The Magnificent Bastards

II | The Dagger and the Chalice-4

SHE AWAKENED WITH A start, her heart hammering, her pulse racing, and threw off the blanket someone had lain over her—probably Jeremiah. A voice had intruded into her dreams, a female voice, that voice, Sister Samain. Did it work? she asked, her voice seeming at once familiar and at the same time foreign—alien. Did the trust spell work as intended?

Yes, Satyena projected, and glanced down the hall toward Jasper and Jeremiah’s rooms. But this is not a good time. The house is too quiet, and the Witch Doctor has The Way. The old man, too, will have it by morning, for I have promised to push him.

Why would you do that, Satyena? Samain objected. The Witch Doctor was inevitable, but another—the old man, especially—what if something goes wrong?

Spells are not perfect, Sister Samain. You above all should know that. They are men, yes, but they are not fools: the old man will want proof that I am carrying out my part of the bargain. What better proof than unfettered access to what he perceives to be my mind?

What bargain? And what do you mean, Satyena, ‘You above all should know that?’ Nevermind. We must put the bickering between half-breeds and full-bloods behind. I am sorry that the cloaking spell failed your coven, but remember it was your own coven who imprisoned you! Would you have thought to turn your whispered plea for help into a plan which might save all the witches if I had not reached out to you?

No! Satyena projected. But our projections at this moment are endangering the very plan you speak of. Jere—the Witch Doctor—has too much latent power. I tell you now, he could be listening as we speak. Desist this communication at once and I shall make contact with you in the ...

And then there was silence, a psychic silence, and Satyena knew she was gone.

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* * * *

SHE EASED THE DOOR to Jeremiah’s room open as delicately as she could and found him sleeping. How peaceful he looked just now, minus his accouterments as Witch Doctor. How child-like. She had strategic reasons for wanting to visit him, of course, the first being to confirm that he had, indeed, been sleeping during their exchange, and another being the strengthening of their bond, the building of an intimate trust. But she had a personal reason, as well, one she was afraid to admit even to herself but was as real as he was nonetheless. And that was to know what it was like to lay beside a man.

For something had touched her when the two of them had clung to one another as the coven was flattened and burned, something alien and yet wholly familiar, as though it had always existed and always would, regardless of the war between men and women and regardless of the casualties. Something which repelled and allured all at once. Something which, try as both sides might, would not go quietly.

Something which drew her to him and suggested she lay down by his side, which said, This is the true Dagger and Chalice. Not a ceremony, not a ritual—at least not one designed by mortal men and women—but something older than the stars themselves. Something irreducible. And when he put his arm around her she felt as though she were a child once again, and slept. And dreamed of Jasper’s paintings and a world in which everything was alive and connected, in which nature itself was the sole author of the divine, a world she’d heard spoken of once by a very old woman, who’d said it was the birthright and belief of the witches of old, of the druids and the Wiccans, she’d said, of the true witches and their splendor.