The Blood Witch Saga

4. Remember Me-1

My dearest Thána,

My dearest Thána,My beautiful child, forgive me for what I have done. I was desperate to keep you safe from the men who killed your father. I hoped that by blocking your gifts and hiding us from your memory you might escape their grasp.

My beautiful child, forgive me for what I have done. I was desperate to keep you safe from the men who killed your father. I hoped that by blocking your gifts and hiding us from your memory you might escape their grasp.The spell I used was powerful magic but has already begun to erode. If you are reading this, a blood tracker was able to find you, and the time has come for the spell to be undone.

The spell I used was powerful magic but has already begun to erode. If you are reading this, a blood tracker was able to find you, and the time has come for the spell to be undone.The words below will pull the string and allow your gift and memory to unspool. Everything you need is here in this trunk. The house awaits you; the key and deed are here.

The words below will pull the string and allow your gift and memory to unspool. Everything you need is here in this trunk. The house awaits you; the key and deed are here.If I can, I will come to you there and we can be a family once more. Until then, be safe.

If I can, I will come to you there and we can be a family once more. Until then, be safe.Love,

Love,Alana Alizon, your mother

Alana Alizon, your motherI wanted to crumble the paper up and throw it away, but my eyes were drawn to the tidy script over and over. At the bottom of the page, there was a series of strange words, foreign and weird. My mouth moved, sounding out the words in a hushed rush. “Me aftés tis léxeis, anatrépste ti échei gínei.”

Me aftés tis léxeis, anatrépste ti échei gínei“Ginei, the G should sound like a Y…” Merry said as she watched me. “And soften the x in léxeis.”

GineiléxeisI repeated the words with her corrections and held my breath. I don"t know what I was expecting, but nothing obvious happened.

Merry, on the other hand, looked thrilled. “Good, good. You should probably sleep now. That spell will take its toll.”

“And what about you?” I asked.

“I"ll be right here, keeping watch. No matter how open the veil is, no one will find you tonight.”

I was certain I wouldn"t sleep, not with a strange woman in the room, not with so much happening that seemed impossible. I pulled back the blankets and slid into the bed while Merry moved around the room turning off lights. She hummed softly to herself and settled back into the chair. My mind churned around the words of the letter. My mother and father had once been a part of my life. I had no idea what either of them looked like, what their voices sounded like. No matter how I strained for the memory, all I had was static and blood.

I don"t know how long I spun around and around with questions and doubts and that nagging question about my sanity, but eventually, it spun me down and unconscious.

I woke to the smell of coffee and the sweet, yeasty scent of donuts. Merry was sitting in the same chair, feet tucked up under her, a pair of glasses perched at the end of her nose, a powdered donut in one hand, a tattered paperback in the other. On the table in front of her were two steaming cups of coffee and from the smell of it, not the usual motel swill.

I stretched slowly, feeling each joint pull and realign and come back together before I slid out from between the sheets to get to my feet. I eased into the bathroom and shut the door, thinking about the drive ahead and wondering if my newfound relative was planning on riding with me. I did my business and washed my hands before emerging back out into the main room.

Merry looked up from her book and nodded at me. “Better. I got breakfast.” She nudged a white paper bag toward me as I came closer. “Chocolate frosted with sprinkles.”

I blinked at her, but it was too early for the likely answer to my question about how she knew, so I just accepted it and took the donut and my cup of coffee back toward the bed. I drank half the coffee gone before I went after the donut, and when that was half gone as well, I cleared my throat. “Is it safe to assume that you will be joining me for the ride north?”

“Someone"s got to keep you alive,” Merry responded. “How"s your head?”

I frowned at her. “My head?”

She shrugged. “Figured you might be a bit tender. You did just rip off a twenty-year-old Band-Aid last night.”

“I"m fine.” I frowned at my donut, trying to figure out what she meant. “A hot shower, then I"m ready to go.” I finished my donut, then the coffee, and headed back into the bathroom. A part of me still believed I was going to wake up to find it all a dream.

I showered efficiently, scrubbing my fingers through my hair, and tilting my head back to rinse the shampoo out. I kept my thoughts centered on the drive and what to expect when I got there. I froze as I reached to turn the water off, suddenly remembering words from my mother"s note. “The house awaits you; the key and deed are here.”

The house awaits you; the key and deed are here.”I climbed out of the shower and started to towel off, then wrapped a towel around myself, though it was too small to cover me completely, and opened the bathroom door. Merry still sat in the chair, donut, and book in her hands.

“What house?” I asked, pulling my suitcase up onto the bed.

“Your house, of course,” Merry said, as if the answer was obvious.

“I have a house?” I was frowning again. I forced myself to stop. An image floated up from the dark recesses of my mind, a blue cottage-style house, with a big, grassy backyard. It felt familiar, though I would have sworn I"d never seen it.

I pulled on pants and a shirt from my suitcase and crossed to the wooden trunk, opening it and looking through the various papers and mementos until I found the deed. It was old, the paper yellowed, and it seemed to be written in Spanish, but the dialect was unlike any I had ever seen. I translated what I could before I looked through the attached pages.

Essentially, the land had been granted to my mother"s ancestor, back when California had still been held by Spain. It had included five acres, which eventually was whittled down to one acre as the family sold off lots over the years. On that acre sat a house, and behind it stretched a wilderness area and garden.

I set aside the deed and looked in the box for the key. I found a small velvet bag and opened it to find a set of keys, and stones like Merry had put at the door. I dumped them into my hand and rolled them around. They felt familiar, but the thought was fleeting, and I couldn"t hold on to it.

“We should get moving,” Merry said. “The blood tracker could already know where you are.”

Putting everything back into the trunk, I had another image bubbling in the back of my brain, a woman with dark hair and dark eyes, tears on her face telling me I would be okay, and it was for the best.

I shook my head to clear it. Was it my mother? I had no memory of her to compare the image to. I blinked away tears I didn"t want to shed. I had put my thoughts about family away a long time ago. I didn"t need them creeping up to cripple me.

“Let"s go.” I nearly growled the words, though my frustration was only with myself. Merry didn"t deserve that. I sat on the bed and pulled on my boots before zipping up my suitcase and closing the trunk.

Merry mumbled some words and picked up her stones, secreting them away into a pocket. She picked up the trunk and nodded. Together, we left the room and went down the stairs to my car. She stood behind it for a long time, her eyes closed.

“They haven"t caught up yet, but they can’t be too far behind. And who knows how many of them got through while the veil was at its thinnest,” Merry declared as I opened the car trunk and put the suitcase in.

I took the trunk from Merry and tucked it in beside the suitcase. “Are you ever going to tell me who "they" are?” I asked as we climbed in, and I started the engine. “And why they want to kill me?”

She didn"t respond until I had us on the freeway headed north. “They are a…religious order, for lack of a better term. Very old-fashioned notions about your kind. They are the reason there are so few of your kind left. They believe you are the kin of Hathus.”

“My kind? Hathus?” I asked, sparing a glance at her. She was staring out the windshield, her face unreadable.

“Hathus is the god of the dead. These people call your kind thánatou, the death bringer.”

thánatou“Excuse me?” I managed not to drive us off the road but earned a few angry horns from drivers beside and behind us. “Death bringer?”

She shook her head. “You are a blood witch, Thána. You eat disease and flush it out through your menses. Sometimes that heals the sick. Sometimes it eases them into the next life.”

What? What I was hearing simply couldn"t be real. That was Hollywood stuff. It was ludicrous. “I don"t understand anything you"re saying.”

“I speak the truth. You will know it soon enough. In the meantime, we need to beat these fanatics to a place that is safer, strongly warded against their trackers.”

I shook my head, but the words kept rolling around inside me. Blood Witch. Death Bringer. Sparks of knowledge flared in my mind, but none of them brought any clarity. Splatters of memory, unconnected and unexplained followed words that sounded like a made-up language, maybe. At least they weren"t Spanish, German, or Hindi. I was familiar enough with those sounds.

Some part of me kept telling myself that they had the wrong person. I was no witch. I didn"t believe in witches or magic or whatever god this woman was talking about. Hell, I didn"t even believe in the gods I was familiar with.

I would explain that to the next would-be assassin, I decided. Once they knew that I was just a middle-management corporate lackey, they would leave me alone.

Right. I managed to believe that until we were nearing the turn-off for Los Baños. It was almost one in the afternoon, and I pulled us off to find lunch. Merry stirred from her spot, yawning, and looking around us before nodding.

The truck stop was busy. I pulled up to the pumps and got out to fill the tank while Merry fussed with her shoes and her hair, which had all sort of shifted to one side while she slept in the passenger seat beside me. She shuffled off in the direction of the bathrooms while I pumped.