It was a minute later when she gasped out a much-needed breath. But just as she let down her guard, a voice inside of her whispered, “He’s just like you.” Noa froze, body still. “You are just like him.”
Noa shook her head, heart pounding. She scrambled for the shower’s controls, turned it off and jumped out, escaping from those words, from that truth.
The alluring temptation of that truth.
She dried herself off and threw on some clothes. She went to make her way out of the door, but she stopped dead on seeing her reflection in the full-length mirror. And Noa just stared. She stared at her long pink hair, her black clothes, and the brown eyes that she rarely recognized these days.
Noa stepped closer, one step, two step, three … She reached out her hand and ran it gently over the glass. She was a mannequin in this skin. The hair, the lack of bitter vibrancy in her gaze were only a mask for what she and her sisters knew resided underneath.
Diel was the first person outside of her coven who had taken one look at Noa and known what lay in her soul. Shivers ran down her spine as she recalled him in the cell, goading her to come closer.
He was a magnet drawing her in. Her stomach turned. She didn’t know how long she could hold herself back from his allure.
The more she stared in the mirror, at the woman she no longer knew, the less she was sure that she wanted to.
The sound of screaming cut through her inner war. Noa rushed to Beth’s bedroom. When she walked through the door, the rest of her sisters were already there. Beth was thrashing around on the mattress, her skin red with exertion and her eyes wide with the fear of the disease she believed constantly poisoned her blood.
Jo pressed a wet cloth to Beth’s forehead. Candace pinned her arms down, and Naomi moved bed-side, her bloodletting kit in her hands. Naomi sat on the edge of the mattress and, as she had done so many times before, placed a tourniquet around Beth’s bicep and cut into the skin. Crimson blood trickled down Beth’s arm. Her body jerked; her eyes were glazed. But as the warm blood flowed from the wound, her breathing turned from choppy and labored to quiet and calm.
Noa reached the foot of the bed and placed a soothing hand on Beth’s ankle. She looked so small on the mattress. Beth had always been a complicated case. She was strong and could fight just as well as the rest of the Coven. But the blood disease she believed she had, that the Brethren had convinced her she was cursed with, was a viper, striking her down with its venom. For years, whenever the disease had her in its grip, the Brethren Witch Finder twins had pinned her down and placed leeches all along her body. Week after week, she would be tied down, leeches sucking the blood from her body until it was all her life became.
Color blossomed back into Beth’s cheeks, and Naomi collected the “poisoned” blood into sterile bowls to dispose of. Beth’s blood had been sent to every blood specialist in the US for examination. All had given the blood the all clear.
Dinah caught Noa’s eyes over the bed. Her sister was just as pissed at the situation as she was. Not at Beth. Never at Beth. But at the bastards who’d made such a pure soul believe she was riddled with soiled and worthless blood, so much so that Beth was convinced that if it wasn’t let, she would die an agonizing death. After years of trying to heal Beth, Noa was pretty sure that there was no remedy in existence that would ever take the plight from her. No amount of therapy could convince her that she was clean.
Beth’s eyes closed, and her breathing evened out as she felt the poison draining from her body. Dinah sighed. “We agreed to breakfast with the Fallen.” She checked her watch. “We’re already five minutes late.”
“I’ll stay with Beth,” Naomi said, her soft lisp wrapping around her “s” sounds. Dinah moved to Naomi and kissed her on the head. Then she looked at Noa, Jo and Candace.
“Let’s go.”
“Call us if you need us,” Noa said to Naomi as they left the room. Noa was dressed in her staple black leather trousers and a long-sleeved black top. Dinah, Jo and Candace didn’t look much different.