Aimless Witch
Questing Witch Book 1
Shannon Mayer
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
4. Three Years Later
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Afterword
Copyright
Aimless Witch, Questing Witch Series, Book 1
Copyright © HiJinks Ink Publishing 2018
All rights reserved
Published by HiJinks Ink Publishing.
www.shannonmayer.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a database and retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the owner of the copyright and the above publishers.
Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Original Cover art by Damonza
Original Photography by With Magic Photography
Mayer, Shannon
Created with Vellum
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help of the usual crew of editors, copy editors, ARC team, and my family putting up with my absence, staring off into space as I daydreamed about the story. More importantly, this book would not have been possible without Stephanie Erickson. Your help, brainstorming and encouragement was everything needed to help this book come to life. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. ❤️
Chapter One
“Little witch,” the voice called to me softly, gently, “you have to get up. We can’t stay here. The fires are closing in and the ground is still shaking.” A paw patted my cheek and I slowly opened my eyes to stare into the face of my familiar. A tiny peach-colored tabby cat splashed with white markings.
I groaned and rolled to my hands and knees. “How long was I out?”
Oka sat on the rocks beside me. “Only an hour. The world is still shattering.” She shivered, and a gust of wind rippled across her fur. Only it wasn’t wind, per se, but heat flowing off the fires that burned around us.
I wiped a hand across my face. I shouldn’t have been able to sleep while the world broke around me, but we’d been running for twenty-four hours and I was exhausted. I wobbled to my feet and pulled my thick cloak around me. I wiggled my fingers at Oka and she leapt into my arms, then crawled to my shoulders and draped herself across them.
I did a slow turn. The ground was charred in every direction, the fire burning outward, away from us. To be fair, I’d started it. I turned and looked over my shoulder. Fifty feet away lay the charred remains of the trolls that had attacked. Smoke still curled up from the bones.
“It’s no wonder you passed out,” Oka said. “That much power after running as long as we were.” She shook her head. “That’s not how to train your abilities.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. I’d lost my bag in the fire, so I had no food, no water, no clothing, no weapons. I sighed and held a hand up to the sky, tapping into one of the five elements I carried. A rush of cool air coursed down my arm and then in the palm of my hand, water condensed, pulled from the air around us. I brought it to my mouth three times, until my thirst was slaked, then offered it to Oka.
“What direction?” Oka asked.
“Does it matter? The world won’t be anything like what we remembered. For all we know, we could be on an island now.” I took a step, then another and another. There was no direction here, just movement to stay alive.
We walked for hours, and when we finally stopped, it was only because my legs gave out. Exhaustion, hunger, and apathy did me in. I struggled to care about what happened to me.
I’d done this. I’d been the one to bring about the destruction of the world. No small weight for a fifteen-year-old to carry even if I’d only been a tool to open the cracks and not the actual hammer that had shattered our world.
I crumpled to the ground near a pile of trees that had come down and pulled my thick purple cloak over me. I stared at the color, how it stood out against the chaos and darkness around me. I smoothed a finger over it, running the thinnest thread of magic into the cloth, tweaking the color until it was a deep, dark green. At least it was a natural color.
“You need to eat something,” Oka whispered.
“I need to sleep.” I closed my eyes, squeezing out a few tears as I did. She was my familiar, and she could feel my emotions even if I wasn’t willing to talk about them.
The ground beneath me rumbled and the sound of trees coming down made me hunch tighter underneath the cloak.
Oka disappeared, and for just a second, I thought maybe she was leaving me. Her thoughts came through loud and clear.
Don’t be silly. I’m here with you, Pamela. You didn’t do anything wrong. You helped the Destroyer do what this world needed—cleansing. It’s hard now, but it will get better.
I wanted to ask her where she was going, but I felt her intention as the question formed. She was looking for food for both of us.
Sleep caught hold of me, fitful and restless, but better than nothing at all. My dreams were all fire and tornadoes, of my family staring at me and asking me why I would do this. I saw the questions in their eyes. They didn’t understand what I had to do to help the Destroyer. Even if I didn’t fully understand the consequences.
That was a bitter pill to swallow. I’d not fully grasped how bad it would be when she—the Destroyer—actually pulled the world apart piece by piece. To save us all, she’d destroyed everything.
It looked a hell of a lot better on paper than in real life.
I shivered and woke as Oka approached, dragging something with her. I sat up and stared.
“A rat?”
“Sorry.” She shrugged and dropped the oversized rodent at my feet. “Only thing I could find alive and worth eating.”
I only had one knife on me. I pulled it from the sheath at my lower back and used it to open the rat, gut it, and peel the skin from its tiny body. My gorge rose a couple times, but I bit it back.
There was a good chance we weren’t going to be eating again for a few days, so it was time to buck up and take the hits head on. I started a small fire with a flick of my fingers at a space of rock at my feet and the flames sprang up.
“You wouldn’t use so much energy if there was wood involved,” Oka pointed out. I shrugged.
“I barely feel the drain for a fire that size.” I cut the rat in half and handed the top bit to her. She took it and crunched through the bone and skull. I put my lower half onto the flames. Cooking rat shouldn�
�t have smelled so damn delicious, but the scent wafted up my nose and my stomach rumbled while my mouth filled with saliva.
There was a shuffle of feet against the rocky ground behind me and to my right. I whipped around to see a girl a little younger than me staring back. Her green eyes were wide, and she was covered in ash, her face nearly black with it. Dark brown curls sprang out in every direction even though she’d clearly tried to tame them.
“I saw your fire,” she whispered. “Can I sit with you?”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
She blinked a few times, then flinched as the ground gave a shudder. She wrapped her arms around her upper body. “Are you from England?”
I forced a smile. “I grew up there, yes.” Funny to think that I considered all my growing up years to have been done by the time I was thirteen. At fifteen, I felt like an adult.
Then again, I’d done more in the last couple years working with other supernaturals to stop a demon invasion and saving the world than most humans do their entire lives.
Which made me helping to destroy it that much worse. Suddenly my appetite was gone. “Are you hungry?” I pointed at the roasting rat.
The girl didn’t hesitate. She snagged the back leg of the rat and pulled it right off the fire. It had to be burning her fingers, but she didn’t slow down. How long since she’d eaten last? I’d guess at least a few days.
Oka gave me a look. “That was for you, Pamela.”
“I know,” I whispered, then turned to the girl. She wouldn’t be able to hear Oka and wouldn’t understand why I was talking to her. “What’s your name?”
“Macy.” She smiled around the rat. “And you?”
“I’m Pamela, and this here is Oka.” I pointed to my familiar who sat glaring, her yellow-green eyes narrowed as they watched the girl eat my meal.
Macy squinted. “She looks a bit cranky. Is she an old cat?”
Her question caught me off guard and I laughed, a sound that seemed totally out of place sitting where we were, the world crashing to pieces around us. Oka snorted, stood and made her way to my lap where she curled up.
“She made you smile, so I don’t feel bad about feeding her now,” the peach-colored cat grumbled. I put a hand on her, still smiling.
“She’s not old,” I shook my head. “Just protective of me, which can make her look grumpy.”
Macy shifted a little closer to me, rubbing her arms. She only wore a thin, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. The temperatures were all over the place, but one thing was certain, the nights were damn cold.
I lifted my cloak edge and Macy scooted underneath with me, shivering. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
I kept the fire going longer than I wanted, but it would keep us warmer than not. And even without the food, my energy level had come up a little with the rest. Macy’s eyes drooped, and she fell asleep against me. I lifted my hand to the sky and pulled a few mouthfuls of water to me, enough to take off the edge of the hunger that had returned.
I fell asleep sitting up, holding Macy and Oka, our combined body heat with the fire helping us fend off the cold of the night.
The next morning came with a boom and a crash, and the sound of guttural roaring. I leapt to my feet, flung Oka off my lap and sent Macy to the ground, flat on her belly.
I spun to see a pair of purple-skinned trolls tromping our way.
Macy grabbed at me. “Hurry, we have to run. They’re slow enough we can keep ahead of them.”
I raised an eyebrow. “They were chasing you?”
She cringed. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d lost them.”
“Pamela.” Oka only said my name, but I heard the warning in it.
“I’m not going to overdo it,” I said.
Macy frowned. “What?”
I waved a hand at Oka. “She’s my familiar, and I can hear her talking.” Any other time I would have kept that to myself, but the truth was the supernatural world was no longer a secret. It was freeing to not have to hide who I was.
Or what I was capable of doing.
The trolls saw us finally and they picked up speed, their loose flesh dancing and jiggling as they shuffle-ran our way.
“I hate trolls,” I growled. Oka puffed up beside me and then in a burst of light, her body shifted, changing from a tiny peach-colored cat to a six-hundred-pound stripeless tiger.
She let out a roar, baring all her pearly whites. The trolls slowed and stumbled to a stop.
“Oy, oy, we just want the girl,” the one on the right said, pointing at Macy.
I laughed at him. “Oy, I think not, mate.” I found myself falling back into my childhood lingo the more agitated I was, which only agitated me further. I was not a child being sold to trolls again.
Troll on the left said, “Why don’t we just eat the two of them?”
“You see the tiger there, dummy?” Righty snarled. “Unless you want to try and get past it first?”
Lefty shrugged, reached over and picked up his buddy so fast I barely blinked, and Righty was sailing through the air toward Oka.
She leapt up and caught the troll with her big paws, then rode him to the ground, slashing with four-inch claws, tearing his belly apart with a few well-placed blows.
I looked at Lefty. “That wasn’t very nice.”
He grinned and pulled a stick from behind him. “I’m not very nice.” He pointed the stick at me but before he could do anything, I tapped into my connection with the earth. I softened the ground and sucked him under, all the way to his neck, then firmed the ground again.
I checked on Oka and Righty. He was dead. She was covered in blood. She hated trolls almost as much as I did. Probably because she knew what they’d done to me all those years ago. I shook my head. Not going there; this was not the time.
Lefty struggled against the hold I had on him. “Lemme go!”
I stood in front of him, a well of darkness flowing up through me, from the soles of my feet all the way through my body. Light and dark, I knew they were both a part of me, but the darkness called to me in a way that I struggled to fight, more so when I was in danger. The darkness was strength and ruthlessness to protect those I cared for no matter the cost. Like a dark phoenix rising through me, I embraced it. “No, I will not let you go.” I softened the ground further, shoving him down, deeper and deeper until his cries were gone, muffled under the earth.
I took a step back and turned to see Macy staring at me, her eyes so wide, they were likely to fall out.
“Macy,” I said softly as if talking to a wild animal likely to bolt, “I’m a witch. And I can protect you. I won’t let them hurt you. I promise.”
She blinked a few times. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”
I looked to the side and Oka shifted back to her house cat form, a grimace on her face, blood still splattered across her pale orange coat.
The ground below us rumbled again and a crack appeared between Macy and me before I could explain my reasoning. I ran toward her, my cloak flaring out behind me as the crack widened, threatening to separate the three of us. I leapt over it, barely landing on solid ground on the far side. “Oka, hurry!”
“I’m on it!” she called back and then she was there, landing beside me light as a feather before she bounded ahead of us, leading the way.
We ran for what felt like hours as the ground cracked and split, trees falling around us. Somewhere around midday, we stumbled onto an old paved road and followed it until we could go no more.
The rumbling of the ground stopped finally, but that was when the real storm rolled in.
I stood panting, sweat cooling across my face as I stared up into the sky. “Oh, this can’t be good.”
Black roiling clouds bled through the sky, lightning forking in all directions and the boom of thunder so loud, I felt it to the center of my bones. It stole my ability to take a breath for just a moment.
I looked around us. There was no place to take cover, n
o cave, and the trees were still being split by lightning.
I held my hand out over the ground and pressed it downward, using my connection to the earth to create a hollow space. “Get in.” I pointed to it and the three of us scooted inside. I pulled the ground around us, creating something of a nest.
Macy clung to me, and I, to her. Oka curled once more in my lap. The cloak was our only real cover against the sudden onslaught of hail the size of my fists.
“Ay!” Oka screeched as a smaller stone bounced off her nose.
“Hang on.” I lifted my head and wove a barrier above us, though the energy it took was more than draining. I was at the end of my reserves.
I held it as the storm raged, my body shaking as hard as the wind around us.
Oka stared up at me. “Pamela, you’re not going to last much longer. You can take energy from me.”
I shook my head. “I need you awake.”
“Macy!” I shouted her name to be heard over the wild storm far from easing off.
She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. “What?”
“I might pass out.” Even as I spoke, the fatigue from running, using my magic, no food and little sleep burst over me in a rush that left me shaking. “I can’t hold this barrier for much longer.”
“What do you want me to do?” she yelled. I didn’t really know. But I had to give her a goal to keep fear at bay. I’d learned that as a youngster in this world. Goals kept you from realizing how bad your life was.
“Get to some sort of cover,” I said, and then I was sliding out of consciousness. The hail would pummel me into the ground; there was nothing else I could do, though. There was no way I could even get to my feet.
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