A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [233]
The breeze moved around my feet in gusts, but it didn’t increase. The tingling descended from my elbows into my nails. Instead of pushing back my frustration, I let the feeling mount. Arcs of blue electricity moved between my fingers.
“Use your power,” he rasped. “You can’t fight me any other way.”
My hands waved in his direction. It didn’t seem very threatening, but it was all I could think of. Matthew proved just how worthless my efforts were by pouncing on me and spinning me around before vanishing into the trees.
“You’re dead—again.” His voice came from somewhere to my right.
“Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working!” I shouted in his direction.
“I’m right behind you,” he purred into my ear.
My scream split the silence of the forest, and the winds rose around me in a cyclonic cocoon. “Stay away!” I roared.
Matthew reached for me with a determined look, his hands shooting through my windy barrier. I flung mine in his direction, instinct taking over, and a rush of air knocked him back on his heels. He looked surprised, and the predator appeared in the depths of his eyes. He came at me again in another attempt to break the wind’s hold. Though I concentrated on pushing him back, the air didn’t respond as I wanted it to.
“Stop trying to force it,” Matthew said. He was fearless and had made his way through the cyclone, his fingers digging into my upper arms. “Your mother spellbound you so that no one could force your magic—not even you.”
“Then how do I call it when needed and control it when it’s not?”
“Figure it out.” Matthew’s snowy gaze flickered over my neck and shoulders, instinctively locating my major veins and arteries.
“I can’t.” A wave of panic engulfed me. “I’m not a witch.”
“Stop saying that. It’s not true, and you know it.” He dropped me abruptly. “Close your eyes. Start walking.”
“What?”
“I’ve watched you for weeks, Diana.” The way he was moving was completely feral, the smell of cloves so overpowering that my throat closed. “You need movement and sensory deprivation so that all you can do is feel.” He gave me a push, and I stumbled. When I turned back, he was gone.
My eyes circled the forest. The woods were eerily silent, the animals shielding themselves from the powerful predator in their midst.
Closing my eyes, I began to breathe deeply. A breeze ruffled past me, first in one direction, then in another. It was Matthew, taunting me. I focused on my breathing, trying to be as still as the rest of the creatures in the forest, then set out.
There was a tightness between my eyes. I breathed into it, too, remembering Amira’s yoga instruction and Marthe’s advice to let the visions pass through me. The tightness turned to tingling and the tingling to a sense of possibility as my mind’s eye—a witch’s third eye—opened fully for the first time.
It took in everything that was alive in the forest—the vegetation, the energy in the earth, the water moving underneath the ground—each vital force distinct in color and shade. My mind’s eye saw the rabbits crouched in the hollow of a tree, their hearts thundering in fear as they smelled the vampire. It detected the barn owls, their late-afternoon naps brought to a premature end by this creature who swung from tree limbs and jumped like a panther. The rabbits and owls knew they couldn’t escape him.
“King of the beasts,” I whispered.
Matthew’s low chuckle sounded through the trees.
No creature in the forest could fight Matthew and win. “Except me,” I breathed.
My mind’s eye swept over the forest. A vampire is not fully alive, and it was hard to find him amid the dazzling energy that surrounded me. Finally I located his shape, a concentration of darkness like a black hole, the edges glowing red where his preternatural life force met the vitality of the world. Instinctively turning my face in his direction alerted him to my scrutiny and he slid away, fading into the shadows between the trees.
With both eyes closed and my mind’s eye open, I started walking, hoping to lure him into following. Behind me his darkness detached from a maple