by Celeste Raye
They went to sleep that night in each other's arms, and Cira tried to calm her mind down. She had too many dreams of witches and babies and shifters. By the time Cira woke up, her breath was coming out in short gasps, and her heart was pounding. At first, she thought it was just a dream, but then she realized that there was something else wrong.
Cira had been out in the woods for almost three weeks now, and she had gotten used to the silence that was around her. The natural sounds made by the animals and the insects were the noises she heard as she was going to sleep. When she woke up, all she heard was silence.
She looked over to find that Broch was next to her, but that wasn't enough. She still had this bad feeling inside of her, and she finally woke Broch up. She did not know what to tell him, just that something wasn't right and she needed him awake.
“What's going on, Cira?”
“I don't know. Listen. There is no sound. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”
Broch did as she asked, and his eyes seemed to predict the same thing that hers did. Something was about to go down.
“They are here.”
“Who's here?”
“The witch for one, and I don't know who else is with her. Can't you feel her?”
Cira looked at him a little questioningly because she didn't feel anything at all. She should have, but she didn't. Why did he, though, when he hadn’t before?”
He got up with a quickness and started to get dressed. She felt the alarm go through him and to her. Whatever was going on; however, he was feeling, Marl Stein must have had something to do with it, and Cira wasn’t going to doubt it.
“What are we going to do?”
“We have to sound the alarm before we’re all burned alive. Apparently, that's something she's pretty good at. From what I hear, it’s her specialty.”
He was worried, and Cira was getting more and more nervous the longer it went on.
“Are you sure about this?”
“You're the one that woke me up, Cira. Listen to your instincts. That's her, and I feel a whole lot of shifters with her.”
Cira shook her head because she couldn't feel anything. Was being with Broch that desensitizing? Was she only worried about him now and couldn't even focus on anything else?
Whatever it was, she knew that she was going to have to get herself together. Cira could not give up being a witch just to be with a man. All of the extra power that she had, she should be able to focus better, but Cira was finding it the complete opposite. More magic, brought intensity of feelings to everything else.
He started to leave the room and she asked him what he was doing.
“Like I said before, we need to warn people. They are going to be upon us very quickly. This is it.”
Cira thought about the guys that had gone after the witch earlier in the day. Were they the reason that she had finally shown up? Where were they now?
Cira knew the answer to the last question quickly. None of them survived.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Everything started to happen very quickly. Broch knew almost certainly when Cira woke up, that the witch was close. He had never known it before, couldn't feel witches one way or another, but she wasn't just a witch. She was a person that inhabited his mind for almost two weeks. They knew each other so intimately that it was hard to not feel her presence.
“It's her, Cira.”
Cira looked at him and smiled reassuringly and then nodded her head.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Can you feel her?”
“Not yet; she must be staying back. It's the smoke that worries me. She is going to burn us out. Didn't she do that before?”
Broch agreed. They were running down the hallway, getting to the last person that needed to wake up. People were starting to scream, and everyone wanted to leave the burning building. Some people were already outside, and then there was more fire.
“This is exactly what they did last time with Dennis and his clan.”
While this was a different time, it was much of the same thing. They had been waiting for her, and now she had arrived.
Broch could see that Cira was worried. He was too. There was no possible way that anybody wouldn't be freaked out by what they were up against, especially if they knew as much as Broch did about how Marl thought.
He pulled Cira to his body for just a moment. He kissed her on the lips and told her that everything was going to be okay.
“I wish that I could hide you somewhere and keep you safe. I wish I could take care of this for you, but I know that I can't.”
“What about all the ones that tried?”
“We can't think about that right now. We have to think about getting out of here and getting Marl dead.”
Cira waited for a moment before she saw Connie and went towards her. She didn’t want to leave Broch, but she didn’t have a choice. One last kiss and she was gone.
The four women went outside together. There was already an evacuation plan in place. Marl Stein did not seem to have many tricks up her sleeve. She kept using the same one. That was good for them because they already had something in place for it.
While the witches of the new coven weren’t looking forward to taking on one of the oldest and strongest in the world, everyone else was fleeing into a series of tunnels that had been dug. The tunnels would take them out about a half of a mile from the scene. At that point, anyone extra in the scenario would only make everything more complicated. There would just be more victims and more targets.
Jazz had a bottle in her hand, and Cira knew without asking what it was: the immortality potion that she had heard so much about. That was the whole reason that Marl Stein was there. All they had to do was give it to her, and she would go away. She would cause pain and chaos to whatever part of the world she was in, but she wouldn't do that to them.
Cira shook the thought from her head and felt bad for even thinking it. Of course they weren't just going to give it to her. But at the same time, she had never been so scared in all of her life. Cira had lived a quiet life with a small coven that helped the people in the village to get better. She had never fought anyone, save for a girl in third grade that had pulled her hair because she was jealous of Cira. Cira didn't know if she was ready for all of this.
She looked around and Broch was gone. He was helping hurt people to safety. That was part of the plan. Their plan, but what she wouldn't have given to have him next to her side.
She must have lost her attention for a moment because Connie shook her a little bit and told her that it was time.
“We have to go, Cira. They're all going to be safe, as long as we can stop her.”
“I know, but I'm scared.”
She smiled at her and told her that everyone was.
“Trust me, Cira; you are not the only one. We just have to rise this one last time and take her out. I have faced her before; it is a lot.”
“What if it isn't enough?”
“We can't think like that, Cira.”
Too late, she thought to herself. She couldn’t stop the worries and anxiety that ran through her mind.
The witches set up the circle outside days before. It was ready for them. They needed the power of it to channel their own. There had been a lot of talk about what spell they should use, but in the end, they decided that sometimes the simplest spell was the best. They were going to bind Marl Stein’s power. She would then have no more power and her human body could quickly be taken care of.
They had all expected the attack. They had not expected the extra help that seemed to be coming with the old witch. There were shifters and even a couple of vampires standing behind her. Twenty at least. Cira's heartbeat started to go faster, and it was thumping so hard in her chest that it actually hurt.
“What are we supposed to do about them?”
The question was not even out of her mouth before several of them started running towards the small coven. Cira knew that there was nobody there to help them. Tha
t was the plan all along after all. They were going to take care of the witch because they were the only ones that could. Why had they not thought that she would bring more reinforcements? Wasn’t that the whole reason that she had Broch under her spell for so long?
“We're going to have to break the circle to take care of those coming.”
Dahlia was the first to say that it was impossible.
“We break the circle now and Marl is going to kill us all. Then she's going to get her bottle and all of this will have been for nothing. I will not go out like that.”
Cira looked around. There were small buildings burning, trees that had taken a light from the tall flames on the roof that served for quick-made housing. There were people running underground for safety, trying to get away from the fire. Where would they all go if they didn't take care of Marl?
She continued to chant like the rest of them, trying to block out the fact that as soon as the spell was finished, they were most likely going to be killed by multiple magical beings. She could already feel teeth on her neck. That's how the shifters took out their prey.
“Cira, squeeze my hand harder. You have to clear your mind and stop thinking about it.”
Both of her hands were squeezed harder, and she started to feel magic flow through.
The coven was doing their job, and she could feel it. It was hard to ignore the extra power flowing. The way it made every sense inside of her heighten to inexplicable levels.
And then the power was gone. It evaporated into the air after being shot towards Marl Stein. She would be bound.
Cira started to open her eyes, but then she heard a growl right next to her. It was a guttural sound, so deep that there was only one thing it could be. Cira fully expected it to be her last moment. She broke the circle and sent out a magical burst to the sound. She couldn't even open her eyes; Cira was too afraid to see what was coming.
The growl turned into a whimper that she, for some reason, recognized. She knew exactly what person had made it and she opened her eyes suddenly. Cira didn’t want to believe it was true.
“Broch!”
He was lying on the ground, partially in the circle and partially out. He had taken a direct hit from her, and there was a burned area about the size of a volleyball on his chest.
Cira's heart dropped. She looked around for the attacker, the one that was surely going to kill her, but they were standing just outside the circle, looking at her. All of them seem to be in a daze.
“Go get Marl Stein!”
She said it was such an intensity that they did not question it. Cira knew if she needed to push their minds to her will, she would be able to. There was another level of power and certainty inside of her now.
“Bring her to me!
Connie and Jazz were already trying to help Broch. They were saying healing spells above him, but Cira just seemed to know exactly what to do. She told them to help her drag him into the circle.
They repeated a spell over and over again, but Cira could see that he was losing his fight. She had too much power, and she couldn't erase what she had done. Cira was going to have to live with the fact that she killed the man she loved.
Another idea sprung to mind: the answer to all of her prayers.
“We have to give it to him.”
“What?”
She looked over at Jazz and didn't have to say another word.
Jazz hesitated a moment, and Cira knew that she would take on Jazz if she had to. Cira would have done anything to make sure that Broch lived. She couldn’t live with the burden of killing him.
Cira had loved him for a long time, and there was no way that she was going to lose him like that.
“Give him the potion. If anybody deserves to live forever, it's Broch. He loves everyone and helps. He is a good man, and I can't see him die. Give it to him, or I will take it.”
She thought for a moment that she would have to fight Jazz for it. She didn't want to, of course, but if worse came to worse, she would do exactly that. Cira
“Are you sure that's what you want to do?”
Cira agreed. “It is the only way, and I can't watch him die. I love him, and I can't do it. I won’t.”
Jazz smiled and told Cira that she had felt the same way before about a man. “I would have done anything, and I think he would too. This bottle has been passed down from generation to generation. It has been more of a hindrance than anything else, from what I hear. Witches have had to run and fight for it for centuries. I'm tired, and I have only started. Let it go to somebody that can make a difference with it.”
Jazz moved over to Broch and took out the stopper in the blue bottle. She breathed deep, hesitated a moment, looking at her other sisters, and they all nodded their heads. This was how it was supposed to be the whole time.
She tipped the contents into his mouth and closed it so that he would have to swallow. Cira sat there staring at his face; it was already starting to look ashen. She had done this to him, and if that stupid bottle didn't somehow work, Cira knew that there was nothing she was going to be able to do. She would have lost the man that she’d loved for longer than she even knew what love was.
Nothing happened for several moments. Maybe it was a few heartbeats, tops, but to Cira, it was an eternity. There was no way that she would be able to go on without Broch. Not after they had finally found each other. Everything hung in the balance; time stood still. Cira’s heart threatened to stop beating altogether.
Then Broch coughed. The wound in his chest started to heal itself. The skin came back, covering the burning hole that she had put in his body. After several moments, Broch was made whole, and the only thing that showed his damage were the burnt hairs on his chest.
His eyes opened and met Cira's almost out of instinct. “What happened? Why can’t I feel Marl anymore?”
“The witch is being brought to me as a human. The shifters will be able to make a decision on what they will do with her. I don't care what you guys do with Marl Stein. You're alive, and that's all that matters.”
“How am I alive? I'm pretty sure I died.”
“You'll never die again Broch. You are going to live forever. I demand it.”
Broch smiled and accepted the kiss that was planted on his lips. He, of course, thought that it was an expression about how much she loved him and couldn't go on without him. He had no clue that she was serious. She could see the confusion on his face. Cira knew that it was going to be hard to tell him such a thing. She didn't know how he would react, but there was no time for that now.
Several men that had once been shifted animals came back with Marl Stein captured between them. She was resisting, but she was human now. A very old human. All of the residual power that she had and used was gone. Marl didn’t seem so scary anymore. Cira actually pitied her.
“Get everybody out here. They need to decide what to do with this witch.”
There was a round of whooping and hollering around her, and Cira felt like it was finally over.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The shifters were placated with the fact that they got to decide the fate of Marl Stein. She wasn't going to last much longer, though, and so they had to come up with a plan rather quickly. Broch was amazed at how many people wanted to kill her. Burn her at the stake, more specifically.
He kept looking at her and even after everything she had done to him and made him do, he couldn't hate her. Maybe that was the funniest part of it all. She was just an old woman who was so decrepit that she couldn't seriously hurt anybody. It looked like she was actually aging still. If all of the stories of her true age were accurate, Broch did not think she would last much longer.
“I think we should just let her die. It won't take but another day or two. We should not stain this with another death. Let her go back to the ground where she is supposed to be. That will keep the balance going.”
There was an uproar with his comment. It seemed so simple to Broch. This was an old decrepit woman. She wasn't s
ome monster. They were giving her way too much credit.
He calmly went towards the old woman and took his trinket back. Broch was glad that it had not kept her safe like it had him. He put it back on and felt like a part of him was put whole again.
“You can't be serious!”
“We can't do nothing!”
“We need to kill her. That is the only way that we can move forward. We need to end one chapter and move on to the next.”
Broch could see that he was probably not helping matters. But one comment in particular caught his attention, and he had to respond.
“What do you mean it's because I can't die?”
Justin turned to Broch and asked him if he did not know why he was living right now.
“What do you mean?”
“You were given the immortality potion. You can't die now, Broch. I thought you knew that.”
Broch had seen the women in the circle, chanting. And then he had seen the shifters and a vampire coming towards them in a spell. He had doubled back in the tunnels to make sure that they were okay. He was ready to launch himself at them when they all stopped suddenly, staring off in the distance like they did not know what they were doing.
It was then that he had seen Cira and her hand shoot out. There had been a fireball that came from her fingertips, and he just remembered getting hit. It had hurt down to his soul, and there had been a thought in his mind that he was not going to make it.
Next thing he remembered was seeing Cira standing over him. Or maybe she had been leaning over him. He had no idea; he just remembered her face. She looked so relieved and happy to see him that he had given her this silly smile that felt from his lips.
“I thought you were gone.”
And then she kissed him. It had been so feverish, it almost hurt, but he just kissed her back and let her say how much she missed him. He didn't quite understand it, but maybe now he did. Had he really died?
It felt like everyone in the area was looking at him. Why hadn't Cira told him? Maybe she didn't want to tell him that he had died or she didn't want to admit what had happened.
