His Dark Howl

Smoke and Mirrors

    Bria couldn’t have slept even if she wanted to, and she didn’t. At midnight, she would turn eighteen, and she wanted to be awake for it. To pass the time, she curled up in the blue velvet armchair in her bedroom, and opened up the grimoire. “Spell to Seek a Spirit” opened before her once more. A quick perusal of the spell informed Bria that it was a spell to talk to a witch, who had passed on beyond the veil. Immediately, Bria thought of her Grandmother. What better way to celebrate her eighteenth birthday, than to speak with her once more. Maybe, this spell would work, maybe it wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot.

    She gathered the necessary materials, easily. A silver mirror, procured from a table in the upstairs hall. White, red, and black candles, standard enough in any witch’s home, she already had a box of them under her bed. A sharp knife, something she always carried with her in her satchel, just in case. Her grandmother had gifted it to her for her thirteenth birthday, the last birthday they had celebrated together. The grimoire, open on the floor before her. She was ready.

    Bria propped the mirror up against the crate the candles had been in, in the middle of the wooden floor beside her bed. She had rolled up the colorful throw rug that had been there, and tucked it aside. This was better done on the wooden surface. She took a white candle for the Maiden, a red candle for the Mother, and a black candle for the Crone, and placed them in a row, in front of the mirror. The three faces of the Goddess. She lit them all simultaneously, calling on the Spirit of Fire silently. The flames burst to life, starting the color of fire, then all burning transparently as Bria concentrated, giving off a very clear, white light.

    She watched her reflection in the mirror as the candles burned, for a few minutes. She needed them to melt some excess wax before she continued the spell. When there was sufficient wax pooling in the candles, she took them, one by one, and dripped them across the mirror, replacing them to sit in front of it after she was done. Three stripes of wax coated the silver mirror, white, red, and black.

    Bria drew her knife, and held it out in front of her. This was the painful part, but nothing she couldn’t handle to speak to her grandmother again. She took her knife and nicked a shallow slice across her right palm. Just enough to draw a few drops of blood. She didn’t need much, just enough to coat the tip of her blade. She watched her crimson blood pool in her hand, and lay the blade in her palm, turning it to coat it with her blood. The blood clung to the silver knife, as she muttered a few ancient words from the grimoire.

    Then, came the last part. The knife coated in her blood, she knelt before the mirror. Bria used the tip of her knife to carve her grandmother’s name into the wax. Ruby Cabot. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and finished the words to the spell. Then, she opened her eyes, and stared at her grandmother’s name, concentrating on thoughts of her. She pictured her grandmother baking her birthday cake, zesting lemons, and laughing while Bria tried to sneak some batter from the bowl. She though of her grandmother standing in front of the pond, teaching Bria how to work water magic. She thought of her grandmother the night before she had died, sitting in her rocking chair on the cottage porch, embroidering as the sun set. That had been a quiet, ordinary night. Bria willed back the tears that had come to her eyes, she needed to concentrate.

    Slowly, she noticed the wax on the mirror start to shift. The wax around the words that formed ruby’s name started widening, flowing aside to form a a ring around the center of the mirror. The mirror had grown cloudy, as if it was a window looking into a place of smoke, and mist. Only the name, written in Bria’s blood, remained in the center. Then, the blood began to pool into tiny droplets, and floated, backward, into the mirror itself. Bria watched, holding her breath, as Ruby’s name grew smaller, and more distant, floating away from her, into the mist. The spell was working.

    “Hello?” Bria called, hearing her voice echo strangely through the mirror, “Grandma? Are you there?”

    A moment of silence, and then, Bria heard a whisper. “Bria? My Bria? Is that you?” It was her grandmother’s voice, a distant, echo of her voice. The strange mist still swirled in the mirror, and her Grandmother’s voice travelled a long distance through it. The spell had worked.

    “Yes, Grandma. It’s me…I miss you so much.” Bria fought back tears. She never thought she’d hear her Grandmother’s voice again. “I found a grimoire, and I found a spell, to contact you.”

    “That is very powerful magic, Bria. Be careful. You can’t spend energy like that, without consequence.” Ruby sounded worried, “You are very special, Bria. You must be careful.”

    “I need your advice, Grandma.” Bria didn’t know how long she had until the candles burnt out, and the connection to her grandmother vanished. “I need to know…about my magic.”

    “You were gifted with all the Elements, Bria. All of them, in balance. You are more powerful than you know. You need to stay safe. I can sense you are somewhere good, but danger lurks outside, you must be careful.”

    “I have found a good place to live, Grandma. And some other witches to guide me. There is just so much I still don’t understand.”

    “You sound so much like Charlotte. She would be so proud of the woman you’ve become.”

    Bria smiled at the thought. She had no memories of her mother, but she always enjoyed being compared to her. She knew that she favored her mother, and the photographs she had proved that she looked like her more and more as the years passed. Her gray eyes were the only feature that were different, her mother, Charlotte, had brown eyes, like Ruby.

    “But there is something I need to tell you, Bria, before the portal closes. There is a protection spell on you, but it has been fading away. At midnight, it will be gone, and you will need to be careful. I’m glad you have found witches that you can trust, but it isn’t enough.”

    “What do you mean? I can protect myself, with my magic…I’m stronger now, Grandma, and I found an old Grimoire…I can learn more magic.” Bria assured her, “And I’m safe here, on this property.”

    “There is something I have never told you. It’s about…your father.”

    Her father? Bria had never thought of her father, not once in her whole life. Now that she realized this, it felt very strange. Why had he never been mentioned? Why had she never asked? Certainly, she knew, intellectually, that everyone had a father. Why hadn’t she ever asked about, or wondered about, hers?

    “Part of the protection spell is a binding spell, Bria. I bound away thoughts of your father, and his influence, to protect you, while you grew up.” Ruby’s voice grew sad, and slow. “I had assumed that I’d be around to tell you about him, before now. I was wrong, and I’ve left you unprepared.”

    “He is dead, like Mom?” Bria knew that this was right, even without asking. She felt in inside her.

    “Yes, honey. Your mom, she didn’t die in childbirth. She died shortly after…along with your father. They were murdered. Brutally. His name was Nathaniel, Nathaniel Nightwalker. He, he wasn’t a witch, Bria.”

    “He was human, then? Lots of witches are half human. Is that what you’re trying to protect me from? Why were they killed? What does that have to do with me being safe, now?” Bria had so many questions. Her parents were murdered? When she was a baby? By who, and why?

    “No, Bria. He was…a werewolf. He was the Alpha werewolf of the Nightwalker pack. He was, an important man. Your mother, she fell in love so quickly, so suddenly. His pack accepted her, this witch who was now a Luna, but some other packs…well, they saw a danger in it. A powerful witch and a powerful Alpha, they had the potential to have a terribly powerful child. They felt threatened, and so, sent someone to murder them.” Ruby’s voice flickered as she spoke, “They feared, you, Bria. Because, you see, you’re not only a witch. You’re also an Alpha werewolf.”

    Bria gasped, disbelieving. She thought of the wolf in her dream, in her tea. What if it hadn’t been the strange man this whole time, but herself? She didn’t understand, this was so much to process. Why had she never transformed? Why had she never met the wolf her grandmother now claimed was living within her?

    “My protection spell, the binding spell, kept the wolf in you dormant, Bria. But now…now it’s fading…and soon, she will be free, that other side of you. And you must be careful….” The candles were nubs now, and Bria knew the conversation wouldn’t last much longer. She started to cry, and leaned towards the mirror. Her own reflection was once more visible over the swirling shadows, the spell was fading.

    “Grandma, what do I do? Grandma?” Bria sobbed, feeling as if she was losing Ruby once more. Her head grew heavy, and dizzy.

    “I love you, Bria…” her grandmother’s voice was barely a whisper, “I love you, and I believe in you…You are more powerful than you know…”

    Bria’s head was spinning as she watched the candles gutter out. She tried to stand, but she was too weak, and couldn’t lift herself off of the floor. She lay backward, on the cold, wooden floor, and gazed out of her bedroom window, at the moon above her, the almost full moon. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed, twelve times. Bria closed her eyes, she was eighteen. Before she fell into unconsciousness she heard a sound, a howl of a wolf, in the distance. Then, everything was black.