by D L Blade
“No, I’m sorry. You have every right to kiss someone else.”
“But that’s the thing, Riley. I just did it to get answers. I knew I’d have another vision.”
“It’s cool. But keep going. What happened after that?”
“Well, I freaked out and ran out of his aunt’s house as fast as I could before he could explain what I had seen. The next day, I went to this witch shop after searching topics online about witchcraft and I found a witch, who’s also a psychic, who read three tarot cards for me. One had this strange, triangular symbol on it. The symbol triggered my memories. In one of them, I saw myself stake a man through his heart, and right before my eyes, he turned to dust. The psychic told me the symbol means vampire hunter.”
He stared at me expressionless.
“It means I’m a vampire hunter,” I repeated.
He continued to stare as if he hadn’t heard me.
I laughed, throwing my head back dramatically, like I was losing my mind. “So, there’s that.”
“Whoa,” he said under his breath.
He looked at his burger as if he’d lost his appetite and set it down next to him. “This is intense, Mercy. I mean … vampire hunter?”
“Yeah, and also since it’s my birthday—”
“Happy birthday,” he snuck in there.
“Thanks, Riley, but it doesn’t really feel like it. My Awakening is tonight, so I’m supposed to become this all-powerful witch. I am scared and sort of losing it, but there isn’t anything I can do to stop it.”
“I will be with you through all of it.”
“Thank you. I hope it doesn’t freak you out, and I understand if you want nothing to do with me and this life. It’s dangerous, Riley.”
He grabbed my hand but hesitated at first. When I didn’t flinch, he gripped it tighter. “I’m with you until the end,” he promised.
The end. If only he knew I didn’t have an end. This was only the beginning for me.
The game had now started. The teams were determined by the first letter of their first name to make things fair, as there was a mix of all four classes on the field.
An hour went by and each time a team scored a touchdown, Riley and I would jump up and cheer.
The game was now coming to an end as Jeff Yung was running to win the final touchdown. As he reached the end of the field, he tripped on the turf and his leg bent under him. The cheers turned to screams and shouts as Jeff lay on the field, with an obvious broken limb.
Jeff was the ground crying out for help and his body was trembling as if he were having a seizure.
Riley was calling 911 as I ran toward the field. I didn’t even hesitate, I knew I could help him. When I reached the field, my eyes were fixed on him, with one goal in mind—heal him.
When I reached Jeff, I knelt and placed my hand on his chest. He was shaking so badly, but the moment my hand touched him, he calmed.
“Back up!” I shouted to the students gathering around him. “Please, give him space.” They backed up, and I hovered over Jeff, shielding everyone from seeing what I was about to do. Jeff looked up at me and my hand lingered down to his leg. “Don’t move, okay?” I whispered.
I closed my eyes and felt the energy flow through my body like waves rolling over each other and onto a shore. My fingers warmed as the energy left my body and entered Jeff. His light brown eyes, for a moment, turned a shade of green and he looked up at me, shock and disbelief read over his face. “There,” I said as I let go.
Jeff sat up and bent his leg. “I …” he started to say. I shook my head at him. “Mercy, did you just …?”
I shook my head again. “Jeff, you fell and sprained your ankle. That’s what happened right?” I told him, insinuating the lie.
His eyes grew wide and he came to his feet, helping me to mine. “Yes, of course, I guess it just hurt worse than it really was.” He gave me an agreeable nod, while a couple of his guy friends were now by his side.
“Dude, what happened?” James asked.
“Hey, at least I made the touchdown,” he boasted, giving me one last worrisome look.
The guys all slapped hands and everyone started to cheer. Jeff gave me one more look of disbelief. He had witnessed a miracle, and I was sure I’d have to give him more of an explanation later.
Oh, please don’t say anything, Jeff. You owe me for this one.
As I turned around to look up at Riley to see if he was still on the bleachers, I ran into someone’s chest. I looked up. My heart pounded so hard, I felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. I looked into Caleb’s eyes.
“Caleb? What are you doing here?”
“That was careless, Mercy,” he scolded me like I was a child as he looked over at Jeff. “You can’t just go around healing anyone you want. It’s dangerous. If people knew what you could do—”
“I couldn’t just watch him suffer. He broke his femur.”
I knew Caleb was right and I hated that he was. I put myself and the coven at risk. I don’t know what I was thinking, but knowing I had the power to heal him and not do anything also didn’t feel right.
Caleb sighed deeply and looked up at Riley on the bleachers. “Did you drive with him? Or is your car here?”
“My car is here. Why?”
“I need you to do the Awakening in Danvers, not at your home. There is more to the spell that must happen, that Lily and Joel can’t be a part of. I also need to bind you to the coven, so I need to be there.”
“Then we can go pick up Lily and Joel. They’re at Joe’s Bar and Grill. Let me go get Riley.”
“No, you won’t,” Caleb snarled through gritted teeth.
“Caleb, stop. If it’s absolutely necessary that I do this somewhere else with you, they won’t stand in the way. I need them there—”
His hands were on my head before I could speak another word, and my eyes rolled back to darkness.
When I opened my eyes, we were pulling up to a little cottage in a wooded area.
He parked the car and I glared at him until he looked at me. “You kidnapped me? Are you kidding?”
He turned off the ignition without responding.
I looked down at my phone, which he thankfully hadn’t taken from me, and I had six missed phone calls between Riley, Lily and Joel.
“Can I at least call them and let them know I’m okay? They’ll worry sick.” I pleaded, hoping he’d understand. “Am I okay?”
“I’m not going to hurt you. You know that. But just text them,” he said. He shook his head slightly and gripped the steering wheel. “I’m not trying to be difficult, but we don’t have time for you to call them. You know how that call will play out.”
I was still pissed at him for taking me against my will, but he was right. Lily would just freak out and this whole ordeal would become more dramatic than it needed to be. Even if I did ask for their help, or try to run, I would never make it back to East Greenwich on time, and then I’d be alone during the Awakening.
I group-texted Lily and Joel first.
Me: I’m with Caleb. I’m safe
My hands felt clammy. I hated lying to everyone. Maybe I was safe, but I sure didn’t feel like it. I scrolled through my messages until I found the last message I sent Riley.
Me: Hey Riley, I know you saw Caleb take me. I’m safe. I’ll call you once I go through my Awakening.
I kept it simple. Any extra details about why he took me would just set off an alarm of worry between the three of them.
After I texted everyone that I was “safe” with Caleb, I turned my phone down and put it in my pocket. We got out of the car and entered the home through the front door and I could smell the ash from a recently burned log in the fireplace. The cottage felt warm and inviting. It was filled with old furniture and ancient sculptures. There was a collection of artifacts that looked centuries old covering the shelves against the walls and paintings that reached from the floor to the ceiling.
“Whose place is this?” I asked as we walk
ed over to the couch.
“It’s mine,” he answered with an unreadable expression on his face.
I sat down on his couch and looked around the room. This cottage wasn’t what I expected. The truth was that I didn’t really know what I had expected. I could maybe picture it as a family home, parents and children laughing and playing games, not as the dwelling place of a powerful flame-throwing witch.
He stepped toward me when he entered the family room and looked down at me. “I know you don’t agree with my methods and I’ve kept things from you, but I did it to help you learn who you are. We grew up learning about our powers from childhood. You didn’t have that in this new life. I had to tread lightly with you, so you could use your powers the way you’re supposed to. We don’t use spell books. We act on instinct, and with you not understanding what was happening to you, it was shielding you from that. Tonight, with you helping that guy on the field, you knew you had to save him, and you did, even though it was a really stupid thing to do.” He glared at me and I just squinted my eyes at him stubbornly.
I walked over to the couch and turned to him. “I know I’m a vampire hunter. Or, or at least, I used to be.”
His eyebrows rose a notch. “I’ve been trying to tell you the last few times we’ve seen each other, but you kept running from me.” He paused. “How did you find out?”
“A psychic showed me on a tarot card.” I smiled, proud of myself for not needing his help.
He wasn’t smiling back. “Mercy!”
“Look, it doesn’t matter how I found out. But I know now. I have all my memories from birth to about the age of twelve or thirteen. It came to me when I looked at the symbol on the tarot card.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to kill people, Caleb.”
“They’re not people.” He tried to explain it to me, but I just shook my head again and sat down on the couch.
He sat next to me and looked down, brushing the hair from the sides of my face and away from my eyes. “You’re not a murderer.”
“I was. Whether it was a vampire or a human, I still took a life.”
Caleb shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “There is more to this story,” he said.
“I’m ready to hear it. I need to know everything. I don’t care what I see, I’m not running.”
His voice was calm and steady. “Centuries ago, an angel came down to Earth. She was sent to stop a demon from destroying the human race. Instead, she fell in love with him and helped him create the very thing she was sent to stop. Their union created a half breed: part demon, part angel.”
“A vampire,” I said. “Beauty on the outside, but with a dark and evil soul.”
“Vampires don’t have souls,” he corrected.
“That’s unsettling.”
“Yeah, and it spread like wildfire. Vampires were creating more vampires, and the destruction was more than the witches on Earth could handle. Our purpose in coming here was to rid the world of them. After you died, we struggled to keep the balance. Our coven went their own ways and we did our best to kill as many as we could on our own.” He closed his eyes and drew in a breath. “The feeling of a witch drawing the energy from you is unlike anything else in the world.” He opened his eyes.
I was a vessel that was lost to my kind. That must have been horrible for them.
“Why didn’t the angel that created me, just bring me back? Surely she had the power to do so.”
He shook his head. “We couldn’t find your soul, it was as if you died with your body. The first time I felt you after you died, was when the spell worked with your mom. We don’t know where you went. My guess is, neither did the angel.” He grabbed my hand gently. “When you go through the Awakening, you will be a tool for all the witches in this world. You’re going to help them. We can’t do this without you.”
He held up his hand and instantly a flame appeared on the tip of his thumb. “When a witch draws the powers of Fire using my element, I give that to them, no questions asked.” He shut his hand and the flame disappeared.
“What does Spirit actually do?” I asked.
“Spirit is a little bit different than the rest. You bind all our powers together. You control the power of healing, nature, and telepathy. When you died years ago, the power to heal someone was taken from this earth. It was the key to what the power of Spirit represented. Witches haven’t been able to heal anyone for centuries. We needed that power, but it was gone. When I brought you back, we could all feel that power again, but your mom began to shield it from us. Once you awaken, we can do so much more with your gifts.”
I thought back about my childhood and how I knew I was different. It brought a feeling of sadness and anger that my mom had hidden this part of me. The people I could have helped, the lives I could have saved, were non-existent because of her.
Caleb continued. “Part of Spirit is that you can move objects with your mind and telepathically speak to someone. My guess is this is how you can talk to animals today. Your powers must be heightened in this new life.”
“So, if I want to move water, I can do it without pulling it from Leah, but other witches would have to pull that energy from her?”
“Yes.”
“This is crazy,” I said.
He placed the back of his hand on my cheek. “And amazing.” He smiled at me and lightly brushed my cheek with his hand. I moved back, releasing his touch from my cheek.
“You kidnapped me, Caleb. How do you expect me to trust you when you treat me like that?”
“I would never hurt you, but I also know what’s best for you. You don’t have your memories and you don’t truly understand what’s at stake. I can’t have Lily and Joel trying to stop what we need to do. They don’t understand, either,” he explained, but it didn’t make me any less irritated by how he had handled the situation.
He didn’t touch me again, but he inched closer to my side.
“You were destined to fight evil and save other witches from being destroyed by the demons that were created to kill them. The angel couldn’t destroy her own child, but she hated what she had helped create.”
I had read a few books about vampires and werewolves, but never did I suspect anything like this could be real. I searched my thoughts. “What else is real? Dracula?”
Caleb snickered. “Fiction.”
“Frankenstein?” I always tried to be funny when I was nervous, but this time, I was serious. If witches and vampires were real, what else could be real?
“Fiction.”
“So, I killed a vampire.” I hoped saying it out loud would make me feel better about what I had done, but I still felt sick about it.
“I couldn’t just come out and tell you everything in your room the first time we talked. It would have overwhelmed you. You discovering it through your visions wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to play out, either, but now you know.”
“Now I know.” I looked up at the ceiling and rubbed my eyes. The lack of sleep the last few nights was getting to me. “What did the vampire I killed do to deserve death?” I asked.
“That vampire had just slaughtered an entire village. Women and children were killed and bodies were left to rot on the streets. You were protecting the humans. You were a hero, not a killer.”
It felt a little bit better hearing that. Just a little.
“And the woman you killed in my vision? The people you burned alive?”
He closed his eyes tightly and balled his fist. “She and her blood-sucking clan killed my mother, turned my father into one of them, and took your father prisoner.”
I quickly sat up and looked at him in disbelief.
Oh my God.
He looked so upset, as if he were living it all over again. “I was so angry for what they had done, I had to kill her. I had to make them pay.”
His eyes watered, but he wouldn’t allow the tears to fall. This was the first time I had seen Caleb this sad. It was strange to see him so broken.
“Why did I try and s
top you?”
“Because we didn’t know where they were taking your father. You thought if we kept her alive, we could torture her for answers, but I couldn’t stop myself. You hated her just as much as I did, but you wanted me to stop so we could find your father. For that, I am so sorry, Mercy.”
“Did you ever find him?”
“No. We searched, but we couldn’t find him.”
The feeling of anxiety tightened in my chest. I had to steady my breathing. He had killed children. I did what I had to do. Right?
“Is that everything?” I still felt like he was holding something back.
“Your blood is very powerful to a vampire. It makes them much stronger and will allow them to walk in the light, so once you go through the Awakening, they’ll come after you.”
I gulped. This was a new twist. “Why are you just now telling me this?”
“This isn’t something I could have just dropped on you until you had a full grasp of your purpose here.”
I studied his face. I could see it in his eyes that he was holding back again. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and I understood why.
“That’s why you kidnapped me. You knew Lily and Joel would stop you. You’re going to make me immortal.”
“You being a mortal is a problem, Mercy. You’re going to be hunted. They know I brought you back. They know what will happen tonight after you turn eighteen. If you get caught, some will not be able to stop when they drink your blood and it will kill you. I need you alive.” Caleb bowed his head. “I won’t lose you again.”
“I don’t know if I can watch the people I love die while I continue to live. Living forever, that’s a big deal, Caleb.” I collected my thoughts and went over in my mind if there was any other way. If I died, the element that was crucial for the survival of the witches would be gone again, but if I became immortal, I would watch Lily, Joel, and my friends die, and I would be fighting demons for eternity.
Caleb pulled me out of my thoughts as he placed his hand on my cheek again. “I’ve loved you since the moment the stars aligned and brought us together for the first time. You won’t lose everyone in your life, Mercy. You have a coven that will walk with you in this life. A coven who loves you. I love you.”