by M. J. Caan
I focused, drawing on the eldritch energies around me, and struck out at the witch. She readied a shield, bringing it up to deflect my bolt. But that was her mistake. It wasn’t a blast that was meant to repel her, but rather one that was meant to attract. The power split when it hit her shield, snaking around her and embracing her dark form. It pulled her to me, locking us in an intimate embrace.
“My mistake was trying to figure out how to stop you before you cast this spell,” I said, “and when I failed to do that, I panicked, thinking there was nothing else that could be done.” I increased the magic that held the witch, and reached out to place a hand on her forehead.
“What…what are you doing?” she asked, struggling in vain to free herself.
“In order for you to cast the Leveling, you had to bind yourself to the power of the ley lines. It was the only way to corrupt it to such a degree. I’m betting that you’re still connected in some way…ah yes, there it is…” I could see the black tendrils of power that entwined the witch to the ley lines, snaking upward into the atmosphere, disrupting the moon’s natural progression and somehow locking it in its path across the sun. The amount of power to do this was unfathomable to me. At least it was—until I realized that all she had done was warp a forbidding into a cylinder that focused the darkness of the eclipse into one place. All she was doing was preventing the eclipse to progress through to its end, when the sunlight would naturally return as the moon’s shadow passed beyond it.
Between them, the witch and the Warlock had created a protective ward that would keep sunlight from reaching us. Wards, while still tricky, were something I had become fairly comfortable with lately.
The witch lashed out again at me, trying to summon her dark smoke and send it snaking into my throat, clawing at my eyes. But I was ready for her. My power hummed within me, and just like back at the house, she might as well have been moving in slow motion. I brushed the darkness away with a wave of my hand and refocused my power into the witch.
I wasn’t trying to fight her. I was trying to join my magic to hers, entwine them, and make her power mine. Just as the Warlock had tried with me, I now did to her, absorbing and using her own magic along with mine. I combined our magic and injected it into the ley lines. If I couldn’t stop the spell or reverse it, then I was back to my original plan: destroy the ley lines. Cut off the source of magic in our world once and for all. If I did that, perhaps it would keep anything supernatural from deciding to cross over and enter the world of man.
But then I looked around. My friends that were fighting and dying at my side…did they deserve that? I remembered the looks on the Totem Shifters’ faces when they realized my magic was able to help them achieve their dreams; to help them see the physical representation of who they had always felt themselves to be. The joy they felt for the first time in their lives…satisfaction with who they were. Who was I to take that back from them?
And what about Cody? He and Kendra were born shifters. What would happen to them if the magic that allowed them to exist vanished? I sighed as I held the witch in place. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it quickly. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold this level of power.
I closed my eyes and quietened the world around me. The din of war around me fell away, taking with it the indecision that clouded my mind. I knew what I had to do.
Pulling more of the witch’s magic into my own, I focused on the Leveling.
“You’re right,” I said to the witch. “It is done. I can’t stop it now.” I looked at the struggling form of darkness that wore my mother’s likeness. “But it’s not too late to modify the existing spell.” She fought, of course, but she had expended much of her power in casting the spell. What was left was quickly being drained and used by me.
Power exploded within me as I cast my magic outward, pouring it into the spell that the witch had cast. The layers of my memory peeled back as I remembered the first touch of the forbidding as I sought to tear it down in order to save Cody’s life. That magic had been foreign to me then, something that I’d wielded like a club to smash my way through any and everything before me.
But that was before I learned to control my magic; to embrace what it meant to be a Reliquary. For this to work, I had to reach deep into the reserves of magic that lay dormant within me; I had to accept who and what I was meant to be.
I felt the physical world slip away from me, and the sounds of battle surrounding me grew quiet. All that remained was the warm light of magic that emanated from the ground, the trees, the rocks, the very air I was breathing. I could feel it suffuse every molecule of my being. I reached out and found the spell that anchored the Leveling. It was malevolent and all-consuming.
And it was everywhere. That was what I needed to change.
I tugged at the spell and felt it move; it hadn’t quite taken hold. I knew I couldn’t undo it…I also knew that in the time it would take me to force the witch to break the spell, it would be too late: the Leveling would have settled in and become the new normal. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure she could undo this spell. It was massive in scope. I could feel the magic pouring from the ley lines to feed it; enough time had already passed that we should have started to see a sliver of daylight as the sun began to peek out from behind the moon.
But it wasn’t happening. It was still pitch-black. I reached out with both hands, feeling for the source of the Leveling. I could see it in my mind’s eye…the black smoke that was creeping through the primal light of the ley lines, suffocating and supplanting them in order to keep the sun’s energy at bay.
Well, if I couldn’t stop the spell, I would definitely have to settle for modifying it.
I grabbed at the darkness around me and began to pull at it. With every ounce of willpower I possessed, I pulled. No spells, no incantation, no invocation of powers beyond the veil. This was just me grabbing onto an ancient, evil magic and fucking it up by sheer force of will.
The effort took everything I had. It felt like I was dying and being reborn over and over. My head was pounding so hard I thought it was going to explode. I was gritting my teeth to the point I was pretty sure they would crack. But I didn’t stop, I didn’t give in.
I cast my power outward until I could feel the walls of the Leveling, and then I pulled even harder. I needed to stop the spread, isolate it, give it a new anchor.
Slowly, I felt the world around me start to come back into focus. Opening my eyes, I could barely make out the figures around me. There was a shimmer in the air. It was no longer dark, but it also wasn’t light out. It was like the waning hours of dusk…that time at night when the sun has set and the moon is just beginning to creep out. The palest of blue light washed across the landscape.
The air around me whooshed and I felt myself drop, falling head over heels. I had no idea how high up I had been; in truth I hadn't even aware I’d been levitating. Someone, or something, caught me in mid air; I could feel the grip of steel-hard talons wrapped gently around my waist and chest. The swirling air currents around me settled as I was placed gently on the ground.
Immediately Cody was at my side.
“What…what happened?” I said.
“You tell me,” he replied, gently brushing a strand of my red hair out of my face. “One minute we were fighting that hellhound and all the werewolves, the next you kind of went all Dark Phoenix on us, rose into the air…and then this.” He gestured around us and again I noticed the twilight glow that seemed to suffuse the clearing, barely outlining the tree band that encircled us in the distance.
“The hellhound!” I shouted looking around and shaking the fog away from my minds eye.
“It’s okay,” said Cody, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Turns out he wasn’t quite a match for bunch of Totem Shifters. It was pretty sweet seeing a saber-toothed tiger holding the monster down while a freaking unicorn stabbed it through the heart with its horn!”
“And the werewolves?” I asked.
“Routed,”
said Elion. The vampire walked up to us. He was battered and torn, his flesh rent and raked over in many places. His mouth was black with blood that dripped from his fangs and ran down his chin. “Without the apostles and the magic of the Warlock or witch, they fell. The ones that didn’t scattered to the hills once the light changed…after you did whatever you did.”
“And Mallis…?” I asked.
“My brother is…” He looked down at his right hand. His long fingers ended in pointed talons that dripped the same black blood that coated his face. “Well, he won’t be bothering us again.” His voice grew hard at that point, and I knew not to ask any further questions.
“Allie!” It was Aunt Lena. She and Aunt Vivian ran to my side and threw their arms around me. “Oh, thank God! You’re alive.”
“Barely,” I said, smiling. “I feel like a just ran twelve back-to-back marathons.”
Aunt Vivian was standing with her head cocked to one side, her attention focused on something far away. “It’s still dark here, but…I can sense the eclipse fading elsewhere. How is that possible? Allie, what did you do?”
Cody helped me to my feet and I struggled to find my balance. That spell had taken a lot out of me. “I did the only thing that I could. The Leveling was too big, too powerful for me to stop. So when I realized I couldn’t stop it, I grounded it instead. I locked it in place.”
“Do you mean to say…?” began Aunt Vivian, letting her voice trail off as she looked around.
“What?” said Cody. “What’s happening?”
“The Leveling is still in effect,” I said, “but only for Trinity Cove and the surrounding area. I bound the Leveling to the ley lines. I have no idea how far it would have spread if left alone. I assume it could have potentially swallowed the whole of the Earth, bringing eternal darkness to every corner of the globe. No matter. Now, life will go on. Only Trinity will be veiled in shadows.”
“You are a fool, girl!” came a creaky voice. It was the witch, speaking up from where she had fallen at my feet. Or what was left of her. Drained of all of her magic, she barely had enough strength to hold her body together. My guess was that whatever she was, wherever she had come from, she was slowing returning to it. Her body was losing its corporeality. Her limbs were deforming, her features sliding away like a grotesque wax figure placed to close to a flame. “You think you did a good thing?” She tried to laugh, but instead only puffs of black smoke escaped her mouth as she glared at me. “All you have done is open the bridge from my world to this town. Everyone from the dark realm will find their way to Trinity…and what will you do when your little town becomes overrun with monsters that make me and Mallis look like schoolchildren?”
“I will do what I must, what I was born to do. I will protect this town and everyone I love,” I answered stepping toward her. “But that will mean nothing to you. Because you will not be returning to the nether-place from which you were summoned.” I held up a hand and called forth blue flame. “Not even your spirit will return the darkness. You won’t be whispering anything to anyone.” I gestured toward her and sent a blue fireball screaming in her direction. It struck her form and ignited, burning hotter than a thousand suns but colder than blackest depths of space. I burned her fading flesh to ash, but along with it her soul as well. It was a dark act I performed…and I should have been appalled at what I did. But then I remembered that she had desecrated my mother’s name and face.
And I smiled to myself as the last of her evil visage melted away.
No one said anything as my friends gathered around. Their eyes held many questions, questions that I vowed to answer truthfully when asked. But they also carried with them a look of profound sadness. Austin and Lady stood next to me, tears in their eyes.
“It’s over,” I said soothingly. “It might not have been the victory I imagined, but it’s a win nonetheless.” Austin gathered Lady into her arms as her friend cried quietly onto her shoulder. “What is it?” I looked around, trying to take in everyone that surrounded us. There were too many people to count: shifters, Totems, friends, lovers, and family. But that was when I realized not everyone was present. “Who?” I turned to Cody.
He took a deep breath and reached out a hand to take mine. “Dana didn’t make it.” I felt my heart seize up as I finally let the realization crash over me. Cody gave my hand a little squeeze. “Jace lost his brother as well. A couple of the shifters from the community were also lost in the first battle.”
I cried then, harder than I had since the early days of my mother’s departure. Cody took me into his strong arms and to his credit, didn’t try to console me. He just let me empty myself out, providing me the silent support I needed.
22
Six Months Later
The sweet smell of Aunt Lena’s hibiscus tea permeated the house, wafting out the French doors to tickle at our noses. I welcomed the steaming cup that she placed before us on a serving tray. She folded herself down on the couch next to Aunt Vivian, facing Cody and me.
“So,” she said, “it would appear that everyone has adjusted to our new normal here in Trinity Cove.”
I smiled, looking beyond her at the shadow of the woods behind our house. Even though it was midday, twilight permeated as far as the eye could see. It was still jarring to wake up, go to bed, and do everything in between with no change in the natural light outside. My internal clock had taken a bit to get used to what was happening, but over the past few weeks I had come to appreciate the different kind of beauty that eternal night gave Trinity.
“Well, if by ‘everyone’ you mean the supernatural community, then yes. The humans…not so much,” I said.
Aunt Vivian smiled as well. “And you, Cody? How is the police force handling all of this?”
“Actually, not too bad, all things considered,” he said. I snuggled up close to him, his body heat adding to the warmth of the tea as it spread through my system. “The brass has called in some specialized recruits from New Orleans that are a little more familiar with keeping the peace among supernaturals than our force. They are making good additions to the team…well, to the officers that decided to stay in the area, that is.”
It wasn’t just members of the police department that had decided to pull up stakes and leave town when the sun didn’t come back out half a year ago. Most of the business owners that had remained in town during the war with the shifters had now left. Tourism, which was at one point our bread and butter, practically fell off the radar as word spread that Trinity Cove was now a hunting ground for creatures out of most people’s nightmares. That wasn’t true of course; humans were not on the menu for most of the supernaturals that moved into town. Not that they wouldn’t dine on one if they could, but they understood and respected the rules that were in place.
My friends and I had come up with the rules. When I realized that Trinity, or the Land of the Settled Sun, as some creatures had begun calling it, was becoming a hotbed for all manner of shifter, fae, witch, goblin, elfish folk, and everything in between, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone dropped a match on this powder keg. I spread the word that all were welcome here…provided they respected not only any humans that remained here, but one another as well. No race was allowed to feed off another, murder was a no-no, savagery would not be permitted, and vampires, while tolerated, had to register with the town’s police department.
That last one was a sticking point…but it was the shifters and werewolves that came up with that decree. No one trusted a vampire, especially in a town where the sun never rose. And incredibly, for the most part, there hadn’t really been any issues that had come up between all these different races of living in the same geographic location. Word had spread in places that I had never knew existed that Trinity Cove was now a haven for displaced creatures of the night, looking for a community they could belong to.
A family of incredibly rich gnomes had moved to town and taken over the banking infrastructure, offering interest-free loans to many so that they
could purchase the houses of the humans that had walked away. Slowly, businesses began to reopen under new ownership. We blossomed as a community—albeit a closed one—where everyone respected everyone else’s right to privacy and to be who they were without fear.
The Totem Shifter community grew in number and became a cherished part of the community. One of the byproducts of the Leveling spell was that magic now flowed much easier in Trinity Cove than it had previously. It was incredibly simple to cast a spell that allowed the new Totem Shifters that moved to town to make contact with their Kintype. As long as they were truly Otherkin, and their totem was one of positivity and light, they could shift into their new form at will.
Not everyone decided to stay. There were shifters that still ached to be loners, and they made their way back into the high country, or simply moved away from Trinity Cove. But for the most part, we grew together as a community and created a world all our own, sequestered away from the prying eyes of man.
Of course, there were still the occasional curiosity seekers or stray reporters that would wander into town looking to find a story or confirm the rumors of monsters living like humans. In the days following the eclipse, the town was descended upon by what seemed like every journalist from every paper across the globe. After all, it wasn’t everyday that one hears about a city that is covered by eternal darkness. Uncovering the truth of it would mean a Pulitzer for all involved. But after weeks of…well, nothing, interest had slowly waned.
Hiding what had really happened had been close to impossible. Many highly respected scientists who happened to be on the high council of the fae court had tried to explain away the twilight that befell Trinity with a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo about celestial alignments and a shifting of the Earth’s alignment, the way that certain polar areas could be in darkness for an entire winter. That sounded good, except that we weren’t in a polar region.