by SJ Davis
Picture Four
Her face hides in the shadows, make her body more real as a consequence. Sunset flows across a long lovely woman. She sits on cushions and wears nothing. Her breasts and belly seem too large for such a thin frame. They look swollen and dark. Her left hand rests on her swollen stomach, waiting. The baby has been dead for two weeks inside of her yet she still hopes for the next hard kick. The picture jars Cora with the forceful negligence of medical care in parts of Africa. Mothers of malnourished children carry the corpses of their dead babies inside their wombs. Waiting for release, waiting to labor for a child that will never draw breath.
Picture Five
The camera is too distant to show faces or the details of any single body. What impresses is the wash of bare flesh, pale and lovely. Hundreds of bodies stand where they died, closer as lovers.
Aid workers stand on the margins of the clearing in Bogotá, shouting instructions and encouragement in the sea of death and lifelessness.
There is no noise in the photograph, no motion. The quantity of flesh seems infinite.
Picture Six
Cora is surprised to find her own face. A picture from her birth. She is nothing but a round face inside a hospital blanket. The flash from the camera annihilates shadows while her oily green eyes gaze up at a round piece metal that means nothing to her. Torn from the warmth and gentle waves of her mother, she will cry and cry and cry. Five minutes old and she is miserable. This is how her entire life will be.
She drops the pictures, each one heavy with in its story. Each photograph is a moment captured. Each one represents only a mere fraction of the painful images from her father’s career. Yet these were the ones he chose to die with.
She looks at the nightstand. The camera had been pre-positioned, connected to banks of strobe lights that throw their glare at the piece of floor where her father crumpled after his self-inflicted gun wound. A note taped to the mirror read, “All my life I took pictures. Pictures of pain, war, poverty, and death. This is the last one.”
The Last Picture
Cora scrolls through her father’s camera again. Pictures of the sky, of broken glass on the road, and the minutiae of life fill her eyes. The policemen drape the body and the voices of the emergency technicians scramble her thoughts. The oak floor is cleared, but the image of her father remains as the last photo. A picture he took of death. Of his death.
She sees her father’s face, unblemished with a closed mouth and open green eyes. His face is blurred yet the body has clear delineation. It seems only halfway real as she holds his camera. Flames lick the still burning fireplace as she pauses. She sets the camera on the logs. Burning plastic and noxious chemicals burn her nostrils as she leaves the camera to die also.
AN AWAKENING
A BOULDER CIRCLE PREQUEL
BY HOPE DANIELS
CHAPTER ONE
Helen used her foot to close the overhead door to the garage. The pulley screeched, trying to defy gravity and the force of her muscles to remain open. With a growl and internal curse it finally closed, but Helen’s morning was fucked and not in a good way. Just one more thing to add to her to do list which would never get done. Not enough money and not enough time. The earth rumbled under her feet at the force of her power.
“Calm down, Helli. All you need is Vivian to send Lucian after you,” Helen spoke to no one. She’d gotten used to talking to herself since her brother, Brody, took off to “find himself.” She mentally put quotation marks around the last two words when she thought of her brother. Dumb ass, y-chromosome carrying male water witch. Whatever was he thinking leaving town anyway? Here was the only place members of the Boulder Circle Coven, for which the town was named, were protected.
What bothered her the most was the fact she hadn’t heard a peep from anyone about him in the last two years. Lucian used to give her updates from other packs here and there. Then suddenly nothing. Maybe it was time she left the farm and wandered into town herself. Grandma Grace’s stories growing up made her wary of leaving the farm at all, but it was just a bunch of bull. No one came out here unless they wanted her blueberries or access to the river. Heir apparent to the pack, Luke Knox did not count. He wanted in her bed and to for her to claim her birthright. Helen was not in the mood to grant either of his wishes.
“Gretchen!” She called for the rescue dog who’d shown up one day about a year ago looking like something the cat had dragged in. The scraggly, short-haired, terrier mix was something only a mother could love, but had the eyes which melted Helen’s heart. Gretchen was supposed to be all white with a black patch over her left eye, but brown patches showed up one day sporadically splattered elsewhere. Brody made fun of her teasing the dog mercilessly about who gave her the black eye. It didn’t help any that her tongue always hung out to the side in a perpetual grin. “There you are. You weren’t nosing around the compost again were you?” Helen grinned at the mutt who looked everywhere but at her. “I see how it is. Don’t you dare think you are coming home dirty and smelling like a shit pile. Seriously Gretch. You will sleep in the barn, I mean it. Besides, we’ve work to do today.” Helen tossed her gloves in the waiting wheelbarrow where the shovel and rake were already waiting.
Without warning Gretchen began to growl at the sky then jumped up knocking Helen to the ground. Shocked, Helen hit the dirt hard, but regained enough of her senses to roll under her Escape to get out of the way of her still rumbling dog. What. The. Hell? From beneath the SUV, Helen’s perspective changed. She was next to her element and could smell the richness of the soil and implored the trees to turn their leaves upward searching the skies just as her baby was doing. What set you off, girl? You don’t act like this? Helen didn’t have her Mithril on her at the moment.
The double-sided blade kissed with magic could only be wielded by witch or wolf guardian and her family was one of the few left in Boulder Circle who could call them from the earth. At this moment, Helen would give her right arm to have embraced all she could be as the hair on the back of her neck raised and the dog continued to growl.
“She is here. I can smell her,” the sibilant voice echoed in her mind.
Noctis? What the fuck? How? Helen barely breathed.
“It seems the brother was right, there is still time. Ezra must be told immediately, before she realizes we’re here, Josiah.” A lighter female voice demanded. The sound crawling across Helen’s skin.
Oh, Goddess, Brody. What have you done?
“Kill the creature, Jonelle. Shut it up before it makes her curious and she comes out here. We need to be cautious,” the male Helen knew would be captivating to human woman just as the female would to men. Even witches fell prey to Noctis if they were not cautious. The Boulder Circle Coven was a warrior clan and fought the scourge of what she would term evil vampires. It was up to her family to make the blades to fight them. She had to warn the Council and get help for Brody.
“We need to take this opportunity to capture her now.” With the female Jonelle’s statement, Helen bit her knuckle to keep from shouting out and giving away her location.
Helen only knew two things. She was screwed and Brody was in serious trouble. If he wasn’t dead, they were going to kill her baby dog Gretchen if she didn’t do something, anything. As for her brother, with her face in the gravel, she was willing to kick Brody’s ass herself. With a Noctis on her property, the vampire clan who’d been hunting her people for centuries, it meant Brody had been captured, tortured and now that his intel was known to be correct, who knew if he were still alive. Bastards. The earth trembled beneath their feet. Shit. Not yet. Not yet.
Helen watched as the vampholes entered her home, violated her sanctuary, ripping apart the last place she had known happiness. She was deafened by the silence of her brother’s betrayal. It didn’t matter in this moment it was a forced sellout. Her own flesh and blood led them here. Gave the Notis access to Boulder l
and. To their secrets. She would never forgive him.
The ground vibrated with the force of her anger, or was it from Luke’s Harley as he raced toward her home? She had no doubt an alarm had been raised, but feared they would arrive too late. Even now she could feel her power rising, fighting to be let loose with each dish breaking against the walls of the house.
“Stop,” she cried into the ground. “Please stop.”
Tears pooled in front of her face matting dirt and stones to her cheeks and forehead. Gretchen barked, growling low in her throat. Helen’s head popped up, her gaze pinned to the front steps. Hand weathered wood she, Brody and Luke had etched their names into with a pocket knife. Steps she never wanted to climb again.
“Little witch, little witch where are you?” Her dad used to call her by that nickname. From between the vamphole, it was a curse word and she was at the end of her magical rope. The rocks began to bounce beneath her. For once in her life she kept her mouth shut and no one was around to see it. Figures, she thought, just as she heard the unmistakable roar of a motorcycle in the distance. But if she heard it, the vampholes would have too.
There was a big difference in knowing she needed to control her powers and knowing she could control them. Especially when she was this hurt, this angry yet strangely calm. Even in the moment as her fingers speared deep beneath the topsoil, she moved at the speed of light while everything else seemed to move at a snail’s pace.
The earth rolled and twisted as if their were a wave of water beneath it moving the truck along with it. Heli stayed where she was, poised and ready for a fight. It was a cacophony which made Gretchen howl adding to the scene playing out before her. As Helen rose in the air on the mound of earth forming beneath her, the female Nostris, Jonelle, broke through her bedroom window flying to the ground in some kick-ass karate move which Helen had only seen on television or in the movies. The woman flipped in the air twice, balanced herself and landed like that chick in Underworld.
Now Josiah, would have made her girlie bits stand up and say hello baby with his blonde hair, broad shoulders which looked sexy as hell in his leather duster standing on the porch she was never standing on again with a come hither and let me let me make your dreams come true stare, if Luke Knox hadn’t parked his bike and ate up the ground to stand in front of her in 2.5 seconds growling all the while. His six foot four inch, bad assed biker look had always done it for Helen and looking at him from the back with her adrenaline pumping, it was definitely doing it for her now when her mind should be on the Noctis in front of her.
“What are you doing here?” She couldn’t help but ground out. Luke might make her feel like a bitch in heat but he also made her feel like she was about two inches tall. If it was his way of keeping his distance, it was a piss poor way of being a man.
“Saving your sweet ass, again little witch,” his Mithril slipped free in both of his hands, the muscles of his arms flexing. The difference between this time and the last time Luke had saved them was about ten years and the fact Brody wasn’t with them. She wasn’t a little witch anymore. She was damn powerful. She could feel the power flowing through her body. The pulse of the earth as its heartbeat grew faster more urgent, in time with her own she realized at the same moment she realized she had more earth power than she should. More than she’d had that morning anyway. Ready, willing and eager to fight, Helen held her hand out over the ground and held it there until a mithril appeared.
“We are too late!” The female shouted. “Kill her.” Chaos as she had never known erupted.
Luke and Josiah moved at lightning speed toward one another. As the female vamphole came at her, Helen ran toward the orchard. If Jonelle thought she was going to play fair, well she would be another dead, stupid vampire. With just a thought, myst rose around her making it difficult for the vamp to see her and for her to see the vampire. What it didn’t do, was hide the smell of her blood.
“Come and get me Joni,” Helen taunted hearing the battle between Josiah and Luke in the background. “You know you’d like my head on your platter so to speak. I bet I’d be a great trophy to bring home.” She noticed a quick movement off to the left out of her peripheral vision, which meant vamp tactic said she’d come from the right. Helen was completely relying on her instincts here and so far they hadn’t been wrong, which meant she needed to go left and deeper into the woods toward the center of the orchard.
A flash of a knife and blood splashed up onto an apple tree. Helen gasped stumbling as she ran. The vision was powerful. Was it the past or future she saw?
“You cannot hide from us, Witch. Your brother has given you up to all Noctis. You are ours,”
Not hardly, she thought, but did slow down to get her bearings. “With this sacrifice bless our crops and our harvest.” This time she saw but a snippet of the coven standing in a circle in the orchard.
A branch snapped, not unusual in an orchard, but not after she’d just checked and pruned each tree. “Oh hell.” Helen tried hiding behind a larger trunk, the beautiful white and pink blossoms full and lovely, but the moment she touched the bark she was struck with another vision. Bile rose into her mouth as laughter erupted not far from her. As much as she tried to quiet the pounding of her heart, she couldn’t. Not without putting her Mithril through it and she was a fighter first. She somersaulted to another tree and slid to sit at its feet. The memories came crashing down around her. This time she let her element show her what she needed to do with this vampire threat. Helen dared to close her eyes to concentrate on the sound and found Jonelle in the upper branches nearby.
Jonelle’s attempts to hide in the treetops failed and they would be her doom. Helen’s eyes popped open and she knew exactly which tree would do well for this task. An ancient apple tree Brody had wanted to take down. He’d even tried several times to convince her it should be taken down, but it was so old she dared not for the soul of the tree knowing it would tell her when it’s time had come.
As she stood, Helen remembered the argument they had over the tree. As it was it only has a few good strong branches, but a thick center and a hungry soul. This was all her fault. Brody, the Noctis, Gran. If she had embraced her power, none of this would have happened. The ritual had been broken and she broke it because Gran didn’t know. Her father and mother knew but the vampholes had killed them, but Vivian and Lucian knew. The visions had shown her that tad bit of info.
She’d deal with Vivian and Lucian at another time. For now, she was going to give Jonelle exactly what she needed. Piece, love and understanding. A piece of her mind, how much she loves to hate vampires and an understanding that Jonelle was going to die.
“Did you finally manage to get your heartbeat to slow down, Helen?” Jonelle asked, but much closer than Helen wanted her to be.
With the Mitril in hand, she adjusted its hold and readied for her last dash to the center of the lot. “Yes,” she called. “Just as soon as I realized you’re the one who is going to die, not me.” Then Helen was gone. Jonelle was right behind her toying with her, Helen knew. If only the vampiress knew what was going to happen next, she might not be as happy about catching up with Helen.
CHAPTER TWO
There it stood. Some might say it was an eyesore, but to Helen it was a lifesaver. More bark missing than was on the actual apple tree, with only three limbs reaching into the sky reminding Heli of a clay model she’d made once of a tree in winter. Only this tree sprouted a few tiny blooms.
Helen weaved and dodged. The other trees snagged at the vampire bitch. Please let me get there first. She prayed hard, making the kind of promises everyone makes to their deity when their lives are at stake. Only she was about to do everything she promised. No backing out, no secondhand, I’m alive so backing out deals for her.
“I’m going to rip your throat out you bitch!” Jonelle screamed and screamed more when Heli flicked her wrist and yellow jackets descended.
Hands shaking, she stood in front of the sacrificial tree. “Thank you, Mother, show me what to do.” Rule number one, do not ask a tree goddess to show you what they want you to do, because fuck it, they will and the download could just possibly burn out your brain. Rule number two, make sure someone has your back if you break number one because pissed off vampires tend to ram your head into said tree.
While Helen was having her head filled with pictures she’d rather not describe, draw or really remember, Jonelle didn’t waste time even if she looked like the undead’s version of a pincushion. In seconds Helen’s head met the charred flesh of the tree. Twice before she was able to slip out of Jonelle’s hold with blood now running down her face.
“I wish I could kill you right now, Helen. Unfortunately, the big boss man wants to talk with you, so you’re coming with me,” Jonelle tried grabbing her hands to put behind her back.
“No!, she shouted. “I don’t think so, Joni,” even as sore as she was, Helen donkey kicked the woman away.
“With this sacrifice bless our crops and our harvest,” this time when Jonelle came at her, Helen was ready and called a Mithril from the Earth slicing her across the arm. “With this sacrifice bless our crops and our harvest.”
“You will pay for that, bitch. I don’t care what Ezra says.”
Good information for her to keep in the back of her head. She was valuable to the vampire leader. The why was yet to be discovered, but when Jonelle came within striking range, Helen used her blade once more cutting deep on her upper thigh. “With this sacrifice bless our crops and our harvest.”
“Stop saying that. I am not your anything! You are nothing to me. You have no power. Your brother is dead. Useless. You are alone.”
Every word was a cut of it’s own to Helen’s heart. Logically she knew the vamp was spewing shit to get a reaction...an advantage. But what if the things she said were true? These were things she had already thought about. She was alone, but she would not fail in this. She would not fail her family again. They may not be in this world, but they were watching from the afterlife and she wanted them to be proud.