The End of Magic (The Witches of Echo Park #3)(3)

She opened her mouth and screamed, the sound raw and terrifying as it ripped itself from her throat. It left her gasping when it was done, but she ignored the burning in her throat and repeated the action one more time. She felt like there was some kind of murderous poison bubbling up from deep inside her and the only way to get it out was to scream. So she did-again and again until the scream became a sob and then she was forced to let the tears flow. She didn't think crying made her weak. More the opposite. With tears came acceptance and the will to go on in the face of utter impossibility.

Because Lyse finally understood-sitting on that outcropping of rocks in "the middle of nowhere" Nevada-that the battle she and her blood sisters were entrenched in would probably be the end of them and of everyone they knew and loved.

She and her coven mates were on what amounted to a suicide mission.

As this realization blossomed inside her, it took up the space where fear and anger had been hiding, filling her soul with a sense of righteous purpose.

So she died doing what was right? Well, then . . . that was just gonna be the way it went down. And if she could protect her blood sisters from the same fate, she would-but she was comfortable with the knowledge that death loomed large in her future.

Today, she decided, was as good a day as any to die for what she believed in and knew to be right.


• • •

She came back to find the others crowded around Evan. Well, to be more precise: Evan's phone.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Arrabelle, with her aquiline face and smoldering brown eyes, was the only one to look up. She'd stripped down to a tank top, and even in the fading afternoon light, her toned brown arms stood out in stark contrast to the cream fabric. Her look spoke volumes to Lyse.

"Shit," Lyse murmured.

"Yeah, shit's the word," Arrabelle said, her words coming out in a whisper-as if by keeping her voice quiet, she could stop whatever she was about to tell Lyse from being true. "You think the Inquisition was bad news? What happened today makes the Roman Catholic Church look like a bunch of witch lovers."

As Lyse got closer, she could see that Niamh's face was wet with tears, her shoulders heaving as she cried. Even Evan, who was the most stoic of the three, looked shaken.

"Tell me," Lyse said, a deep sense of wrong eating a hole in the pit of her stomach.

"They burned down a school in West Africa," Arrabelle said. "Some of the children began exhibiting powers and the villagers just burned the whole thing to the ground. Ninety-four kids dead. And there's more."

"More?" Lyse said.



       
         
       
        

Arrabelle raised an eyebrow, arms crossed over her chest. Lyse could feel her friend trying to distance herself from the words coming out of her mouth.

"Someone posted a list online of every coven in the United States. With names. It has to be The Flood's work. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"And . . . ?" Lyse prodded.

"They're picking up everyone who is named on the list. 'Quarantining' them," Evan said.

"Who is 'they'?"

"The police," Arrabelle answered before Evan could. "Rounding us all up. Like we're criminals."

Lyse was having trouble processing what Evan and Arrabelle were saying.

"I don't understand."

"They're picking up every blood sister they can lay their hands on," Evan replied. "And not just here. It's starting to happen across the world."

Lyse was speechless. It was like they'd survived a nightmare only to step into an apocalypse.

"My God," she said, finally.

So the hunt for witches had begun. Lyse saw why the blood sisters had gone underground all those centuries ago after the witch trials of the Dark Ages had nearly wiped them out. Why they had let magic seep out of the human world and had practiced their trade secretly and silently to avoid detection by the mass of humanity.

Fear.

Death.

Obliteration.

This was what awaited Lyse and her fellow coven mates now. Because humans had a nasty reputation of killing what they didn't understand . . . and only asking questions later.

"So Lizbeth's dream . . . it's doomed us," Lyse said.

Arrabelle nodded.

"Looks like it. Lizbeth fulfilled her destiny. Her dream brought magic back to the Earth, but, at the same time, it beamed the truth about our existence into every human mind in the world. It heralded our return-but it damned us, too. Witches are real now. We can't hide in the shadows anymore."

"No," Niamh said, speaking up now. "Without Lizbeth's dream, our magic was weak, almost nonexistent. With our new power, we are so much stronger. It was a necessary step forward. I believe we have to go to an extreme before we can ever hope to return to a balance."