Chapter One

It was that smell, so smothering and recognizable that I knew I should be fearing my life. The air was choking with lilacs and her presence was unbearable to have the idea that she was standing there. A chill ran down my spine and the sweat on my brow coolly went down my cheek slowly like molasses out of a jar. I stood up from the desert ground and gave one last look to the pile of ashes at my feet. I looked out onto the horizon with a pain that overflowed out of me.

   I could hear her sarcastic chuckle from behind me, all I felt was my hand clenching into a white-knuckled fist. I could feel my nails digging into my skin and the pain was nothing compared to what I had just felt. I squared my shoulders and rose my head, ready to fight that witch getting amused by my every single pain.

"Aw," she mocked, "Your boy fail you for his final time." She began to tsk and every tsk made my blood burn and boil underneath my skin. "You see, he was nothing to you. Just some plaything that you stupidly fell for. Haven't you noticed this yet? You are not for him. He is a Fighter, he is the one that protects us. You and I are the same. Whether you accept it or not. Whether you change your profession or not. You will always be a Witch. You have it in your blood. You cannot be a Fighter, no matter how hard you try."

"Shut up!" I yelled. "You don't know anything. You meddle in everything without even knowing what I need. You just swoop in as if you are helping anything." I began swinging my sword by my side as if I was ready to kill her brutally. I turned to her blinded by the red gleam in my eyes and ready to see the blood ooze from her neck. "I was done when I said I was done. Why? Why after all these years to continue to torment me?" I swung my sword aiming for her, but purposely missing to keep going. "What have I ever done to you that makes you want my happiness to be extinct from my life?" I swung at her again, a little closer to her skin this time, just grazing enough to make her flinch. "Just tell me, or fight me, but know that my hatred for you is consistently growing and it will never stop. No matter how close in blood we are, we will always be enemies, no matter how badly you want me to be a Witch right beside you." I was up close to her now, my sword blade against her skirt covered thigh. "You killed him like a beetle under your foot. Is it because you lost your Fighter in battle and you won't admit to yourself that you were in love. But yet, your anger, you focus on me and my leaving and you cannot stand to see me happy and enjoying my Fighter, so you killed him. Now, you are next."

And I swung at her.....

 

 

 

I tried to steady my hand before I threw the five daggers. The wind in the wood began to slowly spur around me as I focused on my target. I tried to imagine the evilness of her face on the bull's eye and my heart began to pick up in pulses, as if getting ready to go into a dark cave in the mountains. But instead of fear, it was pure hatred. My eyes began give a tint of red in the vision. I stepped back and smelled the fresh moistness of the earth beneath my feet. I squared my shoulders and threw my first dagger, hoping that all my training from Jack paid off. I threw one after another like children throwing their rocks in the old woman's house.

"Perfect!" He congratulated to me from behind. He patted my shoulder with his strong hand and almost made me go off-balance from the shock of it. "It was beautiful Gen, just beautiful." His voice just washed me with pride and hugged me from making the several bull's eyes with the new skill he taught me.

   "It is not that great Jack," I humbled. "I still almost missed on that last one." I began to retrieve the daggers that I had thrown from thirty yards away. "Besides, you can throw them from fifty and still keep a great aim," I countered. I could not yet look at him in the eye. Not while he had a brilliant smile on his face and he still looked as good as he did last time I looked at him.

  "Genevieve, this is wonderful for a Witch."

  I shushed him before he let any more of my secrets loose. "You know better to just blurt it out like that."

  "I was mostly hoping that you would look at me Geni," he told me in a quiet voice.

   I kept my eyes on the daffodils that were growing at the base of the tree nearby. I could not look at him, not yet. I looked at our leather covered feet and brown cloth over legs. I noticed how small my feet were compared to his huge ones. The fact made me feel dainty and small. Kind of like the rest of me, soft and subtle, but with that hint of an extra something.

   The idea that he wanted me to look at him made me notice in myself that I was avoiding him. I remembered that it was last week that I actually looked at him, fully. His tousled, baby-soft hair that seemed only to curl at the end framed his forehead in such a way that gave his hazel eyes a sharp glow. It sent my breath out of my body as he looked right into my own eyes. A soft smile played on his pale pink lips on his sun kissed face, he noticed that I was staring at him, but not in that creepy stare that the butcher gives me. It was a stare of unmistakable attraction and that could make any person have a slight rosiness to their cheeks. It made my gut wrench that I could not be with him. It is not that I did not want to, because I did. I have to stay away for his own good, and for his welfare. Not with the powerful magique in my veins. It was too dangerous, not only for himself, but me as well.

  That horrible magique that was once intended for good, made me internally cringe from the idea that I have it in me. It made me feel like sludge that now Witches and Warlocks use it for evil and personal bidding, no longer for its intended purposes of healing and perfecting the world. Since I was a born Witch, the magique was easier for me to obtain and control, and much harder for me to deny. Only Jack and his family knew my true identity as a Witch, while everyone in town speculated about it. Rumors began as soon as my foot stepped into town and has not stopped since. At least the whispering died down in my presence when everyone began to obtain the idea that I was staying in town for good.

   Jack and I sort of conjured the idea that if I were to stay, or if my will came to leave, that I needed to be able to defend myself in any situation, so he began to train me as a Fighter. Normally, Witches would not associate themselves with Fighters, even though their homes are constantly protected by them. More so, females were frowned upon if caught being with their assigned Fighter. Females had the magique gene and in order for the gene to be passed, Witches must mate with Warlocks. With this, the magique became stronger and more powerful with each generation. No pressure, right? Wrong. Warlocks had a horrible temper and the worst at being faithful. All of my sisters that I had before I left were either married to pitiful Warlocks and pregnant, or about to be left with children. I could not stay there and have every shrewd of dignity stripped from me by a horn-dog of a Warlock.

   A shiver ran down my spine from all the pain I left my friends and half-family with, but it was worth it. Jack and his sisters took me in with open arms and I was content in town far from the bustle of the City. A bit too content at that and I noticed Jack's hand over my own.

  I slowly pulled away from his touch and walked over to the target and yanked out my arrows from the stubborn canvas. I knelt on the fresh earthly soil and watched a farm of ants scatter around a few leaves. Quietly wrapping up the equipment and hitching them to my pack, felt a few drops of water spit down from the tree tops.

  "Unless you want to become soaked from the storm," I began. "You should help before the deluge begins."

  Jack, with that helpless romantic look in his eyes, complied wordlessly.

 

"Look at you two," Emily began to shrill at our drenched appearance when we came home. Her red hair seemed to look like a moving fire as she ran around us to minimize the amount of water we brought in the house. "Both of you are going to fall ill and the Medicine Man is out of town." She huffed searching for a towel in one of the launder bins I brought in this morning.

   Felicity gracefully danced in from the kitchen and shook her head of tight dark curls framing her heart-shaped face with an amused expression. "Jack," she playfully scolded. "I warned you this morning about the storm. Your own fault for not listening." Her green eyes looked at him disapprovingly and she chuckled and put herself back in the kitchen before Jack could think of any retort. I could not help a smile, for that thirteen year old girl could make a twenty-two year old boy speechless.

   Emily, assigning herself as Mother Hen when Mumma died a year back, was the eldest at twenty-five and lived here with her husband Mason, the town's blacksmith. They moved into Mumma's room and could once a night leave the rest of us two days without a wink of sleep. They, however, showed love in a pure form when together. Slight things they did made a smile creep up on my face once in a while. Slight kisses and the blush that blooms on Emily's face when he comes around and hold her close to him. It did not matter the amount of magique in my veins, what they had was hard to come by, and more magiqual then whatever I could produce.

   I shucked off my boots and placed them in the corner with the rest of our shoes by the door. Ignoring the banter between Emily and Jack, I began to dry myself off by the fire on the far wall, closest to the dining table of mismatched wooden chairs. The wooden floor creaked under my feet as I walked around. Grabbing a white cloth towel that Emily handed me, I twisted the water out of my hair and brushed my hair free of tangles. I was becoming comfortable until I heard a loud clang from the kitchen.

   On high alert, I bounded in to find Felicity on the ground covered in pots and pans from the ceiling hangers Mason had made. The small room that only had an iron wood-burning stove and a wide barrel for dish washing was a disaster. Emily, being Emily, had the icy blue stare down with Felicity as she began to clean up the mess of skillets and soup pots. I moved the pan of the cooked chicken breasts to the dining table in the idea that it may fall to the floor. And another mess did not seem too helpful for Em tonight.

   "Em, go prepare a bath. You could use it as well as Mason when he gets home from the shop." I began to usher her out of the room just as Mason walked through the door.

   "Honey, I'm home," he called from the doorway.

   "I think I will take that bath," Emily mumbled under her breath. Her eyes seemed to soften with exhaustion and headed out the back door to the bathroom in the back of the house.

"What happened?" Mason stood dumbfounded in the doorframe of the kitchen as I helped Felicity clean up the pots and pans.

  "Mama Bear is just tired and Baby Bear had a slight klutz moment."

  "Where did Em run off to?" Mase shucked off his boots by the fire and dried his hair with the spare hand towel.

  "A bath. Let her be though." I stood up and looked at Mason in the eye. "She needs some time alone, everything is too much right now."

  Mason nodded and assessed the damage in the kitchen. A small grin appeared on his face as he took in Beth a mess from the pots. "How are you doing Baby Bear?"

   Disgruntled over Em's scolding, Felicity did not seem in the mood for games. Slowly rising up from the floor, she shot Mason with one of her usual thirteen year old looks of hatred from humility. Once and a while, Felicity and Mason would banter and could go too far, leaving one of them hurt and sulking in the next room over.

“Hey, Geni,” called Mason. “How was your practice today?” He sat on the old rocking chair, slowly unlacing his leather boots and setting them by the fir next to mine.

            “It went well, that was until the rain cut us short.” I stayed in the kitchen, idly watching over the cooking chicken and occasionally stirring the pot of vegetables.

            Mason came in the kitchen and took my hands away from the food, making me look up at him. His dark eyes peered into mine, he was getting comfortable in my thoughts.

            Mason was not a Fighter, a Warlock, or just plain human. He was a Hyb, a mortal-morphing being that could change in an instant. Some Hybs had great abilities, Mason’s was being able to read a whole mind and speak to someone without being heard.

 

You were crying again last night, Genevieve. His eyes showing a glimmer of sadness, the pain of knowing the truth.

 

Did anyone else hear? Our gaze was intense, reading the other’s emotions and feeling it ourselves.

 

No, I unfortunately am a light sleeper, heard your whimpers from our room. What was the matter? He attempted to dig into my mind, find the nightmare that has been haunting me.

 

I was dreaming about Daniel’s death. The awful smell was invading my lungs, the warm blood from Daniel’s body on my hands, and the burning pain in my heart from his loss.

 

So I can see.

 

Jack cleared his throat, causing Mason to let go of my hand.

 

“We will speak more in the morning.” He gave me a brief hug and retired to his room.

 

“So Mason can talk to you, but I can’t.” Jack spoke, his voice echoing with hurt.

 

“Jack, don’t.” I finished up the food and began setting up our table. I pushed our mismatched chairs in place, fixing up or table places.

 

“Look at me, Genevieve.” He growled as I passed him with a stack of plates and cups.

 

“Not now.” I walked past him, putting the finishing touches on the table. I looked into his eyes, they were pained at my cold demeanor. “This conversation is over.”

 

“For now.” Those were his last words until he walked into his room, slamming the door behind him.