by Claudy Conn
I couldn’t move—stunned with disbelief, shock, and denial once again.
My entire world had just been ripped apart and mashed into the earth. Like a coward I stood there waiting for my death. All I could think was let me die now.
He turned hate-filled, glowing eyes to me and shouted, “You could have been mine. Your mother made a mistake all those years ago. She chose him. He couldn’t save himself, let alone her, and now you too will die, and she will be no more, and I will be free.”
Anger welled up inside me, and with the last ounce of strength I had, I shot out pure white magical energy, a birthright from my mother and my ancestors.
It hit him, and this time, it stunned him.
He recouped and grinned wickedly before he told me, “She should have prepared you. She should have known I would come.” He laughed, and the evil sound swept through me like the poison from his claws.
He picked me up with one fist closed around my neck and dangled me as though I weighed less than a feather. I couldn’t even struggle and, in truth, didn’t want to. I wanted to die and join my parents and my clan. His fangs displayed themselves, and I knew I was going to get my wish. He was a hybrid, and like a werewolf’s bite, his would be deadly.
When his teeth connected with my flesh, I knew it was over. Death would be agonizing, but at least I would join my loved ones.
He dropped me to the blood-filled grass and sneered as he turned to his pack of monsters now in human form.
He shifted back into wolf, and as a pack they did the same. Then they howled their victory to the winds.
Poison seeped into my organs, and pain began its vicious journey. Still I asked myself, even in those last moments, But … how? Weres can’t shift on command … he must be getting help.
I watched him take his pack and leave, all of them walking into the woods and away from the destruction they had wrought on our peaceful clan. I had seen them in their human form, and even though I was about to die, I consigned their faces to memory.
Agony swept through me. Grief tore through my heart and laid it open. Tentacles filled with poison rushed through my blood and left me in a world of pain.
Whimpering, I tried crawling closer to my mom, who was only a few feet away.
I cried out as I witnessed my father, a vampire well over a hundred years old, disintegrate. All my clan members were disintegrating.
Happy twenty-first, Harley, thought I bitterly.
Banks would have known my death would be slower than all the others. I was a hybrid of sorts, witch and vampire. He had wanted me to see the horror of what he had done.
He knew I would suffer, and as I did, I was ashamed at the sounds I made. And then it came to me, one overriding emotion. It welled inside me and burst. I had never felt it before, but even as I died, it was a terrifyingly dominant sensation that obliterated all else.
HATE.
~ One ~
ONE EYELID OPENED and then shut.
Where was I? Dead. I was dead. Where did dead vampires go? Pain shot through my body like millions of tiny, sharp, pointed jabs. I closed my one eye because I couldn’t focus anyway and didn’t really want to.
I thought I heard my mother’s voice calling, Harley.
She needed me, so I tried to go through the process again. I was disoriented, and something was wrong with my other eyelid. It wouldn’t open, and I realized it was sealed shut. Why? How?
The world was gray and green and smelled of blood and wolf. I wanted to hide in the darkness and not think. My mother’s voice sounded in my head again, though. Harley. Harley, get up.
I dragged myself into a sitting position and gingerly touched my sealed eyelid.
Dried blood. It was shut tight with dried blood.
I rubbed it until I was able to flicker it open. I managed to get onto my knees and touched the ground to steady myself.
The question repeated itself: Where was I? And then it all came flooding back in living color, and those colors were only red and black and more red.
I looked at my mother’s lifeless body lying only a few feet away. Oh no, oh no. Why couldn’t it have been a nightmare?
Her beloved green, witchy eyes were open. Her crushed heart lay on the grass beside her, and she was gone—forever gone. I gagged and was convulsed with a tsunami wave of horror.
I sank back onto my rump on the grass and closed my eyes again.
Anguish bubbled painfully through my blood. Agony swept through my body. Torturous and demanding reality made me dry-heave.
And then came the question: How was I alive?
She came to me in that moment, my mother’s voice in my mind. I was alive because of her. She had prepared and made me drink a potion she knew would save me—change me, but give me back a life. Oh, Mom, what have you done?
I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to live. I wanted oblivion.
Her image came to life before my haze-filled eyes, but I knew she was gone. I knew because I was sitting beside her in a pool of her drying blood.
I looked around as my body writhed in agony from the physical changes still taking place inside me. Drink, she had said. Drink.
Her image floated above the grass, a ghost of what she had been. Her voice whispered in my head, sweetly, encouragingly.
I shook my head free. No. How? I had somehow lived and had gone insane, I thought at once.
And then I remembered how she touched my forehead after I downed that awful liquid. She had spelled a memory into me—her memory.
I would have it always—her face, my dad’s face, and her voice. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her just then. It was so hard to listen to her while her body lay in the late afternoon sun.
My mom was strong and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She came to me gently but with a force that held me fast and told me why I was alive.
She had seen some of the horror we had just experienced in a vision—some, not all. It was why she had created the potion only the day before. She had needed time to create more for all the clan … for my father and herself, but that wasn’t to be.
Banks had killed me. Oh, I died all right, but I came back, and I came back as something unique. I was still a vampire but now also a shifter, a hybrid in the ‘normal’ sense of the word. That was due to Banks’s poisonous bite, which my mother had foreseen. I survived it, and my body incorporated his shifter elements and merged them with my vampire DNA. However, there was more. My mom had created a potion filled with her own special brand of magic, and my blood had absorbed it as it made it my own. I stared at her transparent image, standing right there in front of me … speaking to me. She told me what she had done to keep me alive, but all I wanted was to sink into her arms.
I couldn’t. My parents, my clan, were gone forever.
She told me I was now a force of magic, but I needed training. She wanted me to go to Mike and Tanya. She said my magic needed darkening for the days to come.
It was all too much. My mother—a white witch—wanted me to learn dark magic?
She told me I had always been the impossible because I was born to an immortal white witch and a vampire. Now I was even more impossible, and it would be very difficult to kill me.
Banks had known how to kill my immortal mother. There are three ways to kill an immortal white witch. Banks had taken her in the most hideous of those ways.
Suddenly all thought was suspended as my body convulsed once again, and a seizure shook me so hard I thought my body would splinter into many pieces. I lay helpless on the earth, trembling from the tremors that shook me.
I tried to get a grip and thought of my mother. Just as suddenly as the seizure had taken me into convulsions, it stopped. Magic.
I had used magic to stop it. That magic had come automatically, somehow. I knew it—felt it softly coursing through me.
I sucked in a long breath of air and sat up.
I had to honor what my mom had done for me. I had to be strong, because I was going to get the son-of-a-bitc
h that had killed her and my father and tear him limb from limb. Then I was going to get each and every one of his werewolves and do the same to them. No pity, just like what they had displayed—none whatsoever.
I looked again at my mom, lying there, and cried my heart out.
After a time, I sat up and saw I was covered in dried blood.
I looked around at the piles of ash scattered all over our once beautiful yard. Ash was all that remained of my dad, my clan. They had been kind and generous beings who had not hurt anyone in over one hundred years.
Oh no, Oh NO! How could I have lost them—lost them all?
He had done this for revenge. Banks. I knew only one name—Banks. Well, I was going to damn well find him and show him what revenge felt like when it was turned in his direction.
It hurt to see their ash remains blow away in the wind.
It started to rain, and the pelting wetness was a relief as it hit my flesh and soaked me through. Ignoring the wretched sharpness of the pain shooting through my belly, I got to my feet.
I had to bury my mom. I had to. I ran to the house, stripped off my bloody clothing, went into the hot shower, and stood there forever.
I wanted to wash it all away.
After a time, I was able to dry myself off, go into my room, and dress in jeans and a black T-shirt.
The next thing I did was lift the lid of my hope chest. Hope? All gone.
After emptying it of all the keepsakes I had collected over the years, I lined it with her favorite quilt. Then, with so much more than vamp strength, I picked it up, took it outside, and set it beside my mom’s lifeless body.
As gently as I could, and with sobs raging through me, making me feel as though I were being split in half, I placed her inside.
My dad loved building things and working the land. We had a successful winery that he’d started when he bought the place, and so tractors and other such machinery were in the barn.
All at once, the rain stopped, and I looked up. Something glinted brightly before it vanished, and I thought it was Mom’s soul joining her ancestors.
The McDagus Vineyard was a thing of the past.
There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was certain that as soon as the devil and his pack were able to transfer the deeds, he would install wolves here to run what belonged to my family. I thought of burning it, not letting them have my home, but, no. One day I would reclaim it!
I took my dad’s old Bobcat and dug up a spot near the boulder where my parents had carved out our initials. I dug deep into the earth and then jumped out of the Bobcat, lifted my hope chest, and put it as gently as I could in the earth that she had always loved and respected.
I laid my mom to rest … I couldn’t do the same for my dad, whose ashes had scattered in the wind.
I got back into the Bobcat and used its shovel to push the earth over the hope chest, crying all the while. When I was done I jumped out and ran to pick up a garden shovel. I dug up her favorite rose bushes and her perennials and planted them just beside the boulder near her grave.
I had to leave. I knew it was time. I had to leave.
Banks would be back with his pack to claim my father’s place. I wanted him to think I’d disintegrated like all the vampires. I wanted him to think I was dead.
He would see my mother’s grave and think perhaps our Indian friends who lived in the foothills had found her. He wouldn’t pick an argument with them. Supernaturals of all sorts kept their distance from the Shatchwaanie tribe. They were shifters, and they were an ancient tribe, a powerful one that even hybrids would not want to engage in battle.
It was time for me to go, but as I looked around, I vowed to come back.
I knew what I needed—my mom had told me.
I needed to go dark. Could I? My mother gave me a white witch’s power. Could I acquire some dark sorcery to go with it? She had always told me white magic could defeat dark but that there were times it should mingle. This was one of those times.
I would have to know—learn how to use it. Yeah, well, I think I had already gone a little dark. You can’t hate without that happening, and I hated from the depths of the newly changed soul I now possessed. If Banks was going to die at my hands, and he damn well was, I needed every advantage, no matter the cost. He was an ancient hybrid with dark magic, so there was something I was going to have to do immediately: train.
I was going to shove my hand into his chest and take his black heart from it. Oh yeah, hot damn, I was going to make him suffer. I would keep him alive and make him watch me crush his heart in my hands.
It would not bring back my mom and dad. It would not bring back my friends, my clan, but it would put an end to his evil. He—his pack—would not be allowed to benefit long from the deaths of my family.
I closed my eyes as I walked to my dad’s black SUV and remembered I needed to pack and I needed blood. I was weaker than I should be, and it was from thirst.
I had consigned Banks’s face to memory. Handsome in spite of his evil, with a scar across his chin. He shouldn’t have been so handsome. His face should have mirrored what was inside him. But the devil comes in many guises.
I had an advantage, though. This devil thought I was dead. He didn’t know that, one day soon, I would be coming for him!
* * *
I found what I needed in the fridge and drank it down swiftly. Suddenly something happened. Glowing—I felt myself glow and rushed to the mirror. Right, I was glowing. What the hell?
Some quirk of the change.
I hurriedly packed and stuffed everything into the SUV. It was time I headed down towards a hidden dirt road that would take me to a stretch of private land deep in the foothills, to the two people my parents trusted more than any others on earth.
Mike and Tanya Benewah lived well above the village, and although their land was spelled against intruders, my parents and I were always able to pass the magical barrier. Mike and his wife were Shatchwaanie and were also guardians of their Shifter tribe. They lived on the outskirts of the tribe’s land, and they kept watch. Theirs was a sacred Shatchwaanie outpost.
They were an immortal tribe with untold abilities. Theirs was an ancient heritage, and legend had it that they would only take arms against an enemy when their land was in danger.
I parked outside their log cabin home, but even as I got out of the SUV Mike was already stampeding towards me. I rushed him and sank into his sturdy arms; he was a life jacket in a roaring ocean. “Mike!”
“I know, little one,” he said as he brushed my hair with his hand and then patted my back. “I saw it all in the Orb just now. I was just on my way up to get you …”
I looked at his beautiful, weathered face, and I saw his dark eyes begin to glow yellow with the fury he felt, the kind of fury that seeps in and grows when you know you’re helpless to change what you can’t. As a Shatchwaanie Indian, he was, along with his mate and the others of their tribe, forbidden from taking sides in the wars of outsiders.
Mike and his wife, Tanya, had been the best friends my parents had ever had. They had seen many changes over their years together. That in itself was an oddity because, as a rule, their tribe of shapeshifters neither trust nor approved of vampires.
“Where is Tanya? Is she okay?” I suddenly was frightened for her.
“She is warding our perimeter with a new spell. He—Carsen Banks—thinks you are dead, but we don’t want to take any chances. The ward she is installing now cannot be broken.” He lifted my chin. “You will remember your parents, your clan, as they were.”
“I will.” I nodded.
He hugged me. “Tanya has given herself a new tattoo, one to protect herself from the dark magic she has called on.” He gave me a half smile and patted my shoulder as he released me. “It is a doozy.” He sighed heavily and added, “I sent her word through our mind link that you were here. She should be back soon.”
“Will he come after the Shatchwaanie?” I asked worriedly.
“He
is arrogant, but he isn’t stupid. If he were to attack us, he would incur the wrath of the entire tribe. He won’t take unnecessary chances. He has, he believes, accomplished some of what he wants,” Mike said sadly.
“Some?” I asked, diverted by this. “What more could he want?”
He took my arm. “Come with me, Harley. I want to show you something.”
We went inside, and he sat me in front of the table where his ancient Orb reposed in a pink crystal bowl filled with heather. Pink crystal has soothing qualities. As he placed my fingers around the bowl I knew that it had been set there for me.
“I want you to look inside the Orb—study what you see,” Mike said.
I did as he asked and at first saw only gray mist. Then the mist got thicker and, like a curtain, parted. I saw … a man. No, he wasn’t just a man but something else. He was huge—a Titan of a man—with tawny hair that fell in waves to his neckline. His eyes were mesmerizing and fiercely blue. He was beautiful. He held an ancient sword, and I knew at once it was an immortal’s Death Weapon. Death Weapons such as that were made to kill supernaturals, and my parents had taught me how to recognize one.
I stared at him in the Orb. It was as though I were right there beside the Titan as he raised his sword high. With his free hand he grabbed the wrist of a stunning young woman.
She was exquisitely beautiful, with long, dark hair and glittering eyes. He dragged her away from an open, arched doorway. She tried yanking out of his hold.
She resisted and shouted, “I’ll not go with you, Kian! Do you hear me? I have made up my mind.”
Banks stepped through that open doorway, and the scar across his chin caught my gaze. A wave of hatred made me gag.
I wanted to put another scar across his face before I killed him. I clenched my fists at my side. Where they hell were they?
The Titan called Kian kept pulling her along, and I could see a stretch of green, sloping grass at his back. Why was this so familiar?
All at once, I knew. This was Ireland.
My parents had taken me there a few times as I was growing up. I had the feel of my beloved Ireland in my witch’s mind. If so, what was Banks doing there? When had he gone there? Was this a scene from the past or the future? An Orb could show present, past, and future.
