by M. J. Caan
Opal nodded. “That could be bad. If they follow him blindly, and he’s under the control of a hunter…” She didn’t have to finish that sentence. They all knew what that could mean.
“How can you show us what happened?” asked Torie.
Jasmin smiled. “Magic, of course.”
She knelt next to Elric and placed one hand on his head. Eyes closed, she concentrated, pouring her will into his mind, and forcing him to show them what he had seen. She held her other hand out, casting a cloud of mystic power on which the werewolf’s memories were projected.
The three of them watched as he was racing through the woods, the foliage being eaten up in increasingly larger leaps as he ran through the forest at dizzying speeds. Ahead of him was Torie’s house, and they could see the front door had been blown inward by a kick powerful enough that it took out the frame of the large door.
They felt like they were part of the action as he leapt through the opening just in time to see the hunter draw her knife and aim the point of it at the three witches sitting on the couch, oblivious to everything happening around them.
There was a blast that sounded like thunder to his enhanced hearing, and he watched as the hunter somersaulted backwards, narrowly evading Glen’s shotgun. There was a distinctive shkking sound as she chambered another round and aimed it at the hunter. At the same time, Fionna leapt at the hunter, leveling a kick at her midsection. The squirrel shifter grunted when the kick landed. To Elric, it sounded like she had kicked a concrete wall.
The hunter actually laughed as she shrugged off the blow, landing an open-handed slap that sent Fionna spiraling through the air away from her.
Then, dodging yet another shot from Glen, the hunter sprinted across the space to confront her. To her credit, rather than try to squeeze off another shot, Glen turned the gun around and landed a blow on the hunter’s chin with the butt of the shotgun.
The hunter barely registered the hit. She smiled, rubbing at the spot on her chin where Glen had made contact. Then, she drove her fist into Glen’s midsection, sending her flying backwards into the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. Fionna was on the hunter before she could move to finish Glen off. She shifted in and out of her squirrel form, using the change in size and speed to keep the hunter off balance as she landed blow after blow.
Elric rushed forward, shifting to his half-human hybrid form, only to be caught by something from behind. Something monstrously strong and large. He howled in pain as fangs clamped down on his shoulder and upper chest. He was thrown against the brick fireplace, smashing the stone and sending shards of rock and wood flying.
It was Max, in his full wolf form, yellow eyes blazing as he stared at his fallen beta. The hunter smiled as she landed an open-handed slap on Fionna that sent her spiraling through the wall that Glen had crashed against. Then she strode over to stand next to the great wolf and began to casually stroke his fur.
She cocked her head to one side, smiling at Elric, and uttered a single word.
“Kill.”
Immediately, Max launched himself, his razor-sharp fangs aimed at Elric’s throat. Elric was able to get up a forearm to protect himself just in time. He screamed as Max’s jaws closed on his arm. With his free hand he punched the wolf, aiming for his more sensitive nose, and was rewarded as Max released him, shaking his head. Elric dropped to the floor in front of his friend, drawing both legs up to his chest, he kicked out with all his strength, sending the wolf flying through the air to land on the kitchen island, smashing it to pieces.
He saw the hunter once again draw her knife as she stood over the three witches that were still not moving.
“No!” he screamed, leaping for the hunter.
Fast as he was, she was faster still. She caught him mid leap, one hand clasped firmly about his throat as she held him aloft. He struggled against her grip, but to no avail.
“Bad dog,” she said. Tossing him upward to crash into the ceiling, shaking the entire house to its foundation. As Elric’s body fell back towards the floor, the hunter spun, landing a vicious side kick to his side that sent him sprawling across the kitchen floor.
Grayness swam in his peripheral vision as he watched the hunter bend forward, leaning over the witches. He tried to stand, but his legs weren’t working, and he could feel consciousness slipping away. The last thing he saw was the hunter take something from her pocket and slip it into Jasmin’s front jacket pocket.
Then everything went black, and the visions being projected for Torie, Jasmin and Opal stopped.
“What the hell?” said Torie. “Why would she attack like that?”
“More importantly, why didn’t she kill us when she had the chance?” asked Opal. She turned to her sister. “And what did she put in your pocket?”
She and Torie crowded around Jasmin, watching as she fished into her jacket. She frowned as she withdrew a small, gold object. She held it in her hand and turned it over, looking closely at it.
“What is that?” Torie asked. “It looks like a locket.”
Jasmin didn’t speak as she turned it over in her hand. It was a locket, intricately detailed with tiny swirls and stars embossed on the cover. Her hands were shaking as she pried it open. The picture inside made her gasp, and she dropped the locket to the ground, her hands flying to her mouth.
Opal bent down and retrieved it, examining the picture as Torie peered over her shoulder.
“Is that…is that you?” asked Opal.
The picture on the locket was of a young woman with delicate features and full, natural hair that was pulled to either side of her head in beautiful afro puffs.
“Jasmin,” said Torie, “how does this hunter have a picture of you from so long ago?”
“Because,” she replied, her voice trembling, “that hunter is my daughter.”
13
“I’m sorry, your what?” said an incredulous Torie.
Jasmin hadn’t taken her eyes off the locket. “You heard what I said.”
“I knew it!” exclaimed Opal, storming over to her sister. “I knew you were hiding something from me. All those years ago when you stopped answering my letters. You cut me out of your life, and I knew it had to be for something other than just what happened with Mom.”
Jasmin sat down heavily on the ground. She didn’t trust her legs to support her weight. The air around her was growing heavy and she felt herself beginning to gasp for breath.
“Hey, hey, it’s going to be okay,” said Torie, rushing to her friend’s side. She rubbed Jasmin’s back as she spoke softly to her. “Breathe…one breath at a time. Slow down…you’re okay.”
Jasmin audibly exhaled a couple of times before turning to Torie and her sister.
“Am I? Going to be okay?” Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t believe this is happening. After all these years of forcing myself to bury her and not think about her. Now, here she is, face to face with me.”
“Well, I guess that explains why she didn’t just kill us,” said Opal.
Torie gave her a stern look. “Jasmin, I don’t even know what to say.”
“I do,” said Opal, “how about, why didn’t you tell anyone you had a daughter? Are you even sure she is your daughter?”
Jasmin nodded, turning the locket over and over in her hand before holding it up by the chain.
“This is the only thing I left her with,” she said. “When I—” her voice faltered and she buried her face in her hands, letting her tears flow.
Torie sat beside her and threw an arm around her, drawing her in close. “Shhh, it’s okay. We can talk about this later.” She rocked her, letting Jasmin cry for what felt like hours.
Opal sat down beside her as well. She fished around in her bag and found a white handkerchief.
“It’s clean,” she said, offering it up. “I’m sorry for what I just said. I really need to learn to edit the things that come out of my mouth before I just spew them out. I can’t imagine what you went through that led
you to make whatever decisions you had to make.”
Torie nodded. “If you need to tell us anything, you know you can. I’m not here to judge you; Lord knows I’m the last person who should be passing judgement. I’m here for you, and I support whatever you need.”
Jasmin took the white cloth and pressed it to her face, drying her eyes and cheeks.
“It was just after you left,” she said, turning to Opal. She took her sister’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Gram had passed, and I just felt so alone. And tired. Tired in a way that I didn’t think was possible. The guilt I felt over Mom was more than I could bear. Couple with that the fact that I blamed myself for you leaving, and I was in a very dark place.”
Opal looked like she had just taken a shot to the stomach. Jasmin took her hand in both of hers.
“No, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. All of this was generated in my head and I didn’t know what to do. I completely understand why you left…at least now I do. I was just looking for someone to blame for the space I was in and since there was no one else around…” She shrugged, squeezing Opal’s hand. “What I’m saying is that I created the cage that I felt trapped in; no one else had a hand in that.”
“Still, if I had been there, things might have turned out differently.”
“Maybe. Or I could have found other destructive vices to fall into. But I felt alone and was looking for something…someone…to help make me feel better.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “I did the usual; drinking, sampling a few mind-altering substances here and there. And men of course. But none of those did anything for me other than providing a temporary haze to get lost in. It was like using a band aid to cover a gunshot wound; did nothing to staunch the emotional bleeding I was suffering.
“So one evening, feeling particularly down, the little bit of money I had from the sale of Gram’s house was drying up, and I didn’t have a clue what I needed to do to get out of the mess I was in. I went to a party out at the lake; the parties Mom had always told us we weren’t allowed to go to.”
Opal nodded. “I remember. The ones filled with all the low life townies, as Mom used to call them. She said if we hung out with them, we’d end up just like them; no futures.”
“That’s right,” said Jasmin. “Well, guess what? Mom was right. One of those low lifes was a man I caught myself dating. Truth is, we were just using each other for what we could offer at the time, but that seemed to be what I needed in that moment. But something was different that night. I was tired of the partying. Tired of feeling like I was walking around in a daze. I felt on edge watching everyone get wasted around me. I needed a change and told Kenny, the low life, that this wasn’t working for me any longer and I needed to make a change in my life. I was leaving, and he knew that it wasn’t just for the night.
“What I didn’t tell him, was that I had just found out I was pregnant. That was why I wasn’t drinking that night. For the first time in so long I had a clear head and realized that this was a life I had condemned myself to, but it didn’t have to be one my child would be locked into.”
She paused, exhaling sharply. Torie felt her body lighten, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about her and wondered what happened to her,” she said.
“Can we ask what happened with her?” said Torie.
They waited as Jasmin gathered herself, choosing her words carefully.
“I’m not proud of what I did next. I knew that I couldn’t care for a child. Hell, I wasn’t even able to take care of myself. And I knew; I just knew, deep down in my bones that I was carrying a little girl. I just knew. And that scared me more than anything. That I was bringing another girl, another potential witch, into this world to follow in my failed footsteps.”
“So you gave her up for adoption?” said Opal.
Jasmin didn’t answer. She stared into the distance, letting the silence between them build.
“No, I didn’t,” she said finally, her voice little more than a whisper. “I left her outside of a fire station.” Here she burst into tears, too ashamed to look her friends in the eyes.
Thunder rolled in the distance, and Opal’s eyes grew pale as her power built.
“You did what?” demanded the witch. Blue lightning streaked across the sky in the distance. The pulse of light playing through the growing clouds was echoed in Opal’s pale eyes. She stood, thunder echoing all around her. “Tell me you didn’t do that, Jasmin.”
“What was I supposed to do, Opal?” she replied. “What choices did I have? I couldn’t bring myself to abort. I looked into adoption, but it’s not like people would have been knocking down the door to raise the child of a poor, black girl from the coal mining mountains! What were my options? I was alone!”
The thunder rumbled in the distance but faded as Opal reeled her power in. She glanced at Torie whose eyes were wide with empathy.
“Stop this,” Torie said, directing her attention to Opal. “We don’t know what Jasmin was thinking, what decisions she had to be grappling with. This had to be the hardest decision she has ever had to make.”
Opal settled down and turned to her sister.
“You went through so much by yourself, Jasmin. But this…why didn’t you reach out to me? I would have been there for you. You had to have known that.”
“I didn’t know anything. All I knew was that I couldn’t raise a child. I had nothing to offer her. I felt like nothing myself; I was broken. I did what I thought I had to at the time.”
“What about the father?” said Torie. “Does he know?”
Jasmin exhaled. “I tried that. I told him I was pregnant. I guess part of me wanted to hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d want to help. That he’d want to make us a family. But I was a fool to think that. Rather than sympathy or love, I was met with rage from him. He said that it probably wasn’t his, that it could belong to any number of men in the town. I told him that wasn’t true, and that I had only been with him. Anger made my tongue sharp that night. I told him that unlike him, I was a loyal lover. I wasn’t lying down with anyone that could offer a full bottle of gin or a fresh hit of weed. That earned me a split lip. So I knew he would be no help. He offered to pay for me to end the pregnancy. I took him up on it…took his money and left. That was the last I saw of him.”
Torie felt her anger spill down her cheeks in the form of fresh tears. How could any man be so callous? The answer to that was obvious; it wasn’t a man that Jasmin had been dealing with. No man would act that way, but she would never say that to her friend.
“So did you think about it?” said Opal. “Ending the pregnancy, I mean.”
Jasmin didn’t say anything at first, but then she let out a little sigh. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But in the end, I knew that was not an option. My actions brought a life into this world; but I’d be damned if I’d let them take one out as well. So when the time came, I—and I’m not proud of this—I left her at a fire department.”
Torie could see the anger and judgement in Opal’s eyes, and she waved the woman off before she could voice her opinion.
“I mean, I stayed close by where I could see that someone came out and picked her up. I didn’t just drop her and run. I left her with a note and the gold locket that Mom had given me when I was a baby.” She looked at Opal. “You remember, you got one too.”
Opal stared at her sister before shrugging. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, you had one. We didn’t wear them however, we kept them in a small antique jewelry box in the bedroom we shared.”
Something in Opal’s eyes told them a memory had been sparked. Still, she didn’t acknowledge anything, rather she just stared at her sister, urging her to go on.
“If you’re wondering why I didn’t take her to a hospital, the answer is I was afraid. Afraid they would ask me questions or call the police. I couldn’t risk that.”
“Did
you…think about keeping her?” asked Torie.
“No. In all honesty I knew I couldn’t raise a child. What kind of life could I have offered?”
“Did you think about the fact that she would grow into her powers without anyone there to guide her?” questioned Opal, trying hard to control her tone.
“That was just it,” I said. “I thought that maybe, if she grew up without the influence of magic all around her, maybe it wouldn’t happen to her and she’d just be normal.”
“Normal?” said Opal. “Do you think there is something wrong with us, Jasmin?”
“No, that isn’t what I meant. Opal, we had no one to guide us. We knew what Gram could do, but that was it. It’s one thing to be told you’re going to grow up and get all these magical abilities, but until it happens, it seems so nebulous and far-fetched. I had no idea how wonderful our powers would turn out to be. For all I knew, it might not have happened at all.”
“Well, I can tell you that even with an absent mother, it still happens,” said Torie.
“I know that now. But when I was a child…I was ignorant. That’s all I can say on the matter.”
They sat in silence for a while. Torie went to check on Elric, leaving the two sisters to talk. She could feel the silence between them and knew that conversation was a ways off still. Instead, Opal made her way over to the wounded werewolf and held her hands over his chest, head cocked to one side as if she were listening for something.
“He’s strong. Nearly completely healed. He should be waking up any minute now.” She stood up and made her way back to her sister. “Meanwhile, time to check in on something.”
She stretched her hand out and snapped her finger. “To me, my pet.”
Immediately, a black, ghostly figure comprised only of smoke glided upward from the ground. It was formless as it settled next to her.
“The hell is that?” asked Jasmin, stepping back.
“My familiar, of course,” said Opal. “You do know what a familiar is, right?”
Jasmin looked at her, blinking. “Of course I do. But aren’t they usually cats, or some other small house animal?”