Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  Who knows?

  I was tired of being left in the dark. I was tired of finding out things last. I was tired of feeling like I was constantly under threat. I went over to the cabinet where the Southern Comfort was sitting and started pouring myself another glass. Maybe it would calm me down long enough to finally get some rest that night. It looked like nightfall would be coming soon anyway. The light through the trees outside was getting darker.

  ‘Jeez, Nathaniel. Would you say it’s safe for me to use your deck? Or do I need permission for that too?’

  I opened up the back door to his wooden porch and took in the crisp fresh air. It was like nothing I had ever breathed back home. There was a coolness to it that nearly stung my insides when I took in a breath.

  My cell phone started ringing from inside the house. I walked back in to see that the call had already been lost before it had appeared on the screen. Go figure.

  ‘Damn it! What if it’s Madison?’

  I walked back out to the balcony and held up the phone in the air, hoping I would get some kind of signal. Would I be giving away where I was if I did? Would Nathaniel be angry?

  Maybe it was the booze talking but I didn’t really care. I had been everyone’s plaything and slave for the last week or so. Maybe it was time to do things by my own rules. I stumbled into the wooden railing of the porch and held the phone out farther.

  I got a bar. It started ringing again.

  “Madison?” I asked, answering it as fast as I could.

  There was a gurgling on the other end of the line. Followed by a voice trying to break through. A male voice. Who the hell was calling me?

  “Harper? Harper, can you hear me?” The voice said.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “Bren,” I heard followed by more static.

  “Huh?”

  “Brian!”

  Wait…Brian? Samantha’s fiancé? How the hell did he get my cell phone number? And why was he calling me?

  “Brian? What’s going on?”

  “You gotta help, Harper. You need to get over to Carlton’s house right away.”

  I looked around at the trees in the forest.

  “Um, that’s not likely to happen, Brian.”

  “You have to! It’s Emily! She’s trying to kill her dad!”

  Emily? She was doing what?

  The vixra blood! It was doing something to her. Damn it! Why didn’t Nathaniel help me find her before we came here?

  “What do you mean? You can’t be serious!”

  “Just get here as fast as you can. She’s locked me out, but I can hear Carlton screaming inside.”

  ‘Granted the size of that house, that’s kinda impressive.’

  Whatever storm inside me that the whiskey managed to calm down a bit suddenly came tearing back in, giving my insides whiplash.

  “Brian, I can’t, I mean…I’m not in Dilton right no-”

  “Get here, Harper! Please! You’re the only one she’ll listen to.”

  Brian sounded scared. Scared to his core.

  ‘Good lord, Emily. What have you done? Or better question, what has the vixra blood done to you.’

  “Call the polic-”

  The call was dropped. I peered down at my cell phone. The bars were gone. I wobbled inside and shut the door, really regretting that last rather large glass of whiskey. But to be fair, I was expecting to head straight to bed after I had finished it.

  I reached for my forehead, trying to make sense of what was happening. I was completely trapped in a house where I was assuredly safe but unable to help Emily. She was doing something to harm her father. Brian was in a panic. And I couldn’t help. I couldn’t do anything. If Nathaniel was here at least I could get him to use this vix-

  ‘Wait. He switched jackets.’

  I walked…okay. Never mind that. I stumbled over to the front door where he had hung up his jacket and started searching the pockets. Nothing in the right one. Nothing in the left. What about the breast pockets?

  I pulled out a couple small sheets of paper from the breast pocket. Ones with a very tiny crimson speck on them.

  I stuffed them back inside. I promised Nathaniel. I told him I’d do as he said. But that was before I knew Emily was in danger. Danger from herself.

  Not to mention that I didn’t know how to use the vixra tunnels. Even if I tried I’d probably end up somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  I reached back into the pocket, nearly wobbling into the wall as I did. Caleb always made fun of me for being a cheap drunk. And that was just with table wine. The night of the Congressman’s party it had been enough to tamper down my nerves. Right now it was impairing my ability to think straight. And walk straight.

  What was worse? Angering Nathaniel and breaking my word, or staying here and letting Emily potentially die just like Andrew with her heart exploding from her chest after she kills her father? Why was she trying to kill her father? Why was Brian locked out of the house? And why were there two jackets instead of one? I could have sworn there was just one here a second ago.

  I was seeing double. And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Nathaniel wasn’t interested in my well-being for any reason other than I looked like his long lost love. I had to get to Emily.

  I took out the vixra blood and marched out of the house, forgetting to even close the front door as I shuffled to the grass near the forest. I opened my palm. There were three small pieces of transparent paper with red droplets on top in my hand. One for getting to Emily. One for getting back. And one for if I messed up big time. At least I wasn’t drunk enough to think I didn’t need an insurance piece of…of…vixra blood.

  What was I doing? This could be catastrophic!

  I didn’t give myself another chance to doubt my decision. I put two of the pieces in my pocket and let the other dissolve on my tongue. A force drifted through my body, unlike anything I had every experienced. It was…invigorating. I felt strong. Capable. I looked down at my hands. I extended one of them out and held my palm upright, summoning my magic. It came swirling out of my hand with little to no trouble. Then I forced it back in. It disappeared without a fuss. I jerked my hand and forced it out again, then back in. I had control of it! For the first time in my entire life, it didn’t look like a chaotic mess erupting from my skin. It was a beautiful golden swirl of magic twirling between my fingers.

  ‘I could get used to this.’

  I rushed back inside, realizing that I left the front door open. Grandpa’s wand was on the kitchen table along with gran’s grimoire. I grabbed the wand and headed back outside, shutting the door behind me this time. I extended it directly into the air above me and pushed my magic through my hand. It shot right out of the wand in a fantastic display of light, crackling all the way into the sky like a bolt of lightning.

  ‘Imagine what I could do if I was sober. Now how does this tunnel stuff work?’

  Nathaniel always used his hand to open them. But then again, he had little to no magic without the vixra blood. I already had some. Maybe I could use the wand?

  I focused hard on where I wanted to go, then the movement Nathaniel made with his hand to open the tunnel. Almost like he was carving it into the air. Only I used the wand. I pointed it directly in front of me and visualized the tunnel opening up the same way it had for Nathaniel.

  Sparks flew out of the wand and into the trees. I shrieked as a branch crashed down to the ground. For a moment it looked like it might catch fire and I would have my face on television for having started a forest fire. I watched in horror. Then I lifted the wand just as a fire erupted from the wooden branch and the grass on the ground, visualizing water coming from the tip. A tidal wave erupted from the wand and drenched the ground. Along with me. Then luck be my lady, rain started to fall. And I could have sworn that I was the root cause of it.

  ‘What am I doing? I’ll never get through the tunnel. I’ll wind up dead.’

  My thoughts drifted to Emily. To her being inside her house
with her father, the veins around her eyes turning black and the pain she would feel once the vixra blood became too much for her heart. The panic on Brian’s face. The insanity that was my life after Nathaniel entered it. I wanted to get to Emily. I wanted to help her. I was failing her! I was the only friend she had in the world and I was failing her.

  A tingling erupted in my fingers. A red light was drifting between them. I lifted up my hand and moved it from left to right. A large circle ripped open in the air directly in front of me. It appeared as though I had created a looking glass into Emily’s house. She was standing in the living room with her father tied up. But not with ropes. With the blue magical cord Nathaniel had used against Isaac. How did she get a hold of that?

  The Congressman was bruised and bleeding. Blood trickled down from his nose and his right eye was swelling. Had Emily caused that? No. It was the vixra blood giving her increased strength.

  I pushed my hand into the looking glass opening in the air and felt the same pull that had become familiar to me. The pull of a vixra tunnel being opened and dragging me inside. I shut my eyes and held onto the vision of Emily in the living room. She was screaming at her father. Striking him. Attacking him. Her hands were wrapped around his throat. She was going to use her increased strength to strangle him.

  “How could you do this to me, dad?” she hollered. “I was your little girl. Why did you do this?”

  The tunnel wrapped around me and I started moving. I refused to let go of the image in my mind. Without even trying, I moved through the tunnel, spinning around and feeling as though I was falling just like before, but with a little more control. I didn’t let Emily’s face leave my mind until I felt my feet touch the ground again. The landing, however, wasn’t as pretty. I blamed the whiskey.

  I crumbled down on the ground of the Congressman’s landscaped front lawn, bruising my hands and knees.

  “Ouch!” I yelped.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” Brian said from a few feet away. I shoved the wand into my jeans and tried standing up, only to stumble backward on my butt right in front of him.

  “From thin air,” I answered. “Can you help me up?”

  Chapter 11

  I heard something crash from inside the Congressman’s house.

  Brian quickly latched onto my hand as he tried pulling me up. My magic must have been on high alert because it zapped his hand the second his skin touched mine. I only made it halfway up before he let me go with a cry. Having vixra blood in my system didn’t stop my magic from choosing the worst of times to alert me to danger.

  “Sorry,” I said, doing my best to gather myself up on my own. “Static electricity, I guess.”

  ‘I really picked the wrong night to slam down a few drinks.’

  He said nothing but merely stared at me.

  “Where’s Emily?” I asked.

  There was a scream from inside the house. It was the Congressman. His voice sounded as though it was muffled. Had she tied something around his mouth? Or duck taped it? My vision showed him tied up but I didn’t see much else.

  Another muffled scream. If it hadn’t been for the Congressman’s loud lung power I might not have heard it at all.

  “She locked all the doors,” Brian said, looking through the front window on the porch and trying to decide the best plan of action. There was a rocking chair sitting next to the window. It didn’t escape Brian’s attention either.

  “As long as you’re prepared to help me pay for it, we’ll have to break one of the Congressman’s windows,” I said.

  Brian agreed and reached for the top of it. It didn’t exactly look light, but he flung it above his head and smashed it into the window as hard as he could. The shattered shards of glass went flying. I took a few generous steps back and covered my eyes.

  Brian reached for my hand and brought me forward. This time I was prepared and I forced my magic to settle back inside my skin. It did so without argument. That in and of itself was something of a miracle.

  I squirmed through the gaping hole and into the Congressman’s front entryway, doing my best to avoid the sharp pieces of glass that survived the wooden rocking chair being thrown through only seconds ago. Brian came in right after me. I shook his hand off of mine. My magic was desperately trying to come out and tell me that something was wrong.

  ‘As if I don’t already know that. I have to find Emily. If she’s willing to hurt her father, she might be willing to hurt me.’

  I started walking down the front entryway and toward the living room in the back where Nathaniel had carted me through by my arm over a week ago. I didn’t have to go far. I could see the Congressman sitting there, tied to a chair and whimpering for a peaceful shred of air to enter his lungs. I didn’t know what Emily had done to him but whatever it was made the Congressman appear as though he had just been through a boxing match.

  Emily turned her back away from her father. I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Good god,” I muttered.

  The veins around her eyes were jet black. Her skin was white as a sheet. She was dripping wet with sweat. And her clothes looked like she had taken to living in the woods for weeks.

  “Emily,” I said, not quite believing what I was seeing. This was my friend. She was suffering. And she was looking at me with daggers in her eyes.

  “No!” She shouted. “You can’t be in here.”

  “Emily, don’t-”

  My words were too late. She walked straight up to Brian and shoved him backward. And not just back a couple feet. She shoved him so hard that he went flying through the air and landed back against the front door, shattering the decorative glass and nearly knocking Brian completely unconscious. I doubted he would be standing any time soon.

  I looked back at Emily, even more stunned by her strength than I was her aggression. I didn’t know exactly how much vixra blood she had consumed but it was certainly more than Andrew had. Maybe I was too late. Her heart could burst at any moment.

  “You brought him in here!” she said to me in the most accusing tone anyone had ever used with me. “Why?”

  “Brian asked me to be here. He wanted me to help you.”

  “You can’t help me,” she hollered. “You’re one of them.”

  “No!” I said in the sternest voice I could manage, praying that if she attacked me I would be able to counter it. She had already seen my magic, and the Congressman was too dazed and confused to know what the hell was going on around him. He could barely hold his head up straight. So I let my magic seep through my palms where she could see it. “I’ve never been one of them. They held me hostage just like they did to you!”

  “You sided with them, just like he did,” she said pointing to her father.

  She turned around and walked up to him, then repeatedly bashed him across the face. I ran over to stop her but her strength was too much for me. Even with vixra blood in my system.

  Her father looked like he could very well die of being beaten to death if I didn’t do something quick. Something drastic.

  I took out the wand. “Emily, you have to stop right now.”

  She saw it but wasn’t quite sure what it was or why I was holding it. “You were supposed to be my friend,” she said.

  “I am your friend. I’ve always been your friend.”

  “Then why are you helping him?”

  “Tobias? He isn’t giving me a choice. I don’t have a choice in any of this.”

  “But he did!” she said with her finger pointing directly at her father. “He knew what he was getting us into. Samantha is dead because of him! Because of his ambition! Because he wanted Tobias’s plan to work!”

  “Plan? What plan?”

  “To give the blood to Tobias’s strongest vampires. To fight in the war! The war to defeat us all!”

  What. The. Hell.

  “Emily, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I want to. I want to know more about what’s going on. I want to help you. But if you try striking y
our father again, I’ll have to stop you.”

  She rushed at me.

  No. She didn’t. That wasn’t her. But it was. I couldn’t even make sense of what I saw. Because it looked like Emily had projected herself out of her body and lurched out at me. The walls around us vibrated. Her voice echoed throughout the obscenely large living room. And just like Brian, I went flying through the air. Only I landed in the kitchen to the right of the living room. I fell a few feet back down, hitting my head on the kitchen table with a loud thwack. It took me a few seconds to come around. All I could do was look up as I heard Emily’s footsteps walking over to me. There were two of her. She had two bodies. Somehow, the vixra blood helped her project her body out of herself. One Emily was leaning down, watching me with loathing eyes, and the other seemingly falling apart. Wanting to cry. Wanting to scream. Wanting release from her own skin. She was in more emotional pain that I ever realized. More than I ever picked up on. And I didn’t even know she was hiding it. People usually couldn’t hide things like that from me. My magic could always sense emotions if they were powerful enough.

  I struggled to stand up. Emily took her hand and pushed me back down. The other Emily walked back over to her father, ready to give him another beating.

  “How could you do that, dad?” she whimpered. “How could you hand over your little girls to such monsters? Is that the future you wanted? One where you didn’t have to worry about us? One where you could leave us to fend for ourselves? Is that what it takes to make you proud?”

  He was too out of it to answer her, which only made her angrier.

  It was a good thing she was focused on him because the second projection of her body started to fade away. It disappeared along with her hand pinning me down.

  I grabbed onto the kitchen table, even more wobbly than I was before.

  “How could you, dad?”

  She took something out of her pocket. I only recognized what it was after she had a match lit in her hand and was holding it up for me to see.

  “We’re both gonna end up dead anyway,” she said. “So what does it matter?”

  It occurred to me right then and there that some of the sweat dripping down from the Congressman’s face wasn’t sweat. It was alcohol. She had poured alcohol down on her father’s head all the way to his feet.