As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw them standing in a circle. They were quiet, but it wasn’t the reverent silence you would expect from a crowd in a graveyard. It was the tense, barely veiled excitement of a hound waiting for the fox to bolt. I could practically smell their base desire. My fingers pressed against my lips as I fought another wave of nausea. Mark spotted me at the edge of the circle. “Here she is. Destiny, we’ve got somebody you should meet. I think he wants to talk to some spirits. You could arrange that, right?”
Willow cackled and clawed at Mark’s sleeves with her manicured nails. He shot her a dark glare and shook her off. The other kids parted to let me join Mark, and for a second I contemplated turning on my heel. We weren’t supposed to expose our magic to humans. Officially, it was against the code, but in reality the Family turned a blind eye to a bit of harmless fun. It’s not like anybody ever believed the humans when they told people about the beautiful monsters that lurked behind the walls of Dublin’s most exclusive neighborhoods. And things rarely got out of hand. It was just a bit of fun. Mostly.
Mark covered the space between us in a flash and grabbed hold of my hand. I wondered had he seen the hesitation in my eyes, or if he could smell my loss of appetite. I shook my head. This was my life. This was fun. I took another swig of vodka and turned to get a better look at tonight’s prey. The bottle slipped from my fingers and smashed into a thousand pieces on the stone under my feet.
Usually when we found a human looking for our world they didn’t really believe we existed. That was the beauty of it. People casting spells, telling fortunes, masquerading as mediums between this plane and the next. They didn’t really believe the lies they were peddling. So when we showed them what was hidden in plain sight, their reaction was usually worthy of an award. They blubbered, and cried, and swore they would never come looking for magic or death again if we would only leave them in peace. But the boy sitting in the circle was nothing like that.
He was an ordinary looking kid, about the same age as most of us, fifteen or sixteen. Brown hair, fair skin, medium build. His hands were stained red from the blood he had used to create a protective circle around himself. I had never seen a human do that before. I might have thought it was a lucky guess, if it weren’t for his eyes. They were the color of the sky on a spring morning. Clear and pure. And they were staring straight at me as if they could see inside my soul.
I took a step back, and Willow howled as my boots connected with her toes. Open toe stilettos in a graveyard. She deserved it. Mark tugged at my hand. “Babe, we were just telling our friend here that you can help him talk to whatever spirit he’s looking for, right?”
My eyes narrowed on Mark’s face and then scanned the rest of the circle. I shook my head. They couldn’t sense it. They didn’t realize this guy was different. I let my eyes travel to the stranger's face again. There was no trace of fear, no whitened knuckles or sweat on his brow. He met my gaze and gave me a curious once-over. The ghost of a smile flickered over his lips. Mark slipped his arm around my waist and tapped my stomach. “What do you say, Destiny, want to give him a little show?”
The boy's eyes focused on Mark’s hand on my abdomen, and suddenly they widened. His stare flicked up to my face, and I stumbled backward. “No!”
Mark’s jaw tensed, and he tried to pull me back into his arms. His voice was lower now. “We talked about this, Destiny. Time to snap of it, babe. Show our friend what you can do.”
The tone of his voice was like barbed wire in my ears. Had he always spoken to me like that? Willow rolled her eyes and sashayed past Mark and toward the stranger. “Whatever, I’m tired of waiting. Destiny isn’t the only one who can put on a show.”
She threw a lingering glance back over her shoulder and then turned her focus on the boy in the circle. I watched his face. I was unable to see what Willow was showing him from this angle, but I could imagine. I had seen her shift a thousand times before. Watched her turn from a man’s fantasy into his worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. Seen her skin wither and her gums bleed. I waited for her latest victim to begin screaming and cowering in horror, but he barely even watched her show. I caught his eye again, and another jolt of unease burst through me.
Willow threw her hands up the air and turned her back to the blood circle. “Okay, what’s with this dude? Is he blind? Deaf? Mute? I can’t get any read on him. This is getting boring.”
The stranger gave no reaction at all to her little speech. Mark narrowed his own eyes and looked from the stranger to me. He pushed his shoulders back and cracked his knuckles. “I’m pretty certain I can make him talk.” Mark nudged the blood circle with his toe and grinned. “Blood circle. Somebody gave you good advice, kid. But not good enough to keep a Red Witch out.”
I wrapped my arms around my body as I watched Mark eyeball his prey. Physical violence against humans for sport was strictly forbidden for the uninitiated, but there was something lurking in Mark’s eyes that I had never noticed before. Mark’s grin was savage as he lunged for the boy, and I felt my heart leap in my chest. There was a sickening crack, and Mark shot backward, repelled by an unseen barrier. He scrambled to his feet and wiped away the blood trickling from his nose. Oh, Gods. This was bad. Mark’s eyes were like pools of tar. “You sneaky little creep. How did you know about the salt? Who the hell are you? I’m going to kill you, you little piece of dirt. Is that what you came to the cemetery for? To pick your own grave? Because I’m going to make you dig it yourself.”
I put my hand on Mark’s arm, but he flung it off. The boy in the circle stood up slowly. He was wearing black jeans, trainers, and a plain black sweater. There was nothing about him that was out of the ordinary. He let his arms fall down by his sides. For the longest moment I thought he wasn’t going to speak, but when he did his voice was calm. “I didn’t come here looking for trouble, brother. I had no intention of crossing paths with the living tonight. My business isn’t with you.”
Mark’s face twitched. He looked around at his cronies and tilted his head to the side. “Do you hear this joker? His business isn’t with me.” Mark’s lip curled back over his teeth as he faced the boy in black. “This is our city, kid. No, scratch that, this is our country- this is our goddamn world. Everywhere you go, you have business with us, but little turds like you don’t realize it.”
The boy shrugged his shoulders at Mark. “I have no business with you, friend."
My spine was tight enough to crack as the tension hardened between my vertebrae. I wanted to scream at the boy with the beautiful eyes to shut his fool mouth before it was too late, but I kept silent. Mark nodded at a few of his friends, and they drew closer to him. My heart sank as Willow joined the little group. Red, Silver, Blue, Gold. They were going to break the circle. Willow licked her lips and took a greedy breath, savoring the growing excitement in the air. Mark ground his heel into the soil under his feet. “Any last words, kid. At least you came to the right place to meet your end.”
“Anyplace can be an end. Or a beginning.” I froze to the spot as his bright blue eyes met my violet stare and turned my soul inside out. I knew those words as well as my own name. Carried inside the deepest corners of my soul since my aunt Aoife had disappeared four years ago, searching for the Free Witches, leaving me nothing behind but a promise that she would return for me.
Willow threw her eyes to the heavens and groaned. “Oh, please. What does that even mean? This guy is a total crapbag.”
Crapbag. Mark’s favorite new word. The one he got from watching a Z-list movie last night. Alone. My blood began to simmer as I let my glare run from Mark to Willow and back again. Mark kept his shoulders low and gave me a slow smile, the one he knew made my knees weak, but I saw through it to the pulse beating in his neck, and the film of lies that he wore like a mask. “You cheating mother—”
Ten things seemed to happen at once. Mark gave the nod and his pack burst forward, tearing through the circle like wild beasts. The rest of our classmates rose up for the
hunt and released their own magic. The air around me filled with every form of poison and beauty that the world contained, and it whirled and ensnared the form of the stranger. I had a split second to make my decision. This life or another. My fingers grazed the plastic in my pocket, and I unleashed my darkness.
All of the witches were frozen to the spot. Suspended in the space between life and death, at the mercy of my whim. I half expected the boy with the blue eyes to be frozen too, but he stepped out of the circle and started running for the gate. My mouth dropped open as I watched him sprint by. When I caught up, he was standing by the bonfire in front of the crypts. I dug my hands into my pockets. “What are you doing hanging around? I’m going to get a serious amount of hassle for letting you go. Tomorrow is going to be brutal for me, thanks to you, cemetery boy. The least you can do is actually escape before my spell fades.”
The boy gave me a grim smile and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans. The breath caught in my throat at the sight of my name written in my aunt’s familiar scrawl. I grasped the letter from the boy’s fingers without a word and stared at it greedily.
“There’s an address inside. If you care about Aoife, you should either use it or burn it. If you tell your father or anyone in the Family that she is with the Free Witches, she will be in even greater danger.” The boy nodded once, and then he was gone, merging into the darkness of the night.
I tugged the plastic stick from my pocket and stared at the two blue lines. Positive. A hundred different tests and they all said the same thing. Positive. Pregnant. Mark’s baby. One crazy, drunken moment that I couldn’t undo, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to. But what life could I offer a child? A cheating father and a lying mother. I was the first Black Witch that had been born to the Family in centuries. Morrigan’s hope. I gave a bitter laugh. Hope. There was no hope in this life for me. If they had their way, I would be a weapon of destruction, nothing more.
I wrapped the test inside the unopened letter from my aunt and held them over the fire. The flames screamed for the contents of my fist. My heart began to beat harder, and a chant echoed inside my cranium, like a swarm of bees. Wake the dead. Wake the dead. Wake the dead. A Black Witch was a wicked witch, nine times out of ten. That’s what they said. That was my fate. My fingers began to uncurl, and the pregnancy test slipped from my grasp and began to tumble toward the fire. The memory of my aunt’s voice stirred inside my mind. Be the exception, Destiny.
My cry tore the silence of the night, and I snatched the letter and the test from the flames and cradled them in my hands. There was always hope. Any place can be an end. Or a beginning.
The strength of my spell began to ease as I thundered towards the gate, away from Mark and Willow, away from the stench of death and greed. I felt the others begin to return to life behind me. I pushed myself harder as I bolted past the stirring body of the security guard and skidded through the gate that the boy with the blue eyes had left unlocked. Mark’s voice echoed through the rows of tombstones, calling my name. I didn’t look back.
I followed the trail of life left behind by the stranger as only a Black Witch could, searching for the Free Witches. Searching for Neverland. Second star to the left and on until morning. Screw the Family and raising the dead, I chose to raise the living.
Wicked Destiny
Book 1 of the Wicked Witch Series, June 2017
Destiny O’ Neill craves a normal life. She wants to pass her driving test, finish school, and look after the only people that matter in her life—her daughter and her aunt.
She wants nothing to do with the witches, their magic, or the immortals. And she knows exactly where they can shove their insane prophecy about Destiny’s fate.
All Destiny needs to do is get past her eighteenth birthday without using her powers, and she will be safe to join the free witches and escape The Family for once and for all. Simple. Until the boy with the blue eyes crosses her path…
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to all of those who have supported me and encouraged me to continue with The Demon-Born Trilogy. Endless thanks must go to my family for helping me find the time to write, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor Helen for her ceaseless patience and tireless effort. Finally thank you to all the readers who have taken the time to read my work, it means more than you know!
The Shadow City (The Demon-Born Trilogy Book 2) Page 21
