Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  Nathaniel placed one hand to the right side of me and another to my left, leaning in close and not letting my eyes move away from his.

  “Focus hard, Harper,” he said.

  “On what?”

  There was a heaviness in my bones that locked my attention on him. Like a target finding its victim and honing in like a guided missile, locked onto its target with no chance of missing. It almost felt like sinking. Like my consciousness was slipping and being replaced by someone else’s. By his!

  “What are you doing?” I asked accusingly.

  “This is what it feels like,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This is what it feels like when I’m luring someone. Can you feel it?”

  He focused on me even harder and I had to struggle to take in a full breath. My bones felt even heavier. And my mind couldn’t hold onto a single thought. I shook my head, trying to regain some focus. It was no use. He had a hold over my mind. He could place anything in there and I would likely believe it.

  “This is what it feels like when a vampire is luring you. Know the exact feeling and you will know whenever a vampire is trying to be deceitful around you.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was letting me in on a secret that vampires have kept well-guarded for centuries. How they lure someone and how to know when it’s happening can be the difference between life and death.

  “Now think of your favorite song,” he added. “Whatever it might be. Sing it in your head. Focus on it as hard as you can.”

  ‘Huh?’

  I did exactly as he said even though it sounded completely crazy. I thought of a song that Caleb and I used to be obsessed with. We’d play it every time we were in the car together. I thought of each line to the song, lyric by lyric, word for word. Slowly, but surely, I was able to refocus my thoughts. To drift them away from Nathaniel’s and know which ones were mine again. I could separate the two.

  “I’ve only ever lured you once, Harper,” he said.

  I shook my head again once I finally felt his consciousness leave mine. I was free of his thoughts and totally in my own. And slightly out of breath from the effort. It wasn’t an easy task but I somehow managed it.

  “At my house when I was getting ready for the Congressman’s party,” I said.

  “Yes. And even then you’re magic caught onto what I was doing. Kruxa are harder to lure than humans. Any magical being is. It can be done by a very disciplined vampire. But most aren’t.”

  “Promise me you’ll never try to lure me,” I said.

  “Only if you promise to actually do as I tell you in the future.” He took my head into his hand as though he was going to cradle it. Nope. No such luck. He was still pissed as hell and ready to let me know it. “And if you ever steal vixra blood from me again, I will make you explain to the vixra yourself why you are tampering with the most precious resource of magic in the entire world. Do you understand?”

  I gave a small nod, realizing that I had to stop moving my head altogether if I had any hope of being able to stand up the next morning. The dizziness was getting worse.

  Oh shit. The vixra blood. The other sheets of small paper were in my pocket. Inside the jeans that got waterlogged. They had to be ruined.

  “Those were the last supply that I had,” he said. “And Eli doesn’t just hand them over to me whenever I want them.”

  He let go of my head and took a step back from me. If I wasn’t already perfectly aware that he wasn’t going to hurt me, I’d be afraid of him.

  “I’m not sorry,” I said defiantly. “I had to get to Emily. I’m the reason the Congressman is still alive. And if you had helped me get there sooner, I could have stopped all that from happening in the first place.”

  “She was doomed the second she tasted vixra blood, Harper.”

  “I need to find out who gave it to her. And who committed the murders. Georgeanna said I have to.”

  If vampires could turn even paler than they already were, I imagined that this would be the moment when it happened. Because Nathaniel’s expression went from severe to downright frightening. I knew he didn’t mean to direct it at me. And even so, a chill ran down my spine and I couldn’t help but reach for the blanket to keep any warmth that I could from escaping my body.

  “What did you say?”

  I took a deep breath before speaking, knowing full and well that it was his turn to be in the dark. Strange given that it was mostly me who felt that way. It almost gave me a feeling of levity to know something that he didn’t. To perhaps be one step ahead of him for once. Not that it mattered. That was all going away in a matter of seconds.

  “I saw her,” I said quietly. “I had another vision. Or maybe it was a dream. I’m not sure. But I saw her again. She said I have to find out who committed the murders. And that I would one day have to approach the vixra. That they knew why we look exactly alike.”

  “Why would the vixra know anything about that? All they have is a prophecy that spoke of you. Of someone who looks like Georgeanna being a sign of darker times to come.”

  “Darker times meaning war?” I asked randomly.

  I didn’t know if it was Tobias who taught Nathaniel all he knew about looking menacing, but if he did, I was determined to give Nathaniel a lesson in being a little less severe all the damn time.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Looking like you might murder me all the time.”

  He let go of some tension in his forehead as though he was mentally rolling his eyes at me. But I forced him to break away a piece of the armor he had over his demeanor.

  “Emily said something strange right before she tried lighting us all on fire. She said something about a coming war. A war to defeat us all. What did she mean by that?”

  Nathaniel stood in silence. A silence that told me one thing. I was given a detail I wasn’t supposed to know.

  “Is that what the prophecy predicts? That when I appear, it will be a sign of impending war? And what did she mean that it would defeat us all?”

  “All witchlings,” he finally spoke. “The prophecy speaks of a war that will be the end of witchlings.”

  That set me back. If I hadn’t already been lying down I would have found somewhere to sit to compose myself.

  “A war to end all witchlings? And I’m the sign that it’s going to come? Why?”

  “I don’t know why,” he said as he crossed his arms.

  “Eli wouldn’t tell you?”

  “Eli doesn’t know either.”

  “You didn’t think it was important to tell me all of this a little sooner?”

  A nurse knocked outside of the door and sent the curtain flying to the other side of the room.

  “We have a room for you, Miss Ashwood. Upstairs on the third floor.”

  Nathaniel leaned against the wall in silence. I couldn’t tell if he was irritated or desperately trying to compose himself. Either way, I sent him right on the edge. Not that it was difficult. I put him on the spot when he was expecting to be the one laying into me after all I had done.

  “I have to stay overnight?” I asked the nurse.

  “It’s just a precaution,” she said. “We’ll keep you under observation overnight and the doctor will more than likely release you tomorrow morning. You’ll have a bump on the head and perhaps a concussion, but that’s likely to be all.”

  She started to wheel me off. I watched Nathaniel as I got closer to the door.

  “You’re not coming?” I asked him.

  “Visiting hours are almost over,” the nurse said.

  ‘Come on, Nathaniel. Do the luring crap if you have to. Just don’t leave me hanging right now. Yell at me all you want! Just don’t leave me alone in a damn hospital!’

  He must have seen the anxiety in my face because he stood up from leaning against the wall and started following us upstairs.

  “I’m not leaving her,” he stated.

  “Well, of course not,�
�� said the nurse. “We make the occasional exception for loved ones.”

  ‘Loved ones? What dirty thoughts did you put in her mind, Nathaniel?’

  The biggest blessing I could get at this point would be to fall into a deep sleep that would take me away from reality. Away from all that threatened to show me more of the real world around me. Humans are lucky in that regard. They walk through life never questioning that the crazy paranormal things they see on television are nothing more than fairy tales and old myths that medieval people believed to make sense of the world. Things such as vampires and witches were silliness. A story to read for fun on a rainy day with some steamy romance thrown in from time to time. I, however, was living it. And no better for it. I couldn’t go to sleep without having a vision now. I was starting to live in fear of them while I was awake. There was nowhere to hide.

  As the nurse wheeled me into the room, I felt the inviting temptation of sleep starting to take control, and I prayed as hard as I could that I wouldn’t see Georgeanna. That I wouldn’t have to think of murder or the fate that had been so cruelly handed down to Emily.

  I wanted to kill whoever did this to her. I wanted to find them. Torture them. Watch them suffer.

  But most of all, I wanted a few minutes of not having to think of anything.

  The last thing I felt before sleep took over my senses once more was my hand being dipped into icy water.

  No. That wasn’t icy water. That was Nathaniel’s hand.

  He buried it under the blanket so I could still get some warmth from the covers, but his hand was still there, comforting me.

  “I’m only going to lure you this once, Harper. Then I’ll never do it again,” he whispered.

  He inserted a very simple image in my mind. I was back in my own house, laying on the couch Caleb’s mother had bought for us when we first moved in with a warm fire crackling in the fireplace. A place that had always made me feel safe. Ironically until Nathaniel had shown up. I was sipping on hot chocolate and watching the flames flicker in the darkness of my peaceful home, wrapped in a thick blanket. There were even marshmallows in my cup.

  I had to give credit where credit was due. Nathaniel had attention for detail. And he must have seen the marshmallows in my pantry when he was making me tea the day we first met. I couldn’t get mad at him for it either. I had done a fair bit of snooping when I was in his house too.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning was much less eventful than I expected. In fact, it was downright boring. When I was a kid I would fear being bored like some monster that would sneak up on me when I least expected it. Now as an adult, being bored and having nothing to do was the highlight of the entire week.

  I ate the pancakes the nurse brought up in the morning as Nathaniel watched from the side bed in the corner by the window. He didn’t leave my side all night. I don’t think he even really moved. He just watched me. Like a creep. And like someone who thought I might spontaneously burst into flames if he didn’t keep a close eye on me. But oddly enough, I didn’t mind. I had the best night of sleep that I could have asked for under the circumstances. To be fair though, that could have been the medicine the nurse gave me.

  As I lay there chewing on my pancakes and sipping orange juice, my thoughts kept going back to Emily. I wondered what I could do. What I should have done differently. If there was a way to save her. Was she really beyond hope if she had too much vixra blood in her system? I didn’t want to believe it. Even though I knew it was the truth.

  When Officer Rosenberg and a couple other officers came back to get an official statement from me, I tried to keep it as dumbed down as possible. And for the most part, I told the truth. With the magical bits kept out of course.

  “You say Brian Stockard called you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nathaniel was still in the corner watching me. His complexion was even paler than usual. He hadn’t had blood in a long while. And he needed it. He would have to leave my side eventually. And to my shock, I didn’t like the thought of that. The man that most other women found sexy as hell but also a bit terrifying had become a strange sort of comfort to me.

  I didn’t know for a fact whether or not Nathaniel was luring Officer Rosenberg again, but from the way he looked at her as she spoke, I wouldn’t put it past him. Whatever he had to do to help get me out of this mess was fine by me.

  “And Emily was inside with her father. How did she manage to get him tied down?” Officer Rosenberg asked me.

  “I don’t know. That happened before I got there.”

  The officers looked at one another curiously.

  What was I supposed to say? Emily had some of the most powerful witchling blood in the world in her system and it caused her to have strange super strength? And then there was the way she projected her body. That was insane. I needed to ask Nathaniel about that but I wasn’t entirely sure he would know all the aspects of vixra blood when in the human bloodstream. Was it unique to each individual?

  “Oh, and the darkening around her eyes? How long has she had that?” Rosenberg asked me.

  I shrugged. “I saw it a few days ago when she was at my sister’s house after Samantha Larsen’s body was found. But that’s it. I don’t remember seeing it the week before.”

  I knew the answer she was looking for. She thought the darkening was some sort of bruising. That the Congressman had hit Emily.

  “I don’t think the Congressman did this,” I blurted out.

  “Why would you say that?” one of the other officers asked.

  Nathaniel glared at me. His eyes said something to the effect of ‘don’t make my efforts more difficult than they have to be.’

  “Because I saw his reaction when Samantha was found. He was…wrecked.”

  “Easy enough for a politician,” said Rosenberg. “They tend to have a public persona and a private one.”

  That got my attention. Brian had said something similar at the Congressman’s party. I decided not to say much else. I just plead ignorance and told them as much as I could without giving too much away. Brian had called me begging for help. We broke in. We stopped Emily. And the water? Still a mystery. Maybe a pipe burst or something.

  Once Officer Rosenberg was gone and the nurse said the doctor was signing my release, I got dressed in the small bathroom in the corner. Nathaniel must have left for a few minutes during the night because a few of my clothes were waiting for me. And not the ones from last night. Dry ones.

  “Can we stop by my house?” I asked Nathaniel. “I need fresh clothing. I’ve used up the ones Madison packed for me. It’s either that or go to the store for laundry detergent.” It felt odd to ask him if I could go to my own house. And yet, some small part of me felt guilty for having broken my word to him. Not sorry. Just a tad guilty. We had just started to have a semblance of trust between one another. I had damaged that.

  He gave a small nod and escorted me out of the hospital.

  “You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes before we leave,” he said as he walked out.

  “What? Is there a supply of donated blood downstairs?” I asked.

  He looked back at me like I had just suggested the most barbaric of things he had ever heard. Apparently, cold blood isn’t as appetizing as the room temperature blood he poured at his house.

  “No. But there’s a security guard downstairs that’s been shirking his duties. I’ll give him a small lesson in doing his duty properly.”

  “Don’t kill him.”

  “Who said anything about killing him?” he said with an annoyed grimace.

  With that he disappeared for about ten minutes, only to come back with a touch more color to his face. Which isn’t saying much. He still looked fairly pale.

  When we got downstairs, I saw that he had ordered a rental car. An expensive one of course. I truly had inconvenienced him. There would be no more opening up vixra tunnels for us until he managed to have a meeting with Eli to get more vixra blood. If Eli would even allo
w it granted what I did.

  I stared out the window as we got closer to my house, only to see something strange that caught my attention as we turned around the block in my neighborhood. It wasn’t the media. I expected them to be camped out in front of my house or my sister’s but they seemed to lose interest in favor of the Congressman’s property. There were men on top of my house. My roof had at least six of them. There was one on the front patio. Another on my driveway. And the front door was wide open.

  “What the hell?” I said as we pulled up to the front driveway.

  The noise of construction tools such as hammers and nails and an electrical saw echoed from the inside.

  Nathaniel got out and turned toward me. His expression said that he was equally as confused as I was.

  I shut the car door and started charging for the front porch. Nathaniel grabbed a hold of my arm and stopped me.

  “Let me,” he said.

  I walked behind him as we climbed up the steps. He knocked on the door. Yeah, that’s right. We had to knock on my own freaking front door! It’s an odd feeling no one would understand unless they came across a bunch of strange construction workers that they don’t know working on their house previously destroyed by a crazy vampire.

  “Who is in charge here?” Nathaniel shouted into the front doorway.

  A man appeared from the back and walked over to us. His eyes locked on mine almost instantly.

  “Miss Ashwood,” he said with a large smile. He was a tall man with a muscular build. Much like Nathaniel. Although, he was clearly well-acquainted with hard labor. His skin was very tan. Probably from having worked outside so much during the hot Georgia summers. “I’m Ryan. I was told to give you this if you turned up.” He took out an envelope from his back pocket. It had been folded over a time or two, but the wax on the back was still sealed shut. The crest on the wax was none other than the symbol of the Catach-Brayin.

  I peered over at Nathaniel who seemed to know what was going on that very instant. He rolled his eyes as I took the envelope into my hand and opened the red wax seal.

  The note inside was addressed to me.