Blood Witch (5 page)

She had gotten home, her anger riding high in the winds. She had come into her power
late and Rich and his master Jonathan had been there, unexpected, to show her what
she could be. They showed her a side she had never seen. Something exotic, different,
tainted. At first she had enjoyed it, but deep down she knew it had been wrong. Her
body had loved the pleasure that they gave her. Rich had been her
soul mate
, both blood witches in the same town. It had to mean something. Jonathan had been
her lover. Human bodies weren’t meant to mate with wereanimals, even in human form,
they were rough. However, she was not a normal human, and she enjoyed the pain. Then
there came the bloodletting, and the dark magic.

She grabbed
Persuasio
n by Jane Austen off the bedside table, and after bunching her pillows around her,
she started reading. Lately her only comfort was Miss. Austen.
Persuasion
was her favorite below
Pride & Prejudice
. Before her new life had started, her awakening into the Opposite Side, she felt
her life was exactly like Anne Elliot. When she had been normal she had been just
a regular plain, young lady. Her family cared little for her. Except as help to pay
bills, they really had no use for her. She had always been the odd one out. So when
Richard introduced her to the Opposite Side, she thought she had stepped into a fairy
tale, because she was pretty to them. Actually, her power was. Sometimes she wished
she never came into her power.

She was getting to the part when Anne finally left to Bath to be with her father and
older sister when her phone rang. Irritated she looked at the number, and noticed
it didn’t have an ID. “Hello?”

“Leslie,” whispered a small, frightened voice. “Here in Snelling, is rogue werebear.
Hurry, help.”

It sounded like a troll. “Where are you?” She jotted down what he hissed to her quickly
before hanging up.

She didn’t like to drive much—she liked being in the passenger seat—driving made her
nervous. The whole reason she learned is that she could stop relying on people to
take her places. And right at the moment, she was angry with Collin and Patrick. She
arrived in Snelling thirty-five minutes later, as the sun started to rise. She drove
down the quiet main street, passing the store and the once Freezie burger place. Her
GPS told her to take a right, and so she did. When she finally stopped, she pulled
up beside the river. Frowning, she checked her gun before getting out of the car.
Magic was good, but sometimes it still didn’t stop certain things. Taking a deep breath,
she got out of the car and started walking to the edge.

She looked around for a bit and finally found a trail down to the river. The trail
turned rough and sharp, sloping downward. She gave out a small prayer to the Goddess
and started down. Her feet slid out under her once, but she managed to catch herself.
The fact that she made it to the bottom alive seemed a huge miracle for her. She paused,
looking at the slow moving water. The river was high, but not as high as it would
be in a month when the snow really started to melt. Other than the wet sounds of the
river, the night seemed eerily quit.

She closed her eyes, and sniffed the air. She knew it seemed very inhuman, and she
never did it with the others around. She smelled human sweat, river water, dead leaves,
new growth, mud, a decomposing animal, and blood. She turned toward the smell and
started walking. She finally came to a small, dilapidated shack after about half a
mile. The brush and undergrowth seemed heavier here, and she had to cut through it
quietly, knowing she was probably doing a bad job at it. Rustling to her left made
her pull her gun. It got closer as she undid the safety. She smelled and felt power,
and then those lively greenish gold eyes blinked at her over the muzzle of her gun.

“Nathan, what the hell are you doing here?” she whispered, clicking on the safety
and holstering the gun.

“I got a call that there was a rogue bear out here.”

“Funny that. I got a call that a rogue bear was out here too.”

“The shack reeks of decomposed animal and blood.”

“I know,” she said and put her hands out in front of her, aiming them at the shack.
She closed her eyes, and let out some energy. She opened her eyes, and looked at Nathan.
“Nothing in there is alive.”

“Well, let’s take a peek,” he said walking past her to the door. He pushed it open
and walked in. She didn’t like this, something seemed off, but she followed after
Nathan, hand close to her gun. The old house wasn’t much of a shack; it had been a
very nice two bedroom house once upon a time. Now the windows were missing glass,
and boarded up, and the walls had last seen paint at least twenty years ago.

Nathan had a door open, as he waited for her. “It’s a sort of basement the smell is
coming from here.”

“That’s what happened to the house. The river took it over,” she said, noticing the
water rot along the walls. She stopped next to him, looking down in the darkness.

“I’ll go if you want to stay up here,” he said, almost in a whisper.

She gave him a small frown. Sure she could think of better things to do than go into
a stinky, probably water filled basement, but this was part of her job as well. And
she couldn’t let the Bear King go down there by himself. She pulled out her mini flashlight,
and flipped it on.

“I see, prepared for anything, huh?” he asked; his voice held an edge of tease with
a bit of unease.

“We work in the dark; flashlights are musts.” She started down the steps.

“What else do you have in your Batman pack?” His voice came very close to her left
ear.

“The usual,” she said and made a small noise as she stepped down into water. She had
thought there might be water down there, but the cold still shocked her. She stopped,
the cold sinking into her shoe and sock.

“What?”

“Water.” She took a breath and stepped into the water. She took four more steps before
hitting the mushy ground. She stood knee deep. “You know, just once I would really
like to not get wet, covered in blood or get dirty. Really, is that too much to ask?”
she said to herself mostly.

Nathan grabbed her arm, the one with the flashlight, and moved it around the very
dark room. His touch startled her just a little, but what really startled her more
was the person at the top of the stairs. The figure threw something in the water,
and slammed the door. A thick gas started to rise from the water, causing a heavy
fog.

Coughing, Leslie, grabbed her cell phone, and wrapped it in the plastic baggy she
usually carried. Nathan didn’t let go of her arm, using it to drag her up the stairs
with him. He banged his other shoulder into the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He did
it again harder, using all his force. The fog slowly filled the room; Leslie had to
sit down. She reached out with her magic, barely feeling the wards. Breathing became
heavy, but it also made it hard to keep her eyes open. She felt so sleepy.

She could hear Nathan slamming his body into the door once more. “Nathan,” she said
but the world went black. She woke up cold, wet, and in the dark, leaning against
the wall. By the smell, she was sure she was in the same place. She opened her magic,
and found the door they came through was heavily warded, and they were now not alone.
Her magic found Nathan, to her right. Someone had come in after they were unconscious
and moved them off the stairs.

“Nathan,” she whispered crawling through the cold, stale water looking for him. Her
head thumped from the drug, and she wasn’t sure her legs would let her stand.

“Wha-,” he said. “Shit. Leslie don’t move.”

“There is a werebear in here with us, isn’t there?” she asked in a frightened whisper.
She had felt animalistic need coming from the other down there with them.

He moved in the water toward her. She could feel him, and it gave her some comfort
but not much. “It’s a cub. He’s going to change. The full moon is in a few days. There
is fresh blood, and he is scared. He won’t be able to fight this.”

Her hands ran over her face, and she touched a couple cuts on her cheek. She explored
her arms and felt more cuts. “Uh-oh, um, that blood is me.”

“How bad?” He moved up against her. His hands reached out and gently ran down her
arms and back up. He paused at her shoulders, briefly and continued up her neck, fingers
gently probing the cuts on her cheek.

“It doesn’t hurt, so it had to have been a very sharp, silver blade.”

A flood light came alive above them, probably on a timer, blinding them all briefly.
They looked around, and saw the boy in the corner, naked and scared. He had dirty
hair and skin, and looked too skinny for his small frame. He tried to fight off the
change. But he would lose, they all did. Once the moon calls, the change happens,
there is no fighting. Already the bones could be heard snapping inside his body.

Nathan pulled off his shirt. Using the water, he cleaned her cuts. “It’s going to
bleed for a while.”

“I think that’s the point,” she said, nervously flicking her eyes to the young man.

He let out a moan, and his body shuddered. “It hurts!” he screamed.

“Oh crap,” Leslie whispered, grabbing onto Nathan’s arm.

That electricity zapped through them. They both sucked in air at the same time. But
she did not let go. And he did something that should have unnerved her, but weirdly
it didn’t. He leaned in as if he was going to kiss her, but then she felt his tongue,
moist and warm, lick her cut. He looked at her with those strange green eyes which
were filled with curiosity.

The boy screamed behind them again. The scream turned into a roar. Nathan crawled
over to the boy using his own magic to sooth the cub. He couldn’t stop him from changing,
but he could control it enough so that it could take longer. He'd wear the cub out
when he turned.

“Who are you?” he asked the sobbing young man.

“Jake,” he whispered through dry, chapped lips. His muzzle was slowly pushing the
bones in his face to break so they could reknit in the shape they wanted.

“Where are you from?”

He shook his head. “Nowhere, mister, just a street kid.”

“You know what is happening to you?”

Leslie got up while Nathan had his chat with the kid. Her legs were steady so she
made her way up the stairs to the door. She placed her hand against it and pushed
some power into the wards, hoping to probe the makings. The ward didn’t like that
at all; it shot back the power and some more hitting her in the chest, hard. She didn’t
remember falling down the stairs, but she lay there in the cold water trying to breathe
as Nathan talked above her, her ears ringing.

She sat up. “Ouch,” she finally managed, her hand rubbing her sternum.

“Just an ouch? Leslie, it looked like you got electrocuted, and whatever it was threw
you down the stairs.”

“I’m going to find whoever did that ward and kick their ass!” She blinked at him.
“Is that better?”

He gave her half a smile and turned back to the cub. The jolt had singed some of her
t-shirt. But she wasn’t about to go around shirtless. She was a tall Amazonian, as
the guys liked to call her. Now was not the time to think about herself. She needed
to break the wards. But she couldn’t figure out what it had been made of. Usually
a witch, a blood witch at that, had a taste to their magic. This ward tasted dirty
but not in just one way. Her brain struggled to place it.

The cub screamed, and Leslie could see that his body had enough and decided on changing.
“This is going to get dirty.”

“Don’t panic,” he said, shooting her a quick look, trying not to keep his attention
off the cub too long.

“Too late,” she said, trying to calm her heart. All she needed to do was make herself
a big enough target.

He came to her, and held her face in his big hands. The electricity flared. Her magic
started to break through, which happened when her emotions were high. “Breathe,” he
whispered to her.

“I know what happens to the newly changed. They’re hungry.”

He nodded, and leaned his forehead to hers. “I can’t stop it. This is going to be
ugly, just close your eyes okay.”

She did, but she could hear everything, all his bones breaking and reknitting themselves
together. The sound was in-between a dog drinking water, and a messy eater eating
something very gross. His screams turned to roars. Finally, after all the bones we
reknitted, the cub gave a roar that shook the small room they were trapped in. Nathan
turned, keeping his back pressed to her, blocking her view. She did what she believed
was the stupidest move ever, but couldn’t help herself; she wrapped her arms around
him. The flare of the electricity that entered her body, made her weak, and she leaned
her head against the back of his neck.

The more skin that she pressed against him, the more of the electrical feeling zapped
through her. But then something else happened. Her magic opened, but it didn’t go
wild. Instead, it touched Nathan’s beast. His power flowed from him, mingling with
hers. For a second, they were nothing but magic. And then as one they looked at the
cub, angry and hungry as it slowly advanced on them fully in bear form. As one, they
willed it to sleep. And it did just that. It lay down in the water and went to sleep,
the bear body slowly turning back to human.