Asparas cried as she knelt by his side.
Loti wept at the sight of the two them. “I’m sorry, daddy.”
She rushed to him and fell to her knees. He opened his arms, seeming to forget all about his crooked, dripping nose and hugged her to him, murmuring soothing words. Asparas let go of him, but kept a watchful eye on Loti. Loti squeezed him with all her might until he coughed and choked. Wolf hovered over them in an uncertain holding pattern.
“You’ve gotten a lot stronger,” John croaked.
Loti gasped and let go. “I’m so, so sorry.” She cupped his face in her hands, examining his broken nose. “I forget myself.” She scrunched her face, her eyes full of a pain. “I forget how strong I’m becoming.”
Wolf hunkered down and put his arms around her waist from behind. “Go ahead,” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, wiping tears with a loud sniffle.
“Let me fix it.” Her voice was thick with emotions she couldn’t sort through: anger, fear, sadness— excitement? Maybe a strange hope?
He was alive. He was here—had been here the whole time. Asshole! She bit her lip to keep from saying something mean and her hands shook. As Wolf’s arms tensed around her, she drew on the effulgent light all around them and in them. It glowed green in Wolf and Loti’s heart centers and flowed out her hands and into her father’s face.
The light gathered in his nose and she watched it fill him with a phosphorescent glow. The bleeding slowed, stopped and his nose straightened itself out with a tiny snap. When it was completely healed, the light shrank away from his skin and faded to his core, until it winked out. Loti held his chin, tilting his face left and right, and then a perplexing thought occurred to her.
“You should be in your fifties, Daddy,” she exclaimed, resting back on her heels. “You don’t look any older than the day you left for work.” She bit the inside of her cheek, a puzzled wrinkle between her eyes. “How’s that possible?”
“Oh, Loti, the fae have their ways.” Asparas’ voice tinkled with amusement. “Besides, we would never allow a human to live among us and make them suffer the cruelties of infirmity.”
Loti screwed up her mouth at the fae. Asparas’ smile faltered.
“Why?” She crossed her arms over her chest while Wolf hugged her close from behind.
Her heart ached and she wanted it to stop. He had left. Left her; exited stage right; no explanations. No, it was worse than that. He left her wondering if he wandered off from the accident and died somewhere in the woods cold and alone. How long did she wait for the officer to come back and tell them his body had been discovered by a hunter?
Gruesome images of him dying a slow death, decaying in the woods all alone appeared in countless, sweaty nightmares. In the naïve way of the very young, she waited for the phone call from the police saying he suffered amnesia and was on his way home. Daydreams of her daddy dropping his briefcase by the door and throwing his keys on the kitchen table before scooping her up in his big arms were all she had to keep her hope alive. She convinced herself that if she just kept playing it over and over in her mind, it would come true. It would happen—it had to happen.
She remembered with a stabbing pain in her solar plexus the day she stopped believing it. It was on her fourteenth birthday, alone in her room after dinner with her grandmother and mother, watching the sun set. After five years of hoping—forever, really, to a child—the last light of hope disappeared with the sunlight that night, and when the sun came up the next morning, it was a cold thing.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed say.”
“Nothing. You don’t have to say anything, Loti.” John reached out to touch her cheek and she flinched. His hand hung mid-air, then dropped to his knee. “I’m the one who needs to say I’m sorry.”
“John,” Asparas chided. “You need to—“
“No.” He glared at the fae and she blanched.
Her face registered indignation as she crossed her arms over her small, bare breasts and turned away, plopping herself down on the windowsill with an indignant huff. Loti was suddenly distracted by the fact that her back had been smooth and bare, no sign of the gossamer wings or where they might have gone.
“I know this is a shock, Loti. I wasn’t sure if Asparas should look for you at all, and then she told me that you were a Light Walker. I didn’t know what that was.” He lowered his head, but his eyes flickered up at Wolf. “And that you were with a vampire.” He cleared his throat.
Wolf watched him with steely eyes, offering no reprieve.
“No offense,” John rubbed a hand over his jeans and braced a hand on the wall to help himself up. He apparently didn’t embrace the clothing-optional lifestyle of the fae or maybe he had dressed for the occasion. John offered his hand to Loti and she stared at.
“I don’t know what to think right now. I’m oscillating between wanting to hug you and break your nose, again.” She tugged at Wolf’s arms and he loosened his grip. She adjusted her robe as she tentatively gave John her hand and he pulled her to her feet. “I think you should go,” she said as she dropped his hand and stepped back.
Asparas jumped up. “But—”
“It’s okay, Asparas.” John stuffed his hands in his jean pockets. “I’ll go. But I’d like to see you one more time before you leave. There’s something we need to talk about. That’s all I ask.” He cleared his throat, “And I know I have no right to ask anything.”
Loti glanced at Wolf who rose from the floor with a silent eeriness. He was shielding his thoughts from her, and she frowned, but nodded at her father. “Okay, before we leave.”
John blew out a breath with a relieved sigh. “Okay. Good.” With a hesitant wave of his hand, he added, “You look good, darling.” Wolf’s jaw flexed and John glanced up at him. “And I can see you’re in good hands.” Wolf huffed through his nose but said nothing.
Asparas threw up her hands and stormed out of the little hut, slamming the door behind her. John smiled sadly. “I’m sorry for her behavior.”
“Never apologize for a faery. They don’t have any sense of propriety.” Wolf surprised Loti with his response.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about what Wolf had said, and this state of confusion was getting to her. Her temples pounded and her jaw ached. She hugged herself as John shut the door with a quiet click. Wolf stood behind her, saying nothing, and doing nothing. She had no thoughts in her head, but her body pulsed and shivered with a rising tide.
Like an emotional tsunami, it rushed out of the deep sea of her past and swamped her. She covered her face and fell to her knees. Something sizzled in her solar plexus and rose up her throat, constricting it and she heard a low, building moan. It grew louder and higher until it was a keening wail. Wolf scooped her up off the floor and she pounded him with clenched fists, but he didn’t stop her. He held onto her as the rage and fear and sadness shattered her walls until they crumbled under the onslaught.
The tempest swelled and shrank back, only to come on stronger the next time. She shook and twitched and hit and cried out in that ugly way of pure release. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t romantic. It was raw and Wolf took every swing, dropping his shields to feel it all right along with her.
They collapsed to the bed together and he held her convulsing body close to his. He wiped away the tears over and over again; he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. There was no sense of time passing and the rest of the world didn’t exist. Her heart burned, her stomach churned and she got up more than once to dry heave in the bathroom.
Wolf was her shadow and she resented it and adored him for it. At some point, she found herself lying spent and limp, tears trickling randomly down her face onto Wolf’s arm. Her cheek rested on his upper arm as she lay facing him on her side.
She took a shuddery breath. “This is what I am, Wolf. A mess. A broken soul and I have no idea what happens next.”
Wolf kissed her red-rimmed eye and brushed the hair out of face. “You’re not broken.”
&nb
sp; She squeezed her eyes shut. “You have no idea.”
He chuckled softly. “Oh, yes, I do.” Her swollen eyes turned into thin slits.
“He just disappeared one day, Wolf.” Her voice hitched and squeaked. “We didn’t know if he was alive or dead. We never heard from him. I thought…I hoped…” The sour pain twisted her face.
Wolf pulled the duvet over them and shuffled closer to her so her face was buried in his bare chest. “I love you, Loti. I love who you are. If it took bad shit in your past to make you the brilliant beacon of light that you are, maybe the shit was worth it.”
Loti’s mind emptied and her heart stopped its heaving. She inhaled a deep lung-full of breath, and let it out like a slow leak, her body softening as the air left. There was nothing and no one except what and who were in that room at that moment. The world outside the little cabin didn’t exist and her soul was inexplicably at peace.
She realized her soul was always at peace when she and Wolf dropped the barriers between them. It was her heart and mind that fucked it all up. She inhaled the musky smell of Wolf’s skin as his arms drew her even closer to him. He kissed her hair and she breathed softly into his chest.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Okay, thank the Goddess.” Rachel sighed as she tapped the end call button on her cell.
She glanced over at Heather and Daniel with their heads together in the foyer of the AWA building. The morning sun did its best to penetrate the air conditioned room, but the tinted windows held the heat at bay. Rachel took a shaky breath and straightened her skirt as she walked with care to Heather and Daniel. The rest of the coven sat in twos and threes around the room, some of them sipping Styrofoam cups of coffee.
“Is Loti okay?” Daniel asked as Rachel approached.
“She’s with Wolf at the Vermont fae colony.” She flipped her palms up and shrugged at Daniel’s crinkled forehead. “I don’t know. She didn’t say, but I guess they’ll fill us in when they get back.”
“Well, I’m sure Wolf’s looking out for her.” Daniel rubbed Rachel’s shoulder and her hand covered his.
Heather’s eyes darted between the two and her lips pursed and relaxed as she followed the conversation. “Loti is the Light Walker, right?”
Rachel’s eyes flared. “That’s right, you haven’t had a chance to meet her or Wolf.”
“It’s time,” an older gentleman in corduroy pants and a white, button-down shirt said quietly as he touched Rachel’s arm.
She searched the room and realized all of the people wore solemn, even sad faces. No one liked what was going on, and not just because this was bad press for the AWA. The glass front doors were surrounded by a crowd of people, led by reporters from every news outlet. Her nostrils flared and she gripped her hands to keep from reacting to the scene unfolding on the other side of the tinted glass.
Throngs of people held picket signs that said things like, “Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live” and “God Hates Witches” with Bible references painstakingly printed underneath. She held her breath as a young man shook an angry finger in the face of a picket sign bearer. A streak of blue lightning burst a sign into fireworks and bits of burning paper fluttered in the air. Rachel trotted over to her Nan who was turning towards the commotion.
“Nan, let’s go.” She tugged Katie by the hand, but she jerked free. “Nan, there’s nothing we can do. Let the police handle this.” But Katie was already striding towards the front door. “Get Richard,” Rachel barked at Daniel and Heather, who took off for the meeting room.
“Nan,” Rachel shouted as she ran after her. “Let it be.”
Katie stopped and turned back to Rachel holding up a hand. The hard look on her face stopped Rachel dead in her tracks. Katie’s hand floated down and she turned deliberately around on her kitten heel. Rachel’s stomach churned and she swallowed down the acrid taste of dread. If Loti had been there, she would have seen Katie’s aura crackling and popping with her indignation. Rachel glanced around the room helplessly then took off after her grandmother.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brown, but we cannot unlock the doors,” the security guard was telling Katie.
“I understand you are just doing your job, Roger.”
Katie knew everyone at the AWA. She had been an involved member most of her life, just like her mother, and her mother’s mother. As far back as the early days right after the nation had been formed. Back then it had been called the Association of the Magically Gifted. Katie flicked a wrist and disappeared. Rachel knew where she must have gone and cursed her mental block with teleportation.
She looked frantically for another way out and remembering the emergency door in the side hall she ran as fast as she could, her heels clacking.
Richard trotted from the meeting room in a fluster, huffing and puffing his way across the foyer. “Rachel!”
She skidded on the marble floor, slamming into the emergency door and it flew open with a blaring shriek. Red lights flashed and the alarm morphed from a high-pitched scream to a low warbling then to a staccato blast. Covering her ears, Rachel ran towards the front of the building, kicking off her heels one at a time as she pounded the pavement. She vaulted over a bench and around the corner.
Stumbling to a complete stop at the frenzy of screaming protestors, Rachel strained on tip toe. One faction’s “God Hates Witches” signs answered the other side’s “God Made Witches”. At the center of it all, amid chants of “Witches are people too,” stood Katie Irene Brown. Her small frame belied her larger-than-life body language.
“People! Calm yourselves. There is no reason for violence.” Katie clapped her hands together and it boomed like thunder. The crowd quieted and a few souls gasped.
“Please. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Please control yourselves. No senseless violence.” She stalked over to the young man who had blown up the sign. “No more using your witchcraft like a hate weapon.”
A protester ran up to her and screamed in her face. “Abomination! Witches are devil-spawn.”
Katie narrowed her eyes at the red-faced man. “You, my son, have witch in you. Did you know that?”
He blanched and blinked rapidly. Then a flood of purple and red rushed under his skin. “Witch, witch! You’re a BITCH!” he screamed in her face.
The crowd behind him picked up his words, “Witch, witch. You’re a bitch.”
They chanted, weak at first— discordant. Then it grew bigger, louder, and rhythmic. It was Katie’s turn to lose her color. The witch supporters grabbed her as a tied up sock sailed over their heads and cracked on the pavement. Rachel gasped as Katie narrowly avoided having her head smashed open. Her heart pounding, she ran into the crowd of screaming witches as flashes of blue scorched across the police line into the witch haters’ side. She grimaced as screams of pain and anger were followed by a volley of unidentified objects.
A booming explosion slapped Rachel’s eardrums and the world warbled, muted of sound, as she yelled for her grandmother but couldn’t hear her own voice. She caught a glimpse of Katie’s pink, cashmere sweater set and dove for it. She staggered into Katie and barely kept them from toppling over. Three people sprawled on the ground at their feet and Rachel realized with revulsion that one was missing a leg from the knee down.
An ashen-faced woman dragged herself across the pavement, her foot dangling by a shred of tendon. A police officer fell to her side, and she collapsed. He spoke into a walkie-talkie and Rachel gagged at the sight and smells of blood and charred flesh as she shoved Katie forward. The two women wormed their way through the squirming mass of anger and fear and mob mentality.
Bursting out into the open air, they took deep, harsh breaths. Katie turned and lifted both hands, chanting:
“om saha nāvavatu
saha nau bhunaktu
saha vīryaṃ karavāvahai
tejasvināvadhītamastu mā vidviṣāvahai
oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ”
&nbs
p; Rachel recognized the incantation for peace. She mumbled the words along with her grandmother while she scanned the immediate area for a familiar face. Trembling and on the verge of collapse, she realized there wasn’t enough energy on their own. Rachel closed her eyes and reached out for the coven. Her body went weak with relief when they responded to her call, flowing out another emergency door.
Streaming in a line around the bushes, they gathered around Katie and Rachel. When they linked hands like they had done countless times, their minds clicked into place, each fitting neatly together with the others. With her coven mates connected to her, Rachel felt the numbness fade and she wondered how anyone functioned without this kind of human connection. While she empathized with Heather’s struggle against the intimacy of it, she sent her a mental reassurance to surrender.
Heather reluctantly relaxed, but Rachel heard her sigh with relief as the coven merged. The screaming and yelling faded to a few angry shouts here and there. A woman cried out, “They’re bewitching us!” But no one responded. To ease their fears, Rachel took up the mantra in English:
“Om! May She protect us both together; may She nourish us both together;
May we work conjointly with great energy
May our study be vigorous and effective
May we not hate any
Om Let there be Peace in me
Let there be Peace in my environment
Let there be Peace in the forces that act on me.”
Heather joined in, then the rest of the coven followed suit. A few voices in the crowd picked up the incantation and then more, until the entire witches side chanted in an eerie unison. A few of the anti-witch protestors mouthed the words, too. The cameramen and reporters stood transfixed as the air itself pulsed to the rhythm of their voices, stirring the leaves on the nearby trees and rippling through the holly. Everyone took deep breaths.
A few people sat down where they stood, and the police officers moved in slow motion to deal with the injured parties. A small, homemade bottle bomb, like a Molotov cocktail had been the cause of the explosion— not witches’ magic—it turned out. People wandered off in ones and twos until all that were left on the side walk were the injured, the officers, the reporters and the coven. The coven stopped their chanting. With heads bowed and eyes closed their breath drifted in and out of their noses. Their hearts beat in methodical unison as they lifted their heads and opened their eyes as one.
Shattered Page 20
