Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) Read Online Free Page B

kept walking.
    “Damn her,” Nathanial cried. “Damn her, she’ll pay. I’ll make sure she pays!”
    “She’s beyond your reach now, Nathanial.”
    “Oh, do not be so sure of that, my boy,” Nathanial muttered.
    Duncan turned then, to see the old man walking away. He did not know what Nathanial could have possibly meant by his words. But it did not matter. The lass was gone now. Dead, and Nathanial was as responsible as if he had pulled the lever himself. Duncan would never forgive the man.
    He went to his stark room in the back of the church, to gather his meager possessions into a sack. He would never return here again; he’d meant what he’d said. This place had been his home for two years as he studied for the priesthood at Nathanial’s feet. But that was over now.
    What he had seen today—and what he’d felt—had changed him forever. He sensed it deep inside, though he had no idea how this change would manifest. He only knew he had to leave.
    He only knew that the strange beauty had touched him, touched his heart, his soul, and his life, and that he would feel that touch for a long, long time to come.
    Slinging his sack over his shoulder, he walked out again into the streets. People whispered and pointed as he passed. He didn’t care. He would have liked a horse. It was a long walk to the place where they’d taken the girl and her mother. But he sensed it would be only the beginning of an even more distant journey. That the steps he took now were the first steps on the way to his destiny.
    * * *
    The darkness that descended on me when I reached the end of that rope was a temporary one.
    I remember so clearly the sudden, desperate gasp I drew, the blinding flash of white light that stiffened my body and made me fling my head backward as I dragged in as much air as my lungs could contain. The rapidly fading pain in my neck and my head. And the shock I felt as I realized...I was still alive.
    I was alive!
    I blinked my eyes open and looked around me, and then my stomach lurched. ‘Twas daylight, morning. Still early, I guessed. I lay upon the ground with the bodies of the dead strewn around me. The bodies of hanged criminals, and those taken by the disease plaguing the area. This was the pit they’d dug for this purpose. Every so often men would come here with shovels to cover over the dead, and ready the place for another layer of victims of the plague and the gallows. But I was not dead.
    I was not dead.
    I sat up slow, gagging at the stench of rotting flesh, and looked around me, frantically searching for my mother. I’d had no idea her magic was strong enough to save us from the gallows, but it must have been, for I was alive, and she...she.... No. Oh, no!
    I found her, and my heart shattered. She lay still, her neck broken, her eyes open but no longer beautiful nor shining like onyx. They were already dulled by the filmy glaze of death.
    “Mother! No, Mother, no!” I gathered her into my arms, sobbing, near hysteria as I held her close, and rocked her against me. “You can’t be gone! You can’t leave me this way. Why, Mother?” But she did not answer, and so I screamed my question again, to the earth and the sky and the corpses all around me. “Why am I still alive? Why do I live, and not my precious Mother? Why?” But I knew I would get no reply.
    Not from the dead. Not from my mother. Her spirit no longer lived in this body. She was gone. Gone, and I was alone.
    Eventually I sat back and looked down at her poor body, an empty shell, yes, but even so ‘twould not remain here in this vile place. Not while my heart still beat on.
    Gently I lifted her in my arms. I was taller, larger than she. But even then it should not have been so easy to carry her. I thought perhaps ‘twas my grief making me strong.
    I made my way out of the pit and took my mother’s body into the forest nearby. And there, I scooped away the snow, and scraped out a grave for her with no more than my two hands and a flat