Chapter 18

I couldn’t even begin to tell you what happened that day in school. I moved through my classes and the crowded hallways in a complete and total daze. In three different classes Jodi and Steven had to whisper answers to me when teachers called on me and I didn’t even hear them. I was vaguely aware that I needed to get a hold of myself and focus, but I kept slipping into daydreams of what we were going to be facing that night and the work I had done yesterday. Analyzing what had happened when I picked Jodi and Steven up for school this morning.

At lunch I huddled into the base of the tree we liked to eat lunch under. The ground was still a little wet, like it would never dry in this winter weather, and I had Jodi and Steven play look out. I sat Indian style with my knees resting on the knobby roots of the tree and took slow, even breaths and grounded myself into the Earth’s energy. I sent out a shield to the archway of the hall that would lead to where we were that would make any wandering students suddenly feel like they didn’t want to go down that hallway. I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t be distracted, but I opened all my magical and psychic channels and was able to see the world around me without my eyes.

Like an out of body experience, I rose up from myself and stepped out of the protection of the tree. I turned and found Jodi and Steven just a few feet away from me. Steven was less of a body and more of a raging column of fire in the shape of a human. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he had set himself on fire. I turned and saw that Jodi was no longer just a body; she seemed caught in a cyclone of swirling air and lightening. She reached a hand out to pluck a fallen leaf off of Steven’s shoulder and when her energy neared his, the air and fire spiked out from each other, reaching to the other power, growing in ferocity and feeding on each other. But as I watched their faces, I knew neither of them was aware of what was happening.

I was fascinated by them and could have studied them all day, but mundanely I knew I needed to get back to myself and, with that realization, I was suddenly overwhelmed and excited to turn and look upon myself. I turned so slowly I felt like I was caught in honey. I steeled myself and forced those last few inches of the turn.

I knew I was looking at myself because I could see my face, but I was so confused. I didn’t know what I expected to see. Knowing that my true element was earth would I be a mound of earth? Or perhaps had become a tree? It sounded silly to me, but this I did not expect to see. White light radiated off of my body, swirling in a color spectrum. It would seem red, but as soon as I decided it was red, the color would shift and ripple and would suddenly be blue or green or orange and all came back to white. I could have accepted that it was just my aura on steroids after the power I had summoned and clearly affected Steven and Jodi, but nothing could account for the huge black and sliver wings that curled and folded around my body.

The feathers were well and truly black but the edges bled into each other and shimmered in the false light of my aura to gleaming, perfect sliver. I concentrated on them, taking a few steps closer to my body and reached out a hand to stroke the edge of one wing. Just as my fingertips slid over the nearest feather I heard a deafening crack of thunder over head and I flinched, snatching my hand back just as the wings burst open and spread wide behind my body as if the tree wasn’t in the way. They were glorious, seeming too big to fold down around my body and not drag on the ground. I traced the length of one of the wings with my eyes to the tip and saw on the right tip the slow and steady drip of blood that fell to the ground only to disappear into the earth.

I walked around my body and the tree to examine the bleeding wing and saw that there was no open or healing wound for the blood to come from. I knelt in the grass and looked up at the wing and could see that the blood looked like a splash of paint against the feathers, as if the wing had been too close when a fatal blow had taken someone down. I breathed a sigh of relief and came back to myself in a rush, gasping for breath and clutching at my chest to calm down.

“Terra!” I heard Steven’s strained voice as the two of them heard me gasp and scrambled to my side. Jodi reached out a hand to my shoulder and I could feel the build up of power between her hand and my shoulder. She felt it too, looking down at her hand and had to force it through that build up of power to close those last few inches between us.

“Terra? What’s going on?” Jodi asked in a whisper.

“I’m not sure,” I said, my voice a little breathy after all the gasping. I reached a hand out to touch Jodi’s shoulder and found no resistance whatsoever. “Let go of me,” Jodi looked like she wanted to argue, but I locked eyes with hers and said, “I just want to check something. Let go of me.”

She did what I asked and I reached out again to touch her and the resistance she had felt was suddenly there, keeping me from touching her. I closed the distance with a little effort and held on tightly to her. “Ok, now try and touch my shoulder again.” Jodi reached out to me and her hand slid effortlessly through the air and laid gently on my shoulder.

“What does that mean?” Jodi asked. I didn’t know if Steven could see the difference but I didn’t explain it right away.

“Maybe once we force an opening through the shields the channel is open and it’s easier to make contact?” I knew I was speculating, but I had nothing to base this on. “You two try to touch each other.” I said, waving my hands between Steven and Jodi. They each lifted their free hands in front of me and reached out to each other. Just two inches away their hands slowed and I watched them press the air between them, slowly flattening it. I blinked and let my eyes go unfocused, much in the same way you would if you wanted to use your peripheral vision. I could see the energy between their hands like a live, writhing thing afraid it would get crushed in their hands. The closer their hands got the brighter and more solid the energy became.

Finally, when Steven’s fingers slid around Jodi’s, interlacing them, the energy sparked and wound its way over their joined hands in frantic excited lines. I could see Steven’s hand on my shoulder out of the corner of my eye and realized it was a deep orange and red, like the flames in a fire, and it seeped down my body like spreading warmth. Slowly, to keep from losing this sight, I turned just enough to see Jodi’s hand on my other shoulder. Her energy was brighter and in shades of blue, lavender and white, the colors I always imagined the wind must be if we could only see it. Her energy was more erratic, but cooler, than Steven’s.

I had a spark of inspiration and remembered earlier that morning in the car. I lifted my right hand, palm up, in front of me so that all three of us could see what I was doing. I concentrated hard enough to bring a crease between my eyebrows until I could feel Steven’s warmth travel up my arm and fill my palm until it almost, almost burned. I had the sudden urge to close my hand into a fist and shake the pain away, but I held my breath to give myself a few more seconds of patience. Just when I thought I was burning my skin from the inside out, a tiny flame burst to life in the center of my palm, less than an inch above my hand. I heard Jodi yelp with surprise. Steven was staring at the tiny flame with pure astonishment.

I licked my dry lips and lifted my left hand, palm up, until it was parallel with my right hand. I shifted some of my attention to Jodi’s cooling, electric energy on the left side of my body, keeping enough attention on my right so I wouldn’t lose the tiny flame. I drew Jodi’s energy down my arm, raising the tiny hairs in goose bumps, until it swirled in and around my hand. It felt like my hand was swelling with the power, like my fingers would tear away from my hand. I held my breath again, steeling myself, but nothing happened outside of feeling the energy begin to stretch my skin until it hurt. I realized I was waiting for a manifestation like the flame, but air didn’t do that unless I wanted a tiny tornado in my hand, and I really didn’t think I could control that.

I rotated my hand until my fingers pointed to the sky and brought it closer to my right hand, palm still up, until my wrists almost touched and I had made a right angle out of my hands. I pushed the air energy out of my left palm into the tiny flame in my right and let the fire feed from it until it was round and glowing, the size of a softball. The air swirled around my hands and the fire grew and tendrils of flames licked out at the swirling air. The heat became too much for me to endure. I caught my breath and knew I had to let this go or burn my hands to blisters or worse. With that one intake of breath something passed through me and the fireball shot away from my hands into the grass about six feet away. As one, all three of us gasped in horror and froze.

I was on all fours before I realized I had moved and pushed my hands into the earth, forcing the hidden water in its depths up to the surface to squelch the fire. With smoke and ash, the fire drowned in the new puddle until every ember was gone. I crawled away from them, forcing them to let me go or else to fall to the ground at my sides. I crawled over to the burned circle on the ground and ran my fingers over the blackened earth and felt the pain beneath the surface. I closed my eyes against tears I didn’t realize were there and laid my hands in the ashes and forced life back into the soil. I felt the pain edging away from the earth but it was coming into me, into my hands.

It hurt more than a few second s of burning grass should have, or at least that’s what I thought. Just as the thought came into my mind, a memory flooded into the front of my mind of me standing in the clearing and laying hands on the trees that had been carved into and used for blood magic. The pain I was drawing away from the ground under my hands right now was pooling inside of me with the pain from the trees. I healed them by pulling the pain and black energy into my body, like pulling a cancerous thing from them and into me.

I sat back on my heels and raised my hands in front of my face, staring at them like I should be able to see the black energy of pain as a stain on my skin, but there was nothing. I dropped my hands in my lap and let my focus slide to my right. The bright, warm orange and red glow was gone, leaving little more than a shadow of the power, but I could feel it like a memory waiting to be remembered. On my left the lavender electricity was gone but the swirling cool breeze was there, near enough.

I turned back to Jodi and Steven and saw that they were both still holding hands. I had let my eyesight focus but I was pretty sure the energy there was still going strong. “How do you two feel?” I asked carefully.

“Fine, great even,” Steven said and I wasn’t surprised to hear Jodi say, “Electric.”

“Let go of each other.” Without asking why, they both let go and their hands dropped to their sides. “Well? How about now?”

“The same,” Jodi said with a smile on her face and Steven nodded an enthusiastic agreement.

“You’re not drained or tired?” I stood up, brushing the dirt from my jeans and walked over to them.

“No, why?” Steven asked.

“Because I think I just borrowed energy from both of you.”

The last few classes of our day were probably the longest classes of my life. It had been so tempting to just leave school after my little pyrotechnic display, but I was determined not to draw any undue attention to us and I had missed enough classes, people were going to start noticing. Jodi and Steven spent the better part of our English and History class reminding people of my birthday party tomorrow night. I shook my head, trying to hold back the nasty laugh I could feel building in my throat. They were so optimistic about our success tonight; I couldn’t even begin to think about my birthday. I almost asked when they had had time to plan my party or get preparations done, but I knew I had spent enough time away from them in the last couple of days that they probably had all the time in the world.

I dropped Jodi and Steven at Jodi’s house after school so we could all make appearances at our houses. We were all fairly certain that we didn’t need to be near the clearing until around eleven o’clock. We agreed that I would enter the clearing on my own and Jodi and Steven would circle around to come at the clearing from the rear.When dinner was ready, I walked into the kitchen to fix my plate while my parents did the same. They were planning on eating in front of the living room T.V., I was planning on hiding out in my room so everything looked as normal as possible.

“Hey, honey,” my mom said as I came in.

“Hey,” I was glad to hear that my voice was as casual as hers.

“Jodi and Steven are throwing you a party tomorrow night, right?” she asked as she spooned potatoes onto her plate.

“Yeah, why?”

“You know we always do family dinners out on birthdays.” It wasn’t a question, but I knew where she was going.

“Yeah, no worries, mom,” I took the spoon from her and helped myself to the potatoes. “The party isn’t until eight so we have time to eat after dad gets off work and get me home in time to put together my costume and get to Jodi’s house.” I gave her a vague smile and saw her relax, her shoulders easing away from around her ears.

“Oh, good. Have you decided where you want to go?”

“I don’t really care, we can let dad pick. He’s always pretty tired after work. At least he’ll want to go if he gets to pick.” I shrugged, turning to leave the kitchen.

“He’ll probably want to go to the steak house.”

“Yeah, probably. That’s fine with me.” I shrugged again and made it successfully out of the kitchen this time, practically rushing to my room to keep from having any more conversations. I wanted to eat and get some sleep before I had to sneak out and pick up Jodi and Steven. It was seven o’clock before I could safely close my door and crawl into bed without fear of my parents checking on me. I told Steven and Jodi to make sure they got some sleep before I picked them up.

I rolled over in bed, wide-awake, and saw by the light of my alarm clock that I had been laying there for thirty minutes without so much as a yawn. I tried to close my eyes and fall into a meditative trance to at least relax enough to feel as if I had slept, but it didn’t worked. I just couldn’t clear my head enough to start the trance.

I threw the covers back and sat up in bed, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. I rubbed my eyes, grateful I didn’t wear make-up nearly as often as Jodi did. I slipped to the floor on my knees and crawled into the middle of the area rug in the center of the room. My dad had gone crazy one summer and ripped up all our carpet and put down hardwood floors. At first my mom and I had been happy about it, but the first cold morning made us see the fatal flaw in hardwood floors. That weekend we had gone out and bought area rugs and laid them throughout the house. I took the opportunity to sketch a protective pentagram in crayon under my rug so that I could meditate and work small magics without having to draw and redraw a circle of power and protection. I used crayon so it wouldn’t rub away but at the same time wasn’t permanent. If we ever moved it was going to be a bitch to clean off though.

I felt the edge of the circle shiver and tingle over the edges of my body as I slipped through it. I knew exactly where the center of the circle was without ever having to pull back the edges of the rug to check because I spent so many nights here. I folded my legs into a half lotus position with my right foot resting on my left leg and let my hands rest lightly on my thighs. I closed my eyes, tilted my chin up, took a few deep breaths, and felt my body sink. I stayed conscious enough not to leave my body in spirit or mind. I had a healthy enough fear of whatever creatures had already been summoned to affect my dreams that I didn’t want to be an open door to any other precautions he may have taken.

A moment later the alarm on my cell phone went off, vibrating it against the bedside table like a tiny fist knocking frantically against the wood. I opened my eyes slowly, rolled my shoulders and rotated my neck to loosen up. Carefully I peeled my right foot away from my left knee so I could turn comfortably around to look at the clock. It was half past nine, just enough time for me to change, arrange the covers on my bed to hide my absence and crawl out my window into the backyard. I would sweep around to the side yard and get into my car and off to Jodi’s to pick up Jodi and Steven.

Since we agreed to take the bare minimum with us, the car was already ready. I decided not to wear a coat tonight to make moving easier on me. I wore hiking boots, jeans, a t-shirt, sweater, and hooded sweatshirt to try and shield me from the cold. I tied my hair up in a ponytail to keep my hair out of my face and I was out the window.

“Ok, so are you sure you want to go into the clearing on your own?” Steven asked from the dark of the backseat. He wasn’t sitting forward hanging on our seats and that alone showed me how scared he really was.

“That’s the plan. I won’t really be alone, you two will come in from behind,” I said, trying to look at him in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, but what if he gets to you?”

“Then you guys help. Get Tracy out of the clearing and get to me.” I tried to sound casual about it, but I was just as scared. I didn’t like the idea that my only physical weapon was my athame. In order to do damage with it, the bad guy would have to be really close, closer than I was comfortable with.

“I think maybe we should go in with you. After what you did at school today with the fireball we could get him from a distance.” Steven said.

“And take the chance of killing Tracy too, or setting the whole damn mountain on fire?” Jodi interjected, looking over her shoulder at Steven.

“Yeah, I didn’t mean to shoot that fireball when I did it, which means I don’t really have control of it. Would you risk that kind of damage?” I asked, still trying to see him in the mirror.

“No, I guess not.” He sighed, his voice was clearly unhappy, but what could I do about it? “I just don’t like the idea of you going in there alone,” he said again. I decided not to argue about it with him anymore. He saw it as me facing down the boogieman by myself and truthfully, I did too.

We drove up the winding road leading to the parking lot of the park at the bottom of the mountain in silence. The bend of the road loomed up ahead of us in the light of my headlights and I saw the barricade blocking the turn into the parking lot. I slowed the car to a crawl until I stopped in front of it.

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

“What the hell is this?” Jodi asked, rolling down her window, letting the freezing air mingle with the heat from my air vents. She leaned out a little, squinting in the darkness to read the note taped to the sawhorse in the middle. “Crap.” She fell back into her seat, rolling up her window quickly.

“What?” Steven asked, finally coming forward to hold onto the back of my seat.

“It’s a police barricade to keep people out of the hiking trails.”

“Or Satan worshipers from performing animal sacrifices,” I offered.

“So what? Just drive around it,” Steven said.

“No, a patrol car could be stationed in the parking lot just waiting for that,” Jodi said.

“Right,” I agreed, cranking the steering wheel to pull away from the turn. I drove up the road a couple hundred feet until I found a spot with enough shoulder to fit my car into it. I cut the engine and we all got out. I watched Steven climb out of the back and as he was bent forward a necklace spilled out of his shirt. I caught the pendant at the end and held it up to see it clearly. He was wearing a rosary.

“Just felt right,” he muttered as if he were embarrassed. I touched his cheek and tucked the crucifix back inside his shirt.

“Then it was right,” I whispered and rose up on my toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. We walked to the trunk to get our knives out. I showed them both how I had slid the knife into the sleeve of my left arm so the hilt rested in the palm of my hand so I could draw it quickly with my right.

“Is it just me or does it seem kind of… I don’t know, sacrilegious to be using these as weapons?” Jodi asked, looking at her knife with the fake sapphires set into the hilt, running her fingers over the stones.

“Yeah, a little. But they’re tools and we’ll need them to break the seal on the circle to enter it anyway. That jackass probably won’t think to do that and will just walk into the circle without its protection around him,” I said, gesturing up the hill.

“But then so will Tracy,” Steven said.

“Yeah, but once you guys are in you can grab her and bring her into the circle correctly,” I said. “Ok, Jodi, you wearing your pentacle?” Jodi wore a simple silver star necklace so she could wear it more openly in public than a pentagram. She nodded in answer, her hand automatically reaching for the chain like a security blanket. “Steven, you brought your rosary. You did get the holy water, right?”

“Yeah, right here,” he reached into his front pocket and pulled out an honest to goodness sports water bottle, the kind with the pop-up lid so you could drink from it without taking the lid off.

“A water bottle?” I asked before I thought it through.

“Yeah, that way I have more control if I need to fling the water out at whatever, I don’t just dump it all in the first try.” He fished out a second bottle from his other pocket and handed it to Jodi. “I didn’t get one for you because you said you didn’t want to look like you had anything on you,” he said apologetically to me.

“No, you did perfect,” I tried for a reassuring smile, but didn’t think I was all that successful at it. I reached out a hand to each of them and they hid their bottles away in their pockets and took my hands and each other’s hand, forming a circle of the three of us. We all closed our eyes and turned our faces up to the sky. I whispered a spell of protection and guidance to our guardian angels and felt a small breeze swirl around us. I was suddenly aware of a weight on my back just between my shoulder blades.

“Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name,” Steven’s voice came to me in a whisper as I finished my spell. “Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

“Amen,” Jodi and I said together. I squeezed both their hands before I let them go. I took one deep, steadying breath and turned to face the forest. Could I risk my life to stop whatever demon might be summoned from the Underworld? Yes. Could I risk the lives of my two best friends? No. But they weren’t giving me a choice in the matter. I exhaled and stepped into the forest.