Quick Author's note!
Dedicated to Britt, because, well, She's awesome and inspiring! I love your work ma'am!
My first contest here!
Let's try a contest:
Get Witch Way up to 1300 total reads, and 50 total votes, then I'll upload the next chapter! Off to work lads and lasses!
Chapter 12
She stumbled in the darkness, catching her foot on an upturned root. She tried to avoid the towering trees, landing instead on the floor of the forest. The moss covering the ground was soft, but it was filled with prickling thorns from the vines that seemed to have taken over the place.
She could tell it had once been a beautiful place, even with the darkness obscuring her vision. The vision of what the forest had once been filled her mind. The trees would have been full of life and free of vines. The moss on the floor had once been entirely soft, perhaps even patchy in spots, exposing the loamy soil of the forest floor. Exotic flowers had been in bloom here at some point, before the evil leeched all of the good out of it.
She shook her head and wondered where the thought about evil came from. It wasn't long before she recieved her answer in the form of a creepy disembodied voice.
"It's because you recognize my presence here, daughter." The voice, which she identified quickly as that of Lawrence, quashed any hopes she had that the dream was just that. A Dream.
"Why are you doing this to me? I'm your daughter for the sake of the Goddess." Her voice shook with the fear and adrenaline that came from remembering the earlier confrontation with the man.
"And because you are my daughter, everything you are, and have, belongs to me." The voice paused speaking to let out a maniacal chuckle. "Unfortunately for you, of course, all I want from you is the power you were born with."
"Why? Why do you need it. You seem plenty powerful to me!" She exclaimed in indignation.
"Because eventually that little coven in town will come for me. My little birdie in their midst has made me aware of that. And when they come, I need an edge. You'll give me that." As he explained his reasoning, his tone suggested that it made sense and was completely reasonable.
"You'd kill your own daughter for something as trivial as power?" Her voice was a whisper for fear that if she angered him, he may actually show himself and commence to fight her.
"Yes. I would. See you were conceived for that reason, and that reason only. So that you could be trained, and when you came into your full powers, sacrificed for my gain. It should be looked upon as an honor." The voice grew louder and seemed to be beginning to emanate from one point in front of her, instead of all around as it was at first.
She didn't understand that this meant he was gaining strength, so when he implied that her death for his personal gain was an honor, she finally lashed out, putting magick and force behind her words.
"There is nothing you can say to me to make me think it would be an honor." She practically spat the word, her voice growing louder with each utterance. "You are pure evil, Dear Daddy, and I will never do any of this willingly. And what's more, you will leave Soren alone!"
She was too angry to notice that as soon as she sneered at the term 'Dear Daddy' a pool of shadows began to take a vaguely humanoid form just ahead and to her left. But as a voice came from what she then assumed was the head of the figure, she shrank back only to find herself cowering against a tree.
"You will do whatever, and I do mean whatever, I tell you to. Either in compliance, or by force. Though forcefully will not be pleasant for you." The shadowy presence began to glide towards her at such a speed that she didn't have time to move away from the tree to run. "Though I will enjoy every sound of pain you make when I torture you for your insolence. You will beg for death."
The last declaration snapped Shayla partially to her senses and she began to scream. When the apparition slammed into her, creating a kind of pain that she thought would kill her then and there, her screams of terror became the desperate cries of someone being tortured to death.
All she could think was 'Someone, anyone, Please wake me up!'
)O(
Soren was huddled in the center of the guest room bed, trying desperately to sort out his thoughts. He had strong feelings for Shayla, but sometimes she could be so hard to deal with. She was always on the defensive and though he knew there was probably plenty in her past to explain that, it didn't make their relationship any easier. She didn't seem to understand that his cockiness and the way he always seemed so detached from everything was the way he coped with his own life.
His Coven Master, Lawrence, found him sleeping in the streets at the tender age of fourteen after his coven had disbanded. Since his parents had been gone for a long time, that left him with no one to depend on. He learned the ways of the streets, used his magic only to save himself, or anyone who was innocent and being mugged, or worse, that he happened to come upon. When Lawrence found him it was like he had finally found the light at the end of the tunnel. Someone wanted him.
He spent many years doing whatever was asked of him out of fear of being turned away again. Eventually though, the stories of his Coven Master and his exclusive inner circle's torture sessions and, occasionally, cold blooded murder, reached his no longer innocent ears. This terrified him even more and pushed him to continue working his best, but also taught him to keep his head down when he needed to, and show no weakness any other time. Being snarly was a way to pretend it was all okay. That nothing bad was happening. His fellow coven mates were none the wiser.
When he was approached and given his assignment, Shayla, he nodded his head and informed them that a little girl should be easy to handle. Boy, was he wrong. Laying there in bed he wondered when it had all changed. When it had stopped being just an assignment he didn't really understand or want, to a personal issue where the woman he cared for was in danger.
He was debating to himself about how to apologize to her the next morning when an earth shattering scream echoed through the house.
"HELP ME!" He was off the bed and to the guest room door before she screamed again. When he entered her room in a sprint, her next shriek was wordless, but reverberated against his eardrums causing a strange tickle at the back of his throat.
Shayla was tangled in the bedding as though she had tried to tie herself up in her sleep. Little did he know that in her dream, she was lashed to one of the towering trees while her father tortured her psyche.
Soren didn't give it a second thought as he bent down and began untangling her from the sheets. He worked faster when he heard a snarl that seemed to come from within Shayla, but not actually from her. It was right then that he knew who had her in the dream. How could he have been so stupid. To leave her alone after her ordeal was sentencing her to excruciating torment from Lawrence.
As soon as he had her free she began to thrash about so wildly that he had to bodily hold her to avoid her ending up on the floor. When his skin came into contact with hers he felt that familiar sting of dark magic and began to shake Shayla's shoulders to try and awaken her.
"Shayla. Baby it's alright. But you've got to wake up now." He talked soothingly to her, he yelled, he even tried to shake her awake until his arms grew tired. When he knew that neither of them could take much more he called up all of the power he could muster and shoved it all into her with only one intent. To protect her and bring her back to him.
The thrashing, and he assumed the torture, stopped almost immediately. It took several more minutes for her eyelids to begin to flutter. In that time he pulled himself off of her and grabbed a cool, damp cloth from the bathroom. He perched himself off of the edge of the bed so that he could clean the sweat from her forehead when her eyes opened. Something wasn't right though, they seemed vacant, and an almost malicious aura surrounded her.
The familiar, yet foreign, eyes twitched over to him and Shayla's sweet mouth morphed into a sneer. "This isn't over boy." Lawrence's voice threatened out of her mouth.
Just as suddenly as her eyes had opened, her mouth did the same and a strange black energy flew out, buzzed around the room then shot through one of the windows, blowing out the glass in the process.
Soren looked down at Shayla and was relieved to see her eyes fluttering again. When he heard a pained moan escape her lips he stopped cleaning her face and neck and leaned down to plant a kiss on her lips. She opened her eyes in fear before realizing who it was and relaxing into his embrace.
"What happened Shay?" He inquired. He was careful to keep his voice soft and neutral, because from past experience, after any sort of big ordeal she tended to go on the offensive.
"I was dreaming, and then- then- then he was there. And- Oh god the pain Sor. The pain." She didn't cry for some reason, but he assumed it was because she had probably cried while she was sleeping through the pain. She was just out of tears.
He nodded, knowing full well the type of pain she endured. "It does go away. I promise it does."
A glimmer of hope shone in her eyes and his heart jumped a little. "I'm sorry about earlier. What you just went through, that's what he was doing to me while I was gone. It, well It's just hard to admit that the big, cocky, ladies man eventually cried uncle."
She waved away his apology and nestled her head into the crook of his neck. He assumed that meant all was forgiven, so he wrapped his arms around her and shifted himself to lay next to her. He thought that she would probably want to go right back to sleep, since he was pretty sure that her father's power stores were depleted after two psychic confrontations. She, as always, surprised him when she sat up and turned to him.
"Soren, he let something slip that I don't think he meant to." The ferocity and sheer determination on her face was truly a sight to see. He stifled a smile and nodded her onwards.
"He's got someone feeding him information from inside the town's coven. I don't know who, but it's a higher up member I'm thinking." Now he scowled as he concentrated, wondering how to find out who it could be.
"Do you have any thoughts on who it could be? Maybe that Dillan guy? I don't like him anyway." He stated as if it were the simplest and plainest solution in the world. He didn't like what she said next, or the regret in her eyes when she said it.
"He hasn't done anything wrong. He tried to protect me many times. I was just too stubborn to see it." He opened his mouth to point out the kiss at Lammas, but she cut him off before he could say it. "Yes, he should have gone about it differently, but Soren, I need all the training I can get, and he's a powerful witch. Between you, him, and Amethyst, maybe I'll be better prepared when we actually have to meet him face to face. Because it will happen you know."
He tried to think of a way to argue her out of her decision but he saw the logic in it. Jealousy wasn't reason enough to leave her any less prepared than she could be. He was just hoping fervently to himself that her fling with him was over. He wasn't really one to share with anyone, much less someone he despised so much.
Dillan and his Aunt and Uncle were three of the people from his original coven. He and Dillan were even friends at one point. But when they disbanded, after death of the High Priest, Dillan had a family to cling to, while everyone shunned the poor little almost orphan.
This was no time to bother her with such trivial things, so he agree hesitantly and finally talked her into letting him make her some tea and then get some sleep so that she could speak with Dillan about helping her train tomorrow.
He gritted his teeth, but made and brought her the tea to relax and reenergize her before crawling into bed next to her. Soren marveled at how much better it felt to be in the bed with her, as he had become accustomed to. Shayla drained the last drop of her tea and nestled down into his arms, facing him. He thought she almost looked scared of falling asleep. Or more accurately, dreaming. He basked in the feel of her in his arms and began to run his fingers through her hair to soothe her to sleep.
She smiled contentedly and sighed before she drifted off to sleep and he planted a gentle kiss on her forehead and attempted to join her. Tomorrow was going to be a doozy. Because there was no way she was going alone to see Dillan.
)O(
A/N
Read, Comment, Vote, Fan, just do your thing! Check out my new novel, Dark Hunters: The Rebellion as well! If you notice any errors, please feel free to point them out. I type fast, so I often dont notice that I've misspelled something or typed the instead of then or something like that! Thanks!
<3
JessieB
Let's try a contest:
Get Witch Way up to 1300 total reads, and 50 total votes, then I'll upload the next chapter! Thanks!