Lyra's Magic: Witches of Manhattan Book One

by Langley Keaton

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. And I’m supposed to defeat this demon before I ever get this training?”

  “Yes, and I am sorry that it has to be this way. But you must defeat this demon, because he is the demon who murdered you. If you do not defeat this demon, then you cannot complete your mission. That is how it has always been, because that is the agreement that the Maleficus has commissioned with the Ars Goetia. The Ars Goetia summoned one of their most powerful minions to defeat you and send you to The Infernum for the first time. This action is what has set the curse into commencement. If that demon was not able to get to you, then the curse would never have been activated. Once that demon vanquished you, it became incumbent upon you to defeat him in kind. He must be defeated first, Lyra, or else you will not have the full powers that you need to carry out the rest of your mission.”

  My head was spinning. “What? Mom, you’re not making any sense. Back up, now. If that dude didn’t get me, the curse would be off?”

  “Yes. He needed to kill you before your 21st birthday. If a demon did not slay you by your 21st birthday, then the curse would never have taken effect. You also would not have realized your powers and your mission. This is pursuant to a pact that the Maleficus made with the Ars Goetia. It was a compromise pact, for the Ars Goetia wanted you to be cursed because they knew that, as the daughter of Michael, you would be all-powerful. However, they have always worked with the Maleficus. As I stated before, all entities know that there must be a delicate balance of power. It’s much like hostile countries who nonetheless work together on treaties, because that is the only way that everyone’s interests are served. The Ars Goetia wanted there to be a curse, while the Maleficus wanted to protect you.”

  “Yeah, so I was a pawn.” I nodded my head. “That seems fair.” Of course I was being sarcastic, because this was patently unfair. It was probably the most unfair thing that I had ever heard. “Listen, mother, I know a little something about contract law. I studied it in school. And that is that there has to be consideration for an agreement. Why would you and the Maleficus council make such an agreement, mother? It doesn’t sound like you got anything from the Ars Goetia for you to agree to such a thing.”

  “The Ars Goetia wanted a curse with no conditions. We asked them for no curse. They agreed that there would be no curse unless the demon reached you before you turned 21.”

  “Ah, well, see, that demon shot me at 3 AM. So, it was technically after my 21st birthday, so there mom. No curse. That’s your loophole.”

  Peter put his hand on my shoulder. “Lyra, you are forgetting time zones. Your mother and the demon council agreed that the demon would have to kill you on or before your 21st birthday, meaning that all the time zones in the world must register the next day before the curse can be lifted.”

  “What? Demons are paying attention to time zones? What kind of supernatural council are they?” I shook my head. “Anyhow, mom, you haven’t told me yet. What did the Ars Goetia give you that was so important that you would even make a deal like that? It seems pretty simple to me, really. They want me dead and going to The Infernum, you guys want to protect me. The good guys win, right?”

  “No, Lyra, I am sorry. The Ars Goetia is more powerful than the Maleficus. Unfortunately, the demon council has gradually, over the years, become the most powerful in the supernatural world. We were lucky to get the compromises that we got from them. In addition to them agreeing to not curse you unless the demon could slay you before you turned 21, they also agreed that you have 9 chances before you are banished to The Infernum for thousands of years. They originally wanted you to go to The Infernum after your first vanquishing.”

  I shook my head. There was something more. Something that my mother wasn’t telling me. But what was it?

  “Mom, you aren’t telling me the whole story. I appreciate you telling me as much as you have, but mother dear, I need to know what you’re hiding from me.” I knew that she was hiding something from me. My witchy nerves were getting twitchy. I could feel my powers growing, and the first power that was growing was my power of intuition. “Mother, tell me. What was the real reason why you and the Maleficus council would make a deal like that?”

  Mom looked at Peter worriedly, and he looked back and emphatically shook his head. I narrowed my eyes at both of them. The two of them were conspiring to hide something from me, something major. “Peter. What is going on? What is mother hiding?”

  “She is hiding nothing.”

  “I’m calling shenanigans.”

  “Lyra, you may think what you want,” Peter said. “But your mother is hiding nothing.”

  “Bull----“ I shook my head. “What is it with you mother? Suddenly I can’t cuss.”

  My mother smiled and nodded her head. “That is a good thing. You should not use profanity anyways, Lyra. It is not becoming of a young lady, let alone a young lady who is immensely powerful.”

  “Well…”

  Peter gently took my arm. “Lyra, I’m sorry, but we have to get back. I have a vision that your sisters are hunting for that demon. They’re hunting for him, and we must get back to New York to help them. They have a shifter-wolf helping them, which is going to be vital. As your mother indicated, this demon is very powerful, and your powers are not yet completely manifest. You will need all the help that you can get to find him.”

  “Nothing doing. I’m finding out, right here, right now, what that witch is hiding from me.” I smiled, realizing that, in this case, the term “witch” wasn’t necessarily an insult so much as it was a statement of fact. “And I’ll stay here all day if I have to.”

  “You cannot,” Peter said. “I just received a vision. If we do not find that demon in the next 24 hours, he will kill again.”

  23

  Oh, lord, here we go again. “Listen, Peter, you need to explain a few more things to me. Number one, what do you mean my sisters have a shifter wolf helping them?” I never knew that my sisters knew a shifter wolf. Hell, I didn’t really know that shifter wolves existed. I now knew that shifter wolves existed, because my mother told me that they did.

  “Your sister Maddy has a friend whose name is Hale Peterson.”

  I nodded my head. “Hale, yeah, yeah. I know him. He’s a Native American guy. Very handsome, very sexy, very smart and funny. Good guy. I always wondered why he and Maddy never made it. I always felt that she was in love with him, and I think that he feels the same way about her.”

  “Yes. As you know, Hale is a part of a motorcycle gang called Blue’s Angels. The leader of this gang is named Catori Blue. He’s also the pack leader of their wolf pack. Their pack is known as the Animosh pack.”

  I sighed. I knew how Maddy met Hale. There was a period of time when she chose to run away and live on the streets. She was 18 years old. I had no idea why she went off the grid, but Sybil and I were worried sick about her. We went to the police department almost every day, reporting her missing, trying to get leads, but nobody knew where she was.

  She finally came back about a year later. She was brought back by a beautiful Native man who was dressed as a biker would dress – black boots, sleeveless leather vest, sleeveless t-shirt, bandana around his head. He wore his black hair long and braided it down his back. She introduced him as Hale, and he was a sweet guy. Very down to earth. We all sat around the apartment that night and had bottles of wine and a lot of laughs. Since then, Maddy brought him around from time to time, always insisting that they were just friends. I wondered why, because I saw how the two of them looked at one another.

  It turns out that Maddy had a drug problem during that year. Heroin, of all things. She credited Hale with saving her from the streets and getting her off the drugs. She had lived on the streets for the better part of that year, but, during the rest of that year, she had stayed with Hale. She finally returned to us when she was ready to come back. I always wondered why she turned to drugs, and I finally thought that I knew why. Since Maddy was a seer, she was probably bombarded con
stantly with visions of things that she couldn’t control. That would drive anybody to distraction. I guessed that Hale helped her come to terms with that, which is why she decided to stop destroying herself with drugs.

  Now that I knew that he was a shifter wolf, everything made sense to me, as far as why the two couldn’t be together. “Maddy can’t be with Hale because he’s a shifter wolf, right?” I asked Peter.

  “That’s right. Councils are very strict about that sort of thing. Otherworldly beings cannot mix. Humans can sometimes mix with otherworldly beings, if they get the explicit approval of the whatever council governs that being. But otherworldies cannot mix with each other. I’m sorry, Lyra, but that’s the way that it is.”

  “Huh. Well, you must be an otherworldly being, then.” I raised an eyebrow. “Which answers nothing still.”

  Peter nodded his head. “You will find out one day the answer, but I cannot tell you now. I can tell you that we must get back and we must get back soon. If we don’t, it will be too late.”

  I sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

  24

  Maddy

  “Okay,” I said nervously to Sybil. We were approaching Hale’s apartment in Brooklyn. I had called him to explain what I needed, and he readily agreed to help me. As I knew that he would. He and I were still friends, even if we both knew that we could never be together. It was the tragedy of my life, but, then again, what can you do? “I hope that Hale can help us find this demon.” I looked at my watch. “Lyra and Peter should be back at any moment, and not a moment too soon. I just got a vision of the demon. I don’t know where he is, the vision was cloudy, but I did see that he was going to murder a young girl.”

  “Well, then, that makes this mission much more urgent. It’s a good thing that you’re able to see that, Maddy. That makes it helpful to know how much time we actually have.”

  “Yeah. It’s not much time, either. I see it happening within 24 hours. I hope that Lyra and Peter can help out with this, too. I know that Hale has lots of skills that will help, including computer hacking and the ability to track, but there’s not a guarantee that we can find this guy in time. And, even if we do, will Lyra be able to vanquish him?”

  The only thing that was certain was that nothing was certain. Well, that and the fact that I was soon going to be face-to-face with Hale. That knowledge alone was enough to make my heart start to flutter and my hands start to shake. He knew me when I was at my lowest. He saved me from the streets. After he found me in that alley, where I was living, he brought me back to his apartment, and took care of me. That was all that he did – take care of me. Made sure that I was well, that I didn’t get back to using, and I had everything I needed. He never pushed me to return to Sybil and everyone else. I fell head over heels for him, even though I was only 18 and he was 23.

  I could still imagine his warm hands on me, caressing my cheek and grazing my body. His soft kisses which burned the flesh, as tender as they were. The feeling of his steely chest laying up against mine while he held me throughout the night. His big brown eyes, so warm and inviting, so enchanting. I was the one with the magical powers, yet he was the one who was hypnotic. When we finally made love, about six months after I went to live with him, it was an explosion, but also it was one of the most romantic and tender nights of my life. Our bodies seem to fit together perfectly, a symmetry that I had never thought was possible. He was loving and tender, yet had a great degree of stamina, more than I had ever previously thought possible. The buildup to that night was incredible, as we had spent every evening together in bed, just touching and kissing and caressing, but not actually ever making love, so that night was truly special. Plus, he was my first. My first, and thus far, my only.

  Unfortunately, the night we made love was the last night we could be together. When he went to work the next day at the bike shop, his fellow pack-mate, whose name is Catori Blue, immediately knew what was going on.

  “Hey Cat,” Hale had said when he got into the bike shop that day. I was right there with him, and nobody said a thing about my hanging around with Hale before. In fact, I was welcome there in the shop. Hale told me that they enjoyed having me around. But on that day, Catori looked at Hale with narrowed eyes. Catori was the alpha male of the pack and the elder of the Blue’s Angels. When he gave a word, everyone was obligated to follow it. There were seven pack members, all Native Americans and all a part of Blue’s Angels. On that day, there was only Catori and Hale there in the bike shop.

  “Hale,” he said, and then looked at me. “May I have a word with you in private?”

  Hale simply nodded his head. He had no clue on what was coming. There wasn’t any way that he could possibly know what was about to be handed down. He looked happy and smiling when he followed Catori into the back room. Fifteen minutes later, he came out with his eyes downcast and it looked like there were tears in his eyes. “I’m very sorry, Maddy,” he said. “But I cannot see you anymore.”

  My heart dropped out of my chest when I heard that. “What? What do you mean?”

  He gestured to Catori, who was standing behind the counter with his arms crossed in front of him, glaring at both of us. I didn’t understand it – prior to this day, Catori was always kind to me. He teased me like I was a younger sister. Hale and I had been over to his house for barbecues. We played poker together, and I always won because, well, I used my gift to cheat. Not that there were high stakes, because there weren’t – it was mainly nickel and dime stuff, so nobody ever lost a lot of money because of my cheating. The point was, we were all friendly.

  He lowered his voice. “I will have to tell you later. I have to work. I’m so sorry, Maddy. Somebody called in sick.”

  “No. You can’t do this.” I started to feel slightly panicky. “Hale, please. Please explain to me why it is that we can’t continue to see each other.”

  He sighed. “It’s too dangerous. Catori explained to me, and he’s right. There has never been a pairing between a wolf shifter and a witch, and if I accidentally got you pregnant, that would be a clear violation of one of the fundamental tenets of the council. The child would have to be aborted, and I would be banished from the pack.” He hung his head. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t aware that the council was so strict about that type of thing. If I had known, I never would have gotten involved with you.”

  “Maddy?” Sybil said, shaking me. “What’s wrong? Are you getting another vision? Do you see the demon?”

  I shook my head. “No. I just was thinking about things. Reliving the worst day of my entire life.” I never thought that I would get over Hale, and, indeed, I never really did.

  Sybil put her arm around me. “Let’s go. He’s expecting us.”

  “Okay. I know.” I sighed as we walked up to Hale’s place. He lived on the third floor of a brownstone walk-up on a tree-lined and quiet street. The building was built around the turn of the century, and it had bay windows, a brick façade and a fire escape. Hale and I would spend time on that fire escape, sharing a beer on hot summer nights while we tried to cool off and enjoy the beautiful stars and cool breezes. I loved this neighborhood – it had so much more character than the crowded area that we all lived in. Living in the middle of lower Manhattan, in a gleaming high-rise, seemed like the dream scenario, but, for me, it wasn’t. This neighborhood, with the trees, the bike-riders and skateboarders, the small drugstores and mom and pop restaurants and buildings that have stood the test of time – this was the neighborhood where I felt I belonged.

  I guessed that I felt attached to Hale’s neighborhood not just because I had such great memories there, but also because I grew up in a place much like this. It was in my prior lifetime, one that I also shared with Sybil and Lyra. We lived in a walk-up that was much like Hale’s, only at the time, it was a new apartment. It was around the turn of the century, and I could still see the horse-drawn carriages that used to pull up to the door of the apartment. They would deliver milk and ice for the ice-box, and I loved to go down and c
ommunicate with the horses.

  We walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. I could hear sounds of rock music drifting from Hale’s apartment – Hale loved the classic stuff from Rolling Stones and The Beatles to Styx and REO. Nothing more modern than AC/DC ever emanated from his ancient turntable.

  That was another thing – he had an old-school turntable. He didn’t have a CD player, but, rather, he had an enormous record player that was inside of an old-school wet bar and cabinet. It was mahogany wood pained blue, with the record player in the middle and martini and wine glasses on one of the side consoles, with wine glass openers and olive forks in the other. The bottom part opened up to several shelves that held his Dewars and Jack Daniels and Tanqueray bottles.

  I felt a certain chill, just hearing the records playing on that turntable. My mind flashed back to that magical night. Hale put three 33 vinyl records on – including the Moody Blues, Etta James and Frank Sinatra, and made love to me until that last record dropped. I couldn’t hear any of those songs from any of those artists now without feeling a real twinge of sadness.

  I sighed as we got to his door and lightly rapped. He must have been expecting us, because he immediately opened the door and looked at me. I held my breath, because he looked so handsome. He was dressed as he usually was – tight sleeveless t-shirt, jeans and boots. His long black hair was braided down his back, and a bandana was tightly tied around his forehead. I noticed that he had a new tattoo on his right arm – it was written in Cherokee, which I could read and understand, as Hale had taught it to me – and it said I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. I smiled, thinking that this was a saying that fit Hale perfectly.