Chapter One
I
batted at the curl of smoke
drifting off the tip of my candle and tried not to sneeze. My
heavy velvet
cloak fell in oppressive, suffocating folds in the closed
space of the ceremony
chamber, the cowl trapping the annoying bits of puff I missed.
I hated the way
my eyes burned and teared, an almost constant distraction. Not
that I didn’t
welcome the distraction, to be honest. Anything to take my
mind from what went
on around me.
Being
part of a demon raising is way
less exciting than it sounds.
The
bodies of the gathered coven
pressed close, shrouded in the same black velvet, the physical
weight of their
presence making it hard to breathe. I struggled to censor my
clichéd thoughts
and focus on the task at hand. The glow of other candle flames
floated around
me, barely lighting faces, enough for a serious case of the
creepies. A low hum
sounded from every throat, filling the room with an almost
physical
presence. I participated half-heartedly, wishing I was
anywhere but here,
knowing despite my personal preferences I had no choice
whatsoever.
The
group swayed as one as the hum
grew in volume. The first hint of power made its way around
the half-circle. I
felt my own power being drawn away, connected and shared
despite my reflexive
attempt to pull free. As much as I suppressed my magic from
day to day and
refused to use it at all, the draw of the coven and my
attachment to it made it
impossible to deny.
Totally
crappy. Especially since
anything to do with magic always made me feel slightly
nauseated and off
balance.
I wiped
a smoke-laced tear from the
corner of my eye and blinked at the pentagram etched in the
stone at my feet.
The lines of the star began to glow faintly blue, the candles
at each point
flaring as though with the heartbeat of the whole, the breath
and life of each
and every soul in the room. I wondered if anyone ever checked
to see if our
hearts really did beat in sync. Wouldn’t that be special?
I
stifled a sigh as a tall, elegant
form flowed forward from the circle to the center of the
pentagram. She swept
back the hood of her cloak, her long, thick and perfect black
hair a flawless
halo around her gorgeous face. Her eyes glowed with joy,
cheeks flushed from
the rush of energy coming from the coven, her coven.
Miriam Hayle was
everything every woman wanted to be. Beautiful, graceful,
commanding, the
perfect witch, the perfect leader, the perfect everything.
My
luck? She was my mother.
I blew
on the smoke from my candle as
subtly as possible while barely managing to still the jiggle
starting in my
left knee. Somehow I always ended up in exactly the spot where
a tiny little
breeze pushed the white vapor the wrong way. A part of me was
sure it was
somehow contrived that way as an extra level of punishment
piled on to my
particular little corner of hell. And forget the sacrilege of
blowing the
candle out. It’s not a whole lot of fun being the center of
the
displeasure of fifty-odd witches of varying power, so I
suffered.
Oh
believe me, I suffered. Every day,
every moment, every breath. I, Sydlynn Hayle, sixteen-year-old
all-American
girl, was a witch. My mom was a witch. My grandmother was a
witch, if a crazy
one. My sister, my mom’s best friend and every single other
person in my life,
much to my disappointment, fell in that category, with a
couple of exceptions.
Lucky me. Except I spent my entire life wanting nothing more
than to be normal,
average, ordinary and just like everyone else.
Hard to
do in a family like mine.
So
there I was, another Saturday
night, no friends, no social life, just the stupid coven and
another stupid
coven ritual. Could one girl’s life really suck that much?
I
glanced down at my little sister as
she stared at our Mom, rapt in attention, beaming a smile.
Meira glanced up at
me, red-tinted skin and amber gaze aglow as the power in the
room built,
triggering her demon blood. In the ‘real world,’ Meira had to
disguise her
unusual coloring, her overlarge eyes and cute little horns
peeking out of her
silky black curls. Within the safety of the family she was
free to be herself
and I know she loved it.
I
always envied my eight-year-old
sister her eagerness to embrace her birthright while I simply
did everything I
could to ignore it. Easier for me, I suppose, with my plain,
dark brown hair
and ordinary blue eyes, my white skin and handful of freckles.
I did what I
could not to look the part, to forget our dad was a demon.
Meira
grinned at me, her candle’s
trail curling perfectly upward toward the ceiling in an
endless swirl. I waved
at my smoke again, the tickle in the back of my throat and
nose getting worse.
Meira watched me struggle like she always did. With laughter
wrinkling her
upturned nose, she waggled her fingers at my candle. I felt
her power reach
out, the thin film of it forming a delicate tube around the
wick. My smoke
immediately behaved. She winked before turning back to Mom.
I felt
stupid. So that’s how they did
it…! Sixteen years of this crap, and it took my little sister
taking pity on me
to finally get the joke. Of course, if I ever paid attention
or agreed to do
magic, maybe I’d have known about it a long time ago. But the
fact my
suspicions were so dead on, that Mom obviously instructed the
others to let me
figure it out on my own or continue to suffer, made me grind
my teeth in frustration.
She would do anything to get me to use my talent, short of
putting me in
danger, and I even wondered about that.
I tried
to focus on the stupid
ceremony and not my urge to throw the dumb candle in her
flawless face.
Yeah,
that would go over well.
Mom,
either unaware or not caring
about my present state of mind, raised her arms, robe falling
into a perfect
puddle at her feet, revealing her model’s figure in a black
satin gown,
polished silver jewelry at wrists and throat. She positively
glowed with power,
vivid blue eyes in rapture. How pathetically stereotypical. I
wanted to throw
up.
I felt
the strength flow out of me in
a rush and struggled as I always did to control the weakness
in my knees and
the slow roll in my stomach. I tried to catch my breath as
secretly as
possible, furious this always left me on the verge of passing
out. Of course,
no one else showed any discomfort, just little old me. I guess
knowing how to
use your magic and being willing to share made the whole
transfer easier.
That’s me, fight tooth and nail, even to the point of pain.
Sometimes
I wondered why I was even
invited.
At
least I had the diversion of being
responsible for my grandmother. She stood next to me, as
usual, about as into
the whole thing as me, but for different reasons. She hummed
softly under her
breath, her watery blue eyes crossing and recrossing as she
studied the tip of
her protruding tongue. She turned to me, wisps of white hair
escaping from the
edges of her black cloak, fanning back and forth with a life
of their own. Her
powder white skin fell in crumpled folds, but her expression
was pure
childishness. She cackled, winning me a silent warning from my
mother. I rolled
my eyes at Mom before sneaking a caramel out of my pocket and
slipping it to
Gram. She made a face. Chocolate was her favorite, but I
hadn’t time to track
some down. Okay, honestly, I forgot and raided the candy dish
on the way. I
prayed the offering would be sufficient.
Ethpeal
Hayle had once been an
influential witch. When I was just a baby, an evil coven
challenged our family.
She stood against them alone, cutting herself off to protect
the rest of us.
The Purity coven fell thanks to her, but the fight scrambled
her sanity. So, I
waited for the old woman to make up her mind about the candy
and tried to be
patient. It wasn’t her fault she was nuts.
I saw
the flicker of rejection as her
wrinkled old mouth puckered and knew if I didn’t act right
then the scene she
could create would probably level the house. The fight with
the Purities may
have left her one fortune cookie short of a combo plate but it
did nothing to
reduce her power. Knowing I only had one chance, I curled my
fingers and
started to pull away.
Her
hand shot out, dagger-like nails
brushing my palm as she snatched the sweet and stuffed it into
her face. She
grinned at me, nose wrinkling, eyes full of mischief. I tried
not to react,
knowing yet again we were saved by careful manipulation of my
crazy
grandmother.
I
returned my attention to Mom with
some relief as, oblivious to the disaster I averted, she
turned slowly,
pivoting on manicured toes. I made a face at her fuchsia
piggies, just in time
to catch her disapproving frown. I could practically hear her
whole body
screaming at me to pay attention, the little hairs on my arms
vibrating from
it. I flashed her a half-grimace, half-smile so she would
stop. Her expression
softened. She turned away. Thankfully. I wasn’t sure how long
I could keep up
the whole fake happy thing without bursting into flames.
She
faced the altar at the back of
the room and the life-sized stone effigy of an impossibly
perfect and handsome
man with large muscles and tiny horns on his smooth forehead.
She pushed
magical force toward it.
“Haralthazar,”
she glided closer to
the statue, “we summon you this third night of Power, nine
days and nine nights
from Samhain Eve, to tighten our bond with you and your
realm.” She knelt at
the foot of the altar, the picture of the submissive
handmaiden. Could she be
any more ridiculous? Seriously. “My love, come and be
welcome.”
The
blinding flash leaping from her
to the statue continued to pour out of her in a deep blue rush
of light. I
turned my head slightly to the side, squinting against the
glare, grateful for
the edge of the cowl and the shadow it made. The whole room
started to thrum,
the floor vibrating with condensed magic as Mom used the
energy we gave her to
make the doorway permitting my father through to this plane.
When it
happened we all felt it
rather than seeing it. The power swirled around us, drawing us
all closer,
forming us into one entity, one spirit, a seamless conduit to
the other
dimension. I always hated this part, the total and utter lack
of self that came
with the opening of the door. Every time I went through it I
tried to pull
back, but my own demon blood wouldn’t allow it. Even more so
than the other
witches in the room, my being was tied completely and without
choice to what
was happening at the altar. I was always helpless, tapped
into, taken, and
ended up on my knees behind my mother, Meira at my side, as
the effigy of my
father came to life.
The
blue flared to gold and
Haralthazar, Demon Lord of the Seventh Plane of Demonicon,
flushed and filled
out. Still with the properties of stone but the appearance of
flesh, he materialized
from a burst of light as the gateway to his plane slammed
open. For a heartbeat
he stood there, haloed in the back glow of his dimension
before the power
propelled him the rest of the way forward and he stepped
through and into his
statue.
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Genre – YA Urban
Fantasy
Rating – PG
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