Immortals After Dark 04 - Wicked Deeds on a Winters Night

that was a lamb or a chicken because giving up food would be a great sacrifice. But now... if I wanted to call upon Hekate’s altar, I could give up my iPod and feel the sting.”
    “What were you awaited to do?” Tera asked.
    “I have no idea,” she replied. “No one does—there’s nothing but speculation.”
    Cade said, “Maybe you were supposed to destroy that tomb.”
    MacRieve gave a humorless laugh. “Do you think that’s all the witch has in her? You’ve no’ been on the receiving end of her powers as I have.”
    Mari was startled—she’d been thinking the same thing. She hadn’t wanted to hit the high point of her life at only twenty-three.
    “What enemies do the witches have that you could vanquish?” Tierney asked, plucking at the meat of a cracked-open coconut. Exactly how far had he run toward the coast to reach a palm tree?
    She answered, “There are some wizards who went rogue, a sorcerer who likes to murder pregnant witches—”
    “If you’re to be the greatest witch,” MacRieve interrupted, “then you’ve been put here to fight the greatest evil. Fate does no’ blow her bullets for nothing.”
    “That’s not possible,” she said. “No mortal or even immortal can defeat our greatest enemy.”
    “Why no’?”
    “Because she’s a goddess.” Mari drank heartily of the processed water, then wiped her mouth on her shoulder. “Or she was. Her name is Häxa, the Queen of False Faces.”
    “What’s her damage?” Tera asked.
    “Again, do you really want to hear this?”
    MacRieve’s “Aye” just beat out Cade’s “Yes.”
    “Okay, then,” she said slowly. “In the beginning of the Wiccae, there were three goddess witches, sisters. Hela was all good, Häxa was all bad, and Hekate was both.”
    “But you said you worship Hekate, right?” Tierney said, between chews. “That means you worship a goddess who was part evil.”
    “She was a balance of good and evil. We believe it’s all about balance. All good is bad. The universe can’t handle all creation without destruction.”
    “All sunshine makes a desert,” Cade offered, and when she smiled and said, “Exactly,” MacRieve shot him a killing look.
    “When Häxa kept growing stronger, Hekate and Hela bound her powers—made her an immortal instead of a goddess.”
    “Why didn’t they just kill her?” MacRieve asked. Naturally, that would be his first instinct.
    “They can’t. All three are witches at heart, and it’s impossible for one of our kind to kill a member of her own family. And others have failed to take her out because Häxa is still extremely powerful—she feeds on misery, seeding it in others, then harvesting it.” It was even rumored that she kept living beings in her lair, frozen in eternal agony, feeding off their misery forever.
    “What does she look like?” MacRieve quickly asked.
    “She can assume the form of anything, or anyone, living or dead. No one knows her true face. She could be any one of us... ”—Mari made her voice theatrically ominous—“ and we’d never know it. ”
    “How does she choose her victims?” MacRieve asked impatiently.
    “There’s no discernible pattern. She’ll strike out against a despot as easily as an innocent farm girl.”
    MacRieve seemed to mull this answer for long moments, then he said, “Is it true you witches will no’ heal others without payment?”
    She should have known MacRieve would cut straight to the heart of why witches could never gain the respect of other Lorekind. She swallowed, then admitted, “Mostly, it’s... true.” As expected, everyone grew quiet. “But you have to understand why.” MacRieve raised his brows as if he couldn’t wait to hear this. “A thousand years ago, witches gave freely, over and over, but we were always ultimately persecuted for it. My ancestors concluded that our kind needed the protection and clout that money could buy. The bottom line is that witches who live in mansions and have the ear of kings don’t get burned to death as often as those who live in toadstool hovels at the edge of the forest.”
    MacRieve’s expression was inscrutable, and she couldn’t get a sense of what the others were thinking either. Should she try to convince them of the witches’ plight? To point out that no other faction in the Lore was as persecuted as they’d been?
    The opportunity was lost when the brush grew thick again. Conversation became difficult, which left her free to experiment more with the