She carried the weight on her arm like a dumbbell, a weight, pinned to the floor. Five strips of black leather kept her hand still, stabbed through the floor with five knives, set in the order and shape of the Beast's star. A pentagram. Her hand extended. Her body, in sporadic intervals of stillness and restlessness. She would awake. Collapse to sleep. Awake once more. All in pain.

It had been one day (one, only one!) after the first time her tattoo appeared on her arm, and already her pain had scaled twice as much. Luanne stood by her rear the whole time, bucket in hand, to wash and dry her bloody arm. Leeches squirmed on the surface of her (Jezebel's) skin, squirming. It felt like she was being ripped apart, that the veins in her arms were being re-wired, pushed aside, cut and moved without reason. She tried to stand, but the tethered leather kept her down. Her feet dangled by the edge of the bed.

"Don't move too much, you'll make it worse." Luanne took a suckling bug from her arm. It was dripping blood. She dropped it in a bucket.

"Old traditions never die, do they. No matter how rich we get, how far removed. We just can't help repeating the old." Jezebel laughed. Pained. She tried to turn. The leather stretched but did not break.

"Traditions are hard to kill. They're in us like DNA." Luanne said, wiping the tattooed arm with a wet towel.

The prominent black-green glow of the arm's arcana showed through the black trappings.

"Why are you here?" Jezebel said beneath the covers of her bed. The sweat-soaked covers stuck to her chest and face. They looked like suction cups, peeling off her.

"Because you're my sister." Luanne said rubbing the towel across the fresh blood. The tattoo was leaking again. A leech fell, dead, from the table platform the arm was, down to the floor. Jezebel turned her head as the towel ran across her arm, it felt like candle fire, and hot wax poured over a wound and scratched (though the towel was soft) like a rake.

"That's not true," Jezebel said. "You're here to protect mother's prospects. She wants to make sure I stay alive long enough to do her dirty work. God knows what-" Pain struck her. She yelped. "God knows what that is."

"That's all a child is, aren't they? An investment."

"To what?"

"Who knows. I used to think for a better future, but I wonder. I wonder if people even want things to get better." She ran like rote autonomy, a robot guided by maternal instincts than any kind of consciousness.

Jezebel felt like a baby as the towels came to her. As she was fed little spoonfuls of blended food. Applesauce. Cinnamon. She didn't even try to eat it as the spoon approached. Luanne took the spoon away, disappointing.

"Do you think what's happening to me will happen to everyone?" Jezebel asked.

"I know so. You're just more talented than the rest of us. Well, I hear Floyd has something like this too..."Her voice went quiet. "I don't want to talk about him though. He's...going through stuff."

"Stuff? What kind of stuff?"

"He's got a crazed look in his eyes last time I saw him...it didn't even look like he was in pain. It looked like he was enjoying it, honestly. He kept talking about the Wolfe's pride and shame or something. I think Junior's death hurt him."

"It hurt all of us."

"No, no. Not in the same way though, not in the same capacity or type." Luanne said. "It changed Floyd. And I'm scared I had something to do with it too..."

"Like what?"

Luanne pursed her lips. Her eyes darted to the corner of her eyes.

"I'll tell you one day, I think."

Jezebel tried to protest but felt the fire in her veins once more. A sharp pinch of her nerves that caused her veins around her shoulders to bulge.

"This isn't right," Jezebel said, teeth grit as she outstretched from the bed. "None of this is right."

"It's just what we were born with. We can't change that."

"What are we?" She tried to pump her fist, but the leather held her down. "This is a brand, and we are slaves. That's all we are, isn't it?"

Luanne looked down. Smiling.

"Of course you'd say that." She hesitated, then looked up. "You were always the rowdy one. Always the rebel."

"Answer my question-" Her eyes rolled back as she was struck with pain.

Jezebel turned her head and rolled onto her side, or tried to. The blood trickled down her arm and to the bed. Luanne held her still. The nails keeping the table (and subsequently the pinned arm) down shook and creaked as they began to separate from the wood floor.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Simmer down." The leeches writhed on the floor, falling from her arm. "Please, for your own good."

Jezebel committed to a final stretch. A final scream, before she collapsed back onto the bed.

"You don't know when to calm down, do you?"

"I was never calm," Jezebel said in between deep breaths.

"That's right. Why, I remember when Floyd got stuck in that oak tree back when we were little, outside that little motel we used to rent out when dad forgot to pay rent," She wiped the blood from Luanne nervously as she spoke. "Maybe you don't remember...you were so young."

"I remember," Jezebel said. The pangs had made her face tight, had made her veins pop from her forehead.

"So you remember how you tried climbing that tree and how much you scraped your knees and face and how many times you fell trying to get Floyd."

"I remember getting hurt."

"And you remember Floyd climbing down by himself, don't you?" Luanne asked.

"Yeah, it made me feel stupid. All that work - Ah," It was the kind of pain where she could not even talk. Not even breath. She waited a bit for it to pass. "Fuck - Ah - Yeah...yeah... It made me feel stupid. He went off and fixed his problem, all the while I tried so hard. All that work, for nothing. I wasted myself."

"It wasn't a waste, Jezzy." Luanne rubbed the hair off her face. "That's what I love about you. It's a good thing you haven't changed."

Jezebel shook her hand off. Luanne rubbed her harder.

"You're always taking care of my baby boy, and mother and everyone else. You're always so overprotective, and violent and angry. You really love this family, don't you?"

"I do," Jezebel said, still turned and facing the glass window and the skyline.

"I know you do. And that's what I'm afraid of." Luanne said. "I didn't come here to protect mom's interests. I came here to offer you to reconsider."

"Reconsider what?"

"The idea that you're going to do something bad for mom. The idea that you really didn't decline her, that you're going to do something stupid. I can read it in your face."

Jezebel was silent.

"You're going to help her, whatever it is. Aren't you?"

Jezebel turned her head down.

"I knew it," Luanne said. "I want you to consider something else."

"What?"

"Running away."

"What?"

"I know you, Jezzy. You're selling yourself the idea that mom's right. That she knows better, that she cares more about us than the stupid name we carry."

"What do you expect? I don't know what's going on. I can't tell what I need to do or what's happening."

"Mother wants to secure whatever power is being offered by Mammon. She wants it to herself, through her or her children. She wants you to kill your stepbrothers. She wants to make sure no one but her wins."

"What?"

"What do you think this all is Jezzy? This devil stuff, this marking, this curse? It's a competition. We're fighting to be the vessel for the Mammon. It's self-sacrifice, Jezzy. This whole demon, magic nonsense. It's all a game."

"A competition? Magic?" Jezebel asked.

"Yes. I mean, you experienced it, right? You sunk into the floor."

Jezebel bit her lips, the memory was still fresh. A memory of her sinking and falling. She had a nightmare last night about it and awoke in the middle of the night only to re-experience it. She had rolled off the bed and had fallen through the marble floor, through concrete, before she stopped a whole level below.

"So we're in danger, is that why you want me to run?"

"Yes."

"So that means everyone else is in danger too. Even you, right?"

Luanne hesitated. She knew the answer and knew what it would mean.

"Yes..." She said, finally. The words taking some will to leave her mouth. "But...I don't know how or when or by whom. And...And-"

"So you're in danger," Jezebel said, her eyes lit up.

The atmosphere was antagonistic. Too thick, too painful to breathe in. The lights seemed to dim, casting a shadow to pronounce her tired eyes. Like two caverns. She was afraid. Her blue eyes rattling in the black pits that were her eye sockets. Like broken, blue glass cast down a well, losing light and falling further into darkness.

"But if we're all in danger," Luanne said. "We should all run."

"I'm not letting any of you get hurt. Not my little nephew, especially."

All pain had disappeared, or perhaps, had been pushed to the background like furniture. The leeches fell from her arm, simply full and swollen and dead. Jezebel yanked her arm free in slow, methodical violence. The nails keeping her strapped collapsed and shot out as her muscles pushed on and on. Jezebel's face strained.

"You can't tell me that and expect me not to get worried."

Luanne's eyes watered. Her voice, shaky.

"I knew you'd say that. That's what gets me so scared." She caressed Jezebel's face. "That's why I'm trying to tell you, trying to convince you to leave. Nothing good is going to come out of this. Not for you, I know it. I feel it."

"You expect me to idle?" She asked. "There's a reason I learned magic as a kid, wasn't there? There's a reason why I've got the Wolfe name and this tattoo. It's for this, right? To protect you?"

"N-no. No." Luanne said. Small driblets formed on the edges of her eyes, they were nearly full-sized tears. But she sniffled and turned away. She always cried silently. Always.

"There are more ways to protect us than this, Jezzy."

"Like what?"

"Like helping us all get away."

"We won't get away. You've seen Richter, haven't you?"

"We have to try before we say that," Luanne said. "We can't fight. We shouldn't. It's bad enough I have Floyd like this! But you - You too?!"

"You're all I have, Luanne," Jezebel said. "I've got no friends, no future. I'm not as smart as the rest of you. I never had that in me. I've got nothing but my family. You're telling me to risk the only thing that matters?"

"I'm telling you to think of another way to get us to safety. To forget all this."

"And if there isn't? Maybe mom knows that too, maybe that's why - "

"Don't," Luanne said. "Please, don't."

"Is there a way out of this competition? A concession?"

"No. None that come easy, that I know of."

"So then even you admit it, we're stuck with it. With this fight." Jezebel said.

Luanne went quiet.

"What convincing can you do for me then? We're stuck. We're fucked."

"I just wanted...I just thought maybe we could figure something out."

"I'm not like that, Luanne. I'm not."

"I know," Luanne said, smiling, nearly. It collapsed into a frown immediately.

She stood. Jezebel watched from the bedside.

Luanne rubbed her neck and left the towel in the bucket of bloody water and stood by the door frame, looking at Jezebel laying on the bed. She waved once. Both of them did, at each other, Jezebel's bloody hand aching just from the pain of gravity. Then Luanne left, closing four doors along the way.

And the room was filled with silence. Silence waiting to be filled, as Jezebel stared from the edge of her bed, looking at the wall, looking at the pentagram on her table and the blood falling from its edges and the leeches still writhing on the floor.

A witches tradition.

Waiting. Waiting patiently. Waiting nervously.