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“This was a place of worship once,” Lilith said vaguely, waving a hand at the clearing before them. “Women used to pray to me, on their knees in the mud and the leaves. I'd hear them weeping, and begging, and thanking me from the bottom of their tiny little hearts. And look at it now.” The toe of her stiletto shoe picked dismissively at a discarded soda can, glinting weakly in the thin sunlight. “Replaced by that stone monstrosity you call a church, nature replaced by men who think a pissing contest passes for devotion. Oh, the trees remember it all.”Those very trees hissed and cracked around them as if summoned to life, clawed branches grasping closer to the ground, and Zelda glanced around in concern, holding Diana's wedding dress closer to her body as if to protect it. “My lady-”“Lilith,” she said, her voice as velvet-soft as the fingertips that drew Zelda's face back towards her. “The so-called Dark Lord may demand your subservience, but I do not.”“Lilith,” Zelda repeated, trembling with sinful devotion. “The women of Greendale have worshipped you in secret for centuries. Every childbirth, every death, we have called upon you to aid us and hear us.”“Why do you think I'm here?” There was barely any air between them, red lipstick and scarlet almost close enough to touch. “So many pretty voices calling my name, and yours the prettiest of them all. Is it any wonder the Dark Lord felt his powers wane?”“And tonight,” Zelda breathed.“Tonight he takes Sabrina as his Dark Bride,” she said, “and when she denounces him in her dear mother's wedding dress before the entire congregation, his anger won't even touch her, and the last of his power will fade.” She brushed a kiss against Zelda's lips. “But first, the spell.”“You're sure it will work? Sabrina's still so young, if it doesn't-”“Do you doubt your Queen?” Lilith hissed, eyes flashing.Zelda squared her shoulders and shot her a haughty look, the sort she would have used when she had believed her companion to be Mary Wardwell and not the Mother of Demons herself. “Sabrina is my blood,” she said proudly. “I will never apologise for trying to protect her.”“I like it when you show your teeth." A predatory smirk settled into place, and she licked her lips. “I never did have the time for fawning sycophants. Forcefulness suits you, Zelda Spellman.”Zelda blushed, soft pink creeping up from the neckline of her dress, but didn't lower her gaze.“The dress,” Lilith said. “It needs to go on to that...altar.”Zelda nodded, and stepped into the clearing. At its centre sat an ancient tree stump, its flat weathered surface marked with cuts both deep and shallow. Nature had reclaimed it: ivy wound like chains around its base, and a family of woodlice squirmed together in the deepest of the gashes. The blood was almost tangible.“Kneel,” whispered Lilith from the edge of the clearing, and Zelda obeyed, damp earth and rotting leaves soaking into the knees of her stockings. She laid Sabrina's dress across the battered top of the stump with as much care as if she were preparing the high altar at the Church of Night.The trees creaked in sympathy as Lilith stepped across the invisible threshold, and a breath of wind sighed around the clearing. She stalked her way to where Zelda knelt, her vicious stiletto heels somehow not sinking even a fraction of an inch into the mud and the moss. “Come, my darling,” she said, holding out a hand. “We have magic to perform.”Zelda stood, and the two of them positioned themselves either side of the makeshift altar, hands clasped in front of them. “Maledicte satana,” they chanted together, “ hostis naturae. Maledicte satana, hostis naturae.” They repeated the chant until the sky around them darkened, the trees embracing the clearing with an ominous, claustrophobic intensity; a rising wind whipped leaves and broken branches around them. Still they continued. The demon behind Mary Wardwell's eyes grinned fiercely as the air crackled with power, with centuries of rage and of anguish, of being cast aside and ignored by the Dark Lord and his male underlings.They raised their voices above the growing tumult. “Hoc habitu repellit, infernatis adversarii!”With an almighty crack, an old, gnarled yew tree just inside the boundary splintered in two, and a thousand female voices screamed release into the darkened sky.“Humiliare sub potenti manu naturae; contremisce et effage, invocatoa nobis sancto et terrible nomine mulierum, quem inferi tremunt.”Roses burst from the ground like living landmines, brought back to life where once a village woman had planted and tended them in honour of her goddess, and where they had withered into barrenness once the stone church gained in power. More voices joined the throng, screaming all their tiny, tender hopes and dreams, their thorn-prick betrayals, from the broken ground.Zelda staggered back, her face pale. “I-”“Go,” Lilith commanded. “The rest is mine.”The trees themselves were whispering now, women's voices rising in pain and joy and anger, the branches clawing ever-closer to where Lilith stood, arms raised in pride and triumph in the centre of their embrace.She spoke, and the words she uttered were ancient, untranslatable, forces of nature all by themselves.Everything fell silent.The whirlwind of debris fell to the ground, the trees stood once again tall and still, and the roses withered instantly down to dust.At the edge of the clearing, Zelda was a statue in black, lips parted, golden hair tangled and pulled beyond recognition from its chignon. Lilith turned to her and smiled, and there were too many teeth in her mouth.And then branches exploded through her ribcage, cracking her open to expose the manic shine of bone. Blood poured onto the soil as thorny briars ripped themselves from her veins, rose petals mixing with the blood underfoot, and Lilith laughed around the blood trickling from her mouth, eyes rolled back in ecstasy.Dizzy with shock, Zelda gripped the tree trunk next to her with enough force that the bark dug shallow cuts across her hand. There was a splatter of bright blood across her cheek to match the splashes across Sabrina's white dress, and in front of her Mary Wardwell's body was a ruined, writhing mass of blood and gore and grasping branches, all those thousands of voices contained within it, bursting out of it, all still screaming. And in the centre of it all, Lilith laughed. Raising her arms again, broken and dripping with blood, she spoke one single word in that ancient language, and with a rushing noise not unlike the forest in a storm something visible was torn from her body and absorbed by the dress laid out on the dead altar.Then the dress was clean, and she was whole again.Turning, she held her arms out to Zelda, who stumbled forward and fell into them with terrified exhilaration.“It's done,” Lilith said. “No need for your little heart to pound so fast, witch, for now Sabrina will be protected by the power and anger of generations of Greendale women.”Zelda stepped back, composed herself, and smiled. There was a touch of the wolf to it, predatory and ready to tear out the enemy's throat, that was only enhanced by the smear of blood high on her cheekbone. “Lilith,” she said, looking her straight in the eye. “Mother of Demons. My queen.”“Zelda, said Lilith, the same smile forming on her lips. “My sweet consort. Shall we begin?”