Lyse

One powerful dream that went out across the world and reawakened the slumbering power of magic. One coven of blood sisters—or witches, as they’d been called before the word took on such negative connotations—standing against a Machiavellian syndicate called The Flood. One woman who didn’t know what the hell she was doing but who’d been thrust into the middle of a battle between good and evil.

This was Lyse MacAllister: a woman who had straddled the line of living up to her responsibility and shirking it . . . choosing the former. She was the uninitiated woman. The unwitting master of a coven that stood between the world remaining as it was and being destroyed under The Flood’s new world order. She was woefully unprepared for the job, but, in the end, it kind of hadn’t mattered.

Lyse had seen what The Flood was capable of, had experienced their evil firsthand. They had captured and tortured many of her blood sisters, using up the women’s powers to further their own nefarious ends. Lyse and her coven mates had freed the poor wretches they’d found in The Flood’s secret underground lair, but the damage had been done and many of the women were now only shells of their former selves. A human body could only endure so much—and to be caged like an animal, experimented on, and have your powers drained from you like tree sap . . . ? Well, it was merely a matter of time before you ceased to function. Before everything that made you a person was sucked out and you were left an empty husk. No longer the glorious and unique human being you once were. And these atrocities were carried out against young girls, too—children, really, who had just begun to move toward womanhood.

Lyse likened what she and her coven mates—Arrabelle, Evan, and Niamh—discovered in The Flood’s subterranean warehouse laboratory to the World War II horrors of Josef Mengele’s “experimentations” at Auschwitz. The inhumanity they’d found there had chilled Lyse and the others to their very cores.

Evan and Arrabelle were trained herbalists, but their magical gifts could do little to help. They’d done what they could, helping Lyse and Niamh free the women and children—and soothing those who seemed somewhat cognizant of what was happening—but most of the victims were so far gone that “fixing” them was not on the table.

Evan had been the first one to realize that they needed help to get the victims to safety, and so he’d encouraged Lyse to reach out to the few blood sisters that he trusted, those who’d stayed on the fringes of blood sister society and hadn’t been co-opted by the corruption inside the Greater Council, the governing body that presided over the world’s witch covens. After Lyse and her coven mates had discovered a mole inside the Greater Council’s ranks, anyone associated with the Council had become subject to suspicion. And Lyse doubted that Desmond Delay—the man she’d only recently learned was her grandfather—was the only bad apple.

She didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of taking up space in her mind. He’d blown her world wide open when he’d informed her of her parentage and now she felt sullied, tainted by having his blood running in her veins. He’d made her question who she was and where she’d come from. Made her question the tenuous relationship she’d forged with the woman who’d raised her, her grandmother Eleanora. For now she was ignoring all the bad feelings that bubbled up inside her, but she knew that one day soon she would be forced to unpack them, possibly forfeiting the leadership of a coven she’d only recently accepted her place in.

“You’re lost in your head,” her coven mate Niamh—a diviner of great talent—said, sweeping her long dark hair into a bun at the nape of her neck.

Lyse could only agree with Niamh. She knew she’d disconnected from the present moment. Knew she’d been cast adrift in her own thoughts as she’d tried to process all the pain and suffering and fear she’d experienced in The Flood’s underground laboratory.

“Sorry,” Lyse said. “You’re right. It’s all a bit overwhelming.”

The others had followed her lead, shepherding the victims into a safe area, then heading topside with her by way of a bank of industrial-sized elevators that served as the only entrance and exit into the bowels of the mountain—leaving The Flood’s underground labyrinthine research facility behind them physically if not emotionally. Now they were in the Nevada desert, looking to Lyse’s continued leadership to get them the hell out of there.

“It’s a lot,” Arrabelle said, resting a hand on Lyse’s shoulder, but Lyse could feel her friend’s body shudder as she turned to look back at the bank of elevators that led to the lab. “We all feel it. This place has bad juju—evil things happened here . . . even before The Flood took it over. It’s full of nasty vibes.”

Lyse knew Arrabelle was convinced the place had once housed a secret U.S. military compound, and Lyse had to agree that there was something cold and clinical, and vaguely government-issue, about the facility.

“You know we’re not far from where Area 51 is purported to be,” Evan said, joining Lyse, Niamh, and Arrabelle’s conversation. “Who knows what the government had in there before The Flood got their hands on it?”

The old mine shaft that housed the facility was in the mountains bordering Groom Lake, Nevada—maybe Arrabelle and Evan weren’t too far off the mark.

“I’m gonna reach out to the Eagles if you guys are still all right with it.”

Lyse nodded and watched as Evan took out his cell phone. There was little small talk. He quickly got to the heart of the matter, asking his friends to send reinforcements who would be prepped and ready to help care for the women and children Lyse’s coven had rescued.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Lyse told Arrabelle.

She needed some space to think.

“We’re on it,” Arrabelle said, and nodded.

Lyse turned to go, but then she felt Niamh’s long fingers encircling her upper arm.

“I wanted to tell you that we did the right thing,” Niamh said, a haunted look in her eyes. “Now no one else will die like my sister.”

They’d arrived too late to save Niamh’s identical twin, Laragh—who’d been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by The Flood. Lyse knew that Niamh had been damaged in some visceral way by her sister’s death and that the loss of the psychic connection between them—the same connection that had helped guide Niamh and the others to the location of the secret facility—was ripping Niamh apart.

“I wish we’d gotten here sooner,” Lyse said, filled with guilt by the loss of the blood sisters they hadn’t been able to save.

“Me, too.”

Niamh let her go, but not before giving Lyse’s arm a firm squeeze. It was as if she were saying . . . It’s not your fault. But Lyse didn’t believe her . . . or anyone else.

She gave Niamh a quick nod, then stepped out onto the uneven desert floor. She felt Niamh’s gaze pinned to her back as she stumbled along the rocky terrain, but she didn’t look back. Embarrassed by the tears that blinded her vision.

She was feeling unsure of herself, and she needed some space in order to think, to figure out what their next move would be and what the future might bring them.

She moved farther away from the others, taking one of the paths that led away from the mouth of the mine shaft toward the dusty brown horizon. She was so happy to be aboveground again she didn’t even mind the heat as she walked, watching the blue sky shift into late-afternoon streaks of burnt orange and dark indigo. She was dirty, sweaty, and she could smell herself. She realized she had no idea how long she had been held captive by The Flood before she escaped and hooked up with the others, but the last time she’d showered was at least twenty-four hours in the past.

The rubber soles of her shoes offered little protection from the jagged stones she was trying to maneuver over, so she stopped and hauled herself up onto an outcropping of beige rock. She felt exhausted, both mentally and physically, her tired feet aching from too much time spent standing upright. Hopping over a crevice in the outcropping of stone, she saw flecks of greenery growing in the shaded dirt beneath the rocks.

Even when things look darkest, life goes on, she thought, then tore her gaze away from the growing things to gently make her way over to the edge. She plopped down on the warm stone, the heat radiating up through the seat of her black jeans, and closed her eyes.

She lifted her face, catching some of the dwindling sunlight. She tried to relax the kinks out of her shoulders and back, but it was no use. She felt tight as a knot, her whole body aching from the last few hours. She let her mind drift, remembering all the awful things she’d endured: She’d watched a man die—a man she’d been in love with. She’d let down her coven mates, especially empath Daniela and Dream Keeper Lizbeth. She’d allowed Desmond Delay—the man she was now forced to acknowledge as her grandfather (the thought made her skin prickle)—to escape without taking any responsibility for his heinous crimes.

She was a shitty coven master, and even though she hadn’t asked for the gig, she still felt the weight of the position pressing down on her. Yet she was only one person. There was only so much she could do. For someone else, those words might have absolved them from guilt, but for Lyse, they did nothing. As far as she was concerned, they were a cop-out, and they did zero to assuage the anger she directed at herself for failing to be a better leader.

She opened her mouth and screamed, the sound raw and terrifying as it ripped itself from her throat. It left her gasping when it was done, but she ignored the burning in her throat and repeated the action one more time. She felt like there was some kind of murderous poison bubbling up from deep inside her and the only way to get it out was to scream. So she did—again and again until the scream became a sob and then she was forced to let the tears flow. She didn’t think crying made her weak. More the opposite. With tears came acceptance and the will to go on in the face of utter impossibility.

Because Lyse finally understood—sitting on that outcropping of rocks in “the middle of nowhere” Nevada—that the battle she and her blood sisters were entrenched in would probably be the end of them and of everyone they knew and loved.

She and her coven mates were on what amounted to a suicide mission.

As this realization blossomed inside her, it took up the space where fear and anger had been hiding, filling her soul with a sense of righteous purpose.

So she died doing what was right? Well, then . . . that was just gonna be the way it went down. And if she could protect her blood sisters from the same fate, she would—but she was comfortable with the knowledge that death loomed large in her future.

Today, she decided, was as good a day as any to die for what she believed in and knew to be right.

•   •   •

She came back to find the others crowded around Evan. Well, to be more precise: Evan’s phone.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Arrabelle, with her aquiline face and smoldering brown eyes, was the only one to look up. She’d stripped down to a tank top, and even in the fading afternoon light, her toned brown arms stood out in stark contrast to the cream fabric. Her look spoke volumes to Lyse.

“Shit,” Lyse murmured.

“Yeah, shit’s the word,” Arrabelle said, her words coming out in a whisper—as if by keeping her voice quiet, she could stop whatever she was about to tell Lyse from being true. “You think the Inquisition was bad news? What happened today makes the Roman Catholic Church look like a bunch of witch lovers.”

As Lyse got closer, she could see that Niamh’s face was wet with tears, her shoulders heaving as she cried. Even Evan, who was the most stoic of the three, looked shaken.

“Tell me,” Lyse said, a deep sense of wrong eating a hole in the pit of her stomach.

“They burned down a school in West Africa,” Arrabelle said. “Some of the children began exhibiting powers and the villagers just burned the whole thing to the ground. Ninety-four kids dead. And there’s more.”

“More?” Lyse said.

Arrabelle raised an eyebrow, arms crossed over her chest. Lyse could feel her friend trying to distance herself from the words coming out of her mouth.

“Someone posted a list online of every coven in the United States. With names. It has to be The Flood’s work. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“And . . . ?” Lyse prodded.

“They’re picking up everyone who is named on the list. ‘Quarantining’ them,” Evan said.

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The police,” Arrabelle answered before Evan could. “Rounding us all up. Like we’re criminals.”

Lyse was having trouble processing what Evan and Arrabelle were saying.

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re picking up every blood sister they can lay their hands on,” Evan replied. “And not just here. It’s starting to happen across the world.”

Lyse was speechless. It was like they’d survived a nightmare only to step into an apocalypse.

“My God,” she said, finally.

So the hunt for witches had begun. Lyse saw why the blood sisters had gone underground all those centuries ago after the witch trials of the Dark Ages had nearly wiped them out. Why they had let magic seep out of the human world and had practiced their trade secretly and silently to avoid detection by the mass of humanity.

Fear.

Death.

Obliteration.

This was what awaited Lyse and her fellow coven mates now. Because humans had a nasty reputation of killing what they didn’t understand . . . and only asking questions later.

“So Lizbeth’s dream . . . it’s doomed us,” Lyse said.

Arrabelle nodded.

“Looks like it. Lizbeth fulfilled her destiny. Her dream brought magic back to the Earth, but, at the same time, it beamed the truth about our existence into every human mind in the world. It heralded our return—but it damned us, too. Witches are real now. We can’t hide in the shadows anymore.”

“No,” Niamh said, speaking up now. “Without Lizbeth’s dream, our magic was weak, almost nonexistent. With our new power, we are so much stronger. It was a necessary step forward. I believe we have to go to an extreme before we can ever hope to return to a balance.”

“So we open the door to The Flood? Show them our vulnerabilities so they can expose us to humanity . . . ? They’re rounding us up like criminals,” Arrabelle murmured.

Niamh sighed.

“Yes, all of it. Even the bad stuff. Because there can’t be any more secrets. If we’d stayed hidden, we would’ve been doomed. We’re real again and now we can fight back.”

What Niamh said made a queer sort of sense, Lyse thought. It seemed counterintuitive, but maybe that was just the way the world worked.

“But what about what we’ve done here?” Lyse asked, indicating the entrance to the mine shaft and all the unsettling things that lay inside it. “Since we’ve destroyed their research labs, doesn’t that put The Flood at a disadvantage? They’ve outed us, but we’ve cut them off at the knees.”

“We don’t really know what they accomplished here,” Evan said, his hand unconsciously going to the wound on his side—or the scar that was there now that the wound had been miraculously healed by the power of magic. “They might not have gotten what they wanted from these women. I think, more than anything, they created the opposite of what they were expecting. They forced a psychic connection between all of those blood sisters they tortured. They built a monster down in that hellhole.”

Lyse knew Evan was right. There was something terribly powerful loose in the research facility. It was like a psychic monster created by all the suffering and pain. The Flood’s test subjects had unwittingly created the psychic beast and it had come to their aid when they’d needed it—but it would not be controlled. It did what it wanted and could not be relied upon to help anyone unless it felt moved to do so. Its unpredictability had made Lyse and the others decide to leave it to its own devices. Trying to corral it or force it to come with them didn’t seem like a viable option.

“You’ll have to let your friends know what’s down there,” Lyse said. “That it probably won’t hurt them, but they should be aware that it’s very powerful and intense.”

“Of course,” Evan agreed. “And they should be here soon. Jessika and her blood sisters were coming from Las Vegas. I doubt they know about the website posting, but maybe I’m underestimating them. I hope they’re careful getting to us.”

Lyse hoped so, too.

“So we wait for them and then what?” Arrabelle asked.

This was what Lyse had taken her walk to figure out. She’d had her epiphany about what the future held—danger and death—but the smaller details were still murky.

“Well, we need to get ahold of Daniela and Lizbeth. Touch base with Dev. Make sure she’s been holding down the fort in Echo Park without too much trouble,” Lyse said. “Let her know about the website. That maybe she and Freddy should take the girls and make themselves scarce for a little while just to be on the safe side.”

“Agreed,” Arrabelle said, nodding. “I’ll call her now.”

Now, Lyse thought, if I can only get ahold of Daniela and Lizbeth that easily.

But she needn’t have worried about finding them. As soon as Arrabelle powered up her phone, it began to beep with voice mails and texts.

“Damn, I’m blowing up,” she said, scrolling through the texts. Then her finger froze and her mouth dropped open. “There’re like ten from Freddy. Jesus . . .”

She clicked on the screen, eyes flicking horizontally as she read.

“We have to get back to Echo Park. Dev’s whole family . . . the girls . . . the house . . . it’s all gone.”

Lyse thought she’d misheard.

“That can’t be right—”

“It is right, Lyse. There are dozens of messages here. He says Dev’s destroyed, almost catatonic with grief. He says we need to come back now. The last text is dated two days ago . . . radio silence after that.”

How long have we been down there? Lyse wondered. It couldn’t have been that long, could it?

But if Arrabelle’s phone was correct, then they’d lost at least forty-eight hours. Lyse, who’d been down there longer, had probably lost more time than that even. She suspected that time ran differently down in the underground lab. This seemed to prove it.

She wished she had her own phone, but The Flood had taken it—and everything else she owned—leaving her with only the clothes she had on her back when they’d captured her in Italy.

Italy . . . where Weir had died.

She didn’t want to think about it, but the image of his cold body, stiff with rigor mortis, filled her mind and would not be banished. She felt her heart break again—like it would every time she relived that horrible moment in the Italian catacombs when she’d first realized he was gone.

Gone, she thought. No, gone was too easy a word. It didn’t begin to encompass what had happened to Weir when they’d run into The Flood’s operatives.

Murdered . . . destroyed . . . obliterated . . . these words were more appropriate.

“You’re a million miles away,” Arrabelle said, running her hands over her newly shorn head. She’d shaved it down before they’d performed the Releasing Ritual for Eleanora, the last master of the Echo Park coven. It was upon Eleanora’s death that the leadership of the coven had passed to Lyse, her granddaughter. Only Lyse hadn’t known the true nature of their relationship at the time, having been led to believe that Eleanora was just her great-aunt. It was hard to believe that Eleanora’s death was still so recent. So much had happened since then that it felt like decades, not days or weeks.

“I’m here,” Lyse said, dragging herself back to reality. She would tell the others about Weir’s death soon. She just couldn’t face it, and everything else they’d just learned, right at that moment. “Anything from Lizbeth or Daniela?”

Arrabelle shook her head.

“No . . . wait, hold on.” She tapped the screen, bringing up a voice mail on speaker. “It’s an Italian number.”

The message played out in short bursts of heavily accented English. It was a woman’s voice, an administrator from a private Italian hospital, letting them know Daniela was their patient. The message rambled on, but the gist was that Daniela wasn’t doing well, had been in a coma since she’d been admitted, and Arrabelle’s was the name they’d been given from the emergency room as a contact. Please would she be in touch?

Arrabelle replayed the message again for clarity, but the intent was the same: Someone needed to go to Rome and take care of whatever the hell was happening with Daniela.

“And there’s no mention of Lizbeth,” Lyse said, thoughtfully, “but she has to be the one who gave them your number, Arrabelle.”

“Seems like a reasonable assumption,” Arrabelle agreed. “Something bad happened to Daniela, forcing Lizbeth to leave her behind.”

“She had a dream to get out to the world,” Niamh said in a quiet voice. “She did what she had to do to make that happen.”

It was clear from this voice mail that fate had splintered the Echo Park coven to the four corners of the Earth. Yet, Lyse felt, should she and Arrabelle ever come together with Daniela, Dev, and Lizbeth again, their reunited coven’s power would be more than impressive. It would be unbelievable.

“We can get to Los Angeles in a few hours, and then we’ll go to Italy from there,” Arrabelle said, looking to Lyse and Evan for approval.

“I think it’s the only plan that makes sense,” Evan said, reaching out and taking Arrabelle’s hand in his own. “We should stay together. There’s power in that.”

“Yes.” Niamh nodded. “Together is best. They’ll have a harder time getting us if we stick close to one another.”

“When they came for Niamh’s and my coven,” Evan said, his voice tight, “they played ‘divide and conquer.’ I’ve wondered since then . . . if we hadn’t let them separate us, maybe the outcome would’ve been different.”

“I don’t think it would’ve mattered,” Niamh said—she and Evan had been members of a coven on an island in the Pacific Northwest. When their coven had been attacked, they’d lost their coven master, Yesinia, and two of their other members, including the coven’s empath, Laragh.

Niamh had watched The Flood burn her blood sisters at the stake and then steal away with Laragh. Niamh’s connection to her twin had led Arrabelle and Evan to the mine shaft near Groom Lake—but Laragh was already too far gone when they’d arrived. Lyse and the others had watched as Niamh held her emaciated twin in her arms, the sisters together one last time before Laragh died. It had been heartbreaking, and had made Lyse hate Desmond Delay and the rest of The Flood even more.

“No?” Evan asked. “You really think we were screwed, no matter what we did?”

Niamh nodded.

“We weren’t prepared, and they were. We could never have beaten them.”

The low-pitched hum of an approaching helicopter interrupted them.

“Shit,” Arrabelle said, squeezing Evan’s hand. “They know we’re here. We need to get clear of the entrance and hide . . .”

She turned on her heel and headed back to the mine’s entrance, dragging Evan with her. Lyse and Niamh followed behind them as the sound of the helicopter’s blades cut through the purpling dusk. Lyse pulled her flannel from her waist and slipped it back on, the cool air from the mine shaft making her shiver. Arrabelle found a crevice in the shaft big enough for them all to fit, and they crammed inside, waiting.

“Are you sure—” Niamh started to ask, but Arrabelle shushed her.

The helicopter was close, kicking up the dust outside the mine’s entrance as it set down on the scorched brown earth. The four of them waited with bated breath as the giant machine shut down and a long, uninterrupted silence filled the air. This was eventually followed by the crack of a metal door opening.

“Evan?! You in residence here, ya crazy bastard, or was that a bogus call you made?”

The tension went out of Evan’s shoulders as he recognized the voice.

“It’s Jessika,” he said, bringing Arrabelle’s hand to his lips and giving it a quick kiss. “The lady nabbed herself a bird to get here.”

“Jess! Right behind you,” he called out before striding toward the mouth of the mine shaft.

“Shall we?” Arrabelle asked, quirking an eyebrow as she watched Evan’s retreating back.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Lyse said, and grinned.

She loved seeing the usually taciturn Arrabelle acting as smitten as a schoolgirl over Evan, her former flame. It was the one bright spot in what was proving to be an otherwise miserable existence.

“After you,” Arrabelle said. “You are the master of the Echo Park coven.”

She poked Lyse in the upper arm to let her know she was just teasing. Even though Arrabelle had wanted the job—would have probably made a better coven master than Lyse—she had been a gracious loser. But she still enjoyed harassing Lyse about it.

“Okie-doke,” Lyse said, and led the way, Arrabelle and Niamh hot on her heels.

They left the cool dark of the mine entrance, returning to the last dregs of afternoon heat, but Lyse was too busy staring at the helicopter to notice.

“Holy crap, that thing is giant,” she said. “It looks just like one of those Black Hawk ones from the movie.”

The three women who’d arrived in the helicopter had enveloped Evan, ribbing him between hugs, but at Lyse’s comment, they broke rank and came over to surround her. They were all wearing camouflage T-shirts, dungarees, and combat boots—which would’ve made them seem imposing even if they hadn’t been well over six feet, each possessing a seriously muscled body and a fierce expression on her tan face.

“Uh,” Lyse said, taking a step back—and hoping she hadn’t offended them.

“You think we’d roll in on a civilian chopper? Like we were the local news?” the tallest of them said and snorted with derision. Her short blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck, and her mirrored aviator shades made it impossible to tell what she was thinking. “We only travel in style, little lady. And we have reinforcements on the way. About five Humvees’ worth so we can get your refugees all tucked up safe inside.”

“Arrabelle, Lyse, Niamh . . . this is Jessika,” Evan said, grinning at his friends’ shocked expressions. “When I say I’m calling in the cavalry, I mean I’m calling in the cavalry. They’re blood sisters . . . but also members of an elite group of covens who act as mercenaries for some big guns . . .”

“Not the Greater Council?” Lyse asked, almost choking on the words. This was a huge mistake. The Council was compromised, and she’d warned Evan and the others that this was the case . . .

“Stop looking like a wolf ate your supper,” Jessika said, whipping off her aviators to reveal intense violet eyes. “We may do jobs for those guys, but we operate on our own. And we don’t do any kind of shit that we don’t want to do. Right, sisters?”

The other two women, both blond and as tan as Jessika, nodded.

“Besides,” Jessika continued, “I dreamed about you, Lyse MacAllister. You and the rest of your coven are famous—and any blood sister worth her salt knows that if we don’t help you, well, we’re all pretty much fucked.”

With a rakish grin, Jessika offered her hand to Lyse,

“We’re famous?” Lyse asked, incredulous.

“You’re more than famous,” Jessika said, grabbing Lyse’s hand and giving it a firm shake. “You’re the only thing standing between this world . . . and the end. So, me and my sisters, we’re here to help you, protect you, and keep you and your sisters safe.”

And with that, she pulled Lyse into a bear hug, almost crushing the smaller woman in her heavily muscled arms.

“Good to meet you, too,” Lyse murmured, dazed, as Jessika finally released her.

“Now where are the prisoners?” Jessika bellowed, beckoning for her sisters to follow her inside the entrance of the mine shaft. “Let’s grab ’em and then let’s get the hell out of here before the government calls and says they want Area 51 back.”