Taking Back Sunday (4 page)

“Get in the car.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Straps secured her arms at her sides, and when she seized, she could feel her shoulders ripping out of their sockets. Her legs were spread apart and fixed to a solid concrete bed with shackles. No amount of struggling loosened her bonds. When her body jerked, the iron bands cut into her flesh. If Sunday could see from beneath the blindfold, she would see the blood oozing from her wounds. The more she squirmed, the more her body tore apart with pain. She wailed until her voice cracked and the sound turned into nothingness. The sandpaper lining of her throat burned as acid boiled up from her stomach. The spit that trickled onto her mouth stung in the cracks of her broken lips.

At fourteen, Sunday was still embarrassed at the sight of her own naked body, yet she lay spread eagle as strangers examined her, touched her, cast chants upon her, and watched her suffer in the chamber. The more she fought the spellcasting, the more insistent it became. The chanting never stopped, even when she was certain that there was no one else in the room. There was no getting out from under the enchantment and no freeing herself from the bonds that immobilized her.

Over the last few months, prophetic dreams revealed that the destiny of the Incarnate was upon her, but if she had known it would be like
this
, she would have fought every step of the way. No books she’d read or stories she’d been told could have prepared her for the savageness of this torture. Fate reigned supreme, however, and attempting to forge a different path for herself would have been catastrophic. Fighting wouldn’t have absolved her of Fate’s design.

Dark magic wormed through the annals of her mind, erecting blockades and blacking out the pages of her mental diary. Sunday desperately fought to recover a lesson that could get her out of this, but the sorcery rapidly erased the steps. The faces of her family and friends, the titles of her favorite books, the way home from school, and the things she’d been taught about the Incarnate slowly faded. Tears streamed from beneath her blindfold.

In Louisiana, Sunday had gone willingly with the men who claimed her, knowing that it was her destiny. As soon as she and her werewolf chauffeurs arrived in Seattle, one of them stabbed her with a needle, and she passed out. Sunday later awoke in the corner of a dark, dingy dungeon, like something straight out of a medieval horror. Stripped of her clothes, she gathered her knees to her chest and shivered in the shadows, unsure of where she was or what was happening to her.

A pale, older woman came into the room, face tight and lips pursed. She was dressed in all black, and her hair was neatly gathered into a bun at the back of her head. Fingers laced, she held her hands to her belly and looked down her nose at Sunday.

“Dear girl, fear not, for you are here to be purified,” the woman said. Her voice was nails on a chalkboard, and Sunday grabbed at her head and winced at the sound of it.

She tried to speak, but her voice was hoarse and the words wouldn’t come out.

“You have been hidden from my eyes, but destiny has guided me to you.” Her beady eyes shimmered like onyx in the fractured light that shone through the crack in the door. “This is the ritual of your great awakening, Incarnate.” A tight-lipped grin formed on her lined face, cartoonish in its cruelty. “I will leave you be, but I will see you again soon.”

Hours after the woman had once again abandoned Sunday in the dungeon, her voice still whispered in the girl’s mind. Minute-by-minute, her thoughts became hazy, and her senses began to fail her. When the door finally opened again, two men donning red robes came in. Sunday tried to stand and run away, but she staggered and fell to her knees. Then, everything turned to darkness.

Sunday’s eyes shot open, and she jolted upright in bed. Her body was covered in sweat, and her heart was racing. Gripping the sheets in a white-knuckled fist, she scanned the room frantically to make sure that it was only a dream.

Curtains veiled the room from the early morning sun outside. When her eyes landed on the photo on the nightstand, she drew in a hard breath and slowly blew it out. She was in her room in Columbia, not a stone basement beneath Bernadette’s once-sprawling Washington estate. She ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face.

“When will this be over?” she muttered to her reflection.

Black and blue bags tugged at her bloodshot eyes, and worry lined her forehead. Hair mussed and tangled from tossing relentlessly in bed stood at all ends.

Half a decade earlier, nightmares like the one last night had been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. They had tipped Sunday off to the world hidden behind the veil of Bernadette’s sorcery. Until that time, Sunday couldn’t remember anything before her life at the right hand of the powerful witch. She didn’t even remember thinking that there
was
a time before then.

Her first real memory, at the time, had been waking as an amnesiac to the first thirteen years of her life. Through slits for eyes, Sunday made out the blurred shape of a man carrying her down a dim hallway. He radiated heat. Cradled in his arms, Sunday remembered thinking that she had never felt so warm in her life. Teeth chattering and freezing, her body shook uncontrollably against his chest. When her body jerked, he tightened his arms around her and held her closer. Her head fell against his chest, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Mind as blank as a newborn’s, Sunday had known no comfort in her life but this. As she closed her eyes again, she fell asleep.

For the first few weeks, her body healed. Open wounds turned to scabs and later scarred. Bruises turned green, and then yellow until they disappeared. During the weeks of her recovery, Bernadette visited Sunday regularly. She sat on the edge of Sunday’s bed and lay the girl’s head on her lap.

“My little girl,” she cooed as she petted Sunday’s head and caressed her gently. “I will teach you all the ways of the Incarnate, and you will shine as a star shines, only brighter. Yours will be the light of the sun, and we will be strong together.”

Under the witch’s hand, Sunday’s spirit relinquished itself and its authority to Bernadette. The witch had burned her, but the witch had saved her. Between sobs, Sunday thanked Bernadette, and Bernadette lowered her face onto Sunday’s brow and kissed her as a grandmother would kiss her sick, beloved granddaughter.

“I will show you the world that most do not see because they cannot see. I will show you of our kind’s dominion over the world of man and the world of magic. I will teach you of your power and of the power we hold over all that we can see, all that we can touch, which is so much more than that which other men can see, be they human or beast.”

As Bernadette lulled her to sleep, every cell in Sunday’s body tingled. Little by little, her life before the witch drifted further and further away until it all but disappeared. There was nothing then, nothing but Bernadette.

Adopting the Incarnate was no small boon for Bernadette. Over the years, Bernadette rose to power over the preternatural sects. Vampire royalty and werewolf Alphas sought her counsel and deferred to her authority. Power hungry mundanes called on her for favors. Anyone who crossed her allies met the strong arm of the Incarnate. Nests of vampires burned, covens saw their witches plucked out one-by-one, and whole families of mundanes died under mysterious circumstances. Bernadette amassed a fortune and her infamy was widespread. All the while, Sunday stood at her side, desperate to earn the respect of the closest thing to a mother she had ever known.

On her twenty-first birthday, memories that had dissipated in the act of her rebirth began to trickle through the threads of Bernadette’s intricate sorcery. That’s when the nightmares began, nightmares too vivid to disregard as falsehood or fantasy. The dreams carried over into Sunday’s waking life. In the days before the storm, phantom bruises formed on her body. Her skin would spontaneously break and bleed in places where nothing wounded her. She would burst into tears and tear at her hair from the pain.

Specters haunted her. Ghosts of cloaked men emerged from the shadows. Their awful chanting echoed in her mind all day and night. She pretended that she couldn’t hear them, but it didn’t work. In her nightmares, they would stab her, whip her, and pour scalding water over her.

Walls,
she kept thinking,
put up your walls. Use your ability to block out the witchcraft.
But as soon as she did, an extraneous force would tear them down.

When Sunday stopped fighting it, she became aware of a second layer of chanting. It’s was Bernadette’s voice weaving a spell. As the days went on, Sunday went mad. When she came to Bernadette for counsel, Bernadette refused to help.

“You will tell me!” Sunday shouted.

Thunder clapped outside, and in a heartbeat, a bolt of lightning smashed into the ground just outside the wall. “You will tell me who I am, and you will tell me what you have done to me!”

The withered witch crouched in the corner of the room, holding her shaking knees to her chest just as Sunday had done in her nightmares. Never had the powerful matriarch appeared so helpless and frail. No spell she could cast, or magic she could conjure would stop the Incarnate in the throes of rage.

Sunday grabbed a vase and threw it against the wall. The broken shards rained over Bernadette. A wave of anger beat against the walls. The sound of it muffled only by the relentless roaring of thunder outside. Another lightning bolt struck, this time at the roof of the house. Electricity climbed through the soles of Sunday’s feet and fizzed up her legs. The house trembled beneath her feet. Smoke poured over the side of the house from the fire brought on by the lightning strike. Sunday couldn’t see the flames, but she felt them dancing. With a flick of the wrist, she could have made them all disappear, but she did no such thing.

“Bernadette, you will tell me now!” She was screaming; her voice sliced through the air.

Fists pounded against the front door of the house. The guards were trying to get in. They thrust their bodies into the door, one by one, like rams against the gates of a castle. They were hired to protect her. Now, they were beating down the door to stop her.

“I am an old woman,” Bernadette whimpered. “You cannot hurt me. If you do, you will only hurt yourself. I am your mother. I am the only one who cares for you!”

Livid, Sunday beamed a book across the room. A severe gust rose out from her hand as the book flew from her hand. The book hit the wall above the old matriarch’s head with so much force that it dented it.

“You lie!” Sunday wailed. “You tortured me! I know what you did! You’ve used me. You’ve put me under a spell, and you’ve
forced
me to love you! I am not your slave! Tell me who I am! Tell me why you’ve done this to me!”

Bernadette aged even as Sunday watched. Cataracts formed a film over her eyes. Her face grew more and more wrinkled. Yet, as Bernadette began to wither away before Sunday’s eyes, Sunday grew stronger and surer of her own strength. It was the Incarnate’s power and unleashed as it was, Sunday couldn’t rein it in.

“You’re going to die here, woman!” Sunday yelled at Bernadette.

There were no answers coming. Visions of her past swirled in her mind, and her body became electrified with fury.

“Bernadette, please!” Sunday’s voice broke as though she would cry. She wanted to know so badly. “You don’t want to die here. Tell me the truth!”

But nothing came. As Sunday watched the effects of her loss of control, Bernadette became a shell of her former self. Bernadette had always looked old, but now she fell apart as she rotted into a corpse. The old woman’s body crumpled on the floor. Sunday fell to her knees and held her head. She released an unearthly howl that shook the walls of the massive house.

It was over, and she had nothing, nothing but the nightmares, the dreams that haunted her into the day. No answers had come, and now none would. Nor would they ever.

In her bedroom in South Carolina, Sunday brushed away the footage of the past that had played endlessly in her mind for years. It was getting easier to make herself forget, though not entirely. The image of Bernadette’s lifeless body becoming ashes, and the funeral pyre she’d created to burn Bernadette’s many minions to death in the aftermath couldn’t so easily be forgotten.

After so many years since divorcing herself from that night and the life of horror she’d lived before it, Sunday knew that her life had gone on. That life and those deaths were from a time that Sunday obscured under layers of vagueness. She was here now, not in a dungeon and not at the compound. She was a part of this life now—this mundane life—not the life she’d obliterated in her wake. As overwhelming as it could be, it was real. It was natural. It was where she existed now. And she needed to feel a part of it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Cyrus and Angel had flown into Columbia after following the lead on the Incarnate’s last known vehicle.

“We’ve been here a day, and you want to get started so soon?” Angel asked.

Cyrus’ body tingled. The hairs on his arms stood on end. He was edgier than he’d been in a long while. He was eager to cast the net.

“There’s a party at a place called the Lair tonight. On other nights, she has multiple options for going clubbing, but tonight she’s got
one
. We get there tonight and see if she’s been seen there. We can follow any leads the rest of the week and next weekend. We clear on this?”

The Incarnate had finally slipped. The car she’d picked up in Chicago was caught taking a red light in Columbia, South Carolina. She had finally made a mistake. He fought to keep his excitement at bay, at the expense of not turning into a giddy schoolboy in front of Angel. They had waited for this.
He
had been waiting for this. And it was just a matter of picking up as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time, so they could finally grab her and end all of this.

The Incarnate was wily. That much they knew. When she flew, she flew fast, rarely taking up in one spot for more than a few months at a time. If they’d nearly caught up to her, they couldn’t let her slip through their fingers again.