SovereignsChoice Read online

  “Here we go, sweetheart!” I feel the swaying motion of her running, still clutching me tight to her. The heat is intense, the flames licking at us like hungry tongues but somehow my mother keeps them off. I hear her chanting under her breath, feel the magic flowing out of her like water…like blood.

  Even as a child I know this isn’t right. She’s giving too much, expending too much energy—too much life force. It’s as though she’s cut a vital artery in her arm and the flow is all that is keeping us safe from the flames. But how long can she keep it up? And how can she live if she gives herself away so recklessly?

  I hear her voice weakening and the swaying is more pronounced. She is stumbling now, fighting her way through the burning house with only one thing in mind—saving me. Getting me out in time before the blazing roof collapses. I don’t know how I know that’s what she’s thinking but I do. And then I know something else—she doesn’t think she’s going to make it herself.

  I want to push my head out of my nightgown and protest. To tell her she has to stay with me—that she can’t leave me. Like so many free-spirited witches, my mother is a single parent. She’s all I have in the world. Oh I have other family but none so dear to me as her. None whose hearts are linked to mine by an unbreakable bond.

  Suddenly I hear a loud thumping—like someone banging on something. I push my head up and out of the confines of my nightgown and find myself almost suffocating with smoke. My mother has reached the front door of our modest little house. She is still clutching me to her but she can’t get the door open. She’s kicking it with her bare foot as she jiggles the knob, all while still keeping me safe in her arms. I can feel her distress rising, like a silver mist between us. Please, she’s thinking, throwing her thoughts out into the night like a cry for help. Just help me save my baby. Just help me save Emma…

  Suddenly the door leaps open, as though someone has yanked it from the outside. I tumble out of my mother’s arms and onto the hard wooden porch, bruising both knees. I turn, expecting to see that she’s come with me, out of the inferno.

  Instead I see her still in the house—just inside the doorway—wreathed in flames.

  “Mamma!” I try to go to her but something or someone holds me back. A strength I cannot fathom is keeping me from getting to her. “Mamma!” I scream again but she only shakes her head.

  “Go, Emma!” she shouts above the roar of the flames. “I love you but you have to go!”

  “Come with me!” I beg, still reaching for her.

  “I can’t.” Her long ebony hair is alight, the black turned to an orange-and-red-and-gold corona by the flickering, hungry flames. “I can’t, Emma. The fire, once called, demands a sacrifice. Go!”

  I don’t understand her words. I only know that my mother is burning…burning… I struggle in the strong grip of whoever is holding me back.

  “Keep her safe,” my mother cries, as the flames consume her. “You are oath bound to protect her!”

  “I will,” a deep voice says. And then he is taking me away, taking me to safety while my mother burns. “Don’t look,” he tells me. “You don’t want to see.”

  “Mamma! Mamma!” I scream and beat against his back but he pays me no attention. He moves me swiftly away from the burning house and out into the dark yard. Out there, among the trees, I see a swarthy face—the man with horns—coming for me. But when he sees my protector, he scowls.

  “She is not for you,” the man holding me says. “Tell your masters she is not to be touched.”

  “She’s safe for now. When the power of her blood manifests—”

  “She is not to be touched,” my protector grates. “She’s under my protection.”

  “We’ll see about that.” The horned man fades into the darkness between the trees, laughing. He leaves an unpleasant, musky odor behind that lingers long after his ugly chuckle has faded. When he’s gone, my thoughts return to the horror I have just witnessed.

  “Mamma,” I whisper brokenly.

  “She’s gone, darling,” murmurs a soft voice. “I’m so sorry. She’s gone. Gone…”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Gone…” I wake up crying, as I always do from The Dream.

  What exactly happened that night—the night of the fire that I always dream about and can never quite remember? I can recall very few details. I remember crying inconsolably. Strong arms carrying me and a deep, soothing voice telling me I would be all right. The dark, smoke-smelling night folding around us. And then my rescuer, whoever he was, depositing me in my aunt’s arms. “She’s yours now. Take care of her.”

  And then he disappeared.

  I never saw his face. I never knew his name or even where he came from. But he saved me from running back into the fire and from the danger in the woods… Danger? What danger? Something about a man with horns…

  I try but the dream is slipping away. The more I try to grasp at the details, the more they disintegrate to ashes, like paper in a fire.

  And then the pain starts, driving away every other thought in my head.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My period isn’t a regular, monthly occurrence, like it is for most women my age. It only comes three or four times a year—always presaged by The Dream.

  And it always makes me feel as if I’m dying.

  The stabbing, grinding ache in my lower abdomen feels as if someone is simultaneously poking me with a bayonet and driving over me with a tractor. Usually it comes on slowly, giving me time to brew a cup of tea from the special herb mixture I’ve concocted, which makes it a bit more bearable. The herbs don’t take all the pain away—nothing short of death could do that. They do, however, make me feel a little less as if I’m about to meet my maker.

  But this time the pain hits hard and fast, like a freight train of agony smashing straight into my body. It hurts so much I can barely breathe and even if I get up, it won’t do any good. My herb mixture is at home and I have no way to get it.

  I think of calling Lexy. It’s the middle of the night but she would understand. She was with me when I had my first few cycles—the ones where my aunt rushed me to the emergency room, certain I had been stricken with appendicitis or something equally deadly. It was only after having two or three periods that we realized the grinding agony was normal for me.

  So yes, I’ll call Lexy and ask her to go to my apartment again, and bring me my herbs. But my phone is all the way across the room on the dresser. I’ll have to get up to get to it and right now, I’m not even sure if I can turn over, let alone get out of bed and walk across the room.

  Still, if I don’t get my special tea, the torture is only going to get worse. I know from painful experience that it can go on for up to twenty-four hours before my period finally runs its course. That, of course, is the only goodthing about my cycle—it’s very short. It’s as if my body saves up all the pain a normal woman has during her entire week-long cycle, multiplies it by a factor of twenty and dumps it on me all at once. All in all, I think I’d rather have a week of dull, achy cramps than one twenty-four-hour time slot filled with unremitting agony. But it’s not up to me.

  Grimly, I force myself to roll over in bed and sit up. The effort leaves me shaking, my forehead damp with sweat. I can feel the wet, sticky warmth between my thighs and I’m afraid I’m ruining the crisp cotton sheets. I never have a very heavy flow but it’s enough that I need a tampon—which is something else I left at home. I’ll ask Lexy to bring them along with the herbal-tea mixture.

  Now comes the hard part—standing up. I know that getting to my feet is going to feel as if someone is stabbing me with a thousand knives but I have to do it. I have to reach my phone. Why the hell didn’t I leave it on the nightstand instead of all the way across the room on the dresser? Ugh…this is going to really hurt…

  Pushing against the mattress with all my strength, I lever myself up into a shaky standing position. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Then I take the first step and the stabbing pain cuts through me. The bright flare