voice said.
“We are agreed then?” the raspy voice said.
A chorus of barks and snarls followed. As the Sin’Rath filed out of the balcony and left her alone in the room, Isabel stood stock-still, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Nearly an hour passed before she heard the bar being lifted.
The door opened and a creature that should not exist entered, smiling wickedly. She had dark grey skin … one eye a smoldering red, the other a sickening yellow, both with the irises of a cat … pointed teeth, the left canine extending past her lower lip, leaving a festering welt where it rubbed. Her long dark grey hair was patchy and stringy, coated in grime. Two-inch horns protruded from her forehead, curving toward one another. She was hunched over, her right shoulder and arm grotesquely larger than the left, both hands ending in long fingers tipped with razor-sharp black talons. She walked with a limp, each step revealing a barbed tail whipping back and forth behind her. Despite her contorted features, her face was perfectly formed, with high cheek bones and perfect bone structure. The contrast between the beauty of her facial structure and the grotesqueness of her body only served to heighten the sense of wrongness that radiated from her in undulating waves.
As Isabel stared in revulsion at the creature that stood before her, the balcony filled up with the rest of the coven and the door was closed once again.
“I’m called Clotus,” she said in a cloying voice. “They won’t believe you. They don’t see me as you do, and besides, they belong to us.”
Isabel swallowed hard, facing the monster. “What do you intend to do?” she asked.
“We will cast a spell to make me look like you,” Clotus said sweetly. “Then I will go to Phane and take his magic and his life.”
The balcony erupted in a fit of barking madness.
“It would be unwise to answer any more of her questions,” the reasonable voice said.
“Yes, begin the spell,” the raspy voice said.
The voices cloaked in shadow above began to chant—guttural, dark and animalistic noise reverberating around the cave. Isabel waited, wondering what to expect. She didn’t have to wait long. A blob of spinning darkness, illuminated by flecks of sparkling purple, began to form in the air between her and Clotus. It grew in size as it spun faster and faster until it split in two with only a thread of darkness between the two halves. Very quickly the thread elongated as it spun, until a blob of darkness engulfed Isabel and Clotus at the same time, surrounding each of them with dark magic.
Isabel couldn’t breathe, coldness seeped into her very soul as the black magic worked within her. She watched in horror as Clotus transformed into a perfect likeness of her, right down to the color of her eyes and the shade of her chestnut-brown hair.
The magic abruptly faded and Clotus smiled.
“You see, I am now you,” she said in Isabel’s voice. “Phane will welcome me into his fortress and then he will fall to me.”
Her smile widened and she looked up to the rest of the coven. “This one is special,” she said. “I can feel the darkness within her. With the proper preparation and motivation, I believe she could summon Mother.”
Madness erupted from the shadows above.
“How can this be?” asked the reasonable voice.
“Yes, how?” said the raspy voice.
“She has a connection to the darkness within her,” Clotus said. “I can feel it through the link.” Her eyes narrowed and fear ghosted across her face before she snarled, “She also has a connection to the light, though Azugorath has blocked it.”
“She may be more valuable than we first thought,” the reasonable voice said.
“Yes,” the raspy voice said. “We will think on how best to use her. For now, Severine will keep her prisoner here until we decide how she can serve us.”
There was a barking agreement from the rest of the coven.
Clotus knocked at the door and a guard opened it.
“Yes, Mistress,” he said, seeming to know she was one of the witches, even though her appearance had changed.
“Take this one back to your King. See to it that she remains here as our guest until we call for her again.”
Chapter 7
Lacy ignored the knock at the door of her cramped little stateroom. She’d been at sea for less than a day and she’d already spent most of the voyage leaning over the gunnel, vomiting into the ocean. The cold sea air had