Still, the ritual itself was easier than the one in the caves where Kala had shown me the prophecy being spoken.
Until she came at me with a sharpened dog bone, like a cross between a giant knitting needle and a stake.
I had to force myself to stand utterly still, even as my every nerve ending screeched for me to fight back, to run, to dodge, anything. Since she wasn’t instantly turned to dust on the tip of a Chandramaa arrow, the ritual obviously had been approved beforehand. I’d ordered them to let Kala do what she had to, but that was when I’d thought the worst thing I might have to do was chant in my underwear. Mom took a step forward.
Kala jabbed the pointed tip into each of my wrists, and once over my heart. The cuts were shallow but they bled quickly and swiftly. The Hel-Blar clacked their jaws together and howled so viciously, Aidan had to struggle to keep them contained. Kala ignored them all, the screeching, the muttering, the hissing. She only cared about the blood currently dripping into the snow.
She touched her fingertip to the rivulet trickling from my heart and smeared the blood over her forehead, then mine. Isabeau held a small bowl carved from stone under my wrists until my blood gathered there like wine. She passed it to Kala who drank from it, taking a small ritual sip. There was no hunger to it, her fangs were always extended but they didn’t look any sharper or longer than usual. She was deep in her magical trance, seeing things the rest of us couldn’t see. The drumming got louder, faster, like a thousand humming bees. It made me feel slightly disoriented.
When Kala lifted her head from the bowl, the whites of her eyes were red. The drumming stopped abruptly, as one. No one moved, no one spoke. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath. Kala didn’t move but it was obvious she was somewhere else. Less obvious to the others perhaps, that she was prowling through my inner landscape. I could feel her prying open doors and rusted locks, peering under the bed for monsters. It was the strangest feeling and not altogether pleasant. My teeth chattered.
“Spirit,” Kala whispered in a creepy singsong voice. It was all wrong, like a doll in a frilly pink dress holding a butcher knife. “Spirit.”
Wounds that still ached, throbbed inside my head. I was being scraped raw.
“Viola,” Kala snapped. “Show yourself.”
I shivered all over, knees buckling. I landed in the bloody snow. But there was no voice, no sense of vertigo or disconnection.
“The last test,” Kala announced.
I looked up at the sound of weeping.
Constantine.
I blinked, confused. It took a moment to realize the weeping wasn’t inside my head. A pack of the Hounds’s dogs milled about his ankles, snapping and growling to get him moving. There were bloody bite marks on his calves. His hair stood on end and his eyes were bloodshot and red. He was weeping loudly, brokenly. He looked nothing like the charming, witty vampire who had saved my life from the Furies and kissed me in the Bower. He looked, quite frankly, insane.
He stumbled, distracted by the sight of Madame Veronique. “You.” He seethed, fury and pain contorting his usually handsome features. His fangs gleamed. “You did this,” he shouted, tripping over the dogs as he tried to get to her.
Madame Veronique didn’t react, she didn’t even blink. She sat like a medieval ice statue in a velvet dress. Her handmaidens stepped protectively in front of her, but it was Isabeau who knocked him off his feet before he reached her and before the Chandramaa could attack.
“You may die on your own time,” she said briskly, her accent sharp. “After the testing.” She yanked him to his feet by the back of his collar and the dogs raced back in, hackles rising. Their teeth looked every bit as dangerous as a vampire’s fangs.
I shrank back as the dogs brought him closer to me, remembering that it was his presence that had called Viola out, had tethered her inside my body. Constantine fell to his knees in front of me, grabbing at my arms. “Viola?” he asked with such fractured hope in his violet eyes that it was painful to look at him. “Viola, come back to me.”
And then he kissed me.
A kiss to tell the truth from a lie.
I tensed, listening so intently for Viola’s whisper that I could hear the scuttling of moles in the earth beneath us. But nothing else. I sagged with relief even as Constantine shook me frantically. “No!” He sobbed. “No!”
“He’s no threat.” Kala dismissed him. “He’s broken inside.”
I pulled sharply out of his hold and rose slowly to my feet. He knelt, weeping and gnashing his teeth. I’d never seen an ancient vampire having a breakdown before. It wasn’t pretty. Blood seeped from his eyes and his chewed lips. I just stared at him, unable to feel anything but pity. I couldn’t even muster enough hatred to hit him again, as I’d done that day under the tree bridges, even as he tried to hold on to my feet so I wouldn’t move away.
The same couldn’t be said for my family. My mom snarled, but it was my dad who hauled off and punched Constantine in the throat. “Come near my daughter again and I’ll kill you,” he said calmly, almost politely, as he loomed over him. “Slowly.”
Kala stepped back, blinking blood from her eyes. “The spirit has been banished, all because this girl,” she pointed at me, “was strong enough to hold her ground when all around her were blind to the battle. This other spirit can do you no harm,” she told the council and the others. Her voice didn’t get louder but it seemed to reach everywhere, snaking between bodies to the very furthest corners of the camp. “The prophecy has been fulfilled,” she added. “And is no longer any concern of yours.”