by Rex Baron
Contents
Hexe Volume 1
Legal
Dedication
Forward
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Author Notes - Rex
Author Notes - Izzie
Social Links
Magic: When Ruthless Ambition is not Enough
H E X E
WITCHES, WARRIORS, MAGIC & MURDER
By Rex Baron
V O L U M E O N E
CHOSEN FOR POWER
Hexe (this series of books) is a work of fiction.
While some of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are based on real people and events, everything that happens to them are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
This book Copyright © 2019 Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron
Cover Design by Jeff Brown
Cover copyright © ProsperityQM LLC
ProsperityQM LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
ProsperityQM LLC
1500 South Lamar Blvd, 1050
Austin, TX 78704
First US edition, 2019
Version 1.01.01
Hexe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2019 by Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron
DEDICATION
Dedicated to the Power and Magic that lies deep within each of us.
— Rex
CHOSEN FOR POWER
HEXE VOLUME 1
JIT Beta Readers
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Kelly McCormick
Raine Ward
Kimberley Beaulieu
Nora McGuirk
Suellen Wiseman
Mary Morris
Timothy Hester
Sara Keyes
If I missed anyone, please let me know!
Editor
Sarah Kante
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
Thank you for reading HEXE.I hope that you will find it an enjoyable and exciting experience. But it is important for the reader to be aware that although there are any number of historical personages characterized throughout, the events described surrounding them and their interactions with the fictional characters are largely imagined and presented as such, strictly for the sake of storytelling.
There is no intention on the part of the author or publisher to demean or malign the reputation or character of any historical person represented and any reference to their sexual orientation or personal actions is simply hearsay, based on information collected from outside sources.
A great deal of research has gone into the creation of this series, and every effort has been made to ensure historical accuracy—even to the descriptions of the recipes for spell casting, which have been researched from credible, centuries-old sources and included (in part) to enhance the story’s authenticity. This being said, HEXE is not intended as a primer on witchcraft and much of what is described that deals with Wicca and Witchcraft is left for the reader to further investigate for their own enjoyment.
It might also be noted that because much of the storyline is set before the new millennium, when the notion of political correctness was not in place culturally, some of the language and description of characters might be judged as harsh or even inappropriate by today’s standards. But in the times when the events of the story are set, this was assuredly not the case. The manners and language of the 1920s differs greatly from that of the 1930s, and certainly from the parts of the story set in the 1980s or present times. In order to give the correct “feeling” to those times, I have made a strong effort to depict situations and people as they would have been seen and described then, with all the flavour and gusto of those unique and exciting times.
I do hope you enjoy your journey into the fascinating world of HEXE, “the chosen”, and look forward to continuing the saga until its fateful and exciting conclusion.
So Mote It Be REX BARON
Fountain Hills, AZ, September 2019
CHAPTER ONE
1921 New York
Her fingers dug into the metal mesh of the cage that contained her. She had always had a fear of dark and small airless spaces. She closed her eyes and strained to hear the faint whirring of machinery, the sound, no louder than a heartbeat, that would signify the time had come for her deliverance out of the pit. She heard her own breath, short and uneven in its rhythm, and she pushed hard on the unrelenting sides of the cage to try and expand the suffocating space, turning her body in the spare inches around her, twisting her legs in the jumble of heavy fabric of her skirt, tangling them, binding them into helpless, useless limbs. Her eyes closed tight as the vaporous blackness moved in around her like an evil tide, filling her lungs with the knowledge and fear of death. She was drowning, unable to save herself. Her mind filled with panic as she fought the darkness for breath. She wanted to cry out, but she dared not for fear that someone might hear her and think her a fool.
A pale sliver of light suddenly appeared above her, like a sorcerer's wand afloat in a nocturnal and lifeless sea. Steadily, she fixed her eyes on it as she heard the blessed soft purring of machinery fill the obscurity around her. Slowly, the cage moved upward toward the light, like a lost soul ascending toward salvation, and she peeled her trembling fingers from the mesh with thanksgiving.
The old man fixed his gaze on the blasphemous circle drawn on the floor, concentrating on the blackness of the star within the shape. He strained his hearing to catch the tiny, almost imperceptible sound of distant machinery as he fearfully choked out the name of the demon. Bolder still, he called again.
“MEPHISTOPHELES”
Shaken by an explosion of sulphurous light, he crumbled to his knees. In a cloud of oily smoke, a radiant woman rose through the floor, shimmering in translucent white, her hair braided around a crown of gold.
She stepped toward him, a gleaming Madonna, offering up her hands in a gesture of solicitude, worthy of the vision of any new-made convert.
A spotlight from above flooded her in iridescent blue, and she began to sing.
“She's the most beautiful Helen of Troy I've ever seen,” whispered the young dresser, peering out from the wings, as she absent-mindedly tore at the wig in her hands with a metal comb.
“And the thinnest,” replied an old man hanging on the curtain rope. “I've been at this theater for a good number of years, and we very seldom get them built like this German girl... pretty little thing... and young. But give her a couple of years, and she'll blow up just like the rest of them.”
The wardrobe mistress tightened her thin lips into a disapproving curl and glared
at the old man as she took out her annoyance for his comment on the disheveled wig.
“Say, mind what you're doing,” he scolded. “There won't be a hair left on that tired old thing. It looks like a cat when the tenor wears it as it is.”
The young woman gingerly tucked the wig into her smock, and ignoring him, joined in on the applause for the entrance of the beautiful Diva on stage.
She stood transfixed for the last act of the opera, listening to the lovely voice of the German singer, waiting for the moment when she would need to spring into usefulness and help her change for the press.
When the opera had reached its climax, the audience jumped to its feet and offered a deafening accolade to the girl on stage. Time and again, she bowed low, nearly touching her forehead to the floor in a single graceful movement. Ankle-deep in masses of roses wrapped in cellophane, she pressed her lips to the pale pink flowers she cradled in her arms, sending the crowd in a frenzy to get nearer the stage.
She kissed the palm of her hand and waved over the electric lights at the faceless silhouettes that clamored for her as she floated toward the wings.
“You were wonderful, Miss Lucy,” the dresser whispered, as the singer slapped her braided wig and pink roses into the girl’s hands. “Fourteen curtain calls.”
“And that is more than enough,” Lucy replied. “Respectable for any opening... I should think, even by New York standards. I’m just glad I survived that Gottverdammt trapdoor entrance. I hate being in that suffocating cage.”
As they rounded the corner leading to the dressing room, Lucy regretted having been so impetuous in removing her wig. Up ahead, a wall of Society’s best and members of the press waited, like well-groomed ponies at the starting gate, ready to charge her the second the gun went off.
Germany, in the American mind, was a place of seamy cabarets and dangerous nightlife, an economy rife with labor strikes and social unrest, a haven for decadent art and corrupted women. It was considered promiscuous for women in America to have their hair cut short, and Lucy's cropped, blonde hair had become a source of expectant excitement for the gentlemen who lined up outside her dressing room, waiting to meet the German beauty who had come to America to make them surrender, just as they had made her country surrender in the Great War.
“There they are,” she muttered more to herself than the admiring little dresser who trailed behind her, trying not to tangle herself in the train of Lucy's costume. “I should be used to this by now. But these people do seem to be more persistent here.”
Smiling, she ran her fingers nervously through her boyishly bobbed hair and stepped forward. With the inaudible sounding of the racing pistol, they descended. Flattering young men with dark, oily hair and smoky complexions tapped their heels together, imitating the custom of her country, and tried to take her hand as they bowed ever so slightly and grinned their compliments.
Lucy smiled her way to the dressing room door and scanned the people, packed in between the ridiculously overzealous floral tributes that dominated the room, for the only person whose opinion meant anything to her. David’s cool unruffled nod of approval, which he had offered so often during rehearsal, was all that she needed now to make her triumph complete.
David Montague stood at the other end of the dressing room with his wife Celia. He was patting the hand of a substantial-looking woman, unquestionably a patroness of the theater, and Celia chatted graciously, twisting the strand of pearls that hung at her neck, the only hint that betrayed her boredom. They were perfect, the opera impresario and his wife. Like parents greeting wedding guests, they laughed and chatted, accepting praise for the performance of their newly discovered protégée.
“It's a gruesome little opera,” Celia muttered to David, careful not to be overheard by the hefty ladies laden with jewels.
“On the contrary, darling, Faust is secretly everyone's favorite. A bargain with the Devil always makes for an amusing evening. You watch some poor soul get whatever he desires, and in the end, old Mephistopheles comes to collect, dragging him kicking and screaming to the torments of Hell.”
“I think it's depressing. Isn't opera supposed to be beautiful and uplifting?” Celia insisted.
“Entertaining is infinitely more profitable than uplifting,” David answered with a wry smile. “And no one can resist a good riches to rags story.”
A magnetic attraction drew David's glance toward Lucy. He beamed a radiant smile and nodded his way through the crowd to take her hand.
“You were splendid,” he said happily. “You have no idea how it pleases me that you are received so well. Look around you. This is your night.”
He stroked the side of his nose with his finger as if deep in thought.
“I do believe, my dear, that you have made a sensation of yourself. I have every confidence of what the critics will write. From this point on, you may have anything you wish.”
Lucy's eyes drifted away to the strangely painted, yet familiar, reflection of her own face in the dressing table mirror.
David's words rang ominously in her ears, the same words her mother had used ten years before in a railway car on the way to Wiesbaden.
Mrs. von Dorfen had been holding up the morning paper, displaying inky photos of women wearing diamond necklaces, wrapped in blankets, being helped onto the deck of a ship. It was the paper's account of the rescue of the seven hundred and twelve survivors from the Titanic's watery grave.
She read aloud with what Lucy considered, even at age ten, to be an unsuitable, almost bloodthirsty enthusiasm in her voice.
“I should like to know who's really behind this,” her mother had whispered, shaking her head.
Lucy licked at the swirl atop a pink, frosted teacake.
“It says in the paper that it was an accident. They struck an iceberg,” she replied with casual concern.
“Of course they did,” her mother snapped back. “But even in such cases, someone is always behind it. There are very few true accidents... you will come to learn that as time goes on.”
“Yes, mother, I know,” the girl sighed.
“The poor, negligent captain or some other poor soul will probably be blamed, but that's not what I mean. Someone else had to think this into happening... someone truly evil. Haven't these people any perception of what's being done to them? Don't they dream at night? I must say, I am truly astonished. I'm only relieved to know that nothing like this could ever happen to one of us.”
Mrs. von Dorfen exhaled with satisfaction as she tucked the newspaper into her traveling bag and turned her full attention to a frosted teacake of her own.
The girl looked up puzzled.
“Why could it never happen to us?”
“Because of our gifts, dear child,” her mother whispered. “We are the Hexe, the Chosen among women, those who possess the power.”
The girl nodded as if she truly understood, but she did not. She merely nodded to escape her mother’s disapproving looks.
“Remember what I'm telling you,” her mother continued. “There are no accidents. Someone is always responsible. We all have gifts, powerful gifts, pitted against one another. Just be aware of who is in your world and what they are up to, and you can be certain that you will be in no real danger and may have whatever you wish.”
And so, it appeared her mother’s promise had come true. With seemingly little effort, she had become the darling of the opera world, first in Germany, and now most certainly in New York as well.
David took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I christen your American career with a kiss.”
Lucy shot a glance at Celia, who stood applauding warmly with the others.
“I can only thank you for your patronage,” Lucy smiled, “and I am sure that only wonderful things will happen to me here.”
CHAPTER TWO
1921 New York, David and Celia’s apartment
Lucy sat in the window of David and Celia's apartment opening the morning mail. Her
Egyptian dressing gown was tucked up around her bare legs, and she looked to Celia like a child, translucent in the sunlight, an otherworldly creature from another time. She seemed out of place surrounded by the heavy, ornate furniture and romantic bric-a-brac of Celia’s youth. Her freshness was lost amidst the elaborate arrangements of waxy lilies and roses in alabaster urns.
In spite of all her loveliness, there was something about the girl that Celia found unsettling. Perhaps she was just too modern, too new in a world for which she, herself, had little sympathy.
“Another invitation from Mrs. Mullridge,” Lucy interrupted the older woman's musing. “You know what that means, one of her séances,” she stated with mock mystery.
“Are you going to accept?” Celia asked tenuously.
“I'm not certain yet. I'm such a poor traveler, and a journey into the beyond, as she calls it, sounds far more tiresome than any ocean crossing... you know how I hate those.”
“You seem to take all of this rather lightly... all of this otherworldly business. Don't you find it... well, at least a little alarming?” Celia asked, trying not to show her disdain.
“Not really, why should I?”
“Because it doesn't seem right somehow, trying to cross the perfectly serviceable boundaries between the living and the departed.”
Lucy looked up from gazing at the address on an envelope with an amused expression.
“Dear Celia, don't you realize that to attend these evenings is all the rage, as you say here. At least I'm not asked to play bridge or some silly card game that I hate. I'm just trying to be sociable.”
“Well, I believe people can be sociable and still remain in this world,” Celia remarked, bringing her cup down too hard on the saucer. “In my day, people may have been more conventional, but we found dancing and talking with real living companions exciting enough. We had no need to invite in amusing apparitions.”