looking ruffled for the first time. “There are many syncretic traditions that involve both witchcraft and Christianity, which are—”

  “What you need to know most, Nat, is that the anniversary has power,” Kate interrupted, earning a withering look from her grandmother. “The Woodwalkers gain strength as it approaches. That’s what happened last time, and it’s happening now.”

  “Malachi was the first to recognize the signs before the anniversary,” Maggie said, finally freeing her granddaughter from her ruthless “act like you’ve had some raising” glare. “Before she knew about the power the date held, she lived alone in a house in the woods. She drew magical boundaries to keep the Woodwalkers confined to the wilderness while she worked to break the curse she’d cast in 1921. She never could. So she charmed weapons to try to kill the Woodwalkers. But that didn’t work, either. The weapons only fended them off. They can’t be killed. And as the fifty-year anniversary approached, she noticed that they started getting restless and bold. They started crossing her boundaries that had held strong for decades.”

  “So, Malachi lived until she was sixty-something years old without being seen by anyone?” I asked, stunned. “How do you know that? Wait…did you know Malachi?”

  “For a short time,” Maggie said. “With all of her magical levees breaking, she sought us out. The Woodwalkers received power on the night of the curse, but so did my Grandmother Lillian. So did Johanna and Dorothy. Malachi knew that. She hoped we could help her.”

  “Sadly, Lillian was the only other surviving Pagan of the Pines,” Cynthia explained. “Growing up in poverty didn’t do Dorothy or Johanna any favors, especially at a time when people didn’t live long to begin with. But their daughters and granddaughters inherited threads of Malachi’s magic. We’d been stifling it, fearing it. We were scared that our reputations would suffer like our grandmothers’ had.”

  “Malachi gave us the collyrium and the bitterwine,” Maggie said.

  “Bitterwine?” I asked.

  “Wine boiled with ingredients to enhance our magic,” she replied. “She also gave us her grimoire, which we renamed the Book of Wisdom.”

  I saw the older women nod their prim approval of the more Christian-friendly rebranding.

  “The church was a safe, private place to protect the boys who had been marked by darkness, and we hoped that the power of our faith would add extra protection,” Maggie continued. “On the night of the anniversary, we gathered them in the sanctuary. Malachi used the last of her power to reinforce the magical protections, but she died from the effort. We were on our own. And as you know, that didn’t go well. That’s why we need everyone. That’s why we need you, Natalie.”

  The ensuing silence was heavy. Feeling everyone’s eyes bore into me, I tried not to squirm. “What do the Woodwalkers, um, look like?”

  Vanessa’s chalk made shrill sounds as she started a new sketch. The creature she drew was tall and spindly. Its body looked wispy, its fingers long shadows that tapered like claws. Rather than a human head, atop its body was a deer skull with an extravagant pair of antlers and eye sockets deeper than graves.

  I was doing my best to cling to reality, but I had already acknowledged the existence of something beyond my understanding. The blood oath had tested everything I knew to be t
rue. It had undone me. And the soulless eyes in Vanessa’s drawing threatened to wash away every ounce of remaining skepticism.

  “We know it’s a lot to take in, but there’s no time to waste.” Maggie stood up and rounded the Earth Warden table to approach me. “As soon as you’re ready, you’ll say our Oath and drink the bitterwine to unlock your magic. You’ll have to swear to uphold your duty. After that, we’ll administer the collyrium so you can see the Woodwalkers. Once you take the Oath, there will be no going back to life as usual.”

  I cast a glance around the room again, nervous now that the time for deliberating had arrived. Were these women lying? Were they delusional? Or did they really need me—and my magic—to help protect San Solano?

  Maggie touched my shoulder and looked out across the group. “If we succeed this time, you young girls will spend the next fifty years reinforcing the wards. You’ll keep yourselves hidden, protect people who venture into the woods, and teach magic to your daughters. You won’t have to face the anniversary for a long time, and by then you’ll be so practiced that you’ll have no trouble stopping the Woodwalkers again. But first, we all need to rise to this occasion. We need to prove that we can protect the innocent. And who knows? Maybe saving the boys this time will somehow break the curse. Maybe it’s always been the only way.”

  Maggie’s hand felt weighty on my shoulder. I looked at the engraved chalice. I could smell the pungent strangeness of ingredients I could never guess, mingling to make magic. It was Malachi’s recipe. The Triad had known Malachi.

  My grandmother had known Malachi.

  Kerry Colter had watched her ancestor die fighting to undo the curse she had cast on twelve evil men. Kerry had probably helped put Malachi to rest. Yet she had rarely spoken of her, had certainly never indicated that she’d known her, and had shielded me from this rich, secret legacy.

  “Assuming all of this is true, why did Grandma Kerry make you swear never to tell me anything? Why did she think I would be safer not knowing?”

  Maggie’s shadow stretched to cover me. “She thought she was distancing you from danger, but that was deluded. She wasn’t well, Natalie. She started that house fire to show how serious she was about severing ties, about leaving behind her old life as a Warden. She burned her magical garden, her occult books, even most of the spells she’d written. She also did it so she’d have an excuse to live with your family and be nearer to you…so she could keep you away from us.”

  I stared at her like she had just slapped me in the face. The room seemed to rock around me. When I blinked, the anger made me see bright bursts in the darkness. “That fire was an accident,” I whispered. “She had dementia. She died from dementia.”

  “Yes, it’s true that her mental faculties were going along with her physical ones,” Maggie said, cradling my hand and patting it. Her wrinkled flesh felt cool. I thought of the papery folds of snakeskin stored in a glass jar on the shelves and shuddered. “She had lived a life that isn’t easy on the mind or the bones. Take it from me. But hon, the dementia wasn’t nearly as bad back then as she made it seem. Kerry was a good woman, God rest her soul, but loving you made her selfish.”

  “Selfish?” I echoed, anger beating like a bass drum behind my sternum. “My grandma was the opposite of selfish. You have no right to call her that.”

  “We all have family here, Natalie,” Cynthia said, clasping her bone cameo necklace. “Of course, we don’t want our loved ones to have to battle these cursed creatures or live secret lives. But this our duty. Your grandmother stopped honoring that. There’s no dressing it up. She was a deserter.”

  Sensing the breadth of my seething anger, Kate spoke up, her voice gentle yet firm. “Nat, forget about Kerry for a minute. This is about you, not her. The Woodwalkers will sense you’re vulnerable. They’re growing bold, just like last time. If you’re left unguarded, they’ll drain your magic to increase their strength and kill you in the process.”

  “It’s happened before,” Maggie added, “to my cousin Nora.”

  “If you don’t take the Warden’s Oath and learn to protect yourself,” Kate went on, “we have to keep using valuable resources to protect you.”

  I fumed, my chest rising and collapsing. My hands were rigid on the wooden arms of the chair. “If it’s true that my grandmother was willing to burn down the house where she lived with my grandfather for decades and exaggerate her symptoms of dementia to keep me from this”—I gestured wildly—“you’re out of your damned mind asking me to join.” The chair squealed across the concrete as I stood. “Leave me the hell alone, and don’t use any of your tricks on me or I will go to the police.”

  Lindsey started to argue, but Maggie cut her off. “Let her be. We can’t force her to do her duty.”

  With a melancholy sigh, she slipped a sealed envelope out of her pocket. “From your grandmother,” she said as she tendered it, noticeably reluctant. “When she made us take the blood oath, she also made me swear that if you ever found out the truth on your own, I would give you this, unopened.”

  I snatched the letter, addressed to me in Grandma Kerry’s scratchy writing.

  Kate stood up and rummaged around the shelves of casks and jars. “Kerry put up protections around your house, but take these just in case,” she said, crossing the room to present three bundles of herbs. She removed a metal amulet with the Warden’s Rune from her collar and slipped it over my head. “The bundles are for smoke cleansing. Burn one of these when you sense the presence of evil and say, ‘As darkness flees from burning flame, pray let evil stake no claim.’ Only use them at night. You’ll be safe during the day without them. And the amulet is beguiled so no one will notice it.”

  Nothing but the memory of the shadows in the woods—and Vanessa’s chilling artwork—convinced me to set aside my pride and accept her offering.

  “You can take my car, too,” she said, handing me her keys. “I’ll pick it up before sunrise.”

  “Lindsey, you should walk her out,” Maggie said. “Promise you’ll think on it, Nat. We need you.”

  I didn’t reply, and Lindsey didn’t speak as she stomped up the stairs and led me back to the sanctuary. When I reached the warm outside air, I turned to Lindsey, but she had already slammed the sanctuary doors, leaving me alone.

  A quiver snuck up my spine. The summer night was bright with stars and thick with humidity, just like any other. But the shadows seemed darker, more alive.

  Savage and hungry, yet chillingly patient.

  Natalie, my dearest girl,

  If you’re reading this, you’ve learned the truth. The Wardens have told you how valuable you are. They have asked you to join. They have told you that I kept you away for no other reason than to protect you. That’s simply untrue.

  I know you might think joining the Wardens is the right thing, the brave thing. But the farther you stay away from them, the safer the people you love will be.

  Make your own path. Don’t just stop the Claiming. Break the curse.

  THIRTEEN

  TWENTY-TWO DAYS UNTIL THE CLAIMING

  The coffeemaker sputtered, making me jump even though I’d just pressed the brew button. I caught my breath and rubbed my puffy eyes.

  For more than two weeks in a row, I’d barely slept during the night. The hours crawled by, a fog of nightmares. I dreamed I was buried alive, clawing at the dirt with no way out. Other times I was drowning in a pool of blood. Last night I’d dreamed of an agonizing ache in my bones, as though something were trying to rip me apart from the inside, and woke up to see a shadow moving outside my window.

  After each dream I lit one of the herb bundles and spoke the chant. Soon I would have to tuck my tail between my legs and ask for more herbs, unless I could determine what they were. I’d even spent some time rummaging around the spice rack in the pantry to try to identify the unique scents, without much luck.

  It was hard to imagine that twelve boys in this town were in danger of getting hijacked by the disembodied spirits of evil,
sadistic men. But I couldn’t dismiss it, either. I felt the darkness pressing close to me, caressing my mind, wanting something from me. I couldn’t convince myself that the Wardens were lying or that the Woodwalkers didn’t exist. I couldn’t convince myself that Levi, Grayson, Bryce, or even my dad was safe from this unseen danger. If they couldn’t Claim a young man, would they settle for a healthy middle-aged one? What if they were so desperate this time, they’d take any body they could get their claws on?

  I’d thought about using my savings to buy my dad a surprise fishing trip to get him out of town, but he would never accept the gift, and he certainly wouldn’t take three weeks off work. If my appeals became too desperate, I’d need to tell him the truth, which he wouldn’t believe, and which would lead to a police investigation of Maggie and the others during a time when they couldn’t afford to be distracted. The more I understood about the ramifications of Malachi’s curse, the more I understood why the Wardens operated the way they did. What else could they do to protect potential victims of the Claiming?

  The full moon waned each night, and the great shadow of cosmic darkness advanced. The old moon would be reborn in obscurity, freeing the Woodwalkers to hunt for their most critical prey.

  Even the moon, infinitely distant as it was, was no longer just a lamp orbiting the earth. It was a harbinger of danger and death. The illusion of normalcy had cracked open and seemed to crumble around me, unsalvageable.

  “Doesn’t the last volunteer meeting start in ten minutes?” Mom asked, breezing into the kitchen in her scrubs, ready to pop over to work the front desk in my dad’s office.

  “Yeah,” I croaked, and blinked lazily at the stream of strong coffee.

  “Didn’t sleep well again? What’s wrong?”

  In every shadow I see demonic creatures with black pits for eyes, I thought. I’m scared for myself and everyone in this town, but I’m not allowed to join the only people protecting us.