Chapter One
A blind witch walks into the woods...
Ok, that sounded like the start to a bad joke.
And stop freaking out. It’s just a temporary lack of vision, nothing permanent.
Anyways, I walk through the woods, mindful of my steps so that I don’t tip off my targets and give away my location. Hunting is hard as fuck when I have to rely on my other senses more heavily. But I can do this.
I slow my breathing and listen, leaning into my trisense hearing.
There it is. Two heartbeats.
Hesitating, I listen for any sound that could indicate where they are other than a vague direction. It does you no good to track someone if you simply bump right into them because you wandered around aimlessly.
There were nine when I started this hunt. The first two were easy pickings and hadn’t even bothered with shields. The third and fourth worked together, which ultimately led to their dual elimination since they both seemed to have boulders for feet.
Then there was the fifth, who was far trickier, and had me going in circles for a little while, but a minor slip that had them circling back on themself, and I got them easily. The sixth and seventh were working against each other, which had seriously confused me at first, and I truly thought it was some type of strategy, but when it became obvious that it was a matter of ego, I was able to take them out when their maneuvers lead to full-on verbal bickering.
These last two though, have proven far more capable than their allies. The eighth and ninth contenders have been sneaky. Their tricks with evasion have had them just outside of my reach for nearly two hours now.
Reaching out again with my senses, I still only manage to pick up on their heartbeats and a vague direction. Steady, but elevated. Close, and yet just outside of my reach.
Where the fuck are they?
Picking up a brief trace of magick to my right, I push out with a pulse of air in that direction. It doesn’t connect with my target, but when I hear the crunch of dead leaves on the deserted forest floor to my left, I adjust my trajectory and send out another small gust of wind.
THUMP!
Hearing my target hit the ground, I rush to assess the situation.
When I pull down my blindfold, I come face-to-face with a very grumpy Taryn, an eleven-year-old merfolk boy. He is sitting on a mossy space with his arms crossed his chest and a scowl firmly in place. To be fair, I don’t think I have actually seen the kid smile, but his frown and the wetness pooling in his eyes say that he may have landed a little harder on his butt than he had hoped. Crouching down closer, I offer him a small smile.
“Are you okay?” I ask, even though I know he wouldn’t tell me if he wasn’t. While the children from the merfolk village were more than willing to help me with my training practice today, they are still afraid of me.
Sadly, so are their parents.
Not that I would ever bring them any harm. I have grown to love these people almost as much as I love their primary healer. I’m just a wee bit of a klutz. Combine that with some Goddess-level powers and… well, let’s just say that people have been known to lose their eyebrows around me from time to time.
Ok, just one time. But the whole village heard and won’t let me forget it.
Picking on me has become their favorite pastime over the last few days. Although, I suspect that is just their coping mechanism, trying to make light of the wounds they are still healing from. The battle took a lot out of them when they weren’t really a tribe of warriors to begin with. Toss in some healthy trepidation for the witch that came back from the dead, and well...
Yeah, I think I would be nervous around me too at that point.
“You peeked,” Taryn accuses, drawing my attention back to my successful capture of my eighth training partner. His accusation raises my hackles for a minute before I remind myself that he is only a kid. Of course, he’s a bit of a sore loser.
I hold my hands out in a defensive position. “I didn’t look once, I swear. I think it was these big trompy feet I heard that gave away your location.” With a huge ornery smile, I reach down and tickle the bottom of his foot. Like all of us, he is barefooted. Unlike me, the kid has no ticklish bones in his body and continues giving me a death glare while I unsuccessfully try to tickle his foot.
Well, this is awkward as fuck.
Do I stop, or should I keep trying to make him laugh?
Do I help him up, or just leave him to find my last target?
And why the fuck am I still wiggling my fingers against his smelly foot like an idiot?
Finally, my brain catches up with my movements, and I decide to pull my hand away before I continue to make an ass of myself. I guess I’m not the greatest around kids. I mean, I was never really around many before, and I have never even held a baby, so I guess it’s to be expected.
Abandoning any chance of inciting laughter, I take the mature route and stick my tongue out at Taryn as I stand up and turn away from his everlasting frown. Pulling my blindfold back in place, I take a few centering breaths. I feel Taryn’s energy pulsate slightly as he stands. He doesn’t move for a minute, and I don’t have to be able to see right now to know that he is probably sticking his tongue out at my back.
Or maybe he’s giving me the finger? I could have sworn he did that to me yesterday when I won our chess game, but he pulled out some wicked sweet eyelash batting and I checked my accusation real quick. That kid is a genius.
When I finally hear Taryn stomping away–and I’m pretty sure while putting extra effort into those trompy feet of his–I readjust my focus. It’s time to get back to my training anyways. I have one last kiddo to find in this weird version of hide-n-seek.
Cordelia designed the game and enlisted the help of a few of the village tweens. She pulled the nine that were strongest at shielding magick for this one to help exercise my tracking skills. She has been my rock these last few days. Between the late-night talks when the pain in my chest becomes nearly unbearable, to helping me get my magick in shape fast, we have grown a tight bond.
She makes me feel safe when she soothes me but strong when she pushes me. She sees my potential, and not just because of what I could mean for her and her people, but for what I could become to myself . I truly am grateful that she has been pushing my training and designing so many exercises, because I seriously need to track down my man.
Well, not my man.
Just a man.
I mean, he is technically my soul-bond mate, but he’s still his own person.
You know what? Let’s just find this kid already.
I take a deep centering breath and let it out slowly. The smell of the trees, dirt, and tiny hint of the ocean fills my senses with calm. I truly do love this area and could see myself living here for the rest of my days happily with Blake.
WHAT?! Where the fuck did that thought come from?
Although, I guess the more important question is whether that is really what I want. Especially since Blake is my soulbond mate.
Relaxing my face from the frown I seem to have stuck in place, I remember that I really don’t need to think about that right now. I just need to focus on one thing at a time, and right now, I need to focus on finding my last victim–er… target.
Breathing in deeply again, I immerse myself in the scents of the living and dying cycle of the forest we are training in. Flexing my toes in the dirt and moss-packed ground beneath me and centering my focus on the task at hand. When the sounds of the fauna around me begin to fade with my continued focus, I feel it. It’s like a small tap on my arm, and I instinctively move in that direction.
Keeping my steps light to avoid being heard, I weave my way through the thick trees. I can hear the birds chirping endlessly around me and have to focus harder to drown out their songs. After a few feet, that tapping sensation encourages me to turn right. I continue on like this for about five minutes. Turning and weaving, slowly being pulled like a moth to a flame, when my entire body erupts into goosebumps. Again, acting on instinct, I reach my right hand out and grasp the air as if were a solid force, then pull it to me.
The startled screech from Len, lets me know that I have won the game. A huge smile crosses my lips as I pull down the blindfold, only to be met with the face of an angry twelve-year-old girl. I open my mouth, but before I can get a single word out, she is striding past me and yelling over her shoulder.
“Yes, well done, oh mighty Noctifer Witch. You won a child’s game against a bunch of children !”
I can’t tell if it’s shock or just the fact that Len is trying to get away from me as fast as possible, but either way, I have been stunned into silence.
Sighing deeply, I scrub my hands down my face as the old hurt bubbles up. Kids didn’t even want to play with me when I was a kid. Why should they feel any different now? Were the kids from my childhood village afraid of me because of my strange eyes, or could they feel my immense power bubbling just under the surface?
No matter the reason, it still sucks ass.
Yes, it was a child’s game. But I still won, and what Len doesn’t realize is that a few weeks ago, I didn’t have magick at all, let alone the magnitude I have now. I’m starting at the beginning, and while I’m catching on fairly quickly, it’s still been a struggle.
My power begins to swirl on the breeze, and I know that I need to get it reigned in immediately before it gets out of control.
I start by lifting my hands straight into the air on a deep inhale and then bend forward at the waist until I’m touching the ground in front of me on the exhale. Standing up slowly from that position, I bounce on my toes while shaking out my arms. Repeating the motions a few times, I feel more at ease with each set. The process helps to clear my focus instantly, and I’m even more grateful to Cordelia for teaching me the trick.
Feeling much more grounded, I begin walking back towards the merfolk village. I have been here for three days now since I woke-up from my near-death experience–
Although I did die, so I guess it was an un-dead experience? No, that implies I’m a zombie and we have established that those are sadly just a myth made-up by humans. No brain-eating, flesh-decaying reanimated corpses here. Nope, just a super badass witch, who pulled herself back from the Ether.
So as I was saying, it’s been three days since I died, and Cordelia has spent every moment she can spare teaching me everything that she possibly can. Although, there are two big reasons why I know that our time together will be ending soon.
Reason number one, is Blake. He is my supposed soul-bond mate, total asshole half-breed, super sexy hunk, and Cordelia’s grandson, who was taken captive. Who snagged him from us? A group of corrupt magickals that are working for–or with, we aren’t clear on that yet–the very creature that I have spent the last three years of my life guarding, and Blake has spent his entire adult life hunting.
The Creatori...
Even just thinking the creature’s name, has me stopping for a moment and clenching my fists.
The monster who can make any magickal nearly wet themselves in fear. The Creatori is a monster that feeds on the life-force energies of magickal beings.
Thankfully, there have been moments throughout the past thirty years when stronger magickals have been able to put the creature into a stasis, which seems to last a few years at a time.
Unfortunately, the monster can only be put in stasis by a special spell that inevitably kills the caster. Last time, that was my own mother.
I begin walking again, and a sad smile lights my face like it always does when I think about Elswyth.
My mother never did anything the way it was expected of her. Blame it on her wild heart.
So, needless to say, she didn’t exactly go into the Ether like she was supposed to at first. Which is mostly my fault when I started throwing around magick that I didn’t understand, while we were battling the monster together. A small part of her life essence was able to hold on to mine and found sanctuary in the body of a dragonfly.
She stayed around me in that form for the last three years, and was able to watch me and guide Blake to me in dreams. When I died a few days ago, though, her small form was caught in the crossfire. She met me in the Between and guided me back to my body, while also filling me in on a few details I may have been missing before she passed on to the Ether. The pain from her second death is still there, but witnessing her passing into the Ether soothed something deep inside my soul. Something that I didn’t know was still in agony over losing her.
Which was a good thing because I had quite the task list ahead of me. Finally finding peace with losing my mother, has given me a newfound strength that I know I will need for what’s to come.
My strides start to take on a more determined pace. I could have easily used my transport magick to take me back to the village instantly, or even stretched my wings with some flying practice–Gods knows I could use it. But I am grateful for the walk and the time it has given me to sift through my thoughts.
When I enter the village, I head straight for Cordelia’s house, in desperate need of a shower and some food. However, when my stomach grumbles loudly, I decide that I’m not too picky about the order of those things. Unfortunately, I just barely make it past the merfolk village healer commorancy, where Cordelia spends most of her days as the village’s lead healer, when a deep voice tickles across my spine.
“You must be Forsythia.” The deep, cold voice leaves a trail of goosebumps across my skin and my heart begins to beat harder. Dread washes over me.
I know that I shouldn’t turn around, and to be completely honest, a tiny part of me even says to run away. However, I’m apparently a glutton for punishment because what do I do? Well, I turn around, of course.
He’s tall, maybe just a bit more so than Blake, and I actually find myself looking up at him a little to meet his gaze. His body is built like a warrior, and his skin is the color of my favorite caramels. When I see his face, I understand where his son got his good looks, except for his eyes that have a much greener hue to their bold blue. Although, where Blake’s smile is cocky yet still warm, this man’s expression is stern and cold.
He doesn’t need an introduction because I already know exactly who this is. He’s the merfolk clan leader.
Dagon Coakley.
Also known as Blake’s father.
From what I have learned through Cordelia, he’s not the best father to Blake and is fueled by pure rage at any mention of the Creatori. Like Blake, she also seemed to feel that it was best he didn’t know too much about me, as he would find my mere existence an insult from the Gods.
He was also the second reason that I needed to be leaving soon. But it looks like ‘soon’ up and left without me. I just hope we have managed to keep my true identity a secret. I can feel his aura, and while I believe that he is a good man at his core, and a dedicated leader for his people, he would also see no problem taking any weapon that he feels would do greater good in his control.
And I am the biggest weapon in existence.
Taking a calming breath, I give him a slight nod and smile. After all, maybe I can sneak away as soon as he dismisses me.
“So the rumors are true. The Noctifer Witch has arrived.”
The smile falls from my face the second the words leave his lips.
Well, fuck…