The Dark Rising

  Cat reached for the tubing on the I.V., and I saw her adjust a small roller. My blood began to flow out at a much more rapid pace, and I felt myself drifting away.

  “Vance deserves what he gets,” she replied, with a snarl, right before my vision faded into blackness once again.

  I vaguely remembered slipping back into a dim consciousness long enough to know I was being moved from the car and there was another person, besides Cat, present with me.

  I didn't know how much time had passed since that moment, but I heard a loud motor running and for a few seconds a wave of nausea washed over me. Then I realized I must be in some kind of boat, a small one, judging from the curving bow beneath my spine.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes and found it was nighttime. I could see a sliver of the moon glittering through what appeared to be moss draped tree tops overhead.

  “She's waking up again,” a low female voice with a heavy southern accent permeated the air.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Cat responded, and I quickly drifted back into oblivion once more.

  When I awoke later, I found myself restrained in a semi reclining position on a medical table of some sort. The I.V. still hung from my arm, with its constant dripping of blood moving into the receptacle at the end of it.

  I couldn’t move any part of my body, except for my eyes, which I cast about to explore my surroundings.

  The room was dimly lit and made entirely of roughhewn wood. Rows and rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, containing all sorts of items. Many of these I recognized as being for use in magic, but others were completely foreign, unrecognizable to me.

  While no one was with me, I could hear the murmur of quiet voices coming through a door that stood slightly ajar at the far end of the room.

  My mind scrambled to put together some sort of coherency to my situation. I knew was the prisoner of at least two people. The area I'd been brought to had been accessed by boat, through what appeared to be a swamp, and the dwelling looked to be more of a shack than an actual residence or living quarters.

  Wagering a guess, I thought perhaps I could be somewhere in the Deep South. There were miles and miles of swamp land located there. Escape would be near to impossible, and being found by anyone who wasn’t Vance would be an even more remote possibility. It was a perfect location to hide someone.

  Exhausted, I closed my eyes again and tried to center my mind, pushing out passed its barriers, searching for Vance.

  “Are you out there?” I spoke into the silent darkness, wondering if my magic was even strong enough for him to hear me.

  My body pulsated with an ache from the physical pain of our separation. I knew this feeling was the very thing which would draw him to me, but there was no answer, only stillness.

  “Portia?” Cat’s voice called to me from across the room. Instantly my eyelids snapped open to face her. “Good, you're awake,” she said and she moved toward me.

  I thought of how her name suited her perfectly while I watched her lithe movements, just like that of a predator stalking its prey.

  “Where am I?” I asked her with a dry mouth, wishing I could have a drink of water.

  “Why does it matter?” She reached to finger the tubing that was running from my arm. “You'll never be able to escape from this place.”

  “Then there's no harm in answering the question, is there?” I countered back to her.

  She looked me over before giving me a sly smile. “No. I suppose not,” she replied. Her eyes flitted over my face, and I thought I saw a flicker of humor pass over hers. “We're deep in one of the bayous of Louisiana.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, trying to pump her for as much information as I could.

  “I have a friend here who's going to use her expertise to help me out a little.” I felt, more than saw, the change she made in the adjustment of my blood tubing when a wave of dizziness washed over me.

  “Help you with what?” I questioned, struggling with difficulty to remain afloat in my head.

  “With killing you and Vance, of course.” She smiled politely as if we were having a nice conversation together at brunch.

  I sighed heavily and my mind fought to keep up.

  “You can’t kill us,” I said back to her feebly, closing my eyes against another wave of dizziness.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we're immortal. We both received the Awakening,” I explained and I opened my eyes to watch her reaction to this news.

  She tipped her head back and laughed before she leaned forward once again, placing her mouth right up against my ear as she ran the long fingernails of one of her hands down my face.

  “That's precisely why I brought you here my dear. We're going to remove it.”

  Chapter 15

  A woman entered the room behind Catriona. She appeared to be of Haitian descent, but I couldn’t tell her age. She looked to be both young and old at the same time, perhaps younger in appearance … yet with an air of knowledge. Her black hair stood wildly out from her head in some sort of long, untamed afro. She was wearing a loose flowing dress, made with a light blue calico print that swirled down her slim frame stopping near her ankles, revealing her bare feet beneath.

  The fact she was carrying a headless chicken in her hands, letting the blood drip across the floor while she moved through the room, wasn't the most disturbing thing to me. It was her eyes.

  They were solid white—no irises or pupils. She looked at me with an unnervingly, blank stare.

  “This is Mayla,” Cat said to me with a smile as the woman approached my side. “She's a Hoodoo Priestess. Her coven has been helping me.”

  I watched with wariness when Mayla reached me. She raised the dead chicken in her hand, letting its blood run out over the top of me, and I would've flinched in disgust if I could've moved at all.

  Her low voice began to mutter in a language I couldn't comprehend and demon features suddenly flashed over her face, turning her grotesquely white eyes, completely red in the process.

  Great, I thought to myself. It wasn’t bad enough these people dealt in black magic, they were demons too.

  The woman moved away from me, going to one of the many well stocked shelves, and reached up to pull off a wooden bowl of some sort. She placed the dish on a small table and drained the rest of the chicken blood into it.

  She tossed the carcass to the side when she'd finished. Then she removed several bags of herbs and began placing a pinch from each into her bloody concoction. When she was done, she mixed the ingredients together by dipping her hand in and letting the liquid run through her fingers.

  She carried the dish back over to me, and commenced her mutterings once more, submerging her finger into the bowl before removing it to mark my forehead, wrists, and ankles.

  Catriona ripped the neckline of Vance’s t-shirt, the only thing I'd been wearing when she kidnapped me, until it was just an inch above my breast.

  Mayla then reached in and placed a blood mark over my heart.

  Cat adjusted my I.V. tubing so it flowed faster, and immediately the weakness seeped through me again.

  “Open your mouth, Portia,” she instructed me harshly, and I couldn’t help but notice the wicked glint in her eye.

  “No,” I replied, clamping my jaw tightly shut, realizing with queasiness they intended to make me drink the grotesque mixture.

  She moved to my head, using her hands to force my mouth open. I struggled against her and Mayla joined her, tipping the dish to begin pouring the blood concoction down my throat.

  I frantically fought the invasion, spitting and coughing the vile fluid back out, not wanting to swallow.

  Cat slipped into my mind, trying to give me an illusion of something sweet tasting, making me feel like I wanted to drink, but I still fought against the images. I would've screamed, had I been able to, but they were drowning me with the potion.

  “Drink it, Portia!” Cat yelled at me over Mayla’s chanting as I struggled.

>   Mayla kept pouring.

  My lungs seemed like they would burst from lack of oxygen. Involuntarily, I tried gasping for a breath of air, instead sucking the mixture thickly into my airways and down my throat.

  A sensation of fire shot through me and I did scream this time, spraying the blood Mayla still poured into me all over her and Catriona. The spots on my skin which had been marked began to burn with an intensity I couldn't stand, and I felt as if I were being ripped into two pieces.

  Giant tears were streaming down my face as they finished force feeding me. I saw Cat’s wide smile swimming in and out of my blurred vision, and as soon as my throat was cleared, I drug the air back into myself and yelled with all of my might while my body was racked with horrible spasms.

  Mayla moved away from me to pull a glass jar, which was slim on the top, and bulbous on the bottom, from the shelf. It had a cork in the opening. She removed the stopper and placed it on the table, and I wondered briefly what it was for. Then I began to notice the soft white light lifting in wispy streams from my body, moving to enter the container.

  “It’s working!” Catriona said with a grin.

  “Yes,” Mayla’s southern voice agreed as she nodded. “It's coming out of her very cells.”

  No wonder I felt like I was being ripped in half. I was. They were literally tearing the Awakening out of me. I screamed again.

  Cat leaned over next to me, her features swimming and contorting unevenly in my vision.

  “This will take a while Portia, and it'll hurt badly.” She smiled with a sickeningly sweet smile. “We're going to leave you to yourself for now, but I'll give you some dreams to keep you company.”

  She reached out and placed her hand on my head. Instantly the pain intensified and I hollered out again. My vision blurred dramatically, and I saw my own body writhing, but as the image sharpened I realized that I was covered in dozens of snakes.

  Reptiles, of all shapes and sizes, twisted against me, through my hair, around my neck, down my torso, and over my extremities.

  I gasped, opening my mouth to scream again and a large snake slithered across. Its scales slipped over my lips and I gagged. As soon as it had moved passed, I snapped my jaw shut. My yells were now uttered through clenched teeth.

  All of sudden, Vance was standing there next to me and relief flooded every pore of my being.

  “Help me!” I called out to him desperately.

  He reached out for me, grabbing me by the arm, but his features morphed into his demon mask and he wrenched my limb harshly. I could feel the bone crunching beneath his strength, tearing another scream from my throat.

  This wasn’t Vance, I realized, with horror. This was all Catriona’s illusion. She was enjoying the torturing of me.

  I tried to tell my brain to focus, that Vance wasn’t really here breaking every bone in my body, but it wouldn’t believe me. The pain was excruciating as he twisted his way brutally down me, splintering the bones in his path.

  When the horror became too much to bear, I mercifully began to have bouts of unconsciousness. Those were moments of blessed relief, but the pain soon roused me again and a new torture would begin.

  The next time I surfaced back, a whole coven of Hoodoo demons fed upon me. They sank their teeth into my tender flesh and ripped out large chunks, before feasting on my spraying blood. Then they cut themselves open and forced their blood down my throat, the fire seeping into my veins as their poisons swept through me.

  I couldn’t tell if the screaming was in or out of my head anymore. All I heard was the sound of my own voice yelling out in horrified pain while my body was racked with tremors. They continued to tear into me until the white of my bones showed in some places and then I passed out again.

  “I’m coming for you, Portia. Hang on,” Vance’s voice whispered through the fog into my mind, bringing me back to consciousness once more, and I felt the rage seething from inside of him.

  “It’s just a trick,” I mumbled to myself as I cried. “Don’t listen. They're trying to confuse you.”

  Hooded people stood over me now, slicing into me with athames. Another shriek escaped me as I watched my blood splattered against them. The figures removed their hoods, revealing my family, along with other members of my coven. They smiled as they continued cutting into my bare skin.

  “It'll be better soon,” Shelly whispered from near my head. She reached for a bowl filled with salt and began pouring it into my wounds. “See?” she smiled and another cry tore from me as she ground the burning granules down into me deeper.

  “I’m coming baby. I promise I won’t let them hurt you ever again,” Vance’s voice was stronger this time.

  This was the worst torture of all. I couldn’t stand hearing him talk to me that way … sounding like it was really him. I knew Catriona was trying to give me false hope, and I tried to shut my mind to the sound.

  An image of Brian Fitzgerald appeared before me now. He leaned over me and he wrapped his long fingers around my neck and began to strangle me. I choked, struggling for breath against him, unable to fight back. He features slowly morphed into Vance and I felt his hands turning molten as he melted my neck the same way he had done to Brian. This time I gave in to the pain, passing out from lack of air.

  When I awoke again, it was to the sound of a great roar and I found Vance standing over me once more. He was tearing at the manacles which restrained my tortured self, and they broke easily under his touch. Soon he was lifting my limp body into his arms.

  “Portia, baby, what have they done to you?” he said in a choked voice, his eyes searching over me.

  “You’re not real,” I whispered back with a raspy sound, trying to steel my mind against him.

  “I’m really here,” he replied, shaking me to keep my attention. “You've been having horrible hallucinations. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, I was hurrying as fast as I could.”

  I wanted to believe those pleading, concerned eyes in front of me but I was afraid to.

  “Stop this please,” I cried, staring at him in agony. “I can’t take anymore.”

  It was at this moment his eyes suddenly glassed over. His arms went limp and I fell hard to the floor. Vance’s body landed with a loud thump next to me, and a large hypodermic needle was protruding from his neck.

  I looked up to see Cat standing over us looking extremely victorious.

  “That went exactly according to plan,” she said with a satisfied smile as she surveyed the two of us.

  Behind her, Mayla walked over to place the cork back into the bottle which now held the swirling white mist of the Awakening inside.

  I weakly reached for my arm and pulled the blood tubing out, applying pressure to where it had been.

  Catriona watched me with her patronizing smile.

  “That’s fine,” she replied, acting as if my actions were of no consequence to her. You won’t need it anymore.”

  She raised both of her hands into the air, using levitation magic to lift Vance’s unconscious body, and placed him in the spot I had been in.

  “Time for round two,” she said and she had the gall to wink at me.

  “Don’t you touch dare him!” I growled at her, and I attempted to throw myself at her legs.

  She slammed me back against the wall with the tiniest flick of her fingers, knocking the breath out of me completely.

  “While I admire your courage, and the desire to protect your lover, you need to understand something. You're like a little baby to me at this moment, too weak to do anything. Now, the way I treat him will depend on you. If you choose to cooperate, we'll remove the Awakening from him while he's still drugged, which will be much less painful for him than it was for you. If you'd like to fight, then I'll let him wake up and he can suffer just as you did. What’s it going to be?” she questioned with a glare.

  “You're making a big mistake here,” I replied weakly, as I sat up against the wall and continued to apply pressure to my arm. “The Awakening is the
one thing keeping him from being one hundred percent demon. He'll have no sense of a moral compass to guide him. He's a newly made demon, meaning he'll lose it completely and destroy all of you.”

  “No. I think you're the one forgetting something.” She squatted down to be level with me. “Once he's completed the change he'll be starved for fresh witch blood. You're the only fresh blooded witch around here,” she paused, waiting for her meaning to sink into my mind, before she continued. “Vance killed the one person I loved most in this world. Now he's going to kill the one he loves most. Then I will have my revenge.”

  I shrank back at her words because I knew she was right.

  Vance hadn’t been able to restrain himself from killing me the first time his demon attributes had surfaced, and that was with the Awakening. There would be no way he could stop without it.

  I was in deep trouble. The fear must've shown on my face because Cat reached out and patted my head like that of a small child.

  “Hang in there, Portia,” she smiled. “You don’t have much time left on this earth. Remember the Law of Three? What you've dished out has now come back to you threefold.”

  “Really? Then I wonder what's going to happen to you.”

  She laughed, turning back toward Vance now, and to where Mayla was waiting, with a freshly killed chicken in her hands.

  I watched in disgust while Mayla began repeating her previous ritual, spraying Vance with blood and smearing the marks on his body. I knew they had no idea what they were about to bring out.

  Vance wasn’t just any other demon. He had all of the natural ability he had been born with, which was strong in itself, but he also had the power of dozens, maybe even hundreds of additional witches and warlocks he had absorbed when he'd performed the demon kiss on his father. Even with the Awakening removed, he would be a formidable opponent … my opponent.

  They poured the blood down his throat with ease. His body jerked once involuntarily before settling into small shakes, like he was having tiny seizures. I let my mind slip into his and found he was indeed unaware, as Cat had promised.