The Witch's Daughter - Laken Cane Page 0,60
in the darkness of her mind nodding his head wisely and telling her that at last she understood why he was mad and why he’d done everything he could to stay free of Skyll and Damascus.
Oh yes, she understood.
The despair, terror, and agony were unimaginable.
Unbearable.
Then do what you must, little one.
I don’t know what to do.
Yes, you do.
I can’t.
You must.
Forever?
For now.
Maybe she remained in the room for weeks, for months. She didn’t know. She lost track of the mysterious gray light that may have signaled the arrival of another day.
Maybe it didn’t.
She knew nothing for sure.
After every vicious encounter, the crawlers left her for a while so she could heal.
And then they came back.
The pain and fear never left her.
She healed, and the crawlers came back.
Over and over and over.
They thought of new ways to torture her. New ways to bring out her fear so they might feast on it.
Sometimes she dreamed.
Sometimes she begged Mother Skyll to help her.
Sometimes she thought she heard the berserker roaring her name.
At last, at last…
She gave up.
“Help me,” she cried. “Damascus, help me.”
Was there any doubt that the witch would get what she wanted?
No. Not really.
“Mother,” she screamed. “Mother!”
And the witch answered.
She appeared suddenly, not through a doorway or a window or a wall, but materialized right in front of Rune as though she’d been there all along.
Perhaps she had been.
Perhaps she’d sunk through the ground the way the crawlers had.
Rune didn’t know, and she didn’t care.
She reached up with her torn hands and shattered claws and grabbed the witch’s clothes. She said nothing. There was nothing more to say.
But Damascus seemed to believe otherwise. “You’re mine now, little girl. Say it.”
Fear, strong and heavy, shook Rune’s body.
The crawlers seeped through the walls, sniffing, biting the air, tasting Rune’s terror.
Rune’s voice was hoarse and as broken as her body. “Yours. I’m yours.” And she shuddered as something, some unassailable truth, hit her brain and her soul and changed who she was.
The witch’s daughter.
She was whatever the witch wanted her to be.
Damascus leaned forward, the ends of her long, black hair caressing Rune’s bloody face. She smiled. Her smile was as beatific and sweet as anything Rune had ever seen.
Her blue eyes were so bright they beat back the darkness. “I can do nothing for Shame. She is my traitor child. But you, with you I can start anew. You didn’t leave on purpose. You didn’t abandon me. Give your mother a kiss.”
Rune couldn’t breathe. Air caught like a block of ice in her throat, choking her. Gasping, she placed her lips against the witch’s cheek.
Satisfied, Damascus straightened. “Let me in. Let me make the crawlers fear you as they fear me.”
Rune wanted to resist. She tried to resist. But she was broken, and the witch was strong. She nodded, and without another hesitation, she dropped her walls and let the witch in.
Walls she hadn’t even been aware, until that moment, that she had. Walls that kept the witch out.
She let the witch in.
“Watch what I can do, baby,” Damascus murmured.
She clasped Rune’s hand and brought her gently to her feet.
Rune closed her eyes.
Magic—there was no other word for it—entered her body.
The warmth of it filled her, pierced her heart and radiated to the rest of her body until she was vibrating, strong, and so full of energy she couldn’t stand still.
It was power like she’d never known, never imagined.
She was invincible.
She was safe.
There was no pain, no fear.
But oh God, was there rage.
“Open your eyes,” the witch ordered. “Open your eyes and make things right, baby.”
The crawlers—dozens and dozens of them, cowered against the walls, circling Rune and Damascus with a fence of terror.
Rune smiled.
The crawlers shrieked.
She didn’t have to be told what to do. She could do anything.
Anything.
She was…she was the witch.
She held up a hand and waved it gently, and the crawlers across from her burst into flames. Not flames that would kill them quickly, either.
Oh, no.
Flames of magic, an inferno of agony that would make them scream in pain for a long, long time.
For eternity.
“Burn in hell,” Rune whispered, and it was so.
All the crawlers began to burn, and the stench was nearly unbearable.
The scent of burning flesh drifted throughout the room on a hot, hot wind that scorched Rune’s gently waving hair and fanned her cheeks.
“Burn,” she murmured.
Her mother watched with a fierce, mad pride.
“My daughter,” she said. “Mine.”
But Rune could have told her that she belonged to no one.
Not to Owen, or the berserker, or even Z.
No.
She was not