Cursed Relic: (Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  Sweet, sweet Kitty. If only she had known that the reminder often caused me more pain. But she meant well. So I cared for the immortal bird as well as I could. Even though hearing her voice call to me often hurt my heart.

  I held out my hand on the armrest of the recliner and she flew inside, landing softly on my wrist with her talons gently latching onto my skin. It wasn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world without a leather jacket to protect my skin but she enjoyed having physical contact with me. I stroked her feathers for a moment as she leaned into my touch.

  “How was Arthur?” Her words softly drifted through my mind.

  “Better than usual.”

  “Did you run into Edmund?”

  “No, thank god. Apparently, he doesn’t do early morning hours. That might be the best time to go there in the future.”

  “I thought old people liked getting up early?”

  “I’m not sure the vixra count. They’re different.”

  I lifted my hand up, letting her know that her talons were starting to dig a bit. She flew over to a spot where I made a nest for her. It was made with soft feathers, twigs, little pillows, and an array of cotton.

  I watched her for a few minutes as she got comfortable in the nest and I rehashed the visit to the Matthews manor in my mind. “Tobias said he found where the remains of his coven nest at night. It has to be somewhere in the mountains. And relatively close to Denver so they can feed on humans by night.”

  Kitty raised her head. “Maybe you should do some work to find out where it is. If you can’t trust him to show up for every hunt then you can’t trust him to share all the details either. He clearly has his own agenda on how to get things done.”

  “We probably would have found half the coven already if he didn’t see fit to ignore me. Unless he wants to torment me. Which let’s face it, he excels at just by being near me.”

  “Why change a winning formula?” she asked.

  I rested my forehead in my hand, trying as hard as I could not to let old memories come crawling back in.

  “Well, he didn’t really win in the end, did he?” I said solemnly.

  She didn’t respond.

  I walked into my small kitchen and reached for some simple ingredients. Ones that were always my fall back when doing any magical workings.

  I took a sage and salt mixture I created and started sprinkling a circle in the middle of my living room floor. Then I lit the candles on each corner of the room standing on steel holders I found at some silly local New Age shop for humans. Then I closed the window along with the blinds and took out a few items that I had stored in my nearby closet. An ancient staff, a dagger, a collection of old coins, a gun, and a brooch I once wore over my chest a very long time ago. Each item gave me power. They made me feel as though I had funneled energy into more than just lives that passed me by, but through objects that held a piece of my soul. A part of me that was lost to the tides of time. I placed them around the circle at five various points and sat in the middle of the circle with my legs crossed and my hands stretched out over my knees.

  “What’s all of that?” Kitty asked me.

  “Some old possessions that found their way back to me,” I answered as I shifted around on the floor and tried to get comfortable.

  “From where?”

  “A dead luxra witchling.”

  “You sure they’re safe to use?”

  She must have seen the hesitation in my eyes but I was determined to use whatever I thought might give my magic a boost. “I think these items will be uniquely beneficial.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed as I closed my eyes. “Because they were all mine once. In previous lives. I can use the energy inside them to boost my magic.”

  She didn’t need an explanation. She already knew what I meant. After all, she was one of the few on this earth who knew the entire truth about me. I didn’t keep secrets from her. Not after my true great-granddaughter died. Who would a bird tell anyway? I was the only one who could hear her.

  Even so, she didn’t like it when I brought up the prophecy behind my birth. Or the lives I lived before this one. I think it made her heart heavy that she couldn’t do more to help me. And that the prophecy would haunt me until the day I died. Mostly because I didn’t fulfill it.

  I didn’t want to leave Scotland. I didn’t want my life controlled by the vixra either. But most of all, I didn’t want to leave Tobias. He caught me like a spider in his web. I was infatuated with him from the first time I saw him. And he knew it. He even made me believe that the intensity of my affections were as strong as his own. But Tobias’s lust for power knew no bounds. He wanted to be the most powerful vampire in the western world. He achieved it. Only to realize that the effort he made in seeking it was more exhausting than enjoying the result. Then his world came crashing down once the vixra witchlings learned that he was responsible for helping me escape them. If I had marked him or another vampire like the prophecy said I was meant to, it would have been a sign that the war between witchlings and humans was on the horizon. During a time when witchlings could have controlled the outcome. Those days were long gone. Human war technology was so advanced now that it may very well be too late to win such a war if it did in fact happen. And it would all be because of me.

  Fate even gave me a second chance. I met Nathaniel in the American colonies. A vampire who took my breath away. Then I ran from him too. It became a pattern until the day Edmund found me. I didn’t run after that. I couldn’t. He made me a slave to the vixra as a punishment for running. I learned first hand what happens to those who cross the vixra. Tobias was only now learning the consequences of his actions.

  “You usually don’t have such a hard time focusing,” Kitty said. “What’s wrong?”

  I opened my eyes and shook my head in frustration, trying my best to get rid of the memories flooding my mind. “That was the closest Tobias has been to me since the day he sent me away,” I whispered.

  If Kitty could sigh I figured this would be the moment when she would do so. Instead, she gave a short caw as if the thought had already occurred to her as well.

  “We’ve been through this, nanna,” she said to me. “He didn’t truly care about you. He didn’t then and he doesn’t now. Otherwise, he would have let you mark him. He would have let the prophecy be fulfilled. But he didn’t. He chose himself.”

  A familiar hollow pit churned in my stomach. The pit that reminded me that I still felt certain types of pain as potently now as I did centuries ago. “I didn’t even know if my blood wanted to mark him at the time.” The thought nearly made me laugh. Tobias Vallas. A marked vampire.

  “He didn’t give it a chance,” said Kitty. “And that’s all you need to know. If anything, he’s a risk. His recklessness could cause the vixra to end you.”

  My heart started to race. “Please don’t say things like that. It’s not like the thought hasn’t already crossed my mind but there’s nothing I can do about it. And if I can’t do anything about it then I don’t want to waste time worrying endlessly.”

  “You have to consider the possibility. Tobias led you into ruin so he could maintain power, avoid being marked, and continue to build a powerful vampire coven. For all we know he might want to do so again and escape the bonds of the vixra.”

  “Stop it!” I snapped.

  ‘Tobias will never let a kruxa mark him. I’m probably lucky he told me to run away over killing me. His ego loves the power that being a vampire gives him.’

  Kitty cawed a few more times at my sharp reaction then finally went quiet.

  “I need to focus. So please, don’t get me all worked up,” I begged her.

  ‘I can do that without any help.’

  “I’m just trying to look out for you the way you did me.”

  ‘I obviously didn’t do a very good job. Otherwise, Kitty would never have gotten sick. And she never would have placed a copy of her consciousness in a damn bird.’

  I exhaled and allowe
d the tension growing in my sides to ease up a bit. As I sat there in the middle of the circle I created, I shut my eyes and let my mind drift from the small and cold apartment to the sky above the complex. Then through the city and toward the mountains in the distance to the west of the urban areas. There was a certain peace the Rockies possessed that I wasn’t familiar with until the vixra told me I would be living here. I knew many men in the 19th century who left to pursue gold and adventure through their craggy cliffs and rocky trails. Braving the native tribes that lived there and often never returning. I hoped some of those men found the adventures they were looking for. But I knew others met dreary ends. Some got lost or found animals in the night that considered them a meal. A few succumbed to the cold and subzero temperatures during the harsh winters that overpowered the mountains like a steel grip of death that often didn’t let up until June.

  I could hear the various streams rolling with water over the rocks and the howling wind pushing through the valleys and mountains. I searched everywhere I had already been and then a few areas I wasn’t familiar with, allowing my mind to move in and out of the trees, inside some old gold, silver, and coal mines, abandoned log cabins, and then back out again.

  Kitty watched me with patience, wanting to know more but fully aware that distracting me would break my concentration.

  Not that it mattered. I couldn’t find anything. A few owls flew from tree to tree. Some elk ran through the valleys and hid from a few mountain lions chasing them in the night. Then a movement that just barely caught my attention rushed by me. It was fast. Too fast. Not an animal and definitely not a human.

  There were two vampires running through the woods and leaping over any rocky hillsides they came across. The height of their leaps made even a witchling like me envious of their strength. One of them had bright blonde hair wafting in the wind as she ran. It was the same girl from the concert. The other was a young man. Well, young by the looks of him. I had little doubt that he was probably much older. Looks were even more deceiving around immortal vampires than they were around the vixra, regardless of how slow the vixra age.

  A dark hole appeared in the side of a mountain. They were headed directly for it. They leaped from the ground and lunged right inside with perfect aim, closing their arms once they got inside and running down the deep length. Only to reach a hole in the ground and jump right down it like a funnel. I never even heard their feet touch the ground.

  They landed below and I was left in the darkness chasing after them. Vampires were night creatures. They could see in pitch black. I couldn’t. I was left wondering where the hell they had gone as they continued to walk down the tunnel deep inside the mountain. There was no way I could continue to follow them unless I went there physically.

  “Kruxa,” a voice tickled my ears. “I see you watching, kruxa.”

  My eyes bolted open.

  “What did you see?” Kitty asked with eager anticipation.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “I think I found where they nest.”

  Laughter erupted inside my head. Whoever spoke in my ear through the vision was still there. He followed me back to my apartment. His essence was in the room with me.

  The magical green cord around my throat tightened. I gasped for air but none reached my lungs. There was only the harsh sting of not being able to breathe.

  Kitty cawed and flew in circles around me as I fell over with my hands clawing at the floor. I rolled over on my back and reached for the cord around my neck. The man whispering in my mind knew what I was. Not just a kruxa, but a slave. He knew about the cord that bound me to them. He was using it against me.

  “Do I need to remind you of how it feels to slowly strangle to death, kruxa?” he said.

  ‘That voice. I know that voice! Victor!’

  Then the second I thought I might black out, the strangling stopped and I could breathe again. I gasped for air and immediately started coughing. The presence in the apartment eased away and I was left with a frantic bird swooping around the living room and desperately trying to get the attention of anyone she could.

  A loud banging thundered on my apartment’s entryway door. “What’s all the commotion?” a woman hollered from the other side. “People are trying to sleep around here! Birds aren’t permitted as pets in this complex!”

  ‘Yes, I know you twat!’

  I threw my arm up in the air and cast a charm over the room with my magic, hiding Kitty from view. Then I ran up to the door and opened it just enough for the woman to get a look at a sliver of my face.

  “There are no birds here,” I explained in a strained voice like I had been coughing up a lung. “I had the TV on too loud. I’m sorry.”

  “That was no TV,” she snarled.

  “I won’t make another sound, alright?”

  She examined me with skeptical eyes, pouted her lips, then walked away.

  I shut the door and removed the shadow from the room.

  “Over a century later and you still can’t stop your cawing from getting too loud,” I scolded her.

  “Don’t blame me! You looked like someone was strangling you!” she cried. “It’s always brief when one of the vixra call on you with that stupid cord around your neck. This wasn’t like that.”

  I gave a huff then collapsed into the recliner, holding my neck with my hand and rubbing at the layer of skin that felt as though someone had lassoed me with a rope made of fire.

  “Turn on the light,” she demanded.

  I turned on the lamp to my side and she flew over to the armchair.

  “I was right! You were being strangled,” she said.

  I rushed to the bathroom mirror. The place where the magical invisible cord sat was still invisible. But there was a distinct imprint from where it tightened around my neck.

  It started healing right before my eyes. One of the small benefits of being given immortality was healing fast. That didn’t make it any less painful. Only fleeting.

  “What happened?” Kitty asked me.

  “I’m not entirely sure. But I learned at least one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  I huffed and plopped back down into the living room recliner, kicking at the sage and salt mixture in a circle on my floor and breaking the barrier I placed around myself. Much good it did to protect me anyway.

  “Victor is here in Denver.”

  Kitty’s wings flapped a few times before she contained herself. “Are you sure?”

  “I never forget the face of a man who tries to kill me. Or in this case, his voice.”

  I had battled Victor in the past. He even managed to kill me several times. Not that it stuck. I would recover in time for him to kill me again. He was a ruthless vampire. Even older than Tobias. He risked exposing all witchlings with his crazy schemes. And somehow, he found me. We were two immortals, locked in a crazy dance where neither of us could die but we could spend an eternity hunting one another. The only way I could die was to regain my freedom and become mortal. The only way he could die was for someone to rip his head right off his body. If I had any intention of killing him, my freedom would have to wait. Because as much as I wanted my freedom, I wanted his head on a platter even more.

  “Do you think the vixra would redeem me if I killed him?” I asked Kitty.

  “I’m not sure,” she answered.

  “If the vixra will grant me my freedom or if I’m capable of killing.”

  “Both.”

  4

  The warmth of my bed would have to wait yet again. Dawn was only two hours away. And since I was used to Tobias bailing on me, it didn’t feel different from any other time I was going hunting on my own. Or on this rare occasion, exploring.

  ‘Tobias thought I was perfectly capable of crossing an ocean by myself in the 18th century. A lonely unmarried woman traveling all by herself. Clearly, he thinks me capable of hunting on my own as well.’

  I reached for my boots and jacket then tied my hair up in a messy bun.

&nb
sp; Kitty saw me getting ready to leave and cawed into the air.

  “No more of that,” I scolded her. “I have neighbors. Meet me by the car.”

  I went down the stairs of the complex and out the side door leading to the parking garage. Kitty waited for me outside by the used Jeep Wrangler I bought from a man on the Internet. Tobias had his taste for expensive cars. I, however, was lower maintenance. And I liked having a vehicle that got around the mountains easily no matter what the weather was like. Because let’s face it. I had no idea how long I would have to live in Denver and traverse the Rocky Mountains looking for the remnants of Tobias’s former coven.

  I reached for the door of the Jeep and started pulling it open when the atmosphere around me started to change. The hairs on my arms stood straight up. A chill ran down my back giving me goosebumps and the color from the world started to dissipate, turning a sullen shade of gray.

  When I was young it took time to get used to having random visions. Part of kruxa having such little control over our magic was the relentless annoyance of having visions that we couldn’t control either. Our magic doesn’t exactly adhere to the concept of an appropriate time and place. The entire world stands still as we see things that our magic can tap into.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to five. Then I opened my eyes and allowed my magic to show me what it was I needed to see.

  The space around me went completely black. I was alone. It was silent. The only sound I could hear was the howling wind above me from a long distance away as the world continued to go by. I was trapped. There was no light. No way for anyone to find me. A feeling of hopelessness started to engulf my insides as I heard whimpers coming from my chest. Until water started surrounding me as I struggled to get to the surface.

  “I see you, kruxa,” Victor’s voice called to me again, taunting me with the knowledge that I would never be found in the dark crevice of… well, I couldn’t quite make out where I was, to be honest. It just looked like a deep hole. And only he knew where I was.

  ‘Victor, I know it’s you. I don’t fear you.’