Page 23 of Speak No Evil

Keep it together, Jade. You gotta think your way outta this.

Kayla hits me with another jolt of fire, and I pitch even further forward, testing the bindings around my wrists. I scream, though the pain isn’t reaching my brain anymore, and thrash about as I try to carefully pull my wrists free.

I just hope the witches at my back don’t rat me out when I do. With one good tug, my right hand is free, then the rope falls away from my left.

It shouldn’t have, but I’ll thank Lucifer later.

Ok, your hands are free. Now what? You don’t have access to any magic.

The puddle of blood shimmers in candlelight of the temple.

Without magic, all I can hope for is overpowering Kayla with brute strength, which I could definitely do on a normal day. But there’s no way Kayla wouldn’t use magic well before I got close enough to touch her.

The blood reaches my first two toes, and I keep myself from moving my feet. A person in the amount of pain I was portraying wouldn’t care if their toes got bloody.

Another wave of fire, and I arch my back and force another scream from my raw throat.

Maybe she didn’t get all of it? Maybe there’s still some left? That’s what I say to myself as I reach inward for that center of power.

Like before, there’s nothing. What the binding spell hasn’t contained, the double devil snare...

The devil trap etched on the floor that’s now covered in my blood.

If I can just...

I scream and buck and kick, smearing the blood across the floor, and smearing the chalk marks of the spell that locked down the demon power within me.

Power that Kayla shouldn’t know I have.

Power that can’t be bound because it’s not mine. Not a part of me.

Please work, please work. PLEASE WORK!It’s a mantra I repeat silently while I ruin the double devil snare working. I reach again...

A pitiful scream leaves me in earnest as I find no trace of demon power. I whimper and double-over, chest first, into my lap, if only so Kayla doesn’t see the defeat on my face.

“Are you ready to give me your power, Jade?”

I suck in a shuddering breath, every muscle in my neck straining as I lift my head to meet her black eyes.

“More. Fire,” I rasp.

Kayla obliges.

I fall out of my wooden chair, right into my own puddle of shimmering blood.

And something strange happens.

When a witch first comes into her power, it starts subtly. A tingle, a strangeness in her body is the first clue.

Feeling power for the first time is like the first time an adolescent gets horny. It’s weird. Odd. But good.

At least, that’s what I’ve been told. I never felt my awakening. Never felt my magic at all.

But lying on the floor of the Demonic Bloodline Temple covered in my blood, conjures the very feeling.

I don’t know why, or how, and I don’t care. I just want more of it.

Writhing, pretending to feel the pain Kayla inflicts, I wiggle out of my robe, hoping that more skin covered by blood means more tingles, more power.