Hex

by Kali Emerson

So, how good of a friendship could I build with someone like Callie or Olivia? We were prepared to fight with them, but I wasn’t ready to really call them our friends.

  The next few days would creep up on us, and have unexpected consequences. I saw it in my vision and somehow still agreed to follow through with the plan. I had gone over it in my head a thousand times trying to figure out another way, but there just wasn’t.

  If we tried to face them alone, surely Alex and I would meet our demise. There wasn’t a way where we could fight them on our own. We were too weak and inexperienced. We had only just begun to develop our powers, and we would be fighting against people who had years of it. The only other option would be to surrender ourselves to Fiona and The Council, but that was completely out of the question.

  All we could do was wait, and follow the plan we came up with together with everyone in The Coven. It was our only chance at being free, not having to conform to The Council’s idea of what the prophecy should be. It was incomplete and there could be any outcome, they made it clear they would do anything to make it theirs.

  They said it was for the betterment of the people, but we all knew it was a lie. They just wanted to make things happen the way they wanted with no regard to who it hurt, or who was involved.

  I suppose no one is ever prepared for things like this. I wasn’t prepared when my mom got sick, and neither was my dad. It came unexpected and had a negative outcome even though we tried really hard to fix it. We had to deal with it nonetheless.

  Prepared or not, it was what needed to happen and I was mostly sure of it. At least Alex was fully sure, or I might not be able to get through it.

  15

  Our plan really wasn’t very different from my vision. The only difference was being on the lookout for a spell that would take away someone's magic. It didn’t sound very promising to me, and I almost didn’t want to risk it. Alex talked me back into it about a hundred times until I finally swore to him I wouldn’t go back on it.

  We started early in the morning. So early that the sun hadn’t risen above the trees yet. The night before was frigid cold, and left a dust of ice across everything in the meadow. Even in the dark the large trees hurled shadows eerily, making what was already dark appear much darker. I wasn’t being haunted by the shadows, what petrified me the most was the thought of the unknown. Although I had a vision, I didn’t really know what was going to happen.

  We drifted across the grass, standing right in front of the small shopping area within the meadow. The houses of the villagers were just behind it, among the trees. It had heavy warding, just like everything else, but we didn't want to put anyone unnecessarily at risk.

  “Does everyone understand what they will be doing?” Gideon whispered. Everyone nodded to agree.

  Alex and I would take the far left, Callie and Morgan would take the middle, teaming with Olivia and Gabriel for the bigger sections, and Gideon would take the right end alone. Hakeem and Lucia were tasked with opening and closing the portals. It was the most dangerous task, but with their powers they would be able to stop anyone who tried to hurt them.

  Hakeem was able to boil liquid by manipulating the heat within the liquid. It was dangerous at first because he couldn't control it, that's how he met Gideon. When he was five his powers started to show, and his parents brought him to Gideon because Hakeem was out of control. They traveled back and forth with him for years, until he was disciplined enough not to accidentally kill someone.

  At sixteen he was given a position with The Coven. That's where he met Lucia. Lucia has a rare ability, one that can stop someone's power temporarily with an enchantment. She wasn't ready for a fight like that. She had only been with The Coven as long as Hakeem had, but she didn't spend her adolescence with them.

  Lucia was eighteen and just out of high school. She left New Orleans to travel, and her first stop was Casco Bay in Maine. When she felt Sidra using her power, which she never turned off, she used her own magic to stop it.

  When Callie noticed something was wrong, she followed Lucia to find out what she did to her. When she finally approached her Lucia admitted to using her power on her.

  Callie was so intrigued by what Lucia could do, she brought her back to the village right away. They offered her a seat, and because of Hakeem and the promise of learning to use her power better, she stayed and never looked back.

  It was going to be hard work and I wished I had slept like everyone else. My eyes felt heavy.

  Even with the two cups of coffee I chugged before we left.

  “Okay. Let's go.” Callie signaled for us to start ushering people out. Alex and I walked fast at first, but realized our footsteps made a lot of noise. We slowed as we approached the first house.

  It was a smaller house. Most of them looked like newer versions of our cottages. They were made from wood and stone. It had a small pathway leading up to the door which sat above three steps. The windows were dark and the curtains were drawn. They were definitely asleep.

  “effugium” I whispered.

  Two people appeared in front of us and almost fell, we had to catch them and before they could scream or make noise Alex cast a silencing spell on both of them.

  We whispered quietly what was happening and that they needed to follow us. We didn't know them, but they knew us and trusted our judgement already. They sleepily walked behind us toward the portals.

  We did that with ten houses, most of them single people or couples. But we did have a few families with small children. They were the hardest because some with smaller children had to be carried.

  There were over two-hundred people living in the village, and we only evacuated about seventy-five. The others wanted to stay behind and help us. We tried to talk them out of it, since no one had any special abilities. They had their own plans of how to fight, with spell bags and potions.

  We were done in only a handful of trips and we finished in a little under an hour. With everyone evacuated it became a waiting game. The villagers who chose to stay, put up extra warding on their homes. They wanted to make sure they had some place to rest.

  I didn't think it would come to that. I had a pretty good sense that it would be that day. I remembered in my vision the way what the air felt like. The sun rose above the trees just as it had in several of my visions.

  It was only an hour after the last person went through the portal, that we saw three figures begin to appear at the outer edge of the meadow. We signaled the other villagers that they were here. They stayed hidden in the trees on the other side. We stood in the middle.

  The same trio from my vision approached us. I could hear the cicadas buzz in the summer breeze, creating a beat with the crunch of their shoes and the leaves brushing against their branches.

  The woman to Fiona's left was short and only came up to her shoulders. She had a fair complexion and dark rust colored hair. She looked to be about the same age as Gideon.

  When I saw the way she looked at him, I'd realized they knew each other. But it wasn't the way an enemy looked at an enemy. They looked like they could have been lovers.

  The man on Fiona's right was young, like us. His hair was the color of champagne and it was contrasted against his tanned skin. His eyes looked dead, like he had no life left in them if I hadn't seen him walking. A few seconds later, Maria came walking out of the tree line behind them and stood between the boy and Fiona.

  “Allegra.” Gideon spoke kindly from beside me.

  “You know what I am here for. I don't need to hear you try and sweet talk me.”

  “We can do this another way, my dear.”

  “No. We cannot. You've known this day was coming for a long time.”

  “I know.”

  “We've come to negotiate.” Fiona announced. Her entire demeanor was different. Looking loss in the face will do that to a person. She still had fear in her eyes, though. I didn't know if it was fear from confronting me, knowing that what The Coven wanted to do to her mother. Or if it was the fea
r of losing. Fiona did not like to lose.

  “Give them to us and we won't hurt you.”

  “We won't do that, Allegra.” Gideon took a step back and I braced myself to fight, even though I didn't really know how to.

  “You will be sorry, once again…Gideon.” She stepped back and then launched herself forward and into the air about six feet, clearing the ten of us and separating half the group by making them turn to look at her. We signaled for our back up to come out of the trees. I saw Hakeem look right at her, and at the same time she started screaming out in pain. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. The scream of someone who knew she was dying.

  She fell to the ground, and I could see the steam coming off of her body. He had boiled her from the inside. She didn't even try to fight back.

  Gideon watched in horror, then had to block a physical attack from someone who came running out of the woods behind them. He didn’t even have time to recover, he had to defend himself right away.

  He had been holding out on what he could do. Gideon was a reserved man, and didn't speak about himself very much. But he had been holding out on something that would serve very beneficial to us. He held out his hand and the witch that had attacked him burst in mid air. He fell to the ground in thousands of specks, like pieces into the grass.

  “What do we do now?” Lucia looked at me for an answer.

  “We fight.”

  16

  As magic swirled in the air people were dying left and right. I realized that my vision hadn't changed and our people were dying. The enemy was circling in on us. Allegra's sacrifice left Maria in charge, who was commanding Fiona. I could see Fiona’s mouth moving, but her voice was too low to hear. Somehow her powers had advanced to allow her to send thoughts into other peoples heads just like empathy but reversed.

  She was chanting something. Whatever it was, was making her army stronger and I knew I had to stop it.

  “Fiona.” I took a step forward but felt Alex's hand stop me at my waist.

  “Wait. You don't know what she's doing.” He was right. I needed to stay back in case she was enchanting something I didn't know how to handle.

  “Use your power. That way you can keep a distance while you get her attention. I'll help you." He whispered in my ear.

  “I'll disrupt the ground around her, and you knock her away from that boy. He looks like he might be protecting her somehow.”

  Alex lifted his hands and with a force I'd never seen in him, his eyes turned black and the earth started to crumble beneath Fiona and the boy. I whipped my hand across the air, and Fiona stumbled to the ground, falling away from him. She stopped chanting and The Coven started to recover on them. She had been enchanting them to enhance all of their abilities while acting as a beacon, directing them it seemed.

  Alex and I approached her together and he lifted his hand trying to move the earth beneath her again, but it did not budge. Fiona laughed, glancing at the boy. It was the same action in my vision. Alex didn’t have his powers anymore.

  “You're coming with me.” Fiona reached out and grabbed Alex, he tried to shift the earth again but it he couldn't. Then he tried the wind to knock her over but nothing happened again. It was like my vision playing out frame for frame, but in real life. It was happening right in front of my eyes and I didn’t know how to stop it.

  “Stop trying to use your powers, it's not going to work.” Fiona smirked. I looked around at what could be stopping his powers. Fiona wasn’t chanting anymore, and Maria was too invested in herself to be doing anything else. The only other person that was left was the boy.

  Alex didn't have his powers, and I started to panic because it was all coming true. I looked around for Gideon or Olivia to help, but they were busy trying to keep from dying. I focused energy in my hand and created a small energy ball. My magic was still working, so it was just focused on him. The good news was, that meant he probably couldn't take more than one person's power away otherwise he would have.

  I lifted my hand to send energy right at Fiona, but I hesitated. A million memories flashed through my head all at once, as I stared into her eyes. The eyes of a friend, who became my enemy. The worst part about all of it, was that we had each become the villains, and remained the hero in our own stories. If Fiona left with Alex, she would tell a tale of victory and I would tell one of loss.

  But if the opposite were true, if I were able to save Alex right then and there she would have been defeated, and I would have done a victory march.

  “We knew one of you would use your powers. We actually didn't have a full plan yet, because we didn't know which one of you it would be.” She pulled Alex toward her, despite being significantly shorter than him.

  “Jeremy is gifted, though he is not powerful enough to take more than one power at a time yet. He absorbs them and can use them as his own. He's taken Alex's magic. He can't even do an incantation the right way. He's completely powerless.”

  “You can't take him.”

  “But, we are. Keep in touch. Lacus.” The four of them were gone.

  Everything around me became slow motion. I was drowning in a feeling I hadn't yet felt. Even in the depths of my worst nightmares, I couldn't describe how deep and dark it felt. The earth crumbled beneath me as purgatory opened up consuming me entirely. I turned to see blood, and bodies scattered across the meadow, and still felt only sadness for Alex. She didn't even do me the justice of killing him in front of me. He would have to die alone at the hands of someone that was once my friend.

  It was what cowards did. She didn't even fight me. The only thing that I could do at that point was get revenge. I didn't care about The Coven anymore. I didn't care about winning or losing. If fulfilling the prophecy meant that Alex would die, I didn't want it.

  I turned to my left and I saw Callie fighting with someone with stark black hair. She was the only one I could see clearly. Fiona was gone, along with anyone who resembled a leader, leaving their people to be killed.

  Gideon grabbed my arm and started running, I blindly followed. No one followed us or tried to attack us as we fled.

  “We need to get you out of here.”

  “I need to get to Alex before she kills him.”

  “She's not going to kill him. She needs both of you. She's going to keep him captive until she can get you too."

  He started to chant the portal spell but I ripped my arm from him.

  “You knew this would happen?”

  He stopped and looked at me, out of breath.

  “I don't have time to explain it right now, just come with me. Please.” He begged, but I wouldn't go with him.

  “Maybe the only way to get Alex back then, is for me to go to her.”

  Gideon blinked.

  “No. That won't work then she'll just get what she wants.”

  “Then what the fuck do we do, Gideon. Just let him go?”

  “We will get him back, but we need to do it a different way and I just need you to trust me.”

  “Was this your plan?”

  I thought about the lack of planning that happened, and how much they had chosen to trust the process, rather than being proactive about making sure none of it happened. I realized the plan we made together was a false one, and they had their own plan this whole time. I was so betrayed and couldn't believe that I started to call them my friends. I had such a lack of understanding what it meant to be a friend and I was so loyal to those people around me. I wanted to trust someone so bad, but somehow I always got fucked in the end. Gideon wasn’t doing it to protect me, he was doing it to use us as a pawn in their stupid game.

  “It was.”

  I was already so deeply in pain I didn't think it could hurt any more, but it did. The only thing I could do was go with it. I had no other option, because if I tried to face this alone I would surely die, or become captive just like Alex had been. I had to continue to pretend to trust them so I could get to Alex. I knew Fiona better than anyone, so they needed me too. It was the on
ly thing I could use at that point as leverage.

  Although they had betrayed me I couldn’t let them all die. I had so much rage inside of me, I could use it to try and save them. I didn’t know why I felt this way, I wanted so badly to run away but I couldn’t. Something was pulling me to stay. So I did.

  “Fine. But I'm not going with you now.” I turned around and headed back toward the chaos. My head was racing, and all I could think about was destroying the people who had plotted to take Alex away from me. I wanted to see them drown in their own blood.

  I saw Callie still fighting the black haired woman, when another person approached with a large hand gun. I was shocked at first, but realized what a good idea it had been. No one would have expected someone to bring a weapon like that to a battle involving magic.

  He pointed the gun toward Callie and without thinking I lifted my hand and yanked the bullet out of his gun as his finger pulled the trigger, redirecting it to hit him right between the eyes. I lifted my hand toward them, aiming at the black haired woman. I felt my energy connect to hers and grab hold. She stopped to look at me, realizing what I'd done. I was able to reach her soul's energy and hold onto it with my own. I had so much power over her, because all I had to do was rip the energy from her meat suit and she would be dead.

  My hand squeezed closed and she yelled out.

  “STOP!”

  My fist intensified and she choked on another word, before falling to the ground with a thud. Just as Callie got back on her feet an older man with symbols all over his body was running toward us. He was too big to fight off physically, so I would have to use my power again.

  I felt so exhausted already from using up so much of my magic, on top of the consumption of heartache. He had a large knife in his hand, held up like he was going to stab Callie. I knew what was coming next and I had to stop it.

  I lifted my hand up and grabbed hold of his energy like I had of the woman.

  “What did you do?” He exclaimed, looking down at himself, helpless.