Witchling Wars

by Shawn Knightley

  ‘Why doesn’t she get it over with? Why not just kill me?’

  She slowly stepped closer after a minute or two of pacing around the large throne-like chair. She looked like a vulture, flying around its prey and waiting for it to die so she could plunge down to the earth and begin chewing on her feast. Then she stopped and stared down at me. Examined me. Threatened me with those villainous eyes that I never trusted from the first moment she knocked on my front door.

  When she spoke, she leaned down to my ear and made her voice soft enough so only I could hear the words coming out of her mouth.

  “This would have been so much easier if you had simply lost interest. If you had blown off that policeman and gone back to your pathetic existence in hick ville. You brought every single bit of this on yourself. The policemen, Emily, and your family too once I find them. They all died because of you. When will you witchlings realize that your selflessness makes you weak? You refuse to take your own side. It makes you a target. And so much more fun to toy with.”

  She was close enough to me to snap at her with my bare teeth if I felt so inclined. And lord knows that I was tempted. Maybe if I made her angry she would just kill me and be done with it. But the truth struck me with the sentence she spoke. She wanted to have fun. She wanted to enjoy this. She wanted to play with me like a rag doll. And she knew the entire coven would delight in it just as much as she would.

  “I’ve heard a rumor,” she said, backing up away from me. “That this little kruxa has a passenger. A croxa. I believe her name was Emily, am I right?”

  I pulled against the magical restraints in vain. They only got tighter. And the tighter they got, the more I couldn’t help but grunt from the pain.

  The vampires behind her hissed with sadistic glee as if they knew something that I did not. And for all I knew, perhaps they did.

  I could see them for what they were now. Monsters. Monsters with impulses that couldn’t be controlled unless someone like Tobias was there to enforce order. An enforcement that Ragna would see destroyed. Or one she arrogantly thought she could do a better job of controlling. Or worse, she didn’t care about controlling them. Nor did she care for order. She said Nathaniel thought himself superior because he bettered himself. She would let them run wild and destroy anything in their path.

  Ragna took out a wand from inside her leather jacket. “It’s been a century or so since I’ve tried using one of these things. I guess it’s about time I give it another try. Let’s see if we can get sweet little Emily to come out and play.”

  I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I first saw it. It was my grandfather’s wand. The one that saved me from Brian. The one Eli had fixed for me. Now it was in Ragna’s long fingers.

  I saw a luminous red light pierce through the tip. She was on vixra blood. She would have enough power to use the wand. Against me no less.

  She pointed the tip directly at me. I wondered for a mere moment if this was what it felt like to have someone point a loaded gun at their head. Only this was different. Whatever magic she planned to wield wouldn’t kill me on impact. It was intended to torment me in the worst possible way. By summoning Emily’s spirit and having her do the dirty work for her.

  The red light coming out of the tip started to spark. It shot through the air and hit me like a bolt of lightning. Fire erupted in my chest so intense that I didn’t even have the energy to scream. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. There was only the pain of fire curling into my chest and burning away my flesh.

  When she finally let up, I exhaled all the air that was in my lungs in a groan that echoed throughout the large cavern. The vampires behind her howled with laughter and cheers.

  Then there was darkness. No. Not complete darkness. That I might have welcomed. This was different. There was a black shadow shifting and moving through the air. It descended down from the rocky ceiling and weaved through the space between me and Ragna. Then it seeped into my body and took hold of every limb, right down to my fingertips. It was Emily. Whatever essence she had become was taking hold of my body. Possessing it. Commanding it. Doing things I didn’t even know were possible.

  My arms and legs stiffened as the sight before my eyes began to change. I was hallucinating. Only this didn’t feel like the visions I had all my life. This was someone intentionally blocking my eyesight to show me something else.

  I wasn’t sitting before an entire coven of deadly vampires anymore. I was somewhere else.

  A hospital morgue.

  Well, it beat being before a bunch of hungry vamps. For the time being anyway. I stood there searching around only to see the Congressman’s bare body with a white sheet spread across him under the pale flicker of an electrical ceiling light. There was someone else in the room with him. They walked straight through me. It didn’t take me even a second to realize who it was.

  “Nathaniel?”

  Nathaniel removed the white sheet away from the Congressman’s corpse on the metal slab. His eyes were shut. His spirit gone. Brian had been telling the truth. He poisoned himself after the judge handed down his sentence.

  Nathaniel didn’t waste any time. I heard the sound of skin tearing as he bit a hole in his wrist with his sharp fangs and pried the Congressman’s mouth open. Then he let the blood drip into his mouth and down his throat.

  A pair of pasty eyes flew open and the corpse started drinking eagerly from the open wound.

  I could see the recognition in the Congressman’s face slowly start to take hold. Nathaniel wasn’t just changing him into a vampire. He was restoring his memories. Memories of Tobias. Memories of the deal they made. Memories of Nathaniel’s visit to his house the night of the evening party and the vampires swarming it like locusts, and yet walking around as if they were nothing more than mortal human beings.

  The Congressman’s eye color started to return. Only they weren’t human. They were full of fury. Blind rage. Hunger! The truth of everything that happened flashed before him as Nathaniel willed his memories to return. I didn’t need to be in the room in my physical body to sense that Nathaniel would have no problem turning the Congressman into a lethal assassin. The man who was once full of political ambition was now full of seething rage bubbling at the surface. Wanting revenge. Wanting release. Wanting blood.

  Nathaniel pulled his wrist away. I watched as the wound healed and he pulled the sleeve of his suit jacket back down.

  “First you must feed. Then we’ll get to work.” Nathaniel said, making his dominance over the Congressman clear right from the start.

  The vision evaporated and I was back in front of Ragna. She had the wand pointed at me again and was ready to fire its magic at my chest. Right before I felt the hot iron of vixra magic ripping into my body, my eyes sight changed again. Emily was showing me something else. Giving me a hallucination that I wasn’t sure was going to be real or imagined.

  I was back in my own house again, sitting before burning flames in the fireplace. And I wasn’t alone. Nathaniel was sitting next to me. I was leaning into him and his arm was wrapped around me. Enfolding me.

  One look downward and I could see that I was in a dark purple night dress. The kind a woman wears on an anniversary or after a romantic dinner out with someone they completely adore. The kind I wore for Caleb on our honeymoon.

  Nathaniel let his hand trail down my cheek and then to my lips. Then he pulled my attention to him and away from the crackling fire.

  It wasn’t Nathaniel anymore. Tobias was looking right at me. Staring into me as if he would willingly get lost in my eyes if I would permit him enough time to do so. Then his lips eagerly touched mine. I kissed him back with more passion than I knew I had inside of me. I was no longer just warm from the fire burning before us. His touch was mortal. His skin wasn’t like ice. I had marked him. And he was ready to live out a human life with me.

  One second it had been Nathaniel. And the next it was Tobias.

  Was what Georgeanna said not entirely true? Could I mark either of th
em? Could I choose?

  The hallucination vanished. I was left once more with the sight of Ragna standing before me. The vixra magic struck my body with relentless agony as it seared my skin. I threw my head back against the chair. And this time, I couldn’t contain it. I screamed at the top of my lungs as the vampires cheered behind her.

  I closed my eyes as Emily took hold of my sight once more. This time, I saw something that I instantly recognized. It was Annabel Stiles. The victim Andrew had asked me to help with. The case that had gone cold and then ultimately caused his death.

  She was in the same dress as in the crime photographs, running through the woods and desperately trying to escape the man pursuing her. Only this time, I did see his face. It was Brian. He was on vixra blood and running after her faster than should have been humanly possible. Especially since he wasn’t a vampire yet. Or was he?

  I looked harder at him. There were no dark veins around his eyes. Those eyes that were taking far too much pleasure in Annabel’s fear.

  His form changed. It wasn’t him pursuing Annabel. It was Tobias. Or so she thought. Brian had lured her into thinking Tobias was taken with her. He pursued her. She gave in willingly. Until she realized something wasn’t right. Then she ran like hell.

  Brian edged from tree to tree. Hiding behind each one then moving faster than human eyes could see as he vanished from sight.

  Annabel searched around everywhere for him, knowing he was close but unable to find him until he came up from behind and snatched her, holding her so close that she couldn’t get away and plunging the knife deep inside her neck.

  Brian could withstand the vixra blood. That meant only one thing. Ragna had been slowly turning him into a vampire for a long time. She had him doing her dirty work from the beginning. Since before I ever got involved with helping Andrew with the cases.

  He lured Annabel and the others just like he did to me. Fooling me into thinking Nathaniel was in the library with me. Kissing me. Pressing up against me. Making me want him. He made the woman he chased want him. He gave them memories, longings, and desires that weren’t their own and all the while tricking them into thinking he was Tobias. Then he killed them as Ragna created a cloud of suspicion around her coven master.

  If the vampires thought he was recklessly killing the daughters of prominent men in the government or where ever else, their faith in him to lead their coven would be shattered.

  Only Ragna didn’t need that angle anymore. She had me. She knew Tobias wanted me to mark him. And that alone was enough to completely derail his rule.

  My eyes snapped open and my head fell down to my chest. There wasn’t even enough energy in my neck to hold up my head anymore.

  “Timber!” one of the vampires yelled, getting a good laugh from a few of the others.

  When Ragna finally ended the red flame of magic erupted from the wand, I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was suffocating from the pain alone. I was tempted to pass out. Only one thing stopped me. Only one single thing that was urging me to stay awake and withstand whatever Ragna had in mind.

  Emily may have been haunting me. She may have even been helping Ragna torment me. But she was also giving me answers. Answers I had been seeking for months. And it was all because of who was standing before me. I knew who did this to her. Ragna turned Brian and made him into her toy.

  I was no longer failing Emily. I knew exactly what had happened. The threads that didn’t weave together now made sense. They connected.

  “Emily,” I mouthed with no words coming out.

  “What’s that, little kruxa? Begging for more, are you?” Ragna said as she toyed with my grandfather’s wand in her hand.

  “Emily,” I mouthed once more.

  Brian came up to the side of the throne. I heard a metallic snap as he opened a large pocket knife. The same knife he had used on Annabel and the other victims. He was going to stab me. He was going to drink from me until I was dead. Or watch the blood seep from my body as I bled to death.

  Emily took hold of my sight once more. The vampires around me faded. Brian faded. Ragna faded. I wondered if I would even get the chance to experience my own death. Or would Emily keep me distracted until the end?

  This time I was standing back in Tobias’s mansion. In a room that I didn’t recognize. One that I could only assume was his. In the wing I never dared explore.

  He was standing in front of Ragna with his arms crossed over his chest. And he looked irritated. More irritated than I had ever seen him before.

  “You disappoint me,” he said to Ragna, who lowered herself to a kneeling position with her hands atop her knee. Her head was bowed and her temper flared.

  “I don’t understand this, master,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It might be bold of me to say-”

  “When have you ever not been bold?” he snarled.

  “But I’ve known you longer. I’ve been loyal to you longer. I helped you create this coven when you had no one else by your side. Why would you hand it over to Nathaniel and not me?”

  She knew! She knew that Tobias didn’t intend to hand over leadership of the coven to her.

  “Because you have had centuries to better yourself, Ragna,” he hollered down at her. “More than the vast majority of beings permitted to live on this earth and you only reserved time and energy to maintain a minimum amount of control. Nathaniel struggled harder. Longer. He gave himself over to the task of making sure he controlled his vampire impulses so they do not control him.”

  Ragna was fuming. I could see the blind rage in her eyes. And so could he.

  He lowered his voice so I had to step closer to hear him. Somehow, he sounded more threatening when he lowered his voice than when he yelled. “You have been loyal. You have aided me when I needed it. And yet, you still feed on those who might draw attention to us when you think you can get away with it. When you think I’m not watching. You hunt humans like they’re mice.”

  “Aren’t they?” she muttered.

  For a second I thought Tobias might strike her. But he didn’t. He stood up straighter than an arrow, projecting his dominance over her.

  “And that, Ragna, is why I chose Nathaniel. He has enough foresight to know that humans are as dangerous as they are fragile.”

  Ragna was practically shaking with anger. I saw her shoulders slump as she did her best to get a grip on her emotions, trying to prove him wrong. She closed her eyes. And when she opened them, she was back to being the woman I saw sitting beside Tobias the day of Nathaniel’s trial. Calm. Collected. And frightening.

  “Arise,” said Tobias.

  She did so, still refusing to meet his eyes. Or perhaps knowing that she shouldn’t dare do so. Not just yet.

  “Speak nothing of what you have learned here tonight. And leave. If you tell a single soul I will kill you myself.”

  She turned around and walked away with a step that was slow and almost methodical. I could sense the wheels in her head turning. Trying to figure out a way to change things. To make the situation turn in her favor. To make sure the position of coven master would be hers and not Nathaniel’s.

  Just as Emily let go of my body and let me see through my own eyes again, I wished she would take over once more.

  Brian was standing beside me, ready to drive the knife down into my neck. He had it raised high above my head.

  Ragna stood before me, playing with my grandfather’s wand in her hands and holding the tip with one hand and the handle in the other.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the maniacal faces of the vampires cheering as I died.

  I was weak. I was fading. And I had one slight sliver of magic left inside me.

  If I was going to go out, I was going to make sure it wasn’t without a fight.

  I focused as hard as I could on my magic, forcing it to pour into my palms. And as soon as Brian started lowering his arm to sink the knife into my neck, I let it out in one final burst.

  A thre
ad of gold light shot out of my palm and went directly for the wand. It burned bright red and exploded right inside Ragna’s hand. A ball of red fire burst between us as the magic from the wand and my hand met. The light was so bright that I had to shut my eyes. But I maintained my focus.

  There was yelling. Then there was screaming. Then the roaring thunder of my magic shooting through the air.

  I squinted my eyes open to see Ragna on the floor and Brian down beside me. They were writhing around on the floor as flames overpowered their bodies. They were burning alive. I could smell their cooking flesh.

  I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know how I channeled the magic in the wand. It didn’t matter. I kept going. I watched as Ragna tried to stand. She struggled on all fours until she got up to a standing position and hobbled over to me, pushing through the magical sphere I created around me and placing her hands right on my shoulders.

  I expected to feel the flames engulfing her. I could sense she wanted to take me down with her.

  And for whatever reason, she couldn’t. I watched as her eyes turned black and her skin burned straight through to the bone.

  She crumbled to my knees, still trying to set me on fire with the flames engulfing her body.

  I focused on my magic. I gave one final burst of its energy through my hands. And apparently, that was all that I needed. The ball of light around me detonated like a bomb, throwing her backward as her body crumbled into nothing more than ash.

  Fire couldn’t kill a vampire. Gran once told me of the rare occasion when humans would manage to catch vampires in the past and burn them at the stake only to discover they healed from the flames as soon as the flames died down.

  This wasn’t normal fire.

  It was fire created through vixra magic.

  Whatever Eli did to my wand made it more powerful than I ever imagined. It infused the touch of a vixra. A scrap of vixra magic.

  Once the ball of gold light dissolved into nothing, I saw the damaged it had done. The vampires that survived were fleeing through the cavern tunnels without looking back. Parts of the walls had caved in with rocks crumbling to the floor. And best of all, Ragna and Brian had been reduced to nothing more than ash.