Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Free Prequel
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The End
About Me
J.R. Erickson
Www.jrericksonauthor.com
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Sorciére
Born of Shadows Book 2
by J.R. Erickson
Copyright © 2017 J.R. Erickson
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
"Gently..." Helena cooed.
She wrapped her hands around Abby's and helped her guide a delicate paper bird into an intricate wooden cage.
The lovely, but simple, bird held Abby with its two shining, black eyes. Helena had crafted it from fine, white rice paper and though its eyes were merely flecks of obsidian, they bore into her with life.
"Did you create a prayer, love?" Helena asked squeezing Abby's elbow and closing the cage door.
"Yes. I gave it to Sebastian last night," she murmured, taking the bird cage and lifting it before her.
Abby had never performed a death ritual, but Helena, an elder witch at Ula, insisted after Sydney's funeral that Abby and Sebastian would benefit from the consummation. She looked forward to a day alone with Sebastian, but her heart beat oddly at the thought of releasing Sydney's spirit.
She had returned to the Coven of Ula the day before with Oliver and Dafne. When they had crossed through the passageway beneath the cliffs to enter the sparkling lagoon that flanked the castle, Abby felt a great weight lift from her body. For the first time in days, a peaceful calm stole over her.
She had driven home to Ula in silence with Oliver and Dafne. Oliver seemed intent on giving her space to grieve and Dafne simply preferred silence, generally the uncomfortable kind. Abby preferred it as well simply because she needed time to process. While at Sydney's lake house, now her mother's lake house since Sydney's death, she had learned that her Grandma Arlene had also been a witch and had visited the Coven of Ula sometime in the past. Abby pictured the box that her grandmother had left for her, more than a decade before, and considered retrieving it before her ritual with Sebastian. She wondered again what had transpired in the years before her Grandmother's death that made her so sure that Abby would become a witch.
Sebastian's appearance pulled her from her thoughts.
"Hello, my witchy woman."
He strode into the room and kissed her hard on the mouth, jostling her cage and eliciting an anxious groan from Helena. Abby pressed her fingers into his mop of black curls, and kissed his cheeks and eyelids.
Abby had met Sebastian less than than three months before and yet in the short time they'd known each other, the experiences of a thousand lifetimes had transpired. She had gone from being an ordinary young woman, unhappy with her life, to an emerging witch living in a magical castle on a secret island in Lake Superior.
"I've missed you," he told her, nuzzling her neck.
"She was sitting in your lap at breakfast," Helena laughed and hugged them both together. "Young love is intoxicating. I'm drunk just standing here with you two."
"Thank you for this," Sebastian told her, growing serious. He gestured to the tiny bird and kissed Helena on the cheek.
"Are we ready?" Abby asked.
"Ready when you are." He held up a canvas bag.
"What is it?" Abby asked, but he closed it before she could peek.
"It's a surprise," he whispered and kissed her again, softly this time and, when he pulled away, Abby almost refused to let go.
They both wanted so badly for the day to go well. Abby felt their stifled energies bouncing back and forth between them. They had never had a real romance--only stolen moments flung into the tumultuous world of death, witchcraft and mystery that they now both inhabited. Sometimes Abby wondered what their relationship might have become if there had been no Devin, no Vepars and no witches. She ignored the possibility that, without those elements, she and Sebastian would never have met at all. Perhaps, without her inner calling, she would have stayed with her ex-boyfriend Nick and moved through the world as his soft and pliable shadow.
"Let the adventure begin," he said, carefully taking the cage.
Abby nodded and accepted Helena's quick, fierce hug.
****
Abby and Sebastian walked away from the castle, meandering beyond the second lagoon. The island that the Coven of Ula inhabited in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was sprawling and picturesque. In October everything shimmered in gold. Amber colored leaves and the sweet golden light of autumn created its own magic.
They followed a trail that Helena had described in detail the night before. A large forest of old-growth cedars stood at the southern tip of the island. The dense canopy of trees blocked most of the light from their footpath. Abby walked mindfully, carefully side-stepping any signs of life on the forest floor. As she grew more connected to the energy of the earth, she felt spirit in everything. At times she shuddered to squish a blade of grass.
"Hey, check it out," Sebastian exclaimed, pointing ahead.
An ancient-looking stone stairway curved up out of the forest floor, roughly chiseled into a corroded limestone wall. The stairs were moss covered and crumbling. A delicate braid of flowers and vines created an archway over the stairs. Handmade chimes hung from a low-hanging branch. They tinkled softly in the breeze.
"Shall we?" Sebastian asked, holding out his hand.
She took it and bit back the warning that the steps looked ready to collapse.
They walked slowly, pebbles sliding underfoot and toppling to the leafy forest floor. Overhead orange and gold leaves shimmered in the mid-day sun.
Abby felt her heart rise into her throat when they left the stairwell and emerged into the cliff-top meadow that Helena had described the night before.
"The floating garden," Abby murmured and knew that she had plucked its name from a collective mind that was not her own, but a dozen cumulative witches' memories.
They were not in a field and not in a forest, but a lovely marriage of the two with twisted trees that plunged into the earth, their branches rose ecstaticall
y toward the blue sky. The ground was a dazzling parade of violets and yellows and reds, the flowers in full blooms of magenta and turquoise. Radiant gold reeds floated next to heaps of glossy ferns. In October, the flowers should have been dead, dried and crumbling onto beds of browning leaves, but in this enchanted garden, the plants lived on. The flowers, however, held only a piece of the charm. The whole garden appeared to genuinely float. The meadow flowed into blue sky and Abby steadied her hand against Sebastian's back to calm the sense that she'd left solid ground.
"Whoa," he laughed, teetering momentarily to the side. He moved hastily to one of the gnarled trees. He placed a palm against it and then quickly pulled away.
"Touch it," he told her.
She did and a thousand voices converged in her mind. Not human voices, but the twittering and whispering and laughter of some other life. She leaned into the tree and rested her forehead against it, an overpowering sense of love embracing her. For an instant, she swooned and then the sensations subsided and she returned, sort of, to reality.
A narrow red stone path wound through the garden and, when they both felt confident of their footing, they picked their way along, single file, neither wanting to crush even a petal.
Abby could not see the cliff edge ahead. The trees' hanging branches blocked their view, but Helena said that they would know the right spot when they found it. A blue and black butterfly drifted lazily ahead of Sebastian, alighting briefly on the bird cage before she took flight.
"A blessing," he said, clearly delighted by the small creature as she danced away.
Abby felt a strong surge of Yes and grinned as the butterfly disappeared into a mass of purple chrysanthemums.
"Whoa, careful," Sebastian called back, stopping abruptly. The flowers did not end, but trickled over the steep cliff edge. The rock wall plunged one-thousand or more feet, ending at a platoon of jagged rocks that drowned again and again in the surging dark water.
Abby turned in a slow circle, looking behind her, but as she shifted her gaze, she spotted an outcrop twenty feet below them. It was a flat rock ledge, heavy with flowers and, in its center, stood a still pond. Beside the pond lay an enormous starry quilt.
"That must be for us..." Sebastian said, taking Abby's hand and starting along the cliff.
Abby felt the tiniest prick of fear at the thought of getting to the blanket. It was such a long way to fall. One small slip of a foot and... But before the fear could take hold, her heart swelled and she felt overwhelmed by the power within her and more, by the power surging from the enormous lake below. She felt light enough to fly.
They discovered another stairway, this one significantly cruder than the last. It was cut into the side of the cliff and reminded Abby of that dark hole in the earth where the Lourdes of Warning lived. She blinked the memory away.
"Okay, let's do it," she murmured and picked her way down the stairs. She demanded that Sebastian let her carry the bird cage, despite his insistence that he could handle it.
Once settled comfortably on the quilt, Abby pulled the small scroll that contained her incantation from her pocket. She unfurled it gently, holding it flat against a rock on the pool's edge. She glanced down and caught her reflection. Her curly hair was wild and the blissful smile on her face rendered her momentarily unrecognizable. When had she ever smiled like that?
Sebastian moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She sighed heavily, happily and they stood for a moment letting time ebb away. She breathed deeply and savored the scent of cinnamon on his breath and the steady pressure of his chest as it rose and fell into her back. A lump moved into her diaphragm and her throat caught and she resisted the urge to turn around and sob uncontrollably against him. The dark mood passed and, when he released her, she returned to the scroll.
Abby shrugged off her boots and turned towards the sky, opening her arms wide. She moved ankle-deep into the soft, cold water of the pool and began to chant. Sebastian murmured in unison, looking to his own copy of the prayer.
Her chant was written in Latin, translated by dictionary, but as she whispered a final call to her beloved Aunt Sydney, the words grew into giants reaching into the sky to bring the spirit of her aunt back to her one last time.
She turned in a circle counter-clockwise and the water began to turn with her.
Behind her, Sebastian opened the bird cage. The tiny paper bird rested on his hand and he looked uncertainly at Abby. She nodded and he held it toward the sky.
The water churned faster, whirl-pooling up to her knees.
Overhead the blank, blue sky swirled with the water beneath her. A flash, white and blinding, streaked down to them.
Abby heard paper wings gently rubbing and turned to see Sebastian watching the paper bird, transfixed.
He moved to her and she cupped her palms around his. The paper wings flapped and fluttered and the tiny, inky eye blinked once before the wind caught her and she took flight.
"Oh," Abby reached out, and almost thought of clutching the bird, but Sebastian stopped her, pulling her closer to him. They watched the paper bird glide high and then drop and spiral back down to them. It lit just above their heads, skimmed across the garden and then turned out to Lake Superior where it quickly disappeared over the horizon.
"Goodbye," Abby breathed.
****
"What is it, love? You seem so...far away today?" Elda asked Bridget gently.
They were in the elixirs room, bottles stacked to the ceiling, all with tiny neat labels in Bridget's perfect calligraphy.
Bridget's brow furrowed and she stood on a step stool, hovering over satchels of dried herbs. Her round body held the grace of someone much more proportional.
"It's something, some sign..." She trailed off and Elda moved closer, sensing her distress.
Bridget nearly always exuded a supreme aura of tranquility and any agitation in her energy immediately alerted Elda.
"Tell me," she prodded her. Bridget, one of the coven's most intuitive witches, was also one of their most unsure. She came to her powers late in life and never truly felt at ease with them.
"Twice now, when I've been mixing the elixir of Samhain, a symbol has appeared."
Bridget did not look Elda in the eyes, but instead hurriedly began crushing herbs in her mortar, sprinkling in bits of cacao.
"What symbol did you see, dear?" Elda continued, gently.
"Well, I cannot be sure, but it seemed to be a...a black widow spider."
Elda frowned and immediately opened herself to the coven. Could she sense some treachery? Bad tidings? Nothing, nothing out of the ordinary. Somewhere, far away, she could feel Abby and Sebastian bidding farewell to Sydney. Closer, she felt the heat of Lydie, angry with Max for pressing her into her astral-travel, but doom? She did not sense that.
"Are you sure, Bridget? Might it not have been some other symbol?"
"Well, of course it might have been." Bridget flustered, wringing her hands. "It might have been a flower, for Pete's sake. I mean, you know how off I can sometimes be..."
But that wasn't true. Not really. Bridget was rarely off, but Elda could nearly always validate her intuition. She had merely to tune into the symbol, the premonition, and it would rise up from its shadow and be known. This time, she felt nothing strange at all. In fact, she felt a profound sense of peace and good tidings.
"Knock, knock," Helena called. She walked in behind them, holding a bundle of dried sage.
Bridget hurried over and took the sage. Elda understood that, for now, the subject had been dropped.
****
Sebastian had packed them a picnic, including Sydney's favorite coconut cake, which he had baked for the occasion. They ate sandwiches and fruit and talked about the good times that they had both spent with Sydney in their earlier lives. Abby hung on Sebastian's every word, loving the stories of Sydney that he alone claimed.
"Oh, she was a nightmare around my dad," he sighed, leaning back on his elbows and grinning at the sky. "A
terrible flirt, and it drove my mom wild. I still remember one summer we went to visit her with Grams for a long weekend, and Sydney came trotting out to our van wearing high heels and a white bathing suit. White, practically see-through! I swear I could see smoke coming out of my mom's ears."
Abby giggled and took another gulp of sweet cherry wine. The alcohol softened the edges of the world and she felt dizzy and buoyant.
"Yeah, she had no filters. When she met Rod, I think she finally found her match."
Abby had liked Rod and, more, she liked Sydney with Rod. Sydney found in Rod a kindred spirit. Abby remembered them always laughing, and when they weren't laughing they were kissing and openly groping each other.
"To tell you the truth," Sebastian laughed, "I had a crush on her until I was a teenager. She was just so...sexy."
Abby nodded. "Oh, I know. I practically had a crush on her, and not just because she was beautiful, but so alive. When she walked into a room, she lit it on fire. My mom loathed her."
"Really?"
"Yeah, she was insanely jealous of Sydney, had been since childhood from what I gathered."
Abby pictured the sour face that her mother made whenever she spoke of her sister.
"I get that," he said, taking a drink directly from the bottle. "Siblings that are so different are bound to clash."
"How about you and Claire? Ever fight?" Abby had almost not asked the question, afraid that the mention of Sebastian's murdered sister would send him into a funk, but he smiled and shrugged.
"Sure, when we were young. We fought over the remote control and who got the toy out of the cereal box and dumb stuff like that. There was never real animosity though. She was four years younger than me so we spent most of our lives in different phases. By the time she hit the hard part of puberty, I was a young adult and so on. When our parents died, everything changed. She became this innocent child that I had to protect and then, when she learned that she was a witch, our roles were almost beginning to reverse. She grew defiant and, honestly, stronger than me. It freaked me out, but still we didn't fight. We just started to grow apart."
Sorciére (Born of Shadows Book 2) Page 1
