by Riley Moreno
A sheaf of papers fell out of one and she picked it up, instantly enamored with the sight of her grandmother’s sprawling handwriting. Quickly, she scanned the notes, her mind snapping to attention as she read his name. Its name. The name she had been looking for and dreading finding all at the same time. Eidolon.
Rapidly, she scanned the text, her heart sinking deeper and deeper with every word she read. Her grandmother had obviously done a lot of research on the topic, and it showed in her words. She wrote of how the evil spirit had first come to exist.
Once, just an average man with an average life, he had traded it all; his home, his family, his very soul, to the darkest of black magic in exchange for vast power. But it had cost him dearly, and unable to contain the newly gotten power, he had changed. Losing whatever small shreds of his heart and his mind he had left to him forever.
Now, he was nothing but pure darkness, drawn to create chaos and torment. His only reason for existence.
Hazel continued to read, unaware of the tears that had started to trail one by one down her pale cheeks as the harsh words registered. Her grandmother mentioned the ‘deliverer’ several times, which Hazel deduced must mean herself, and she also told of how the dark spirit, once freed, would only have until the next harvest moon to live unless he shed the last unwilling drop of blood from her. From Hazel. He had to kill her to ensure his own continued life.
Fear raged through her, storming across her mind as it sank in. The next harvest moon, she thought quickly, was less than three weeks away. And Eidolon would be desperate to reach her, to destroy her, before then.
A new, sudden thought ricocheted through her already troubled mind. What would that mean for Jayce and Nika? Would they also have only a few short weeks to live because of their cursed prison? Her stomach lurched and she squeezed her bright violet eyes shut tight as pain thundered through her. Would her life mean their deaths?
As Hazel struggled with this new onslaught of possible consequences, a loud noise coming from downstairs had her jumping back to her feet and scrambling out of the room, the sheaf of papers containing her grandmother’s notes left in a scattered pile on the floor next to the green chair.
Hazel made it down the stairs and into the living room in record time. She stepped into absolute chaos.
“…now, if you two will just come with me. The council has decided it would be best to keep you under their…protection until we know more about this delicate situation.” The Mother Guardian was saying.
“Wait, what? What is going on?” Hazel asked as she frowned around the suddenly crowded living room, her eyes crinkling in concern.
“We are not going anywhere,” Jayce said calmly at the same time. Nika stood to one side, shaking his head in agreement.
“I’m really afraid that you are. It will be safer for you, for us,” Elizabeth paused, sharing a look between them, “It will be safer for Hazel, as well.”
Jayce and Nika looked at each other for the briefest of moments before finally following one of the council members out of her house. Hazel immediately moved to follow them but was stopped by the Mother Guardian and two of the other council members that had arrived with her.
“Elizabeth, what the hell is going on? Why would they have to leave? Where are you taking them?” The questions shot out rapidly, one right after the other, and at the Mother Guardian’s arch look, she realized also with no regard for her position as coven leader, especially in front of members of the highest council.
The council was the governing body that ruled over all the covens in North America, and Hazel had yet to show her respects as she was so disturbed by the two men suddenly leaving under duress.
“I, uh…I apologize, Mother Guardian, council members,” Hazel said hastily as she burned a bright, embarrassed red.
They all stared at her for a long, painful moment before one of the council members, Hazel believed her name was Margaret Roark, spoke again, her voice notably cold coming from that austere face.
“Hazel Domitreu, witch from the Black Hill’s coven, you are a hairsbreadth from being charged with immoral and malicious use of magic.”
Hazel gasped in shock. It was one of the worst crimes a witch could be charged with and the punishment would only mean one thing. Banishment.
“But…but,” Hazel stammered, staring at them in disbelief, unable to even say the words to defend herself against the accusations laid against her.
“However,” Elizabeth spoke before Hazel could say anything, even if she could have. “We also believe that you had no knowledge or dark intentions. Just that you were very, very foolish.” Every word shot out like a bullet from a gun, filling Hazel with chagrin.
“So, you aren’t banishing me?” She asked hopefully.
“No, we are not,” the council member with the stern features sighed. “But we do have any number of questions that you will most definitely will be–.” She was cut off abruptly as the youngest member, the woman who had been escorting the two men to be detained, ran back in breathless and pale face under the golden hue of her skin.
“Jaz, what is it, dear?” The older council member asked, her blue eyed gaze concerned under the severe slash of brows.
“Oh, highest mother, I…they…” she paused for a moment in answering, trying to catch her breath, “just, you have to come outside, now!”
The urgency in her trembling voice had them all instantly hurrying to see what had caused such terror in the normally stoic witch’s face.
“Oh my goddess,” Margaret whispered as they came outside to find two giant beasts, one a scarlet red with golden eyes and the other silver scaled, glinting like moonlight as he moved jerkily, angrily.
Hazel froze for the briefest of moments before pushing past the other women and running towards them, ignoring their warnings and the orders to halt that were shouted after her.
Panic ran through her, but mostly concern for these dragon warriors, thrashing and flailing in the front lawn in broad daylight. There was a ring of about ten or twelve council members surrounding them, all chanting a containment spell deep and in time with one another so it sounded like it was coming from one giant voice.
“Wait, stop! You’re hurting them!” Hazel pleaded as she ran closer still. She could see the pain burning their wild eyed gazes, so familiar to her now. It suddenly seemed so strange to her that she hadn’t recognized Jayce’s dragon for him when she’d seen him that night, his deep red scales glimmering in the starlight
“Stop it!” She cried again as she threw herself in between the witches and the howling beasts that they were surrounding.
“Get out of the way, Hazel!” Elizabeth shouted, her voice almost as stern as her expression but Hazel ignored her completely, instead rushing out stand in between the dragons, reaching out a hand towards both.
She closed her eyes tight, blocking out the cacophony going on around her and instead focusing only on the two men. She searched for that mysterious connection, narrowing her thoughts until only one remained. Come back to me. Come back. Please come back.
She repeated it mentally over and over, trying desperately to send it to them somehow, to access the thoughts they seemed to so easily read.
Please. Come back. Come back. Again and again she shouted the thought, echoing it over in her mind. Within moments she could feel a change in the air around her. It seemed to almost shift, but she refused to open her eyes to look, refused to pause the litany she mentally replayed to them.
Hazel almost jumped out of her skin as warm fingers reached out and touched her own, still outstretched to either side. Strong hands twined with her own and she finally blinked open her eyes to find them wide on a set of silvery grey and amber gold.
“What the hell just happened?” The highest council member demanded as she stalked toward them, snapping the tension between the three as Hazel turned to face her, their hands still all linked together.
“Well, you see–.”
“We couldn’t control it.�
� Nika said, his confused voice interrupting Hazel. He looked utterly lost as he tried to find the words to explain. “It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. We couldn’t control it. We can always control when we shift, when we change, but the further we got away from the house, away from Hazel…” he paused, shaking his head and making his bronze colored curls dance around his ears but his sharp silver gaze never left hers. Jayce picked up where he left off.
“The dragon just took over. It was as if this form just became too unstable and we, well…” Jayce shrugs, gesturing around the area they were standing in.
“Yes, young man, we were all there for that part,” the council member said dryly. Hazel couldn’t help the small grin at the hundreds of years old dragon warriors being called ‘young men’ and Jayce and Nika must have picket up on it because they both snickered beside her.
“Is something funny here?” Elizabeth demanded, obviously at the end of her patience. “Because I don’t see anything funny at all.”
Bashfully, they all turned looking at the ground, to the side, anywhere but the accusing eyes of the Mother Guardian.
“No, no not at all–.”
“Good!” she all but shouted as she threw her hands up. Elizabeth turned to Jayce, her eyes like dark steel knifes. “Elaborate.”
“I’m sorry?” he said after a long moment of silence, waiting for her to continue.
“What you were saying earlier. Elaborate.”
“I’m really sorry, but I don’t know–.”
“Are you all daft? You said the further away from Hazel you were the harder it was to maintain your normal,” she gestured to his physique, “form.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s how it happened. The distance just made things…fuzzy.” Nika said, trying to explain.
“Fuzzy, is that what you call it?”
“Well, I guess they will just need to stay here, with me.” Hazel hastily broke in before the Mother Guardian’s face could grow any redder. Hazel barely stopped herself from flinching as her words drew Elizabeth’s scrutiny.
“I’ll keep an eye on them, I promise. I’ll take care of them.”
“We’re not puppies, Hazel…”
“Hush!” Elizabeth’s voice cut through Jayce’s words, her eyes never leaving Hazel’s. “You will take care of them, I’ll make sure of that. If anything happens, any single thing that I don’t like, the council takes them and damn the consequences. Is that clear?”
They immediately nodded their heads, scurrying inside without a glance behind them before the Mother Guardian or the council could change their minds.
Chapter 11
With a sigh of relief, Jayce collapsed onto the creaking bed frame in the spare bedroom. The hectic day flashed through his head, that bossy Mother Guardian and the council members showing up just as Nika and him had begun to discuss what to do about Hazel, telling them without a bit of humor that they were basically under arrest.
He grimaced slightly in the dark as he remembered the events that followed. The way he had felt as he’d taken step after step farther away from the little witch. The way his skin had begun to itch, as if every atom was trying to split apart from itself. The itch had become an ache and then it had come upon them so fast he didn’t even have time to turn and warn the people escorting them. Of course, ‘escorting’ was a polite term, he had seen the dark, nervous look in their eyes as they’d stared at them.
Luckily, Hazel had run outside to calm them, somehow her touch had that miraculous effect. Never in his very long life had he heard of anyone even been able to get that close to a drakolia warrior without being obliterated. As thoughts of Hazel entered Jayce’s mind, he recalled what else had happened earlier that morning.
They had been sitting there in the attic, his brilliant idea to try and test her with the Archon’s way, and caught totally unaware by the strength of his own reaction to her. The lust that had rolled through his body had been instantaneous and overwhelming his will. Within seconds his mouth had been on hers, his hands running over the ample curves of her body because if he hadn’t he would have died, right then and there. Almost nothing would have stopped him and he breathed another sigh of relief that Nika had been there to pull him off her. There was no telling what would have happened if he hadn’t.
But he knew that was a lie, a small inner voice whispered. He would have her naked and trembling underneath him, her sweet thighs wrapped around his waist and…Forcefully, he turned his thoughts away, his body already tightening painfully on the small bed.
Before he could reprimand himself for his wayward thoughts, a freezing cold splash of water landed straight in the middle of his forehead. Confused, but not yet alarmed, he reached a hand up to wipe it off but as soon as he did it was replaced by two more.
Finally, he sat up, the sound of even more drips reaching his ears and jolted to turn on the small switch that turned on the electric lights in the ceiling like magic. When they had been imprisoned they had been able to see glimpses of the world as it changed and evolved but seeing them, touching them, still caught him off guard, as did the sight that greeted him once he turned the light on.
By now a steady small waterfall of cold water was streaming from the ceiling, especially from the the light fixtures and seams.
“What the hell?” He said softly, and a noise behind him had him turning.
“Jayce?” Nika’s voice reached him just as he reached the hallway outside his room, Nika standing in the doorway of his own room. They both turned to look towards the narrow staircase leading up to the attic as a rushing, pounding sort of sound barreled down towards them.
There was a heavy moment of quiet before a typhoon of water crashed down the stairs. They leapt out of the way just in time, both back into their respective rooms, but still a second later they were standing almost knee deep in the frigid blue liquid. It rose at such an alarming rate that it was almost mid thigh before they even had a chance to move.
They shared one panicked look, the same thought shouting through both of their minds at the same time. Hazel! With a giant leap they fought against the torrent of water that pummeled them, still streaming in massive amounts from the attic, washing through the rooms to continue downstairs. But the water was coming down so fast and so furiously that it continued to rise, trapped before it could find another place to go.
Finally, Jayce reached her bedroom at the other end of the hallway, Nika right behind him as he threw his entire body against the door, held tightly closed by the pressure of the water. Once more he jammed his shoulder against it, Nika right beside him now and it took both of their impressive strengths to heave the door from the frame. It finally splintered under the pressure, and they stumbled inside along with a flood of freezing cold water rushing in with them.
Jayce tripped a little as the water pulled at his feet but he made it to the bedside in a short moment to find Hazel still fast asleep but tossing and turning restlessly on her still dry mattress. He could see the tracks of tears streaming down her cheeks, the quiet sobs wrenched from her sleeping frame. The water level was almost at the top of the mattress now, though, and as he reached to wake her up she jerked violently, another crashing wave of water storming from the upstairs room to flood the lower levels.
Desperate now, he scooped her in his arms, turning to carry her out of the room and away from danger before they all drowned. Which was a real possibility now, he realized dimly, as the water level reached his chest and it took all of his strength and concentration to keep her unconscious form above the water. But the cold was numbing his thoughts and he knew his movements were become more sluggish.
He stumbled, his foot catching clumsily on the edge of the bed frame and went under water for a brief moment taking Hazel into the icy water with him. A moment later it was all gone. Gone as if it had never been, all the walls, the floors, all the furniture and drapes completely dry. He almost would have thought he was going mad except for the fact that Nika, him, and Hazel were both still
soaked to the bone and dripping wetly onto the now dry floor.
“What…what happened?” Hazel asked weakly as she coughed up another bout of water from her lungs. She looked down at herself, and then blinked those big, gorgeous eyes at him and Nika before speaking again. “It was the nightmare again. It was him.” It wasn’t a question this time and he didn’t answer her, his thoughts whirling madly inside his head.
“Some nightmare,” Nika said softly, and Hazel looked at him oddly. He shook his head, picking his words carefully before he answered, for which Jayce was grateful. He didn’t want to make things harder for her than they already were. “There was water. A lot of water.”
“Yeah, I figured that’s why we are all wet. I dreamed…” she paused, shivering violently before continuing. “I found some notes in my grandmother’s study. About Eidolon.”
“What about him? What did it say?”
Hazel was silent for so long that Jayce was sure she wouldn’t answer, but finally, she did. “It said he will only live until the next harvest moon, unless…unless he sheds the last drop of my blood, unless he kills me.”
Jayce and Nika both stared at her, shocked and filled with the same, sudden fear but before either could speak, Hazel did instead.
“What does that mean for you? What if…” Her words fell off again, unable to say the awful words she was thinking but he could see it in her thoughts, her fears for them, and his heart broke a little because there wasn’t a single one for herself, of her own safety. She was all concern for them, their happiness, their lives. He held her tightly to him, his chest tightening on a wave of tenderness for their little witch.
“I guess some of what I was dreaming about happened here, like with the fire. It doesn’t seem as bad though.” She said, for the first time noticing that nothing else was wet anymore.
“Well, it was a bit more than you might be thinking.” Nika hesitated for a moment, but then continued, telling her the rest, “The whole house was flooding. We were…we were very close to drowning.”