Chapter 13
Katheren:
Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, they all feel the same to me. Every second without him was like an eon to me, each more painful than the last. Realistically, I couldn't have been gone more than a month, two at the most, but thinking about the pain he must be going through nearly killed me.
I sat down on the forest floor. Sometime after the time that I left, I had talked to my grandmother, she tried to convince me to stay back, that we would get the warlocks over time. But nothing she could say, nothing she could do would change my mind.
She made me promise that I would stay safe though, she also gave me a lot of advice and a grimoire. She also told me what I needed to do first... and that it was very dangerous. So here I was now, sitting in the outside of a pentagram with a circle around it with candles at each point about to do a séance.
I made the actual pentagram with long sticks that I found in the forest. The circle around it was made entirely of salt to keep away evil spirits- whatever that meant- from exiting the circle and also served as a way of purifying the circle. Each candle that were at the points of the pentagram put on the outside of the circle represented a different element: air, earth, fire, water, and spirit, and as invocation was needed before each was lit.
I reached over and took the old book out of my backpack that Grams had given me. "Okay, it's now or never," I whispered to myself and opened up the book to the page indicated with a book mark.
Our family book was in the most powerful wiccan language... to bad that I didn't speak it. I thought it was Latin, but I wasn't sure. There was something beside the book mark in the page though, there was a folded piece of paper and thankfully, it was in English. I read it out loud, the words falling effortlessly off my tongue like I had practiced this hundreds of times before. I felt that pull again and I opened my eyes- which I hadn't realized I closed- and looked straight into Aikaterine's sparkling forest green eyes.
"So you are finally ready to learn, child?" she asked me.
I nodded, but I couldn't bring myself to care enough to ask her how she knew that. I wanted to know all about being a witch. I couldn't stop this mess unless I knew how to.
She smiled. "Very well then. What do you know?"
"I know about fifteen spells," I said quietly.
She nodded again and sat down within the circle so that she was at the same level as I was. "Do you know the history at all?"
I shook my head.
"Then we will have a long, interesting conversation. "The magical world consists of angels, demons, witches, warlocks, and humans, nothing more, nothing less. The other myths of the human kind, such as vampires, shapeshifters, cyclopes, are all one of those five creatures. The myths are usually of demons changing their shape- or it is even their true appearance- or the myths of gods are usually angels. The five live in a balance, angels are the good to the demon's evil, witches are the good to the warlock's evil, and human keep the balance as well as tip it- easily manipulated creatures they are. They are not told of us since they do not like anything different and they reproduce faster than us so they could very likely annihilate us if they were to discover us hiding in plane sight.
"Since I have a feeling that you know as much as you need to at the moment of angels, demons, and humans, I will tell you about the other two. Witches and warlocks are humans who have a special ability of controlling their life force and the life force of nature. Witches use white magic, which is good magic and tends to be used for the benefit of mankind. Warlocks use black magic, which is evil magic and usually only tends to benefit themselves. Gray magic is used by both and is the in between, neither good nor evil.
"Warlocks begin as witches. Unsatisfied with being mortal- which both witches and humans are, even though their lifespans differ greatly- they off a sacrifice of blood- the killing of a human so to speak- and become sort of a half demon, an immortal, but at the price of their soul.
"Immortals do not have souls, the reason I do not know. And when they are killed, they do not die, only sent away for a time. They do to either heaven, if they are angels, or hell, if they are demons or warlocks. Mortals, when we die, go to the afterlife until we are ready to be reborn. While mortals start over from scratch, once the immortals are able to regenerate after their 'deaths', they begin as they left off, same memories, same powers, same looks, and same persona. It is technically impossible to kill an immortal, only to hold them off for a few generations."
"So what's the point in killing Sara," I asked morosely, "if she is just going to come back again?"
Again, she smiled at me. "Child, I only said that there is no way to kill an immortal, not no way to kill a warlock." My expression must have been as confused as I felt because she continued. "You make them mortal first."
"How's that possible? They have no soul."
"Normally, only angels or demons have the power to control souls, but you, my child, are different. The Wiccan Chosen One, as they have come to call it over the years, has the power to control souls, that is why there has only been one every five hundred years or so, that power is why they are so powerful. It is also why the other Ancestors and I can commune with you, you are able to bridge to the afterlife."
"So... I what?"
"Angels and demons are created without souls, but warlocks give up their soul. They travel to the afterlife, but are prevented from ever being able to move on and being reborn since their body and minds are still alive. You, along with the natural immortals, can control the souls and use your connection to the afterlife and put them back into their host bodies, thus making them mortal, before killing them."
"So I could bring people back from the dead?" I asked, thinking about my parents.
"Yes and no."
"How can it be both?"
"It is entirely possible to bring someone back as long as they have not moved on yet... but they do not come back... the same."
"What do you mean?"
"They come back" -she struggled to find the right word- "changed. They are like... a zombie, possessed, not the same person as they were while they were alive. If you do not bring them back within the first five seconds, then they will not be the person that you knew. It is dangerous and should not really be done."
I felt hollow again. My little burst of hope dissipating back into the nothingness of his absence, the absence that I caused. "So can you teach me how to stop her?"
Aikaterine nodded gravely. "If I must."
"I've gotten better at learning spells," I observed in a groan as I sank down to the ground.
She chuckled. "No, you could have easily learned the other spells, it is just that they were teaching you as if you were a normal witch, you aren't, so it was much harder for you to learn. Go home, rest, we can talk again tomorrow." When I nodded, she just shimmered away, there was moment and gone the next.
I slowly cleaned up any evidence of the circle and anything that I messed up with my spells that I had done. I shoved my stuff back into my backpack and made my way back out of the woods. It took an hour to drive back to the motel that I had been at since I left my grandmothers. I was somewhere in Utah, but I wasn't sure exactly where and I didn't really care.
Talking with Aikaterine had given me a distraction from everything but now the emptiness came rushing back. I sat on my hotel room, staring at nothing, feeling nothing.
Daren:
"Ryan, are you trying to piss me off?" I asked him without heat.
"I'm trying to cheer you up, man," my best friend said and lightly hit my shoulder.
I didn't move from my face down position in my bed. "There's only one way to do that and whatever you do can't make that happen."
"You know why she left you, right?"
I tried to bury my head deeper into the pillow. I didn't want to hear this, I could handle it. She'd been gone for two and a half months, but it pain still felt fresh.
"She left," Ryan continued, totally ignoring my finch, "because she wanted to protect you."
I sat up. "What are you talking about?"
"Seriously, man, you don't see it?"
"I'm not even a full blooded witch like you and I can tell. She left because she thought it could save you from being killed by Sara, not any of those lies that she sold you. God, you can be such a dumbass sometimes."
I ran my hand through my hair, trying to come to terms with what I was just told. "Wait, what?!"
"You're girl's planning on taking on that warlock alone."
I shot off of the bed. "Shit!" I was shocked- and horrified- that I didn't even noticed that I swore.
"Yeah, you should probably go find her."
I looked over at him, my eyes wild. "How?!"
Ryan grinned. "I might just have a way..."