by Cara E Holt
“I won’t let you hurt any of them.” I snap and he just laughs and it send shivers down my spine.
“You think you could stop me little girl? You were promised to a son of mine and one way or another you will take your place at his side.” He shakes his head. “Such a shame to spoil a lovely evening. Take this as my first warning.”
Before I can respond the ground below my feet rumbles and shakes. I try to scream Lorcen’s name but no sound comes out and then it is like I see everything in slow motion. A large cracking sound is next and then I see the ceiling above the dancefloor come crashing down. Screams and cries are all I can hear and I am stuck there next to him, unable to move, or speak or use my magic. I stand there like an observer watching a tragedy unfold before my eyes and I am powerless to stop it.
“I’ll be seeing you soon Ebony. “ He leans in and whispers in my ear. “This is just a taste little girl, of what I can do to your life. When you are ready to accept your fate, just call my name and I will come to collect you.”
He is gone as quickly as he came, he vanishes from my side much like my demon did that night at the club. I whimper as I take in the scene on the dancefloor and I rush forward.
“Lorcen! Lorcen?” I scream as I frantically search for him. “Scott!” People stumble pass me helping injured students to safety. I don’t care who sees me, I close my eyes and use my magic to lift the debris in the air and keep it suspended there whilst I scan the floor for the people I love. Then I spot him and my heart falls to my stomach. He is lying there covered in dust not moving. I rush over and drop to my knees beside him. He Is so still and for one terrifying minute I think I may have lost him. I put my head to his chest and let out a large sob of release when I hear his heart beating in his chest.
“Lorc.” I whisper to him gently, stroking his forehead which is covered in grey dust. His eyelids flutter open and those beautiful green eyes find mine and my soul feels whole again. The terror of thinking I had lost him for those few moments will stay with me for my long immortal life. “You’re okay.” I tell him as tears fall down my face.
He reaches up a hand and wipes away my tears. “I’m okay I promise.” He tentatively sits up and I put my hand to his back to support him. “The others, are they okay?” I look around the room and shake my head. “I don’t know.”
He leans on my shoulder to lift himself up and he stands. Somehow all this time I have kept the debris floating in the air, so I move it to one side and allow it to slowly float to the ground. I hear coughing and sob in relief when I see Noah sitting up and looking dazed. I can hear sirens in the distance. I frantically look around us gripping tightly at Lorcen’s hand. “Scott! Taylor!” I shout again. I spot Taylor’s pink dress in amongst the grey rubble and without thinking I sift us both over to her. Taylor is out cold but Lorcen assures me her heart is beating strongly.
“Help me get her out of here.” I tell him and he carefully lifts her in his arms and takes her off the dancefloor. It is then that I see my brother and lying on top of him is a large and very heavy looking slab of concrete. I whimper as I sift closer. He isn’t moving. I use my magic to lift the concrete off him and throw it carefully to the side. I lean down and listen to his heart, its beating but weakly. I decide to try something then, after all I am part goddess and what goddess wouldn’t have healing abilities. I place my hand on his chest and close my eyes and will my magic to enter his body and find his injuries. I find the first one, he has three fractured ribs and one of them has punctured one lung. I weave my magic around his ribs and set them back in place and then I work on closing the open wound in his left lung. His arm is next, that has broken badly in two places so is push my magic to heal it back together. My magic moves to his right leg and I can see that is badly broken, I’m about to repair it when two paramedics lean over me and ask me to step aside but I resist. Lorcen pulls me gently away. “You’ve gotten him out of danger now Ebs, let these guys do their job.” He whispers in my ear and numbly I nod. The paramedics work on assessing my brother and I hear them say he has a possible bad leg fracture.
“This is all my fault.” I whisper to him as I rest my head on his chest.
He squeezes me. “This is not your fault. How could it possibly be your fault love?”
“He was here. Lucifer. He found me. This was his warning when I refused to go with him. So you see it is my fault.”
“Over here.” A voice I recognise as Noah’s shouts and we see him crouched before a body on the floor. We rush over and find he and Megan are crouched over a lifeless Melantha. Her eyes are open and empty.
“Oh god no, please.” I sob as I bend down beside them. Two paramedics are working on her, pumping her chest and blowing air into her lungs. They do it over and over again but she continues to lie there like a lifeless doll. The paramedic stops and I look at him bewildered. “You can’t stop, keep going.” I demand. He looks at his colleague who nods in response and looks at his watch “Time of death ten fifteen.”
A sob rips through me and I feel my heart drop. “No, no she isn’t dead, she can’t be. Lorc tell them she isn’t gone. They have to keep going.” Lorcen pulls me into his arms. “No, no, no.” I repeat. “No Lorc.” Tears streak down my face as sobs rack my body. I wrench myself from his arms and drop beside her and I hear Lorcen ask the medics to give me a minute with her body. They must agree as no one attempts to pull me away.
“I can heal her.” I sob and I close my eyes and place my hand on her chest and will my magic to find her injuries. There are so many, her right hip is broken, as is her left leg and there is internal bleeding. Her heart is dead. it’s not beating and my magic feels its lifeless form. I will my magic to get it to beat but nothing happens and I growl in frustration. I close my eyes again and try again but again nothing happens. “Fucking heal her.” I scream at my magic and I know my eyes are redder right now than they have ever been. I look up to the sky. “Heal her you bastard and I’ll go with you.” I wait but he doesn’t come and he doesn’t answer my call. I look back down at her then. It feels so strange to see her lying there so quiet and so lifeless. I gently brush her hair off of her face and close her eyes. “You can’t go Mel.” My tears roll down my face and fall onto hers. “We’ve only just found each other. We are soul sisters remember.” I take one of her lifeless hands in mine and squeeze it and I expect any minute that she will squeeze mine back and ask me why the hell I am crying all over her. She doesn’t. I sob and place my head on her chest and allow myself to cry until I find it hard to breathe. I feel Lorcen’s arms on my shoulders.
“Love they need to take her now.” I nod and allow him to gently stand me up and two medics come forward with a stretcher. Megan is stood sobbing in Noah’s arms and Noah just looks ahead completely numb. His eyes meet mine and he looks so sad.
“I’m so sorry princess.”
I still when I see them place her body in a body bag and start to zip it up. “No you can’t close it up. She won’t be able to see, she’ll be frightened.” I tell them frantically and they give me a sad look and tell me they need to take her.
“She’ll be on her own Lorc. She can’t be on her own.” I whisper to him as I cling to him.
“We need to go to the hospital. That’s where they are taking her. We need to go Ebs. Your brother and Taylor are there too.”
I nod and allow him to guide me away from the dancefloor and outside. Students sit having medical treatment or sit huddled together crying and looking bereft. We pass the principle Mr Barton and he stands there looking bewildered as he talks to a police officer.
I feel empty inside. Like a part of me has gone forever. A part of me died in that gymnasium tonight. I had lost my grandma few years ago and that had been so hard but that was different. My grandma had been old and had lived a good life. She had died having lived a full life with those she loves around her. Mel was seventeen years old, she had barely had a taste of what life was all about. She would never graduate, never experience college or her fi
rst legal drink. She was dead because of me.
Chapter Fourteen.
We all pile silently into Lorcen’s car and I sit there motionless as Lorcen buckles me in my seat belt. No one speaks on the journey there and I press my head to the window and stare out into the night. It is silent as no one knows what to say. What can you say when nothing will ever be the same again. Evil had come to play with me tonight. To give me a little but devastating taste of what it could do and it had ripped my heart in two.
We arrive at the hospital and Lorcen guides me inside and sits me beside Megan while he and Noah go to the desk. I don’t hear what is said, I just numbly go where Lorcen takes us until we arrive on a floor where many students sit waiting. I see my parents huddled together holding each others hands and a sob rips from me and my mum’s eyes meet mine and I run down the corridor and throw myself into her arms. She strokes my head and cries and mumbles her thanks to god that I am okay. My Dad wraps his arms around both of us and hugs us tightly.
“How is he?” I ask them hoarsely.
“He’s in surgery.” Dad replies. “His leg was in a bad way.”
I raise my face to look my dad in the eye. “He’ll be okay though won’t he Daddy?”
My Dad nods and then guides us to the chairs where they were sitting, as we walk we pass Blaine and he looks up at me and offers me a sad smile. “Nicole?” I ask him.
“She’s in surgery. She has internal bleeding.”
I hold out my hand to him. “Come and sit with us all please?” Blaine looks at Lorcen and Lorcen nods his head and beckons for him to come with us and in that moment I couldn’t love my mate any more than I do right then. I give him a thankful smile as Blaine takes my hand and follows us down the corridor. There aren’t enough chairs for us all, so I sit on Lorcen’s knee with Blaine on one side my hand still in his and Noah and Megan next to him. My Mother and Father sit opposite us. Next to my parents are Taylor’s mum and dad.
“How is she?” I ask them.
Taylor’s dad smiles at me. “Concussion and a broken wrist.” I breathe a sigh of relief that my friend is going to be okay. She is broken but okay and she will mend.
Lorcen strokes my arms and offers me physical comfort and I lay my head on his chest and listen to his beating heart. That moment on the dancefloor when I reached him and for a second I was unsure whether he was alive or dead will haunt me forever.
“I love you.” I whisper into his ear. It’s the first time I have told him those three words and I had not envisaged it being in such tragic circumstances. He lifts my chin so that our eyes meet.
“I love you too.” He says it with such passion I know it to be true. I know in that moment that Lorcen is my lighthouse in a sea of storms. I would get through this with him by my side. I would draw the strength I needed for the difficult days ahead from him. I close my eyes and rest my head on his shoulder and I hear my mum ask where Melantha is and I hear Lorcen tell her that my lovely friend didn’t make it.
Five days later I am standing before the mirror looking at my reflection. I am in all black. This was the first of three funerals for us all. You see that terrible day had snatched away three young lives. Today would be the hardest one because today we said goodbye to my Mel. Her Family had been informed of her death and had arranged to pay for her funeral but they would not be attending. Mel had never really opened up about her family. She had just told me once briefly that they could not accept her as she was and that she had refused to marry a boy from another coven and she had been cast out and told to never contact them again. I wanted to find them and rip them to shreds and tell them what a kind wonderful girl she had been.
Lorcen sifts in behind me and I look at his reflection in the mirror.
“It’s time to go.” I nod and reach behind to grasp his hand. We sift into the lounge were Noah, Megan and Blaine all sit. I haven’t cried since that night. I have felt stuck in my grief. I was angry though, angry at myself angry at Lucifer and it was eating away at my soul.
The church is full to bursting. Even though Mel had only been at our school a short time she had made her mark with her vibrant personality and well she was one of our own so everyone from school was there to pay their respects. I’d chosen her coffin, not something I’d ever imagined myself doing at seventeen. It was black and red – her favourite colours. I knew she would love it. She was dressed in her black shorts and white ‘abracadabra’ t-shirt with he in her signature pigtails. I had planned to do a reading at the church but when it came to it I just couldn’t do it. Noah had stepped up and bravely done it for me.
My brother had hated that he couldn’t be there with me today. Even though he didn’t know Mel very well he had known what she had meant to me and he had wanted to be there to support me. He had to have two lots of surgery on his broken leg and had a metal rod and pins inserted the breaks were so bad. Taylor was here though, her wrist in plaster with some fading cuts and bruises on her face.
Nicole’s funeral would be next and then we would need to step up and support Blaine. I had been the one to comfort him when Nicole’s father told us she hadn’t made it. He didn’t cry, he was just silent and then he’d looked up at me his eyes full of sadness. “I didn’t love her you know. She was a distraction. A distraction from the fact that you hadn’t chosen me. She deserved so much better than me.”
I hadn’t known what to say to him then but I could tell he felt guilty that he hadn’t loved her like she clearly loved him. I had chosen Mel’s headstone with the help of my mum. I’d found a quote that I thought was perfect for her.
‘Alis Volat Propriis.’ It was latin and meant ‘she flies with her own wings.’
Chapter Fifteen.
A different demon haunted my dreams at night now. Every night as soon as I closed my eyes I would dream of my friends or family being hurt or killed by Lucifer and I would wake up sobbing and frantic. I wouldn’t allow Lucifer to hurt anyone else. I had only one option open to me and that was to accept my fate and go with Lucifer. Lorcen knew this thought had crossed my mind and he had held my face in his hands and told me fiercely that he would now be in heaven let me make that sacrifice. That we would find a way together to beat Lucifer and I wanted to believe him I really did, but this was the devil we are talking about. A being far more powerful than him or me. The mornings are the worst because I wake up and for a few fleeting seconds I forget you see. I forget that Mel is gone and then reality kicks in and my grief hits me all over again like a freight train. It is like a bullet to my heart each morning and I wonder if it will ever get easier.
A loud rap on our front door pulls me from my thoughts. I throw on a sweater and rush down to answer it, complete with messy bed hair and no make-up. I open the door to find no one there but my eyes land on a beautiful bunch of white lilies in a gift box. I pick up the flowers and make my way through to the kitchen. I open the small white envelope.
‘She was the best witch I knew. Sorry for your loss. Always in my thoughts. Devlon.x’
Devlon! So he had known Mel had been with me. Did that mean that we were being watched? I pick up the flowers and go to dump them in the trash but I stop and decide that later today I will take them and put them on her grave. I pull out a vase and fill it with water and leave them on the worktop for now.
I quickly shower and dress in my jeans and a thin white knit sweater and then I sift over to my mums. I find I can’t be on my own at the moment and that I need to keep myself constantly busy. I bound down the stairs to find my dad in the living room, a book in his hand. He looks up at me and smiles.
“Well this is a nice surprise.”
I don’t know why he says this, as since the dance whenever Lorcen isn’t home then I’m round at my parents’ house. “Where’s Mum?”
“She gone food shopping. She wants to make sure she has all your brother’s favourites in.”
I laugh. “She is going to wait on him hand and foot isn’t she?” I sit myself down beside him.
M
y Dad grins. “She is and knowing your brother he will milk it for all it’s worth.” I nod in agreement. Scott will lap it up.
My Dad pats my leg and shifts to face me side on. “How are you doing sweet?”
I sigh and shrug. “I’m okay. Good moments and bad ones. The mornings are the worse. You know you forget for just a few seconds and then you remember.”
“It will get easier with time I promise you.” He reaches over and kisses my cheek.
“Time is something I have plenty of.”
Dad shifts his glasses. He hesitates before he speaks. “Have you thought about seeing a counsellor?”
I look at him in disbelief. “I don’t think so Dad. I mean it’s not like I can explain what really happened is it. That the whole dance tragedy was caused by the devil giving me warning because he wants me for his son.” I laugh. “I’d be locked away in the first nearest psych ward for evaluation.”
Dad smiles in understanding. “I guess you are right. We do have counsellors in the gate watchers community. It would be someone who is fully aware of all that exists in our world.”
I put my arms around him and hug him. “Thanks Dad. Let me think about it okay.”
“Okay sweet.”
I make my Dad and I egg on toast and once we have eaten I set about loading the dishwasher. I am standing there waiting for the kettle when I stagger sideways as a strange sensation rips through my body. I cry out and grasp the worktop to stop myself from falling to the floor. I hear Dad shout me but before I can reply blackness seeps into the edge of my vision and then nothing.
The blackness feels like a misty fog surrounding me and I look around to get my bearing. One thing is clear as the fog clears, I am no longer in my parent’s kitchen anymore. Before me is a large pond surrounded by a black metal fence. I blink to try and clear my vision and look around me. It dawns on me then where I am. I am near the pond at Houghton Hall near my home in England. In front of me, with their backs to me are a small group of people. I freeze when I realise that one of them is Devlon and beside him is Rhoswen and the strange man I met that day over breakfast when I had been trapped in Devlon’s lair. In the centre of the pond there is a blue pulsing light. At first I presume it is a portal but then gasp in horror when I see what is being raised out of the water. A large black cauldron floats in the air from out of the pond.
