Bone Witch

by D. N. Hoxa

  But wasn’t I already?

  I didn’t have the time to figure it out. I didn’t even have time to make it to my feet when it started.

  My heart hammered in my chest. Ralph was turning.

  Impossible, part of me said. It was broad daylight, and there were humans around, close enough to notice something like a person turning into a wolf. The ECU prohibited it. There were rules.

  But I’d broken the rules, according to them. Why wouldn’t Ralph?

  “No, no, no,” I whispered to myself and dragged my ass away. He was turning right there in front of my eyes. I’d seen a werewolf turn before, and the second time wouldn’t be any better or any less terrifying.

  “Stop it,” he hissed, his voice completely transformed now. He sounded like you’d expect a beast to sound.

  “I’m not doing anything!” I cried, but he didn’t seem to care. His face covered in thick brown fur. Sharp teeth came out of his lips. His eyes grew wider and turned yellow.

  But all of this was nothing compared to the changes in his body.

  Where there used to be fingers, there were now claws. The sleeves of his jacket tore as thick fur sprung from his skin to cover every inch of it. Werewolves didn’t actually grow in size, but as the transformation completed, Ralph sure looked a thousand times bigger to me.

  When he growled, my heart stopped beating again. He looked more than terrifying, a cross between man and beast. A proper werewolf, able to tear you apart with his claws in a single move.

  And he was coming right at me.

  I was running before I’d realized I’d made it to my feet—which I didn’t even feel anymore. The park was flat and there was nowhere to hide, but I still ran. Ralph came after me and the sound of him approaching made me wish I had wings to fly. That was the only way a witch could outrun a werewolf.

  Since I had no wings, he caught up with me extremely fast. I was thrown against a tree, and now my left side was completely broken, too. I fell to the ground hard, my limp arms and legs sprawled around me. Goddamn it, I couldn’t even catch a break—or my breath by the time Ralph was above me. Looking at him was a bad idea, but tell that to my eyes that couldn’t tear themselves from his huge, hairy face. He growled again at me, and for a second, all I saw was sharp teeth and a really big mouth.

  My hands were instinctively in front of me, and I did the only thing I knew how to do: I conjured my shield. It was going to do absolutely nothing against a werewolf. They were way too strong and my magic was barely a meh. But it was instinct, and if it postponed death for even a single second, it would have done its job.

  And it did.

  Another growl and his arm was so big, I heard the air whoosh when he swung it, his claws coming for my face. Instead, bright white sparks flew all over when his claws met resistance. When they met my shield.

  Excuse me for just a moment. What the actual fuck?

  Ralph looked surprised, but he got himself together quickly and tried again.

  And again, white sparks everywhere.

  Why wasn’t my shield already broken?

  Ralph tried again, and again, and again. Nothing but sparks.

  The whole world stood still as I realized what had happened. I hadn’t died.

  The ritual had worked.

  There was no other explanation for it. My shield was weak, if that. A werewolf’s claw would have been able to tear it and me apart in one swing. Unless it was a proper shield. Unless my magic was strong enough to conjure and maintain it exactly as the books said.

  There was just one problem: the books also said that even a strong shield was no match for a werewolf’s claw, especially after the second time.

  Ralph had tried to break it five times. Five.

  But he didn’t wait for me to try and figure this out. Instead, he growled and stepped away to gain momentum, before he ran toward me again. My eyes closed involuntarily. First, there were sparks. Then, there was a werewolf head right on my chest.

  My ribs broke. I felt each one as they cut my breath. Goddamn it, this being breathless thing was getting old really fast.

  Ralph stood up, as surprised as I was to see my shield broken. This time, I didn’t wait for him to figure out what had happened. Sure enough, almost every spell I’d learned while I was homeschooled and unable to skip even a single class like a normal teenager became picture clear in my head all of a sudden. All I had to do was chant it—and breathe at the same time—before I passed out.

  The words tangled in my mouth as Ralph walked the two steps it took to get to me again, his claws ready. Another growl. Chant, chant, chant…

  I’d felt my magic before. I thought I knew exactly what it was, or what it would feel like once it was all there. But I’d had no idea. The warm, stingy feeling that started right below my broken ribs and spread fast all over my body was nothing like anything I could have ever imagined. It was much more powerful than I could have guessed, completely raw and almost with a head of its own. It made my skin itch as it coursed through my veins as if in a rush to get to the tips of my fingers. Breathing was no longer necessary. Magic held me focused as it spilled all over me, and through the tips of my fingers.

  Bright orange light took over my view. Ralph’s growl rang clearly in my ears. I held on tightly to my own broken body, too terrified to allow myself to think about anything.

  Then, there was only silence.

  Power left me as fast as it had found me. Breathing became a necessity again, and pain hit me, full force. I kept expecting the werewolf to come at me again, but he didn’t. There was no werewolf in front of me anymore. There was only Ralph, in his human form, dressed in burned, torn clothes, lying on the ground. Not breathing.

  I blinked and blinked to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, but the view in front of me never changed. Ralph didn’t start to move. He just lay there, looking at the grey sky, just like I had when his fingers were wrapped around my throat.

  I’d killed him, but that wasn’t what surprised me the most. How was the real concern.

  Humans around me, close enough for me to see them, close enough for them to see me. Just how much had they really seen? And did I even want to stick around and find out?

  A definite no. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going anywhere with my broken…everything. Panic set in for half a second. Then I remembered that I had my magic now, and it was much more powerful than I ever thought it would be. I could conjure a healing spell. I could actually heal myself without a spell stone.

  It would have been a happy moment for me had I been able to breathe properly and had not the crowd of humans around me grown. Without hesitating, I closed my eyes and thought of the weird words that laced together the most powerful healing spell I knew.

  The same warmth spread through me, starting from below my ribs, which didn’t hurt as much as they used to anymore. In fact, my elbow didn’t hurt as much, and neither did my right foot. If I was afraid the spell wouldn’t work, all the fear was gone now. And when I opened my eyes again, I breathed easier.

  The pain hadn’t faded completely, but it was manageable. That’s why I made it to my feet again. My foot hurt when I stepped on it, but this was all that magic was able to do for me. No spell could fix everything at once.

  I’d ran farther than I thought while Ralph had chased me. Ralph, whom I didn’t even dare look at again before turning my back to him. Too many lives taken. Too much blood on my hands.

  For now, though, I focused on my mother’s bones. There would be no energy left in them now. No spell could find them, but that didn’t mean I wanted hands on them. Any hands other than mine. When I fell to my knees in front of the hole, I almost cried out.

  My magic worked. It worked as it should—even better. So why had my mother kept me from it?

  As I tried to come up with a good enough reason and put my three remaining spell stones back in my pocket, something floated from the hole I’d dug. I was pretty sure I was imagining it because it seemed to be bone. Just a rea
lly small piece of bone, floating on air right in front of my face. By now, my mother’s bones should have been turned to ash since there was no magic in them.

  But then, the beads around my finger, splattered all over with my blood, flew over to it and circled it. I hadn’t even been thinking about them, and they never moved away from my hands without my command. Never, except now.

  They began to swirl around the piece of bone, first slow, then fast, and then faster. I could do nothing but watch as my beads began to melt. It was surreal, one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen in my life. My beads turned to liquid while they swirled, then a single drop from all four of them floated toward the piece of bone in the middle. I didn’t dare blink for fear I’d miss how the molten titanium created a perfect circle hiding the bone completely from my view. The metal turned hard again, and now, instead of four, there were five beads in front of me, almost completely the same as they had been, only a tiny bit smaller.

  A breath later, they lined themselves around my hand again, all five of them.

  A laugh escaped my lips. I’d never seen anything like it before. Never even heard or read something similar. Mother had never told me how the beads were made. All she said was that every time a mother died in our bloodline, there would be one extra bead for the daughter. She sure as hell didn’t mention the details, or else I would have probably performed the ritual a long time ago, just to see it.

  Sirens in the distance.

  “Fuck,” I breathed. I was running out of time. My right arm was working again, and it didn’t hurt too much to use it, so I closed the hole I’d made much faster. “I’ll come back for you,” I promised my mother, then closed my eyes and tried to conjure a sealing spell above the ground.

  It seemed those two spells I’d made had gotten to my head too fast. I couldn’t attach the sealing spell to the ground if my life depended on it. All I was left with was the hope that when the ECU came to check on Ralph and the mess I’d created, they wouldn’t find my mother’s ashes.

  “I love you,” I whispered to the ground once again, and with tears in my eyes, I turned towards the hill.

  Running was much easier now that my foot didn’t hurt that much. I still felt it throbbing all the way to my brain, but it didn’t matter. I’d have time to rest. For now, I just needed to get away, as far as I could go, and hide. Regroup. Rethink a plan.

  The blue Mercedes I’d stolen from that man in Manhattan was still there, untouched. I’d left it open, the keys inside because I honestly didn’t think I’d ever make it back to it. With a smile on my face, I hurried to it, eager to disappear already.

  But the universe didn’t seem like it planned to leave me alone any time soon.

  Before I opened the door, I caught my reflection in the window. My hair was all over the place. Blood and dirt left no part of my skin unmarked. I looked—and felt—disgusting, and I probably smelled a lot. I tried to wipe my face with the sleeves of my jacket as well as I could and I put my hair behind my ears, too.

  Looking back now, that was the moment I most regretted in my life.

  I didn’t see it at first. I just continued to dust off my clothes. When I saw how useless that was, I stopped. I stared at the mirror again. That’s when I saw the ears.

  They were pointed.

  When my legs didn’t give up on me that second, I was sure they never would. With my shaking hands, I reached for them. I touched my skin, and it felt exactly the same. My ears, too, except they weren’t round at the top like they always used to be. I know. I looked in the mirror probably a million times. Instead, they were pointy.

  Who had pointed ears?

  Fairies had pointed ears.

  Suddenly, the memory of Ralph’s face came back to me with a rush. How he’d looked at me after my chest felt like it had exploded. How he’d shouted at me to stop spelling him.

  He thought I was making him see things. He thought I was creating the illusion with my magic.

  I hadn’t. I’d done nothing. Nothing at all to make this happen. To deserve this.

  My body was numb, pain completely gone by the time I sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door, not daring to look at my eyes in the rearview mirror.

  It looked like I had finally found out why my mother never wanted me to come to my powers.

  Nine

  The police were everywhere. My whole body shaking, I looked around the car I’d stolen for something to clean my face with. In the compartment glove, I found a box of baby wet wipes. As if I wasn’t feeling shitty enough. I’d done bad things, and sometimes very bad things, but I was no thief. Now, I couldn’t even say that.

  I cleaned my face without looking in the mirror. My hair was a mess of dirt but there was nothing I could do about that. Not even put it behind my ears from fear I’d accidentally touch them. I was not going to allow myself to think about it. Nope. Not for a second.

  My heart was in my throat as I drove away from Long Island, passing police car after police car. I was a Paranormal so they wouldn’t be inclined to pull me over, but in situations like this, when humans reported what they’d seen at the park, they would make no exceptions. Not that a human prison could hold a Paranormal, but that was where the ECU came in. If the humans caught me, I’d be served to my hunters on a silver platter.

  Not something I would allow, so I just smiled my biggest, brightest, fakest smile I had whenever someone even looked at the car—which I should have gotten rid of a long time ago, but stealing another was not on my to-do list any time soon. I’d hang onto it, and if I got caught, I’d find a way out.

  A three-hour drive was ahead of me. Destination: Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. I was going to see the one person I never thought I’d ever need help from. Ever.

  Just the day before, I’d thought my aunt Amelia would the option after the last. Unfortunately, now, she’d become the only option. No matter that I didn’t want to think about my reflection—she was the only one who could give me answers. The plan was to stop at a motel somewhere and try to rent a car. Or even buy a cheap one. If I got to her place at nightfall, it would be a success.

  Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania was kind of the main city of Bones. The largest Bone coven, the one that controlled all the other ones across the States, had been in Pennsylvania ten years ago. From what I heard around the office at the Agency, more than half the witches of the coven had never left the place, even after they officially dissolved. My aunt had stayed right there, too. She was sure that the coven was going to get back together very soon, or so she told my mother while she was alive, many times.

  Nobody really knew why the Bone coven dissolved, except those that were part of it, and they would never talk about it. Not to others, anyway. Rumor had it, it was the same as it had been with the Hedge coven. Hedge witches were the strongest of all. It’s said that their power comes directly from the moon, and once the moon takes over the night sky, there’s no stopping their power. Their coven dissolved many years ago, too. From what we know, it was over a show of strength between two of the biggest Hedge families. A lot of witches died that night, and after that, there was no coven. Hedges were stubborn, driven by greed, their egos bigger than any other Paranormal’s. They picked fights with people without reason, having no coven to keep control between them. They usually won every single fight—until morning. In daylight, they were an easy kill for anyone. I’d never met one in person because they were said to be extinct. I had the weird feeling that the same fate awaited Bones. Not that I had any connection to the coven or the witches, but it still felt bad.

  The phone in my pocket was broken. Possibly from when Ralph broke my shield—and my ribs—with his head. The phone had been in my jacket. I thought about calling Amelia to let her know I was going to visit, but I decided against it. What if she said no? There was nobody else I could turn to, not now. Not after what I looked like. She was sure going to be surprised when she saw me at her doorstep, but all I could do was hope that she wouldn’t turn me away.

>   ***

  I stopped at a motel an hour away from Bloomsburg. I still hadn’t calmed down, not even a little, but I needed a shower. I needed a second to put my head on a pillow. I needed to eat really badly. And the motel had a car dealership on one side, and a diner on the other.

  The first thing I did was grab a large pizza at the diner. With a slice in hand, I went to the car dealership. They sold used cars, and I offered the human with a very dirty shirt a thousand dollars for the best car he could find for me. He didn’t seem to mind that I was a mess of dirt and blood like the waitress at the diner had. He barely even looked at my face when he handed me the keys and pointed at a faded army green truck. Said the tank was full, too. It was perfect. I was going to leave the stolen Mercedes in the motel’s parking lot, then call it in from a pay phone as soon as I got to my destination.

  Finally, I entered the motel. The woman sitting behind the small counter barely mumbled a hello when she saw me. Completely disoriented by my very presence, she took five minutes to find a damn key to a free room. It was okay, though. I understood, and most importantly, my stomach was half full because I never stopped eating.

  With the key in hand, I finally made it out. A man with a grey beard and a cigar burning between his lips looked me over from head to toe. Determined to keep my mouth shut, I lowered my head and walked away.

  “Bloody fairy,” he hissed from behind me.

  The blood in my veins froze. I turned my head just slightly to see he’d stopped right in front of the door and was looking at me. He didn’t smell like a werewolf, and he was definitely not a vampire. He could have very well been a Bone witch, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask.

  Instead, I just began to walk away again.

  “Why don’t you curl up in a hole and die, you filthy creature,” the man called, his voice reaching my ears loud and clearly.

  Before I knew it, there were tears in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them spill. Biting my tongue until I drew blood, I didn’t let myself stop. Or turn. Or kill him right then and there.