Actually, I had intended to study literature and perhaps someday bring my own book to the market. I didn’t want children so soon, but I didn’t want to die yet. Not here, in Blairville, on a fucking altar of sacrifice!

My pulse quickened noticeably at the now blood red glowing dagger.

Upon reaching me, Amara placed it on my palm and squeezed. Immediately, I felt a sharp pain and watched as blood dripped down my hand.

My body told her with a twitch that what she was doing was neither normal nor okay, but Amara didn’t seem to care.

If any of the people present had blood infections, chances were high that I now had it too. But I couldn't go on thinking about this terrifying thought because things happened too fast.

Suddenly, Amara threw up her hands.

“Eam ad nos!”

The others repeated the words in chorus, and my body instantly began to shake. Or was it the entire temple?

An uncomfortable trembling, almost as if I were freezing, settled over me. But I was not freezing. Instead, a bead of sweat ran down my forehead.

Only now did I realize that my body had detached itself from the stone slab and was floating in the air.

With a jolt, I felt nauseous.

What the...

I wanted to choke, but it didn’t work. And as if that wasn’t enough, my old familiar headache set in. The pain continued to travel down my neck, across my chest, down my back, and it increased. The feeling became more and more unbearable.

Under the stinging pull, I began to cry, as if Amara’s goddamn dagger had pierced me all over, dragging its gaping wounds across my thin skin like a fountain pen on the wafer-thin pages of a Bible. The pain seemed to grow stronger, engulfing my body.

Jesus.

A loud scream escaped my throat. Then, my entire body bent.

“Amara! Stop it! She’s in pain!”

Distantly, I became aware of my mother.

“Stay there, Diana. She has to get through this!”

“You don’t understand! Please!”

I screamed again under all the pain as if something was tearing me apart inside until my back cracked.

“Amara! Diana is right. Stop the ritual!” another woman shouted.

Then everything went black.

I startled up with a scream.

“She’s back,” Margot called loudly, and then I saw my mother rushing to me.

“Thank God, how are you?”

How I was doing was one thing. Namely, like shit. My skull was humming, my back hurt like a truck had rolled over me, and when I looked down at my burning hand, I was slightly frightened by the slash of dried blood crust. Very appetizing.

The other thing was: What in God’s name had I just witnessed? I had never felt so close to death in my life as I had just down there on the altar.

There were actually worse things than girls turning into wild wolves. And these were women, like Amara, with a magic dagger and a Latin vocabulary from ancient times.

When said appeared behind my mother in a doorway, I reflexively slid back.

Speaking of the devil.

But there also stood two other faces that looked very familiar.

Julie and Grace.

I had forgotten that they had also been in the – shall we say – conflict at the university and were part of these Satanists.

Despite the pain, I was wide awake again, but my head was in chaos, and I just wanted to go home. And I didn’t mean Mum’s vacation home.

“She seems paralyzed. Grace, the herbs.”

Grace disappeared on Amara’s instructions, leaving Julie alone in the doorway. The latter smiled cautiously at me, but I could only look at her, dumbfounded.

“How are you, my darling?”

Mum squatted in front of the dark leather sofa where I sat curled up in a dark burgundy blanket, looking at me with concern. It was that concern I had seen countless times before.

“I don’t know,” I confessed tonelessly, my gaze on Amara, who was now approaching, and just like that, without any warning, reached into my cleavage.

Hello?!

Her fingers encircled the milky white stone that had taken on my body temperature.

“Nothing,” was all she said before she stepped back again and began to march thoughtfully around the room. Back and forth.

Thankfully, no one was wearing the black robe anymore, and we were in a very different place as well. It was a kind of drawing room with burgundy wallpaper. The ceilings were dark wood and decorated with those recurring floral ornaments. The tiny bulbs of the chandelier shone in a warm glow above us. The arched windows told me that we were no longer underground.

Grace came out of nowhere with a glass bottle full of green stuff. She knelt beside my mother and took my hand.

I hesitated at first, but it was still Grace. The outgoing girl from campus with the brown corkscrew curls and all the crystals. One of them…

She gave me a pitying look before just dumping the stuff on my hand.

I groaned and twisted my face in pain.

“Press it together, and your pain will lessen.”

Then she stood up and disappeared back through the doorway.