The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson Read Free Book Online

one she’d heard before: Come hither, Immanuelle. Come hither.
    As the wind’s voice seeped through the trees, the shadows blurred before her eyes, moonlight and darkness smearing together like paint. A kind of alertness came over her, and she tasted metal at the back of her throat. But somehow, she felt no fear. It had been stripped from her, as though she’d become a little less than whole, a half a girl existing between what is and isn’t.
    She wasn’t just Immanuelle now. She was more. And she was less.
    She was in the Darkwood. And the Darkwood was in her too.
    Bracing a hand against the trunk of the oak tree, she rose, knees still weak beneath her, feet still numb. The whisper on the wind grew louder, and she stumbled blindly through the darkness after it, hoping it might lead her to the forest’s edge.
    Gradually, the trees thinned, and for a moment, Immanuelle thought she’d found its end. But her hope faded as she crossed into a small clearing, a circle cut into the thick of the forest all aglow with the light of the moon. Around its perimeter grew a wide fairy ring of morel mushrooms, the biggest Immanuelle had ever seen.
    And at the very center of that ring, two women lay twined and naked, their bare legs tangled together, lips split apart. The bigger of the two, a black-haired woman with the build of a spider, lay on top of the other, her spine contorted, shoulders tensed so tightly Immanuelle could see the corded muscles strain and spasm beneath her skin, which was as thin and gray as a corpse’s. The second woman writhed under her lover, moving her mouth to her neck.
    Immanuelle’s knapsack slipped off her shoulder and struck the ground.
    The women stopped, seized, and detangled themselves from each other, rising from the ground. One of them clawed for something in the shadows of the high grass, a dark object Immanuelle couldn’t see from where she stood. They turned to face her in unison.
    Standing upright, the women were a foot taller than she. Both wore the same slack expression: mouths agape, lips red and slick, like the flaps of an open wound. Cut between their eyebrows waswhat appeared to be a bride’s seal, only the star in the middle was slightly different, less elaborate, perhaps. Though the women stood motionless, their bones seemed to shift and move, as though their skeletons were fighting to be free of them. Their eyes were dead white, the color of sun-bleached bone. No pupils, no irises, and yet, somehow, their gazes were fixed on Immanuelle.

C HAPTER F OUR
It is an odd love between the Father and the Mother, between the light and the darkness. Neither can exist without the other. And yet they can never be one.
    —T HE H OLY S CRIPTURES
    THE BLOND WOMAN stepped forward first, her hand slithering free of her lover’s grasp. She crossed the glade in a few long strides and stopped just short of where Immanuelle stood. Up close, she could see that the woman’s features were mangled—her nose was badly broken, the bone at the bridge protruding into a sharp joint. Her lips were full, if a little swollen, and Immanuelle saw that the bottom one was split down the middle. Her breasts hung heavy and bare, and her head lolled to one side, as if her neck lacked the strength to hold her skull upright.
    The black-haired woman eased forward after her, wading through the grass and bracken. She was the taller and more beautiful of the two and she walked with the tentative grace of a doe. She stopped just short of her lover and slid a hand around her waist, as if to draw her back. But the woman brushed her off and stepped forward anyway, slowly extending a hand to Immanuelle, as if in greeting. Her fingers were pale and crooked—as mangled as Abram’s—and they were folded around something small and black.
    A leather-bound book.
    The pale woman pressed the tome to Immanuelle’s chest and she staggered back, falling into the trunk of a nearby pine. The woman’s mouth wrenched into something like a