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32
“Mine too,” Brian said as he opened the door. He was carrying a plate with a large sub sandwich and a big glass of milk. He set it down on the bedside table.
“Explain how you’re going to prove it while I eat,” I said. It turned out it was pretty simple; she was going to show me how to heal myself. I ate as she explained the basics of magical healing to me, and all I could think of was how far-fetched it all was.
The sandwich was quickly gone, along with the milk, as Brian removed the brace from my lower leg. “Your medical records are complete on this injury and your ribs,” he said. “The leg was broken in several places, the doctor had to put a plate in to hold it together. A normal person would take eight to twelve weeks before it would be strong enough to walk on it.”
I looked down at my leg. It was bruised, had a four inch scar from the incision, and I could see the plate under the skin. It looked terrible. “Ow,” I said as I touched it.
“Place your fingers on the leg,” Miriam said. “Close your eyes and clear your mind.” I did; a friend had taught me how to meditate in my freshman year of college, so I went back to focusing on my breathing and letting the other thoughts depart. She taught me a phrase, I didn’t know the language, but she helped me sound it out. “Repeat the phrase and let the magic flow. Imagine it coming forth from your heart, flowing down your arms and out your fingers.”
I relaxed, repeating the phrase I’d learned. Nothing happened at first, but I kept going because I’d promised I’d try. Then I started to feel the tingles.
My chest and stomach started to heat up, like something was coming out. It wasn’t scary, not like Aliens; it was like a warmth that was spreading to my arms. I focused on pushing it to my fingers, feeling them warm and start to pulse. The energy jumped into my broken leg; I could feel it tingle and warm.
“Holy shit, she’s doing it,” Brian said.
I ignored him, just focusing on saying the phrase and pushing the warmth out to my fingers and into my leg. Miriam removed the wrap from my ribs. “Jessie, move your hands to your chest now.” I put them on the broken ribs, saying the phrase as the power flowed. A minute later, Miriam pulled them away. “That’s enough,” she said.
I stopped talking and opened my eyes, feeling the warmth retreat back into my chest before it went away completely. I looked down at my leg, touching it in disbelief as my fingers ran down it. The bruising was gone along with the scar. I pressed on the broken area, expecting to feel pain, but there was none. “It’s…”
“Healed,” Miriam said. “Your powers healed you. You did this, because you now have powerful magic inside you that you can use.” She pulled me off the bed; I stood, there was no pain. I let go of her hands and walked a few steps, I was good as new. I felt my ribs, taking a deep breath, no pain there either.
I couldn’t deny it any more.
I was a witch.
Jessie’s POV
One Week Later
The candle sat in front of me at the table, mocking me with my own failure. I focused, said the words, but my fingers did nothing.
Miriam had made it look so easy; she whispered the words and a flame came from her index finger, burning brightly before she extinguished it. “You’re thinking too much,” she said as she watched my face. “Relax and let your magic out.”
I huffed, then closed my eyes and focused on letting things flow. I felt something moving inside me, it shot down my arm to my fingertips. I opened my eyes to see flames shooting out two feet from my fingers on my right hand. Quickly, I toned down the flow until only one finger had flame, about two inches long. “I did it.”
“You did, and you controlled it quickly,” she said. “Now, imagine the flame is a ball. Form it with your hands, like you are making a snowball.” This took a little longer to master; the flame kept going out, and getting it into a sphere took some practice. An hour later, I had a flameball floating in the air over my outstretched hand, about a fist size as it rotated. “Good. Now, using your mind, push it towards me.”
The ball hovered and quivered before I was able to launch it at her. She reached up, stopping it with her right hand before she sent it back towards me. I reached out to catch it, letting it hover just over my hands. I moved my hands apart, making it grow to the size of a basketball before pushing in and shrinking it to the size of a marble. Finally, I let it die out. “That was amazing. It didn’t even burn me.”
“It’s your magic, it won’t hurt you,” she said. “Fireballs are very useful, but simple magic. With practice, you will be able to make them quickly and of any size. Combined with your telepathic skills, they make effective weapons.”
“I can see that.” I was exhausted, we had been training for several hours at a time, four times a day for the transit across the Atlantic. I looked out the porthole, we were transiting the St. Lawrence Seaway in between Canada and New York state. “Can we take a break?”
“Get your jacket, it’s cool out there.” The late fall weather could vary widely, and right now it was cool, in the fifties. She put some snacks and beers in a cooler and grabbed her jean jacket.
I pulled a windbreaker over the jeans, long sleeved T-shirt and sweater I was wearing, and we exited the stateroom to the hallway. I knocked on the door of the guy’s stateroom. There was no answer, so they were probably in the gym. They spent the week working out, watching movies and playing video games in between the meals. They had explained to me why they had chosen this form of transit to get me back home; Yuri was bound to check all normal transport, and they had bribed the Captain to keep our names off the manifest as they departed. We would still have to show our Passports when we docked in Duluth, but in the meantime, we would be hidden from the world for two weeks.
We opened the hatch and stepped onto the narrow deck at the port side of the aft superstructure where the cabins were. The bridge was two levels up; as we walked back aft, there were four deck chairs set up. She handed me a beer as I sat in the bright fall sun, watching the shoreline pass as we moved through the shipping channel. I could see houses and cities in the distance. I hollered up to the bridge crew, “Where are we?”
The Captain appeared a moment later, leaning over the bridge wing. “Coming up on Montreal in thirty nautical miles,” he said. “We’ll have to wait our turn at the St. Lambert Lock.”
We sat out there, drinking beer and watching the fall colors along the St. Lawrence River, waving to the boaters and sometimes people on the docks when we were close enough. Larry and Brian joined us, their hair still wet from their post-workout showers. “Did you drink all my beer?” Brian started looking through the cooler, all we had left him was a Coke.
“Snooze you lose,” I laughed.
He got pissed and stormed off, I heard him talking to the Captain a few minutes later. When he came back, he was a little happier. “Captain says he can get a couple cases delivered at the next lock and dam,” he said. “I’ll let you have some if you dress up in your Hooter’s Girl outfit and bring me drinks out here.”
I snorted. “I got fired from that job, thanks to that scary fucker you guys brought there,” I said. “I still see him beating that guy’s face in when I sleep.”
“He was just protecting you,” Larry said. “He’s not a bad guy, and he paid a steep price for losing control like that.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s in jail. I’ve seen too many guys like that. High strung, jealous, they beat up other guys and then get drunk and start beating up you. I’m not letting anyone like that near me again; I’ve been hurt enough.” I got up and walked away, going back to my room as they stared at me. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, for some reason thinking about him brought feelings out I didn’t want to deal with. Why would a man I was afraid of cause my insides to tingle, and bring dirty thoughts into my head? I just needed to stay far away from him. My life was screwed up enough as it was.
Yuri had tried to kill me twice already, I was in hiding and learning how to use the witchcraft the Father had given me. I didn’t need a man in my life.
Larry’s POV
“That could have gone better,” I said.
“Fuck, man, how do we convince her to give Beta John a chance now?” Brian was looking up at the sky. “She must not feel the pull at all.”
“They barely spent a few minutes around each other, and her wolf is buried,” I said. “What we need is a way to get them together, spending time, letting the mate bond work on her to break down her defenses.”
“Without Jessie tossing fireballs at him or throwing him off a building,” Miriam said. “She’s not the helpless Hooters girl anymore, armed only with pitchers of cheap beer.” She had a good laugh about the story of their meeting.
My burner phone buzzed, a text message came in. It was a link to a web page. I got up, the phone was only known to Charles and he was only going to use it if it was important. Along with the link was a message; “Not safe at home. Try something else.” I told them to come inside and we went to my room. Pulling out the iPad that the Highlands Pack had given me to replace my laptop, which they destroyed, I pulled up the site.
“Fuck me,” I said. It showed Jessie’s passport photo, the address of the cabin on our land, her full name, height and weight, her original Russian name and a few more photos from her Hooters days and college. “Cover is blown, do not approach. Photos are being circulated along with promise of a big reward if they take her out.”
I closed up the computer and sat back down on the bed. Brian flopped into the chair. “Well, that escalated quickly.”Content protected by Nôv/el(D)rama.Org.
“How long until they figure out where we are,” Miriam said.
“As long as we don’t leave the ship, no one should be able to pick us up until we go through Customs in Duluth. Once our entry is put into the system, it’s on like Donkey Kong,” I said. “You can bet they have Mob guys at the docks, if they spot her it could get exciting quickly. I was planning to have the Alpha send a car for us, but Charles should have told them already that we’re too hot. They know her house, they know our Pack was watching her since it’s our territory. We can’t go anywhere near home, they’re going to be watching it closely.”
“How about other Packs?”
“Bringing a human in, especially one that smells like a witch now, is bound to be noticed. All it takes is one person telling the wrong person, and it’s over. They wouldn’t owe her anything, and that reward is pretty big.” I looked it up, it was over $600, 000 American. “I don’t know who we trust that much, who owes us enough to give her sanctuary. Yuri has a lot of influence in both the werewolf and Mafia worlds. If they know he is after her, most Packs will decide to stay out of it.”
Miriam tapped my arm. “She still needs training, and most Packs won’t let a witch anywhere near their lands. I have an idea, though. The coven I am going to visit up in Grand Marais is isolated, their land magically protected. They would allow us to stay, for a price.”
“Can you trust them?”
“I can trust them to keep quiet as long as they are being paid. They don’t like werewolves, but I’ll vouch for you. My second cousin Gwenyth is the High Priestess there.”
I thought about it; if we headed to Grand Marais, it was the opposite direction they would expect since our Pack was three hours south. She could continue her training there, with more help and out of the view of humans and werewolves. “Call her and ask if we can.”