Lend a Helping Hand Page 5

  “Is everything okay?” I asked softly.

  “Shh,” she said and held up a finger. “I need to focus.”

  “Grim, why don’t you see about throwing up another protection spell?” I asked as quietly as I could.

  “I don’t know, Zoe. I want to, but I’m already keeping so much going. If I stretch myself much thinner, I won’t have any oomph left if we need big magic,” he said.

  “Would you two please?” Chastity whisper yelled.

  I felt it before I heard it. The floor began to shake a little like there was a small earthquake. Then it became a rumble, and just before it became a roar, Chastity pointed toward one of the rooms.

  “Get in there,” she pleaded. “Ward the door with everything you’ve got. When it’s clear, get to the top floor and find the attic access. Get out of here with or without your friend. No sense in all three of you ending up dead.”

  I wanted to ask her more, but the noise became deafening. Grim scrambled into the room and waved for me to follow him. I could see him mouthing the words come on.

  Reluctantly, I went. I wanted to stay and talk to Chastity or help her face whatever was coming, but I remembered what she said. There were those who listened to her and those who didn’t. I would have done just about anything for Ginger, but there were others to think of too. How would my mom or Joe handle it if I didn’t make it back?

  Once I was through the door, Grim slammed it shut. I stood back and watched as he warded the door, and then I turned to the window to do the same. We cast as much protection over ourselves as we could without completely depleting our magic.

  For a brief second, I looked out the tiny, dirty window. I’d seen that not every room had one, but this one did. We were so close to the outside but so far away. I doubted we could break the window physically, but I knew Grim and I could cut through it with magic. Then what? Even if we used what magic we had left to scale the side of the building down to the ground, we’d have none left to open the gates.

  “Your bag,” Grim said. “Put a line of salt along the door and let’s make as much of a circle as we can in this small space.”

  “My bag,” I said as I shrugged it off. I’d forgotten that I was even wearing it.

  I put a line of salt under the door and cast a small circle. Right as I did, the building shook harder. We heard the sound of massive footsteps coming down the hall. They were so thunderous that I wondered how the floor didn’t break under the weight of whatever it was out there.

  The footsteps, if you could even call them that, stopped right outside the door. “Chastity.” A loud voice echoed through the entire floor. I could hear it as if the door wasn’t even there. “You disappoint me.”

  It was then that I heard it. The voice wasn’t just one voice. There were several others just under the sound of the first. It was as if there was more than one entity speaking through the same mouth. It was demonic.

  “Sorry to let you down, Azelbub. We’ve got to quit meeting this way,” Chastity said in a voice that didn’t betray any fear.

  “I thought we’d warned you not to interfere again. I thought you knew better than to mess with our entertainment.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” she said defiantly. “I never signed my name in the black book. I chose the path of the light. You and your master are not lord over me.”

  I’d heard about that practice before, but it had died out a long time ago. Witches used to choose between the dark and the light, but that had ended. Or at least I’d thought it had. Modern witches were just good. Some were gray and did shadow work like me. I did dabble in a little necromancy, but it was never with the intention of being evil.

  “Well, it seems that we have a little bit more leverage with you now, don’t we?” The demonic voice snarked. “I will spare your… friends if you sign the book.”

  “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” she asked in a hushed tone.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s been easy. A great deal of work has gone into setting the stage for this. I’ve not seen the dark lord or his minions go to this much trouble over one witch for a long time.”

  “To be fair, it’s more than one witch,” Chastity said. “You think I don’t know, but I do.”

  “Ah.” The demon sighed. “It’s obvious to me that you’re stalling, but I’ll indulge you for a bit. Yes, you’re right. If you sign the book, it sullies your whole line, but she’ll live. Isn’t that what is most important?”

  “While I have my doubts that you can corrupt my ancestors without their consent, I’m still not going to sign your book just to get you to go away. Plus, I think you’re scared. You and that filthy coven have been holed up here for so long that you’ve lost touch. None of you realized what you were dealing with until she got here. Now, you’re scrambling, but your little parlor tricks aren’t going to work on her anymore once she realizes who she is.”

  “What are they talking about?” I whispered to Grim.

  He turned around slowly and looked at me with a soft smile. “They’re talking about you, dear. The Elders and I had long suspected that you were what the dark coven was after. We couldn’t be sure because Chastity ended up here, and there were few records of what happened to her child after she was put into the asylum. Her daughter was spirited away by friends and her lineage was lost to the Elders.

  “But they had reasons to believe it was you, and they were right. Unfortunately, we’ve walked right into the trap they set and we can only hope that you’re strong enough to walk out.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who set a trap? Why do they want me, and are you saying that I’m related to Chastity? What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re descended from the oldest line of witches, Zoe. You and your mother are the last in the line that dates back to ancient history. For a long time, the dark thought they’d wiped Chastity’s lineage out when they stuck her in this place, but it was eventually revealed that she’d had a baby girl who’d been hidden away. It’s probably the reason your mother chose Destiny Cove when her mother passed on. She was drawn to Chastity’s spirit.”

  “So the stuff about the dark coven summoning a demon, that’s all true, then? The witch Amanda was supposed to kill was me? And who is this dark coven?”

  “They’re not just a coven of dark witches, Zoe. They are the dark coven. The oldest coven of black magic practitioners. They’re Satan’s minions on earth, and they’re here. We’re in their lair.”

  “That sounds bad,” I said. “And that demon out there is the one Amanda made the deal with. It’s the big one the coven summoned?”

  “Probably not,” Grim said. “You’d know it if that one was here. You’d feel it in your heart. That one probably wouldn’t just come out in the open like this. That would provoke our side into war.”

  “This is all very fascinating, but I think we should pick it up later,” I said as the room began to shake.

  “How is this for a parlor trick?” the demon said as the whole building quaked.

  The sound of stone walls crumbling and wood splintering filled the air. I would have thought the entire building was coming down around us except that the room we were in was untouched. It was all an illusion. That’s all the demon in the hall had. He could use illusions to scare us, but that was it.

  I turned at the sound of scratching on the window glass to see that one of those zombie things from downstairs had climbed the building and was outside the window. It was startling, but if we couldn’t get out, I doubted it could get in.

  “Move aside, Azelbub,” Chastity said. “I may not be alive, but I still know the spell to send you back.”

  “If you could send me back, you’d have done it already,” he snarled.

  Suddenly, the building stopped shaking and Chastity screamed. After that, everything went completely silent. Grim and I just sat there for a moment waiting for… I’m not sure what we were waiting for. Something. Anything. But there was nothing.


  “It’s a trick,” I said.

  “I doubt Chastity’s spirit would do that,” Grim said. “You said yourself that you trusted her, and that’s how I knew she was the genuine thing and not just an illusion created to trap you.”

  “Well, I mean, we are kind of trapped,” I said.

  “I think we should try and get out of here. We need to make our way to the attic. Chastity must have found some way to occupy the demon.”

  “Occupy is an interesting way to look at it,” I said, remembering her scream.

  “It’s true. Once she confirmed it was you, she might have sacrificed herself. We might have lost our only ally in this place, but we still have to keep going.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go out to the stairwell and get to the top floor. This place looked to be about five stories. So two more floors and then we have to find the attic access.”

  I halfway expected to door to stick shut, and then I expected to find some sort of horror on the other side waiting for us. Neither one of those came to pass. The hallway was quiet and there was no one around.

  Part of me cringed when I stepped out of the room, expecting an invisible menace to materialize, but there was nothing. Grim trailed behind me as I turned back to the stairwell we’d come up.

  “She was going the other way,” Grim said.

  “What?”

  “When we came up here, Chastity was going down this hall. Maybe there is something we need up here or perhaps the stairwell on the other end of the building is closer to the attic access.”

  “Okay,” I said and turned around. “Well go to the other side.”

  I wanted to be as quiet as possible, but I wanted out of that building more. I’d begun to regret coming alone. If I was the last in the line of the first family of witches, then I really needed to learn a little patience. For the briefest moment, I wondered if Joe would even want to marry me or have children if he knew how important our kids would be to the world of witches. It was more than he’d signed up for when he’d put his fear of witchcraft aside and entered into a relationship with me.

  But there was time to think about such things later. First, I had to make it out of Blackwell Rock alive. We made it to the end of the hall, and I was about to enter the stairwell when something in the room to my right caught my eye.

  It must have been what Chastity was leading us to, and it was definitely the thing the demon was trying to prevent us from finding.

  Sitting in the middle of the floor was a carved wooden box with the three moon symbol on the top. Grim walked over to it and sniffed.

  “It’s warded against demons and spirits,” he said. “Only a living, breathing person can pick it up or open it.”

  “Well, that explains why it’s still here, but that doesn’t tell us who put it there.”

  “Doesn’t matter right now. We should open it,” Grim said.

  “I think we should do that later. I’m going to put the box in my bag, and we’re going to keep moving.”

  I didn’t wait for him to answer. With the box in my bag, I left the room and started up the stairwell to the fifth floor. I had a good feeling about what was in the box, but I had a bad feeling about something else. I’d suddenly become filled with the urgent need to get the heck out of there.

  Strange noises emerged from the fourth floor as we walked past the door. I didn’t look through the window or slow down. I could have sworn it sounded like a combination of someone hissing and the rattling of chains. I took the rest of the stairs two at a time.

  When we got to the fifth floor, I looked back down. “Maybe we should go back. What if someone was in trouble?” I said.

  “That was not someone in trouble, Zoe,” Grim said. “I’m not sure what it was, but let’s just keep going.”

  The fifth floor was more patient rooms on one side and what looked like open stalls on the other. I shuddered to think about what the purpose of those were, and I noted how hot and stale the air was on that floor. It must have been unbearable in the summer. I could only imagine the suffering of the people who occupied the fifth floor.

  “We need to find the attic access,” I said. “Maybe we should check the ceiling?”

  “I don’t think so,” Grim said. “In an old place like this, there are probably stairs up to the attic. They aren’t in the main stairwell, but it should be up here somewhere.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be in any of the rooms. Perhaps it’s in the stairwell on the other side,” I said. “Let’s go check it out.”

  Before we got to the other stairwell, I noticed something about the room on the end. It wasn’t a patient room. The door didn’t have a window, so I assumed it was a closet or possibly an office.

  “Let’s look in here,” I said and reached for the door.

  We hit the jackpot. Inside was a narrow, steep staircase that had to lead up to the attic. I looked at Grim and smiled before turning and climbing the steps.

  Chapter Three

  “What the actual…”

  “Grim,” I cut him off before he could curse.

  “This is weird,” he said.

  I looked around and I had to admit that he was right. It was weird. We’d walked up the steps I thought led to the attic and found ourselves inside of a dark barn.

  When I turned around to go back down, the steps were gone. There was a ladder in its place that led out of the hayloft Grim and I were standing in.

  “We must be in one of the barns outside of the main building,” I said. “Unless this is an illusion and we’re about to walk off the roof.”

  “Well, if that happens, I can at least slow our fall,” Grim said.

  “That makes me feel so much better,” I said sarcastically.

  “I mean, I can let you fall if you would rather,” he retorted.

  “No, that’s okay. I’m appreciative. I swear.”

  We climbed down the ladder and I looked around the barn. It was dark, and our light bubbles hadn’t followed us. Before I could cast another spell, my eyes adjusted a little and I could see the barn doors.

  I carefully made my way over to them and pushed the huge wooden plank. It was on metal rollers, and they were a bit rusty. The door stuck a bit at first, but I managed to get it open a foot or so.

  Moonlight didn’t flood through the door like I’d expected. As well as I could see, the sky had become completely overcast. That was confirmed when lightning flashed across the sky and struck the ground on the other side of the field outside of the barn.

  It lit up the dark for a second and revealed a chilling scene. Three scarecrows on large wooden crosses were spread out in the field. They hadn’t been there before. We hadn’t seen anything like that when we walked around the inside or when Grim and I had first entered the asylum grounds.

  For a moment, all I could do was stand there with my mouth open. I knew that coming to Blackwell was going to be kinda scary, but this place was like something straight out of a horror movie.

  “Did that one just move?” Grim asked from behind me.

  I jumped about three feet in the air. Not because I saw it move, but because I’d been focused so hard that Grim scared the pants off me.

  “I don’t know if it just moved, but I think I might have peed a little,” I whispered. “You just about gave me a heart attack.”

  “What, did you forget I was here?”

  “No, I didn’t forget you were here. I was just focused on them,” I said. “What do you think they are?”

  “They look like scarecrows,” he said and I sighed.

  “I know that. But you can’t tell me they are just scarecrows. Those things were not out there earlier.”

  “I don’t know, Zoe,” Grim said. “Whatever they are, it’s not good. We should try to get past them and get back to the main building if you think that Chastity was right about getting to the attic. We have to try again.”

  “How are we going to get back to the attic? Those things have taken over the first floor.”

 
; “Maybe they aren’t there anymore. It feels kind of like we reset things. I believe it’s worth a shot.”

  “That might just be wishful thinking, Grim, but you’re right. I don’t know what other choice we have.”

  Looking back, the decision to try and sneak past a bunch of creepy scarecrows in a dead field wasn’t our best idea. As soon as we stepped out of the barn, I thought I saw one of them move.

  I narrowed my eyes to try and focus on them, and a loud crack of thunder resonated through the night. That was followed by a lightening strike that hit the scarecrow furthest from us. It slumped as if it had been alive and had just died.

  Dread filled my chest as the scarecrow smiled at me. “Let’s go,” I said just as the sky opened up and a torrential rain shower began.

  The rain wasn’t just rain, though. It reeked of sulfur and burned my eyes. As it soaked through my clothes, I could feel it stinging my skin. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst was that I could feel the rain draining my magic power away.

  As it ran stinging down my arms and neck, it took my magic with away. It drained out of me and seeped into the dead ground at my feet.

  “We have to get out of this,” I said and looked around.

  The closest building was another of the barns, but that seemed too close to the scarecrows. A little farther away were the cabins that served as housing for the patients who were stable enough to be able to live outside of the main building. Or perhaps employees lived in them. I wasn’t sure. I’d only ever heard rumors about the place, but those rumors were vague memories clouded by the dark spells emanating from the asylum.

  Without another word, I took off in a jog toward the cabins. The stinging, stinking rain was horrible, but I was afraid to go into any of the barns.

  It took a minute, but we made it to the closest cabin. I almost burst into tears when I found the door locked. I tried to use magic to open the door, but nothing happened. After a brief spark, my magic completely fizzled out.

  “Uh, Zoe,” Grim said while tugging on my pant leg.

  I turned around to see what he was looking at and had to bite down on my lip to stifle a scream. Halfway between the fields and the cabin I was trying to enter were the three scarecrows. They were down from their poles standing there staring at us.