Before him he had placed the lavender, the cloth, the hand and the spell, and with it the green bottle of olive oil. There were a few items he still needed. He stood staring at Bolear, still hidden by the shadows. “Now what?”
“You need to summons the next relic.” His uncle’s creepy voice came.
It didn’t take much, he thought of what a candle could possibly look like that was made up of bone – time master bone to be exact, when a rattling came from somewhere inside the room. His first thought was that someone was at the attic door, but Bolaer quickly corrected him.
“It’s coming from inside the casket.”
“Casket?”
“Behind you.”
He turned and had noticed for the first time, that the long rectangular glass case that stood in the middle of the room, where he had retrieved the hand from was indeed shaped like a casket. As he stepped toward it, a light emitted from inside.
A candle inside the chest lit up, casting a flickering light. It was something out of a Bram Stoker tale and Asher could barely believe his eyes. The candle holder was made of bones. Nonspecific bones, some finger bone, another a wrist bone, and tiny shards of other bone made up the outside of the candle. The waxy part was a deep red, that almost could be mistaken as black. He placed the candle of blood and bone, the lavender white and purple, the disgusting hand, the locket, Amanda’s ring in the bowl, drowning it all in the olive oil, as instructed.
Bolaer’s voice was beside him, his breath falling on Asher’s skin, causing the hair on his neck to stand on end. “You need to trace a pentagram with your blood over the printed lines, then light it.” Asher shivered at the eeriness of it all. When he turned to find a lighter in the drawer of Octavius’s work station, a shadow behind the bookshelf caught his attention.
His entire body went cold. “Who’s there?”
It was Cleo, her dark curly black hair a mess around her shoulders and face. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He followed her big blue-eyed gaze, and saw how her face was pale. The poor kid was petrified from the vision of Bolaer.
“It’s going to be okay, Cleo,” he said.
She shook her head “I won’t let you do this, Ash, its wrong. He’s evil.”
Asher’s eyes darted between Bolaer and his little sister. He anticipate Bolaer’s next move, jumping between him and his sister before a streak of vertical lightning zagged across the room. They tumbled to the ground and rolled over the carpet. A shelf shook, and pages of books exploded into shreds, floating like snow all around them as the bolt struck inches away
Fire rained down around Asher’s head as the pieces of paper caught flame, and he bumped it against something hard. When he looked up, Brooke, and Milla were making their way into the room from the attic stairs. Brooke’s eyes were strange and unfamiliar as she held them tight on Bolaer. Milla was holding her palms out, controlling a yellow orb of light above them. As she moved to stand over him and Cleo who was tucked in beneath his body, the orb exploded into a thin whip. The whip of light unfurled and snapped at Bolaer across the room.
“You would not want to lose the other hand do you, Bolaer?” Milla said, driving him back into the back wall, where the shadows were thickest.
Asher whispered to Cloe. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, her arms still tightly wrapped around his neck.
“You have to hurry Milla,” Brooke shouted. “His mind is not easily bent.”
Asher took to his feet, pushing Cleo in behind him, protecting her. He looked between Milla and Brooke, not sure what they were up to and even less sure about what he was meant to be doing.
Octavius’s voice came from the stairs. “Get him inside the coffin,” he instructed.
Asher felt the dread of watching everything happen before him, not knowing what he should do. He was sick of feeling helpless. The look on Brooke’s face intensified. Flashes of the car crash rushed through him. No, he would not lose this part of his family, too. This time, he would do something. He would save them – somehow.
“Your nose is bleeding Brooke!” Cleo screamed. “Stop it! Stop it!”
“I can hold him a little longer,” Brooke said.
“What is she doing?” Asher shouted to Octavius who had entered the room with Caleb right behind him.
Caleb replied. “She’s in his mind.”
Milla looked to Asher then to Brooke as Asher clutched his arm. “We’re too late.” She said with dread brimming her eyes.
“His blood has been drawn.” Her eyes went from Asher’s wound to the black cloth and all the artefacts sprawled around it.
Asher screamed as the pain intensified. His arm felt as if it were being pulled out of its socket as he was dragged across the room by an invisible force. The pain was unbearable, but just when he thought he could bear it no more, suddenly, his whole body went numb. “You need to push harder Brooke.” Octavius instructed her.
Then Asher’s ears fell deaf to the noise, and it was as if he was watching everything through a keyhole. All the light vanished from the room and his vision become a single slit of sight looking down at the scene, as his soul split from his body.
Somewhere in the distance he heard someone shouting, “Asher, you have to fight it.”
But he didn’t want to, he had intended to use the spell. This was what he had wanted.
Octavius came up to the glass display case, which Asher had recently been informed was a coffin, or casket as Bolaer had named it.
Brooke closed her eyes, and fell back into the rocking chair from exhaustion. Milla stalked across the room, her fiery whip coiling around the shadow that made up Boler’s form, trying to block him from his quest to get into Brooke’s mind in order to push her out of his own
Milla’s blonde hair whipped around as her firy whip churned up the air. And it was then when Asher saw it… She was so brave, so beautiful so … She was Amanda. Asher felt it in his heart.
Nine
Asher’s chest pulled tight as black shadows furled around him. It was like smoke, only thicker, like the night sky closing in on him, pulling him asunder. He hovered above the scene like a ghost watching his family fighting Bolaer. There was nothing he could do. Below him, he lay frozen in place, his body draped over the bowl that held all the needed ingredients for the spell, including his blood, taken unwillingly. Suddenly, the bowl caught alight. First, the perfumed smell of oil and lavender, then of blood and death.
Octavius handed Caleb a book-like object, and when it couldn’t open it, they looked to Asher’s body. Impossibly fast, he saw Cleo move to stand beside her brother and some small slight of her hand. She placed Caleb’s bloodied hand over the book, which flew open, the pages fanning open to a spot and then stopping. Caleb screwed his eyes against the Latin text and began to read. Asher saw Cloe slip a blade away in the pocket of her pyjama pants – so she jammed the lock? How can she move like that?
A terrible wind kicked up in the room below; papers, and tiny objects were picked up and taken to the wind. The wind intensified until it formed a tunnel, sucking objects in to it as it spun. Asher saw the flames from the bowl bending toward the wind-funnel, slowing stifling the spell.
Bolaer’s form distorted. The fiery rope around his figure ebbed out and Milla fell to the floor, the wind pushing her into the book case, which tipped over. Bolaer once more shot a bolt of light, intending to kill Caleb who was still reading the banishment spell from the book. As the bolt streaked across the room, Cleo snatched up a sharp silver object from the floor and hit out like she was on the baseball field, and deflected the bolt that stuck right back into the shadow that was Bolaer. Asher tried to scream for Caleb to move away as the wind-tunnel swallowed everything in its path, but all he could hear where the desperate cries of Bolaer as it filled in the space between the different dimensions.
The whole room was wrecked. His sister, Brooke still sat unmoving in the rocking chair, and he couldn’t see Milla. He feared she was trapped under the booksh
elf, and if so, terribly injured, if not dead.
Bolaer’s laughter filled the room. “You fool, now you’ll never get them back.”
“Now Asher, your wrist Asher.” He heard his uncle’s cries. Asher let his soul slap back into his body, and as he came tumbling down into the earthly realm, he cast a spell that was written on his wrist that he couldn’t remember writing there. He then watched in slow motion as Bolaer’s shadowy form was being sucked in by the wind tunnel, then his mind grasped at the coffin. Cleo stood below the shadow with a stick like object in her hands, and cast Bolaer into the coffin where Asher with his mind closed the lid on his evil ancestor forever.
Just like that, everything crashed to the floor and Asher fell back into his body knocking the wind from his lungs and bringing with it the pain in his wounded arm where earlier, Bolaer had sliced open his skin quite badly.
“It worked!” Cleo shouted out of breath, staring at the burnt lavender in her hand that had the power to cast Boaler’s shadow into the coffin.
“Is everyone okay!” Asher called, pushing debris from him and pushing through the mess to try and get to his family. He swayed still unsteady as he took a while to adjust being back in a wounded body. Octavius and Asher pushed until the bookshelf moved, revealing Brooke and Milla bashed about and bruised, but mostly unharmed.
“That was insane.” Brooke looked to Milla, then rested her head in between her legs to ease the headache quickly forming.
Milla crouched beside Brooke, “You were amazing.” She added as she stroked her lower back, while looking up at a pale Asher for confirmation. “Brooke you are so strong, Bolaer was positively neutralized of his power, long enough for our tricks to work.”
Brooke’s muffled voice came from between her legs. “So I did good?” She dare not move until the episode passed, she’d never attempted a Push of the mind so intense before.
Asher turned his attention to the massive hole in the roof, which was leaking sunlight.
His family was by his side. “We all did good.”
“You are quite a mean spell caster MR Blossom.” Octavius took to his side, staring up at the daylight. “You think you can cast us a new roof?”
Asher shot him a nasty glare. “Are you serious? I just about died casting that spell?”
Octavius held his hands up in defence, “Too soon for a joke then?”
Asher side eyed his uncle while assisting Brooke to her feet. “You okay?”
Brooke hugged him. “Are you okay?”
“Not at all.” He shook his head, rubbing at his injured arm.
Brooke looked to the twins who were inspecting the remnants of the table that held ingredients for the spell.
“Good, I’d be scared if we were okay.” Brooke half smiled.
“No children.” Octavius quickly made his way over to the twins. “Those relics hold the dark energy of the spell. They still have the power to do harm.” His steps loudly echoing through the broken room.
“Thank you.” He looked to Milla, a slow blush quickly flushing over his face on remembering the one thought that dominated his mind when he had first been pulled from his body – Amanda is Milla. He found his legs give in under him.
“Woah.” Milla and Brooke both caught him before he slumped to the ground. For a moment Asher felt completely numb with fear. “I don’t know what would have happened if you guys didn’t come…”
He was ushered to a nearby chair. “How did you know to come?”
Brooke took her phone from her pocket and showed him the message sent by him. “Milla has the same message on her phone too.”
Check your email, when you hear the thump coming from the attic, it’s my signal that you have 20 minutes to save my, and one day Caleb’s life. You must all follow the instructions on the video.
“That is insane.” He looked between the two girls.
Milla crossed her arms, her wrist tattoo fully visible, when something struck…
“We’ve been here before.” Asher mumbled. Staring at the triangle tattoo on her wrist. With the words, it’s like a veil had been lifted from his mind. “Amanda had that same tattoo.” He said to Brooke. “It was a sign on how to defeat him.”
A scream came from across the room, Caleb chasing Cleo with the half burnt hand used in the spell, an angry Uncle Octavius shouting after them. “You need to stop that. Caleb put it dow…”
Suddenly Caleb fell to the floor, shaking uncontrollably.
Asher moved quicker than he thought possible, pushing Octavius aside. His mind pulled the Time Master’s hand from Caleb’s and threw it across the room knowing the dark magic within had done something to him.
“Caleb.” He tilted his brother’s head back and opened his lids to see only the whites of his eyes. Caleb grabbed at Asher’s wrist and a vision struck Asher.
“I told him not to touch it, what if the dark magic…” They all shuddered at the thought.
“Asher what is it?” Brooke called beside him.
“He is showing me something…” He closed his eyes, “A triangle over and over again.”
And inside the triangle a door to another timeline…. Of Asher studying up on the time spell, of Asher studying up on how to stop the spell, of Asher going back in time to this very moment… Most important the very clever trick of his soul leaving his body that broke the spell that would have given life to Bolaer and robbed him of his.
He pulled free from Caleb’s impossibly strong grip, dizzied by the vision. Octavius looked just as curios ad he did mad. “Exactly how many times have you used the spell Asher?”
Asher shook his head, I can’t remember… a few?” He couldn’t be sure as the events flashed in his mind, others clashing.”
Milla spoke from across the room from her position crouched over the petrified hand. “No one, except Bolear, was able to do a Time spell more than once.” Milla then turned to Asher, “How did you know how to trick Bolaer?”
“Triangle.” He smiled to his own personal joke. When he realized everyone around him giving him and odd look. He looked to Milla, her triangle tattoo on her wrist, seeing Amanda so clearly now. He had gone back in time, had changed her adoption to an American family. Even if it meant they would not be together the way he and Amanda were – she was alive, and the world better for it.
“If two timelines intersect it can cause death. But if you intersect three timelines of the same event… Ah, forget it, it’s far too complicated and my head hurts.”
“Tell us,” the twins pleaded.
“You mean, tell you again?” he said, smiling down at Cleo.
~x~
About the Author
Bio Carlyle Labuschange is a USA Today bestselling author, who resides in the beautiful country of South Africa. This die-hard dreamer, who is fascinated by a great story, feels compelled to share these imaginary world with others.
Her love for writing spills over into every aspect of her life where she has founded a library project aimed at the youth, is the creator of SAIR writers’ events, and is co-founder of a publishing company. Her other addictions include cappuccinos, being outdoors with her loved ones, and the avoidance of doing dishes at all costs.
Her next few crime novels take characters from South Africa and place them in NYC where she has visited a few times, fell in love, and refuses to let the city’s magic leave her bones.
For more information on Carlyle’s books
www.carlylelabuschagne.com
Also by carlyle labuschagne
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