Hex, A Witch and Angel Tale

  Hex

  A Witch and Angel Tale

  Copyright © 2010 Ramona Wray

  www.ramonawray.com

  Hex is available in paperback and Kindle formats.

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  For Mom

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank my husband, Steven, because without his love and support, none of this would’ve been possible. Thank you, hon, you’re the best.

  Also, to Eric — little angel and light of my life — who inspires me to do and be better every day. I love you, sweetie pie.

  A special thanks to my editor-in-chief, Ms. Lisa Pieper, a woman of great intellect and inexhaustible patience, who helped me through a ton of insecurities and doubts, while reading and editing again, and again, and again. Thank you, Lisa.

  My endless gratitude to Renata, who has always been a great supporter of my artistic endeavors and has never stopped believing in me. Thanks, sis, you rock.

  A big thanks goes out to Catwoman, editor extraordinaire, who was exactly what my manuscript needed. Much obliged.

  Last, but not least, I want to thank Olivia Dobrescu, Aurelia Dan (in memoriam), Ion Pecin, and Magda Jianu — wonderful teachers, guides, and dear friends. I am in your debt.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter: One

  Chapter: Two

  Chapter: Three

  Chapter: Four

  Chapter: Five

  Chapter: Six

  Chapter: Seven

  Chapter: Eight

  Chapter: Nine

  Chapter: Ten

  Chapter: Eleven

  Chapter: Twelve

  Chapter: Thirteen

  Chapter: Fourteen

  Chapter: Fifteen

  Chapter: Sixteen

  Chapter: Seventeen

  Chapter: Eighteen

  Chapter: Nineteen

  Chapter: Twenty

  Chapter: Twenty-one

  Chapter: Twenty-two

  Chapter: Twenty-three

  Chapter: Twenty-four

  Chapter: Twenty-five

  Chapter: Twenty-six

  Chapter: Twenty-seven

  Chapter: Twenty-eight

  Chapter: Twenty-nine

  Chapter: Thirty

  Chapter: Thirty-one

  Chapter: Thirty-two

  Chapter: Thirty-three

  PROLOGUE

  Gloucesterschire, England, 1657

  The sun was well past the zenith when a black-cloaked rider came into view from behind the scenic green hillock. Galloping wildly, the horse followed the foot of the grassy mound with uncanny precision and then made a beeline for the forest, where it vanished in a swirl of black cloth and dead leaves.

  At the same time, deeper in the woodland and partly out of sight behind a thicket of ferns and wild blackberry bushes, two individuals were involved in an agitated verbal exchange. The young woman, perhaps sixteen years of age, seemed unable to stop crying and shaking. That left her escort, a youngster scarcely a couple of years her senior, with little choice but to curb his own concern and focus on calming her down. At the end of a tender but persistent coaxing campaign, he was finally allowed to bring his arms up and cradle her closer. Not a moment too soon, either; her slender body all but collapsed against him in a soft, exhausted heap.

  Laying a gentle kiss upon her forehead, he began murmuring soothingly in her ear. With patience worthy of an angel, he carried on crooning to her in this manner until the shivering ceased. Until she raised her hollow-cheeked face to his and their lips met. Timidly, despairingly, guiltily.

  Unbeknownst to them, the embrace had become the object of scrutiny for a third party, the black-cloaked silhouette on horseback, who watched them closely. Having approached undetected, the rider halted just shy of being seen, but perfectly positioned so as to see it all. The mysterious character waited until the kiss was over, drinking in the sight of the young couple, their every gesture, every grip, every last sigh, and then proceeded to dismount in one graceful motion, not interested in hiding anymore.

  The forest itself quivered and the air inside the secluded grove grew too hot to breathe. The cloak slipped away to reveal the rider’s identity. She was a girl, willowy, with raven curls that fell loosely over her shoulders. She would have been lovely to look at, but anger had turned her delicate complexion a very unpleasant grayish-blue shade. It felt as though even the earth beneath their feet trembled and groaned under the load of her pain.

  The young man seemed unable to move, his expression not ashamed but haunted. Pained. His companion, now whiter than a sheet, swayed on her feet. He gently pushed her behind him, supporting most of her weight with his right arm.

  “You snake!” the raven-haired young woman spat. “And you, Katherine, my beloved sister. You, my own flesh and blood. Damn you! Damn you both to hell!”

  Raising both arms above her head, she cried to the sky.

  “By the blood of my ancestors, O, ye vengeful halflings and elementary spirits, I call upon thee! I seek retribution! Blood, to be paid in blood, a hundredfold. Hear my plea! A curse. A curse upon them both!”

  “No!” her sister cried, already running toward her.

  But it was too little, and much too late. Lightning bolts plunged from the unclouded sky, confining the dark-haired sister inside a ring of static and blinding white light. Dead leaves and branches soared and spun around the circle in a hellish rhythm. Thunderclaps roared from above, where the sky opened and bled red down on the grove alone. The earth shook again and again.

  “Elizabeth, what have you done, sister?” Katherine cried, falling to the ground, where claws of lightning seized her, feeding on her life spark until it was almost extinguished.

  At the same time, an otherworldly creature descended with the lightning; it was beautiful, ageless, swimming in silver light. Unflinching, one glowing arm rose, bringing down a blade that plunged deep. Katherine’s chest didn’t bleed right away; a grayish-white light layered her skin and her body seemed to absorb it like a sponge. It stemmed not only from the knife, but from her sister’s chest as well. Like a tempestuous two-armed river, the silver energy spilled into young Katherine, and once it failed, so did her slight body. The killer was swallowed up by a new burst of lightning. She slipped away. All in a heartbeat.

  “No!” the young lad bellowed, and threw himself over her. But he found her very still and already cold.

  “You shall regret the day you were born, my betrothed!” Elizabeth howled. “This is not the end, mark my words. It is merely the beginning.”

  But he took no notice of her. He could care about nothing beyond the lifeless body he held in his arms.

  Later, much later, he’d wish he had taken more heed of Elizabeth’s warning. For being forewarned is being forearmed, and later, much later, he’d come to grasp the value of such things. Of course, by then it would be much too late; by then he’d
wish he hadn’t been born, just as his scorned fiancée had promised he would.

  Hell hath no fury …

  Chapter: One

  Rosemound, Michigan, Present Day

  Raising a daughter must be a tricky business nowadays. Much more of an issue than, say, six hundred years ago, when a family could, for instance, ship their young female offspring to a convent. There, behind sturdy walls and under the watchful eye of black-robed crones, the girl’s chastity was, at least in theory, totally safe. But that was then; one sexual revolution, and one Internet explosion, later brings us to what is now. People’s interests have moved on. The issue of anyone’s chastity is so passé! Our century is big on keeping things casual when it comes to relationships — or the ozone layer, or adding chemicals to our food supply, but that’s another story — and banishing girls to convents has long fallen out of fashion. Then again, there’s always boot camp.

  I wouldn’t know about any of that, though. My parents never worried about my teen hormones getting the best of me, and with good reason. Getting touchy-feely with anyone has always been a big no-no for me on account of that pesky habit I have of keeling over after as little as a few seconds of physical contact. Zap! I’m out cold. Live like that for seventeen years and you either start seeing boys as chocolate-covered French éclairs on legs, the kind packing a thousand calories apiece, strictly hands-off, or you stop seeing them at all. As it happens, no forbidden-fruit complex or the related gross amounts of drooling occurred in my case; instead, I kind of stopped noticing boys.

  Until him.

  Funny how I always thought the world would dilate and then snap back with a loud bang the day a boy happened to me. But there was no explosion, no fireworks, no sudden shift in the tectonic plates of the earth. It was more of a Zen moment. Quiet. Everything was instantly quiet. The world, my mind, the flux of time — all still. And in the middle of it was him. Golden. Tousled inky hair. At the very center he stood, a leather-clad god looking upon his subjects with indifference. It could’ve been the curve of his lips or the way his hair whipped around his face, blown by wind as if in a sharp Spanish dance. But somewhere inside me something tensed and shattered.

  I watched him and ached. Blown away. Wanting. Wanting him.

  Of course, as soon as my mind processed that, I quit staring with the rest of the school. Slamming my shields in place, I crawled back into my shell faster than you could say “tortoise.” Naïvely hoping it wasn’t too late.

  But, of course, it was. There was no going back for me, not anymore, not ever. After all, ignoring a guy is kind of hard to do when you’re convinced he wants to kill you.

  But I’m skipping ahead.

  Let me go back to one deceptively typical April morning circa one year after my Zen moment. It started off like any other day, with me sleeping like a rock through the numerous efforts of my cauldron-shaped alarm clock to wake me. Since I was running late, I had to skip breakfast, which left me hungry and very much inclined to take my frustration out on the car. Still, none of this was new. In fact, there were no hints that my day was going to be anything but ordinary until after I made it to school.

  The first weird fact had to do with the school’s parking lot, which looked markedly deserted. Rosemound High was closed, I ventured a guess, already scrolling down a list of potential reasons in my head. A pandemic. Terrorist attack. Low attendance. Or did I maybe forget it was Saturday? None seemed likely, I concluded with a frown, moving on to checking the time again. My trusty Juicy Couture horologe shocked me fully awake by revealing that, in fact, there was nothing wrong with the world, or my school, for that matter. I was just way too early! But … how? Even if every clock in my house had magically become faster overnight, the fact remained that I’d never woken up in time to be early for anything in my life.

  I was considering a range of far-fetched scenarios when I was confronted by the weird fact number two. Someone was hanging around in the parking lot, as usual making a show of seeming as cool and unapproachable as ever. Ryder Kingscott, aka Zen-moment guy. What was so strange about him hanging out there? Hmm, how should I put this? Well, Ryder didn’t hang. He didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t look at anyone except maybe to make the person feel small and irrelevant, and he definitely didn’t kill time in the parking lot. Ryder just was. A mystery man. Much like the original rebel-without-a-cause, only with better hair. Rumor had it that he lived alone, that he was one of those emancipated minors. What I knew for sure was that he had a job at Dave’s Garage; I’d seen him there a couple of months back when we’d dropped off Mom’s car. Oh, and he rode a bike! Uh-huh, a sleek black thing that seemed to be the object of every male student’s desire. Personally, I viewed it as a death trap, but since I’d often been called a party-pooper, I may have been narrow-minded. But probably not.

  I was staring, but didn’t feel bad about it because everyone with a double X chromosome stared at Ryder. In fact, I was willing to bet that even a few dudes sneaked a peek at him every now and then when they thought no one was watching. Because he was just that hot. Picture the body of a model, tall, long-limbed, and conspicuous in all the right places, paired with a face of absolute sin, should the concept of sin ever take on a physical form. I had it on good authority that his lips alone provoked and inflamed a whole lot of naughty fantasies all over town.

  So imagine my surprise at seeing this ravishing specimen suddenly deciding to mosey on up to … me. No way, I thought, already considering having my eyesight checked pronto. Except that I was parked in the corner with all the other spaces next to me still empty, so the logical conclusion seemed to lean heavily toward yes, way. There was no mistake; he was coming right at me.

  “Oh dear God,” I whimpered. “Please don’t let me throw up.”

  Staring at him while he stared right back wasn’t as much fun as before, but quitting now would have been too spineless, even for me. In the meantime, sporting one of his signature outfits made up of worn-out jeans, a black leather jacket, biker boots, plus a pair of aviator sunglasses, he approached my car very relaxed, as if he’d done it a million times before.

  I basically flatlined in reaction to the show-stopping smile he dazed me with. A lazy, lip-quirking smirk that flashed only an impression of extra-white teeth and bordered on arrogance. Right there and then, I knew it: I was toast!

  To avoid gaping any longer, I rushed to roll down the window.

  “Hi,” I said, with an uncertain smile.

  Taking off his sunglasses, he proceeded to unleash the full mojo of those silver eyes on me. “Hi, Lily.”

  Just like that, with one snakelike flick of the tongue across the upper lip, he made the sound of my name into everything he was about, sexy and dangerous.

  “I was wondering, is someone taking you to prom?”

  My jaw dropped. But at the same time, a little warning light started blipping somewhere in the back of my stunned head. Why would he want to take me, of all people, to prom? Did he even care about prom?

  “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’ll blush for sure,” he said, and his mouth did that quirking-thing again.

  He was being dismissive and teasing all at once and I was hypnotized, which, I would guess, made me look a lot like a tongue-tied idiot.

  “So, prom? Date?” he insisted, sizing me up as if attempting to establish if indeed I possessed a brain.

  I shrugged, trying for cool and only mildly interested. “What are you expecting me to say?”

  “Yes would do nicely.”

  “But, uh, we don’t know each other. At all. I think people should know a little bit about each other if they’re going to prom together.”

  I stopped, happy that the words coming out of my mouth reflected nothing of what was really going on inside me. My instincts shouted: Run! But I didn’t. If I’d learned anything this past year, since Ryder had moved to Rosemound, it was that no matter how far I ran, no matter how well I hid, his ghost always stayed with me. Haunting me. Toying with me.
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  “Define ‘know each other,’” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. People date and stuff.”

  “So, you want us to date?”

  “What? Date? No, I didn’t say —”

  “You don’t want us to date.”

  “No! I mean, yes … I mean … hold it! How did we get from you asking me to prom to us dating?”

  He tilted his head, sunshine bouncing off his hair to show all the tones I never knew black could range across. Sleek obsidian, glossy onyx, thick ink, his tousled hair fell around his face like shreds of living darkness. I was deeply in awe.

  “We could date, if that’s what you want,” he went on.

  I shook my head unconvincingly. “That’s not wh —”

  “But you’re wrong.”

  “About what now?” I asked, exasperation seeping into my tone. This was, without a doubt, the strangest conversation I’d ever had in my life.

  “I do know you,” he said calmly.

  “You do?” My reply sounded like Yeah, right! but he didn’t seem to care.

  “You’re smart, outspoken to a fault, consistent. Some might even argue that you take yourself too seriously,” he added with a grin.

  “What are you —”

  “You’re not really a loner, but you’re lonely. Missing your dad and all. And you’re special, in more than one way, not that you don’t do a bang-up job of hiding it. That part of yourself you put in your candles. The reason you go out to gather plants in the woods, at midnight, when there’s a full moon.”

  He paused.

  “So, I’m thinking, horticulture degree. Cornell or Ohio State. Cornell is more prestigious, but Ohio State puts you closer to your father, so I guess that comes out on top.” Another moment’s breather. “And you have a cat. Raisin, is it?”

  I had the uncontrollable urge to just repeat “huh?” and “what?” over and over, but my jaw seemed to have other plans, which didn’t include unclenching in the near future. I couldn’t move! Just like one of those creepy French mimes impersonating a statue, I took my time and observed Ryder Kingscott — the legend, the most envied, desired, talked about, etc., guy in school — mutating before my eyes into Ryder Kingscott, the … possible stalker? But how? And when? And where the heck was I when this happened? Also, could my guy-radar be any more defective? Never mind answering that.