Sitting back down, I noticed Kyle had sat next to Dmitri who was focused on Lisa. His glare outmatched that of Dmitri’s earlier and their similarities raised a flag in an inner most curious manner.
“Is Kyle like you?” I asked Dmitri.
He looked over to me, smiled but didn’t answer the question.
“I don’t get it. You want us to communicate but yet you won’t answer my questions.” I added, annoyed.
“Some things you ask are irrelevant. If Kyle is like me bears no importance to your relationship with me. You wouldn’t need to know it.”
I couldn’t help react to his use of term, relationship.
“We don’t have a relationship, Dmitri.” I mentally sassed him.
“Oh but you see, we do, and we always will. So get use to it!”
“Hey, are you okay?” Carla asked, interrupting my secret conversation with Dmitri.
Looking back out past the fire, I realized Lisa had continued on without me. She had pulled up Cassidy to try a wind spell to put out the fire but it wasn’t working just right. It was only making it flicker like it wanted to go out but the magic wasn’t strong enough to keep the flame out.
“I’m fine.” I replied, paying close attention to Lisa’s demeanor. Something about her seemed familiar as well. The methods she used, her stance, and even the aura she was pulling from as she said the incantation reminded me of my mother.
Could it be that Lisa was part of My immortal coven?
“I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to sit out the rest of the night. No one has ever been able to do anything like the orbs before. This, the flickers, is mostly what happens when we get together.” She explained. “They seem to want to work but never quite do what they are supposed to do.”
“Has everyone read the book she is reading from?” I asked.
“Sure, Lisa let all of us take a jab at it when she found it.”
“Where did she find it?”
“Her grandmother had it hidden in a box at her house. When she died, Lisa came across it by accident. She says her mother has asked her about it about a dozen times but she hasn’t admitted to having it. She tells everyone she found it in a garage sale, but that’s not true.”
“Is her mother into all this kind of stuff too?”
“We don’t really know. Lisa’s mom isn’t around much and we don’t tend to talk about it because it makes her feel bad. Not that she would ever admit to it, but we can see it in how she acts.”
If Lisa’s mother is a part of the Immortal Coven, eventually I will know about it. When the summoning occurs, I will meet all the members. It bothers me, though, to think that Lisa’s mother could be a member and she would treat her daughter in such a manner.
Lisa and Cassidy laughed at the end of their chanting. Their amusement filled the field, seemingly bouncing off the trees. The rest of us, clapped at their attempt.
Just then, the fire flickered, crackled, and popped in a horrifying way, startling everyone.
Dmitri and Kyle, almost in unison, jumped to their feet. Justin, Jason, and Pete all followed their reaction.
My eyes darted to Lisa and hers to mine.
“We need light!” Kyle shouted out. The order clear as to who was going to make that happen.
Lisa and I both bent down to take the dirt.
“Wait…” I barked. “Anabel, do this with us!”
She didn’t ask, she bent down as quickly as we had and took the dirt in her hand.
We looked at each other a brief moment before blowing towards the fire, and made sure it was done together.
The spell took on a life of its own with 3 witches as opposed to 2.
The dirt blew out over the fire as orbs but floated out far out and high, eventually exploding into a thousand tiny still lights making the field just beyond us illuminate a terrifying sight.
Cassidy and Trisha cried out in terror.
Lisa, Anabel, and I turned to each other in stone shock.
The field, now brightly light, revealed a monstrous presence.
“I’ve seen this…” Lisa whispered.
“Me too…” I added.
“What do you mean you only looked at a couple pages?”
“I have my own book, Lisa.” I admitted, walking over to where her book now laid on the ground. Picking it up, I felt her glare become great.
As I flipped the pages, I could hear everyone scattering back to their vehicles.
“I found it.” I said, as I came across the same image of the shadowy beast with glowing amber eyes that I had seen in my own book.
Lisa walked over and read the incantation that was scribbled below the dark likeness. “It’s not going to kill it.” She realized.
“No, but it will force it back into its realm.” I countered.
“Do you know it, the words?” she asked me.
“Yes” I felt I knew the words before I had read them.
She took my hand and we walked to Kyle and Dmitri who stood, in a protective stance staring at the beast in the distance.
My eyes meet Dmitri’s, “Don’t leave me.”
“I will never leave you.”
Hand in hand, Lisa and I walked towards the field, staring at the glowing eyes out in the distance.
The incantation was a series of words, that together meant nothing, but separate would lock the beast in its realm.
“Tenebris….lucem…non hic tibi”
Over and over we recited, Darkness, in the light, we will not have you here.
As we reached the towering demon, he’d become but a translucent presence.
His features were disturbed. He looked vaguely human, his skin, ebony in color was lined with etchings of something I couldn’t quite make out. His eyes glowed an orange red but seemed terrifyingly familiar, like I’d seen him before, in a dream perhaps.
It seemed too easy to make him disappear. Dmitri and Kyle walked ahead of us and waited protectively for the beast to disappear back to its own realm.
The moment the two in front of us turned to assess our current state, I felt the strength in my knees give way. I fell on my butt and began to tremble.
Lisa had it worse, she fainted. Lucky for her, Kyle was quicker than she was.
Dmitri was at my side, kneeling next to me.
“Are you okay?”
And though my response was, “Yeah, I’m peachy,” I could feel the small break in my resolve.
I made eye contact with Kyle, “Is she okay?” I asked, worried for my new friend.
“It was too much for her. She isn’t like you. Her mother still holds the brunt of the power.”
“You are like him then, aren’t you?” Annoyed that Dmitri hadn’t just admitted the truth when I asked.
“Yes, but Lisa’s mother is not like you. She hasn’t given in, refuses to accept what is.”
“So you protect Lisa and not her mother?” my confusion took him by surprise.
Dmitri interrupted, “Our main purpose is to protect the coven. While Lisa is still not in her place, she is the future of her heritage.”
“That’s why you chose me.” I asked quietly.
“I chose you because I had to. In that split moment, my whole existence was tested. I cared for your mother, and knew what was most important to her…You. Had I chosen her, she never would have recovered, and the coven would have been lost regardless of her inability to have another child.”
Lisa began to stir just as Justin ran over to us, realizing that Lisa had passed out.
“Nice of you to show up,” Kyle scolded.
“What the Hell man, I just realized the four of you were out here.” He argued back, bringing a now bright eyed Lisa to her feet.
Dmitri evaluated my abilities, “Can you get up by yourself?”
“I think I’m fine.” I assured him.
He stood up and reached out his hand for me to take it.
The orbs had begun to dim, the field becoming dark once more. A cold breeze in the air sent a chill u
p my spine. The fear I had coming to this place returned. My hand found Dmitri’s and he pulled me up, and our eyes meet each other. The warmth of his body felt like an open invitation.
Seeing my reaction, he pulled me close to him. His arms wrapped around mine and I felt safe. The fear disappeared like a phantom in the night.
“Are we always going to be fighting a shadow?”
“I hope not.”
Dmitri took me home at that point. Seeing as how Lisa was pretty much spent, and the party was over.
The short car ride was silent. Neither of us said a word about the evening’s events. Occasionally, I would glance at him as he switched gears but the shift in the car’s movement jolted my inner nerve.
Pulling into Aunt Olivia’s driveway was the unnerving part. I had been picked up in Lisa’s Jeep and was being returned in Dmitri’s Charger.
I could see her shadow just behind the curtain in the living room as he turned off the ignition.
“I think we should talk.” He began.
“How did Lisa and I know exactly what to do at that precise moment? We were so in sync it was incredible.”
“Your connection to each other makes you prone to make similar choices. It’s in your magical make up.” He sighed, “Tonight was not a random event. The Domskabi, that’s who they are, feed off the energy of the coven. The coven was created to annihilate them many centuries ago.”
“So they know who I am?”
“They know who all the members of the coven are, they know everything about you. They wait for the right moment to attack, and go for the kill.”
“The one tonight didn’t do a very good job. Why would you attack someone who is in the middle of spell casting? We were ready for him.”
“He wanted you to see him. He was feeding off the fear you had been feeling all night. His appearance was calculated, which is what worries me.”
“But we know the spell to force them back into their realm.”
“Yes, but you see, he hadn’t known about Lisa. She isn’t a coven member yet, you are. It changes everything.”
“So Lisa can hide. Kyle can protect her.”
“Do you seriously think she will run and hide just like that. She knows nothing, Celia. She hasn’t been told. It hasn’t been necessary.”
“Well, it’s necessary now. She has to be told. I’m sure she will be filled with questions now. They have to convene to take the necessary precautions to protect the innocent ones.”
My words took a moment for even me to consume. Dmitri sat back in his driver’s seat and stared out at the living room window.
“She needs to know. You can’t keep this from her.” He said, referring to Aunt Olivia.
“She is going to want to keep me locked up in my bedroom, is what she is going to want to do.”
“She loves you. Of course she is going to want to protect you.”
“I’m not a child, Dmitri.”
“No, you’re not. You are a powerful witch who needs to be realistic. Everything that you know about the world is skewed, and the veil needs to be lifted.”
“Then by all means, release me from my ignorance.”
Unable to contain herself, Aunt Olivia opened the front door and stared at us from the porch.
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
“Aren’t you the brave one tempting Olivia’s wrath?”
“Oh, I have battled with more difficult guardians.”
I gauged his honesty for a moment, “I bet you have.” It came out as a whisper.
“By all means, it will be much easier to dissimulate tonight’s events with a back up voice.”
We both got out of the car and followed Olivia into the kitchen. She knew something was up, and she respectfully waited for us to explain the events that transpired. The further into it we got, the more unrealistic it sounded.
Life had become a science fiction movie for me, and I was here, acting like it was no big deal. The surrealness of it all forced me to realize how desensitized I’d become. It didn’t faze me to admit to my only family member that I’d vanquished a shadow demon to another realm with the mere use of an incantation.
When we were finished, she looked at the two of us and nodded her head once.
“So, you’re not going to be doing that nonsense again.” She stated plainly.
“You don’t get it do you?” I countered her authoritarian styled response. “They are going to make their attempt anywhere, and when we least expect it, just like they did Mom.”
“You can’t put me in a bubble and expect everything to be alright. And quite frankly, I’m sick of you acting as though you have a say in any of this.” I shouted, getting up from the kitchen table.
“You are not a part of the coven, and can’t do a damn thing to help me!”
When the words were out, I could feel the heat on my skin and the power surging in my system.
“Yes, you are right. I can’t help you fight these horrible life sucking demons, but I can continue to love you and care about your well being. Like your mother asked me to do.” Her demeanor was calm, her expression plain. She hadn’t reacted to my frustration by raising her voice. It was something my mother had always done as well.
Realizing my part in the conversation, I sat back down and quickly back tracked. “I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult night.”
“I bet it has.” She replied.
Dmitri added, “I am going to ask Kyle to stay close to you tomorrow. I’m going to see about convening the coven at once. The situation has become more grave adding Lisa into the mix.”
“So Kyle can protect me just as well as you can?
“I’m surprised you even had to ask.” He said, getting up from the table. He leaned over to me, his mouth caressing my cheek. The heat from his breath stirring emotions in my being I wasn’t expecting.
“If you need me, just think of me.”
I caught his eye as he pulled away, his words easy enough to decipher.
CHAPTER Six
Sunday mornings as a child were magical. No pun intended! Of course, it wasn’t like a Mary Poppin’s rerun. There wasn’t any magic actually happening.
No, my mother would snuggle into my bed, just as my eyes would flicker open. She would tell me this story of a princess from a far away land, and by the end, I would be wide awake ready to start my day after having heard the most beautiful story of happiness.
It was our ritual, we never wavered from it. I could, still to this day, recite the story with every little detail she added. Years and years of a simple, yet complex, habit ultimately ended abruptly a little over a month ago. Today, waking up to a cold silent room on a Sunday morning was just terribly depressing.
No rays of sunlight would ever bring my mother back. I would never hear her voice repeat the story she’d told me my whole life.
But am I that type of girl? The type to dwell on the current emotions choking just below the surface…..No, I’m not.
I threw the covers off my body and lie staring at the white pop-corn ceiling, the fan spinning effortlessly, despite its apparent old model. The morning light was getting bright enough to peek through the dark blue curtains covering the windows in my room.
I knew what I must do…I would simply have to create a new Sunday morning ritual, one that was mine only. Something that no one could take away from me and that no one could interfere with.
The only problem is keeping an eye on the present without referencing the past to make decisions that affect the future. Not something I was sure on how to execute with my seventeen year old mind.
I sat up and caught my reflection in the mirror. Seeing myself felt random, as if I was seeing someone I hadn’t noticed in a long time.
It became a curiosity to see who the girl in the mirror was…who I had become in the time span of a month. My features, the ones I’d never liked reflected the same as they always had. Skin randomly tan, hair and eyes a color brown everyone swore was black. Weight a little hea
vier than it should be but that was mostly because I hadn’t been watching what I was consuming since summer started.
The physical was still the same….but the look in my eyes had changed, and I felt as if I’d been walking straighter all of a sudden, my spine a little tighter.
Broken (The Immortal Coven Book 1) Page 9