CHAPTER 2

 

 

 

A screech rose in her throat and she slammed her closed fist against the wall, unnatural strength causing the sheetrock to crack and shatter. Fury had her hair rising in a static-y halo around her head. The picture frames on the walls shook and threatened to fall.

No one got the better of her. Not anymore. Her new magic saw to it, much more than her own meager powers ever had. Earth magic? She scoffed. Being an earth elemental was nothing compared to what she could do now. The man who’d penetrated her dream—if it was a dream—should know better. If he had the means to get in, he had the means to see her for who she was, what she was.

Her magic wasn’t enough, she decided on the spot. Any would-be attacker would see her as weak unless they could see her as someone on their level. Or someone capable of going one better.

No one would flinch if a barrage of flowers batted at them, or tree roots lifted to slap at them. Earth magic was good for healing, and once upon a time she’d been one of the best. Of course, that was a whole other chapter of her life. And she was ready to close the book on those chapters permanently.

Whatever or whoever that had been, they were likely long gone. Karsia tugged the collar of her jacket up to her ears and walked out of the room. Determined to remain unaffected.

Winter in Miami felt like summer in Chicago. The heat weighed her down and dampened her exposed skin. Oh, she missed her home. She thought she missed it, anyway. Part of her knew it was right to feel remorse. To feel homesick for the place she’d lived her entire life. It was becoming more and more difficult to manifest those feelings without conscious effort.

She’d have to start fresh again after this. Find another place to hide her darkness until she could think of a way to combat it. So far in her quest, she’d failed miserably.

It made her think there were worse things than death. Being stuck with a dark passenger inside her sapping her humanity, for instance, with her alliances torn between the good she knew was correct and the immorality her very soul urged her toward.

Just one example.

Karsia stopped and drew the night air into her lungs. A glance down at her wrist showed her there was no remaining mark from where the man had grabbed her. The stranger. She took a moment to think about him. He’d been oddly familiar, unnatural and intriguing. It was a new angle to think about. There was someone out there with the power to control her subconscious.

Who was he? Where was he?

She marched down the street and considered. He shouldn’t have been able to get the jump on her. She was the living embodiment of chaos. He’d called her a child of the dark. Almost like he’d known her. Come find me, the stranger had said.

Assuming she listened to the freak—which she was in no way about to do—how would she even know where to begin?

Karsia thought about her life six months ago, her time divided into two distinctive periods: before and after. Before, she’d had a plan to compete with their enemy and triumph. She was sure of herself, with a clear end goal in sight and little doubt about their ability to come out the victor.

Now she knew she needed to find her way out of the darkness and back into the light. Knew it, yes. Believed it? Those were two different horses. Part of her didn’t want to let go of the power she now held. That part enjoyed what she wielded and the being she’d become. She spent every day at war with herself. Considering she hadn’t killed anyone yet, Karsia felt she was doing a bang-up job.

That’s when she remembered the web page. The knowledge inside of her came together like the snap of a puzzle piece. A light bulb flicking on to brighten a room. The teacher at a college in Wisconsin, who worked in the Mythology department—she’d found him while helping her sisters research possible meanings for the Cyrillic script tattooed on her sister Aisanna’s arm. On the Internet, she’d come across a scholarly paper from a professor of philology who’d found some kind of stone tablet written in multiple languages and detailing a cataclysmic even at the end of the Dark Ages. His words had struck a chord with her, although the others hadn’t seemed impressed.

Finding this professor seemed like a good starting point. There was something about his writing, the way she’d recognized the passion between the lines. The man knew his legends, knew his history, and perhaps he would know more that could help her.

“Perfect,” she said out loud.

There were no better options jumping out at her. And having a destination in mind was preferable to running. If this professor was the genius several blogs professed him to be, he might be able to scrounge up a lead on her mysterious attacker.

Wishful thinking.

Karsia stopped and leaned against the metal bars in front of an electronics store, iron and steel protecting the expensive wares inside from thieves. Around her, life carried on. In the wee hours of the morning, people still filled the streets. Cars honked and voices shouted, with everyone vying to be heard.

Pursuing the professor gave her a perfect opening to start over yet again. It meant another city, another trip to a different place, where this time she may not be able to control herself. It was easier in places like Miami where there were too many people per square foot. A cup running over kind of thing. She could lose herself in varied distractions and indulge in the decadent taste of sin on her tongue.

But Wisconsin? Who knew what she would be walking into this time?

Taking care to block herself from prying eyes, Karsia delved into the depths of her bra and pulled out a wad of money. She hastily scanned the bills, counting. Yes, it would be enough to get her a car. A junker in good enough shape to get her where she needed to go. The last car she’d purchased from a roadside dump took her as far as the Everglades. She’d left it there, pushing it into the muck and completing the rest of the journey on foot.

Karsia carried no license and no forms of identification, which made renting a vehicle or stepping foot in an airport impossible. She needed to stay under the radar and away from the prying eyes of the Claddium.

The Claddium, she thought with a groan. The magical goons charged with policing the witch and wizard community. Keeping them safe. What a joke. She’d always thought they were the ones who went bump in the night. The ones who needed to be feared above anything else. She’d been wrong. Now she knew what real darkness looked like.

Still, she didn’t need any unwanted attention. Their goons were everywhere, and sure to be watching for her.

She grumbled and made her way down the sidewalk, with the rustle of palm trees echoing after her. Each passing day brought her closer to the eclipse and the vernal equinox. Closer to the end.

I dreamed of you, he’d told her.

Huh. Funny things, dreams.

 

**

 

Morgan Gauthier sat at his desk with a mess of papers in front of him. College papers. College freshman papers. He felt an ulcer bursting to life at the thought. It definitely wasn’t going to make his night go any faster.

He considered the pile with a scowl and wished he’d been born with the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes. That way he’d never have to read any of the research essays given to him by his less-than-helpful teaching assistant. College freshmen were the least succinct group of people he’d ever had the displeasure of teaching, and their papers reflected such incompetence.

Amateurs, one and all, with no sense of drive or pride in their work.

He’d been around his fair share of humans over his many millennia. Every so often he wondered what was wrong with him that he continually felt the need to interact with academia. There had been Socrates. Aristotle. Michel Foucault and David Hume. Those were great minds, he thought with a swell of nostalgia.

Then he looked down at the misspelled title on top of the pile and grimaced.

A couple of those babies and Morgan would need a bottle of whiskey to deaden the headache. Okay, maybe not need, but desire. Deeply desire until it consumed his waking thoughts. Maybe it was time to take another break and get out of town for a while. Surely his father would be happy to see him. He hadn’t paid a visit to the Underworld in…ugh, no, too long.

Morgan suddenly felt old.

He turned his attention back to the papers. One would think with the invention of the Internet, those kids could easily find a good abstract to emulate. No, instead they bedded down with that evil seductress known as Wikipedia and fought to see how many adverbs and adjectives they could fit into a single sentence.

Savages.

His position at Carthage College was a hard-won thing and suited his personality to a T. Mythology and the history of language were in fact more than a hobby. He knew from personal experience that the stories he taught, the theories passed down through the ages, were true. Extraordinary things happened. Magic existed. And it took a special person to instill wonder in the general public. The days of being worshiped as gods were over, and sometimes the best he could do was remember them fondly and relish seeing the past come alive in the joy of the people he educated.

Being able to teach a subset of his favorite subject put his mind at ease and helped him relax. Sure, the little monsters were rude and inconsiderate, obstreperous and incorrigible. Hormonally charged, more than anything. On the cusp of adulthood. More into wild nights of partying than studious days of class. It was all he could do to keep himself to himself when they fell asleep in class. Nature took over then and he sometimes took the opportunity to mess with their dreams.

It was in his nature, he thought. Did one’s genetic code make one human, or was it one’s actions? Could society ever view a half-blood god as human?

Morgan chuckled to himself. Yes, they could. And they did. He was living proof.

It was easy for him to blend in with the masses. The small spark of something human inside of him—due to an unfortunate mixing of parentage—afforded him more than any of his other siblings the ability to intermingle. He could emulate any form he chose with the ease of breathing. He could be anyone. Anywhere.

It was what he was known for.

Swiveling in his chair, Morgan peered out the window at the radiantly lit campus, the faint play of light bouncing off the reflective surface of the lake. There were so many other things he could be doing instead of procrastinating. That’s what had got him into this last-minute rush in the first place.

He once again contemplated chucking the entire stack of papers of his mythology class out the window and letting the snow deal with it. That sounded much more appealing than the hours it would take him to get through the mess of grammatical errors, poor spelling, and idiotic comparisons.

He bent to the lowest drawer of his desk and removed a slim metal flask filled to the brim with liquid libation. Just a little pick-me-up, he assured himself. He hardly ever felt the need to overdo it without an extenuating circumstance. Tonight qualified as an extenuating circumstance.

The first sip of fiery hot ambrosia slid down his throat and the answering warmth flooded his bones, had his hair rising and goose bumps bursting to life along his skin. Good stuff. He had to make it last, of course; otherwise it would mean another trip to Mt. Olympus and the horrifying consequences of such a visit. The jokes, the teasing, the rude comments about his mother…

Definitely not something he wanted to do anytime soon. It was a bad day when visiting the Underworld was preferable to visiting the home of the gods.

The thought had Morgan recapping the flask with more than a little regret and settling for a small sip.

Then the door to his office exploded inward.

Wood slammed into the neighboring wall with a thud, chunks of dust and splinters littering the floor.

“Whoa!” Morgan stood and nearly dropped his flask. “Excuse me—”

The beauty in front of him stood at a whopping five-foot-four-inches, with a cascading mass of dark reddish-brown hair. At first, he saw only the outline of her silhouetted against the garish hallway fluorescent lights. She stepped forward, scowling at him, and Morgan felt his heart do a somersault. Then he felt it a second time. Lower.

His mind refused to form the words as he took her in, from the scowl marring her face to the delicate V of her eyebrows.

“Are you Professor Gauthier?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and melodic.

Her frown spawned an answering look on his face despite his intrigue. What could a woman like her possibly want with him? And at that hour of the night? Then he felt the power wafting off of her. He drew it into his lungs. Ah, an earth elemental witch. Not many of those in his neck of the woods.

“Ma’am, I don’t know how you got in here, but I have to ask you to leave right now.” The demand was halfhearted.

He took her in, took in a face dreams were made of. He would know; he’d produced the dreams of mankind since his birth. Perhaps this was the universe throwing him a bone in the form of a welcome distraction from grading papers? A delicious, svelte, and wholly angry distraction?

It was too much.

She had pale skin with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Eyes too large for her fair face, cheeks as full and sweet as a ripe plum. Based on the coloring of hair and skin tone, Morgan placed her heritage somewhere in eastern Europe.

The woman thumped what was left of the door closed behind her and flicked on the light switch, instantly blinding him.

Morgan took his glasses off and squinted at her. “Slamming things is not going to make me want to let you stay,” he muttered.

“I’m going to presume you told me yes, you are Gauthier, and then invited me to have a seat. I’ll help myself.” Karsia crossed the floor and sat in a chair, crossing her legs. Staring at him. Dangerous from her seated position. “Seems chivalry died out sometime in the last decade.”

She assessed the man, opening her mind to her other senses. There was a raging river beneath his still surface, she thought. More to him than his exterior hinted at, this man with his steel-gray eyes and aquiline nose. Those eyes met hers with intelligence lurking in their depths, cool and calculating. His blank face was a mask. A carefully crafted image giving nothing away.

She appreciated the effort.

The look on his face directly contrasted with the three-button cardigan and pressed blue long-sleeve shirt. He looked like he’d raided the local thrift store and put together whatever he could find there without thought.

When he kept silent, Karsia pressed forward into his subconscious, the slightest intrusion. She saw empty spaces there—a yawning breadth of isolation and loneliness, coupled with great power. The power of a god.

More shocking, he pushed back.

Karsia blinked and extracted herself from his mind. Tried to distance herself on a cellular level. She would not pry deeper into him without a reason. A damn good reason. She threw off the feeling and continued to stare at him.

Close-cut chestnut hair melded down in a hint of a widow’s peak that completed his angled face. A long, refined nose and slightly bushy eyebrows lent him a distinguished appearance. The sort of man people listened to with ease.

She shook her head. “If we’re finished sizing each other up, let’s get down to business.”

Morgan took his time polishing the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. He exhaled and examined the glass for any lingering spots. “I suppose we must, since you’ve taken it upon yourself to break onto college grounds, find my office, and weasel your way inside. It’s not every day I have a witch seated across from my desk. By rights, I should call campus security and have them escort you from the premises. But I doubt they’d make it far with you in tow.”

“You can try, if you think you have the guts.”

That brought the tiniest smile, which he quickly hid. “For some reason, I have the feeling that the threat of police intervention means nothing to you.” He voiced the thought in a sarcastic tone. “Although if you turned violent, I could handle it myself. You seem pretty small for the fury you keep locked away. You’re quivering with it.”

Karsia quirked an eyebrow before speaking. “I hear you’re the man in charge of the mythology department. Specifically, a stone tablet from the Dark Ages. Found near the Baltic Sea?”

She puffed up her chest, a woman used to being obeyed and who refused to be intimidated. At the sight of her, Morgan pushed down the brief spark of laughter itching to get out. This was a person who took what she wanted. Like a tiny kitten puffing up and hissing at a play toy. He’d come across thousands of men and women like her in his existence. He knew what to say to appease them, what to do to antagonize.

On this occasion, he preferred to go with the latter.

“The man in charge, eh?” Morgan pushed his newly polished lenses back on his face and blinked. “I like the sound of that. Although I’m not sure it’s particularly true in this instance.”

“I read an article of yours detailing an obscure script from the Dark Ages. War and chaos and—dare I say—magic.”

“Did you? And I suppose you enjoyed it?” Morgan studied her. “No, perhaps not. Not the type of woman to sit down and discuss a carefully crafted research paper. You should be out with friends somewhere, dressing skimpily and enticing unsuspecting college seniors into buying you a shot.”

“For your information, I have no friends and I rarely dress skimpily. Are you done being snide?” Karsia asked. “Because I don’t have a lot of time to waste. There’s an eclipse coming, and I’m not sure if you know it, but it heralds the final tearing of a thinning veil keeping this world and the world of ancient magicks separated.”

“I wonder—”

She snapped her fingers. “Keep up, big boy. I need to know more about the script. Was there anything else on the stone pertaining to a veil?” She drummed her nails on the arm of the chair and regarded him with the zeal of a woman who meant business. “A wall or barrier of any kind?”

“Anything else?” he asked slowly. To torment her.

“Any mention of a reversal?”

Morgan leaned back in his chair, springs creaking under the transferred weight. Oh yes, definitely an interesting distraction. Better than any he would have conjured for himself.

He took the time to tighten the lid on his flask a final time and return it to the desk drawer before speaking. “Why are you interested? It’s only a story. A legend. And my paper on it wasn’t exactly light reading.”

The look in her eyes told him they both knew better. “Humor me, okay?”

He knew the details of the tablet better than anyone. After all, he’d been the first documented philologist to set eyes on it. The first to translate the lines of script and copy it to paper for the first time, to translate it to Greek and then back to English.

He remembered the day he’d first sat down with the archeologists, the ancient chiseled stone exciting him and enticing him to explore it.

“There was nothing more,” he told her. “A tale about good and evil, life and death, accompanied by what seemed to be a crude location spell in ancient Cyrillic script. It’s very simple.”

“Very simple?” Karsia’s voice swelled with anger and a shadow passed over her face. “Are you blind, or stupid? There’s nothing simple about what they found.”

Morgan took it in and filed it for later. Curiouser and curioser, he mused. “You’ve read my essay. At least, I’m going to assume you’ve read my essay. My notations and thoughts are outlined there. I held nothing back.” He settled himself in and maneuvered until his arms were folded across his chest. “What I don’t understand is how someone like you can find the tale so interesting you’d break into my office to question me about it. Like I said before, you really don’t seem the type of person bent on entering private property like a burglar in the night.”

“Are you serious?”

He scratched his head. “Or have I gotten so old I’ve forgotten one of my students and you’re simply one of the herd in my classes?” Fighting the urge to check his records, Morgan asked her, “Do I have you in my student files? Did I give you a bad grade and you’re trying to intimidate me?”

Karsia clenched her fists. “I’m not one of your damn students, man. I’m here because things are never as simple as people assume. The stories about the man and woman who made a choice to become the veil are true. I need a way to reverse whatever they did, and right now, sweetheart, you’re the only one on my radar who knows what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“Reverse what? I’m afraid I’m not following you. In fact, none of this is making sense to me at all,” he said. Perhaps a bit too much of the good stuff? He would have to examine the contents of the flask later. Tampering may be involved. Morgan grimaced. One of his brothers must have found him. “Who are you, again? I don’t believe you told me your name.”

“I’m a person who needs help!” Karsia almost shouted at him. “I’m a person who needs you to tell me what you know about the story on the tablet and how to get this…this thing out of me.”

Morgan stood and placed his hands in front of him on the desk. “Please, calm down, Miss.” Maybe he’d baited her too much. Taken the idea of cute but ferocious little kitten for granted.

“I’m perfectly fucking calm!” Karsia got to her feet, with raw power flowing through her arms. She could not stop herself. Wouldn’t if she wanted to. “And don’t call me miss. Do you understand what it’s like to live with this? To have Darkness in your veins and no way to stop it? This wasn’t my choice! Not really. I-I-I…I didn’t understand. I just wanted to save my sister. I didn’t know I’d be a walking advertisement for rogue magic!”

She raised her hands and shot a bolt of pure energy at the ceiling. It was a testament to the gifts she hadn’t wanted and didn’t ask for. Plaster crumbled and cracks spread out from the point of entry. She tethered the magic to her like a lasso of rope around her wrist, ready to call it out again. Something bigger, more intimidating.

“I need help immediately,” she demanded.

Morgan watched pure energy crackle along her skin. She was something else, all right. A vision. A warrior goddess. Or perhaps the manifestation of Kali herself. A vengeful and destructive spirit.

When he scowled, Karsia’s face split open in a fearsome grin. “What? Did I do something you don’t like? What are you going to do about it?”

In spite of his sudden arousal from watching her, a flush of frustration took him at the destruction of his office. “That is quite enough.”

Morgan retaliated swiftly and without thought, his own magic quieting hers. For a moment his true form shone through, complete with a flash of horns. A wave of power assaulted her and Karsia took an involuntary step in the opposite direction.

“Kindly control yourself or I will be forced to take more drastic measures,” he bit out.

Her magic ceased and extinguished with a puff of smoke. Karsia stumbled back to her seat. “What are you, mister?”

Morgan took the time to smooth his hair, run a hand over his cardigan to brush away the bits of crumbled sheetrock and plaster. “Nothing to concern yourself about. If you’re done with the hysterics, we have not been properly introduced. I am Morgan Gauthier. At least, this form of me is Morgan Gauthier.” He held out his open hand. “And you are?”

His interest had been piqued the instant she showed up at the door, an elemental awareness connecting the separate sparks of their essences. He knew this woman, he thought with some surprise. Somehow, someway, maybe from a different life.

That aside, the rawness of whatever she held inside drew on his kinder instincts. This was, indeed, a woman who needed help. Who found herself in the middle of something she was clearly unprepared to wield. He related to the sentiment. One day in the distant past he’d engaged in those same feelings.

And the magic simmering under the surface? Whatever unnatural source it sprang from, Morgan knew it was not hers. This was a young woman in trouble.

How could he turn her away?

Scholarly interest, he told himself with his hand still floundering in the open air while it waited for a partner. As a researcher, he was fascinated by anything out of the ordinary. As a man, her eyes captured his. Her face beckoned him forward. His heart clanked against his ribcage in a single pounding thud.

She took her time before answering, still staring at the offered appendage. Almost as though she’d forgotten what to do.

At last she took it in her own for a quick shake. “Karsia Cavaldi. I need your help.”