“But now you’ve had an offering from me.”
He brushed against her, exciting her dampening core. Desdemona bit her lip. She wanted him. She’d wanted him for so long. But she knew he was only doing this because she’d been propositioned by his ally: the vampire. The rivalry meant more to him than she did. She pushed him away, with great effort, and continued down the garden path.
“Desdemona,” he said, grabbing her arm.
She turned to him, her expression set.
“I don’t have to accept you. I know you don’t really want me,” she whispered, stepping backward and then turning away.
She couldn’t look at him anymore. She’d given so much of herself to try to win his love. It was only now that she’d received a rose from his vampire friend that he showed any interest in her. Desdemona started to walk faster, but he caught her again, his dragon strength stopping her in her tracks. He turned her to him and captured her in his arms. The blue-eyed dragon claimed her lips. Desdemona gushed with need, all her senses bursting with intensity.
He crushed her to him, not letting her go. His tongue darted over hers, and his hands slid down her back, cupping her curves. She burned with desire for him. And it made her hate him. He didn’t love her, but she couldn’t resist him. He shone in her eyes and she adored him, no matter how callous he was. She relaxed into his embrace and returned his kiss, her untouched body alive like it had never been.
His hand slid between the backs of her thighs, gripping her soft flesh.
“Desdemona,” a deep voice said behind them.
She gasped and stepped back, looking at the owner of the voice. It was him, the vampire who wanted her, dressed in a fitted black robe. She looked back at the dragon as he growled at his friend.
“Choose,” the dragon hissed.
“I won’t,” she said.
“I thought we had an understanding,” the vampire said, his eyebrows knitted together over his dark eyes.
The vampire had always been kind to her, but she didn’t love him. Not really.
“I can’t do this,” she said, and she turned and ran away.
She wouldn’t choose either.
Chapter 1
Desdemona Hawthorn hurried through the underbrush near the perimeter of the compound, her guitar clutched in her hand. The deepening afternoon shadows were a comfort after the Dark Sun, she noted as she sidestepped through the thick willows at the edge of the creek. When she found her favorite rock, overlooking the burbling water, she took a seat on the smooth stone, brought her guitar into her lap, and removed the pick from the neck.
She strummed a chord and then the open strings to check the tune. After a quick adjustment, she began to play. The orange light of the golden hour spread over the little bank where she played. Desdemona took a breath and began to sing. Her voice rising over the waters, riding on the wings of her guitar music. She closed her eyes, feeling the music radiate through her body.
Desdemona felt the most alive when she played. The harmony of voice and strings entranced her when she let it; when she was alone and no one was looking. She’d been playing since she was a child, but lately the music had taken on a whole new meaning. Each note and chord was a mystery to unravel, deep within her own consciousness.
Maybe it was because the world was so different now. Before the Dark Sun, Desdemona hadn’t known anything about vampires or dragons, or the fact that any one of the people around her could be a witch. People said that when the sun had gone dark a year and a half ago, magic had come back into the world.
She’d seen a lot of advanced extraterrestrial-like aircraft flying through the sky and she’d definitely seen the zombies who’d killed nearly a million people in Northern California. But she’d had no proof that there was any such thing as magic. Of course, that didn’t stop people from succumbing to superstition about it.
There was a known rule that if any woman was discovered to be a witch she had to be taken to the temple on the coast. No one in Desdemona’s small town had ever seen a witch, although there were a lot of rumors going around. Desdemona was still skeptical. For all she knew, the Dark Sun had actually been caused by some secret space war with China or something.
What was certain, though, was that the world would never be the same again. One day she had been a normal high school student, and the next, she was running for her life. Her family had fortified a ranch deep in the mountains near the Oregon border and had been hiding there ever since.
As Desdemona sang, she tried to drown out the memories of the dark times. She slipped deeper and deeper into her trance. Not willing to hold it back any longer, she closed her eyes and let the music take over. It vibrated through her body, electrifying all her nerves. It pulsed with her heartbeat, keeping rhythm with the chords she played on her guitar.
When she opened her eyes again, still deep in a dreamlike trance, she was almost able to accept what was in front of her.
The yellow willow leaves that had littered the creek bed were swirling around her as if in a whirlwind. She continued to play for a few more bars, until she gasped and stopped. The leaves fell, and she shot to her feet.
She sucked a ragged breath and began heaving uncontrollably, her heart pounding. What was that about? The air over the rocky creek bed, covered in orange sunlight and deep shadows, was silent and still. She turned around in a circle, holding her guitar and panting.
Desdemona put her hand to her forehead and crinkled up her face. She knew exactly what this meant, and it was the worst thing possible. She’d just done magic. If she could do magic, that meant only one thing: She was a witch.
She clutched her guitar and started to run back to the compound. Her heart raced in her chest and her mind was awash with confusion. Desdemona had heard the stories and the rumors of what happened to young women who discovered they were witches. None of it was good. No one could ever find out that she could do magic. She would have to keep the secret safe and under lock and key until she could figure out how to make it stop and go away. She didn't want to have magic. No one in their right mind would want that ability right now.
She hurried around the pasture where the compound’s cattle, goats and sheep were grazing on the tall, late autumn grass. When she came to the barns, she ducked into the side entrance of the main building and found the barn cat licking its gray paw on top of a round bale. Her family harvested its hay the old fashioned way, now that electricity and oil were so expensive and hard to come by. But they did have human hands and human labor.
Desdemona would have been happy to live her entire life on the compound, doing her job teaching the children, but now she had no idea who she was or where she could go for help.
She slumped onto a bench and tried to catch her breath, resting her guitar against the splintered wood panel of the barn wall. She covered her face with her hands and groaned.
"What's the matter, Desdemona?" a small voice asked her.
She looked up and found Sasha standing in front of her, her curly black hair in messy braids down her back. Her eight-year-old sister looked at her with big brown eyes and a questioning expression on her face
"It's nothing. Nothing's wrong."
"Will you play me a song?" Sasha asked.
"I don't think so right now, Sasha. This isn't a good time," Desdemona said, gritting her teeth.
Desdemona’s mind raced. Maybe what had happened by the creek had been a hallucination. Maybe it was a result of food poisoning or a lack of sleep.
In her heart, Desdemona knew that none of those things explained what she had just witnessed with her own eyes. She was a magic wielder, a witch, and there was no way around that fact. She would have to come to terms with it and hide it from her family if she wanted to survive in this world. There was no way that she was going to accept the alternative.
"Why won’t you play me a song?" Sasha asked. "You're being mean."
Sasha ran out of the barn with a huff and started across the yard toward the house where her pa
rents lived. There were several residential structures throughout the compound for her extended family. and their friends who lived there too.
They had all worked so hard to survive after the dark times had begun. Desdemona included. She had only been seventeen years old when the sun had gone out and the vampires and dragons had reemerged on the surface of the Earth.
They had run from their town together as a band of courageous warriors, looking for a place where they could survive the onslaught. Her father and uncle owned a historic property in the mountains they’d been fixing up as a dude ranch.
Her father had purchased a horse and buggy, and they had been on their small property in town when the sun went dark. The family had packed up and ridden out of town when the sun went dark.
Her father and uncle were wealthy businessmen who owned several properties throughout the area. Her family and her uncle’s family had banded together to make it out of town on the first night of the Dark Sun. It had been a narrow escape.
Desdemona knew that her magic endangered the entire compound. There had to be a way that she could reverse the awakening of her magic and go back to being a regular human girl.
She was staring at the ground when she saw her father's boots walking over the hay-littered floor of the barn.
"It's time for class, Desdemona," her father said. "You should be with the children."
"I'm not feeling well right now.”
"What's wrong? If you're coming down with something you need to speak with your mother so she can give you something to cure it," her father said.
Desdemona's mother was a natural health expert, which had come in handy over the year and a half since the world had changed so gravely. Doctors were hard to find in these times and a woman like her mother was worth her weight in gold.
Desdemona didn't have a physical illness. Her heart was heavy and her soul was weeping for what she knew would happen to her if anyone found out.
"I think I'm just tired," she said. "I've been thinking a lot about what happens to the women who discover they’re witches. If there are even really witches in the world," she said in a weak voice.
"There are definitely witches in the world now," her father said, moving toward the wheelbarrow on the other edge of the hay barn.
He began forking hay into the wheelbarrow to feed the cattle and sheep and goats–to supplement their diet as the weather changed.
"How do you know?” she asked.
"I've heard enough stories about it. And I've seen some strange things over the last few years, things that you don't know about.”
"What sort of things?" Desdemona asked.
"What's got you so interested in witches all of a sudden?" her father asked, shoveling another pitchfork full of hay into the wheelbarrow.
"I read in one of the local periodicals about some witch temple on the coast. I was just wondering if it was real or not."
"The temple is definitely quite real, and in my opinion, it's the best place for a woman who is discovered to be a witch. It isn't safe for witches to be around normal folk. The immortals can find them and take them. I've heard that anyone found harboring a witch will be murdered on the spot by these rogue immortals."
"Do the witches of the temple support that kind of behavior?" Desdemona asked, appalled.
"From what I've heard, they protect the witches from immortal assaults. But their influence only goes so far. We live in a lawless world, Desdemona. We each need to make the sacrifices that are required of us to protect the ones we love.
“I do it. Your mother does it, and you will learn you must do it as well. The women who find out they are witches are wise to go to the temples in search of protection from the rogue immortal threat.
“Many other immortals have made agreements with the temple to protect it from harm. The allied immortals are also trying to rehabilitate the cities of the world. Those of them who are decent and good, anyway. We’ve all heard about the evils of the Surge. We've seen it with our own eyes during the Dark Sun."
"How do you know all immortals aren't like that?" Desdemona asked as her father rolled the wheelbarrow past her on the way out of the barn.
"All I know is what I've seen and what I've heard. A group of allied immortals stopped the Surge and turned off the Dark Sun Machine. Without them, the world would still be in darkness. There are many groups of these allied immortals who are helping humans survive the New World even though we have little power compared to them."
"But don't the witches at the temples have to marry immortal males and have their young?" Desdemona asked under her breath.
"It is a small price to pay for the protection the temple provides, not only for the witches, but for anyone who may be associated with a witch. If you find out anyone on the compound is practicing magic, you need to tell me right away. Vampires and dragons can sense a witch’s magic if they get close enough.”
"Okay father," she said, too terrified to say anything else.
Her father left the barn, and she watched him walk across the compound to the pasture. He began forking the hay over the wooden fence for the waiting herd on the other side. She couldn't believe what she had just heard him say. It was the absolute worst case scenario.
If she didn't leave the compound right now, she was putting everyone at risk. If she did come out as a witch, she would have to go to the temple and offer herself as a bride for one of those devil men who had been in hiding for two thousand years.
The last thing she wanted was be some breeding stock for a dragon or vampire so they could populate their infernal armies and continue to dominate the world with their power.
Even if she were a witch, and therefore also an immortal, she morally opposed the dominion of immortals over the human population. She could never give herself to one of them in marriage. It was against everything she believed in and everything she stood for.
Desdemona believed in human independence and sovereignty and did not want to participate in the repopulation of the threat to human life. They had already done so much to devastate society. Millions had died during the dark times when the sun had gone black. She blamed all the immortals, not just the Surge.
Humans like her and her family may not know every single detail of what had happened to bring about the veil that blocked the immortals’ power in the world for two thousand years, but she knew enough to understand that it was both sides that had caused the veiling to occur in the first place.
In short: the immortals were not good people and she didn't want anything to do with them.
Even if she was, unfortunately, now one of them.
Chapter 2
Titus Silverdrake looked at the screen of his glass pad and read the notification. The recent shipment of zero-point energy machines had not made it to their destination, and the human buyers in Michigan were getting angry. He quickly typed out a reply to his buyer, promising to look into the shipment. It should have arrived at its destination at least twenty-four hours ago. But in these times, a shipment over water could be delayed for any number of reasons.
His machines shipped out of St. Louis and took the Illinois River north through the port of Chicago into Lake Michigan. They’d been sending these machines along the same route for the last six months and hadn’t had any problems yet. But now, with another winter coming, and the recent stabilization of many human cities, the demand for his machines was higher than ever.
Titus typed out a message to the foreman of his factory who oversaw the shipments, asking if he knew anything about the delay. He received a message back just several moments later, informing him that his human foreman knew nothing.
Then he attempted to call the captain of the barge that had carried the shipment up the Illinois River, expecting him to answer his glass pad hail immediately, but it just continued to ring and ring. He then checked the GPS tracking on the barge and was unable to pinpoint its location.
Titus rubbed his temples and rested his folded hands on the large oak desk in
his office facing the penthouse window that overlooked the Mississippi River.
In the last year, he had worked tirelessly to re-establish civilization in his city since the Dark Sun had destroyed so much of the world’s civilization. The Surge, a group of depraved and evil immortals, had built the Dark Sun Machine over one year ago. The machine had caused a solar flare that had fried every human electric grid on the planet. Some electronic devices were still operational, but most of the infrastructure had been damaged beyond repair.
Within the city of St. Louis itself, he had focused on rebuilding an entirely new city from the foundation that had been there for almost two hundred years.
His town now boasted one of the most technologically advanced civilizations in America, with hovercraft public transportation, zero-point energy-powered buildings, and pure, fresh running water that was filtered with the most advanced techniques. He’d had floating gardens and pools built on the rooftops of the city. With the climate in Missouri, he had been able to create a lush and beautiful garden city, freed from the confines of societal and financial constraints.
It was more peaceful and prosperous than it had been before the Dark Sun, but unfortunately he had not been able to do the same thing for the outlying areas. Most of the people who lived in suburban St. Louis had moved into the new city or out into the surrounding countryside. They had not been able to rewire the buildings and electric infrastructure quickly enough to provide for the people, so the redeveloped downtown had been the bastion of hope for most of the population.
Once he had reestablished the city’s infrastructure, he had built a warehouse where he’d used ancient immortal technologies to create portable generators that ran on the unlimited energy source available within the very fabric of reality.
The immortals had known about this kind of energy source for hundreds of thousands of years. Titus himself was only five thousand, but had watched for a millennia as humans scraped and scrounged for their resources.
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