by Martha Woods
She shivered, and her skin was tingling. It was getting close enough that she felt like she could almost reach out and touch it. A spray came off the waves and hit her in the face, like tiny daggers of ice piercing through her skin. She was going to die. Nothing could travel this fast, make an impact and survive.
He flipped her around so that she was facing the sky. That way he could break her fall. Then he took her in his arms as tightly as he could and held her head above the water expertly as he pounded against the waves and swam her out to the beach.
By the time he pulled her onto the shore, she was shivering, huddled close against his chest. He laid her down in the sand and stroked her cheek. The sun was directly at his back, illuminating him as he reared up, tore off his wet shirt then stared down at her, a smile creeping over his lips. “You're shivering.”
“I’m cold.”
“Here,” he let her rest against his shoulder and covered her with his arm to shield her from the wind. “Did you enjoy that?”
“Immensely.” She moved her finger along his white chest while she watched the sky fade from blue to indigo as the sun fell.
“Do you still want to die.”
“I just don't want to live. I want to make all of this pain go away, and that's the best way I know how.”
“Hmm.” His eyes drooped for a moment.
“Do you know what it's like to die?”
“I've never done it, but I do know about it.”
“Tell me.”
“They call it piercing the veil.”
“The what?” She sat up to look at him, and he turned his head to meet her gaze.
“The veil.” He said quietly. “It's the space between the worlds. Once you reach it, your consciousness starts to transition from a physical state to a spiritual state. To do that, it has to fall so hard it pierces through the veil and starts falling away. It's like falling off a never ending cliff. It takes months for the transition to cement, and you feel yourself falling the whole time.”
“Kind of like falling off a cliff.”
“Yep.” He nodded his head. “I died when I turned into a vampire. We all do, but our transition is cut short. Vampires are forced to maintain a consciousness that is both physical and spiritual to stay in this world.”
“You're dead.”
“More dead than you are. When we die, we disappear. There's no heaven or hell, no afterlife—just death. We trade in eternal life for a second longer on Earth.”
“That's terrible. I thought you couldn't die.”
“There are forces out there that can unseal our spirits and push them out of our bodies. It's rare when it happens, but most of us do die eventually.”
“There's a lot out there that I don't know about.”
“Most people never get a single look outside their fragile reality, and that's comfort, Sara. There are things out there that neither you nor I could possibly imagine. It's best to live your life in ignorance.”
“When I found my mother dead, after I overdosed, the cops brought me back and tried to accuse me of her murder. They chained me up and took me to the hospital. Then they locked me up in a cell while I withdrew from opiates. I started hearing voices in there, telling me how to erupt this blue fire out of my fingers. These two guards came to get me so they could put me through PET scan and take brain imagery. They beat me, threw me around on a leash and ultimately ended up violating me so badly that the fire erupted out of my fingers. I turned the men to ash without even thinking about it and found myself waking up in my grandmother's guest bedroom. What does that mean?”
He seemed disturbed, staring up at the sky. His face went dark for a moment as if Sara had said something terrible. Then, all at once, he pounced on top of her and drove their lips together. “It means,” he laughed with his body pressing against hers, “that you have an extraordinary power inside of you and that I'm going to do everything I can to give you a reason to keep on living.”
She rested her arms around his neck. “What does it really mean?”
He kissed her again. “It means that you're a witch.”
Chapter 13
“Where have you been?” Margaret rushed out onto the porch the second that Sara reemerged onto the property. She hopped down to confront her granddaughter.
“I was cliff jumping with a vampire.”
She sighed. “Just get in here.” She grabbed Sara's hand and threw her in. “Of all the reckless,” A wave of hot air spewed out of the woman's finger and started drying her off, “stupid things I've heard.” She backed up and stared at her wide-eyed. “Were you really cliff jumping with a vampire?”
“If I'm not going to get answers from you I'm going to get them wherever I can find them. Teach me what you just did. Now.”
Her grandmother turned around, pointed her finger at the kitchen stove to turn it on and levitated a bag of noodles down from the cupboard. Another twitch and they were in a boiling pot of soup.
“Don't you think for one second I'm going to watch you do that shit and keep it all to yourself.”
“I had my reasons.”
Sara sat down across the table and watched her pace around the kitchen.
“What reasons?”
“Magic attracts them, Sara. Young practitioners like you can't fight them. You'd end up using it, and they'd attack you. Now, you've got vampires walking you home and throwing you off the cliff. You're doing their job for them. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Yes.”
Her answer caught her grandmother off-guard while she considered it a moment and ultimately collapsed into a chair across from Sara. “I didn't know you felt that way.”
“After I found her, I took a handful of OxyContin. The EMTs had to bring me back. When they did, they accused me of killing my mother and locked me up in the hospital.”
“I knew you were there. I just didn't know why so I brought you back as soon as I could.”
“Were you the one speaking to me when I was locked up?”
“No. It a shadow, a nonliving entity that acts as the witch sees fits.”
“I killed two men with these blue flames shooting out of my whole body. Did you really think I'd just give it up?”
“No. But you don't understand. Magic draws the Vampires, Sara.”
“Then you need to teach me.”
“I need to trust you first.”
“Hey, you left me in the dark.” She started getting defensive. “I had no idea what they were, just that there was one sitting a couple yards away from me in the lunch room. Of course, I got up to talk to him.”
“Don't do it, Sara.”
“He saved me twice.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His brother has been hunting me. He killed mom, and he's been trying to kill me. Twice when I was in the fields near the cliffs, he tackled me and tried to drink my blood. Caleb stopped him, used his blood to heal my wounds and even gave me a blood transfusion. He's not dangerous.”
“It's like dealing with a wild animal. One moment you'll be walking through the grass together and the next he'll rip your throat out. There's something sick about them. They're not natural. They're a product of ancient blood magic. The spirit inside them is like a virus. Once it passes into their blood, they turn into killers. They do it for fun, for sport, or just out of boredom. They haunt you for decades, pretending to be your friend or lover. Then, when you're at your happiest, they'll kill you. They don't go slowly either. They take their time and draw it out.” Her mother screamed like that. “The spirit craves blood because it represents the full, physical form it'll never be allowed to take. The shedding of blood and the pain that accompanies it, gives it a sick, twisted sense of satisfaction, greater than anything we could possibly experience.”
The way Caleb looked, his comical, yet innocent style, he would've been like an infernal jester, goading her while he tore her to pieces. He was calculating, cold and maybe vicious but there was something dark and all
uring about him. She wasn't going to stop seeing him. He was the ultimate thrill offering the best of two worlds. She could live a little while longer and still know that an end to the pain was coming.
“They get to you, Sara. If you learn anything from me, you'll know to stay away from them.”
“What is this spirit? He told me he was a spirit trapped in a body.”
“Yes.” She motioned for two mugs to fly off the counter and land softly in front of them. Then she whispered something softly and a clear liquid shot out of her finger. “The Vampire Curse is a prehistoric binding, said to have been cast when the matriarch of a tribe of hunter-gatherers lost her lover. He ran away into the hills rather than stay with her. She was a spiritualist named Mana whose individual skill was the ability to speak with disembodied creatures. That's when she came across the jealous spirit.
He was jealous of our bodies. Earthly don't have the ability to choose where they go or what they do. Their bodies are much lighter so they can't touch things the way we can. He could drift in the wind and watch us. That was about it. That's all he did was a watch, angry because he had no way of affecting the material realm. Mana found the spirit and talked about it for days. It claimed to have the ability to take somebody's life which was beyond her own power. So she forced the spirit into her lover's body, hoping it would kill him. Instead, the mind of the man melded with that of the jealous Spirit and the Spirit trapped him in his shell so he could never die. Now, the spirit lives on in them and hunts the blood, drinking it to satisfy its inherent need for the physical.”
“Can't they fight it? He told me that he stopped when he was younger.”
“I've heard of them doing it. Maybe they do fight the spirit, but you can't fight yourself forever. Rapists and murderers feel sorry for the things they do, but that doesn't make them stop. It's a part of who they are. That's why your mother promised me to never teach you.”
“What happened to her?”
Margaret turned around and flicked her wrist, sending the pot off the boil. “When she was younger, she fell in love with a vampire. Sara didn't know what he was, or what he was really doing. All she knew was that she wasn't going to tell me a single thing about it. That was just her way. She didn't want me meddling in things, I suppose.” She took a sip from her mug which was sending off the stark aroma of peppermint and a hint of liquor. “I knew that she was seeing somebody. Otherwise, she would've been home, so I let it go on for a little while until I pulled out my tarot cards and figured out what was going on. When I found out that he was a vampire, I forbade her from seeing him. She refused, of course. She was sixteen. She ended up having to be rescued from atop of a cliff a few hours later. After that, she swore off magic.”
“Why? I mean I'm sitting here, watching you make dinner and move things around without even giving it a second's thought.”
“Vampires are like flies hunting down filth so they can devour it. They'll always find you. You'll never be safe from them. I am older than you will ever know and not once, not in my entire life have I managed to escape them.” She looked around. “This isn't my sanctuary. It's my prison. Because of my protective charms, this is the only place I'm safe. The second I step off the land, it's hunting season.”
“Well, can't you kill them?”
“I'm capable of it, but I wouldn't dare,” she laughed. “Where there's one, there's a hundred. They'll come at you with some ancient grievance, saying you killed their long lost lover or their family. They love fiery vendettas, and one springs up as soon as one of them gets killed. The only thing you can do is stay put because they will do anything to have you and they're smart. They've had centuries, a few even thousands of years to learn how to hunt.”
“That's disgusting.”
“Exactly. Thinking back, your mother had the right idea. She begged and begged me to never teach you magic. That was a slap in the face. That's my right, you know. Bishop grandmothers are meant to teach the children to spell. That's a sacred duty.” She took a sip of her drink. “I was livid. I told her she had no right trying to keep you from your birthright. I thought it would be a disaster.”
“I've always felt incomplete.” Sara's curiosity got the better of her, and she took a sip of the liquid in her mug. She nearly spits it out realizing it was freezing cold schnapps, but she forced herself to hold it down and let it settle her stomach.
Her grandmother smiled. “It's to calm your mind down,” she pointed at the mug. “Parts of your mind are quite a bit more developed than a human's. You probably think too much. You can't sit still. That's the energy that you’d use to make magic. It gets all pent up inside you till you think you're going to explode.”
“Exactly.” Sara thought about sitting at home the way she did, staring at the clock while her mother was working. She could never withstand dead silences like that. It seemed like she was always waiting.
“There are differences between humans and us. They're subtle, but they are there. Are values are different for one.” She took another sip of her schnapps. “They don't value family the way we do. To a Witch a family is an extension of herself. When your mother moved away, it tore me apart. I watched her every day, sat right where you are sitting and read her cards. I looked into your life too, and you know what I saw? Magic would be her undoing.
She was right. The best thing was to keep you as far away from magic as possible. Now, because you've been going around acting like a typical teenager, instead of the witch you are, I have no choice but to teach you.”
“I'm sorry.”
“I have to go back on a promise that had defined all of our lives since before you were born. I don't want to have to do this.”
“Had I known that you were just following her wishes, I would've let it go.”
“It was inevitable.” She shook her head. “Just like killing is to vampires, magic is a part of a witch's soul. The fact that the power came out of you when you needed it tells me that it's just been lying dormant for a long time. It's no wonder the power took the form of the blue fire. It's building up inside you ever since you were a little girl. You could probably blow this place to pieces without even thinking about it.”
“That was incredible.”
“Was it?” She laughed. “I've never seen the blue fire before. I did a reading right before I brought you here. When the cards told me that it was making an appearance, I moved as fast as I could. It's an elastic force, powerful that no natural object can withstand it. You're lucky to be alive.”
“I believe you. It was just exploding everywhere. It rolled out of me before I even knew what was happening and destroyed whatever I wanted it to. I could control it, but it came so easily. If I wasn't careful, I could've easily killed everyone there without even meaning to.”
“Blue fire is what is called a vital energy. It's spiritual power, saying it doesn't exist on our plane. Which is why it's so potent when it's unleashed. It doesn't play by the same rules as other forms of energy.”
“The vampire told me that he couldn't be killed by an earthly power.”
“They have to be killed using a spiritual power. A vampire’s weakness is something called Hades Scythe. It's a killing curse that is conjured by summoning up death's vital energy and hurling it towards them. Like the blue flame, Hades Scythe is extremely dangerous. Unlike blue flame instead of learning to focus the power, you have to find out how to contain it. You draw a little box in your head, a coffin they say and you keep the power in there while you open the lid and pull it out of the spiritual plane. It's not an easy spell to master. I watched my niece get killed that way before your mother was born. She got in the way and got herself killed as my sister was trying to kill a vampire.”
“Jesus.”
“You're not going to be able to learn to kill them, Sara. You just have to learn to tell them no, stay in public when you're out and stick close to home.”
“They're always around, aren't they?”
“Always. They want us, Sara. To the
spirit, we represent the ultimate form because we are able to control both spiritual and physical power. I need you to promise not to see him anymore.”
“I promise.” There was no way she was giving him up.
Her grandmother raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. “That was too easy.”
“I'm not dumb like that. My mother spent my entire life protecting me from those things. I'm not going to let some adolescent seduction trick me into going for a psychopathic killer, especially now that I know what he is.”
“You've always had good sense.” She downed the rest of her schnapps and looked Sara. “Drink up.”
Sara did and shook her head back and forth from the shock of the burning sensation traveling down her body.
“Come on. I'll show you how to make a fire.”
Chapter 14
Sara was just placing the shelves back inside the refrigerator when her mother walked into the house. “Oh my God, Sara. It smells amazing in here.”
Sara turned around, beaming at the spread she'd laid out on the table. There was a vase of arranged flowers in every single color imaginable and a pure white tablecloth she'd pulled out from the cupboard above the refrigerator.
“Do you like it?” She ran up and gave her mother a hug, letting her nose take in every last drop of her perfume.
“I love it. What are you cooking?” She followed Sara into the kitchen. Where she looked over her daughter's shoulder while Sara stirred the pot.
“I thought we'd have boiled heart.” She pulled the beating muscle up with the spoon to show her mother and shrieked when she turned around to see her mother falling on the ground, clutching the gaping hole where her heart had been.
Sara shot up off the bed, shrieking and fell over onto the ground from thrashing around. She lay there staring up at the wooden ceiling beams with the corner from her bedside table sticking into the back of her head. She deserved that. Learning magic was like tearing her mother's heart out. She knew her mother well enough to know that she sacrificed everything to keep Sara from learning, but Sara wasn't going to live without knowing her true nature, or the power that came with it.
