The only possible person would be his brother Xayvion, and she didn’t even know if Xayvion was alive. Still, Xaviero had stayed alive and hidden because he was extremely careful. He took his time, looking over his handiwork before he decided he was safe to use his puppet.

She felt the swelling of his power and he commanded Damon to look around him. Damon didn’t respond, but lay as still as death. She felt the swell of anger, bordering on rage. No one, least of all his puppets, could ever defy him. She felt the retaliation in the form of pain, as if a thousand needles pierced Damon’s skull to stick into his brain.

Her spell held. She realized if Xaviero had tried to test the other five Lycans who had been sent to assassinate Skyler and Dimitri in the forest, he would have found nothing at all. He would have known they were dead. It might appear to him that Damon was unconscious, not sleeping. That suited her just fine. Xaviero would abandon Damon and go after one of the other remaining puppets. They had been given powerful sedatives to keep the High Mage from accessing their brains and memories while Branislava tried to remove the first mage-shadow.

Xaviero didn’t give up easily. He wanted to know what had happened to his servants. He poked and prodded over and over, sending hot needles through the skull to try to wake Damon from whatever state he was in. When that failed he maliciously planted more disturbing thoughts, this time of wanting to kill his sister and Zev. He repeated the order over and over, driving it deep into Damon’s subconscious through the portal he had made in Damon’s brain.

She couldn’t imagine how Damon would feel if he used any of the medieval ways of killing his sister Xaviero had ordered him to use and afterward returned to himself and had to live with his deed. She had no doubt now that Xaviero had been behind the sentence of death by silver passed on Dimitri, that horrible Machiavellian torture supposedly ordered by the council. She didn’t doubt for one moment that he controlled at least one council member and perhaps more, and not necessarily through a mage-shadow.

Xaviero retreated. She didn’t move or make a sound. Zev followed her lead. She was grateful he was so patient. As a hunter he had learned the value of patience and he didn’t move or try to ask her why she waited. Time passed. It could have been ten minutes or an hour, she didn’t know or care. Xaviero would return. He trusted nothing to chance and he’d been more than a little suspicious when he checked his handiwork.

Evil poured into Damon’s mind like sludge. Thick and oily, the muck was foul. Xaviero rushed in fast, his murky light spinning one way and then the next, but no one had dared disturb his creation. He sent another spate of hot needles driving through Damon’s skull, hoping to shock him awake. When it didn’t happen, he left a second time, this time abruptly like a spoiled child angry with a broken toy.

The moment he was gone, Branislava moved out of hiding and began to unweave the two safeguards above her. She didn’t want to remain trapped within that web of danger he had created should he return a third time. Again, she used patience, careful to make certain she didn’t disturb one single fiber as she dismantled Xaviero’s protections, piece by piece. She thought of him as a deadly, poisonous spider sitting in the middle of his giant web, just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to happen by. She refused to be his victim ever again.

The moment both defenses were down, she went to work, circling the darker shadow blending with the grayish matter in the ridges and valleys of Damon’s brain. The portal wasn’t raised at all; it just appeared as a smudge, nothing more, a small oval, elongated smear of charcoal that could easily be overlooked if one went searching. Right on the very tip of each side was a particular loop, a small flaw in the perfect oval—Xaviero’s signature.

Xavier and Xayvion had argued endlessly with him, but Xaviero held firm. He thought each of them should have a distinctive signature no one else would recognize. Perhaps he had a precog episode where he “saw” Xavier killing him. But she doubted if that was real. After all, it was quite clear to her that they had faked the deaths, but to what purpose, she didn’t know.

Had the triplets known that Tatijana and she would escape some day? That seemed very doubtful. They couldn’t have known, and if they had, their solution wouldn’t be to fake their deaths. It would be to murder her and her sister.

She sent up a silent prayer that when Xaviero replayed the entire event back in his head—and he would—he’d find she hadn’t left behind a single telling signature. She was lucky in that while Xaviero knew his brothers’ work and probably every one of the mages who had trained under Xavier, he had never actually seen her capabilities. Most likely none of the triplets believed that she or Tatijana might be able to cast. It hadn’t occurred to the brothers that they had nothing to do to keep their minds active but learn—and that was such a distinct advantage.

She realized she was afraid of Xaviero, but was no longer completely and utterly terrified of him. Somehow, in confronting her worst nightmare, she had gained confidence in herself. She took a deep cleansing breath, or at least, thought that she did so. She pushed aside all doubt and concentrated on the fight to save Damon.

Hail grandmother, spirit of the North,

I call upon thee to defend me this night.

Hail grandmother, spirit of the South,

I call upon thee to attend this rite.

Without a body, she turned her own spirit both north and south in a salute of respect and gratitude, taking nothing at all for granted, but sending her plea out to universe.

Hail grandmother spirit of the East,

I call upon your forces to protect me with might.

Hail grandmother spirit of the West,

I seek your wisdom and guidance this night.

She turned her spirit both east and west, in a gesture of great reverence and admiration.

I call to thee Hecate, triple goddess above,

Maiden, mother, crone, see my plight.

Hecate, dark mother who heals the rights and wrongs,

I call forth your power so that I may remain strong.

She felt power running through her spirit. The white light began to glow a soft pink and then light red. Another breath and her spirit was dark red.

I seek the power to cast lightning’s blast,

So that shadow may burn, undoing that which has been cast.

Twist and turn, heal but burn,

Peeling shadow away, let life now return.

From her spirit, lightning forked and then settled into one steady stream as if the fine tip was a laser. Slowly, with great care, making certain to remove the stain of Xaviero’s shadow, she burned the layers away. It seemed to take forever, and all the while she feared he would suddenly realize and return. The moment the shadow was gone, she began the work of healing, sending rejuvenating cells to cover the damaged layer.