The Girl With The Good Magic: The Shifter Wars Book One An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by MJ Caan

  “Vivian!” shouted Aunt Lena, rushing into the room. “Control yourself!”

  Instantly I felt the magic recoil and wind down, retreating back to the otherworldly pockets from which Aunt Vivian had summoned it. I looked at Cody. His face was pale, and his eyes, though defiant, were not quite as set in anger as they had been a second before.

  “Is that what you think happened?” said Aunt Vivian, swallowing hard. She didn’t wait for an answer. “No, nothing even remotely close to that happened. Where did you hear that?”

  “My father was there! He told me!” cried Cody, struggling to sit up.

  “Your father was indeed there,” replied Aunt Vivian, “at the beginning. He didn’t have the stomach for battle. He could barely enter the caves; he begged to stay outside, taking swigs from that silver flask I bet he still carries around in his jacket pocket!”

  I looked at Cody, watching the blush spread across his handsome features. I’m sure that wasn’t the effect my aunt intended for her words to have. I was thankful that when she spoke next, her words were much softer.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but it’s true. And that is no reflection on the character of your father. Not everyone was cut out for what had to happen that day. So you can’t believe the words of a man who was not there to see what actually took place.

  “As I said, we stood there in shock, taking in the sight. There was no debating what to do. We were close to the warlock, so finishing him off was the duty of the witches. We left the Shifter babies to the humans. They took all of them out of the cave and made their way through the mountain and back down to the Cove.

  “My sisters and I, along with the other witches, made our way through the caverns until we finally came upon the warlock. He wasn’t what we expected. Truth be told, none of us had ever actually seen one or really heard a description of what one would look like.”

  She paused with the expert timing of a master storyteller.

  “Well?” said Gar, unable to hold in his curiosity any longer. “What did he look like?”

  “He looked like you, darling,” she said, looking at Gar. She smiled at the shocked look on his face. “Not physically, but in the normal, all-American young man type of look. He wasn’t menacing, or old and smitten. He was just a young man, barely out of his teens. Where he studied the practice of magic, we never got the chance to ask him. Despite his youth, he was brimming with hatred and darkness. I could feel the black magic rolling off him in waves as he attacked us.

  “He knew what we had done. He felt the mystical and the physical deaths of his werewolves, and in return he had drained everything out of the witches he still held in captivity, leaving only soulless husks in their wake. He used that magic to attack us directly, hurling black waves of power at us that meant to fry us where we stood. But he made one mistake.

  “He attacked us with magic that had an inherent flaw. As dark and twisted as it was, we could still sense what was at the core of his spells. It was the familiar power of our sisters. We were able to tap into that power and redirect it back at the warlock. The fight went on for what seemed like hours, but in reality may have only been minutes. Our combined strength was enough to deflect his attack, and he responded by doubling and redoubling the energy of his power. But that had the desired effect. Unlike us, his power supply was limited. He had no new reserves to draw on once his stolen magic was spent. Without his wolves to take us out, he quickly grew too weak to fight, and slumped to the ground.

  “We surrounded him, magic at the ready, and prepared to deliver the death blow. But it was your mother who stopped us,” she said, gazing at me. “She said that if we killed him, there was nothing to stop another warlock from taking his place. Instead, she devised a way to trap him in the cave: a spell that would cause his body to become ethereal, a living spirit with no power and no connection to the living world, sealed inside that cave forever. We used his own talismans, the ones he had crafted to make his wolves, to act as binders for his spirit. We also used the same talismans to create a forbidding; a wall of magic that worked with the ley energies in Trinity Cove to disrupt the flow of magic here. While we can access and draw on our natural power, it is now all but impossible for a non-witch to tap into our energy source; so effectively, warlocks can’t exist here anymore.”

  “In theory,” Aunt Lena said. She had returned from the kitchen in the midst of Aunt Vivian’s recollection and I had almost forgotten she was in the house. “The spell we cast that day was something no witches had ever attempted. To create a forbidding that trapped the spirit of a warlock and acted as a warning for others who may have followed in his footsteps? We have no idea what we really did.”

  “Wait, so are you saying that warlock is still up there in some cave behind the falls?” I asked incredulously.

  “By now he is no more than a remnant, if his spirit has not succumbed to the darkness of the nether realms,” said Aunt Vivian. “The spells we wove were meant to cleanse and hold. Without a body, and nothing to anchor him to the physical world, he is trapped in limbo. He’s neither here nor there, but somewhere in between the world of the living and the dead, with no hope of ever walking in either. He is no threat to us.”

  “What about the Shifters?” Gar asked. “I mean, you said you undid the spell that created them? So…?”

  “There have not been Shifters in the world since that day,” said Aunt Lena. “They shouldn’t exist.”

  “But what about the one that almost killed Gar and me today?” I asked.

  “Wait,” said Cody, “Shifter? You mean that bear I shot?”

  “Wasn’t a bear,” I said, and Gar nodded in agreement. “Just minutes before you arrived, we watched a man turn into that bear and come after us. So if Shifters don’t exist anymore, how do you explain that? Or the one that attacked me in the coffee shop?”

  “It was definitely a Shifter that attacked the three of you today,” said Aunt Lena. “That was why we wanted you out of the room when we treated Cody. We had to examine the magical signature that was left within his wounds. Allie’s innate magic could have clouded our readings. But it was unmistakable; definitely a Shifter attack. But we can’t figure out how.”

  “After all these years, how is this happening?” said Aunt Lena. “Perhaps the spell is wearing thin. That can happen, you know.”

  “Not likely,” said Aunt Vivian. “Magic exists outside of the individual that cast it. That’s why it is able to maintain itself long after the creator of a spell has passed. No, more likely than not, it is being eroded by someone...or something.”

  “Another warlock?” said Aunt Lena. “Someone has definitely found a way around the forbidding.”

  Aunt Vivian nodded. “That would be the most likely explanation. Someone is seeking to break the wards that we put in place years ago. It’s the only reason that Shifting could happen again. Small cracks are appearing in the forbidding, and that’s brought the power of Shifting back into the world. But whoever, or whatever, is doing this is still working to find a way through the wards. That’s why the Shifter that attacked you at the coffee shop couldn’t completely transform. The bear, on the other hand, was able to complete a Shift. Still... that doesn’t explain why it was attracted to you.”

  “The man that was with the Shifter said something about sensing my magic. I had just conjured a small ball of light to show Gar when they popped up.”

  “Of course,” said Aunt Vivian. “Whoever the man with the Shifter was, he must have sensed your magic and sought it out. The fact that you are a descendant of the original magic that created the forbidding made you stand out even more. They must be seeking the source magic to break the spell that forbids Shifting and keeps the warlocks at bay.”

  “That would explain why they were at our cafe as well,” said Aunt Lena.

  “Wait, why would that be?” I asked. “I had not used any magic when that thing attacked us.”

  “Hmmm,” said Aunt Lena. “Perhaps it was attracted to the stone.�
��

  Aunt Vivian looked at her sister before speaking. “Yes. That could indeed be it!”

  “I’m confused,” I said. “What stone?”

  “Your mother created a necklace out of the last talisman the warlock had,” said Aunt Vivian. “It was made from a ley stone that was bathed in the same magic as that which created the forbidding. It’s the necklace she gave you the night she disappeared. She said it was so that, no matter what happened in the future, it would keep you invisible to any warlock. It also bound your power—for your own protection, which is why you should not have been able to manifest it the way you did today. But if whoever is trying to break the forbidding spell is looking for a way to undo the magic, they could be drawn to any remnants of the original spell, in the hopes that it would help bring the Shifters, and by extension, the warlocks, back into existence.”

  Both of my aunts looked at me as I sat there in silence. My hand had automatically gone to my neck, reaching for my necklace.

  “Allie,” said Aunt Lena, “where is your necklace?”

  I swallowed hard, aware of the look of horror that must have crept over my face.

  “Oh God. I gave it to Hope to wear that night she was taken to the hospital. I gave it to her to wear for good luck.”

  12

  “C’mon, c’mon,” I said. “Pick up the phone!”

  We were speeding toward Hope’s house in Cody’s patrol car. I wasn’t able to talk him out of coming, but at least I had been able to convince him not to call anything in to the Trinity Cove police department. If what we had heard was true, and based on everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours I had no reason to believe it wasn’t, then this was not the type of thing to get the police involved in.

  I kept quiet as we made our way across town to Hope’s home. She was in a gated community that was built around a pond, about fifteen minutes from the ridge where I lived. I kept glancing over at Cody. I wanted to be sure he was still conscious, and besides, I couldn’t quite shake the image of those six-pack abs he was rocking under his bulky tee shirt. He caught me looking and smiled.

  “How are you so calm?” I asked, before he could inquire about my sneaking glances. “And are you sure you’re up for this? I mean, just a few hours ago you were bleeding out on my aunts’ couch.”

  “I’m not going to lie: my back feels like someone is throwing lit matches on it every time I breathe. But whatever magic they used to heal me is definitely doing the trick. Besides, no way was I letting you come over here alone or only with Gar. That kid’s got balls, but I’ve got a gun, and as we saw today, that seems to do the trick.”

  “Or at least it slows Shifters down,” I said, “so that’s good to know. So why weren’t you freaked out by everything you heard back there?”

  “Because most of it I’ve heard, in one form or another, all my life. You should know, there are a lot of tales that circulated around town and around school about your family. And you.”

  I turned to look out the window without responding. Of course I knew about the rumors swirling around my family’s name. It was one of the chief reasons that I was such a loner throughout school. I was popular for a couple of years in grade school, but that was before the other girls were old enough to realize what their parents were saying about my aunts. Once that started, everyone shunned me out of fear. Everyone except Hope. She pretty much danced to her own drumbeat and didn’t let anyone make up her mind for her.

  Thinking about my best, and probably only, friend made the knot in my stomach pull itself even tighter. I fidgeted, wanting Cody to drive faster than he was.

  “We’re close,” he said, almost as if he could sense my feelings. “Try her again on the phone.”

  I did as he asked, only to get her voicemail again. She would never stray more than an arm’s length from her cell, and I highly doubted she would have let the battery die. However, I didn’t want to think about the alternatives as to why she wasn’t answering.

  My anxiety picked up as we made the turn off the main road onto the street that led into Hope’s development. It was an upper-class enclave of homes, and the fact that there wasn’t a guard on duty at the gatehouse made my heart hammer. Then, when I saw that the gate leading into the complex was slightly ajar, my heart went into full-scale triphammer mode.

  “Shit,” I said, already assuming the worst. Suddenly, I wished my aunts had come with us. But they had a lot of their own work to do: they were trying to find a spell that could help them uncover who, or what, we might be up against. No, for better or worse, it was up to me and Officer Hunter to make certain Hope was all right.

  Despite my anxiety, I understood why we drove through the wooded neighborhood so slowly. I could feel Cody peering deeply into the shadows of the well-manicured lawns, watching for anything that didn’t belong to separate itself from the darkness. He followed my directions to Hope’s house and killed the lights as he coasted to a stop on the street just past her driveway. Why he didn’t just pull up in the driveway I had no idea, but I chalked it up to being some sort of cop thing.

  “Stay behind me,” he whispered as we exited his patrol car. I noticed he had drawn his gun and held it in both hands, barrel pointed down, as we advanced slowly on the front door.

  “Are you crazy?” I said. “Put that away before you hurt someone!”

  “And are you forgetting how fast that thing in the woods moved?” he replied.

  “Fair enough,” I answered. I didn’t have a gun, but I did draw up some magic and held it vibrating in my fist. What I would do with it, I had no clue, but I wasn’t about to be taken unawares for the third time in as many days.

  I approached the front door and looked at Cody. Once he nodded, I rang the doorbell. The house was a one-story mid-century modern build. The middle section of the structure was all glass, and offered an almost unobstructed view through the house and out to the pool in back. The land then sloped away, diving down into a wooded lot that led to the large pond around which the community was centered. Cody took a few steps towards large windows, peering in as I rang the bell again. This time I punctuated the ringing with a few hard pounds with the palm of my hand on the wooden frame.

  “Hope!” I yelled. “It’s me, Allie! Let me in! Are you home?”

  I ignored the frown Cody gave me and banged again at the door. This time my adrenaline kicked in, and I was almost to the point of actually kicking the door when it suddenly swung open. I stopped my hand mid-pound, just before it would have collided with Hope’s startled face.

  “Girl!” she said, not bothering to mask her annoyance. “What in hell is wrong with you, beating down my door like that?”

  I wanted to rush in and hug her, but instead I just stood there. “You weren’t answering your phone,” I finally stammered. “I was worried about you.”

  Hope softened, smiling sheepishly at me. “Well, if you must know, I was kinda...busy. My parents are out, and I invited that cute EMT over. You know, the one that showed up at the coffee shop the night you were robbed.”

  I couldn’t say I was surprised, but at least she was okay. I stepped in and then noticed her looking over my shoulder.

  “And who have we here?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “This is Co…I mean Officer Hunter,” I said. “He investigated the crime scene at the coffee shop, and was just dropping by my place to fill in some final details when I mentioned that you weren’t answering your phone. He offered to give me a lift over to make sure you were all right.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Hope said, turning on her heel to head into the house. “C’mon in. I was about to take a dip. Wanna join?” She gave Cody a wry smile and me a not-too-subtle wink.

  “No,” I said, following her into the house, Cody at my back. “We just needed to make sure you were okay. Umm, hey, do you by chance still have my mother’s necklace I gave you?”

  “What? Oh yeah, of course. You know I would take care of it.”

  “I’m sorry to come
over so late, it’s just that…I mean, it’s all I have from her, and I didn’t think I would miss it as much as I do,” I said.

  Hope stopped and turned to face me. She took my hand in hers and squeezed gently. “You don’t have to explain anything. I’m honored you let me wear it. It’s over here on the mantel. I didn’t want anything to happen to it after I got home from the hospital.”

  She retrieved a small, intricately carved jewelry box from above the fireplace, opened it and took out the silver necklace with a teardrop-shaped pink stone attached to it, and placed it in my hand. I closed my fist around my necklace and instantly felt more settled and focused. That was when I noticed that the magic I had called up seemed to fizzle and run away from me, like something I could see moving off in the distance, but was just out of arm’s reach.

  That was also when the sliding doors that led out to the pool exploded inward in a shower of glass.

  13

  I threw my arms up, instinctively protecting my face from flying shards of glass. I barely had time to make out three figures rushing into the room before feeling Cody’s hand on my shoulder, shoving me behind the large couch to our left.

  “Get down!” he shouted, drawing his gun. Suddenly, I was very thankful he had brought it, and if we survived this I intended to make sure he never parted with it again.

  Hope screamed as she dove behind the couch with me, her hands covering her ears.

  “What the fuck?” she shouted. Her entire body was trembling, but right now I didn’t dare let myself become distracted..

  I needed to call up some magic and help Cody get us out of here. But when I reached for my magic, it was gone. Damnit! Now what?

  Cody rolled out from the opposite end of the couch behind which Hope and I were cowering. I heard the rapid fire of his gun, but couldn’t see what he was shooting at. Then I heard a grunt, and the sound of two bodies colliding. Cody was hurled backward with one of the intruders on top of him. The two men tussled, crashing over the console table arrayed with books and family photos. I heard the clatter of Cody’s gun as it flew from his hand, sliding across the floor.