“Lucas! I know you’re in there!” I flatten myself against the tree, heart racing. “You can fight it! I know you can! Do it for us. For her,” I yell, curling my fists and pulling against the chains. Magic sizzles around my fingers, and I can feel the warding starting to break. Lucas is stronger than this, and so am I.
“Her?” Ruth echoes and looks at the blade posed over my stomach. “No! It’s not possible.”
“It is,” I say through gritted teeth and turn my head up, looking into Lucas’s eyes. The blue is starting to show through the black, and his hand trembles as he fights against Ruth’s command. “And I’ll be damned before you hurt my family.”
I curl my fingers around the hagstone hanging from my right hand, and I reach down inside, channeling a source of power I didn’t know I had. Blue light glows around me, causing the ground to tremble beneath us. The hagstone turns hot in my hand but doesn’t burn me. It crumbles into ash.
Lucas squeezes his eyes closed and steps back. “Callie,” he forces out and then drops the athame. His hand flies to his head, and he grunts in pain as he fights against Ruth’s control.
“No!” she shouts and throws out her hands, trying to keep her hold.
“Haec vincula dissolvat!” I yell, and the chains around my wrists break free. “Lucas!” I throw out a hand, sending a small pulse of blue magic through the air. It hits him in the chest, burning his flesh and absorbing into his body. It’s all he needs to come back to me.
“Callie.” He shakes his head, ridding the rest of the dark magic, and speeds forward. He grabs the chains wrapped around my waist and breaks them away. I fall forward into his arms, breathing hard.
“No!” Ruth screams. I push off Lucas and conjure an energy ball. I throw it, and Ruth dives through the door. The energy ball hits a tree where Ruth had been standing, burning through the bark.
“I have to go after her,” I tell Lucas.
“I know,” he says and takes my hand. We start toward the door when Julian suddenly reappears.
“Callie,” he says gruffly. “Are you okay?”
“That’s debatable. Ruth went inside.” I suck in air. “Help them,” I tell him, sweeping my hand out at the students who are still on the ground, bound to trees. “I have to go after her.”
“Be careful,” he says and then rushes forward. I grip Lucas’s hand, close my eyes, and step through the door. Lucas is right behind me and doesn’t burn when he passes through. I let out a breath only to tense again as a blood curdling screams rings out around us.
“The vampires! She told them to kill.”
“I’ll stop them.” Lucas pulls his hand from mine and cups my face, kissing me before turning and speeding off, following the sounds and smell of murder.
“Ruth,” I say, voice carrying through the foyer of the gathering hall. “It’s over.” Taking a few steps forward, I hold out my hand, conjuring a string of blue magic. “You lost. Again.”
I stop, trying to get a read on where she is. Fire crackles inside a large fireplace down the hall, casting a warm glow over the otherwise dim hall. Everything looks as it should. The witches and warlocks were carrying on as normal before they got attacked.
A coffee cup and a book about magical herbs sits on a table near the fireplace, with papers scattered around the ground. I slowly move down the hall, heart still racing. Screams echo behind me, and I pray Lucas got to the school fast enough.
I swallow hard and notice little drips of blood on the cobblestone beneath my feet. The string of magic intensifies, and I curl my fist, shaping it into a ball.
Someone screams from inside the gathering hall, and I telekinetically open the doors. A warlock lies dead in the aisle, face down in a puddle of blood. There are a few witches in the pews, huddled together in fear. Ruth is on the alter with a young girl in her grasp and a dagger to her neck.
“Take one more step and I’ll slit her throat!” Ruth threatens, and I freeze. The girl is crying, and her mother is in one of the pews, begging her to be still.
“Brooke,” I whisper, recognizing the girl. She hid at my house when Varrador was after me, and she thought it was tragic how Lucas has never tasted pizza. “Let her go, Ruth. It’s me you want.”
She’s at the end of the road, and she knows it. She won’t be leaving the Covenstead alive. She’s scared and desperate and all the more dangerous now.
“Get out of my way.” Ruth takes a tangle of Brooke’s hair and shuffles backward, bringing the girl with her. Brooke’s mother screams in protest, and another witch in the pew next to her grabs her hand, keeping her from running to her daughter. Ruth would kill them both; I’m sure of it.