Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  I lifted my bare feet out of the mud and kept trying to run, knowing it was useless. Knowing he would catch up with me. But I wouldn’t stop fighting. I couldn’t. It wasn’t in me to simply give up.

  I tried fighting off the tears, but they came anyway. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my mother experiencing that kind of pain. I wanted to see my little brother grow up. And dad. I was his little girl. He would be devastated. Even as the man chasing me grabbed my neck from behind and sank the dagger into my flesh, all I could think of was my dad. His sorrow. The grief he would feel knowing I was gone and I would never come back. And it was all my fault. I thought I knew the man plunging the dagger straight into me. I thought he was a good man. He seemed so. And the way he looked at me… Even now as I felt my heart steadily slow from blood seeping out of my neck, I could envision the way his eyes drew me in. Like I was the only girl in the world. Like he knew no other woman would ever please his eyes again like I did. And I was the only one who could ever make him happy.

  My thoughts drifted into nothing as sleep took control and my neck bled out. The man let me down to the ground as his mouth latched onto my wound. All I saw was the parting of clouds high above in the trees as the moon finally appeared just as darkness overpowered my vision.

  The victim’s spirit must have left her body quickly because her consciousness was staring down at it. I saw a black mark peering out from under the white material of her dress. It was unmistakable at this point. Especially since I had one to match. It was the brand of the Catach-Brayin.

  Did Officer Parker know about it? Had he made that connection? And if the brand was meant to keep me safe, why didn’t it do the same for her?

  My eyes jolted open. Officer Parker had been staring at me the whole time. I wasn’t certain of how much time had passed, but I knew that he got all the confirmation in the world that I wasn’t someone who provided mere entertainment value at the fair. I was something more. Something uncommon.

  “What did you see?” he asked, almost gleeful to hear what I had to say.

  No. I couldn’t tell him all that I saw. He would end up dead. This was a trail he didn’t need to wander down. It was a trail I didn’t want to wander down. I didn’t want to see him as I did in my vision a few days ago. Bleeding from his chest with blood gushing out. But I had to say something. My reaction to the jacket gave me away.

  “She was running from someone,” I whispered, still not quite over the haziness that came along with delving so deep into someone’s consciousness. Especially when I had to reach deep inside my magic to do so. “He was chasing her in the woods. I didn’t recognize where it was. My sister and I explored the woods in Dilton from top to bottom as kids. But these woods were unfamiliar to me.”

  He was intrigued. “Okay, what else?”

  What else? Is that how all our conversations would go? I would give him something and he would constantly ask what else? This could very well turn into an unending cycle.

  “Um…” I searched for the right thing to say. “Definitely a knife wound.” Not that it mattered. He already knew that. “Definitely a man who committed the crime. She was dumped off somewhere. She didn’t die where the body was found. That’s why there wasn’t much blood at the scene. She was wearing this jacket when she was killed. But she was attacked from behind. I don’t think she ever saw her attacker when the assault took place, but she definitely knew him. They were well-acquainted.”

  Not technically a lie. She didn’t see him. And I didn’t get a look at his face.

  “Was the man…um…human?” he asked, almost embarrassed to speak what was really running through his mind. He wasn’t going to let go of the Catach-Brayin angle. I had to steer him away from it.

  But wasn’t that illegal? Wasn’t I technically harming the case?

  I shook my head. I wouldn’t allow myself to think that way. I was saving his life. And my own. If Officer Parker knew what he was getting involved in, he would run for the hills. That is if he knew what was good for him.

  “I… I think they might have been romantically involved. She seemed to trust him. I guess that would be a question for her friends and family. Ask if she had introduced a new boyfriend to anyone.”

  His eyes fell in frustration. “We already did that. No one recalled her having met anyone.”

  “No change in behavior then?”

  He didn’t answer me. He reached into the box and brought out a pocket watch. A really old one judging by its appearance. It looked expensive. He let it drop from the chain and dangle in front of me. I reached for it as I prepared myself for whatever else I was about to see, and whatever lie I was about to tell to divert him away from the Catach-Brayin. And his unending curiosity.

  A knock came at the door. This time it startled both of us. Officer Parker took the pocket watch and stuffed it back into a plastic bag. “Just a second,” he shouted. Then he motioned for me to hand him the jacket. I did and he stuffed it into the box, placing it under his desk and removing his gloves.

  “Come in,” he said as he composed himself. If there was one look Officer Parker wasn’t good at pulling off, it was the look of innocence. Even without being a kruxa I could see that he looked guilty. Like a little kid caught red-handed with his fingers reaching inside a candy jar.

  “We need more bodies out on the street,” said the officer at the door. To my ears that sounded rather morose. But then again, I had just seen through the eyes of a dead woman.

  “Why? Has something been found?” Officer Parker asked.

  “Not sure. But you’re needed out here. Whatever else you’re doing can wait.”

  And with that, the man shut the door and Officer Parker stood from his desk. He reached his hand out to shake mine. “Thanks again, Harper. I’m sorry things are so chaotic here. I would really appreciate it if you came back at another time, but the Congressman’s case has our full attention at the moment.”

  My brow furrowed. It was my turn to be curious. “The Congressman’s case?”

  He reached for his hat and headed for the door. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked as if I had been living under a rock. But why would I know anything? Just because I was a kruxa didn’t mean that I knew absolutely everything going on in town. I make it my business not to know certain things. My hermit status was well-earned.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “The Congressman’s daughter went missing Friday night after their evening party. No one has seen her since then.”

  “Which one?”

  “Samantha.”

  The uneasy feeling that was lurking inside my stomach finally made sense. Officer Parker headed out the door but wouldn’t shut it again until I was in the hall with him.

  “I remember seeing her there,” I said without thinking.

  He stopped in his tracks. “You were there?” he asked.

  Great. More questions. I really needed to learn when to keep my mouth shut. A skill I normally excelled at. “Um, yeah. At the Congressman’s party last Friday. She was fine when I saw her. She was just hanging out at the party like everyone else.”

  “So you didn’t see her leave with anyone? Nothing out of the ordinary? Did you two speak to each other?”

  I stopped myself from scoffing. “I only saw her long enough for me to remember why I did my best to avoid her during high school.”

  He didn’t need much more of an answer than that apparently, because he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, well, looks like we’re going to turn over every single stone in this town until we find her. I wouldn’t be surprised if a girl like that just split from town to go party, but what do I know?”

  Samantha’s reputation proceeded her. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t care for her. But the memory of the vision I had at the party lurked in the back of my mind. Samantha was deeply involved in the Catach-Brayin. And if she displeased the coven, her brand would have killed her. I didn’t want to tell Officer Parker to start looking in every nearby ditch, even though that was exact
ly where I would start. Officer Parker was about to have even more work shoveled onto his desk if she was indeed dead.

  “Is there anything you can tell me?” I asked, wondering if there might be something more to this that Nathaniel would want to know. Something else I could give him that might keep him satisfied and away from Madison and her daughters.

  “Only that she hasn’t been seen since the night of the party. It’s about to hit the mainstream media. Once that happens, there’s no stopping it. We’ll be up all night and day until she’s found. Can you come by again on Wednesday? We might have to limit your visits to only a few minutes but every little piece of information you can give me or at least confirm helps out a lot.”

  “Sure,” I answered.

  “Thanks again, Miss Ashwood. And remember, this stays between us.”

  ‘And Nathaniel.’

  I made my way home on my bike and through the same woods where I had seen my grandmother only a couple days earlier. She hadn’t been wrong. A tempest was brewing. And I knew I was somehow going to be at the center of it. Caught in the crossfire and potentially causing trouble that I promised my mother I would never get involved in.

  ‘Just get home. Get away from this madness.’

  I stopped my bike only twenty feet or so away from my front doorstep. A familiar face was sitting on the front swing yet again. But this time, Emily wasn’t calm. She wasn’t collected. She was a mess.

  Emily. I completely forgot about Emily. About how this would affect her. If she was worried about her sister before, she definitely would be terrified now.

  “Emily!” I hollered out to her as I parked my bike just below the front steps and walked up to her. She had obviously been sitting there for a while. Sweat dripped down her neck and the front of her blouse. No. That wasn’t sweat. She had been crying. There were circles under her eyes. Big ones. Her thick glasses didn’t do much to hide them. She looked like she hadn’t slept all weekend. And maybe she hadn’t. She and Samantha might not have been close, but they were still sisters. Her worries were written all over her face.

  I didn’t care if it wasn’t proper. I reached for her and she sank into my embrace, her hands covering her eyes under her glasses the whole time. She tried choking back the sobs, but they seeped through anyway.

  “I only learned what’s going on a few minutes ago,” I said. “I should have called you the second I heard.”

  She pulled away from me and looked around, almost as if she thought someone was watching us from the street. I reached out my senses to see if she was right. Nothing came. Only the churning of my uneasy stomach.

  She tried speaking, but her voice broke apart before she could get a word out.

  “Do you want to come inside?” I asked her. “I can make you some tea.”

  I still had some of the tea Nathaniel gave me. It certainly helped to calm my magic that night and permitted me some rest when my brain was still running a mile a minute with questions that got no answers. I supposed it might do the same for her.

  She didn’t say anything. I took that to mean that she wasn’t opposed to the idea and I took her inside. She kept her head down. It was sometimes difficult for her to look at me.

  “Who was he?” she asked abruptly as I set the kettle Caleb gave me for my birthday the year before on the stove top. The same one Nathaniel had used without my permission.

  I didn’t need a refresher on who she was talking about. She saw me and Nathaniel from her tree house as he dragged me out of the party Friday night. My shoulders slumped. Her eyes didn’t fear looking at me anymore. They were drilling holes in my back.

  “Someone who needed help,” I said. It wasn’t really a lie. I didn’t need to include the part where I wasn’t given a choice.

  ‘Don’t do this Emily. I can’t say anything. He’ll go after Madison. I can’t let that happen.’

  “Did he hurt you?” she asked. Although, it sounded more accusatory.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Are you sure?”

  I set her tea bag in the empty mug and placed it on the counter. “Yes, I’m sure. I thought you wanted to talk about your sister,” I said, trying to get the subject away from Nathaniel and a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer without the potential of getting people I love killed.

  She took a seat at the bar behind the island in my kitchen, playing with the paper at the end of the tea bag I set in front of her. “She should never have trusted him,” she blurted out. “I made the same mistake. I thought he was helping me. He was just so…charming. But he was using me. I tried warning her about him, but she called me the virginator again and wouldn’t speak to me.”

  ‘Such a loving older sister.’

  “Who are you talking about, Emily?”

  “Tobias.”

  ‘Dear God. She knows his name?’

  Emily’s eyes darted from right to left. She was trying to decide if she could tell me something. If I was trustworthy. Or if I thought she was crazy. I moved to take Emily’s hand in mine. To let her know that she could talk to me. To comfort her.

  She pulled her hand away and shook her head. “No. Don’t do that,” she said as if she knew I was using my magic to reach out to her. To know more of what was going on. She never made me feel like I was intruding before. But now she did.

  “Why? What has you so scared Emily? How do you know Tobias?”

  She was shaking. Visibly shaking. She tried speaking again but her voice cracked.

  The kettle went off behind us and I turned around to pour our tea. Maybe it would help her relax. Maybe it would help her to stop shaking. Or maybe… I would spill the hot water everywhere when someone grabbed the back of my neck and Emily screamed bloody murder.

  I never got the chance to see who it was before a vixra tunnel was ripped open in my kitchen, sucking both me and Emily inside. I did, however, hear a voice. A voice that I’m sorry to say I recognized.

  “All kruxas meet the same end,” Isaac whispered in my ear. “Did you think you would be any different, Georgeanna?”

  I saw my kitchen practically explode. The floorboards ripped open revealing the foundation of my house. The windows shattered. My walls blew away like a crane with a large hammer had torn through them.

  The last thing I saw before the bright light of the tunnel behind me opened was Emily’s face. Her eyes were wide as she started to scream. The sound of my house being ripped apart muffled her voice as we were both torn away from my kitchen and into the unknown.

  Chapter 9

  I landed hard on the cobblestones. Emily landed on top of me. I suddenly felt bad for Nathaniel given that I had landed the same way on top of him when Isaac ripped us out of the tunnel Nathaniel had created and into another. My chest was screaming as she rolled off of me.

  “Are you okay?” she croaked, completely frantic as I struggled to breathe again. “Harper? Harper!”

  She lightly smacked me on the cheek to get my attention. Her face was a blur. I must have hit my head really hard.

  “She is for the moment,” said Isaac, circling us.

  Emily pulled on my arms and tried to get me to stand up. I managed to sit up, but not before Isaac kicked me straight into the wall behind me. The same wall Nathaniel had thrown me into after I had landed on top of him to get me away from Isaac the first time.

  ‘Where the hell is this place?’

  If my ribs were burning before, they were on fire now. I groaned from the pain of his foot smashing into my chest. It burned more than I can even try to describe. I wasn’t sure if he cracked a rib or not, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. He didn’t want me hurt too badly though. He wanted to drag this out. That much I was sure of. But why did he bring Emily here?

  I heard her screech. Then the sound of choking. He had her up off the ground, his hand around her throat with her legs dangling in the air, desperate to find the ground beneath her.

  “Is this one special to you, Georgeanna?” he said with a sneer.

&
nbsp; ‘Why does he keep calling me that? We can’t look that much alike. Even if she was my ancestor.’

  He snickered at me. “Oh, don’t think I can’t remember you. I never forget a pretty face.”

  “Let her go!” I mumbled. I tried screaming at him, but my wounded chest wouldn’t allow it.

  “Why? It’s so much fun seeing you panic.”

  I had no problem letting my magic out this time around. It was roaring inside of me. Even if I couldn’t quite control it, I was ready to unleash it more so than I ever had been in my entire life. If there was a protective instinct inside of me, it had a soft spot for only a few people in this world. Emily was one of them.

  A luminous gold light erupted from my right hand. I aimed it directly at Isaac. It shoved him back into the other side of the alley with a loud crack against the stones of the building behind him. Harder than I ever expected. My magic was powerful when I needed it to be. Powerful, but a chaotic mess. I never really got the chance to practice what I could do with it. You know, being in hiding and all. And my mother had always told me that my magic would dwindle in need of recovery if I overused it. Kruxa weren’t powerful enough to have their magic on call whenever we needed it like luxra and vixra did. But it sensed when I was in danger. And if there was ever a time to over-exert myself, now was it.

  He stayed on the ground for a solid thirty seconds or so. Enough time for me to get to a semi-standing position and to walk over to Emily to see if she was alright. She was rattled. And her neck would certainly have bruises. But she was alive. For the time being.

  “How did you do it, Georgeanna? How did you stay alive all these years?” Isaac muttered as he slowly got up.