I could have sworn a glint of red flickered in Lilith’s eyes and now her face was contorted enough for me to read an unmistakable expression of fury.
Annora gasped and rushed to the side of the pool.
“Caleb!” she screamed. “Get out.”
Ignoring Annora’s pleas, I waded closer to the witch. And stopped about three feet away from her. I glared into her eyes.
I’d gone to all this trouble getting here. I wasn’t about to be brushed away so easily by this old hag. But mostly my desperation was brought about because I knew if I didn’t get answers from Lilith, my trail would be completely cold.
Damn it, I wasn’t going to leave without putting up a fight.
“Annora and I have been your loyal servants for years,” I said softly. I winced at my broken witch tongue, but lumbered forward all the same. “I have come here requesting to simply talk with you for a few minutes. Is that so much to ask now?”
The Ancient inhaled sharply and stared at me. Without warning, she jolted forward and gripped my forehead, her freakishly long fingers closing around my skull. I remained still, expecting to feel pain. But I didn’t. I didn’t know what she was doing, what she was feeling for, but after several moments, she let go, leaving a handprint of grime on my head and likely on my face. But grime was the least of my worries right now.
“What do you want?” Her voice creaked like a rusting door joint.
“Firstly,” I said, “I want to speak with you in private. I want you to order Annora to leave this chamber while we talk and to not enter until you give permission again.”
“Why do you want to talk in private?” Annora blurted out from behind me.
I ignored her, keeping my eyes level with the Ancient’s.
The grime was beginning to give me a headache. I had to fight to fend off the nausea.
She knew what I wanted now and she was either going to bend to my will or banish us both from the room again.
I breathed out as she slowly broke eye contact with me and looked at Annora.
“Leave,” she muttered.
I didn’t bother to turn round to look at Annora’s reaction. I knew she’d be seething. I kept my eyes on Lilith all the while as Annora’s footsteps disappeared and the door to the chamber locked.
I waded further away from the witch, placing more distance between us, and gripped hold of the edge of the pond. I hauled myself out and leaned against a wall. The Ancient too made her way to the edge of the pond and, placing her hands against the edge of the wall, she hauled herself up. I did a double-take as her decrepit body emerged from the liquid. She folded like a tray, then straightened up. She was almost twice my height as she stood up, her knees thin as rods, and so shaky I found it a wonder that she could even support her own weight.
I stood up, uncomfortable about her standing while I remained seated. She walked around the pond and headed toward a flight of stairs in a far corner of the chamber. She beckoned to me with a flick of her hand. I followed, keeping a few feet between us.
What is she? Is she even living? Or is she a ghost inhabiting a corpse?
To my surprise, we arrived on a landing with four chairs and a table.
She grunted, pointing to one of the chairs. Her lanky legs folded as she perched on one of the chairs opposite me.
I cleared my parched throat. “Do you remember what you did to Annora?”
I doubted that I could express all that I needed to, especially since Lilith seemed to speak in some kind of antiquated dialect, but I had no choice but to stumble forward regardless.
“Annora,” Lilith murmured.
“She came to you. She gave up her form as a vampire and became a witch. She wanted to become a Channeler.”
Her lip twitched and she shook her head. “She was not strong enough to become a Channeler.”
I stared at the witch. “You’re saying Annora isn’t a Channeler? How is it she has so much strength?”
“I made her a witch, but not a Channeler. Her mind was too weak. She gave in before she reached the other side.”
“Why wasn’t she strong enough? Mona was.”
Lilith’s eyes squinted into slits at the mention of Mona.
“Mona,” she croaked. “Traitorous bitch.”
“Yet Mona was strong enough to become a Channeler without losing herself in the process. Why did Mona survive it, but not Annora?”
Lilith stood up, her bones cracking as she began to pace the floor in front of me. “Annora was alone. There was nobody here. She had no partner. Mona had somebody.”
“What do you mean, partner?”
“I mean what I say, vampire. A partner. Somebody close. A relative. Or a lover, as Mona had.”
I shot to my feet, anger boiling within me. “Then why wasn’t Annora granted a partner for her transformation? She could have been—”
“She didn’t want anybody,” Lilith snarled. “She knew she ought to have someone, but she refused. She said she had nobody.”
That cut me deep. How could Annora have said that she had nobody? I’d told her a thousand times she owned my heart, every part of me through and through, and I would be there for her no matter what.
I swallowed back the hurt and regained composure, trying to realign my train of thought.
“So if Annora had called someone in with her, she wouldn’t have lost her mind the way she has.”
The witch pursed her rotting lips into a hard line.
“What is wrong with Annora anyway? I see nothing wrong.”