Interlude

Hesteia

Megiddo National Park, Jezreel Valley, Megiddo, Israel

H esteia woke slowly. The world swam around her, slowly coming into focus. Gods, her head was pounding, and her face felt like it was on fire. What happened? she wondered sluggishly. Why am I lying on the ground? She tried to move, maybe raise her head, but dizziness pulsed through her. The little movement she had accomplished vanished as her body caved back to the floor, and she sank into darkness once more.

Voices filtered into Hesteia’s consciousness, ringing in her ears, pounding through her head. After earlier, she knew not to try to get up so instead she just lay there, eyes closed. As awareness came back to her, so too did the events of the… however long before.

The traditionalists attacked them, killed so many of them. Mother of witches, did they kill Thea too? Thea was standing next to her before the attack, but they had been separated during it. They murdered Chloe. The memory of watching the machete tear through her sister’s chest, the sound of her final shaking breath, tore through Hesteia, wrecking her. A tear snuck out from under her closed lids, but she kept them clamped shut as footsteps rang through the chamber.

She bit the inside of her cheek to avoid crying out in terror when an arrogant voice rang out across the chamber. “Where’s the prophetess?”

Medea . Her brain placed a name to the voice, and she nearly flinched at the Judiciary member’s betrayal. Medea had always been mercurial, violent to the point of unpredictability, and had been the Judiciary member who forced the issue of Evie’s mandated sterilization at 18 and the annual memory reversions after the Council overruled her in their vote to exclude Evie from coven membership. But this? This was—emotionally, she shied away from the phase, but her brain supplied still supplied it—mass murder. The extermination of a group of people who didn’t agree with the traditionalists’ view. Genocide.

Dragging sounds carried to Hesteia followed by a loud thump. She dared a quick lift of her eyelids, just enough to get a peek of the room. Through that narrow slice of vision, she caught a glimpse of a small group of traditionalists and Medea and Circe gathered around the high table where a small body was huddled.

Her pulse thudded in fear, so loudly she was convinced they might hear it. She was closer to the front of the room than she remembered being but far enough away that they hadn’t tracked the subtle movements of her eyes. What had happened between when the witch cut her side with the athame and now?

Circe’s voice cut through Hesteia’s racing thoughts. “Now, prophetess, get up.” A small woman sat up, her back to Hesteia. “You’re to scry for the location of the old gods for us.”

The witch shook her head, whimpered a little, but Medea unsheathed her dagger, extending it so the golden blade pressed against the woman’s throat. “You’ll either do as your Judiciary tells you or we will kill you. And once we’ve burned you at a pyre, we’ll go to your coven and destroy them as well for the disloyal new generation cowards they are.”

The witch turned slightly, barely enough to reveal her face, but it was enough. Hesteia couldn’t help the soft intake of breath. Although they had never met, she knew Sibyl, the most revered prophetess in the covens, on sight. The witch had a narrow, almost pinched face and mousey brown hair cut close to her skull for reasons passing understanding. Some said it was because she had gone mad at the visions that plagued her and, in a fit of lunacy, cut off all of her hair; others said it was because she lived in Greece where it got alarmingly hot during the summers. Nobody could say with certainty, but it only added to her mystique. Most alarming of all, though, were her eyes. Practically black and wild in her too small face, they spoke of a life spent staring into the past and future with too little of it spent in the present.

“Bring me a map,” Sibyl demanded in a deeply accented voice.

Medea gestured in front of Sibyl. “It’s right in front of you.” Voice pitched low but not enough to avoid Sibyl overhearing, she added, “Crazy witch.”

Sibyl tilted her head sharply at the witch, saying softly, “You will be torn apart by fur and darkness and only the shadows will see it.” Medea blanched, a look of fear flashing across her striking face, but Sybil had already turned to the map and picked up the scrying crystal next to it.

Magic poured through the cave as Sibyl rocked back and forth, the crystal swinging from the string in long arcs while she mumbled nonsensically over the map. Small words carried to Hesteia. War. Blood. Throne. Death. Love. Then the shout of a phrase with which she was intimately familiar. Lovely death. Deathly love. The same phrase that Cassandra repeated every time she tried to look into Evie’s past or future. It took everything in Hesteia not to jerk in surprise, but she forced herself to remain still. Any movement would mean her death

Finally, a jubilant cry filled the chamber as Hesteia heard the scrying crystal clank against the table.

A voice she didn’t recognize read out, “Budapest?”

Silence before someone else asked in confusion, “The old gods are in Budapest? Wasn’t the witch in Louisiana?”

Maia— godsdamned Maia, if only Hecate had destroyed her when she had the chance —interrupted them all. “We have their heading then. We must get there as quickly as possible.”

“We’ll use the Council’s portal,” Madea instructed. “It was created to support the Council’s duties. Fulfilling the prophecy is the Councils’ entire purpose, no matter what the new generation may say.” Laughter filled the chambers. “Now, what to do with our traitorous seer who thinks she knows better than the prophecy that came before her?”

Several voices shouted, “Kill her,” but Circe silenced them with a derisive laugh. “You all would cut off your nose to spite your face, wouldn’t you?” A derisive jeer colored her words. “What if we can’t find them in Budapest? It’s a large city and a haven for magical beings. It may not be that easy to locate them. We may still have a use for our darling sister here.” With a wave of Circe’s hand, Sibyl’s body raised into the air, bound by unseen ties. “We’ll bring her with us through the portal. Once we find them, we’ll dump her somewhere. The Danube runs into the Black Sea. I’m sure my father would be only too pleased to take on a new pet once she makes her way to open water.”

Although the solution was fair, it clearly didn’t sate the traditionalist’s bloodlust if the angry grumbling was any indication. Circe was a powerful sorceress, though, and no one was willing to confront her.

Feet pounded across the chambers to the recessed room housing the portal. In less than five minutes, the cavern was quiet, empty but for the bodies splayed across the floor. Hesteia allowed a few more minutes to pass before she cracked open her eyes. A few more seconds after that to catch her breath then struggle to her feet, dizzy from what she could now identify was a swollen knot on the back of her head and a long burn lacing her left cheek. Offbalance and unsteady, she lurched forward, catching herself before she fell with a hand on… oh, gods, that was a body! Her stomach heaved as she surged backward, her hands scraping over the rough chamber floor as she scuttled away from the corpse in terror, only to back herself into another witch’s body. She looked around wildly, only to see an almost perfect circle of dead women gathered around her. Black dots sparkled in the periphery of her vision, and nausea threatened. It was all she could do not to vomit—or faint—at the gruesome tableau in front of her.

Her mind rebelled in horror as she stared around her. Blood splattered the chamber walls in random, nonsensical designs; the stone and dirt were barely visible under the viscera covering the floor. Mangled bodies littered the room, and severed limbs were cast about, no doubt courtesy of Medea’s heinous drakes. This wasn’t an attack. It was a massacre.

Hesteia stood once more, legs shaky underneath her. Barely breathing, she scanned the room, searching desperately for Thea’s long golden hair. Where is she? Is she dead? Her thoughts were disorganized at best. Thea was her rock, one of her very reasons for living, not to mention a powerful witch and the incredible wife who kept Hesteia grounded. She couldn’t be dead.

A long, low moan sounded near the Judiciary’s table. Hesteia snapped her head in the direction it came from, wondering if, in her panicked state, she had imagined it. Then the sound carried again. Without a thought, she rushed towards it, taking care to pick around the bodies, her heart pounding with each step toward the front. She couldn’t get her hopes up that it was Thea. It would only devastate her if it wasn’t.

She cried out in disbelief as she rounded the table, catching sight of her wife, bloody but still very much alive, and flung herself to her knees at Thea’s side. “I thought you were dead,” she gasped, arms wrapped around Thea’s neck. “I couldn’t find you, and I thought you were dead!” Tears poured down her face, drenching Thea’s bloody clothing.

Thea chuckled, a thin, reedy sound that wasn’t nearly as powerful as it should be. But she was alive to make it, and that was all that mattered. “It will take more than a few bigots to kill me off.” She clucked at Hesteia’s distress as she wiped a tear from her wife’s face. “Now help me up, my love.”

Wavering, Hesteia rested a bracing hand on Thea’s shoulder. “What if you shouldn’t move, my darling? What if it injures you further?”

“Don’t be silly,” Thea scolded. “I’m just disoriented from that snake, Medea, choking me out. I passed out because I couldn’t breathe. She must have thought I died.” Her lips pursed in an oddly judgmental expression, her tone thoughtful but dismissive. “She never was very smart.” Looking back to Hesteia, she commanded authoritatively, “Now help me up, Hessie.”

When her wife used that tone, who was she to argue? With a sigh that elicited a raised eyebrow from Thea, Hesteia grasped her wife’s hand, placing the other hand on her back to raise Thea to her feet.

Thea’s stance was tentative, but her eyes were fiery. “Who all is left alive?”

“I don’t know,” Hesteia admitted. “I just woke up, and I was too busy looking for you to pay much attention. But I know—” Her voice cracked. “I know Chloe is dead. I saw an Everglades witch kill her myself. She was gone so quickly. But there are so many of our sisters dead out there.” Out of the corner of her eye, a small movement caught her attention. She whirled, drawing fire to her free palm before recognizing Akna.

“Akna,” Thea exclaimed, pushing down Hesteia’s raised palm and rushing to the Chugach High Priestess. “You’re alright!”

Hesteia followed behind her, a firm hand resting on her wife’s back to stabilize her.

“Yes. Somehow.” Akna heaved a sigh. “I don’t think Madea, Circe, and the traditionalists were sufficiently prepared to execute their little coup, and many of them have never killed so much as a bird, much less a fully-powered adult witch. So there’s a small group of us—” She gestured behind her to a group of bloody and battered witches. “Who survived the slaughter.” Her eyes grew hard. “We’re prepared to wreak havoc on them for their bigotry.”

Carys gasped. “But what about the creed? Witches are nonviolent.”

Bernadette, Barataria’s voodoo practitioner, stepped forward. “Kindly, Carys, and I mean this with all the love and respect in my heart, fuck the creed.” Carys gasped at her coarse language, but Bernadette ignored it. “They acted first, and they executed us. Look around you! They murdered our sisters in cold blood! There is no world in which we cannot respond in kind. Their violence—the horror they want to unleash upon the world—can’t be allowed to go unchecked.”

A small witch with distraught eyes emerged from the group. When she spoke, her words were spoken with a heavy German accent. “They killed my family. There were only three of us in my coven, and they’re all dead. Except me.” Voice cracking, she broke down, crying so hard that there weren’t even tears coming down her face.

Thea raced to the witch to bring her into a close hug, her eyes grim. “You are welcome with our coven, my dear—”

She was interrupted by a guttural shout.

The small gathering of remaining new generation witches turned towards where Hecate and her familiars had arrived in a cloud of shadows. Her face was tight, violet eyes wild as she rushed toward them, taking in the carnage around her. “What the fuck happened?” Magic pulsed violently around her.

The small horde of survivors looked at one another in silent concern. Hecate was an extraordinarily powerful goddess and the likelihood that she would take this betrayal well was alarmingly low. From her appearance, she already appeared borderline maniacal. Her clothes were torn, her hair disheveled, and deep scratches raked down her arms at an angle that made it look like they might be self-imposed.

“Well?” Hecate demanded. “Somebody, answer my question. Now .”

Akna was the first to speak. “After you left, the traditionalists gathered with Medea and Circe and then… well, they attacked those opposing the prophecy, Hecate. All of this,” she gestured around the room. “All of this was at the traditionalists’ hands.”

Hecate’s face crumpled in confusion. “What were Medea and Circe doing at the time of the attack?”

Akna tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat.

When no one else stepped in to answer the question, Hesteia quietly supplied, “They led the attack.”

“No. They wouldn’t… they wouldn’t dare.” Hecate shook her head viciously, the bones tangled in her hair slapping against her cheeks.

“Yes,” the German witch corrected. “They coordinated the charge, and Medea summoned her drakes to support them.”

Silence settled over the chamber before Hecate screamed, a keening wail that practically tore out of her throat. Shadows exploded around her, wrapping long tendrils around her in what almost looked to be a seductive caress. Her familiars prowled prowled around her, eyes alert as they protected their mistress. Almost as suddenly as her cry began, it ended. The chambers rang with its echo, but Hecate was silent. Her head tilted towards the floor. Eventually, she spoke again, her voice low. Distorted. “Where are they?”

“Hecate?” Hesteia approached the distraught goddess.

When Hecate raised her eyes towards them once more, the entire group took a unified step back. Her irises were purple fire, her raven hair blowing in a nonexistent breeze. The shadows that had simply surrounded her before were now wrapped tightly around her, draped like a lover’s body around hers. Hecate tilted her head at the group. The movement was slow. Menacing. Eerie. “Where. Are. The. Traitors?”

It had never been clearer to them before just how foreign and powerful Hecate was. Sitting at the Judiciary table, she always appeared simply to be the Mother of Witches, a goddess in her own right, of course, but caring and compassionate. Standing before them now, however, she was wrath incarnate, sublime and terrifying in her rage.

“Where. Are. They?” She spoke quietly. The sound carried as if she had shouted.

“They’re in Budapest, Hecate,” a young witch from Croatia responded. “They scryed for the old gods and found them there. We believe they mean to kill them, so that they can't oppose the prophecy.”

“Then we go to Hungary,” Hecate announced. “You’re not required to come with me. Know that if you do, this will end bloody, And I expect you to fight if you come with me. If you choose not to travel with me because you can’t commit to violence, I will not hold it against you. But if you come with me to battle, and you hide or second guess your decision and one of this group is hurt because of it, there will be no rock under which you'll be able to hide, no end of this world or the next to which you can run where I will not find you and make you pay for your cowardice.” Her piece said, she swept towards the portal, not even looking back to see if they followed her. “Follow me if you wish to avenge your sisters.”

And, after a long look exchanged amongst themselves, every witch in the group followed Hecate to a war that they never asked for but would commit to for their fallen.