CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

 

A high-pitched wailing filled the air, piercing and horrific, leaving my eardrums on the verge of exploding. I clapped my hands over my ears, but that did nothing to dim the ghastly shrieking. I whipped around, trying to see where it was coming from and whether this appalling noise was a prelude to one of Cadifor’s tricks.

Maeve screamed. Mack paled. I became the middle of Oscar and Joss’s human sandwich as they wedged me between them. The gruesome screeching shot bolts of terror through me and I recoiled, petrified.

“Don’t look,” Joss hissed, trying to protect me from seeing whatever was making that god-awful noise. The fear in his voice clued me in to the fact that this thing was more horrendous than anything I could possibly imagine.

Oscar glared at Joss in disbelief. “Are you crazy? She invoked the banshee, she has to get rid of it.”

“What the hell’s a banshee?” I said, remembering in a frightening flash I had to face and banish one.

A thing materialized less than five feet in front of me, hovering in the air like one of those lame ghosts in the haunted house at Wolfebane’s annual fair. But this was no fake fiend. No, this banshee was the real deal, from the top of its streaming flame hair to the bottom of its ragged gray robes. Bloodred eyes glowed in gaping holes. Its mouth was a wide black canyon emitting the ear-piercing wail, and its deathly pallor was highlighted by nondescript tattered robes hanging from its lifeless body. And then I realized something that had to be a trick, an illusion.

The banshee looked like my mom.

I was transfixed, desperate to look away but horribly drawn to its ugliness. Shudders racked my body, rolling over me in sickening waves. I clutched at Joss to stop from crumbling to the ground.

“You need to do this,” he said, his calmness belied by the anguish darkening his eyes to midnight.

“Tell me how to get rid of it!” While my ears bled, the banshee kept coming, closing the distance between us. The closer it drifted, the harder I shook, pain shredding my insides like I’d swallowed a pack of razors. “Freaking tell me or I swear—”

“You need to find the answer within.”

I swayed, increasingly dizzy and faint, as Joss held me upright.

“Ground yourself. Concentrate. Think.”

Ground yourself.

In an instant I knew. But where was I supposed to find a black obsidian now? Unless I could manufacture obsidian in the next thirty seconds, our eardrums would burst.

I focused on Bel’s fire and wished like I’d never wished before. All of those wasted wishes for the tooth fairy to leave dollars rather than cents, for Santa to bring books rather than more scarves, for the Easter Bunny to hide chocolate and not hideous carob, I’d take them back in a heartbeat if this one wish could come true.

Bel, help me, tell me what to do.

As the flame flickered, it cast a shadow on the ground, over a flat, dark rock. …

“That’s it!” Startling Joss, I dropped to my knees, snatched up the rock, and examined it closely. It didn’t resemble the obsidian I’d used back at school, but it would have to do.

I had to try it, had to try something. Clutching the stone in my left hand, I faced the banshee, trying not to flinch as those crimson eyes staring straight at me glowed with malevolence.

Invoking the grounding spell, I pressed a fingertip to my forehead while aiming the rock at the ground, effectively closing my third eye while visualizing the banshee trapped underground, surrounded by darkness, as far from the light as possible.

The harder I concentrated, the more the agony eased. The banshee faded, her stumps-for-hands reaching toward me, clutching at air, her wail increasing in pitch and volume until we fell to our knees. Though I wanted to look away, I couldn’t, mesmerized by those gleaming red eyes, my forehead and palm holding the rock pulsing with heat. When I thought I couldn’t bear the shrieks any longer, the banshee vanished.

“Holly, you okay?”

Joss helped me to my feet, the sudden silence a welcome relief from the wailing, but strangely eerie.

“Yeah, fine,” I said, though my voice shook.

Mack touched my arm, his expression dazed. “How did you—”

“She’s a fully fledged member of the Sorority now, that’s how,” Maeve said, hugging me tight.

“Yeah, if ever we had doubts before, guess you put those to rest. That’s another task mastered.” Oscar nodded, pensive, sizing me up. “What did you do?”

How did I explain something I didn’t fully understand? “I grounded myself with black obsidian, then visualized the banshee back underground.”

Mack and Maeve beamed like proud parents while Oscar frowned. “You’ve practiced with black obsidian before?”

“A little.” Tired of his condescension, especially after I’d done so well, I squared my shoulders. “I used a trans-channeling crystal for the first time last night too.”

“You used a trans-channeling crystal?” Oscar’s sneer made me bristle. “No way. You’re new to this. You can’t be that powerful.”

“She is.” Joss’s clipped tone didn’t invite further argument. Mack and Maeve studied me with renewed interest.

“Is anyone going to tell me what that thing was, apart from one of the lesser creatures of the Underworld I had to face and banish?”

I didn’t imagine the long pause before Joss nodded.

“Banshees are female spirits who are usually attached to a specific family.” Joss paused and glanced at Mack, whose grave expression gave me the creeps.

“Come on, guys, I need to know what I just faced off in case it comes back.”

Joss entwined his fingers with mine in such a way the others couldn’t see, his simple touch giving me instant comfort.

“Okay.” Mack nodded. “You saw the red eyes?”

Hell yeah, I’d seen them. I thought back to meeting Drake on the first day at C.U.L.T. what seemed like an eternity ago, and how the flicker of crimson in his creepy eyes had spooked me. The banshee made Drake look like an innocent kid.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s from weeping.”

“So she’s a big crybaby. I can deal with that.”

Nobody laughed, not even a ghost of a smile, and Joss squeezed my hand, his grave expression sending a shiver of foreboding through me despite the reassuring grip.

“A banshee voices her anguish when a death is imminent.”

Terror choked me as I deciphered what he’d just said. “You mean—”

“When a member of that family is near death.”

Mack, Maeve, and Oscar couldn’t meet my eye; only Joss could, as brave, stoic, and supportive as ever. But for a split second, I saw the fear lurking behind his beautiful blues. Somehow that one glimpse of my warrior’s vulnerability scared me more than the rest put together.

“So someone in my family is going to die?”

The last word dripped off my tongue like acid. Maeve sucked in her bottom lip and bit down on it.

“It’s just part of an old legend,” Joss said, his lack of conviction emphasized by the others’ silence. He slid an arm around my waist and held on tight while my shaking eased.

Joss was wrong.

That banshee meant business.

I didn’t believe in coincidences, didn’t believe in random acts. Of all the lesser Underworld creatures I had to face, this banshee had appeared at this point in time for a reason.

As a warning.

To scare the crap out of me.

It had worked. No matter how much Joss tried to placate me, one word echoed through my head.

Death.

My first thought was Nan, wasting away in that hospital bed, non-responsive, a shadow of the woman I knew and loved. Losing her would gut me. I didn’t want it to be Nan.

What if it wasn’t?

Did the banshee transforming into an image of Mom mean she would die? While I didn’t feel the same ripping loss at the thought, I didn’t want her to die. Not at the hands of Cadifor, and certainly not before I’d gotten my answers. Did that make me heartless? Maybe, but I wasn’t the one who ran out on my daughter when she was a baby.

The last option was too creepy to contemplate.

As I raised my stricken gaze to Joss, the possibility too hideous to acknowledge, I saw the same thought lurking in the shadows of his expressive eyes.

What if the person in the Burton family about to die was me?