Amaretto Flame by Sammie Spencer Page A

her get mad. Let
her punish me in some other way, but I was going home.
    I drove like a maniac, cursing the many miles
between Staves and Eagleton. The only thing I could think about was
the fact that Max was attacked. If his attackers were Venator, he’d
been within an arm’s reach of the deadliest people to walk the face
of the earth; magick-users who thought nothing of torturing humans
and Wise Ones.
    A few years after I arrived in Eagleton, a
rumor reached us that there was a possible Venator hideout nearby.
Perry and a few of the men from another coven went to check it out.
When they arrived, they found it completely empty. Whether the
Venator tribe was weak and had heard about Wise Ones coming, we
never found out, but Perry had brought back some of the trophies
he’d found there.
    The Venator were true to their name; they
were hunters in every way. Sometimes they killed their victims
right away, and sometimes they turned them into slaves, but the
victims always died and it was always painful. I snuck into one of
the storage rooms a few days after Perry’s return and found those
trophies; bloody locks of hair fastened to wooden plaques,
high-priestess necklaces with teeth threaded onto the chains, and
other horrible memorabilia.
    Possibly the worst were the hides. Years
back, many Wise Ones received tattoos when they dedicated their
lives to the Goddess and to the magick. Whereas the Venator wore
the hunter’s arrows, the Wise Ones were given Goddess symbols; a
full moon between two crescents, waxing and waning. Many of them
took it a step further and received their coven symbol inside the
full moon. These were the Venator’s favorite souvenirs of death.
They’d cut the skin off their victims and dry it before affixing it
to a plaque bearing the silver hunter’s arrow.
    Most Wise Ones had stopped getting tattooed,
preventing themselves from becoming an easy target. The images of
those trophies haunted me, and a chill ran through me. As I got
closer to Eagleton, my heart pounded more forcefully against my
ribcage, but the anger seethed on. Ten minutes before reaching
home, as I turned onto a quiet, country street that was tree-lined
and shaded, I realized there was going to be a problem.
    A few hundred feet in front of me, Ivanna’s
silver sedan pulled out from the side of the street and into the
middle, where it stayed, reflecting the pebbles of light that made
it through the trees. Immediately I knew that I wasn’t going to be
allowed to go home today. I didn’t slow down until I was
dangerously close to her car, and I slammed on the brakes and threw
my own car into park. Getting out, I slammed the door and stood,
waiting for the reason I was being blocked.
    Ivanna stepped out of the driver’s side at
the same time Everett stepped out of the passenger-side. Crossing
my arms over my chest, I glared hard at both of them.
    “What?” I asked. “Are you going to stop me
from going to Eagleton?”
    “Absolutely,” Ivanna said without hesitation.
“Your place is in Staves right now. You’re overreacting and you’re
not thinking clearly,” she added. “Much the way you did when you
were sent to the orphanage.”
    “I get it, Ivanna!” I stepped forward. “I
know I messed up. And maybe I am overreacting but you can’t be sure
who Max’s attackers were. I need to be home. Postpone the
punishment until we figure out what’s going on.”
    “Olivia, there is no need for you here right
now. The grounds of Eagleton are safe and it’s highly unlikely that
the attackers were Venator. Max is still alive and well.”
    “You heard what Lillian said,” I replied
hotly. “Just because Max wasn’t hurt doesn’t mean they weren’t
Venator…and it doesn’t mean they won’t come here. It doesn’t mean
that everyone is safe.”
    “Olivia, if and when we need you here, I will
let you know. Until then, you’re going to face the consequences you
brought upon yourself in Staves,” Ivanna pulled her sunglasses