Spectrum of Magic Complete Series - Spell Breaker - Fate Shifter - Cursed Stone - Magic Unborn - Libra

by D. N. Leo

  It was Orla who stood between him and his parents. He had never told her he’d chosen her over his family because it was a wound that had never healed in his soul, and there was no point in her carrying the baggage.

  But now it seemed he had lost from both ends.

  Just before the last drop of energy drained out of him, he saw the gate of his family’s mansion. The door swung open before he reached it, and once inside, he fell into the arms of his parents and his sister.

  He had made it home.

  Chapter 3

  Cold reality slapped at Orla’s face as she ran aimlessly into the woods. She had left Lorcan at the riverbank with a strange woman. The scene of him holding the woman had ripped at her heart. She knew infidelity wasn’t in Lorcan’s blood, but she had underestimated how much it would hurt her to see him with another woman.

  They had been through so many life and death situations. She recalled the many times she’d held him in her arms, knowing that life was drifting away from him and having no clue how she’d ever survive if he died. But nothing compared to this!

  The pain knocked the wits out of her. She ran until her legs began to cramp and her breath hissed in and out of her lungs in painful spurts. She finally collapsed onto her knees. When she looked up, the entrance of a graveyard loomed over her. She pulled herself up to her feet, using the low stone wall for support. She looked over the wall at the moss-covered gravestones, letting the misty fog and slight breeze soothe her broken heart.

  The magic that her family possessed made it easy to keep private cemeteries looking scary enough so that they were left alone. She knew that the fog wasn’t the ghosts of the dead, aimlessly wandering around their burial places. She finally caught her breath enough to stand up straight and limp her way down the gravel walkway toward the back of the cemetery where her aunt’s grave was.

  Aunt Siobhan had been more than just her mother’s sister. Since her parents had died when she was five, she had known Aunt Siobhan as her mother. She had been a mentor in more than just magic, and she had been the one to give Orla hope that love was still attainable.

  She set her feet on the familiar path, letting them carry her to the very back of the cemetery where the wild trees and grasses of the Irish moors began to creep up over the walls. She loved that her aunt’s grave was here. Siobhan had been more of an elemental, using nature itself in her magic and spells. Now it almost seemed like nature was coming to be a part of her again, even after she was dead. As the fog rolled back, the grave marker came into view through the mist. The wild grasses and moss had started to grow up the stone, and Orla did her best to peel them off with her bare hands. She knelt down in front of it when she’d finished clearing the vegetation.

  Then she thought of Lorcan again, and the fresh wound opened. She let her tears flow freely now, watering the grass at the foot of the stone.

  “Don’t go watering the weeds! There’s no point in me coming here every month to do the weeding if you’re just going to encourage them to grow.”

  Orla’s head jerked up, her heart racing as she turned around slowly. “Maeve! Oh boy, am I glad to see you!”

  Maeve was Siobhan’s daughter, and she and Orla had grown up together. Maeve smiled at her and helped her up for a welcome hug. Orla stumbled a little, as her legs had cramped up from kneeling down on the uneven paving stones.

  “You should be glad it’s me instead of someone else. There’s a bit of a storm brewing. You’ll be in trouble if they find you. You should stop by Mom’s old house. It’s empty and abandoned. You should be safe there for a while.” Orla gave Maeve a hug and an extra squeeze.

  “Thank you. Your psychic read has gotten much better over the years, I can tell.”

  The smile faded from Maeve’s face. “I saw clouds, Orla. You didn’t come back by yourself. A storm is following you, and this one is bad.”

  The pain had crept up on Orla again, and she teared up.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” Maeve asked.

  Orla nodded and wiped her tears away.

  “It’s poor timing, Orla. Couldn’t you have waited another two weeks to return?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “It’s a full moon in two weeks, and Bradan will become the leader of the clan.”

  “Bradan?”

  “Your distant cousin, Orla!”

  Orla squinted. “Oh . . . oh . . . Who would have thought!” Orla exclaimed remembering the skinny, freckle-faced, red-haired boy that all the girls, including her, had picked on all the time. She cleared her throat. “So I guess he’d grown up a strong candidate for the leadership. But what does that have to do with my timing? I broke my promise with the ancestors. If they catch me, they’ll burn me. And so what?”

  “The position has always been yours until replaced by the newly chosen. So that’s Bradan, and that will be in two weeks’ time. Unless you really want to . . .”

  “Hell no.”

  “If you don’t want to take up that post with the clan, why come back now?”

  Orla had no answer. She had left and had been gone for years. She’d sworn to never set foot in the village again. There had been many times she’d wanted to come back to visit Aunt Siobhan’s grave and Maeve, but her haunting past had put her off. She couldn’t live the emotionless life of black magic again.

  And then came Lorcan. He had found her in the city after she’d run off for a few years. He’d left everything behind for her. Before she knew it, he had become a part of her life that was more important than anything else.

  Then came this trip. Bricius had cursed his parents, and he’d had to come back to Ireland. He’d thought he could get away and leave Orla in Eudaiz. But she had followed him anyway. Ciaran had helped her, warning that her trip was against Lorcan’s wishes. Her thought circled back to the scene at the riverbank. Who was that woman? she wondered.

  “Orla!” Maeve called out.

  “Huh?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  The image of Maeve became blurry and flickering in front of Orla. Oh crap! Someone was using black magic on her.

  Chapter 4

  Orla swayed and tried to hang on to her consciousness. She should have known. What had she expected, coming back to the land of black magic, to the place where she’d grown up, where she had been trained and where she owed a debt?

  She hadn’t been practicing for years. Her knees buckled. She heard Maeve calling out for her and felt her hands on her shoulders. Her best friend could help. Aunt Siobhan was a white witch, and Maeve practised white magic. She wasn’t part of the clan, and she was Orla’s only hope. They had been communicating in their psychic minds for years, and she was sure her trip to the Daimon Gate wouldn’t have broken their psychic communication channel.

  “Help me!” Orla managed. She couldn’t get many words past her lips, but she remembered mind reading was one of Maeve rare gifts. “Read me!” She reached her hands out and tried her best to clear her mind to communicate with Maeve. She felt Maeve’s cool hands grabbing hers and a slight energy passing through her body. The warmth of the energy helped.

  “Concentrate,” Orla told herself, willing the muddy clouds from her mind. The scene of Lorcan and the woman at the riverbank flashed back into Orla’s mind. As much as it hurt her, she forced herself to analyze the situation. Someone was using the black magic on her. Someone was trying to break up her relationship with Lorcan. Someone wanted her to resent him.

  A sharp pain pierced through her brain, and Orla suddenly slumped to the ground, breathing heavily.

  “Hold on, Orla, keep thinking. I’m with you,” said Maeve.

  The resentment grew quickly into hatred. Orla could read her mind like an outsider and could see her conscious mind was leaving her. “I want to hate Lorcan.” The words were demonic. It came deep from her throat and from her soul.

  “What are you talking about? You confuse me, Orla. Your mind is confusing. I can’t get hold of it,” Maeve cried in a panic.


  Orla’s head was throbbing. She was losing it. She gasped for air as tears streamed down her face. She summoned a last thread of hope. “Someone is trying to get me to curse Lorcan from hatred. Please don’t let me . . .” She groaned in pain, breathing heavily and trying to shake the thought from her head, but the mud was getting in again. The clarity was leaving her. She thought of Lorcan again, which was probably not a good idea. She almost lost control of her mind.

  “Black magic!” she whispered. Lack of practice was doing her no good at the moment.

  “Don’t let go, Orla. I’ve got you.”

  She heard Maeve’s voice in the distance. Everything seemed blurry.

  “Tell Lorcan I love him.”

  “No, you tell him yourself.”

  Blood trickled from her nose. “Lorcan betrayed me. He kissed that woman.” The words coming out of her mouth weren’t hers. Tear streamed down her face, and her self-awareness slipped in and out. “He kissed that woman. I . . .”

  “Don’t say that, Orla. You’ll put a curse on him, and you’re going to regret it. You’re strong. You can control it,” Maeve’s voice echoed in from a distance.

  Orla cried. Her mind wandered back to the apartment she and Lorcan shared in London. She walked into the living room. She could sense him. She could hear his laughter. She saw him fumbling with the coffee machine, trying to fix it so the sharp lever wouldn’t cut her next time she used it. He smiled at her. She loved his beautiful blue eyes. She smiled back .

  The bed had blankets on it, and the pictures of them on the wall were hanging askew. Some of their pictures had fallen to the floor. Glass was everywhere. “Someone broke into our apartment! That woman—she stole him from me!” Orla yelled.

  “You’re hallucinating, Orla. Concentrate. Don’t let it get to you. I can’t help you if you let it take over your mind.”

  Her heart lurched painfully in her chest, thinking about how happy she’d been in London with Lorcan, but now all that filled her mind was Lorcan and that other woman. Rage began to build inside her, and she was beginning to feel a dull throb behind her eyes.

  “It hurt!” Orla whispered.

  “I know. Come on, Orla, look at me.”

  “It hurt so much,” she said out loud, and once again, the words weren’t hers. “I hate Lorcan. He’ll pay for what he did to me.”

  “Stop, Orla. Stop!”

  She heard Maeve yelling at her, but she couldn’t stop. She drifted back to the apartment again. Looking at a picture of the two of them together was the last straw. She reached up and yanked the picture off the wall so forcefully that the nail behind it bent. As she threw it onto the ground, breaking the glass in the frame, the pain in her head grew worse. She tore through the room, ripping everything that reminded her of Lorcan off the walls.

  At the graveyard, she could see herself hitting the stone marker and ripping weeds out. She saw Maeve trying to hold on to her. But then her mind slipped off again. The world became empty, and she burned with a desire to destroy.

  “He has to pay for what he did to me . . .” She began to chant a curse while tears streamed down her face. The last drop of self-awareness was slipping out of her. Images of Lorcan flashed on and off at the back of her mind. “I curse . . .” She hadn’t finished when a hard blow on the head put her out.

  Chapter 5

  A warm cloth wiped at his back with gentle strokes, as soothing as the hand holding it. Someone was checking his shoulders. Lorcan breathed in as much as he could, he wanted to capture and hold on to the familiar smell from the fresh bed linens and the comfortable pillow his head was resting on—it was the fresh floral scent from the pouch his mother always put into the linen cabinet. She said it was her secret formula, a scent that was unique and memorable to this family. He knew it now—it was the scent of home. He realized now how much he had missed it over the years.

  “Good morning!” the voice sang like gentle and merry bell. Lorcan was facing the wall, but he didn’t have to turn around to recognize his little sister’s voice, Keeva Brody. He turned around to smile at her as he always did, but instead, his jaw dropped and he was speechless. Sitting at his bed side was a stunning woman with magnificent hair and twinkling eyes that he just knew smiled all the time and made people feel warm and happy.

  Keeva rubbed at her face and frowned.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you were my little sister! Would you like to go out on a date with me?” He grinned.

  Keeva laughed and poked his side. Lorcan grabbed his sister and, in one swift move, pulled her onto the bed. He covered her with the blanket and held her tightly. He could feel her body vibrate with laughter. It had been five years since he’d last seen her in London after she had sneaked to the city to visit him. Regardless of her beauty and how much she had grown up since, she was still his little sister.

  “You got a boyfriend yet?”

  “Huh?”

  “I would be surprised if you aren’t seeing someone.”

  “Don’t play, big brother. You should have seen yourself last night and the mess you put yourself in.”

  “Were Mother and Father really mad at me?”

  “That was the first time they’d seen you in more than a decade. I’d definitely be mad if I were them. But surprisingly, they didn’t say much. Just took care of you. It seemed like they had known you were coming home.”

  Keeva sat up in the bed. Lorcan sat up as well and glanced around his room. Everything was intact—just as it had been when he’d left. The decoration was from his teens, and he didn’t think the comic book hero collection that he’d thought was so cool then was too cool now. “Where are they?”

  “Father went into town. He’ll be home shortly. Mother is . . . well . . . in the kitchen.”

  Lorcan raised an eyebrow. He didn’t remember his mother cooking. There were more people who worked in the house than the family members themselves. Reading his mind, Keeva smiled. “She’s supervising the chef. She’s new, and Mother said she wanted to make something special for you.”

  Lorcan nodded as he hopped off the bed. His head was throbbing with a headache, and the purpose of this trip had come back to him.

  “Before you go anywhere, Lorcan, can you explain to me how the wounds on your back healed in just a couple of hours? When I first looked at them, I didn’t think you’d survive. If Father hadn’t stopped me, I would have taken you to the hospital, or at least called a doctor.”

  “Father stopped you from calling the doctor?”

  Keeva nodded. “He said you’d heal. I don’t know what the hell he meant—he didn’t explain.”

  Lorcan frowned. Father knew about his werefox ability?

  “Lorcan?” Keeva called out, waiting for an answer.

  “I just found out about it recently. I’ll tell you later. Right now, I’ve got to see Mother.”

  Keeva rolled her eyes and followed her brother to the kitchen. As they walked down the stairs and turned into a long corridor, the smile faded from Keeva’s face. “What is that, Keeva?”

  “Something’s wrong.” Her voice shook, and the blood drained out of her face.

  Seeing Keeva’s eyes darken, Lorcan darted toward the kitchen.

  Keeva had never been an ‘official’ psychic. He’d always thought of it as an unfortunate gift that she had. She could sense death. The first incident was her pony. She sensed his death just before they had found him attacked and gutted by the wolves. The second was his parrot, who had died for no apparent reason. The third was the death of an old man who’d called himself a shaman. He lived in the woods and had nothing to do with the village and befriended no one.

  The grand country kitchen greeted them with the inviting aroma of a freshly baked lemon and almond cake, Lorcan’s favorite, a pot of jasmine tea brewing on the stove, and the undeniable fresh scent of blood.

  There was no one in the kitchen.

  Lorcan rushed around the large table and found the chef lying face down in a pool of blood. There was no
sign of his mother.

  Tears started to stream down Keeva’s face. Her shoulders shook with fear and confusion. “Her wounds . . . yours last night . . .” Her voice broke so badly that Lorcan could hardly make any sense of what she was saying.

  “What about me?”

  “The wounds on your back last night looked like those.” Keeva pointed at the dead body.

  “I need you to stay calm for me. Are there other people working in the house?” Lorcan asked, holding Keeva’s shoulders.

  She nodded.

  “But I didn’t see anyone on the way to the kitchen.”

  Keeva blinked in confusion. “But we have Mary in the kitchen, Shaun in the garden, and Susan in . . .”

  “Keeva, there is no one else in the house, including Mother. I’m sure of it . . .” Lorcan picked up the handle of the phone mounted on the kitchen’s wall. Static. He hung up and turned toward Keeva. “Phone line is dead. Do you have a cell phone?”

  She nodded.

  “All right, I need you to get the phone, call Father, and then come with me to look for Mother. I can’t leave you here by yourself.” Keeva nodded and scurried back to her room for the phone. Lorcan trailed right behind her, glancing around and scanning for anything unusual.

  Before Keeva had finished dialing Father’s number, they heard the bang of a door that had been swung open. They rushed toward the living room. At the door was Lorcan’s father. He had a lot more gray hair, making him look wise and formidable, Lorcan noticed. His father had always been a powerful figure in Lorcan’s mind. Sometimes too much for his liking.

  “I was just about to call you,” Keeva said.

  “Something happened to your mother.” It was a statement, not a question. He approached his father.

  “Father,” he greeted him, feeling like a robot. He’d never known how to behave in front of his father. He always felt foreign and awkward.

  “I can see you’re up and well. They took your mother.” His father looked at him.