Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I winced, fighting to see through the beams of light shooting up from the tips of the pentagram.
Slowly, it dimmed, and in the middle of the five-point star, hovering above my sister was a—
Mirror? I squinted, confusion rattling my overwrought mind. No, not a mirror... A window.
“Gather ye round, sisters.” A voice rang out clear as day in the hushed, stone room. “There is naught time to dally.”
Mother snapped her fingers, and the words the voice just said, wrote itself in black, wispy letters above our heads—answering the question of how she was supposed to know what they were saying.
The strange, floating window was about my height but twice as wide. Within it, I saw about a dozen women of all ethnicities, dressed in high-waisted, silk gowns with hooped skirts and tightly cinched bodices. There could’ve been more than a dozen, but they were all moving in and out of frame too much for me to notice.
I couldn’t see the ground, but I had a feeling there was something on it from the fact that more than once, a woman would pick up her skirts and make an odd movement like she was stepping over something.
Soft, sniffling cries fell from my lips as one of the women broke from the pack and took a position that put her directly in front of the window.
“Hear me, sisters, and take courage,” the woman began. She looked to be in her early forties and quite pretty, if it wasn’t for the clown paint caked on her face. Face paint as white as flour leeched her of color, and then she artificially slapped it back on with ruby red rouge on her cheeks, lips, and eyes. She finished the look off by drawing on thick, black lines where her eyebrows were supposed to be.
But as wild as it was to say, underneath all that makeup, I saw the green eyes and button nose of my mother.
“What we do here today, we do for all mankind,” she said. “For we will break the yoke of wickedness, and return this land and all within it into the loving hands of the goddess.”
“For the goddess,” they echoed. “For the goddess.”
“Bring me the girl,” my ancestor ordered.
Someone moved across the space. She called her a girl, but the sister towed a young woman who looked to be about twenty to my ancestor. We caught a glimpse of her solemn face before she was placed facing my ancestor with her back to us.
“Let us begin,” she said, then moved back—leaving the young woman in the middle as she joined hands with her sisters. “The hallow of the air, gives an aigrette light and fair—”
“Wait, hallow?” Lucifer cried, lurching forward. “Did she just say hallow?”
I was pretty sure that question wasn’t for me or Mother—especially because the latter fumbled the orb and almost dropped it when she read the word hallow in the air. She wasn’t paying attention to Lucifer in the slightest.
“—from the hallow of the sea, steal what he has given thee,” they chanted. “For the hallow of the fire, light the pyre—burn the sire. Among the hallow of the wood, join thy shackles to his manhood.”
I might’ve reacted to the wildness of that last line, but all I could do was gaze at Dora, because someone fucking should. Someone should pay attention to my sister as she bled out on the cold floor.
“My tale is told. My orders bold. Heed me well for power untold.”
Within the mirror, the sisters began their chant anew. “The hallow of the air gives an aigrette light and fair—”
A light, orange glow poured from the window, stealing my attention. Within, the young woman in the middle of the circle was the origin of that glow. Bright, wispy, dancing orange light swirled around her, then spread—sharing its radiance with everyone in the circle.
“—for the hallow of the fire, light the pyre—burn the sire!”
They began chanting in earnest, louder and louder as the light grew brighter and brighter.
Crying out, I whipped my head around just in time before the window exploded—showering the room in shards of glass that disappeared before they hit the ground.
“So that’s how they did it,” Lucifer breathed, losing his clownish smirk for the first time since we met. “They turned one of their sisters into the All Hallows, and then shared her power among the coven.”
All Hallows?
“With that kind of power, they could’ve turned the sky into a funny hat! Closing the gates would’ve been child’s play. But I thought that was only legend,” he muttered to himself, pacing the floor. “I’ve lived for an eternity— I’ve searched for an eternity, and there was never any proof that the All Hallows was more than fiction. How could a bunch of painted cunts get their hands on its power before me!” he bellowed—finally dropping his funny, wicked uncle act.