Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  "Oh thank you." Abby laughed. "I truly was concerned." She rolled her eyes.

  "Pizza," Lydie shouted when the doorbell rang. She jumped up and ran to the front door.

  Lydie's scream pierced their conversation. Kendra dropped the bottle of truth serum and it smashed on the wood floor. Oliver was already gone, racing from the room in a blur. Sebastian lifted Abby up by her arms and shoved him behind her as Victor ran for the front door.

  Chapter 14

  "Oh gosh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to scare you," a woman yelped from the front of the house.

  Abby and Sebastian walked to the front door where the others stood staring at a dark-skinned woman with beautiful black braids. She hovered on the front stoop with a red rubber mask clenched in her fists.

  "It's just a mask," she told Lydie, holding it out as proof. "I brought it just in case I saw one of the others."

  "You thought a red devil mask was less conspicuous than your own face?" Victor asked suspiciously.

  "In New Orleans? Pretty much. I'm Audra, by the way."

  "Audra who knows nothing," Sebastian said over Abby's shoulder. "She worked in the store," he told her in explanation.

  "I'm not stupid," she snapped. "Do you have any clue what Ethel would have done to me if I talked to you?"

  "So why are you here now?" Kendra demanded, crowding into the entryway with Oliver, Victor and Lydie.

  Audra glanced behind her and shifted uncomfortably.

  "Can I come in? I feel exposed out here."

  "No, you can't come in," Kendra began, but Lydie interrupted her.

  "Let her in. She's scared. I can feel it. She came alone."

  Oliver glanced toward Lydie in surprise, and the woman gave Lydie a grateful look.

  The other witches stepped back and Audra walked into the house. Her eyes darted around the room as if already planning her means of escape.

  "I came because I did meet your friend," Audra informed them, moving away from the windows to stand along a wall where she could not be seen. "Dafne."

  "Why don't we move to the dining room," Victor suggested. "We can sit. The windows face the backyard," he reassured her.

  After they found their seats, Audra reached into her pocket and pulled out several sheets of paper, torn from a book.

  "Dafne wanted a book while she was here. I don't know the name of it. Only that it involved spirits that find a way to survive after their bodies are gone."

  Oliver frowned and looked toward Lydie. She watched Audra with wide eyes.

  "Why would she want to know that?" Victor asked, addressing his question to Oliver.

  "Your guess is as good as mine."

  "Did she get the book?" Abby asked.

  "Most of it," the girl said, pushing the papers across the table. "There were other things she wanted to know as well. I missed some of it because Ethel took her out of the store. I overheard something about an invisible pond."

  "The Pool of Truth," Oliver corrected her, looking at Sebastian.

  Dafne had somehow manipulated the Pool of Truth to reveal Sebastian as dead when he was in fact very much alive.

  "Your witches helped her with that?" Abby asked, enraged. "Why don't they just call themselves Vepars?"

  Audra flinched at the word.

  "They're not my witches," she exclaimed. "That store has been in my family for generations. I didn't make any agreement with those witches, but my great-grandmother did and I'm bound by her oath. It's as simple as that. I don't support their methods. My great-grandmother didn't either, but by the time she realized what they were, it was too late."

  "So they told Dafne how to bewitch the Pool," Victor cut in. "What else?"

  "Like I said, I missed a lot of it, but she came back a few days later and she mentioned a curse. She seemed to believe that she was under some kind of curse and that a spirit had created it. She wanted to figure out where the spirit was getting its power and how it continued to live after its body had died."

  "Kanti," Abby breathed and Victor's face darkened.

  "Ethel gave her a book?" Oliver asked.

  "But she tore out these pages first." Audra pointed toward the torn pages.

  Oliver pulled them from the table and read them quickly.

  "They're about possession."

  "Possession?' Lydie asked, looking scared. "Like when a spirit takes over someone else's body?"

  Audra nodded.

  "Why would she tear those out?" Kendra asked.

  "I don't know," Audra told them.

  "So that Dafne wouldn't know what she was up against," Sebastian broke in. "So that she wouldn't be afraid of getting too close."

  Oliver grimaced and continued to study the pages.

  "Are we talking about this spirit possessing Dafne?" he asked, though he clearly did not expect an answer.

  "Why are you giving us this information?" Kendra looked at Audra.

  "Because someone should know what they are," Audra replied. "I tried to tell Dafne, to warn her away from them. Everything comes at a cost with them. A terrible cost."

  ****

  Like dreams, but not dreams. Dafne saw snippets of life. She felt a burst of cold water rushing over her bare thighs and slippery pebbles beneath her feet. So cold that it shocked her. She danced on the edge of a cliff in the moonlight, hands outstretched with a brilliant ball of flame roiling at the tips of her fingers. She lay beneath Tobias as he devoured her with his sharp teeth and tongue and black hungry eyes, but when he called her name, he called her Kanti.

  When she woke between these visions, her body throbbed and tingled. She felt bruises and aching muscles. Her head felt raw, as if someone had pulled her hair. She smelled the sooty remains of her own power, exercised without her knowing.

  "What is happening?" she asked the room and silence, that endless agonizing silence, greeted her.

  ****

  Kendra arrived back at the house just as Oliver finished creating the circle. They had moved all the furniture against the walls, and he had drawn a large circle in chalk on the floor. Lydie and Abby moved through the house collecting candles. Lydie directed her fingers at one of the candles and they all lit at once.

  "It's a special magic," Kendra said, glancing through the window where the setting sun glowed purple on the horizon. "Something we've wanted to try, but we never had the water element." She inclined her head toward Abby.

  "Dream Magic," Oliver said. "Julian once told me about it."

  "Is it a good idea to be performing new magic on these witches?" Sebastian asked.

  "It's not new," Oliver continued. "Just new for us."

  "Which is my point."

  "She did it," Victor announced, striding into the room. He held a brush thick with long silver hair.

  "I hope they don't hurt Audra," Lydie said, staring at the brush. "She shouldn't have taken the whole brush. The lady might notice it's missing."

  "Audra said there wasn't time to steal hairs, so she grabbed the brush and brought it to me in the alleyway," Victor explained. "I'd say the lack of time applies to us as well, so let's get moving."

  Kendra took the brush and pulled out a handful of the hairs. She took a small doll from a paper bag. The doll had button eyes and large black stitching around its arms and legs. Abby felt a stir of uneasiness looking at the thing. She knew very little about voodoo dolls, but this one gave her the heebie-jeebies.

  "Have any of you used one of those before?" she asked, nodding toward the doll as Kendra quickly sewed the hair onto its head.

  "I have," Oliver admitted. "Sort of. Julian taught me. We used a doll to heal a woman who'd been attacked by a Vepar."

  "It worked?" Sebastian asked, looking skeptical.

  "Julian made the doll right there in the woods. He ripped off part of the woman's shirt, stuffed it with leaves and sewed it with fish line. He took some of the woman's hair and added it to the doll. Then he performed the ritual to animate it with her spirit. I wasn't much help, as you can imagine. I most
ly just watched with my mouth hanging open catching flies. Then he took a bottle of anti-venom and soaked the doll. The woman was unconscious in the woods and had nearly bled out. He was concerned that giving her the potion directly might poison her, and we didn't exactly have a lot of options."

  "And?" Abby asked, incredulous.

  "It worked, or seemed to. The woman came to about twenty minutes later. She needed a blood transfusion so we took her to the hospital and dropped her off. Julian muddled her memory a bit, but he checked on her later and found no traces of the venom."

  "Traces?" Sebastian asked.

  "For most humans, the venom of the Vepar kills them outright," Oliver admitted. "The ones who aren't killed usually wander around until their bodies go completely toxic, and that kills them."

  Sebastian frowned.

  Abby knew that he thought about his own experience with Vepars. He had been bitten more than once and not suffered those horrific outcomes.

  "You're strong," Abby told him.

  "Some people have a certain immunity," Oliver added. "Possibly because your sister was a witch."

  "Well she obviously wasn't immune," Sebastian snapped.

  "I didn't say she was," Oliver challenged.

  Abby put her hand on Sebastian's arm. She could feel his pulse thumping against her fingers. He looked at her for a moment as if enraged that she had stopped him, and then his eyes softened.

  "If you guys are done, maybe we could begin?" Kendra asked.

  The tension in the room buzzed like a live wire. They were attempting unexplored magic and dabbling with a witch who'd likely make vengeance a priority if she discovered what they were up to.

  Kendra finished the doll.

  Oliver set up a ladder and climbed to a chandelier suspended in the center of the room. He tied a string around the waist of the doll and then fastened the other end to the fixture. The doll dangled above the circle. They placed a chair in the center of the circle and Kendra sat down. They had only one broom. Abby walked through the space sweeping the floor and whispering the incantations Elda had taught her to purify a space.

  "Why can't you just set the doll on the floor?" Sebastian asked, watching the grim little doll sway back and forth.

  "We're entering the land of dreaming," Victor said. "It's all about air and fluidity. If the doll were on the floor, we might wake Ethel up, bring her back to the physical world."

  ****

  Lydie arranged herbs in a mesh pouch. Each of the witches would wear one during the ritual. Some of the herbs would be the same: peppermint for help in dream travel, frankincense as an offering to their element and fennel seed for protection from psychic attack. Additional herbs magnified their individual elements. Lydie would add cinnamon to her own pouch, aloe leaves for Abby, for Oliver bark from the cypress trees and a handful of dirt, and for Victor and Kendra anise. Oliver and Lydie had found most of the herbs and stones at a new age bookstore in town. The health food store Mama's Miso sold the rest of the herbs in bulk. Kendra's pouch would contain extra herbs and stones because she would be their primary conduit during the ritual.

  They arranged themselves in the four directions according to their element. As an earth element, Oliver took his position at the north of the circle, Abby at the west, Lydie to the south and Victor to the east. Kendra sat in a wooden chair in the center of the space. The chair was positioned directly beneath the doll.

  "Ready," Victor said and Sebastian flicked off the lights, leaving the room awash in candlelight.

  The four witches on the perimeter of the circle gazed at one another a final time, and then they each closed their eyes.

  Oliver began:

  "I call to the Watchtower of the West, energies of the water, goddess of dreaming. Guide and protect us as we navigate your fluid scape. Protect us with your strength and your grace."

  Abby joined him as he repeated the call a second time. She felt a heartbeat in her belly, but did not know if it belonged to her or the baby. As Abby's voice rang out, she sensed the ball of blue energy at the base of her spine igniting and growing stronger.

  "I call to the Watchtower of the South, energies of fire, sun god Ra. Guide and protect us as we navigate the land of dreaming. Shield us with your fierce energy."

  Lydie joined him during the second invocation.

  "I call to the Watchtower of the East, energies of the air, god of the mind. Guide and protect us as we move into the realms of memory. Protect us with your wit and cunning."

  Victor repeated the call.

  "I call to the Watchtower of the North, the energies of earth, of my own true nature, goddess of Gaia. Guide and protect us as we move away from your solid bearings. Protect us with your steady hand."

  As Oliver invoked the elements, the candle flames danced and flickered. Outside the wind grew fiercer. Leaves and branches scraped the windows.

  As the witches felt their energy heighten, they directed the flow toward Kendra. She held a sharp silver blade in her hand. Carefully, she stood on the chair and drew the blade across an emptiness in the air above the doll. Though she appeared to cut nothing at all, she created a doorway into the world of dreaming. She sat and closed her eyes. Her body hummed with the funneling power and her chair knocked rhythmically on the wood floor.

  ****

  In her astral body, Kendra left the circle. She directed her energy up, beyond the earth and the sky and the universe. She pressed harder and higher until she burst through the barriers of consciousness into the land of dreaming. The blackness terrified her, but soon it gave way to a thousand images flashing in every direction. Colors and streaks of light and ghostly drawn faces wove and cascaded around her. A cacophony of sounds penetrated her mind—music, laughter and crying. She lifted a hand, stared at her own shimmering body, and tried to remember. She had a purpose, a mission, but found only a million glittering worlds, and she longed to fall into each one. A slithering darkness moved past her. She felt her astral body begin to melt toward the shadow.

  In her mind, Victor appeared. Not in the astral plane, but in her thoughts. He held up an image of the doll and she remembered: Ethel.

  She focused on the doorway above the doll, turning through space until she noticed a sliver of red light. She moved toward it, ignoring the dreams that swirled around her. She reached out and allowed her hand to pass through the opening. Immediately the dream pulled her into its scape.

  Kendra stood in an old shack. Rain beat against the tin roof and dripped onto sodden rugs and a dirt floor. Candles stood on a stack of planks in the center of the room. Half-empty plates of thin stew surrounded the candles. A young woman, her back to Kendra, stood at a washpot near the door. Two snoring women slumbered in sagging cots against a wall.

  Kendra did not recognize Ethel, but knew her to be the angular girl washing dishes. She might have been fifteen. Malnourishment gave her the appearance of a boy. Her black hair hung down her back in tangles. Sharp shoulders and ribs stood out in her gray cotton dress.

  Ethel glanced at the women sleeping and then began to whisper under her breath. Outside, the rain grew louder and the wind began to howl. The shack shook and groaned. One of the women woke, scared, and turned to Ethel. Ethel stared back at her and then a streak of white lightning, followed by a deafening clap of thunder, struck the shanty. Kendra smelled smoke and flinched as the front wall burst into flames.

  She started to cry out, but the shack, the women and the fire dissolved. She looked around, confused, at a long stretch of stony beach. The gray half-light of dawn revealed a choppy, cold-looking lake or ocean. Ocean, Kendra thought. She tasted salt in the air.

  Ethel, older now, stood waist deep in the water. She drew her hands up and the water followed in streams and tornadoes and cyclones. In a burst, she flew straight out of the water and spun with her arms outstretched to either side.

  She's dreaming, Kendra reminded herself. Of course she can fly.

  Kendra joined her. She drifted up and began to spin around and a
round. Ethel did not seem startled, only continued her twirling and then dove, hard, into the dark waters below. She emerged and flew up again. Kendra followed her. She dove into the water and then rose into the sky. It was strange manipulating her astral body in such a way. She always knew that she could defy natural laws in the astral space, but rarely did so. Finally, Ethel tired of her game and returned to the shore.

  Her black hair was now cropped short above her shoulders. No longer the sickly teen girl, she appeared as a healthy, glowing witch. Her green eyes, like two shards of beach glass, regarded Kendra with interest.

  In dreams, the tangible world with all its stories ceased to exist. Ethel might know Kendra and she might not. Kendra hoped for the latter.

  "Tell me about Dafne," she said.

  "Dafne?" Ethel asked, but something sparked in her eyes. Recognition and memory.

  If Ethel had not remembered Kendra, she did now.

  "Clever witches," she said, staring out at the sea. "Clever and stupid to approach me this way."

  "No, I don't think so. I think this was the only way."

  Ethel smiled meanly.

  "Don't assume I'll make it easy."

  She vanished and Kendra reached out, grabbing at nothing.

  Another scene materialized. Ethel could shift her dreamscape, but Kendra had already entered it. Wherever Ethel disappeared to, Kendra emerged as well.

  Kendra looked at a towering medieval castle. Angry black turrets stretched toward a sweltering red sky. Black roses grew in massive heaps along the road that wound toward the castle gate. Kendra saw Ethel standing on the stone steps. She turned and ran toward the castle entrance and Kendra raced after her. She had to reach her before she crossed through the door—something horrible awaited them on the other side. So close, she reached out and clutched for Ethel's black cloak, but the door swung out and Kendra stumbled back, terrified. Ethel disappeared into the black interior. Kendra heard screams and laughter and howls of pain.