by A. L. Tyler
I had come to accept it, but with all the new edges and contours, it was a stranger on my body again. It ached liked I had a deep, heavy bruise.
Charlie took the time to explain to me in private that it was likely to tear any time we saw action with Stark. It had been imprinted down to my very soul when he had ripped me to the Other Side, and it had stayed when I briefly dipped a toe into becoming a demon, and that was why it would never heal. The scar had formed when I had no body, and now it would show on my physical form forever.
He told Lyssa it was just normal damage from dealing with demons. I saw the way Martha looked at me, with pity in her eyes, when he explained. She didn’t say anything, but she knew a lot more about demons than Lyssa did. She knew the truth.
She told us that Walter had approached her for help of a different sort than she had led us to believe. By the time a person arrived on a necromancer’s stoop, they had already accepted their demise. He had angered his pack, first by summoning Stark, and then by using him to attack the niece of Kendra Hawthorn. They had abandoned him to his fate, and he didn’t want to be sold by the pound after his death, so he had come to Martha seeking a more humane release.
Using the talisman that Martha had loaned him, he had forced a break with Stark. It had ended his life, but Charlie was fairly certain Stark still lived on somewhere in the Other Side. Death of a bridge to suicide wasn’t as severe to a demon as other tragedies, because the soul had already prepared itself for a release.
I was upset that Martha hadn’t tried harder to convince him to live. Charlie accused her of encouraging him, because she wanted his death for her own life-hungry magic. Lyssa didn’t say a lot; I think she didn’t want to think ill of her friend. What was done was done.
While Charlie and Lyssa debated how bad it was that Martha had lied about the encounter, I checked on Gates and then went to shower and change out of my bloody clothes. Lyssa stopped me just as I got out of the shower.
Martha had promised Walter that she would take his body to Adeline for a proper burial.
I told Gates, and then the four of us loaded into my Trooper because it had the most room for a body in the trunk. Charlie drove, and the whole time I kept shooting him glances. Stark had said there was something about him we didn’t know.
Kendra seemed like a forgiving person. She went around befriending werewolves, demons, and necromancers. Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad if Stark thought it would end their relationship outright.
We woke Adeline up to deliver the body, and she in turn woke the rest of the camp. If I had known it was their custom to send the dead off immediately, I might have insisted on waiting until morning.
They built a funeral pyre and burned him. Adeline said it was to protect his remains from scavenging warlocks.
As the flames grew higher, more and more of the werewolves at the settlement came out, and I was surprised to find Vince there. He was standing next to a young woman, but his eyes lit up and he came over to see me.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to be respectful. “Walter. Stark got away, but Charlie thinks it hurt him pretty bad. Walter did something stupid.”
Vince sighed. “He seemed like that kind of guy. He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but… yeah.”
We both fell silent. He reached over to hold my hand as we stood side by side, watching the smoke and flames rise into the sky. I looked at him, and then back at the girl he had been standing with a moment earlier.
“Is that your new werewolf girlfriend?” I joked.
Vince didn’t look at me. He squeezed my hand.
“Vince?”
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Annie, I was trying to find a good way to introduce you, because I wasn’t sure how you would take this. That’s Blake. She’s Adeline’s daughter. I’m staying in her spare room.”
I looked over at the girl again. She looked too thin and delicate to have a strong name like Blake, especially after I had built an image in my mind of a swarthy and masculine werewolf.
“That’s Blake?” I asked incredulously. “Did you know before, or…?”
“I didn’t know,” he apologized. “Someone told me Adeline had a son and a daughter, Ashley and Blake, and when I got Blake’s number, I assumed Blake was her son.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but my heart sank. “You moved out of my place to move in with another girl.”
“It’s not like that. She’s with someone.”
“Because you asked her if she was?”
“Annie…”
“It’s cool,” I said. It wasn’t cool. It should have been, but it bothered me to look at Blake. After Adeline’s warnings, I felt like the world had conspired behind my back to try to break us up, and Vince was really the only good thing I had going in my life right then. It wasn’t fair. “If it’ll help you with everything, then it’s cool.”
He squeezed my hand again.
When the fire had burned down and the sun was coming up, I was too tired to care anymore. We left the pack and gathered by the Trooper, and when Charlie reminded me that he could just snap his fingers and get us home, I nearly cried in relief. We weren’t traveling with a werewolf because Vince was staying through the full moon, and the long drive was no longer necessary.
But before Charlie could raise a hand to transport us, Martha pulled a small vial from her pocket and gave it to him.
She smiled, pleased with herself. “I made it with Walter’s last threads of life. I don’t need to tell you how powerful they are as a protectant, coming from a werewolf. Drink it, and let your curse fall, and it still won’t be able to harm you.”
Charlie stared at it and frowned. “You let him die to do this.”
“He was going to kill himself, with or without me. He said the pack wouldn’t have him back, and even if we freed him from Stark, he would live in fear of him the rest of his life,” she said, looking at the ground. Charlie still didn’t look like he believed her, and even Lyssa looked troubled by the thought. “I told him I was going to take it, though, and he knew who it was for. Don’t let him die in vain, Charlie. Stark got away, and this can level the playing field.”
He looked at Lyssa, and so did I. Lyssa took a deep breath, and then nodded. Evil as it seemed, it was done, and Martha was right—it might have been our only chance to break Stark’s advantage.
“Why would you do this for me?” Charlie asked, focusing on Martha again. “You’re not going to get anything out of it.”
“Maybe I’m just here to help,” she shrugged. “Just like I’ve been saying all along.”
Charlie hesitated for a moment when he opened the vial, but then he drank it. I blinked, and we were home again. Gates was watching television, and with another snap of his fingers, Charlie had cleaned up the blood stains and set my apartment back to right. It was early Saturday morning, and I was going to sleep until Monday.
I had just said as much when a knock came at the door. Being the closest, Charlie reached over to open it.
She was standing there, wearing leggings under a knee-length skirt, with a beige hip-length cape wrapped around her shoulders. Her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and while I knew she was at least sixty years old, she didn’t look a day over thirty. Being a demon’s bridge had its perks.
She looked at Charlie in surprise. He looked back, and neither of them moved.
“I’m sorry.” Kendra’s voice was barely a whisper.
Chapter 13
They stared at each other for a moment longer, and I saw tears welling up in Kendra’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. She started shaking her head. “I couldn’t break it, and I didn’t know what else to do…”
Charlie embraced her, and she said something else that was lost into his shoulder. They stood there, and Charlie kissed the crown of her head before she turned her face up to kiss him. I turned to go to my room and give them some privacy. Lyssa gave me a smile and a wink
and went to do the same.
But the odd look on Martha’s face made me stop.
I heard a scuffle behind me, and turned back to see that Kendra was staring at Martha with a fixed anger, even through the misty nostalgia in her eyes.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Martha frowned.
Kendra’s voice was still so quiet when she spoke. “You wanted someone worthy, Charlie. This is the person.”
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even ask.
Charlie snapped his fingers, and Gates was human again. Martha was a cat.
“But she knew you!” Lyssa babbled. “You were friends, and the thing with the college professor, and that time on the Ferris wheel when—!”
“We were friends,” Kendra said, stepping forward and picking up the cat. She set her on the table. “Were friends. You know how much these girls mean to me after everything I did for their mother, and still, you’re here. The next word you say is the name of the person who sent you, Martie, or you’ll never speak again.”
Martha stared at her from behind feline eyes. “Draven. He needs the book.”
Kendra closed her eyes, looking down. “I told you. I told you…”
“I wasn’t here to hurt them,” Martha said calmly. “I only wanted to know them.”
“To judge them,” Kendra accused.
“Our family is dying. We need new blood—”
“You can’t have theirs,” Kendra said firmly. “We had a pact, Marti. I should have known that you would fold on it.”
“I wouldn’t want her blood anyway!” Martha said with a look at me. Having withstood so many jabs from Charlie, Kendra had finally raised her ire. “She’s already touched the darkness. She’s unworthy!”
Kendra did a double take, and Charlie raised a hand to his mouth. Lyssa looked from me to the cat and back.
“What?” she asked. “Annie, what is she talking about?”
“She never talks again,” Kendra said to Charlie.
Martha hissed in response.
Lyssa had gone pale. She reached, looking for something to steady herself, and finally grabbed onto the wall before sinking to the ground.
“You said you saved her before…” she looked at Charlie. Then she looked at me. “Annie, did you…? Were you…?”
I clutched the sumac at my neck again, and it felt unusually hot in my hand. “Only for a very short time. Charlie brought me back.”
“You remember it?” she squeaked. Tears had started to pour from her eyes, and I felt like I was watching her learn news of my death. She was my sister, or at least, she had been—because she was looking at me now like I was a stranger.
Kendra had bowed down to help her to her feet. She held her in a tight side hug, saying things about how they would figure it out. She took her into the hidden rooms in the kitchen, like she had been in my apartment a thousand times before.
When she came back, she looked at Gates, confused.
She opened her mouth, and then smiled, offering her hand. “You’re the old cat. Gates, was it?”
Gates looked like a doe in headlights as she shook hands with Kendra.
“Gates…” Kendra wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Were your parents Star Trek fans?”
Gates’ face lit with surprise. “You’re the first person to ever get that on the first guess.”
“She hates me,” I said, still staring after Lyssa. “She’s never going to love me again.”
I thought, or maybe I had hoped, that Kendra would deny it. She didn’t.
“We all have our challenges, Anise,” she said. “I’ve overcome worse, and so will you. And so will Lyssa. You’re sisters, so just give her time. For now, get some sleep. You look like you need it.”
Lifting Martha into her arms, she turned back to Charlie, looking grateful and apologetic and mischievous all at the same time.
“Charlie, let’s go home.”
And they disappeared.
Preview
Hawthorn Witches Novella #4: Vampires & Vinca
Coming March 2016
Chapter 1
- Kendra -
I laid awake in bed for a long time, just feeling Charlie beside me. He didn’t sleep, and he never slept, but he knew me. He knew that I spent a lot of sleepless hours thinking, and he was kind enough not to interrupt when he didn’t need to.
Stark was finally gone. He was still out there, but he was gone.
This was the moment we had dreamed of for more than a year after Stark had finally pushed us over the edge. There had been a lot of moments that had brought us together, actually, but none as fulfilling as this one.
It was snowing the day that I met Stark. He wandered into my greenhouse like a customer, even though I knew I had locked the doors. He brought the cold with him when the bell chimed his entrance, but as he stood across the aisle from me, staring with frigid, mischievous green eyes, I thought he looked like a Norse god.
He didn’t say anything before he dug the knife into my chest, looking for my heart. I had taken it out days before when Adeline called me; someone had been skinned. There was a warlock lurking.
He never found my heart, though he kept me captive in the greenhouse for days afterward.
Charlie found it. Stark was out looking for another witch, in case I didn’t pan out for his plan. I tasted pure terror when Charlie lifted the veil I had laid over a hole in the ground beneath the juniper bushes.
I tried to face him with dignity when he came to me with my heart in his hands. It was my death knell.
“Is there somewhere safer?” he asked me. “Do you have any friends that can be trusted this much?”
Yes. I had many, but the years had left some dead and some unreachable. None of them would trust a demon bearing a heart.
He took it somewhere. I didn’t know where, and that was probably for the best.
I think my confidence in the following days was what inspired Stark’s affection. He let me out of the bonds, and told me to fix dinner. I did it. For three nights in a row. And just when he had started to make casual conversation with me, I poisoned him with my own special blend of nightshade and other toxins.
Sitting across the table from each other, I continued to calmly eat my soup as he started to drink more and more water to ease his dry mouth. Then he started to sweat and cough, and when he fell from the table to vomit, his demon appeared to save him.
I thought he would kill me for sure after that, but once his health was restored, he laughed. He said I was the most clever witch he had ever met. Really, I was only the luckiest.
He laid protections against me after that. I did the same against him.
And then, out of mutual respect, we parted ways.
I didn’t see him again for weeks. The snow thawed on the grounds, and new life had just started to fringe green on the earth. Charlie burst through my door at two in the morning, his master slung over one shoulder, frantic and and more frightened than I had ever thought a demon capable of.
Stark had been mauled by a werewolf, and while he had taken great care to ward himself from infection, the fur and saliva and blood was in the wounds. Charlie couldn’t remove it, and he couldn’t heal it as a result. He was going to die.
I was going to let him.
That night started my true education in demons. Charlie begged me to save the life of his friend. He told me that Stark had saved his life years before and brought him back to health, and even though it ripped at me to watch someone, even a demon, lose a loved one, I refused to intervene.
Then, he had appealed to our one commonality.
“If he dies, I may very well go with him,” he said. “I saved your life. You owe me this.”
I had my arms crossed over my chest when he said it, and I felt the steady rhythm of my beating heart. I got the things I needed, and I saved his life—not for Stark, but for Charlie. And we never spoke of why I had decided to help him again.
Nursing Stark back to health was a trick, because h
e refused to eat anything I brought him the first week. He was quick to learn.
I ate from the same cups and bowls that he did to finally convince him. There were still things that I might have poisoned him with, things that I had a built up a tolerance for, but I neglected to mentioned them. Stark didn’t seem to have much knowledge of witches as living entities.
Two weeks passed before he was well enough to leave bed. He only said two words to me in the entire time we were together, and he looked me in the eye when he said them.
“Thank you.”
And then he walked out the door.
Charlie had thanked me every single night, waiting until Stark had passed out or gone to sleep, but those two words spoke volumes more.
He came back the next month, asking my assistance in harvesting living orchids direct from the Himalayan mountains. He offered to let me keep some as payment for my time. But the Himalayas were too far, and even wild orchids hardly covered the time, expense, and frustration of getting there.
That was where Charlie came in. He snapped his fingers, and we were there. Across the world to the most exotic place I had ever been before, and back home again in the same afternoon.
He came back again for bromeliads and sage, and then for peonies, and then for common marigolds. I knew he didn’t need them. He could have got them anywhere, but he came to me.
Like all of my most fantastic mistakes, alcohol was involved when we became more than just acquaintances. I can’t say in total honesty that the alcohol was to blame.
The world looked upon Stark as a monster, but the life of a witch is that of a solo practitioner. We don’t have a common religion, and we don’t congregate with others outside of our own families. Even then, we tend to secrecy and seclusion. It gave me an objective view to those things that the world described as good or evil, and Stark was one of those things.
I make no excuses that being with him was a good idea. It wasn’t even the strangest relationship, or the worst, that I had ever fostered.