The Last Witch: 3.5: Beyond The Veil. A Novella

My eyes spring open. I’m still screaming. Screaming in pain and in sheer terror. Gabriel is yelling at me, begging me to wake up. To stop thrashing!

And I soon realise why.

I’ve blasted half the damn cliff away, and we’re currently dangling at least fifty metres off the beach. Gabriel has hold of a very precarious rock and is gripping my wrist hard as he tries to keep me from plummeting down.

‘I can’t hold on,’ he yells, straining as his fingers slip. There’s nothing for us to grab onto, just a sheer drop. ‘Lilly-’

I reach up and secure my hand around his wrist, and just as he lets go of the rock, I channel my magic.

We both crash-land back at Connor’s camp. Every bone in my body screams from the harsh impact and the air is knocked clear from my lungs. Worse than that is the crippling pain in my head, bad enough to make it hard to even open my eyes.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Connor exclaims, still sitting on the log by the fire, a mug of coffee in his hands and his eyes wide in shock. ‘What the fuck happened to you two?’

My brain pounds so much that all I can do is roll on my side and clasp at my head.

‘She’s had a vision,’ Gabriel says, struggling to his knees and crawling closer to me.

They all rush to my side.

Gabriel rests his hands on my back.

‘Watch her head,’ he says. ‘Give her a minute.’

But we don’t have a minute. I slam my hand on his head and share my vision, showing him everything.

Gabriel falls back, panting and horrified.

‘W-what the fuck was that?’ he stammers.

‘My birth,’ I tell him, groaning at the discomfort speaking causes. ‘The woman at the beginning, she was my mum. That was her giving birth to me. And the end…’ I struggle to say anything else as the world spins wildly around me.

‘What?’ Bias asks. ‘What was in the end?’

‘The man… the man with the scythe.’ Gabriel swallows. He eases me up and cradles me in his arms. ‘In the vision… he…’

‘What?’ asks Bias, looking harrowed by the terror on his brother’s face. ‘What does he do?’

Gabriel’s arms tighten around me, and he says in a whisper…

‘He m-murders Lilly.’