Hunted Blood: A Love Triangle Vampire Romance (Beautiful Innocence Book 2)

Chapter 11 - Lorianna

The sun beats on my back as I kneel on the dirt beside Marionne in the garden. Despite the cooling season, the vegetables are happy in their environment, so lovingly cared for by my aunt’s hard work. We’re situated in front of a large tomato plant that towers over me now that we’re seated, the plant propped up by many metal rings to support the many branches holding large, heavy tomatoes.

“When I said I wanted to learn magic right now, I didn’t think we’d be going into the garden,” I laugh. “What are we going to do here? Watch plants grow?”

Marionne gives me a patient smile. “Exactly, my dear, although you are going to help these tomatoes along so Samira can make tomato soup tomorrow.”

Her expression is sweet but completely serious. I nervously examine the pale green tomatoes that are waiting patiently for my magic. I had hoped that learning magic would be a good distraction from my dad’s death and how it’s impossible for me to do anything about it right now without putting myself in more danger. We can’t even have a funeral yet, although Samira and Marionne promised me we would have a small memorial of our own in a few days.

But if this is the kind of magic I’m learning, I’m not sure it will be much of a distraction at all.

“I’m going to… help them along?” I say hesitantly.

She gives me an encouraging nod. “The tomato wants to ripen, my dear. You only have to speak to it and tell it is allowed to do so.”

“Okay… I’ll give it a try.”

“Hold your hands a few inches away from the plant and imagine your feet rooting into the ground like an ancient tree, reaching deeper and deeper into the earth until you find the Well at the center of all magic. Then let the magic come to you.”

I hold out my hands and try to imagine myself as she suggests, with roots burrowing deep into the earth. My body trembles with effort, and then there’s this light hum deep inside me as I connect to an essence deeper than myself. Its power churns through my feet and up my legs as if some invisible force is passing from the earth and into me.

It’s just barely in reach, but I can feel it. That endless movement, the Well of all magic. Waiting to be used.

My eyes fill with tears. I’m shocked by the sudden burst of emotion, but I can’t help it. It’s just so beautiful, like briefly touching the essence of life itself. And if this is what it looks like after only the tiniest amount of contact, I want to see more of it. I need to.

I try tugging a fraction of that magic through me and funnelling it into my hands, but the connections don’t work as fluidly as I think they should. Gently, I urge the magic to wrap around the tomato and ripen it, but it still won’t budge. The great churning mass of the Well is as untouchable to me as it is untameable. I let out a grunt. My hands can’t maintain that much pressure anymore, and I drop my aching arms.

“You’re doing great, my dear.”

“If I was doing so great, wouldn’t any magic happen by now?” I say, throwing my hands up in the air with frustration.

“Magic isn’t easy, and although it will come naturally to you in time, you will have many challenges to overcome before then,” she explains. “Because your magic manifested with shattered glass and a memory of your mother, it’s likely that your specialty will be Physical Magic. That is, you will gather a great deal of magic in your body and activate it through touch.”

“Then shouldn’t I—”

“No. If you rely on touch too much, you might never be able to use it from afar; touch could become too much of a habit. Plus, touch is the most dangerous way to learn magic. When using magic through touch, you are experiencing it at the same time as your subject, and you don’t know how to control the flow of magic yet. You could do serious harm to yourself or your subject.”

I sigh, crossing my arms. “What’s your specialty?”

“Plants, of course.” She caresses the bright green tomato leaves, then curls her fingers, and the green tomato I was trying to ripen shivers and begins to turn pink, then a dull red, before she snaps it off the vine and puts it in her wicker basket. “All magic comes from the earth. That means plants are our truest connection to the Well. Through my unique connection to the earth, I can understand what plants need and help them grow or enhance their properties in potions and spells. I can feel and sense magic all around us, and I can sense it in you, too, my dear. So I won’t have you giving up.”

I sit back on my heels and let my shoulders slump. “I’ll keep trying.”

After every attempt, I’m left more and more exhausted as magic tries to connect with my body, but I can’t form a complete spell. Marionne encourages me to take frequent breaks, where she teaches me more about the Well’s power and her own abilities. In the tender ways she tends to the garden, I see a lot of similarities between her and my mother. I think that they were a lot more alike than anyone has let on, despite their differences.

“If you can connect with plants, what kind of magic can Samira do?” I ask.

“Samira is superior on a technical level of magic. She excels in the realms of brewing potions and creating ointments and charms to help with various practical needs of everyday living. Of course, she’s an excellent cook and baker, too. Our abilities complement each other.”

“Wouldn’t brewing potions be a lot like chemistry? I was never very good at that.”

“Chemistry is a good way to think of it. Her way of thinking is very precise, almost scientific, of course only to the extent that you can think of magic as scientific. There are rules that establish expectations around a result, even if we cannot truly understand what all those rules might be since so much knowledge about magic was lost during the witch trials centuries ago.”

“I’m lucky to have you as my teachers. I just wish… it would work, you know? It felt so easy before. Entirely accidental.”

Marionne chuckles. “As it always does, my dear. Here, you’ve had a moment to breathe. How about you try again?”

I nod and lift my hands. I can see now why Samira and Marionne suggested that I work out here first. Through our work—not just trying to ripen the harvest, but caring for the plants—I’m starting to understand the connections between the plants and humans, the magical link from earth to hand. I love how the plants smell and the waxy texture of basil leaves compared to the soft fuzz of tomato leaves.

Although I didn’t have many illusions about how difficult magic would be to work with, I do admit there’s a level of frustration that I feel to not have any results so far. Because not only is magic woefully complicated and downright impossible for me to replicate so far, but it’s also exhausting. I mentally encourage the leaves on the plant to balloon outward, but my arms tremble with that pent-up exhaustion.

I focus on the pathways of moisture in the plant. I seek to feel the roads of their roots and stems that lead up to the veins in the leaves. But no matter how much I focus, how much I push into the plant, I’m not able to get the magic out of my body.

My arms shake and warble, and then they snap back. I let out a long sigh. “Sorry, Auntie, I don’t think I can do it.”

She pats my shoulder. “That’s all right, my dear. We can’t expect you to have it all figured out on day one. How about you take these inside to Samira and we try again tomorrow?”

I take the wicker basket by the handle and carry the vegetables inside, my shoulders slumped.

Later that evening, after dinner’s been served and cleaned up, my eyes droop with the exhaustion of the day. I yawn and stretch my arms over my head as I come out of the bathroom and head for the stairs toward my mom’s room. Marionne already retired to bed to read in peace, but when I turn into the living area, the lamp is on and Samira is sitting on the couch with what appears to be an old photo album on her lap.

She runs her fingers along the pages reverently, smiling as she flips through. There’s an intimacy to the moment as she sorts through memories, but something compels me forward.

Samira glances up at me with a smile. “How was your training with Marionne this morning?”

“I thought science was hard, but I don’t think I’m ever going to understand magic,” I mutter as I come to sit beside her. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Don’t let it get to you just yet. You’re very early on the path, and it’s fortunate that you’ve been able to access your powers at all. It spells good things for your future.”

“If you say so.”

I lean forward, propping my forearms on my knees and leaning closer to her. “What are you looking at?”

“Oh, you know,” she laughs awkwardly. “I’ve just been thinking.”

Now that I’m beside her, she can’t hide that the photos are mostly of her and her sisters when they were younger. My mother, too. My stomach dips when I see the three of them grinning with large ice cream cones in front of their faces. They must be about my age—and each of them is so full of life and joy that it radiates off them even in these photographs.

Samira points to a picture in the corner of the album, the three of them swinging on swings hanging from the trees. “You see this picture here? Those are the woods just out back. We were never too old for childhood fun, but Carmen and I used to cause all sorts of trouble together before we had magic. Marionne would always come yelling after us that we should better respect the trees whenever we were monkeying around, climbing and burning brushes and all those things silly children do without any adults to watch them. We were basically raised by the wilderness.”

She flips through a few pages and offers me a few more glimpses into what her childhood with her two sisters was like. I feel some pieces of my history settle into place with every story she shares about my mother’s life. As she goes on, though, I notice several odd markings in the corner of many of the photos.

Samira turns another page. I point to the odd curved lines in the corner of the photograph. “What is this? I’ve seen it on a bunch of the photos.”

She laughs, and although it’s a happy sound, there’s also an undeniable sadness to it. “When your mother finally left us, just after she turned 20, she still hadn’t developed any proficiencies with magic. Marionne had hers for about four years at that point and me for two, so Carmen and I started drifting apart as Marionne and I began to bond over magic. We had many arguments over the years about our abilities and her lack thereof. And although we never thought any different of her, it’s really only natural that she felt left out because of what we were capable of and she wasn’t. We were teenagers. We loved each other dearly, but you know how teenagers can be sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I murmur. “I’ve said some things to Dad that I regret when I was in my teens. Somehow, he didn’t disown me.”

“He would never.” Samira wraps an arm over my shoulder and pulls me into a half hug. “But you’re so full of emotions and not sure what to do with them. We’ll never really know how Carmen felt during those days. When she left us, it was after the biggest argument we’d ever had. She drew these charms on everything in the house that belonged to her to stop us from using those items to track her when she was gone. But of course, because she wasn’t a witch, they had no effect, and we found her anyway.”

As she tells her story, she has that fond smile, and I chuckle along, too. “I understand, I think. Sometimes, I felt jealous of my friends who had luxurious lives and didn’t have the same heavy responsibilities as me. They had freedoms and privileges, and they got to spend years of their life having fun while I was stuck studying and preparing for this huge role that I wasn’t sure I even wanted.”

“We all have our own paths and destinies to follow. We kept tabs on her of course, watching over you from afar, but she needed her space. It wasn’t until much later, when you were just a baby, that we started to truly reconnect again. But by then…” Her smile falters, and she closes the photo album. “Anyway, we’re past that now. You don’t have anything to worry about. That life isn’t yours, and you can move on to do great things.”

I brush a stray curl of hair out of my face. “You have a lot more faith in me than I have in myself.”

“That’s usually how it works, isn’t it? Everyone else sees the greatness in us long before we find it in ourselves because our true selves are still buried in the dirt, while someone outside can sense the seed waiting for the right moment to sprout. At least that’s how Marionne always says it.”

“I hope she’s right.” My fingers linger on the shape of the anti-tracking charm drawn with black pen onto the photo of my mom laying in the grass, golden brown hair fanning around her. “Will you show me how to make an anti-tracking charm?”

“Of course, but we’ll save that for another day. I’m sure you’re tapped out after the hard work you’ve done in the garden.”

I yawn, remembering just how exhausted I am. “I’m beat.” I pull Samira into a brief hug, and she kisses my forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, sweetheart.”

As I walk upstairs, I keep thinking about the practicality of charms compared to growing things in the garden. While I appreciate Marionne’s efforts to teach me directly from the roots of magic, my worry is first and foremost learning how to protect myself against both vampires and vampire hunters. I’m sure she has a plan, but I just don’t see how hours in the garden will get me there anytime soon.

Charms, on the other hand, sound incredibly useful. I hope that my aunts can teach me other techniques in the coming days and weeks that will help me because I’ve never been a fighter, and I highly doubt I ever will be. But I know I have to rely on myself instead of other people to keep me safe. Everything’s uncertain except for me.

Upstairs, I throw myself on the bed and nuzzle into the pillow, relaxing into that deep space as soon as I’m tucked in. I need my rest so that tomorrow I can continue my training. As my mind releases all my worries about the day and the future and winds down, a crunching sound shocks me out of sleep.

My chest squeezes with new anxiety, and I gasp as I bolt upright in search of the source of the sound. The darkness of the room stares back at me.

“Did I imagine that?”

A clunk strikes the window beside me as a pebble strikes the glass. “Psst, Lori!”

The familiar voice causes my heart to seize in my chest, and I press myself against the wall, peeking through the curtain into the moonlit grass in the back of the yard. Down there, I see the most unexpected thing of all: Luke.

How did he find me?