Sapphire Curse, page 17
part #1 of Rebels of the Realms Series
The blood showed her a slender man tied to a baobab tree in Africa. He was panicked but had lost the will to fight. Perhaps it had seeped out from the wounds that covered his dark skin. His body was riddled with symbols and fang marks. It was early into the night, the sun having just escaped the sky in fear of what the thirteen witches around him were attempting with their snakes and fire.
Flung to reality again, Darcy heaved to try to catch her breath. This definitely had been a horrible idea, but it seemed there was no turning back. How long would it take a single drop of blood to complete its course? Would there be anything left of her when it was finished?
With the images came pressure in Darcy’s head she had never experienced. The man’s jaw snapped because it couldn’t handle the depth of the cry that leapt from him. The coven had all ages, from young children to the elderly. They all chanted around the man in unison.
Darcy used the next surge of pain to throw herself to her stomach. Her gut wrenched, and sweat bubbled on her face. Though her bones warned they might not be able to hold her, she was determined to move.
The man tried to break free from the tree, but it took the last of his strength. His head fell over. The coven went quiet. They weren’t concerned about him. They drew closer, curious.
Darcy latched onto the doorframe and growled, beastlike and unnatural for her mortal voice. Watson wailed and ran upstairs.
While the man remained unconscious and draped in blood and wounds, the coven was ambushed by a group of men and women that carried wooden staffs. Their ears were pointed at the top, the only physical trait that marked them as something other than human. They pinned the witches to the ground.
Darcy gasped in the lull in the images like she had been drowning in the blood and was trying to cling on to life. On her hands and knees, she clawed her way down the hall. She felt as though the walls were twisting and breaking, trying to stop her from moving forward. It was as though they wanted her to remain in the flashes of the images forever.
The wooden necklaces glowed with white light. The witches squirmed on the ground as their own mouths sprang open. Light from their bodies streamed out as though lured away from them with a song. The necklaces absorbed the light.
When the last of a witch’s life left her body, she went limp. Eyes rolled back and stayed open, making them more like dolls than humans. The elderly and the children were all victims. There was one woman who watched her child’s life drift away, illuminating the darkness before disappearing into a necklace. She shouted at the attacker, revealing to Darcy that these newcomers were elves.
By the time Darcy made it to the bathroom her lower half had given up on her. She pulled herself forward with only her arms, moving as fast as she could in fear they would soon abandon her too. Her vision blurred with a red cast like the ancient blood had pulled a veil over her eyes.
The elves took up the last witch, a sturdy woman who tried to flee. They pinned her down with the ends of their staff. A man adorned with four rings up his neck stood over her, blocking the moon from her sight. She muttered to herself like a prayer, but it was a spell. He smacked her jaw with his staff, stopping her. His necklace glowed, brighter than the stars.
Darcy pulled herself up to the toilet and fell over it the second her muscles gave way. Her head hung in the opening of the seat. She couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. Though she didn’t move she could have sworn she was on a ship the way her insides swayed from one side to the other.
As the light from the witch trailed up to the elf above her, he was knocked off his feet. The other elves that held down the witch vanished. It was no illusion, and there was plenty of proof left behind. Blood sprayed across the witch from every direction.
Darcy heaved. Her stomach swelled with heat and pressure. She coughed four times though nothing escaped.
The baobab tree no longer held the slender man captive, if he could even be called a man anymore. He tore the throats of all the elves, drank what he wanted, and let the rest feed the dry ground while he moved onto the next. The witch watched the massacre. Soon there were no elves left. The man turned to the last witch with a growl in his chest.
Darcy growled too.
The slender man faced the witch. His wounds had healed though it was difficult to tell from the blood that cloaked his entire chest. He cleaned his fangs with his tongue. The witch tried to order him to back away, but his strides moved forward instead. She scrambled on the ground. The man was feral. He was uncontrollable. He came after her.
The pressure in Darcy’s stomach finally broke into her throat, and she vomited. Her whole body convulsed. Heat ripped up from her chest and into her mouth. Her tongue was flavored with metal and blood. Her mind was stained with the cries of the witches and the agonizing growl of the failed vampire.
Then it was done like one might get over eating a bad dinner. Darcy went cold and clammy. It took a few tries, but she soon flushed the blood in hopes of never seeing it again. Watson dared to enter the room to check on her.
She slid to the floor and let her muscles take their time in remembering how to work. Watson licked her feet. The blood was gone and so were the controlling flashes. She hoped soon the memories of them would follow, but she was prepared for disappointment.
The thing Darcy had a difficult time keeping down was the realization that the images brought. There were things that lived among mortals that were as dangerous—if not worse—than vampires and witches. Even more unsettling was that Darcy feared she was only beginning to scratch the surface.
17
Darcy hadn’t seen a vampire in real life since she and Thomas had encountered the realm of penance. Xavier had gone off on him, but the second Darcy was well enough to defend him, Xavier had gone quiet and retreated to his room. He couldn’t look at Darcy, and she didn’t know why. After what she had seen from his blood, she wouldn’t look at him the same anymore. She knew him on a deeper level than he meant for her to. She had tried to see him since, but she was told he wasn’t home despite the cinnamon on the air. Whether it was her curiosity or something more, she wasn’t done digging.
There was nothing she could do in the daylight hours to understand Xavier. She could learn more about magic. Redwood land was like an autumn wonderland—a painting made of rust, burnt orange, and light browns as though everything had been steeped in tea. Darcy and Jasmine took their magic lesson outside. Watson was with them, chasing falling leaves nearby. The women sought to play with things a little more dangerous.
“You ready for Halloween?” asked Jasmine. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of a navy hoodie with the logo for Dante’s business. It was a set of two trees with a winding path between them. Around the scene was a circle and within the circle was the company name—Hidden Gem Adventures.
Darcy teased, “Isn’t every day Halloween lately?”
“I enjoy dressing up. Tanner always has some incredible makeup, courtesy of me.”
“How long have you two been friends?”
“Middle school,” said Jasmine. Her face twisted at the thought of those awkward years. She once thought wearing mismatched toe socks was stylish. “People started to tease me and make up rumors, and he was right there to set them straight. Whatever the truth was, it never changed his opinion of me.”
“That’s the best kind of friend. I never had that.”
“You have it now.”
“Cape Emerald is too good to me,” said Darcy, laughing. “Must be magic.”
“Speaking of magic,” said Jasmine. She lifted her left hand, revealing a golden ring on her middle finger. She gestured without any words. “I found a book from our great-grandmother. She was a lot more fun than her daughter.”
A stick raised up from the ground and spun between the women. Despite everything Darcy had seen, somehow this wowed her. With a brush of her fingers, Jasmine was able to make the stick spin and move up and down as though it was on puppet strings. Then the stick whopped Darcy on the butt.
“Whoa!” Darcy yelped before grabbing her backside. “Down, boy!”
Jasmine laughed and then flicked her hand again. The stick shot into Darcy’s ponytail like an arrow. It twisted until it held the hair in a bun.
“What realm is this?” asked Darcy.
“It’s the realm of trickery. It’s a place where rules and logic that we’re used to don’t really apply.”
Darcy rolled up to her toes, bouncing like a child who had seen a magician pull a rabbit from his hat. She begged, “Teach me.”
Jasmine said, “There aren’t any words or sacrifices. It’s vessels and hand motions.”
Jasmine held out her left hand and showed off the golden ring. Rather than a stone, this vessel had a gold hummingbird. For tricks regarding levitation, the book said to wear a ring with some symbol of flight. She drew a horizontal circle with her palm. As though a bubble had sprung up under it, Jasmine bounced her hand.
It was Jasmine that lifted off the ground. She wobbled left and right before she caught her balance. There was enough room beneath her for Watson to run under and lick the bottoms of her shoes.
“This is incredible!” Darcy laughed as she held onto her head with both hands. “You’re floating.”
“This may be my favorite realm,” said Jasmine, beaming. “I just need a broom. Then I’ll look like a real witch.”
Watching from the ground in awe, Darcy questioned, “What’s the price?”
“That’s the thing,” said Jasmine as she repeated the circle, this time in reverse. She quickly fell back down to the ground with a thud, landing on her feet. “Our great-grandmother wrote as long as you play with the easy stuff, you’ll pay with basic things that happen to you already. Stumped toes or spilling a drink.”
Russ joined the women, heard before seen as he came around the house. He had gone to town for groceries and was still wearing a white and blue bowtie. “It’s not always so fun,” he said. “Mary’s mother went beyond the small tricks. One cost her sense of smell. One took all of her hair as a fee.”
“For what?” asked Jasmine as she wrapped her own hair in her fingers and held on tightly.
“Whatever it was, it caused a fight with her and Mary,” he said. “Mary was much more cautious and selective. Her mother would say that life is magic and that any fee is part of life.”
“Great-grandma sounds like a badass,” said Jasmine.
Darcy mimicked Jasmine’s hand gesture while the other two continued chatting about Mary and her mother. When Darcy popped her palm, the magic was like electricity and her fingers the rods. Soon the electricity rattled all throughout her and sent her up like a bottle rocket.
Ten feet off the ground, Darcy started to spin. Each time she saw the sky she felt her lunch in her mouth. It took a few full turns before Jasmine and Russ overcame their shock. Darcy’s stomach jostled around even faster than the rest of her, and it started to show in her face.
“Oh, look,” said Russ, enjoying the moment more than he should but feeling no guilt. “Magic isn’t so harmless, is it?”
Panicked, Jasmine snapped her fingers three times to try to recall what she had read. Darcy whipped around like a paper spinning wheel in the fury of a storm. Watson went crazy, barking and jumping for his owner. Russ sighed, more amused than worried.
“Got it!” Jasmine exclaimed with another snap. Then she repeated the hand gesture from making herself come down, this time with her palm facing upward to control Darcy. As though she had opened a drain, Darcy slammed down to the ground on her back.
Leaves fluttered around Darcy like a wave of disturbed dust. Her head swelled with pressure, and her eyes rolled. It took a few breaths before she could sit up. Russ shuffled to her side and bent at the hips. He plucked a leaf from her hair.
“I must say magic can be fun,” said Russ, delighted more than a kind grandfather should have been.
“I don’t think that’s the realm for me,” said Darcy, wincing. She had yet to shake off the fall or the spinning. Food was the last thing on her mind.
“I like it,” said Jasmine.
Russ threw up his hand and said, “Of course you would. You would have liked your great-grandmother. She always enjoyed a good magical prank. She had a whole group that once used that realm to make every woman in Cape Emerald skip their periods. I’m not sure if it was the women or men that were more terrified.”
Darcy wrapped her arms over her chest. Clouds had drifted across the sun, chilling the air. She said, “Yin mentioned that she took out witches around here. Are they all gone?”
Russ lost the glimmer in his eyes. He said, “Mary is the only one I know of. Magic has been dead in these parts for a while. There are elves, but they hide where vampires can’t find them.”
“Why are vampires so good at killing elves?” asked Darcy.
“Elves are creatures of the sun,” said Russ. “Vampires take blood from mortals. They drape elves with night. I’ve seen it once before long ago. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I understand why they hide then,” said Jasmine.
Russ scoffed, “They were supposed to protect this realm from things far scarier than vampires. They used to be creatures of legend. Now they are known more for abandoning their post.”
“I’m not sure it’s a bad thing to have them hiding,” said Darcy. She recalled flashes of witches fleeing elves. “They do suck the life out of witches.”
“You’ve been learning about elves?” asked Russ.
“It wasn’t planned,” said Darcy.
“Elves aren’t all bad,” said Russ. “Very few things are completely good or bad.”
Jasmine muttered, “Except for Lyle Gutfrey.”
“Except for him,” Russ agreed.
“Some things are all good,” said Jasmine. She swayed her hips and rolled her mind into a memory. “Your coke floats are pretty amazing.”
“When you say nice things, you’re after something,” said Russ.
“It usually works out for me,” said Jasmine.
He smiled. “They are pretty good, aren’t they? I did buy ice cream while I was in town.”
Bouncing with the flavor of ice cream and soda already on her tongue from the thought, Jasmine said, “You have to try one, Darcy. You go get one at a diner, and they’ll pour the coke over the ice cream with no love or care. Gramps here slowly mixes and mashes by hand. It’s heaven.”
“It sounds amazing,” said Darcy, sighing as warmth trickled down her arms despite the cold air.
Nudging her grandfather with her elbow, Jasmine said, “He used to make one for me whenever I was sad. He would say sometimes cold things can warm our hearts.”
“Let’s break with tradition,” said Russ. He pulled another leaf from Darcy’s hair and let it go to flutter in the breeze. “How about I make us some because we’re already happy?”
Darcy shuddered, a good kind. She said, “This is what it’s like to have family.”
“I’m not sure if we’re the kind of thing you’d find in a family magazine,” said Jasmine.
“I’ll take what I can get,” said Darcy.
Russ shuffled backward a couple steps. He said, “Today you get a Redwood treat. Come on inside, and I’ll take care of my girls.”
ξ
A fog traveled with the night. It draped over the woods and across Cape Emerald. The fog settled near the ground like a carpet meant to cover the secrets of the town. As a newcomer made her way through the maze of trees, the fog split and scurried away.
Against her better judgement, Tia had answered the call of a witch she didn’t know and said that she would come. It was an easy decision once she had read the tea leaves and realized just how dark the danger was in this small town hidden between the woods and ocean. All Tia knew for sure was that vampires were involved and that someone aimed to meddle in dark magic. She needed to know more, so she stopped beside the edge of Lake Casper to dip into magic that wasn’t so innocent itself.
From her bag she first pulled out a small handheld mirror. Then she brought out a piece of obsidian the length of her palm. The stone had been shaped like the head of a spear. Its color could challenge the night sky in darkness and the stars in shine. Using obsidian was the only way to ensure she was calling on the mirror realm and not the other way around.
Tia knew the mirror realm well, particularly that it was not to be trusted. She came from a rare family of witches that specialized in mirror realm magic. That’s how she knew to keep the mirror flat on the ground so that it didn’t catch her reflection head on while she did her spell.
Tia sat on the cold ground and let the mud soak into her long brown skirt. Unlike the trees and stars above her, the mirror realm wasn’t truly real but wanted to be. That desire is why Tia used the obsidian to carve the shape of the sun around her for protection.
In the realm of time there was the past as it was, the present as it is, and the future as it could be. Everything was or might one day be true. In the mirror realm truth was trickier to discern. The mirror realm could see everything, but in its efforts to find a way to connect to other realms and make its untruths realities, it would mess with one’s mind if allowed. Tia draped a belt around her waist given to her by her mother. It was laced with raw black tourmaline, always to be worn at the hip and never near the chest.
Tia crossed her wrists over each other and rested her hands in her lap. She released a breath and watched the white cloud wisp upward. The cloud scattered as she breathed in and started her spell.
The mirror quaked, and the dirt stirred around it. She could feel the tremor through her legs. Stopping wasn’t an option. Lifting her arms, she kept her wrists pressed together like they were bound by zip ties. Her hands moved in front of her eyes for the last line of the spell. She lifted her voice like it had to reach across the woods. At the end of her words everything was eerily silent.
Like pulling back a curtain, Tia lowered her crossed wrists and stared down her visitor. There was a woman sitting beside the mirror. She mimicked Tia’s moves, tilting her head one way and then the other. It was easy to do when she looked exactly like her, minus the belt. Everything else was a perfect replica—the same caramel skin and the scar on her neck from a vampire bite that had never healed. When the moon struck her, there was a glimmer of golden light in her dark hair.
