Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

53

I was no-one's sacrificial lamb that was for sure.

Straining against the rope that still bound my body and legs, I took in the details of the room in the murky light of my silver life-force. Shadows loomed in the corners and round the edges of the large space. I concentrated on sending the energy out from my body to illuminate the obscured areas. We didn't want any nasty surprises jumping out at us.

Other than a pile of old rags that lay in the corner of the room, it was empty but for the two stone altars. A shiny pool off wetness around the rags reflected my silver glow. Squinting, I tried to make out the odd shapes in the rags.

Breath caught in my throat as my heart stuttered. I recoiled as far as was possible with my legs still tied to the altar. Poking out from the tattered scraps of material was an animal's leg, covered in grey fur.

Bile burnt the back of my throat. No, it couldn't be. I'd have felt it if Lucas had been hurt, if he'd died.

Searching again for the pack bond, panic fizzled through my magic when nothing responded, the sensation like acid burning through my soul. The emptiness was the most desolate feeling that I'd ever experienced. And frightening.

Very, very, frightening.

Desperate to prove my suspicion wrong, I peered at the pile of bloody rags, trying to make out the details. The pool of blood seemed to grow with the hysteria that swarmed my brain. I was going to lose it if I couldn't find a way to tear my eyes away from that pile of rags and body parts.

I closed my eyes tight, but flashes of blood and grey fur were tattooed onto the inside of my eyelids. Prising them open, my gaze went straight back to the bloody corner.

Crap.

I closed them again. Red and grey mangled together in a grotesque kaleidoscope of colour. Red and grey, blood and fur, everywhere that my mind tried to escape.

An agonised sound, coming not from the corner but from right next to me, finally snapped me out of the cycle of panic and gore that had almost driven my sense right out of my body.

Stephen moaned, a sound full of pain and anguish. My focus shifted and I was able to tear my eyes away from the horror of that gruesome pile of rags and blood.

I concentrated on Stephen, grabbing hold of the connection between our magic and using it to distract me. Realising that my horror and panic had been transferring to him, I blanked my mind.

Feeling for a knot in the rope that bound me to the altar. My hands were numb and rubbery as I slowly fumbled it loose enough to sit up.
Stephen moaned quietly, a combination of shock and sensory overload keeping him in a semi-conscious state. Slipping off the stone altar, I leaned over the form of a man that I loved despite the history that had decimated our relationship.

His face looked pale and waxy in the silver light. But he was still beautiful. Long black eyelashes brushed his high cheekbones as his eyes moved sporadically under closed lids. His full red lips murmured an indecipherable tirade, interspersed with names that I recognised, and some that I didn't.

I'd seen this before, when Mary's powers had started to return. They'd overloaded her brain creating a kind of magical short circuit. Ben had acted as a conduit to temper my power so that we could use it to give Mary's life-force the push it needed to make the final connections. It had brought back her childhood memories and witch magic all at once.

I had to do the same now for Stephen on my own. I had to complete the cycle by giving back what I'd taken to kick-start my own magic. And I had to do it before whoever had put us here came back to finish the job.

Precious minutes ticked by as I fumbled with Stephen's binds, my injured hands unable to perform the tasks that I needed to accomplish.

Good bloody job I wasn't the kind of witch that needed to wave her hands around in the air. We'd be screwed.

We might be anyway, I realised as I cursed yet again when my clumsy fingers couldn't unravel the knotted rope.

Finally I got there. The last of the evil rope fell from around Stephen's body, coiling on the floor like a snake slinking away from its victim.
He'd gone still as I worked but his chest still rose and fell in shallow, laboured breaths.

Unbuttoning his shirt was yet another intricate job that my hands objected to. But I figured that the best way to infuse his life-force was with a direct hit to the heart. That's what they did with adrenaline shots, right? Or was that only when the heart had stopped?

Either way, my life-force was weak, stripped the majority of my power, along with the pack bond. My throat tightened, but I had to push all that away otherwise I was going to lose Stephen too. Whatever I did would have to be drastic to be effective.

The buttons gave one by one in tortuously slow succession. I slipped my hands from his flat stomach to his hard chest. Tiny darts of power shot up my arms only to fizzle out almost immediately. Focussing on how much I had loved to touch his body when we were together, I sought out the strongest emotion that we'd shared.

Love.

It wasn't enough. His heartbeat juddered erratically in his chest. The breath entering and leaving his body came in shallow rasps. Frantically I searched my mind for something, anything that would kick start his power. It had to be an emotional stimulus.

It always was.

Closing my eyes, unable to look at his beautiful immobile face any longer, I ran through all the major events of our relationship. Meeting, falling in lust, and then falling in love. Having sex, moving in together. Enjoying the mundane reality of our normal lives. Him walking out without an explanation.

A buzz of power like a weak electric shock pulsed from deep within me. A flurry of chimes accompanied it. Love wasn't the emotion that defined our connection. It was betrayal.

Stirring up all the pain and humiliation that I felt when Stephen left me, and then again when Emily so dispassionately informed me that the entire relationship had been a ruse, something hot and wild broke at my core.

The air thickened around me and hot gusts swirled through the room. Discordant sounds, high pitched and unwieldy burst forth from my soul. My life-force rushed forward at the last moment.

I drew back a second too late. My power, full and strong, surged into Stephen with all the force of the outrage that I'd felt at his betrayal. Sliver poured from my hands and into his heart, his chest rising high off the altar with the force of it.

Horror at the realisation of what I'd done made me pull away, forcing the power back inside, wrapping it round my organs like I'd learnt to do to keep others safe from it. That I had failed miserably was evident by the look of pain and anguish on Stephen's face when his body slammed back down onto the table.

Distracted by what my power, no, what I had just done, I only noticed that we had company when I saw the glow of another life-force in the room.

"Ah, the tragedy of it Alice. You always destroy the ones that you love."

Oh no! Has Alice lost her control?
Hope you're enjoying the story!