The Beast Cometh

by Constance Barker

  “Relax, I’ll take care of it,” I said. She eyed me suspiciously.

  “Why?” She asked. I had never exactly been one to offer assistance when it came to doing chores.

  “Just rest before we go to Hazel’s will you?” I asked rhetorically. It was more of a friendly, sisterly order than a request. She looked like she wanted to argue more, but I could tell that her exhaustion won out. She wouldn’t admit it, but the campaign had been harder on her than she had expected. Now Amber was busy planning the party for the election announcement tomorrow. I don’t think she wanted a party, just in case she lost, but it was happening regardless of her desires. As soon as she retreated to her room I sighed. I didn’t want to clean up the mess, but I wasn’t going to let it sit there only for Fern to have to deal with later.

  I started to repeat the only spells I knew by heart, the one’s that made my life easier, but I stopped myself before I finished. I didn’t want to waste any energy that I didn’t have to use. I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, no matter how long our lesson was. Even if I had left Fern to clean up and gone to take a nap myself, I knew that it wouldn’t be restful anyways. I would need to be as close to full capacity for tonight, the least I could do was not use my powers needlessly. I wasn’t expecting Hazel to go easy on us. She had dealt with this before, and she knew what would need to be done to stop it in its tracks. I also was reminded of her notion that magic gave but also took. I wondered what was taken to restore balance each time I used a spell to wash a dish, what the cost of my laziness had been. I knew that magic was all about balance. I had always known that. I had more thought of it as a way to restore balance though, not as something that required balance itself and apparently it did. It was like a seesaw and each spell made it dip to one side and in order to become centered again, it would have to do something in return. I cleaned the microwave the old fashioned way.

  Chapter Four

  “Welcome, welcome,” Hazel ushered us into her home with an impatient hand waving us in. It didn’t take an idiot to realize why we hadn’t been invited over before. Her house looked exactly how you would expect a witch's house to look, either that or a particularly eccentric art teacher. It was a small cottage near the woods, close to the edge of town. I hadn’t realized she lived that far out of town center. I had only ever really seen her in the context of the diner, so it was hard to imagine her outside of it. Her house looked like everything Amber’s store, The Witches Cauldron, tried to be.

  The outside appeared innocent enough. A small white cottage with some stonework that I imagined was original to the home. A smaller front porch than was typical of Virginia, but the almost mandatory rocking chair was there. It was inside where you could practically feel the magic emanating from the home. Scarves and fabric of all different colors hung from the ceiling at different heights. The furniture was obscure and brightly colored save for a few pieces of dark heavy wood that I knew were very, very old. In the living room, instead of a couch there were cushions and blankets of various shades of pinks, purples and reds strewn all over the floor. There was no television in the room, although I hadn’t expected Hazel to own one in the first place. There were dozens of plants surrounding us. If I closed my eyes they were so abundant it almost smelled like we were still outside in a meadow. It wasn’t just house plants, but also a myriad of dry herbs hung from the ceiling amongst the scarves. Every kind of herb you could imagine was there, and I’d bet some you couldn’t imagine too. If there were that many plants, there were dozens more candles and crystals. Every available surface, even the floor was strewn with them. If you didn’t know any better you might think that Hazel just didn’t have electricity, but I would venture to guess that she hardly used it anyways.

  Her house wasn’t the most surprising thing of that evening though. That honor would have to go to the cantankerous old man leaning against one of the bookshelves in the living room. His arms were crossed and he looked as grumpy as ever. “Took you long enough to get here,” he grumbled.

  “What are you doing here?” Fern asked, looking between Fang and Hazel for some kind of explanation. Becky was doing the same thing, her eyes wide with surprise. It only took me a moment to put it together. When Hazel first went missing, we sent Fang and Jimmy Jack to her house to track her down, but they had said she wasn’t there. Now I knew that wasn’t true. She was undoubtedly there and had told at least Fang where she was going. That must have been why he tried to get us to stop looking for her, why he had seemed reluctant to search for her. Their tentative relationship made more sense to me as I realized how long Fang must have known about Hazel’s secret.

  “Does Jimmy Jack know too?” I asked out of curiosity. Becky’s head spun so quickly to face me I could have sworn I heard her neck pop.

  “No, he doesn’t know about you lot, and I’d like to keep it that way,” he said giving Becky a meaningful glance. Becky’s face grew hot at the implication.

  “How do you know?” Fern asked. Hazel smiled at Fang sweetly, her eyes distant, remembering the past. I wondered if they had been in love with each other then too, and still hadn’t admitted it to one another. That was stubbornness if I’d ever seen it if it were true.

  “I’ve known ‘bout Hazel since the last attacks,” Fang said matter of factly. “Fifty years ago. Used to have powers myself till they all but dried up.” I was about to ask how that happens when Hazel started talking, adding to the story.

  “He helped me try to save some of the victims last time around,” she said almost choking on the word try. Meaning that she hadn’t succeeded. I felt the doubt again like a black stone in the pit of my stomach growing ever bigger. “He didn’t have much power back then either,” She said eyeing me and I wondered if she could feel my uncertainty. “I wasn’t very strong or powerful myself. We were very young and neither knew much about spells or power. I believe that the four of us might be able to do what Fang and I couldn’t.”

  “How do you lose your powers?” Fern asked, her voice sounded horse as though she was scared to learn the answer.

  “Not too sure,” Fang shrugged. “My family’s only had the whisper of power for generations, probably something someone did along the family line got it taken away or used it all up somehow.” I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t imagine life without magic. I could tell that the words had chilled Becky and Fern, even though they couldn’t have been said in a more casual manner. Fang had clearly come to terms with it, even though I saw his jaw clench when Hazel mentioned that they had failed. I was sure he hadn’t been so accepting of his lot in life fifty years ago.

  “We came across one of the victims and tried to save her, but we were too late,” Hazel said. “We still had no idea what it was that had come to terrorize the town, an animal of some kind. Or at least something that left its victims looking like they died from an animal attack. All I knew for sure was that it was not of the natural world, whatever it was. It was brought forth by magic to restore balance after the comet gave such a boost to our powers.”

  “It didn’t last long enough for us to figure it out,” Fang interjected. He was normally bumbling and blushing around Hazel, but now he seemed composed and put together. I wondered which one was an act. “This was only the echo of the comet and it still took the lives of three people. It’s going to be much worse this time around,” He said with gravity looking at each of us individually. I was reminded of a General looking at his troops before battle and I wondered if Fang had ever seen war. He stopped with his eyes on Becky. “That’s why Jimmy Jack can’t know about this. He would want to help but he can’t, and he’d end up dead.” His voice was pleading, and he flinched on the word dead.

  “I won’t tell him, I swear,” Becky replied earnestly. I knew she had no intention of telling him about her powers in the first place. “How much does he know?” She asked, an expert in the art of lying would need to know how deep the lie needed to go.

  “He knows that we come from a line of warlocks and t
hat there are traces of power still left in our blood, but that’s it,” Fang said shaking his head. I could tell he wasn’t sure that Becky would be able to keep the secret, but he didn’t know her like I did. “It shouldn’t even come up, but just don’t tell ‘im a thing,” he repeated. This time it almost sounded like a threat. Becky only nodded in response, but that seemed to be enough for Fang.

  “Fang is right, it’s going to be worse this time around,” Hazel said, continuing where Fang had broken off to ask Becky to keep it a secret. “I don’t know why it hasn’t already struck, but it will soon and when it does, it’s going to be deadly.”

  “Do you have any ideas of what it is?” Fern asked. I wasn’t sure that it really mattered what it was. What we needed to figure out, that seemed more obvious to me now than it had before was how to end this once and for all. We could fight against this, we could save a couple people, we could wait it out until the power of the comet faded. What good would that do for anyone if in another fifty years it would just be back once more. We had to figure out a way to restore balance for good, something that would stop the comet from enriching our powers in the first place. We needed to remove the source of the imbalance in order to truly be rid of the consequences it brought us.

  “No, but it’s a demon in its own right,” Hazel replied. She was looking at me curiously and once again remembered that her ability was to do with deciphering peoples thoughts. She couldn’t read minds exactly, but she could pick out things when they were most pressing. It was more like she could understand the reasoning behind the dominant emotion a person was feeling. I wondered if she was getting a direct line to my thoughts at the moment. If she was, she didn’t say anything about them.

  “What are we here to learn?” I asked, ready to get down to business. It was getting late and the instinctual feeling of needing to run away was settling in again. I didn’t want Hazel to notice, and I knew it would go away as soon as we started to get to work.

  “I thought we should start with protection and healing,” Hazel said with a light smile. “Without knowing what is committing the acts of terror, it’s hard to create a solid defense against it. At least I can arm you with the ability to save someone before they are lost.” She smiled congenially as she lifted a large ornate blade and sliced the palm of her hand open. Becky gasped and rushed over to her at the same time Fang shouted a rather creative few expletives strung together and moved to go closer to her. Hazel lifted her uninjured hand to stop her. She muttered a few words under her breath holding her injured hand tightly in her other. After a moment she lifted her injured hand, only it wasn’t injured anymore. Though it was still bloody, the cut was completely gone.

  “Wow,” I said under my breath. I could tell that Fern and Becky were still too horrified to see the wonder in what Hazel had just accomplished. I had never seen magic done with such ease, especially not something that had almost certainly required a lot of power. Just a few days ago, Fern, Becky and I had attempted a locator spell to find Hazel. We utilized the magic aids of at least half a dozen objects and still failed. I’d be willing to bet that Hazel could do the same spell with nothing more than a glass of ordinary water, if that. Even my simply household spells required charging crystals and burning the right incense. Hazel smiled brightly at me, ignoring the horrified looks from Becky and Fern.

  “I’d like to think it’s pretty magnificent myself,” she replied to whatever she had picked up in my emotions, as well as my quiet ‘wow’ comment.

  “I didn’t know that you could do magic without a conductor,” I said, struggling on the word conductor...it wasn’t exactly right but it got the point across well enough.

  “It’s not that you’re without a, conductor, as you call it, but that you learn how to channel anything as one,” Hazel responded. Fern and Becky had recovered from most of the horror at this point, but still looked weary. Fang looked angry more than anything. I couldn’t imagine that he was a fan of seeing her hurt, even if it was by her own hand.

  “What did you use?” I asked, trying to think through what she had done. I couldn’t figure out what she had used to channel her magic.

  “My blood,” she replied, still smiling softly. It was an eery thing to hear coming out of such a serene looking woman, almost sinister. It was my turn to feel uneasy, as Becky and Fern stopped and their interest was piqued. I had heard of blood magic, and it didn’t sound like something I wanted to practice.

  “Blood magic?” I asked skeptical.

  “Healing magic,” Hazel replied matter of factly. “The power to heal rests within one’s blood, it sounds far darker than it is.”

  “It sounds sinister,” I replied, not certain I believed her entirely. I couldn’t imagine that much good could come from something called blood magic. Fern gave me a reproachful look, I must’ve sounded rude or offensive with my comment. I hadn’t meant to, but I didn’t really know what else to say.

  “I know how it sounds,” Hazel said. “And I felt similarly when I was first taught it. I was very resistant to learning it, but had I known it fifty years ago, I’d have saved that girl and even if we hadn’t defeated whatever was behind those attacks, I’d have saved at least one person and maybe they would have been able to tell us what it is.” She spoke quickly, as though she hadn’t let herself say that out loud before. I knew the feeling.

  “Okay,” I said, a simple agreement to go along with the lesson.

  “Okay,” she said nodding. “First, I want you to learn how to heal yourselves. You will be no good to anyone if you are — if you aren’t around.” She stopped herself from saying the word dead. “Then we’ll practice on each other. That’s when you will need to use someone else's blood as a conductor,” She said using my word. I held out my hand for the blade, she passed it to me without saying anything. After I was done I passed it to Fern, who in turn passed it to Becky. I was about to offer to slice Becky’s hand for her as she looked queasy, but before I could she was already done.

  Hazel told us the words to say, something in a long forgotten language and we practiced for hours. Fern was the first to figure it out, and healed herself perfectly. I figured it out second, but left a smooth scar across the palm of my hand on the diagonal. It took Becky longest, but she was able to do it without leaving a scar. I didn’t particularly mind the scar, as long as the wound was healed. I knew why it wasn’t working for me as well as the other two. I was still reluctant to use blood magic. As with all things, I knew it had a dark side as well, but I couldn’t help but feel that this had a much darker side than most. I didn’t want to get good at it. Hazel examined my palm and I knew that she knew the reason for the scar but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead she patted it with kindness as she closed my palm. It was then that we moved on to working with one another. It was more difficult to use another’s blood as a conduit for magic and it felt very personal. I tried my best to leave no marks on Fern as I worked to fix her hand, not wanting to leave her with a scar.

  It was close to dawn by the time we packed it in. Hazel had planned on showing us some protection spells, but our work on healing took precedence. Becky had fallen asleep by the time I had healed myself for possibly the dozenth time. Each time, the scar on my hand grew deeper, while Fern’s remained pristine. I wasn’t jealous of her, but concerned about the price blood magic must have. As Hazel worked with Fern having her heal her palm one last time, I thought about why Fang was here. He had sat doing nothing most of the night, he was still awake though. Without any power, I couldn’t figure out why he needed to be here.

  “Not all power is magic,” Hazel said startling me. “Knowledge is power too.” I understood what that meant. Fang had been the one to teach her blood magic, and I guessed a lot of what we were going to learn.

  Chapter Five

  It had been an extremely long night and the sun was already rising by the time we got home. I was going to drop Becky off at her home, but she had fallen so fast asleep that Fern and I had decided to bring
her to our house. We conscripted the help of the Colonel and Little Timmy to carry her inside. I tucked her in on the couch, shocked that none of the movement had woken her up, but she was a new kind of tired. I felt it too, it was more than exhaustion, more than even bone weary. I could barely feel my body, I felt more like I was floating than walking as I made my way to my room. I heard Fern make an effort to politely say goodnight to the ghosts. I looked back for a moment to see their confused faces, as it was early in the morning and certainly not night time. They seemed to understand how tired we were though...they knew just as well as we did that trouble was coming. I didn’t hear them at all, so either I fell asleep more deeply than I had in a long while or they were very quiet. It wasn’t all their fault that they made such a ruckus all the time, they weren’t exactly used to being corporeal.

  It felt like I had only slept for a few hours before Moody kneaded her paws against my back woke me. “You have to get up,” she hissed at me, as I swatted her away, pushing her off of my bed.

  “The election results are soon,” Fern said from the doorway. This got my attention and I rolled over leaning on my elbows to look at her. I could feel that my hair was knotted at the back of my head and probably pushed every which way. I looked down and realized I hadn’t even taken off my shoes or my jacket before falling asleep in my bed. If the results were coming in soon, that could only mean I had been asleep for the entire day.

  “Soon?” I asked, discombobulated. I felt like I was still sleeping in some kind of waking dream. “How long have I been out?”

  “I’d say you got about eight solid hours,” Fern said. I knew by the lines under her eyes and her weary expression that she hadn’t been quite as lucky.

  “And how much did you get?” I raised my eyebrows at her. Sleep was not something that Fern ever got a lot of, but it seemed important that all of us be at peak physical health right now. We didn’t know what was coming, but we knew that it would be violent and judging by last night, it would take a lot of energy. Not only that, but Fern was about to become the new Sheriff of Stillwater. That was going to take a lot of time and energy as well. Even after winning, which she hadn’t yet, but I knew she would, it would be an uphill battle for her. Sheriff Brown had made a fair few friends in his time and they were loyal deputies, so she might have quite a bit of resistance. I hoped that Office Mulberry wasn’t part of that resistance. He had already helped us out once, but I still wasn’t convinced that if he was forced to choose sides he would side with Fern.