Supernal Dawn

by J. A. Giunta

  “Wait,” Lee said, as details began to click into place. “What do you mean I was barren? You said only girls could be born barren.”

  “Your father convinced me,” she said and swallowed, wiped a tear from her nose, “that since you didn’t have magic anyway, you could become a conduit. The family desperately needed one, and your father was running out of time. I agreed to do a spell.”

  Lee couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “You changed me.” More than the notion that his body had been altered against his will, he was crushed by the thought of everything else that had been stolen from him. “I was supposed to be a witch, like everyone else. I would’ve been one of you, part of the family.”

  “No,” she said, pleading. “Don’t you see? You would have never...you wouldn’t have been a witch. You had no magic.” She shook her head, as if thinking it was too much to bear. “You would’ve been sent away. But as a conduit, you filled a void.”

  It was all too much, her words and jumble of emotion crowding his own, the realization of all that’d been taken from him and forced upon him.

  “How could you do that to me?” he asked, betrayed and disgusted. “Is that why you’re being punished by the others? For stealing who I was?”

  His mother wiped her eyes with both hands and shook her head.

  “They found out about Ward’s visions,” she replied, “what your dad was. He would’ve been shunned, cast out of the family or worse, if he hadn’t died shortly after the spell.”

  Spell? Lee thought, and it angered him even more. You said he died in a car crash on the way to the hospital when I was born.

  She looked at him then, to let the words sink in, but all he heard were more lies.

  “They were afraid we’d made you like him,” she said, “that you’d become an abomination. I refused to give you up like they wanted. I just couldn’t. But they wouldn’t let me train you, either. They made me keep it all a secret. I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but a witch’s oath can’t be broken. I swore I would never tell or teach you about magic. But today, at the station, they let me use magic to save Ember,” she said and quickly added, “to save both of you. Doing so freed me from part of that oath. I could tell you everything I’d always wanted.”

  “But you still can’t teach me.”

  Lee was beyond angry but tried not to let it cloud his judgement. He was struggling to comprehend it all, to be understanding and see things from her perspective, to see why she would do such a terrible thing to him. It was difficult to think straight with the influx of her emotions, the overwhelming regret and desperate need for his forgiveness.

  “No,” she admitted, “I can’t. But now that you know the truth, maybe you and your sister can work it out. Your father’s visions were never wrong. At some point, Ember’s going to need you to be her conduit. But listen,” she said, “if you’re going to pursue this on your own, you have to resist. You can’t give in to the urge to cast spells on your own. If I had access to the Nexus, unrestricted and unrestrained?” She shook her head with a single snort of nervous laughter. “Please. I know you’re angry. You probably hate me, and you have every right to. But believe what I’m telling you. If you are like your father and you give in to those urges, you’ll become the monster your aunts and everyone else are so deathly afraid of.”

  “Is that it then?” Lee asked and got up. “No more secrets I should know about? No more life changing news?”

  “If Cerberus has taken charge,” she said, “of dealing with the Affected...Without a conduit, I don’t know what we can do to protect you and your sister. We have artifacts, spells we can cast in preparation…”

  “But it might not be enough,” Lee finished for her. She nodded. He could feel her desire to come around the desk and hug him. He wasn’t there yet. She’d have to wait for his forgiveness, if he ever decided to give it to her. “I’ll figure it out.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Lee,” she called after. “I love you.”

  He nodded and left the room.

  There were yells coming from the front doorway. He hurried to see what the problem was, taking two steps at a time. Ember, Tara and Seanna had come back, and were struggling with a strange man he’d never seen. A bit dirty and more than crazy, he was shouting and kicking at the three, with both arms restrained behind him.

  Is this what they do when I’m not around?

  “Who the heck is this?” Lee asked and got too close. The guy kicked him in the upper thigh. A couple of inches to the left would have meant a whole new world of pain. “Jackass!”

  Lee punched him across the jaw. By the sound of the crack and the way the head lolled, he was certain he’d broken something. What he sensed from the man was distorted, dual waves of pain and emotion, like it came from two different people.

  “Hey!” Ember shouted at Lee. “You can’t go around punching people like that. Not anymore.”

  The guy flailed all of a sudden and hit Seanna in the face with his forehead. She went tumbling back against a wall, as Tara caught a backward kick to the middle.

  Something caught Lee’s attention. He turned to the big mirror hanging in the hallways and saw in its reflection a pale vision of another person struggling to break free of the man’s body. Dark chains wrapped around him kept the spirit trapped inside. The man saw Lee take notice and grinned at him with a wicked stare. The same pale light seemed to shine in his eyes.

  Ember snapped open her right hand, and purple fire erupted from her palm. She smashed it against the side of the man’s head and held it there while he screamed.

  “Try it again,” she told him and let the flames die out. “I dare you.”

  All Lee could think was that all this time his sister had magic. She knew about everything and kept it from him. They all did. Seanna climbed to her feet, and just the sight of her caused a knot in his stomach.

  He was a stranger in his own family.

  Ember dragged the man off to the basement. Tara took a deep breath and followed after. Seanna had a nasty cut on her cheekbone, and blood had begun to run down her jawline.

  “Come here,” he said.

  He put a hand to her cheek when she drew close. It took a few moments for enough cells to form inside her before he could direct them to heal the wound. She must have felt the gash close, walked over to the mirror for a better look.

  “Nice,” she said in admiration and checked her jaw for a scar. “You’re even better than Aunt Bri.” She gave him a sideways look then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “You just became my new best friend,” she said and left with a smile.

  Lee slowly frowned after her, his affection for her deflated. He knew she was only joking, but her words instantly soured his mood. It just brought back all the time he’d wasted in junior high, spent trying to please girls who were only interested in what he could do for them.

  Jen wasn’t like that. She understood him, never asked or wanted more than to hang out. That’s why she was his best friend and had been his entire life. Even with her mother dying of cancer, she didn’t ask for his help, try to use him for what he could do.

  Of course, he would heal her mother. It wasn’t even a consideration. But she knew not to ask. That’s what made him love her. That’s why she was his best friend and why he’d always be there for her.

  He went outside and headed next door.

  - Ember -

  After dropping her chaos and death bomb, her mother glanced at her cell phone, stuck out her hand to ward off any questions and took an incoming call.

  “Fine, but only because of our working relationship,” she said. “If anything goes wrong, we will have more than words.” She hung up, her face tight.

  Ember had a few choice words for her mother, but she kept her mouth shut. Her mother was still the head of their coven, and when she talked busines
s, nobody in their right mind smarted off to her. Not even Ember.

  When she told Ember to round up her cousins and head to the park to pick up some rogue Cerberus informant, Ember spun on her heel, deciding she should leave before she said something that would get her warded in an attic room for the duration.

  She found Tara in the herb room. Her long black hair, streaked with magenta, was pulled back into a ponytail to keep it from falling into whatever she was brewing. “Where’s Seanna?”

  “Kitchen,” Tara mumbled without looking up from the concoction she was grinding.

  “Ugh. Why are you grinding Jimson and wait...what is that?”

  Tara glanced up at her distractedly and a puff of foul smoke whiffed out of the mortar. “Dammit, Ember! That was the last of the dried musk ox bladder.”

  “What the hell were you using musk ox bladder for? No. Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Ember stepped back from the table and bumped into a supply shelf, jostling a multitude of vessels and containers. She froze, waiting for everything to settle before sidling away. “Whoa. That was close. Last thing I need is to have to come up with replacements of whatever freaky ingredients the Greenies are experimenting with,” she said.

  Tara gave her a dirty look. “You know I hate when you call us that.”

  “Sorry.” Ember tried to say it like she meant it, but Tara had always been a better empath than Ember was a liar. “Earth witch just doesn’t have the same ring. And Hedgers? That’s just cruel.”

  Her cousin frowned.

  “Anyway, we have a gig.”

  “Something special?” Tara started scooping up her tools.

  “Doesn’t sound like it.” Ember headed for the kitchen. “I’ll grab Seanna and meet you in the front room.”

  Seanna was making lunch. At least, that’s what some people called it. Personally, Ember hated peanut butter and white bread. “There’s no accounting for taste,” she said. Especially in a family that likes mixing herbs and dried animal guts together.

  “Want some?” Seanna finished slathering the gooey spread on her bread and pressed another slice on top, then popped the sticky spoon in her mouth.

  “Ugh, no thanks. Even without having lunch, you know I wouldn’t touch that stuff. Especially not after the reek Tara just made in the la-bor-a-tory.” She drew out the word like in a creepy old horror movie.

  “Ha ha.” Seanna gave her an annoyed look.

  “Tough crowd.” Ember gestured to the sandwich on the counter. “Grab your lunch, we gotta go.”

  She explained the plan as they headed out the door. “Mom got a call about some activity at the park. Said we should answer. I guess we’re still on the same side. For now.” She opened the door and clamped her mouth shut, almost biting her tongue.

  Lee and Jen were sitting on the porch steps. He couldn’t have set a better ambush if he’d planned it. No matter. The cat was out of the bag, now. The swear-spell Ember had taken at seven still seemed to have some effect. Or maybe she’d just been lying to him and keeping secrets so long, she couldn’t break the habit. At any rate, it felt like her jaw had been slammed shut by an especially powerful charm, and it took a moment to get it working again. “Hey. I thought you were upstairs.”

  “Nope.” He glared up at her. Then he and Jen leaned apart, meaningfully.

  Ember took the hint and clomped down the steps. She knew it was childish to stomp, but the sound of her grungy ass-kicker boots on the wooden steps gave her a cathartic release. For about ten seconds. Till Seanna handed Lee that damn sandwich. It irked Ember how her cousin always managed to out-nice her with her own brother.

  She didn’t wait to watch the love-fest and tromped down the sidewalk, jingling the car keys at Seanna.

  “Where are you guys off to?” Jen called over. She was clearly annoyed at the whole Seanna-Lee exchange. Good. That made two of them.

  “The park,” Tara blurted.

  “Errands to run,” Ember said at the same time and gave her cousin a look that their Grans would have called an evil-eye.

  Jen rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. Well, be careful.”

  It was obvious Jen could tell they were lying, but Ember was hoping Lee was so focused on his sandwich, he hadn’t noticed. Ember raised her eyebrows at Seanna, who finally got the message.

  Ember was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine by the time Seanna hopped in the back. She barely had the door closed before Ember backed out onto the street.

  “What the hell?” Seanna asked.

  “Just buckle-up so I don’t get a ticket,” Ember growled as she put the car in drive.

  “So, is Lee really that pissed at you?” Seanna buckled her seatbelt.

  Ember glanced at Seanna’s reflection in the rearview mirror. Green eyes stared back at her, as if the answer really mattered to her.

  Shit! With her eighteenth birthday coming up, it probably did. “Naw.” Ember tried to sound convincing, but Tara stopped tapping at her cell phone and gave her a disbelieving look.

  “How would you feel, if you suddenly found out your whole family had been lying to you your entire life?” Tara asked. “Especially something on the scale of this?” She waved a hand at the three of them. “I know I’d be whipping up something pretty lethal.”

  “He’ll get over it.” Ember stepped on the gas to get through the yellow light at the intersection.

  “You better hope so,” Tara turned back to her phone.

  Seanna kept quiet. Her pensive aura seemed to permeate the space inside the car.

  A deep itch formed at the back of Ember’s neck as they pulled into the parking lot at Hillside Park. “Seanna. Knock it off.” She slammed the car into park and rubbed at the back of her neck.

  “It’s not me,” Seanna said at the same time as Tara whispered, “It’s not her.” She’d dropped her cell onto the car seat and was staring intently out the passenger side window.

  “Damn!”

  “Language, young lady,” they both chimed, mimicking Ember’s mother.

  Ember purposely ignored them.

  Slowly, the three of them opened their doors and slid out of the car. Ember went around to the passenger side and assumed the point position of their standard triad posture. She felt the power rise up as Tara and Seanna raised a tributary of energy from the local ley line. Their precision and control was incredible, and the only thing that kept Ember’s envy in check was the knowledge that, as long as they were united, she had a share in that control.

  She cupped her hands together and let the energy build between them. Heat coalesced into a visible spectrum. It looked like a ball of purple fire, but was really a distilled form of magical energy, power so pure it might as well have been dipped straight from the well. Ember had the unique ability to grasp that energy and control it. Though, her unaided control tended to be tenuous and sometimes things got a bit scorched. She had the burn scars to remind her. Nothing to match Seanna’s demon touch scar, though.

  They waited by the car and scanned the surrounding greenery. The park was oddly empty. And quiet. No people enjoying the outdoors. No animals rustling in the bushes. No birds twittering in the trees. The missing people might easily be due to the current events unfolding around town. But the birds and the animals were smart enough to either hide or vacate when something dark was in the vicinity.

  There was no sign of their quarry, just the annoying itch at the back of her neck getting deeper and more persistent.

  “Whatever it is, it’s dark,” Tara said. “Not the deepest, but likely strong.”

  Ember nodded. “It’s higher level than we expected. How far can we expand the net?” she asked in a quiet voice. She would have signed the question, but she had her hands full hanging onto the ley energy.

  “Here?” Tara said from behind her. Ember couldn’t see her cousin shrug, but she felt it in the way the energy rose
and fell just a bit. “Ten, maybe fifteen yards at most, and it will be like dragging a heavy extension cord behind us to raise that much power and stretch it out that far.”

  “It will thin the webbing, too,” Seanna reminded them.

  “Stay within the ten yards. Make it feel like our limit and hope that lures our new friend close enough?”

  “Works.” The way the two of them spoke in unison when manipulating magics together always weirded Ember out. For some reason, she never felt that in sync with anyone, no matter how hard she tried. The closest she’d ever come was with Allie. She forced her thoughts away from what had happened to her friend earlier. This was not the time to lose focus.

  They walked forward, spreading out as they moved. Ember kept her hands cupped at her midriff and tried not to look down or bring attention to the swirling purple orb of energy she held.

  Late afternoon shadows stretched beneath the trees and spread across the green grass. A light breeze ruffled the leaves. Inside the net, no air moved, but the itch at the base of her neck grew more intense. She glanced over her left shoulder at Tara.

  Trees, Tara signed in ASL. They had all learned it at a young age. Not only because of cousin Keara, but because it had turned out to be a great way to talk and send messages in class. Until the teachers had figured out what they were doing and decided it was the equivalent of passing notes.

  It still came in handy.

  Ember nodded, since she currently had her hands full, and headed slowly toward the shaded picnic area.

  Seanna edged a little further out to their right and Tara kept pace.

  Suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows. He wasn’t tall, but he was broad, with the shoulders of a bodybuilder and the face of someone who was not afraid to tangle with anyone. Especially, not three teenaged girls. His eyes glowed amber. If she hadn’t known better, Ember would have thought it merely the reflection of the setting sun, but it was clear that evil had its claws in him. Whether by force or by his own allowance was not discernable without the right tools. They had to take him back to the coven. And with as little damage as possible, to him as well as them.