Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  Victor appeared from behind the trees where he had been watching the whole display. I could see the knife he used against me in his hand, ready to strike.

  “I’ll ask you again, Harper,” Daniel said to me. “What have you been hiding?”

  I hesitated to speak. And I learned quite quickly that Daniel wasn’t a patient man.

  He pointed his wand closer to Nathaniel. He was forced down to his knees. I hadn’t seen Nathaniel this angry since he was forced to kneel before Tobias in front of the entire Catach-Brayin. Nor had I sensed fear permeating from his skin on such an intense level. He could fight off other vampires. Even ones older than him. But he couldn’t fight off a luxra.

  Nathaniel was gritting his teeth, determined not to show how much pain he was in and yet barely able to contain it. Until he couldn’t anymore. He let out a roar. Whatever magic Daniel was wielding, it was more than Nathaniel could handle. At least now. Because he was becoming mortal. And Daniel knew it.

  “Stop!” I screamed.

  Victor moved from the trees in the distance and shoved his glowing blue knife right into Nathaniel’s back.

  I heard Georgeanna scream below me. She rushed for the side of the enchanted barrier. It thrust her backward in the air and she slammed down on her side.

  She knew Nathaniel was becoming mortal.

  Nathaniel fell down to the ground below him and didn’t move. Victor pulled the knife out from his back. I felt my entire soul drop to the earth below me. Nathaniel was dying right before my eyes. I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t save him. I was completely helpless.

  Georgeanna’s terror cut through her skin and straight into me. Her emotions combined with my own were overwhelming. I closed my eyes, focused as hard as I could, and tried to summon my magic. To do anything to try and stop Daniel.

  A gold light flared up from my skin. I pushed it out to strike at Daniel, only for it to bounce straight off the invisible wall he created and strike back at me.

  I never understood until that moment just how much my own magic could hurt. I knew the pain of trying to force it back inside my skin. I knew the pain of being weakened by using too much. I even knew what vixra magic felt like as it flew from my grandfather’s wand and right into my calf. This was different. It was my own magic. My own blood. Striking me with full force that was meant for the evil below me. Not my own flesh.

  My back stiffened and I tried to scream. No sound left my mouth. Only a large gasp for air once my magic dissipated.

  “Now, onto bigger problems,” Daniel said as he lowered his wand and took his attention off of Nathaniel’s body lying motionless on the cold ground.

  I tried to sense any emotions stirring from Nathaniel. Any sign that he was alive. There were none. Nathaniel was gone.

  Georgeanna must have realized it too because I could hear her cries below me. But it didn’t compare to the response my body was having. The mark between me and Nathaniel started to fade. And even with it disappearing from my blood, I could feel my affection for him remaining. The feeling that he was the only person who could protect me and the only one who I could ever even begin to cherish the way I did Caleb remained inside of me. All that was left was the despair of knowing he was gone.

  Georgeanna stood from where she landed and walked up to the invisible barrier, her red hair glowing from the flames surrounding us. “Tobias trusted you,” she hollered. “You’ve murdered his most trusted ally.”

  “Really?” Daniel turned to her with a hint of amusement on his face. “That’s what upsets you the most? After you just learned that Harper marked the man you’ve loved for centuries?”

  “I could live with Harper marking him if I knew Nathaniel was alive and well. If he had found some sort of peace even if it wasn’t with me. But this? Why? Why would you do this?”

  “Because he was in the way,” he said, his expression turning cold.

  “Of what?”

  “Of what I want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The prophecy to be fulfilled.”

  Daniel raised his hand and Georgeanna came up with it. In a matter of seconds, she was suspended in the air just like I was, dangling with her feet below her as though we were controlled by strings of magic entwined in the air.

  “Tobias?” I mumbled. “You want me to mark Tobias?”

  “That was all I ever wanted,” he exclaimed. “And you kept running. Every single life you ran away. Not anymore. You will mark Tobias Vallas. He will die. And the war will begin.”

  “Why would you want a war? All witchlings will die if that happens. You will die if that happens.”

  “Exactly. And since the potion I gave you didn’t serve as enough to trigger most of your past life memories involving him, I’ll have to do it myself.”

  He took both the wands in his hands, the jeweled one pointed at me, and the other pointed at Georgeanna. Blue sparks burst through his wands and I watched as the magic struck me right in the chest.

  There was no time to panic. My vision faded to black in the blink of an eye.

  Chapter 11

  Memories began to flood my mind. So many that I felt my mind whirling in every direction. Showing me things I had long forgotten and things I was meant to forget. The first time I ever saw Tobias. Back when he was called Talorcan by our tribe. The way he courted me. The way I avoided him. The way he wouldn’t take no for an answer until my resistance disappeared entirely. The night we spent together before the battle the next day. How I was captured and burned alive as Tobias watched.

  Then more memories. Memories of living in the woods and fighting for survival after Tobias saved me from the villagers accusing me of witchcraft and told me to run. It was in the middle of the Dark Ages and I wasn’t equipped to survive the harsh winter alone. I perished in a small stone cottage I built with my bare hands. From cold. From lack of food. And from a plague sweeping through the nearby hamlets. I believed I could survive on my own. I was wrong.

  The next life flashed before my eyes. The end that I met at the bottom of the sea. The wooden ship I boarded to escape never made it to Germany. It sank after a bad storm capsized the ship. I remembered drowning. The way the salt water stung my throat as I tried to breathe after the water rushed inside my small room. I tried to find my door only for the entire room to turn black in the darkness of the sea. My ears popped as the ship went deeper and deeper. And the final agonizing burn as my lungs gave out and I succumbed to the water.

  Just as the last flicker of life evaporated from my eyes, my vision flashed to another life. One that I was vaguely familiar with.

  Georgeanna.

  She was kneeling before a man standing in a long cloak. One suited for 18th-century nobility. The room was dreary. The atmosphere was thick with disappointment, fear, and frustration. And it wasn’t all coming from Georgeanna.

  I peered up to see Edmund standing before me. Only I wasn’t myself. I was Georgeanna. I was seeing everything through her eyes.

  Edmund wasn’t an older man like I had last seen him. He was younger. I was in a room with the same walls I saw in the Matthews home. Old yet expensive.

  Edmund’s hand was outstretched toward me and a green light was flickering from his palm. The same green light I saw when he threw me back to the present in the vixra tunnel after Isaac kidnapped me and Emily.

  “Do you realize the gravity of what you have done?” he said to me.

  “Yes,” I muttered, resentment pouring through my emotions. I knew he could sense it. And it offended him.

  “Witchlings have an order, Miss Carson. An order that has helped us to survive. You’ve disrespected that order in the worst possible way. The vixra never meant you any harm and yet you’ve done a great deal to us.”

  “How is wanting a life of my choosing harmfu-”

  “Silence!” he shouted. The strength in his voice made me flinch. “You will speak only when I permit you to.”

  I cowered before him, knowing I had potentially made my
already dismal situation worse. The vixra finally captured me after years of running. And there was little doubt in my mind that Edmund may kill me.

  “I saw you a month ago,” he said. “Only it wasn’t you. It was another reincarnation. Another descendant. I sent her back through a vixra tunnel to her own time. It was over two centuries from now. Do you know what that means?” He leaned over me like a parent scolding a child who couldn’t learn to behave properly.

  “No,” I whispered. And it was the truth. I didn’t know.

  “It means the prophecy moved on from you. It won’t be realized in your life. The opportunity passed you by.”

  For the briefest moment, I felt relief wash over me. If the prophecy wasn’t meant to be fulfilled by me, it might mean I could be free. I wouldn’t have to mark a vampire. I could have a life of my own. One look into Edmund’s eyes and I knew that hope was never meant to be. I veered my eyes downward, fearing what he might do if I dared look him in the eyes once more.

  “Now the vixra must wait another two centuries before the prophecy even has a chance of being realized. And who knows if we will be capable of fighting a war then. The witchlings are a shadow of what they once were. Our magic is becoming more and more diluted thanks to luxra and kruxa being lured into the human world. And I’ll be damned if you were to die and not have the privilege of seeing what that truly means.”

  I couldn’t resist. I glanced up at him, not fully comprehending what his words meant.

  Green light flashed from his hand and his magic flew through the air. It slithered about me like a snake and wrapped around my throat. I thought he might strangle me with it. Only when the green light disappeared did I realize what happened. An enormous weight was on my shoulders. A weight that forced my head down in a bowing position.

  “Arise,” he commanded me.

  My body stood without me willing it to do so. I whimpered, knowing instantly what he had done.

  “You will serve the vixra for as long as I desire it. You will not stray. You will not run. And you will not die. Not unless I kill you myself. You will do my bidding without argument or complaint. And you will serve the vixra until I consider absolving you of your crimes against the vixra.”

  Edmund Matthews cast a spell on me. On Georgeanna. And not just to enslave me to the vixra as punishment for running. He gave me the curse of immortality.

  Edmund inched closer to me.

  I kept my head down, too frightened to look him in the eyes again.

  “If witchlings should fall in battle because you refused to respect our hierarchy, I want you alive to see it happen,” he said.

  My eyes flashed open. I was no longer in the Matthew’s house. And I was no longer reliving my memories. I was floating in the air before Daniel in the center of the fire rings. Only one thing was different. I saw something that I couldn’t see before.

  There was a green light wrapped around Daniel’s neck. Almost like a glowing cord. The same green light that was around Georgeanna’s throat when Edmund cast a spell to enslave her.

  Daniel Clark was a slave to the vixra. And immortal. Just like Georgeanna.

  “So now you see,” he said as he stared up at me with his wand still pointed right at my chest. But I couldn’t look him in the eyes. All I could focus on was Nathaniel’s dead body on the ground. I wanted to scream. And to rip Victor’s head from his shoulders right along with Daniel.

  “I don’t see anything,” I yelled back at him.

  “Oh, yes you do. I gave you that potion to take at night so you would see. Along with the wand to activate certain ingredients in the mixture. Don’t try telling me that you don’t see.”

  “The wand altered the sleeping potion?”

  “I gave you back your memories from your past lives.”

  “You nearly killed me,” I yelled. “It was too much at once.”

  “Tell me what you saw!” he demanded, growing more and more impatient with me as the seconds went by.

  “I-” My mouth opened but I couldn’t speak. I could barely make sense of everything I saw let alone describe it.

  “Did you see Tobias?” he hollered.

  “Y-yes.”

  “And you feel nothing?”

  My mind went blank.

  “Would a pathetic little kruxa like you have me believe that you feel something more for this pile of waste laying here over a man such as Tobias Vallas?” He scoffed at me and lowered the wand. “You’re every bit as fickle in this life as you were in your others.”

  “You can’t force it to happen, Daniel,” Georgeanna shouted down at him. “You can’t force her to mark Tobias. Even if you stir up every memory she had of ever loving him. This life is different for her.”

  I was stunned into silence. Daniel forced me to recall my memories to rekindle whatever affection I had for Tobias. To make me love him again so I would mark him. And so I would fulfill the prophecy and start the war. Then he would be free of the vixra. But only once they were destroyed.

  “You’re mad!” I screamed. “You’re completely mad! If war begins you’ll be killed right along with the vixra. Marking Tobias will only lead to your death.”

  He seemed surprised that I had suddenly connected the dots. As though he didn’t think I was capable of doing so.

  “The vixra have cursed me with immortality, little kruxa. If anyone can survive the onslaught of war, it will be me. But the vixra can die. And once they’re gone, I can live freely.”

  “You set this entire thing up,” I cried. “You got Officer Parker to involve me in the murder cases the moment you learned my family name. Because it would lead me to meeting Tobias again.”

  He stared up at me and gave a slow condescending clap of his hands. “Congratulations, little kruxa. Now do what you were born to do already. You’re a few lives late in the process, but we can fix that.”

  “You can’t force me to mark Tobias.”

  “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I thought reviving your memories of your previous lives with him would rekindle whatever the two of you shared. But you resisted. Like you always do. So this,” he said with his arms extended to the fire circle, “is necessary. Now be a good little kruxa and complete the prophecy already.”

  Without another word, he pointed the jeweled wand at me and his own wand at Georgeanna. Then he started speaking a language long dead. An ancient language spoken by tribes in Scotland centuries ago. I recognized various words just from having back so many past life memories, but the dialect was different.

  Daniel closed his eyes and moved the wands from pointing at me and Georgeanna to pointing at the sky. Something was moving at the tips, forcing its way out and curling into the air. It was human forms flying from his wand and into the night sky.

  “He’s drawing power from the croxa,” Georgeanna said as the flames on the pillars around us started burning even higher.

  Emily’s form left Daniel’s jeweled wand and ascended into the sky. She and the other kruxa started circling the pillars above us, feeding on my fear. And Georgeanna’s fear. I could feel it being ripped from my body. Like a thousand needles puncturing my skin all at once and draining me of my blood. The golden glow of my magic seeped out of my skin. I heard Georgeanna struggling ten feet away from me in the air, trying to stop her magic from abandoning her body.

  It was no use. Daniel had complete control. I watched as my magic poured out of me and floated down to him in a ball of light, right alongside Georgeanna’s. He had completely drained it from my veins.

  I was human.

  He needed all my magic and Georgeanna’s to make the spell work. To force me to mark Tobias.

  He continued chanting in an old language, speaking of reviving ancient promises and renewing them. The promises I made to Tobias long ago when I married him in my first life.

  The croxa soared above him and began circling around us. I saw faces I recognized. Annabel was there. Along with other girls Ragna had forced Brian to kill. Andrew Parker flew high above u
s. The veins around his eyes were as black as the day I found his body. And his appearance equally rotten from the harsh grip of death. Even Samantha soared above us. There had to be at least twenty of them. Daniel had been killing people to gain the power he needed for this ritual. Maybe for centuries.

  ‘How many souls has he turned into croxa against their will?’

  The ball of light before Daniel shifted and twisted in the air. He was placing something inside of it. An element that wasn’t there before. He was changing the essence of my magic. Then he moved his hands and separated the ball in two. My magic flew through the air, over the circle of fire and absorbed back into my body, as did Georgeanna’s.

  The memory of how painful it was when Nathaniel and Tobias bit me deep inside the caverns under the Library of Congress quickly faded in my memory. Along with the searing pain of Madison shooting vixra magic out of our grandfather’s wand. And when Ragna tied me up and tormented me before the entire Catach-Brayin coven. None of that compared to this. My skin began to crack and slice open, allowing my magic to pierce and slither back into my body as though it were a virus fighting for dominance over my cells. Only it wasn’t a sickness taking over. It was my magic in a completely altered state.

  I let out a scream. I could hear Georgeanna do the same a short distance from me. The second I thought my body couldn’t handle it anymore and I might pass out from the pain, it stopped. I fell back down to the earth below me with a thunderous crash.

  It took me a moment to come around. To realize that I was indeed alive and my body wasn’t in pain any longer.

  I heard grunting from a few feet away followed by loud cries of pain. I whipped my long hair out of my face to see that Georgeanna had fallen too. She was grabbing her ankle and trying to get back up to a standing position. I saw her eyes dart from me to where Daniel was standing. Or where he had been standing.

  Nathaniel had Daniel pinned to the ground with his fangs deep inside his throat.

  ‘No! How is that possible? I saw him die. I watched it.’