Devil's Shore by Bernadette Walsh Page A

our chant. Caroline did not allow her gaze to leave the pages of the Book.
    The Devlin women formed a single line and moved counter-clockwise along the circle I’d drawn in the sand. Their bare feet left prints that even Claire and Shari could see. Simon tried to walk but his feet appeared cemented to the sand.
    I turned the page and Caroline and I began our second chant: “ What ye have stole, return to me. Times three. Times three. Times three. The powers of Mna Dorcha, dark women, return to your child. ”
    Caroline and I repeated our request three times. The wind ripped from the dunes behind us and lifted me from my feet into the air. Caroline’s voice didn’t waver as she continued her chant. I continued chanting as well as I floated over the head of my sister-in-law, over the ghostly forms of my raven-haired predecessors and into the center of the circle.
    I turned first to Shari, and my hands lifted of their own accord and hovered above the center of Shari’s chest. Caroline’s words drifted over the roar of the surf and the whipping wind. I called out “ Ar ais .” Return to me.
    A rush of warm moist air burst forth from the center of Shari’s chest, as if from the center of her being, and into my waiting open palms. My returning magic traveled up my arm, settling into my chest. I pulled from Shari everything she had stolen from me: her own small kernel of magic, even her quick wit and her poetry. I pulled her essence from her. Her eyes glazed. I closed my fist and Shari collapsed onto the soft waiting sand.
    Claire’s eyes were wet and pleading as I opened my palm. My skulled throbbed as the Devlin magic coursed through my veins once again. I took back all of my magic, draining Claire as she had once drained me, of all her magic, both innate and learned. I sucked from Claire the fluidity of her limbs, her physical grace. The soft lilt of her voice. And then I took from her what she prized most: her beauty. I opened both palms and with all my power pulled the beauty from every cell of her body. Her brilliant blue eyes dulled to a watery blue, her lush lips shriveled into a thin line and her long blond locks turned as gray as the clouds that hovered above us.
    After Claire joined Shari on the sand, I turned to my lover. Unlike Claire, his face was a waxen mask, his black eyes betrayed no emotion. Neither fear nor regret. Hate nor love. Suddenly I was overcome with a fury like I’d never known before. His words, his words echoed in my head. “ Don’t be greedy, girls. Save some for me. ”
    My outstretched arms almost touched his chest, the chest I had covered with kisses as I betrayed my husband. I thought of his smooth skin beneath my fingers. And I thought of his head between my legs as he stole from me.
    And then I pulled from him all my Devlin magic. As the most skillful witch, he had taken twice the magic the girls had, and my ears buzzed with the sharp intake of that amount of power. I drew every last drop of my magic back into me. And then, as if drinking from a cool waterfall, I felt the essence of his first element, water, flow up my arms. I pulled all of his father’s element and all the magic of the Gardiners into me. Images of white-capped women swinging from the hangman’s scaffold flew into my mind’s eye as I drank from him, the sole surviving male of the Gardiner line. And when all his Gardiner magic was extinguished, his mother’s element, air, as light and sweet as cotton candy, flowed through my fingertips. White billowy clouds of power entered through my veins as I drained him of his essence.
    Once the last vestige of magic left his body I should have closed my fist, but I could not. The sound of him laughing as my body, inert, weak, powerless, lay sprawled on the cold wood floor rang in my ears. His grunts as he’d fucked those two whores beside my broken body echoed in my head. I pulled everything from him. His laughter, his sexy grin, his intellect. I consumed his very