The End of Magic (The Witches of Echo Park #3)
Author: Amber Benson
Lyse
One powerful dream that went out across the world and reawakened the slumbering power of magic. One coven of blood sisters-or witches, as they'd been called before the word took on such negative connotations-standing against a Machiavellian syndicate called The Flood. One woman who didn't know what the hell she was doing but who'd been thrust into the middle of a battle between good and evil.
This was Lyse MacAllister: a woman who had straddled the line of living up to her responsibility and shirking it . . . choosing the former. She was the uninitiated woman. The unwitting master of a coven that stood between the world remaining as it was and being destroyed under The Flood's new world order. She was woefully unprepared for the job, but, in the end, it kind of hadn't mattered.
Lyse had seen what The Flood was capable of, had experienced their evil firsthand. They had captured and tortured many of her blood sisters, using up the women's powers to further their own nefarious ends. Lyse and her coven mates had freed the poor wretches they'd found in The Flood's secret underground lair, but the damage had been done and many of the women were now only shells of their former selves. A human body could only endure so much-and to be caged like an animal, experimented on, and have your powers drained from you like tree sap . . . ? Well, it was merely a matter of time before you ceased to function. Before everything that made you a person was sucked out and you were left an empty husk. No longer the glorious and unique human being you once were. And these atrocities were carried out against young girls, too-children, really, who had just begun to move toward womanhood.
Lyse likened what she and her coven mates-Arrabelle, Evan, and Niamh-discovered in The Flood's subterranean warehouse laboratory to the World War II horrors of Josef Mengele's "experimentations" at Auschwitz. The inhumanity they'd found there had chilled Lyse and the others to their very cores.
Evan and Arrabelle were trained herbalists, but their magical gifts could do little to help. They'd done what they could, helping Lyse and Niamh free the women and children-and soothing those who seemed somewhat cognizant of what was happening-but most of the victims were so far gone that "fixing" them was not on the table.
Evan had been the first one to realize that they needed help to get the victims to safety, and so he'd encouraged Lyse to reach out to the few blood sisters that he trusted, those who'd stayed on the fringes of blood sister society and hadn't been co-opted by the corruption inside the Greater Council, the governing body that presided over the world's witch covens. After Lyse and her coven mates had discovered a mole inside the Greater Council's ranks, anyone associated with the Council had become subject to suspicion. And Lyse doubted that Desmond Delay-the man she'd only recently learned was her grandfather-was the only bad apple.
She didn't want to think about him, didn't want to give him the satisfaction of taking up space in her mind. He'd blown her world wide open when he'd informed her of her parentage and now she felt sullied, tainted by having his blood running in her veins. He'd made her question who she was and where she'd come from. Made her question the tenuous relationship she'd forged with the woman who'd raised her, her grandmother Eleanora. For now she was ignoring all the bad feelings that bubbled up inside her, but she knew that one day soon she would be forced to unpack them, possibly forfeiting the leadership of a coven she'd only recently accepted her place in.
"You're lost in your head," her coven mate Niamh-a diviner of great talent-said, sweeping her long dark hair into a bun at the nape of her neck.
Lyse could only agree with Niamh. She knew she'd disconnected from the present moment. Knew she'd been cast adrift in her own thoughts as she'd tried to process all the pain and suffering and fear she'd experienced in The Flood's underground laboratory.
"Sorry," Lyse said. "You're right. It's all a bit overwhelming."
The others had followed her lead, shepherding the victims into a safe area, then heading topside with her by way of a bank of industrial-sized elevators that served as the only entrance and exit into the bowels of the mountain-leaving The Flood's underground labyrinthine research facility behind them physically if not emotionally. Now they were in the Nevada desert, looking to Lyse's continued leadership to get them the hell out of there.
"It's a lot," Arrabelle said, resting a hand on Lyse's shoulder, but Lyse could feel her friend's body shudder as she turned to look back at the bank of elevators that led to the lab. "We all feel it. This place has bad juju-evil things happened here . . . even before The Flood took it over. It's full of nasty vibes."