From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 176
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
Victoria snatched the brush from Elise's shaking fingers before she could stab herself in the eye. "What's wrong?"
Life suddenly returned to Elise's features, contorting into a gruesome rictus of utter shock, her chest heaving in sucking gasps of rising panic. Blinking madly, her head moved in little jerks as if a bright light was flashing in her face. Her balance was quickly compromised and Victoria was just in time to catch her as she collapsed, barely missing the crown of the bath.
Pain and horror came boiling out of Elise, along with the most bone-chilling cry Victoria had ever heard.
She grasped blindly at Victoria's arm as if in desperation to get away from something that was happening entirely in her own head. Claws raked at Victoria's back as Elise thrashed in her arms, legs kicking out at nothing.
"Elise! Elise, can you hear me?"
"Niamh!"
The word burst from Elise's lips along with a spray of blood. Her tongue was all over red, pinkish spittle running from the corner of her mouth. She clung to Victoria like a life preserver, rocking back-and-forth. "Millie… Millie…"
Dread crushed in on Victoria from every angle at once. She was barely able to withstand it enough to ask, "What is it? What's happened?"
"Niamh…" On a limp, doll-like neck, Elise's head fell back to stare up at Victoria with vacant eyes. "Niamh is dead."
With surge of willpower, Victoria swallowed the Raven's cry and denied the frost of rage. Deep, steadying breaths brought her animal instincts to heel, letting her be present for Elise. She stroked her back, tried to make her as comfortable as possible on the cold tiles. Eventually, she got them leaned against the bathtub.
When some semblance of sense began to trickle back into Elise's eyes, it had little connection to her body. "Millie… is angry. Past hot… frozen." Elise winced. "There is so much. Millie… her feelings are so strong, but far. I am not, it… I cannot think clearly. I am Elise… and Millie. Millie… oh, Victoria, her grief… yet angry! I may become so… please do not leave me alone with her feelings."
Victoria squeezed Elise's hand. "Not for anything."
Nothing else mattered. Nothing could. Enough rage and grief for two was wracking the body and mind of one. For her sister and her friend, Victoria would do everything she could to make it three.
Katya made the return trip to the house in a daze.
Unable to trust a local coroner with the body of a Manifested witch, Millie single-handedly carried Niamh so that she would stay in safe hands until they could make arrangements to get her home. Helga had been with them every step of the way, along with a dozen or so of those present at the rally. Though Niamh had sacrificed herself for Katya, she had done it in Germany, struck down by German bullets, and so vicariously, had done it for Germany.
Or so Katya had been told. There were at least 10 more bodies carted from the square in other directions, and she doubted they had the same kind of procession. Still, she understood the need to get as far away from the site as possible.
Her blouse was tacky against her skin, and her head rang from when it had smacked against the ground when Niamh tackled her. Between that and the speed with which everything had happened, Katya could barely string together the events into anything coherent.
She recalled the swell of Helga's rhetoric, the turn the crowd had made. The tears pricking at Katya's eyes with how fervently she wished there had been a Helga in St. Petersburg rather than a Lenin. Katya's heart had risen with every word, bursting with pride as she turned her back on Hitler and his goons.
Then the screaming started. Gunshots, just like those of 1917. The same omnipresent cacophony that came from open warfare on a city street.
Katya hadn't had time to scream, the Firebird striking only a few embers before the wind was blown out of her, stars exploding across her vision.
The awful, horrific sound Niamh had made as they struck the ground together, torn away by Helga's ear-splitting response.
The shattering silence that followed.
A silence that continued to reverberate with the question of why.
Katya had been told over and over again that she was important, that what she did was for the benefit of all witchkind and therefore deserving of all the praise she received for it. She was a Manifested witch, and so had Niamh been. They were equal, neither more worthy than the other. Yet it was Niamh, who had dedicated her every waking moment to saving and avenging witches by putting her life on the line and going face-to-face with the evil that threatened them, who had died so that someone who pushed papers around between giving interviews and posing for pictures could live.
It defied logic, it defied sense.
Why?
Even now, Katya was tethered to Millie, encased in witchscale. They hadn't been more than an arm's length apart since the rally. Again, another witch was being forced to put Katya ahead of herself; to put Katya first.
But she wasn't first; she was a burden.
Now Niamh was dead, along with at least 10 other innocents.
Ten people who had believed in Helga's message, had stood up to evil, put their trust in witches. In the Firebird.
Dead.
She couldn't bear to look at Millie, who bore before her a supernatural bier for the woman she had come to regard as a mother.
Dead.
Because of Katya.
With her arm encased in witchscale, Katya didn't notice Helga had taken it until it seemed to raise all by itself.
"This will not stand, sister," Helga said. Her brilliant green eyes looked only ahead. "I will make sure of it."
A burning tightness squeezed Katya's throat, and she forced out a response. "I'm sorry. It shouldn't have happened at all. The Firebird—"
"Was surrounded by innocent people. My people. That was no place for an inferno." Helga pulled Katya closer. She was spared from having a reaction by not being able to feel it. "None of the blame falls on you, sister. You are human, not a goddess. You have already sacrificed too much on my behalf."
Katya swallowed hard. There was nothing she could say that was any better than contradictory.
There was little anyone could say. Arm-in-arm with Helga and tethered to Millie, they made the rest of the journey in silence.
Until the final corner.
Then someone screamed.
The house was perforated with hundreds of bullet holes, trails of exploded brick and stark black pits, chunks of wall blown out that were big enough she could see the sitting room inside. There was no sign of the gunmen.
Or any life at all.
Including the Manifest that should have been there.
"Alex is gone! And so is Zoya!" Pretoria shouted as she burst into Elise's flat. Then she caught sight of who was laid out on the bed, and the state of her. "Jesus God in Heaven…"
The only thing Victoria could say for certain was that Elise was still breathing. That much was obvious even at a distance, as she hadn't stopped clutching her heart stone. Slowly and steadily, her fist rose and fell.
Her glowing white fist.
"Is that…?" Pretoria said as she approached the bed.
"Witchscale."
Victoria had Elise's free hand clasped in both of her own, but could feel nothing except the cool ephemera that could only be generated by someone hundreds of miles away. It covered Elise's entire body, no less impenetrable than it would have been had Millie been directly tethered to her. The only difference was how alive it looked, whorls and wraiths chasing across Elise's prone form like scuttling clouds.
Looking across the bed, Pretoria's amber eyes were wild with confusion. "What happened?"
Victoria's answer might as well have been a gunshot.
Pretoria's knees boomed onto the hardwood floor as the life seemed to flee her. She cast an empty, searching gaze about the middle distance, but surfaced with nothing. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Fetch Ivy and Carice. But say nothing to the girls about Niamh until we have more information," Victoria said.
Pretoria nodded. "What about Alex?"
"Let her go."
"Wh-?" But before Pretoria could finish her reply, Elise let out a whimper.
"Elise? I'm here. So is Pretoria."
It took a distressing moment for Elise to focus. Tears fanned under the witchscale, trickling down her cheeks to pool at the base of her neck. "They…" Sense fled her again, the cruel obverse of the Bond's gift writ across her face as she was overcome with emotions that weren't hers, yet were. "Oh, God…"
Millie stood before the house in disbelief.
The only thing moving was the smoke curling out of the broken remnants of the ground-floor windows, the only signs of life were outside, crying and screaming.
Beside her, the Firebird ascended like the sun coming out from behind a mountain, snapping Millie out of her daze.
Millie laid Niamh down on the lawn and covered her with her coat. "I'm sorry," she whispered before turning to Hedwig. "Keep her safe."
"With my life."
It was all Millie needed. "Tell the others to stay away until I find out what happened. Kat, with me."
She didn't wait for a response.
Whether it was from shock, her training or her experience, every fibre within Millie that was capable of feeling went numb as she stalked up the drive encased in armour from head to toe.
What awaited inside was a massacre.
The daylight streaming in through the shattered windows made the blood sprayed across the walls bright red, while what soaked into the carpets was almost black. The air inside the house was heavy with the smell of death, warm from the afternoon and the escaping heat from the three bodies as they cooled on the floor.
"Selene! Where are you?" Kat shouted, so loud her voice strained against the power behind it. She dove into the next room and then another, her footfalls booming in the quiet that could only be brought on by the stillness of death.
Helga's newly-empowered voice cried out in anguish, and what little glass remained in the windows rattled in their frames before falling to the floor in an artificial rain. She followed swiftly behind, collapsing to her knees beside the body of sweet little Ilse, who had stayed behind out of fear of being shot.
The irony of it found an entirely new part of Millie's heart to crush into powder.
These weren't strangers. They were more than names. Millie had spent days with them, had dinner with them, slept in the same house. They had gathered together to try to make things better. For everyone. And they'd been murdered in cold blood, publicly.
Footsteps came thumping down the hall as Kat returned from her search. "Selene made it out. She's not here."
Millie blew out the breath she'd been holding, but snapped her witchscale around Kat again anyway.
At their feet, Helga was sobbing uncontrollably, rocking with the body of Ilse cradled in her arms. There was blood smeared across her face, pink where it had mixed with her tears to run down her neck to stain her collar or spatter her chest in crimson constellations.
Already awash in blood, Kat knelt down beside her unheeding of the stains soaking into her white trousers and the hem of her coat. "Helga, I'm sorry…"
The German witch shook her head, light brown curls flying away from her face like planed wood. "Niamh was right. We should have killed them all."
A twinge pulled at Millie's heart, and she knelt beside her sisters, living and dead. "Not you. Yours is a greater purpose than sating revenge. You're bigger than that."
A sudden thump came from the closet.
Millie shared a look with Kat before turning to the source of the sound.
"Stay here."
Barely rising from her crouch, Millie threw a glowing white shield ahead of her and expanded her armour to cover the bottoms of her shoes, letting her approach silently. More rustling. Survivor or booby trap, she took no chances, extending her shield from floor to ceiling to contain whatever might be trying to get out.
Threading a single tendril from the centre of the shield, she wrapped it around the knob on the closet, but felt no resistance.
After a look of approval from Kat and Helga, Millie tore the door off its hinges and snapped her shield over the doorway.
On the other side, Ursula was huddled under a pile of jackets, throwing her hand over her eyes the moment the light burst in.
"No!" she cried, and buried herself further.
Millie dropped the shield and nearly collapsed with relief. "It's all right. They've gone."
Ursula refused to look at Millie, rocking on the floor with her hands wrapped around her knees. "No… never gone… not for me…"
"Ursula, come out of there," Helga said tenderly. "You must tell us what happened."
"I… I can't…" Ursula flicked a glance at Millie with a jerking, halting shake of the head. "I can't!"
Not wanting to pressure the girl any more than she already had, Millie got to her feet and turned to the older witches. "They knew we were here the whole time! They were just waiting."
"Thank God Selene got away," Kat said. "I can't imagine—"
"She didn't."
All eyes turned to Ursula, who didn't meet them.
"They took her."
The girl might as well have socked Millie right in the stomach. It was one blow too many, and she sagged against the wall, no longer able to hold up her own weight. Her arms curled around her torso, teeth gritted so hard she feared they would shatter in her mouth.
Niamh's only living family, the last one to remember Aisling… exactly what Niamh had feared all along. Both of them? On the same day?
Sucking, wheezing gasps forced themselves between Millie's teeth, but it was't enough, and she began to feel lightheaded as every image from the binder Josephine had recovered sprang to mind at once. All the experiments done on witches trying to force them to Manifest. What would they do with one who already had?
The kindness, the empathy, the matronly bearing that had seen Millie, Elise and Vickie through so much, made them believe in themselves, forged them into the people they had become, reduced to…
Unable to hold back any longer, a primal cry of anguish ripped itself out of Millie's chest and she punched her right hand clean through the brick wall, sending a spray of chips and plaster into the next room.
"Goddammit!" she screamed at a world gone blurry. Not even her vice-like grip on the heart stone could steady her breathing. Chest heaving, she turned her fury on the weakest target available: Ursula. "How did they know? How!?"
"Millie…" Kat prompted, but Millie shook off her hand.
There was no violence in the world enough to sate what set Millie's blood to frothing, and she grabbed the girl cowering on the floor by the collar. Yanking her bodily off the ground, she threw her against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. "Why are you still alive!?"
She was vaguely aware of hands on her arms and shouts of protestation, but there was nothing they could do to her. She didn't feel, she didn't hear.
She didn't care.
They couldn't stop her.
Millie pressed her forearm against the girl's throat directly under her chin, strangling Ursula's panicked breath into a whistle. Her face was turning purple.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped out.
The hands flailing against Millie's armour slowed.
It wasn't enough.
"Why?" Millie seethed, "What did you do?"
Ursula's eyes were starting to bulge, red spiderwebs growing from her terrified irises as she looked straight into the face of death. "I told them!"
The shock of the confession made Millie go limp, and Ursula collapsed to the floor in a heap.
Gasping and retching spools of snot and drool, she waved a weak, defensive hand in Millie's direction.
No-one came to her aid.
"Do you know what you've done?" Millie said.
When the girl finally turned her face up, it was twisted in a kind of pain that didn't come from physical blows; a pain that came from the inside, that dissolved the soul slowly and thoroughly. Her chest rose and fell in great swells, tears raining from her chin. "Don't hurt her. It was me. Me! I wasn't brave enough. I couldn't— Please."
"Who?" Kat asked, the question rising on the wind of the Firebird's wings.
Ursula thumped her head against the wall, seeming almost grateful for the question. "Gertrud. They have her. They said they would kill her if I didn't help them."
The pain that wracked Ursula was suddenly very familiar, and Millie felt sick for an entirely new reason. "Who is Gertrud?"
"Please… I love her… they have her! In the castle!"
It was a plea streaked with a type of desperation that wasn't applied to family members or friends, and Millie immediately understood.
Think only of those you love. All that matters is what you do for them…
She grabbed the girl again.
This time, to wrap her arms around her and hold her tight. Millie rocked against Ursula a few heartbeats before saying, "You beautiful thing. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"
"You… understand?" Ursula asked.
"More than you know," Kat replied.
The girl went boneless all at once, and gave herself to Millie's embrace. She began to bawl, and Millie cried with her, stroking her hair as she confessed what had happened.
"They found out about us. Said they would expose us to our families if I didn't give them information about Helga." She looked over at her. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know what to do! They took her, I couldn't—!"
"Ssh, it's all right," Helga said.
"It's not! Everyone is dead! It's my fault! Oh… Oh, God!" She looked around the carnage, seemingly for the first time. "I did this!"
Millie pulled the girl close again. "They would have followed us every step, Ursula. They were just waiting for the time to be right."
"Selene… they didn't know about Selene. They don't know the difference!"
"That may be so, but she is still alive this way. If they didn't know she was special, they would have killed her, too," Millie said. She forced herself to look at the bodies around them.
"I should have gone to the rally. I should have been stronger. I should have said something to you, trusted you!" Ursula exclaimed. "Been brave, like you told me to."
Life suddenly returned to Elise's features, contorting into a gruesome rictus of utter shock, her chest heaving in sucking gasps of rising panic. Blinking madly, her head moved in little jerks as if a bright light was flashing in her face. Her balance was quickly compromised and Victoria was just in time to catch her as she collapsed, barely missing the crown of the bath.
Pain and horror came boiling out of Elise, along with the most bone-chilling cry Victoria had ever heard.
She grasped blindly at Victoria's arm as if in desperation to get away from something that was happening entirely in her own head. Claws raked at Victoria's back as Elise thrashed in her arms, legs kicking out at nothing.
"Elise! Elise, can you hear me?"
"Niamh!"
The word burst from Elise's lips along with a spray of blood. Her tongue was all over red, pinkish spittle running from the corner of her mouth. She clung to Victoria like a life preserver, rocking back-and-forth. "Millie… Millie…"
Dread crushed in on Victoria from every angle at once. She was barely able to withstand it enough to ask, "What is it? What's happened?"
"Niamh…" On a limp, doll-like neck, Elise's head fell back to stare up at Victoria with vacant eyes. "Niamh is dead."
With surge of willpower, Victoria swallowed the Raven's cry and denied the frost of rage. Deep, steadying breaths brought her animal instincts to heel, letting her be present for Elise. She stroked her back, tried to make her as comfortable as possible on the cold tiles. Eventually, she got them leaned against the bathtub.
When some semblance of sense began to trickle back into Elise's eyes, it had little connection to her body. "Millie… is angry. Past hot… frozen." Elise winced. "There is so much. Millie… her feelings are so strong, but far. I am not, it… I cannot think clearly. I am Elise… and Millie. Millie… oh, Victoria, her grief… yet angry! I may become so… please do not leave me alone with her feelings."
Victoria squeezed Elise's hand. "Not for anything."
Nothing else mattered. Nothing could. Enough rage and grief for two was wracking the body and mind of one. For her sister and her friend, Victoria would do everything she could to make it three.
Katya made the return trip to the house in a daze.
Unable to trust a local coroner with the body of a Manifested witch, Millie single-handedly carried Niamh so that she would stay in safe hands until they could make arrangements to get her home. Helga had been with them every step of the way, along with a dozen or so of those present at the rally. Though Niamh had sacrificed herself for Katya, she had done it in Germany, struck down by German bullets, and so vicariously, had done it for Germany.
Or so Katya had been told. There were at least 10 more bodies carted from the square in other directions, and she doubted they had the same kind of procession. Still, she understood the need to get as far away from the site as possible.
Her blouse was tacky against her skin, and her head rang from when it had smacked against the ground when Niamh tackled her. Between that and the speed with which everything had happened, Katya could barely string together the events into anything coherent.
She recalled the swell of Helga's rhetoric, the turn the crowd had made. The tears pricking at Katya's eyes with how fervently she wished there had been a Helga in St. Petersburg rather than a Lenin. Katya's heart had risen with every word, bursting with pride as she turned her back on Hitler and his goons.
Then the screaming started. Gunshots, just like those of 1917. The same omnipresent cacophony that came from open warfare on a city street.
Katya hadn't had time to scream, the Firebird striking only a few embers before the wind was blown out of her, stars exploding across her vision.
The awful, horrific sound Niamh had made as they struck the ground together, torn away by Helga's ear-splitting response.
The shattering silence that followed.
A silence that continued to reverberate with the question of why.
Katya had been told over and over again that she was important, that what she did was for the benefit of all witchkind and therefore deserving of all the praise she received for it. She was a Manifested witch, and so had Niamh been. They were equal, neither more worthy than the other. Yet it was Niamh, who had dedicated her every waking moment to saving and avenging witches by putting her life on the line and going face-to-face with the evil that threatened them, who had died so that someone who pushed papers around between giving interviews and posing for pictures could live.
It defied logic, it defied sense.
Why?
Even now, Katya was tethered to Millie, encased in witchscale. They hadn't been more than an arm's length apart since the rally. Again, another witch was being forced to put Katya ahead of herself; to put Katya first.
But she wasn't first; she was a burden.
Now Niamh was dead, along with at least 10 other innocents.
Ten people who had believed in Helga's message, had stood up to evil, put their trust in witches. In the Firebird.
Dead.
She couldn't bear to look at Millie, who bore before her a supernatural bier for the woman she had come to regard as a mother.
Dead.
Because of Katya.
With her arm encased in witchscale, Katya didn't notice Helga had taken it until it seemed to raise all by itself.
"This will not stand, sister," Helga said. Her brilliant green eyes looked only ahead. "I will make sure of it."
A burning tightness squeezed Katya's throat, and she forced out a response. "I'm sorry. It shouldn't have happened at all. The Firebird—"
"Was surrounded by innocent people. My people. That was no place for an inferno." Helga pulled Katya closer. She was spared from having a reaction by not being able to feel it. "None of the blame falls on you, sister. You are human, not a goddess. You have already sacrificed too much on my behalf."
Katya swallowed hard. There was nothing she could say that was any better than contradictory.
There was little anyone could say. Arm-in-arm with Helga and tethered to Millie, they made the rest of the journey in silence.
Until the final corner.
Then someone screamed.
The house was perforated with hundreds of bullet holes, trails of exploded brick and stark black pits, chunks of wall blown out that were big enough she could see the sitting room inside. There was no sign of the gunmen.
Or any life at all.
Including the Manifest that should have been there.
"Alex is gone! And so is Zoya!" Pretoria shouted as she burst into Elise's flat. Then she caught sight of who was laid out on the bed, and the state of her. "Jesus God in Heaven…"
The only thing Victoria could say for certain was that Elise was still breathing. That much was obvious even at a distance, as she hadn't stopped clutching her heart stone. Slowly and steadily, her fist rose and fell.
Her glowing white fist.
"Is that…?" Pretoria said as she approached the bed.
"Witchscale."
Victoria had Elise's free hand clasped in both of her own, but could feel nothing except the cool ephemera that could only be generated by someone hundreds of miles away. It covered Elise's entire body, no less impenetrable than it would have been had Millie been directly tethered to her. The only difference was how alive it looked, whorls and wraiths chasing across Elise's prone form like scuttling clouds.
Looking across the bed, Pretoria's amber eyes were wild with confusion. "What happened?"
Victoria's answer might as well have been a gunshot.
Pretoria's knees boomed onto the hardwood floor as the life seemed to flee her. She cast an empty, searching gaze about the middle distance, but surfaced with nothing. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Fetch Ivy and Carice. But say nothing to the girls about Niamh until we have more information," Victoria said.
Pretoria nodded. "What about Alex?"
"Let her go."
"Wh-?" But before Pretoria could finish her reply, Elise let out a whimper.
"Elise? I'm here. So is Pretoria."
It took a distressing moment for Elise to focus. Tears fanned under the witchscale, trickling down her cheeks to pool at the base of her neck. "They…" Sense fled her again, the cruel obverse of the Bond's gift writ across her face as she was overcome with emotions that weren't hers, yet were. "Oh, God…"
Millie stood before the house in disbelief.
The only thing moving was the smoke curling out of the broken remnants of the ground-floor windows, the only signs of life were outside, crying and screaming.
Beside her, the Firebird ascended like the sun coming out from behind a mountain, snapping Millie out of her daze.
Millie laid Niamh down on the lawn and covered her with her coat. "I'm sorry," she whispered before turning to Hedwig. "Keep her safe."
"With my life."
It was all Millie needed. "Tell the others to stay away until I find out what happened. Kat, with me."
She didn't wait for a response.
Whether it was from shock, her training or her experience, every fibre within Millie that was capable of feeling went numb as she stalked up the drive encased in armour from head to toe.
What awaited inside was a massacre.
The daylight streaming in through the shattered windows made the blood sprayed across the walls bright red, while what soaked into the carpets was almost black. The air inside the house was heavy with the smell of death, warm from the afternoon and the escaping heat from the three bodies as they cooled on the floor.
"Selene! Where are you?" Kat shouted, so loud her voice strained against the power behind it. She dove into the next room and then another, her footfalls booming in the quiet that could only be brought on by the stillness of death.
Helga's newly-empowered voice cried out in anguish, and what little glass remained in the windows rattled in their frames before falling to the floor in an artificial rain. She followed swiftly behind, collapsing to her knees beside the body of sweet little Ilse, who had stayed behind out of fear of being shot.
The irony of it found an entirely new part of Millie's heart to crush into powder.
These weren't strangers. They were more than names. Millie had spent days with them, had dinner with them, slept in the same house. They had gathered together to try to make things better. For everyone. And they'd been murdered in cold blood, publicly.
Footsteps came thumping down the hall as Kat returned from her search. "Selene made it out. She's not here."
Millie blew out the breath she'd been holding, but snapped her witchscale around Kat again anyway.
At their feet, Helga was sobbing uncontrollably, rocking with the body of Ilse cradled in her arms. There was blood smeared across her face, pink where it had mixed with her tears to run down her neck to stain her collar or spatter her chest in crimson constellations.
Already awash in blood, Kat knelt down beside her unheeding of the stains soaking into her white trousers and the hem of her coat. "Helga, I'm sorry…"
The German witch shook her head, light brown curls flying away from her face like planed wood. "Niamh was right. We should have killed them all."
A twinge pulled at Millie's heart, and she knelt beside her sisters, living and dead. "Not you. Yours is a greater purpose than sating revenge. You're bigger than that."
A sudden thump came from the closet.
Millie shared a look with Kat before turning to the source of the sound.
"Stay here."
Barely rising from her crouch, Millie threw a glowing white shield ahead of her and expanded her armour to cover the bottoms of her shoes, letting her approach silently. More rustling. Survivor or booby trap, she took no chances, extending her shield from floor to ceiling to contain whatever might be trying to get out.
Threading a single tendril from the centre of the shield, she wrapped it around the knob on the closet, but felt no resistance.
After a look of approval from Kat and Helga, Millie tore the door off its hinges and snapped her shield over the doorway.
On the other side, Ursula was huddled under a pile of jackets, throwing her hand over her eyes the moment the light burst in.
"No!" she cried, and buried herself further.
Millie dropped the shield and nearly collapsed with relief. "It's all right. They've gone."
Ursula refused to look at Millie, rocking on the floor with her hands wrapped around her knees. "No… never gone… not for me…"
"Ursula, come out of there," Helga said tenderly. "You must tell us what happened."
"I… I can't…" Ursula flicked a glance at Millie with a jerking, halting shake of the head. "I can't!"
Not wanting to pressure the girl any more than she already had, Millie got to her feet and turned to the older witches. "They knew we were here the whole time! They were just waiting."
"Thank God Selene got away," Kat said. "I can't imagine—"
"She didn't."
All eyes turned to Ursula, who didn't meet them.
"They took her."
The girl might as well have socked Millie right in the stomach. It was one blow too many, and she sagged against the wall, no longer able to hold up her own weight. Her arms curled around her torso, teeth gritted so hard she feared they would shatter in her mouth.
Niamh's only living family, the last one to remember Aisling… exactly what Niamh had feared all along. Both of them? On the same day?
Sucking, wheezing gasps forced themselves between Millie's teeth, but it was't enough, and she began to feel lightheaded as every image from the binder Josephine had recovered sprang to mind at once. All the experiments done on witches trying to force them to Manifest. What would they do with one who already had?
The kindness, the empathy, the matronly bearing that had seen Millie, Elise and Vickie through so much, made them believe in themselves, forged them into the people they had become, reduced to…
Unable to hold back any longer, a primal cry of anguish ripped itself out of Millie's chest and she punched her right hand clean through the brick wall, sending a spray of chips and plaster into the next room.
"Goddammit!" she screamed at a world gone blurry. Not even her vice-like grip on the heart stone could steady her breathing. Chest heaving, she turned her fury on the weakest target available: Ursula. "How did they know? How!?"
"Millie…" Kat prompted, but Millie shook off her hand.
There was no violence in the world enough to sate what set Millie's blood to frothing, and she grabbed the girl cowering on the floor by the collar. Yanking her bodily off the ground, she threw her against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. "Why are you still alive!?"
She was vaguely aware of hands on her arms and shouts of protestation, but there was nothing they could do to her. She didn't feel, she didn't hear.
She didn't care.
They couldn't stop her.
Millie pressed her forearm against the girl's throat directly under her chin, strangling Ursula's panicked breath into a whistle. Her face was turning purple.
"I'm sorry!" she gasped out.
The hands flailing against Millie's armour slowed.
It wasn't enough.
"Why?" Millie seethed, "What did you do?"
Ursula's eyes were starting to bulge, red spiderwebs growing from her terrified irises as she looked straight into the face of death. "I told them!"
The shock of the confession made Millie go limp, and Ursula collapsed to the floor in a heap.
Gasping and retching spools of snot and drool, she waved a weak, defensive hand in Millie's direction.
No-one came to her aid.
"Do you know what you've done?" Millie said.
When the girl finally turned her face up, it was twisted in a kind of pain that didn't come from physical blows; a pain that came from the inside, that dissolved the soul slowly and thoroughly. Her chest rose and fell in great swells, tears raining from her chin. "Don't hurt her. It was me. Me! I wasn't brave enough. I couldn't— Please."
"Who?" Kat asked, the question rising on the wind of the Firebird's wings.
Ursula thumped her head against the wall, seeming almost grateful for the question. "Gertrud. They have her. They said they would kill her if I didn't help them."
The pain that wracked Ursula was suddenly very familiar, and Millie felt sick for an entirely new reason. "Who is Gertrud?"
"Please… I love her… they have her! In the castle!"
It was a plea streaked with a type of desperation that wasn't applied to family members or friends, and Millie immediately understood.
Think only of those you love. All that matters is what you do for them…
She grabbed the girl again.
This time, to wrap her arms around her and hold her tight. Millie rocked against Ursula a few heartbeats before saying, "You beautiful thing. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"
"You… understand?" Ursula asked.
"More than you know," Kat replied.
The girl went boneless all at once, and gave herself to Millie's embrace. She began to bawl, and Millie cried with her, stroking her hair as she confessed what had happened.
"They found out about us. Said they would expose us to our families if I didn't give them information about Helga." She looked over at her. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know what to do! They took her, I couldn't—!"
"Ssh, it's all right," Helga said.
"It's not! Everyone is dead! It's my fault! Oh… Oh, God!" She looked around the carnage, seemingly for the first time. "I did this!"
Millie pulled the girl close again. "They would have followed us every step, Ursula. They were just waiting for the time to be right."
"Selene… they didn't know about Selene. They don't know the difference!"
"That may be so, but she is still alive this way. If they didn't know she was special, they would have killed her, too," Millie said. She forced herself to look at the bodies around them.
"I should have gone to the rally. I should have been stronger. I should have said something to you, trusted you!" Ursula exclaimed. "Been brave, like you told me to."
