The Bitterwine Oath Page 7

  A logging family had built a cabin homestead on the hallowed spot but abandoned it only five months later. Most people found the wild glade and its mysterious force unsettling.

  Ruth turned to this arcane power as a last resort. Her husband, the reverend, would have accused her of faithlessness for beseeching an entity other than their Christian God for help. But God had allowed her son to die, and she no longer trusted him to revive the child she carried.

  Before setting foot in the glade, Ruth removed her shoes and clothing and released her golden hair. She sank to her knees and dug her hands into the earth. She wept and wept under a summer moon, crying out to the untamed power there.

  And the power answered.

  The trees rustled in a phantom wind. The earth moved beneath her fingers, warm and alive. She heard a tortured caw and turned to find a bird with a broken wing ambling near.

  She understood the message: a life for a life. She reached for the bird and wrung its neck.

  The child quickened again.

  At the time, Ruth was too desperate to know or care that deep magic stakes a claim. One day she would realize and would feel ashamed of the bargain she had made in the sacred glade where the vacant cabin sat like a watchman. She would not speak of the shame until she was an old woman, mere hours from the grave.

  But that unspoken shame drove her daughter back to the dark power that had left its mark, that had made her what she was.

  EIGHT

  Natalie Colter

  Levi slammed his door and flicked on a flashlight. Abbie stumbled out of the truck bed, tipsy, and she and Juliana laughed.

  Lindsey slung her alert gaze through the shadows of the surrounding pines. In the mellow moonlight, her long-lashed brown eyes swam with terror.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, fine,” she answered, landing softly on the dirt.

  Vanessa and Bryce hopped out of the cab and fell into step with us, their arms around each other. Our crunching footsteps were too loud in the quiet.

  “You can’t see anything from here,” Juliana said, balancing on her tiptoes for a better view.

  A metallic rattle made me realize Abbie was mounting the fence. “Grayson, give me a boost!”

  Quicker than a snake strike, Lindsey caught Abbie’s wrist and hissed, “You promised.”

  “Ouch!” Abbie twisted away from her. “You’re being a buzzkill.”

  “If you go in there—”

  “It’s okay,” Vanessa interrupted Lindsey in a low voice. She clutched her elbow and guided her away. “We can wait in the truck and keep a lookout.”

  “Do whatever you want.” Abbie clumsily planted her flip-flop on Grayson’s laced fingers.

  “Here, take the keys,” Levi said, and tossed them to Vanessa.

  “Should I stay with you, Ness?” Bryce asked.

  Vanessa waved him off. “We’re fine. I’ll call you if we see someone coming.”

  Grayson helped Abbie and Juliana to the other side, and Faith, who was wearing sneakers, scaled the fence without assistance.

  “Need a boost?” Levi asked, shining his flashlight in my direction. His freckle-dusted skin took on a silvery cast in the moonlight.

  “Um…” I curled my fingers through the chain links and lodged the toe of my sandal in an opening, but it was too small to find purchase. “Yeah, sure.”

  Levi gave the flashlight to Bryce and presented a hand for me to step in. I obliged. He wrapped the other just above my ankle, his fingers warm and steady as he launched me upward with ease. I pushed myself the rest of the way and dropped down on the other side, staggering.

  Levi climbed and assumed an impressive side plank position in the air before landing next to me with a thud. As we hiked up a gradual incline behind the others, the thick grasses tickled my exposed calves, shooting shivers up my spine. I found myself wishing that we could fast-forward to eating buttery waffles at the twenty-four-hour diner.

  The immense pines stood in a crescent-moon formation around the cabin. Knit closely together, they filtered the celestial light and lent a bewildering beauty to the clearing they guarded—the place that Lillian Pickard had called the “sacred glade.” A stray wind shuddered through the boughs, stirring up the musty-sweet scent of wisteria and pine needles and making my damp bathing suit feel cold and slimy beneath my clothes.

  Even though we’d already climbed the fence, it was here—in the clearing—where I sensed that we were truly crossing a barrier. One that shouldn’t be crossed, I couldn’t help thinking.

  Juliana, Grayson, Abbie, Faith, and Bryce forged heedlessly ahead. Maybe they were just being plucky. Or maybe they were unreceptive to the menacing energy of this place.

  Everything in me wanted to turn back. And if Levi hadn’t been there, restraining his long-legged pace to keep even with me, I might have.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, brushing my hand with his, probably by accident.

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want to go back to the truck?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “You can’t think of any reason we shouldn’t be here?” he asked, oddly probing.

  I stopped and looked up at him, frowning, but could only see a glint of his eyes in the dark. Shoving away thoughts of Grandma Kerry’s mental break and the gift I’d received from Miss Maggie, I said, “Other than the obvious? No. Can you?”

  “No,” he said, his tone layered and indecipherable.

  As we drew close, Bryce shined the flashlight on the crooked front porch. I felt the tingling of unease crawl up the back of my neck. And that awful, rotten smell coming in waves—what could it possibly be?

  Death, my imagination supplied.

  Invasive vines and debris cloaked the steeply sloping roof. The rundown cabin looked and felt so eerie that I almost expected to see a figure leering at us through the window.

  Grayson took long strides so he could be the first to conquer the creaky porch steps. But he hesitated when he reached the front door, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Only after the light from Juliana’s phone camera dwelled on his face for a few seconds did he locate the courage to shove it open.

  He screamed.

  Most of the group scampered backward, tripping over one another. I yelped but couldn’t move, engulfed by fear. Levi alone remained perfectly calm, at least enough to shield me, his rock-solid forearm like a wall in front of me.

  “I got y’all so bad!” Grayson cackled.

  Abbie screeched his name and added a few choice words. Faith stomped onto the porch and smacked the back of his messy blond head.

  Dropping his arm, Levi looked sideways at me, as though wondering whether I’d noticed the protective gesture.

  Bryce raked a rough hand through his tousled brown curls, straightened his glasses, and picked up the flashlight he’d dropped in the scuffle. “You scared the shit out of me, man,” he said. Grayson gave a self-satisfied grin and led the way into the one-room dwelling.

  Soft purple-gray puffs of wisteria and snarls of vines draped over the entrance. A lock of my hair got snagged as I ducked to pass through. I trapped a squeal at the back of my throat as I freed myself.

  Once inside, I blinked until my eyes adjusted to the musty-smelling darkness. For all my interest in our town’s history, I had never visited the cabin, content to study the black-and-white photographs in Lillian’s book.

  Now that I had come, it felt inevitable. Like it had always been waiting for me.

  I was spellbound by the place that had lived in my imagination for so long. Maybe, in a corner of my mind more remote than this cabin, I had sheltered a child-like belief in the wondrous, dark, dangerous magic of Malachi Rivers.

  Dust motes churned with each of our tentative footfalls. The only natural light was a ghostly moonbeam falling through the obscured window, reaching across the weatherworn wooden boards. No furnishings remained besides rickety chairs, shelves holding growlers and pots, and a tarnished mirror that warped our r
eflections.

  At the center of the room, a deep ring had been carved into the wooden planks.

  “This is where Malachi and her friends did their magic,” I whispered. “Inside the circle.”

  “So creepy,” Juliana said, brushing away dirt and dust from the carving with her sandal.

  “It’s colder inside the circle!” Faith gasped. Arm extended, she wiggled her fingers.

  The others tested her claim, but no one stepped across the line, preferring to edge around it. I inserted my hand and felt a chill, like slipping off a warm wool glove on a crisp day.

  “Probably just a draft.” Grayson shrugged.

  “From where?” Faith asked. “It’s warm outside.”

  They bickered, but my mind muted their voices. Mesmerized, I crossed to the center of the circle. The sensation reminded me of submerging my head at the lake, listening to the world go silent, and letting the gentle current carry me where it willed. I felt peaceful.

  But that didn’t last long.

  There was an unmistakable brush of phantom fingers traveling down my cheek, almost affectionately.

  With a shriek, I leaped backward out of the circle, upending one of the chairs. A chorus of questions began, but all I could manage was, “Something touched me!”

  “It’s okay,” Bryce said softly, showing me his palm as though trying to calm a wild horse. “It was probably a spider or a cobweb or something.”

  “No, I felt fingers.” My breaths rasped as I traced the lingering sensation that tickled the curve of my jaw.

  So far, Juliana had respected my request for privacy, but not anymore. This freak-out was being live streamed. As I considered the hundreds, maybe thousands of people watching, my cheeks flamed.

  “Do you think there might be something here with us?” Juliana asked. “What if it’s Malachi?”

  “Trying to communicate with her descendant from beyond the grave?” Grayson mocked.

  “Wait, what?” Juliana turned to me with a flash of hunger in her eyes. “Are you related to Malachi?”

  “Okay, I think we’re done here,” Levi said from across the circle.

  “Seriously?” Juliana scoffed. “I’m just trying to—”

  “She didn’t even want to be in it, Juliana,” Faith reminded her.

  Irritably, Juliana relented and gave a sugarcoated sign-off to her followers.

  “We should replay the video,” Bryce suggested. “Maybe we’ll see something.”

  The comforting sensation that only a moment ago had settled over my skin like a balm had turned sinister, pricking every hair on my body. “I’m going back to the truck,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Levi started to say. But he was nearest to Abbie when her foot broke through a rotted board, and she clung to him as she sank calf-deep through the floor. He twisted around to extricate her, but she was laughing too hard to be of much help.

  I left, trampling down the sagging porch steps and forging alone into the wooded shadows. My breath caught in my throat, and I was reminded of coughing up dirt in my dream. That last one had felt so real, realer than ever. Was I losing my mind, imagining things? Things like magically appearing journal entries and otherworldly contact?

  At least the twin glows of the headlights in the distance let me know I wasn’t the only one ready to leave.

  But as I drew closer, my footfalls silent on the lush grass, I realized the lights were actually coming from dripping, pale candles. Two figures sat within their flittering glow: Lindsey and Vanessa. Their hands rested on their knees, palms displayed. Lindsey’s right wrist was bound by twine to Vanessa’s left. They had traced a distinct circle around themselves on the dirt road.

  I halted in my tracks. If I was playing with a full deck—I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that a few cards were missing—that left two possible scenarios: either Lindsey and Vanessa were pulling a much more sophisticated trick than Grayson’s amateur-hour jump scare, or…

  Or Malachi still had worshippers, and my best friend was one of them.

  The talismans on my property, the sachet that Bryce’s cat found, the mysterious wounds that Lindsey had been so defensive about, the journal from Miss Maggie…maybe Lindsey’s entanglement in the cult explained everything.

  Gulping down the sour panic that crept up my throat, I dared to sneak closer and take refuge behind a pine tree. Lindsey and Vanessa were arguing in harsh whispers and hadn’t noticed me.

  “Because you know the Triad is going to be pissed,” Vanessa was saying.

  “What should we have done, chain them all in a basement?” Lindsey asked. “They were going to come here no matter what. We couldn’t let them do it alone.”

  “We could have at least stopped Nat from coming,” Vanessa said.

  Why would they single me out? Why would they want me, specifically, to stay away from the cabin?

  “Maybe it’s good that she’s here.” Lindsey scattered a handful of pine needles at the base of the candles. She removed a bundle of dried herbs from her pocket and set it aflame, waving it around and filling the air with a haze of smoke. “Sidestepping that ridiculous blood oath hasn’t worked yet, and we’re running out of time.”

  Triad? Blood oath?

  I could only hope this was a hokey, harmless society for bored small-town women, one that had nothing to do with Malachi. But the twine on their wrists and the circle in the dirt begged to differ.

  “But they might sense her presence,” Vanessa argued.

  “If they do, we can handle it,” Lindsey replied.

  “They’re getting more powerful, Linds.”

  Who were they talking about? The Triad? Was the Triad the leader, or leaders? Was Miss Maggie one of them? Was this Grandma Kerry’s legacy?

  It struck me that this could go far deeper than I ever imagined. What if my parents knew about this? What if Kate had been playing coy when I’d asked her about the journal? Now that I’d found out Lindsey and Vanessa’s secret, I feared there was no one I could definitively check off the list of suspects.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Lindsey huffed, and then shook her head. “Can we stop? We’re not supposed to fight inside the sacred circle.”

  “You’re right.” Vanessa sighed and closed her eyes.

  They lifted their arms and bent them at the elbows, revealing marks drawn on the palms of their bound hands: on Lindsey, a dark blot, and on Vanessa, an X. If that dot was blood, then these were indisputably two of the three elements of the Malachian mark.

  I dug my fingers into the rough pine tree bark, trying not to panic.

  They began chanting in perfect unison.

  “Shadowed night and silver moon, hark and heed the Warden’s Rune. By powers of earth, blood, and bone, may our aim be clear and known. Spirits, thy strength in us confirm, that no one here should come to harm. As darkness flees from burning flame, pray let evil stake no claim. By this rite we thus decree: as we will, so mote it be.”

  Like a spider’s prey, I was paralyzed, recalling the words that had suddenly appeared on the first page of the journal: By the powers of earth, bone, and blood, proceed we Wardens to our noble work. Runes, magic rituals, sacred circles…In San Solano, those things could never be harmless. In San Solano, they were flashing neon lights that spelled out murderer.

  They called themselves the Wardens, and Lindsey and Vanessa’s incantation implied that they didn’t want their friends to get hurt. What about the other people of San Solano? What about someone—say, me, for example—who might unwittingly discover their dark secrets?

  That Lindsey even had secrets to discover was a stinging slap in the face. How many sleepovers and cross-country runs and inside jokes had we shared since she fell under the spell of a violent cult?

  “I feel a disturbance,” Vanessa said when the chant was over, dropping her voice to a whisper. “It’s Nat. She’s nearby.”

  “Do you think she can see us?” Lindsey asked.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Her
Sight is getting clearer.” Vanessa opened her eyes and snapped her head in my direction. “Nat?” she called out.

  With a fraught gasp, I ran. I heard rattling as one or both of them scaled the fence. Last year, I would have been able to outrun Lindsey, but she’d gotten so damn fast recently, and inhumanly tireless.

  Scratchy underbrush tore at my legs as I ran back through the dense copse of trees toward the cabin. I barreled over the uneven terrain faster than my eyes could see in the moonlight, a swift pursuit at my heels. My toe struck something hard and I took a fall, landing on scattered rocks that scraped my flesh and bruised my limbs.

  Through the throbbing pain, I propped up on my elbows to look around. Blinking into the darkness, I found that the rocks were not rocks after all. Decaying fur, empty-eyed skulls, and other unidentifiable bits of animal remains were strewn through the grass.

  I lay sprawled across a pile of bones.

  NINE

  “Shhh!” Lindsey arrived to clamp a hand over my mouth, cutting off my shriek of horror. I scrambled to my feet and struggled to pry her away, but her sinewy arm was unmovable.

  “Nat?” Levi yelled. Through the columns of trees, I watched him exit the cabin and jog toward the road, continuing to call my name.

  Before I could react, a guttural noise, like a choked garbage disposal, came from the deep woods.

  I froze in Lindsey’s clutches, pure dread icing through my veins. I knew the calls of hogs and coyotes. This was unlike anything I’d ever heard, between human and animal.

  “They’re here,” Vanessa whispered.

  “Go,” Lindsey said. “I’ll catch up.”

  Vanessa darted through the darkness, nimbler than a deer and twice as fast. Lindsey released me, trusting me not to scream again.

  She produced an herb sachet and a tiny vial of dark liquid from her pocket. Dumping fragrant herbs in her palm, she spilled three drops of the liquid and made a mixture. When she dabbed the sticky paste to my forehead, I jerked away.