by Terri Reid
She walked across the barn, her face away from him. Reaching the other side of the barn, she gripped a wooden post near the stalls as if her life depended on it. “Go away,” she said, stifling a sob. “Remember, it’s your burden.”
He strode over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and began to turn her around. “What are you talking…” he stopped when he looked down at her red-rimmed eyes, her face awash with tears, and her body trembling in reaction.
“Hazel,” he whispered, wiping her tears with his thumb. “What happened?”
“What happened?” she asked, pushing him away and wiping her cheeks with her arm. “What happened? You lied to me.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t lie to you,” he exclaimed.
“You didn’t tell me,” she threw back. “That’s a lie. Not telling is a lie.”
Confused about the subject of their argument, Joseph felt he still had to defend his honor. “No, not telling is not telling,” he argued. “There are some things that need to be confidential.”
She kicked an empty metal bucket at her feet and sent it spinning across the floor. “That’s crap,” she said. “It’s all about whether or not you trust someone.”
“What does trust have to do with this?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders again. “What the hell are we talking about anyway?”
She inhaled sharply, her breath shuddering, and she looked up at him. “I don’t want you to die,” she whispered.
A punch to his solar plexus could not have taken the air out of him as quickly as her whispered statement and the look in her eyes. She cared if he lived or died. She simply cared.
He bent down and brushed his mouth over her lips. “Hazel,” he breathed.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, crying, “Oh, Joseph, you can’t die,” she wept. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it.”
He kissed her again, tasting the salt from her tears on his lips, and then he pulled her into his arms and held her. “Shhhhh,” he whispered against her hair. “It will be fine.”
“How can it be fine if you only have a week to live?” she stammered against his chest.
“What did you say to Rowan and Henry?” he asked gently, kissing her forehead. “There has to be a way.”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “Why?” she asked. “Why do you believe that now?”
He looked deeply into her eyes and smiled sadly. “Because now I have a reason to live,” he replied, and he pulled her into his arms once again.
Chapter Forty-nine
Cat nibbled on one more cookie as she sat in the office finishing up her work. She smiled as she looked at the half empty tea cup and remembered Hazel’s quick departure from the room when she received the text from Joseph.
“Sure, Hazel. Men suck,” she chuckled softly. “And you totally have no feelings for Joseph.”
Suddenly, Cat’s vision started to blur, and the room began to fade away before her. Knowing this was the onset of a vision, she put the cookie on her desk, leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
At first Cat saw nothing but darkness. Then the scene before her began to fill with light. She felt like she was walking from a distance toward a clearing in the woods. She looked and saw Henry and Rowan standing together hand in hand. They weren’t speaking to each other, but she could feel they were helping each other, working together.
Her mother was a few feet away, and she seemed to be searching for something. She was walking around the clearing and calling out, but Cat couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Then she saw Hazel kneeling on the ground. Her head was bent forward, her face hidden behind her long hair. Finally, Hazel lifted her head, and Cat could see tracks of tears on her face. Her expression showed intense sorrow and grief. Then her expression lightened, and she stood up and walked to the end of the clearing, her arms open in welcome. Cat strained to recognize the figure walking from the woods toward Hazel.
Finally, she saw him. Joseph, as a wolfman, was walking towards Hazel. As he stepped into the clearing, he took Hazel’s hands in his own and bent his head to kiss her. She moved into his embrace, and then suddenly the two of them seemed to merge into each other, creating one being for a few moments. Then they separated, and Joseph was a man.
The vision darkened, and, after a moment, Cat opened her eyes. She took a deep cleansing breath and picked up the cookie for one more bite. “It would seem,” she said to herself, “that Joseph is a part of this whole thing.”
She pushed herself out of her chair and walked toward the door. It was time to move to the next step.
Agnes peered out the kitchen window and watched Hazel and Joseph walk back to the house arm in arm. “Well, I guess they cleared that up,” she said.
“What?” Rowan asked, scooting in to stand next to her mother and seeing the two together. “Okay, well maybe we’ll get him to cooperate now.”
“Cooperate?” Agnes asked. “Are you talking about the Rumspringa?”
“You know about that?” Henry asked.
She nodded. “My mother told me,” Agnes replied. “She had a relationship with the wise woman of the village.”
“Joseph turns thirty by the next full moon,” Rowan said.
Agnes looked back through the window and saw the love shining from her daughter’s face. “We have to cast a circle,” Agnes insisted. “We’ve waited long enough.”
“You’re right,” Cat said as she entered the kitchen. “We do need to cast a circle.”
Agnes turned from the window and looked at her daughter. “This is a little sudden, coming from you,” she said, surprised.
“I just had a vision, and Joseph played a part,” Cat replied. “I don’t understand everything I saw, but I agree that Joseph is part of this journey.”
Hazel and Joseph entered the kitchen.
“We’re going to cast a circle,” Agnes told them.
“What?” Joseph asked.
“Don’t worry,” Henry assured Joseph. “It’s an experience that you don’t want to miss.”
Joseph looked down at Hazel, and she nodded. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “We gain more information when we cast a circle, and we’re protected from outside influences.”
“Protected?” he asked. “Like no one can see or hear what you’re doing?”
Hazel nodded.
Joseph turned to Agnes. “While we’re in the circle, may I speak with all of you about the information I received today?”
“Yes, of course,” Agnes said. “But let’s get started right away.”
They moved into the great room, and Hazel waved her hand to move the big table and a large, braided rug. Underneath the rug was a Celtic knot embedded into the wooden floor. The quaternary knot was made up of four ovals that intersected with each other and an outer circle that threaded its way through all of them. The entire circle was about nine feet in diameter. Each of the women stood on one of the outer points of an oval, and Henry directed Joseph to stand in the middle with him.
The air in the room changed, and the women around the circle changed with it. These were women of power with the blood of ancient sorceresses flowing through their veins. Their eyes were alert, and their skin glowed with energy. Their hair seemed to flow around their heads, tossed on waves of their combined energies.
Agnes lifted a smudge stick up high above her head, a wisping, gray trail of smoke in the air behind it, and then drew a straight line down. “I cleanse the space to the east.”
Catalpa, standing in the next clockwise space, lifted her smudge stick as her mother had and said, “I cleanse the space to the south.”
Hazel, in the next space, also lifted her smudge stick in the same manner. “I cleanse the space to the west,” she said softly.
Then Rowan repeated the same actions and said, “I cleanse my space to the north.”
When Rowan was done, all the women turned and walked clockwise around the edge of the circle, waving thei
r smudge sticks and chanting, “We cleanse all spaces in between.”
Joseph inhaled the acrid scent of white sage, recognizing it from ceremonies he’d witnessed during his stay with his mother’s people. “White sage,” he whispered to Henry.
Henry nodded. “It cleanses the air of anything evil or dangerous.”
“It smells like the air after a lightning storm,” Joseph added.
“Magic flows like electricity,” he said, “and creates many of the same chemical reactions as lightning does.”
The women stopped walking and paused at the places where they started in the circle. Each one raised her arms out, shoulder-height, so the distance between them from fingertip to fingertip measured about a foot.
“We cast this circle, as is our right,” Agnes chanted with her eyes closed, “to protect us with thy holy light. Nothing can harm or corrupt our plea. As we ask, so mote it be.”
Suddenly, a beam of ultraviolet light appeared above Agnes and then traveled down from the top of her head and through her arms. The light traveled through her to Rowan and Catalpa on either side of her, through them and then finally to Hazel. The light was warm and bright and lit the inside of the circle with a golden glow.
Agnes opened her eyes and smiled at her daughters. “Well done,” she said softly. “Now, let’s talk.”
The women stepped forward into the circle, but the barrier of light stayed on the edges of the knot, bright and glowing.
Chapter Fifty
Agnes sat on an embroidered pillow and directed all of the others to take seats on similarly decorated pillows inside the circle. Then she turned to Joseph. “Why don’t we begin with what you came to talk to us about?” she suggested.
He nodded, then took a deep breath and felt the energy from inside the circle infuse his body. “Thank you,” he said softly to Agnes. “My mother’s people would say this is a sacred place, and I will remember that as I share this information with you.”
He turned and looked at Cat. “This afternoon Donovan came to my office,” he explained. “He had information he wanted me to share with all of you. He told me that he could not come here himself, because it would compromise the position he has gained in the coven.”
“By compromise, does he mean that he would lose stature?” Cat asked, her voice filled with scorn.
“I believe he could lose his life,” Joseph replied evenly, meeting Cat’s eyes. “I don’t know what to believe about him yet. But if he is playing a game with the coven in order to get information to protect your family, it’s a dangerous game.”
“But if he is acting like our friend in order to gain power in the coven?” she asked.
“It’s still a dangerous game,” he replied. “Because he has put himself in the position where no one trusts him.”
“What did he tell you?” Agnes asked.
“The coven is going to hold a special meeting during the next full moon,” he began.
Hazel gasped softly, and Joseph took her hand in his and squeezed it gently.
“What?” Cat asked, watching the interaction between the two of them.
“That conversation is next on the agenda,” Agnes replied. “Go on, Joseph.”
“Donovan said that it will be a ceremony honoring the Master,” he said.
Suddenly the light around the circle shimmered and darkened momentarily. Everyone looked up in surprise, watching as the wall of light deepened to a lavender color and then slowly worked its way back up the light spectrum to golden yellow.
“What just happened?” Joseph asked.
“After we’re finished, we need to check the house,” Agnes said. “It seems that we have uninvited guests observing us. But the power of the circle protected us.”
She turned to Joseph. “It also seems that it is activated by the use of that name you just mentioned,” she said. “So, we should avoid using that name.”
“We need a code name,” Hazel suggested. “How about mosquito, because it’s an annoying, blood-sucking pest?”
Cat smiled. “I’m good with that,” she said. “And because we are going to slap it down and destroy it.”
Rowan grinned. “I like the way you think,” she agreed. “Okay, the M-word is now Mosquito.”
Joseph nodded. “So, this ceremony, honoring the mosquito, is going to be held on the night of the full moon, which is also a blood moon. He said that it will strengthen the mosquito’s power and the power of the members of the coven.”
“Did he know where it was going to be held?” Henry asked.
“No, he didn’t,” Joseph replied, shaking his head. “He said they were keeping that information from him because they didn’t trust him. But he thought it would be in a wooded area or perhaps on top of one of the bluffs in Kettle Moraine.”
“The full moon is only a week away,” Cat said.
Hazel nodded. “Yes, I know,” she said. Then she turned to her mother. “We should talk about the next thing on the agenda.”
Agnes nodded, then turned to Cat. “Before we do that,” she said, “I’m curious about your vision and why you wanted us to cast a circle with Joseph.”
“You had a vision with Joseph in it?” Hazel asked.
Cat nodded. “It was after you got his text and left the room,” she said. “And it was a little confusing.”
She recounted the vision, making sure she included every detail, and then paused, looking around the circle. “Does that make sense to anyone?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” Henry offered. “Joseph has a genetic, ticking time bomb in his body, which is scheduled to go off on the same day as the Ma… I mean, mosquito’s ceremony.”
“The night of the full moon,” Cat clarified.
“Yes. From what Rowan and I have discovered,” Henry paused and turned to Joseph. “We have made liberal use of your grandfather’s library to learn more about your village.” Then he turned back to Cat. “Because of the limited number of people in the village, there was quite a bit of inbreeding over the generations. Starting in about the sixties, this caused one particular recessive trait to appear in connection with the Y chromosome.”
“So, it affects males,” Cat said.
Henry nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “Males who have aged past adolescence, generally between the ages of seventeen and thirty.”
“We discovered that even those with a parent who was not within the Wulffolk community had a tendency to have this trait, but it displayed its effect in later years,” Rowan added.
“What is the effect?” Cat asked.
“Death,” Joseph said plainly. “Or I turn into a wolfman or wolf, lose my memory, and wander aimlessly for the rest of my life.”
Cat took a deep breath. “That doesn’t sound like a much better alternative to death,” she said.
He shook his head. “I agree,” he said. Then he turned to Rowan. “With your research, have you found anything to correct it?”
“I’d like to get some DNA samples from your grandfather,” Rowan said. “And compare them with your samples and see where the change takes place.”
“You have my samples?” he asked, turning to look at Hazel.
“You left your clothes in the barn,” she replied with a smile.
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get the samples from my grandfather. But in the meantime, we need to put together some security measures to protect all of you from the mosquito.”
“The only thing that’s going to protect us is conquering him once and for all,” Cat said. “Which is why I brought Henry’s grandmother’s grimoire into the circle with us tonight.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Cat slid the old, leather-bound book out from beneath her large pillow and placed it in the middle of the circle.
Henry looked down at the book, his ancestor’s possession, and then up at Cat. “Are you sure?” he asked. “We’ve talked about opening it before, and it didn’t feel right to you.”
She met his eyes and shook her head. “H
onestly, Henry, I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I am so confused about everything right now. I don’t think I can trust myself, and that’s why I think we need more direction.”
“Okay,” he said gently. “I’ll give it a try.”
He laid his hand on the cover of the book and repeated the phrase that had sprung into his mind the first time he’d seen the old book, “Memores acti prudentes future.”
Joseph looked questioningly at the group, and Rowan nodded. “Mindful of deeds done, aware of things to come,” she whispered.
The book seemed to glow underneath Henry’s hand, the binding turning from old brown to golden brown. The brass latch on the side of the book sprung open, and Henry lifted his hand, opened the cover of the book, and began to read.
“Dear family,
We write these words the evening before we go to battle against the demon the Pratt Institute members unwittingly released into our community. We do not use the term battle lightly, for this creature of darkness is not a partner or a mentor, as many of our ilk consider it to be.
It is a destroyer.
It would destroy our families and our community and replace them with solitude and paranoia. It would destroy our capacity to have charity one for another, and replace it with hate and prejudice. It would destroy our gratitude for the blessings we now enjoy and replace that with envy and greed. In fact, it would steal our souls and the very essence that marks humanity with hope and love.
For this cause, for the cause of humanity, love, hope and family, we are willing to lay down our lives and entrap this creature of the dark. But, by making this decision, dear family, we have bound you to this quest. We now realize that the souls of the three (well, truthfully, the four) of us are only powerful enough to trap the beast for one hundred and twenty years. You will need more than the three from one to destroy the beast.
The three must find partners, those of the blood, who love deeply enough to sacrifice themselves for the quest. Without the three (and, perhaps, one more soul) the beast will not be conquered, and humanity will be defeated.
As the time draws nearer, you will find the creature, even within its prison, will have power to influence the hearts and minds of those who were already turned to hate and greed. It can even turn the hearts of those who were once good but thought they could control the power of the creature. That is one of the clever tricks of the beast, and a slippery slope to enslavement by its powers.
