Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  The mark! Daniel severed it. The mortality taking over Nathaniel’s body had been destroyed. And he was back to being a vampire.

  I didn’t know how, but when Daniel started the ritual of removing the mark between us, he unintentionally brought Nathaniel back to life. And back to vampire immortality. Along with the rage I saw overpowering him moments before I watched him die.

  ‘Nathaniel doesn’t know. He doesn’t know Daniel is immortal.’

  “He can’t die!” I hollered at him. “He’ll kill you!”

  Maybe Daniel couldn’t be killed but Nathaniel at least managed to hurt him. Or distract him long enough for the fire circle to start dying down. The fire between Georgeanna and me opened up along with the invisible wall just enough for me to get to her. She fell back to the ground after trying to put weigh on her ankle.

  “Is it broken?” I asked once I reached her.

  I heard a growl from outside the fire circle. Daniel had his wand in the air and he was trying to force me back into my circle. Back to where he could control me again. He sent Nathaniel flying at least ten feet in the air behind him. Victor was holding a fireball in his hand, ready to aim it right for Nathaniel.

  “Nathaniel can handle himself,” Georgeanna said.

  “What?”

  She latched her hands onto mine and closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Focus on the objects above us between the pillars,” she urged.

  I could feel energy starting to leave my body. The croxa above us were still soaring high. Still feeding on our fear. I couldn’t focus. I heard Nathaniel roar. The fire in Victor’s hand was shooting through the air. And Daniel’s wand took my feet right off the ground.

  “Don’t let go!” Georgeanna screamed as her grip on my hands tightened. “Focus! Summon your magic and focus!”

  I did as she said. My feet swayed in the air as if there was a powerful tornado only a matter of feet behind me, trying to sweep me away.

  I thought of the first life I witnessed through the memories. The staff I carried in my hands. The way I could control my magic through it and shoot it straight into the backs of Roman soldiers. Then the knife Tobias gave me after he cut away the ropes binding my wrists and ankles. The silver coins to buy me a new life. The brooch Georgeanna wore on her chest. And the gun laced with magic bullets and a silencer Tobias armed me with before I went hunting. All items that passed from Tobias to me in different lives.

  Gold light pierced through my skin and glowed all around me. When I squinted my eyes open, I saw something impossible. Something beyond imagining.

  My former bodies were surrounding the circle. My first life, as a tribal warrior in ancient Scotland, stood only feet away from me. I could see the blue war paint on my face. Then my second life, where I was clothed in animal fur to protect from the harsh northern winter. Then the third life where I drowned inside the wooden ship headed for Germany. All three of my former lives stood outside the circle. Then in perfect unison, they broke through the magical ring of fire Daniel put up and stepped inside the circles. The fires were weakening. Daniel was completely distracted by Nathaniel. Victor ran away. And the croxa above us were descending back down to the earth and rushing toward us, trying to help Daniel maintain control.

  Georgeanna let go of one of my hands. It went flying behind me as the wind surrounding us got stronger. Then the other women, my former lives, took both me and Georgeanna by the hand.

  “Form a circle! Now!” Georgeanna hollered.

  All five of us clasped hands. A shudder ran straight through my body. The moment our hands touched thunder roared in the air. The items from our lives between the pillars lit up.

  I saw Emily getting closer, trying to break my focus.

  A bright white light ruptured inside the circle of our joined hands.

  My head was thrown back as the white light braided through my body and swirled all around me, creeping through my limbs then rushing back out. It shot straight into the air and devoured the fire circle around us, extinguishing it into nothing more than smoke. The croxa above us started to scream. A horrible hissing sound that made my eardrums beg for mercy.

  Trees surrounding us exploded, sending shards of wood everywhere and flattening everything within thirty feet of the extinguished fire circle. Wind ripped through my body, pulling my legs behind me with even more force. It only made me hold onto their hands tighter.

  Then it was gone. Everything was gone. The ghosts of my past lives. The croxa. The fire circle. There was nothing left but the pillars staggering in the air with no fire to light them. Everything was dark.

  I fell to the ground along with Georgeanna. She got up and limped over to me.

  “Harper!” she said into my ear. “Harper!”

  And when I came around and looked to the side, I saw Daniel. He was laying on his back on the cold ground. Nathaniel towered over him with a look of confusion crossing his eyes. I watched as his skin started to heal from the burns crossing his muscular chest. His jacket and most of his shirt had been burned away. Victor had obviously done some damage but Nathaniel fought him off somehow. Just like he did Isaac. He was holding Victor’s knife in his hands as a magical blue light started to glow from its sharp blade. He had it aimed at Daniel’s chest.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  I got up to my feet as Georgeanna took my hand. She leaned on me for support as we hobbled over to him. We had to step over the staff. The staff I used so many lives ago to manipulate what little magic was in my veins. I bent over and took it in my hands, feeling a strange electricity surge through my skin the moment my hand touched it.

  I plunged it into the ground with each step as Georgeanna and I got closer to him. I could sense Georgeanna’s nerves getting increasingly unsteady. Whatever control she had before was gone now. She was closer to Nathaniel than she had been in centuries.

  The embers of the remaining fire on Nathaniel’s shredded shirt flew away from the light breeze. The remaining smoke of the fire circle made him look like he had survived an explosion. And given the luminous white light that erupted when I clasped hangs with Georgeanna and the ghosts of my past lives, maybe he had.

  “You were right,” Nathaniel said to me. “He can’t die. I thought I got the upper hand a few times but he was stronger than me.”

  Daniel’s wands were on the ground ten feet away on each side.

  I closed my eyes and channeled Georgeanna’s magic through my body. My magic glowed out of the staff in my hands. I placed it over Daniel’s form and watched as it forced his magic from his veins. He groaned on the ground and then started screaming.

  “What are you doing?” Daniel hollered.

  “Releasing them,” I said.

  Before Daniel could make another sound, Nathaniel stabbed him right in the heart. The blue magic from the knife paralyzed him in place, just like it did to both me and Nathaniel.

  ‘Lighten up, asshole. It’s not like this will kill you.’

  The light from my body and the staff expanded, forming another circle. Daniel opened his mouth to scream again but no sound came out. He knew exactly what I was doing. And there was no way I was stopping now.

  Chapter 12

  Daniel’s bones started to shake as the magic from my staff, my body, and Georgeanna filled me with power. A power I didn’t know my body could even control after everything I had just been through. And I wasn’t about to let what Daniel had been doing to these innocent spirits continue.

  The light kept expanding until it covered half the mountainside, breaking through the night sky and capturing the croxa still flying above us, trying to feed on whatever fear remained in our bodies.

  The second the light touched them they stopped circling us and looking like they might attack at any moment. They even stopped looking like beings that rotted in their own graves and arose against their will.

  They changed. Emily changed. Her body shifted into something more…angelic. More like the
night I saw her when she saved my life. Along with Andrew. The black lines around his eyes faded. And Annabel changed back to a youthful young woman. One whose life was cut short by a swift hand of evil. An evil that had touched each of them.

  “Thank you,” a voice stirred from behind me. I turned my head to see a face I hadn’t quite expected to see again. It was Carlton. Only he wasn’t a croxa. He wasn’t demonic. He was nothing more than a spirit. A ghost between worlds. And for the first time since I met him, there was an air of calmness around him.

  He stared up at the sky to find Emily. She descended down to her father. Her sister wasn’t far behind, floating through the light my staff created to undo Daniel’s work and purify their souls once more.

  “Let’s go home,” Carlton said, extending a hand to each of them. I saw Emily and Samantha both take it. Their white and translucent forms molded into each other before all three of them faded under the moonlight. When I looked up, I saw the other spirits doing the same, fading away in the night sky as the light from my staff grew dimmer by the second. I was getting weaker, and I couldn’t keep channeling Georgeanna anymore. She wasn’t much better off than I was.

  Andrew looked down on me. There was a hint of gratitude in his eyes. As if he was saying thank you for delivering his soul back to him. And that he could finally rest now. Then he too disappeared into the sky above us.

  “Where are they going?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled before falling backward.

  The last thing I saw before I collapsed was Georgeanna falling down with me.

  ‘She’s free. Emily’s spirit is finally free. They all are.’

  I watched the remaining smoke from the pillars wafting through the air as the chilly breeze slithered straight to my bones. A pair of strong arms lifted me in the air. A faint light appeared in the distance near the tree line. A man stepped out in a suit and tie. Very formal. Not at all what a man wears in the middle of the mountains. He took a moment to look around. To see the pillars and the charred earth where the fire circles had been burning, then back over to me.

  As the man walked closer, I saw his face clearly through the smoke. It was Eli.

  “What’s he doing here?” I mumbled.

  “Collecting his family’s property,” Nathaniel said as he lifted me higher into his arms.

  I curled into his chest, too weak to move but determined to stay awake.

  ‘Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out!’

  What did Nathaniel mean by his property? Was it me? Was I going to be enslaved to the vixra for what happened? He must know… surely Eli must know it wasn’t my fault. It was Victor and Daniel.

  “Daniel is over there,” Nathaniel said once Eli was close enough to hear him. “He’s been paralyzed by a magical knife. It’s enchanted with magic.”

  I remembered how angry Eli was after I used the vixra tunnels by myself to get to Emily. He used vixra blood magic to trap me in Madison’s house. I remembered the stern look on his face when I was sitting in his dining room with his father and grandfather. Neither of those moments compared to the rigid expression he wore now. Was his anger directed at me?

  ‘I tried to fix it. I tried!’

  “Use the tunnel,” Eli commanded. “My father is waiting for you both. I will take care of Daniel.”

  “What about Victor?”

  “Who the hell is Victor?”

  “One of Tobias’s warriors. He was helping Daniel.”

  I saw tension building in Eli’s forehead. He extended his arm out and Daniel’s two wands flew right into his hands with practically no effort whatsoever. Then he snapped them in half, breaking whatever magic Daniel might be able to harness through them so he couldn’t fight back. Bright blue sparks flew out of the wands as the magic inside them sputtered into nothing. Eli stepped around us and walked right over to Daniel.

  Nathaniel took me to the tunnel and we disappeared in an instant. I closed my eyes as the rushing wind flew by us until Nathaniel stepped out on the other end.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw a tall stone structure. One that was as menacing as it was beautiful. I knew instantly where I was without having to be told. This was Eli’s home. And I hadn’t been wrong. It looked like a castle from the outside. What the Matthews considered a family home was more like a museum to the common man. Or in my case, a common witchling.

  Crows cawed above us as the sun started to rise in the distance.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nathaniel asked me. “Why didn’t you tell me Georgeanna was alive.”

  My heart sank. There was no way I was going to get away with pretending I was too weak to answer him.

  “How long have you known?” he continued, aware that I heard him perfectly fine.

  “About a month.”

  “And you said nothing.” His voice was grave. Maybe not quite angry but definitely disappointed. Which somehow felt worse. I could deal with anger. But I was tired of people feeling as though I had let them down. Even if I was just trying to stay alive and put myself first for once.

  “It wasn’t my secret to tell,” I muttered. “She’s enslaved to the vixra. They punished her for running.”

  The door before us opened with a loud creaking noise of wood rubbing against the metal latches.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” Arthur said as Nathaniel stepped inside with me still in his arms.

  “Why is that?” Nathaniel asked as he took me through the main entrance and into a large greeting hall with paintings scaling the ridiculously high walls and ceiling.

  The door shut behind us with a loud thunderous clank that echoed throughout the hall, as though a door to a dungeon had been slammed shut behind us.

  “Damage control,” Arthur grunted as he walked passed us and led the way through the hall and up a large staircase. The same staircase I saw the first time I brewed a tolepa potion to find out where Madison was.

  I rested my head against Nathaniel’s bare chest, trying to listen for a heartbeat. There was none. He was back to being a vampire. Daniel completely destroyed the marking process. I didn’t know if Nathaniel still felt the same way about me, if he felt loyalty to me, or if he wanted to rip my heart from my chest for not telling him about Georgeanna. But I could sense the apprehension building inside of him as it slowly drifted from his skin and into my senses. His uneasiness told me that I needed to be on my guard. The vixra were upset. I could tell by Arthur’s voice. I knew why. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn’t marked Tobias.

  “Set her here,” Arthur said, pointing to a wooden chair.

  Nathaniel lowered me down. I nearly fell over the second he let go. I expended every ounce of magic I had left inside of me, and then some from Georgeanna. I had nothing left.

  Arthur stopped my fall. He placed his palm in front of my face and I watched as green light went through his fingers and into my body. I learned at that moment just how inefficient coffee was compared to the miracles vixra magic could provide. A jolt of energy sparked through my chest down to my toes and to the smallest hairs on my head. I sat up straight like I had been shaken awake by a pair of electrical paddles on my chest. Only it wasn’t a massive shock to my system. I was perfectly alert and wide awake.

  “Go get changed,” he said to Nathaniel. “Eli has some clothes that might fit you. Although, they may be a tight fit. You might not be able to close the jacket but at least you won’t look like you walked out of a fire pit.”

  “I won’t leave Harper,” he stated, trying to sound as though his mind was made up and wouldn’t be altered regardless of who he was speaking to.

  Arthur put down his arm and glared at him. Words didn’t need to be exchanged. Nathaniel had received an order from a vixra and needed to follow it.

  “Third hall on the right and the second door on the left,” said Arthur. “Don’t dawdle.”

  Nathaniel disappeared down the hall and I was left with Arthur Matthew’s eyes boring into mine. I once thought be
ing in the same room with Tobias was intimidating. But that was before I met Arthur. I was awake enough now to be alert and for my heartbeat to quicken once more. My magic even threatened to break through my palms to warn me. Not of danger, but that I was in the presence of someone I didn’t want to make angry.

  “I don’t know whether to tell you job well done or to lock you up and throw away the key,” he said in a strangely monotone voice.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, doing my best to sound humbled by his presence.

  “You helped to discover a traitor among the witchling world. One that was punished centuries ago for his treachery and somehow managed to find a way to nearly destroy us all once more. But in doing so, you created a cloud of chaos that could very well have enormous consequences.”

  “If this is about that scene at the White House, I didn’t have any control over it. It was Victor. I was trying to get away from him but he wanted a display. He might have even done it on purpose.”

  “Yes, that’s what Tobias said too.”

  “He’s here?”

  Arthur stood up a little straighter. Even I could sense his discomfort. I suspected he didn’t like having Tobias in his house. “Yes, unfortunately. But it was necessary. We haven’t had a security threat to witchlings of this nature since Daniel first created vampires.”

  I just about fell out of the chair again. “I’m sorry. What? Daniel created vampires?”

  “Back when he was known as Drostan and leader of the Roganach-Ciar. An ancient coven of luxra witchlings. Do you know the story?” he asked me, clearly not wanting to waste time on details I may already know.

  “My gran told me a little but I never knew which parts were true and which parts she had to fill in. She said a luxra coven made a pact with kruxa to cast a spell and regain some of their magic. But it backfired.”

  “Indeed,” he said with a sigh. “It backfired. Drostan brought about the existence of vampires in this realm. A mistake we have had to deal with for centuries. It resulted in his permanent enslavement until he helped us find a way to contain them. Or kill them. Having vampires bond with kruxa to regain their mortality seemed like enough for a long time. It was a spell Daniel cast on all kruxa descendants to gain clemency for his crimes. Until vampires started hunting kruxa down to keep their immortality.”