Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  Nathaniel took my hand to calm me. And to hide the golden glow seeping out of my palm.

  ‘Take a deep breath. They don’t matter. None of them matter.’

  I didn’t know what was more disturbing. The fact that my magic considered those girls a threat, or that I had been relieved when Nathaniel reached for my hand and folded it inside of his. A drastic difference from when he took my hand at the Congressman’s evening party.

  I had only ever been to Caleb’s funeral. His family spoke various verses from his dad’s bible. We gathered around the casket and each said some words and threw dirt down on it as he was lowered into the earth.

  This was entirely different. I watched from about twenty feet back, giving everyone else space and taking time to observe Andrew’s family as they spoke. His mother was overwhelmed with grief. His father managed to keep it inside. At least for the time being. Then the local mayor spoke of Andrew’s contributions to the community. Amazing Grace was played on bagpipes, which struck me as strange. How did they find bagpipe players in Dilton, Georgia? Then there were the gunshots shooting into the sky. Each rang in my ears like a tremendous thunder. It didn’t matter how many times I heard gunshots at the gun range, or even that I had used my Glock to make Isaac suffer a good long time. These gunshots felt louder. Maybe because my heart was hammering right along with them.

  Then his sister spoke. She came up to his coffin and stood at the head of it. I recognized her immediately. She was a little older now, but she was still the same girl that came to me at the fall carnival for a reading. The only time when it was considered socially acceptable for some people to poke fun at what I do and ask a psychic what their future holds in front of their friends.

  “My brother always put his life in a very particular order,” she said calmly. “God, family, then work. Even so, he was one of the most dedicated cops I have ever known. He dedicated every minute he could to Dilton County. He patrolled the high school to make sure students were safe. He never gave a speeding ticket that wasn’t warranted just to get his quota up. He helped anyone and everyone who walked through the police department’s front door. He even helped with cases that weren’t on his desk to assist friends in other parts of the country. That’s the part of him that I want to remember. Not the way he died, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.”

  Call me crazy, but it seemed as though she looked directly at me when she spoke that last sentence. The queasy feeling in my stomach was beginning to swirl again. Did she still have a grudge against me for predicting her ex-boyfriend was a scumbag during her reading? Why did some girls hold such lengthy grudges like that? Didn’t they have better things to do with their time?

  I gripped Nathaniel’s hand a little tighter. He held it right back, offering what comfort he could. Which granted the temperature of his hand wasn’t much.

  “I’d like to share with everyone an email that my brother wrote to his friend the morning he died,” she continued as she took out a folded piece of paper from a pocket to the side of her dress. “A police officer in Boston, Massachusetts. I think he would approve given its contents.”

  Her eyes were still wandering over to me. My magic stirred even more. I stuffed my opposite hand in Nathaniel’s arm, as though I was overcome with grief and needed a shoulder to cry on. Whatever I had to do to hide it.

  “Hey Clark,” she started reading the email printed out before her. “As you might have heard by now, we found her. Samantha Larsen’s body was in a nearby swamp. I’ll have the coroner forward you the details to see if they match with the Duncan and Foster cases. One thing that did stand out right away was the tattoo on her side. It’s the same one Duncan and Foster had. Do you remember that local psychic I told you about? The one I thought might be able to help with the case?”

  ‘No! Please, please, no!’

  Nathaniel steered us away from the crowd of people without even missing a beat. They instantly turned their heads to stare at us.

  “We have to go,” he said quietly.

  “This was your bright idea. Remember that.”

  “I got her down here at the station to help as a consultant,” she continued speaking as we walked away. Even as we gained some distance, I could hear her. She was trying to talk louder and louder so I couldn’t get away without hearing her words. She planned this. “But I don’t think we should trust her input any more than I already have. In fact, I think you need to add her name to your master list of questionable people surrounding these murders we’ve been looking into. When she reached up to wipe away some of the sweat on her face, I saw the exact same tattoo marking her side under her shirt. The same one Duncan, Foster, and Larsen had. Whatever links these cases together, it surrounds that tattoo on their sides. I don’t know if it involves what we spoke of over the phone, or if they’re all apart of some gang-related trouble, but I will spend any spare time I get in the next few weeks looking into it.”

  Sabotage. Andrew’s sister was trying to sabotage me. She thought I killed Andrew. There was no other explanation for her doing this.

  My magic was definitely showing. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Other than letting Nathaniel lead me by one hand and burying my other in his jacket as we started jogging away. Nathaniel grimaced. It couldn’t have been pleasant for him, feeling my magic like a flurry of electrical sparks in his hand. But then again, he brought me here. Lord knows it wasn’t where I wanted to be. Appearances be damned.

  The media saw us as soon as we appeared around the corner. I was still wearing sunglasses and doing my best to hide the light erupting from my hands. Nathaniel forced me to pick up the pace and we ran for the car. Fortunately, we reached it before the flood of humans with flashing cameras and screeching voices hollering questions at me managed to. Nathaniel drove us away as fast as he could.

  As soon as we were around the block I started screaming. “Remind me again why we needed to do that?”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Why?” I was in a full rage of fury. Why did he constantly feel the need to put me in situations that weren’t only uncomfortable but downright dangerous? “Now everyone is going to suspect me of being involved with the murders. The media will be looking for answers about the Catach-Brayin symbol if pictures of the bodies get out, and you know they will. How was this necessary?”

  “Knowing you’re on the police’s radar as a potential suspect for involvement gives us time to react and come up with a plan. Officer Parker wanted you on a watch list of some kind. He had already turned on you before you even knew about it.”

  “Oh, I knew it. He was damn near violent the last time I saw him.”

  That got Nathaniel’s attention. He looked at me like he might start scolding me.

  “Violent in what way?” he asked.

  I hesitated before speaking, reminding myself gently that Nathaniel’s intimidating glare wasn’t something I needed to fear anymore. Even though he still wore it well. I wasn’t even sure if he meant to.

  “He… was very rude to me. He grabbed me by the arm. He was…I dunno… just very aggressive and angry. And his eyes were so tired.”

  “Tired how?” he demanded.

  “There were circles under them. And the veins were dark. Almost like he had strained them from the stress.”

  Nathaniel sat back in the chair muttering something I couldn’t quite make out. But I had the distinct feeling he was cursing again. His eyes kept looking back in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t sure why until I heard vehicles behind us. The media was following us. Bastards. These assholes would likely give up their first child if it meant bagging a good story. I gathered that word of Andrew’s sister’s little speech had gotten around.

  “The veins around the eyes turn black on humans for only one reason,” said Nathaniel as he applied more pressure to the gas pedal. “Andrew Parker was using vixra blood. If humans use too much too fast, their heart can explode right out of their chest.”

  We sped away and I
felt the car lurch. Nathaniel was more than willing to break a few traffic laws to get me away from the media cars practically chasing us.

  I shook my head in disbelief once the realization hit me. Andrew might not have been murdered. He might have just used too much vixra blood. It would explain his aggression and the way he treated me. The tired look on his face. The change in how he spoke to me. The dark look of the veins wasn’t just something I noticed on Andrew either. Emily’s eyes had the same look just before she ran from Madison’s house. Tired, bruised, and darkened veins.

  “We have to find Emily,” I said. “I have a feeling she might be using vixra blood too.”

  Chapter 8

  Somehow in all the chaos, Nathaniel was able to get us away from the media. He swerved through back streets in the nearby woods and along paths I didn’t even know existed. And that’s saying something given that my sister and I explored so much of the woods in Dilton as kids.

  The air around me slowly started getting thicker and more difficult to breathe. I tried taking breaths in methodical slow inhales just like gran taught me, but to no avail. It was happening again. My entire world was in slow motion. I peered over at Nathaniel. He was focused on getting us back to a highway where the journalists wouldn’t find us again. I looked back at the road, only to see that I wasn’t in my car anymore. I was running through the woods. My hands were grabbing hold of my long blue dress. There was so much material in the skirt that it bundled up in my fist. It didn’t matter how hard I ran, they were still chasing me. Not the vans with prying cameras. But men on large horses.

  I risked glancing back. They were gaining on me. They would catch me. There was no way out. Nowhere to hide. That wasn’t going to stop me from trying. I wouldn’t go down without a fight. It wasn’t in my nature. I was a survivor. Even when dirty vampires who walked during the day were on my trail.

  The harder I ran, the harder they galloped in my direction. I turned around to see a cascade of my own curls blow to the side from the wind, blocking part of my view. I raised up my hands to aim directly at the men on horses, placing one wrist below the other in an L type of shape. My palms erupted with a purple light.

  Maybe I should have kept running. Maybe I was taking too much of a risk in stopping at all. But on horseback, they would certainly catch me. Even on foot, they could catch me. Vampires were too fast for me to keep running.

  Magic exploded from my hands in a chaotic mess, lashing out like lightning striking at the vampires charging for me. Two went down instantly. Another waved off my magic like it was nothing. Like I had no power at all.

  ‘Vixra blood! He has vixra blood. The scoundrel!’

  I turned around to keep running. I had to get away from him. He would reveal what I was. He would turn me over to the other hunters. They would hang me. Or worse, burn me.

  “Ahh!” I gasped as his arm scooped me up from the grass and laid me across his horse like I was nothing more than a bundle of hay he was bringing in from a farm. I reached deep inside the folds of my bodice for a knife. He might heal from the wound, but at least it might stun him enough to drop me. I wrapped my fingers around the handle and plunged it deep into his thigh. He snarled in pain and lurched me upward by my neck.

  “Georgeanna, stop! I’m trying to get you out of here!

  Nathaniel! It was Nathaniel! How did he find me? He couldn’t find me. He had to have help.

  “What’s happening?” I demanded in an accent that most certainly wasn’t mine. “Where are we going?”

  He slowed down enough for me to get one leg over the horse. He had both his arms around my waist, still holding onto the reins. Only this time, I was between his arms as we rode and feeling safer than a few moments earlier.

  “They’ll kill you if they know you helped me,” I hollered, peering back to see the vampires were out of sight and Nathaniel had managed to lose them.

  “Don’t worry about them. Not yet.”

  The horse started to slow. No. That was my vision. It started to fade and I saw the hood of Nathaniel’s car slowly appear before me along with the dashboard. Time sped up and I saw Nathaniel had made it back to a highway.

  “What’s going on?” he asked me. “You looked like you disappeared for a moment.”

  ‘Is that your way of saying I was in a daze?’

  “I did?”

  “You weren’t here. Your mind was somewhere else. What did you see?”

  Damn him. He could read me like a book. Symptomatic of being around kruxa for so long I suppose. Or maybe it was a trait he recognized. One I shared with Georgeanna? Had he seen her have visions too?

  “I’m not sure what it meant,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter yet what it meant. What did you see?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him. Would it make unseasonable memories come flashing back? Memories he didn’t want to remember? Memories that would make him angry?

  “You knew those woods,” I said. “You’ve been in them before.”

  He didn’t look away from the highway.

  I don’t know how I knew. Maybe it was the red hair that gave it away. But I had been inside Georgeanna’s mind. She was on the run from vampires. They chased her all the way to Dilton. Perhaps long before Dilton county even existed.

  “You saved her,” I said. “You acted like you were one of the vampires hunting her in order to find her. But you saved her.”

  He gave a sigh. One that was merely symbolic given he didn’t need to breathe. He had a habit of doing that when he was stressed. “She saved me countless times. In other ways. I had to return the favor.”

  He was silent for a moment longer. I wanted to ask more questions. To pry a little harder. To learn more about Georgeanna. Was being lovers centuries ago really enough to make him want to look after her bloodline? Or was there something else he wasn’t telling me?

  “Take me back to Madison’s house,” I said abruptly.

  “The media probably know that’s where you’re staying. It might be best to-”

  “Take me back there,” I insisted. “I need a few things. It will just be for a moment.”

  He drove me back to Madison’s house but not without a grimace or two. To my great relief, there was no one outside Madison’s house other than a few of the neighborhood kids trying to play street hockey in their parents old and very over-sized roller blades.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I said, getting out of the car and heading inside.

  He followed me in and waited in the kitchen.

  I rushed upstairs to the guest bedroom and reached for the duffel bag that Madison had packed for me. Inside was a few sets of clothes, some personal items from home, and the notebook Eli had given me. I had to write Eli and tell him what was going on and what I had learned. If the vixra were watching us on some level, he might already know things went from bad to downright shitty. But I was about to make the kruxa look even worse by not holding up my end and sparing him the details.

  My head shot up from my bag. There was one more item that I needed. One that I thought about on the flight home from Washington D.C. but I was too tired when I first got home to dig it out.

  I went into the hallway and pulled down on a long string attached to the ceiling. A compartment came down along with a wooden staircase leading to the attic.

  “We need to leave soon,” said Nathaniel from downstairs.

  “Okay, just a minute.”

  “You’re minute is up.”

  I froze for a quick second. That was what Caleb used to say to me when he didn’t think I was moving fast enough to get ready. The sudden burst of memories caught me off guard.

  I climbed up the ladder and into the attic. It was sweltering up there. If I didn’t find what I was looking for, the droplets of sweat would not hesitate to come tumbling down my face.

  “Aha!” I exclaimed, walking over to a large wooden chest that I helped Madison put together ages ago. A tub that held most of our family secrets was lying in the co
rner. My attic was too small to hide things in. So we both decided it was best that she keep them safe in her house. Inside were things that I loved. Things that I didn’t want any human hands to touch. Things such as gran’s grimoire. The collection of potions that managed to survive throughout the centuries that she wanted to pass down to us. A wand, which was pretty much useless but held memories of my grandfather. He claimed it belonged to one of my family’s ancestors way back. A kruxa who’s blood just barely permitted him the use of a wand to do small spells and incantations. It wasn’t something I would ever be able to do. My blood was far too diluted. But according to my grandpa, an ancestor of mine was lucky. He was born with just a hint of extra magic in his veins. Enough for him to use the wand for minor things. An anomaly that rarely existed among kruxa.

  I fished through the wooden chest to find two books that were wrapped in purple velvet. One was gran’s grimoire, the other was a book containing details of our family line. There was just enough light peeking through the skylight above me to see the writing inside. I went back a few generations to see one thing. If what Nathaniel’s said was indeed true. If Georgeanna was one of my ancestors. And to answer a question that had been burning inside of me. One that I didn’t want to ask him directly. Because let’s face it. It was weird. And I wasn’t sure he would tell me the truth even if I asked him. After all, I didn’t know when he had been turned into a vampire. Or if they had met one another when he was still human. Back when it was possible for Nathaniel to have a family.

  The name Georgeanna Carson was written in ink that had faded with age, along with the name of another kruxa directly beside it. James Ashwood.

  “We are not related, Harper,” said Nathaniel. “I was made a vampire long before I met Georgeanna.”

  I jumped at the sound of his voice. He was looking down at me with his arm resting on one of the attic beams.

  “She decided to live out her life as a mortal,” he went on. “I tried talking her into letting me make her a vampire. I wanted her with me. I wanted us to be together for as long as eternity had in mind. But that’s not what she wanted. She thought about it, long and hard. But in the end, she wanted children. And grandchildren. Things I couldn’t give her. Not to mention that us being together proved far more dangerous than either of us expected.”