Timeless Witch (3 page)

With a wave of my hand across the glass, the scene before me faded. Alistair, what a cocky bastard he was. That fateful eve of before, he had somehow found out what living shape my beloved Randar would be. He had waited until I turned him mortal, and I had watched my beloved perish before my very eyes, as a harpoon sank through his muscled belly.

Alistair had murdered him in his human form, knowing if he destroyed him as an orca he would be returned to the sea gods whole. They would have revived him, as he was under their protection, and again he would come to me when the time was right. But in human form he was vulnerable, and mine to guard until it was time to let him go. I could have saved him still from the injury done him. It was my duty to right the wrongs of these heinous beasts.

I had the power...but instead I failed him. For that special night the magic of Halloween belonged to neither good nor evil, and what would come would come.

Randar’s exquisite eyes had widened in agony. His hand had reached for me, fluttering weakly, as his lifeblood spilled to absorb within the water beneath his feet. Sending a message to the water gods I had failed and he must be returned to their protection. His memory of who I was, and our past together, fled across his fearful eyes. He had taken a step toward me, to warn me, but that day, I too, met my demise, even before poor Randar had slumped to the ground.

My eyes were sodden with tears in my grief, as despair almost struck me to my knees. I had no way of knowing Alistair would again risk the wrath of the Keeper, thinking he had learned his lesson. I should have been more cautious. Alistair was there; the serpent’s silver dagger came round me from behind, and he whispered, “Death to you, murdering witch.”

The weapon slid straight into my heart. But as my Randar sank to his knees, his beautiful eyes clouding with despair over our downfall, I grabbed hold of the bastard’s dagger and with my back pressed tight to his chest pushed with all my might. I as well became uncaring as to the sacredness of the night.

Alistair howled with outraged fury and pain. And I was hysterical with real laughter, knowing full well the silver dagger had found its mark. Our blood flowed fast, intermingling. The bile of distaste rose in my throat as his foul serpent’s filth touched me from within, and from that moment on I would be forever aware of his presence. I would sense when he was close. Never again would he be able to catch me unaware. I had my edge.

“May we die together, serpent of evil,” I had spit out. Then I was gone. My soul flew within a gust of wind on the back of a white dove. The frantic search for a host drove me to move on, without my dearest Randar, without my beloved child. It had seemed the bastard, Alistair, had stolen yet another daughter.

I went to sit on my bed, pondering my troubled thoughts about that fateful eve. I knew for certain Alistair would try again. He sought Randar’s demise as well as my own. Randar was a threat to his kind.

Though Randar sported no magic, he could create life within a witch to create a being powerful enough to destroy one of Alistair’s line. I took a small measure of solace in knowing there would be no way Alistair would be able to get close to a killer whale. He would have no means to find him—the water gods were too powerful. They would cloak him well amidst the mass of other mammals.

Randar knew not what he was; he would act no differently than the next orca, making it impossible to single him out. No human thoughts would roam his mind that Alistair could sense. But the vile serpent could track me the moment I used my incantation.

Already I knew Alistair was close. I smelled him. The evil stunk from his pores worse than one of my old smelly diapers. I shuddered with the thought. I couldn’t fail again. I needed to save Randar; we needed to mate and give life to a water witch.

The world was in desperate need of her protection at this time. The waterways were erupting, with the help of evil magic. The evil ones whispered of the sinister humans and their desire to destroy life beneath the oceans. With travesty after travesty befalling our waters, it appeared the evil ones were correct. The waters were angry; they had taken their last blow.

The sea and oceans would soon be at war with humanity. The disturbed turbulence of this era sought guidance. They screamed for a mediator. We were behind schedule with our loss from before. Evil had run amok. The tides were turning, literally. If my little witch were to fail, it could mean the death of all humanity on this planet. The demise of a planet was a serious occurrence. It would throw off the harmony of the galaxies.

I was unable to stop a violent shudder. I was hopeful my little water witch would be strong enough. But first she needed to be born. I would need to use my time magic to manipulate her descent into where she was needed most. It mattered not what era she was born to, it was to where she would be sent. I could slow time to a hairsbreadth. Linger seconds to a perpetual standstill, until the exact moment she came into her full power.

Once born, our little water witch would have the comfort of her parents for a short while. At least she would have her adoring father for ninety years; he was such an amazing parent and mate. It would take a full ninety years before my child would come into her powers. She needed the love and protection both parents offered during this carefree time, a special gift to us.

I loved best those years when we could be a normal loving family, aging slowly under the guise of my powers. That is, if I chose for us to appear in public on certain occasions for outings. As our child aged we needed to age as well, we being her parents, not wanting to raise any unwanted suspicion. Or we could be away to a secluded place of my choice, and Randar and I would age not at all in the serenity of our surroundings.

Once Randar’s earthly body expired, as no matter how much power I had, I must obey the rules of my kind, the cloak of my protection would no longer be necessary. I could then use the full extent of my powers for which they were needed—teaching.

I could transform us, my child and me, to a place of tranquility, where it would be I teaching her the witchly duties demanded of her, during her infancy. Yes, infancy; you see, with our very first birth, witches of our kind do not reach maturity for many, many millennia.

Normally, I was allowed only a short two thousand years with each daughter; it never seemed enough, each one my heart’s joy, each one more powerful than the last, as mine own powers grew and continued to grow.

During this time, Randar would sleep in the sweetest of slumber, cocooned in the gods’ safety, as he was my gift from them for doing their will. Once my daughter was weaned into all of her powers, I would be free to search out Randar’s new form, where we would join, mate, and create a new and powerful witch-child to nurture. It was always intriguing to see what the witch-gods would turn him into to hide him. Even I never knew until I called his image forth.

The only child I ever lost was my firstborn; my heart near breaks with the memory. On All Hallows’ Eve, the first time she caught a glimpse of her intended soul mate through a portal she created, she should have seen it for what it was. A trick, a ruse, to destroy her and her line of forest witch.

A serpent he was, and a serpent he remains. But the beast was cunning. A shape-shifter of such handsomeness, he was irresistible. He lured my daughter away to her death with the assumption he was her mate. I hadn’t been in her time, or even her world, to save her. It was a devastating blow to Randar, me, and to our gods. We were at war with the vile serpent’s kind, and already the casualty list was far too high.

Alistair was created by his kind, Demon gods, fallen from grace, who were ousted from our own. They wanted ultimate power, absolute control over the galaxies and universes. They thought those beneath them to be paltry, insignificant little toys for them to play with, for them to antagonize.

No life had meaning for them. Their measures were extreme, their excessive cruelty used under the guise of ‘punishment,’ was deplorable. They were without scruples. They had no intention of creating anything of use. Their beings were loathsome, and my kind abhorred them.

The earth always announced the birth of an enemy looming, in the way of a fearsome warning, when one of Alistair’s kind came forth. The more powerful the catastrophe, the more powerful and repulsive the being. When Alistair’s son had come forth upon the planet Earth, in the year 1470 BC, the volcano, Santorini, had caused a severe blow to Greece.

A child of massive destruction, he had risen to glory over the years, enough to be able to cause damage in his wake. Killing hundreds of thousands for nothing more than his amusement. That was, until I put a permanent stop to him. For my daughter and for the Keeper, I ended his miserable existence the day after Halloween with the gods’ blessing and encouragement, and perhaps a tad of magical assistance by the latter.

After all, the Keeper had warned both our kinds there was to be no killing on this most hallowed day, the day he stole my daughter’s life. Alistair and I both had an axe to grind with one another.

The only way to eradicate one of my kind was to sever our heads and burn our brains and hearts to ashes while uttering a death curse. It is also the only way to exterminate the serpent’s kind. Oh, he killed me the night he thrust the dagger into my breast, but in order to make it permanent he would have needed to race against time, before my soul could find another host. Instead, we were both reborn. The battle would be fought anew.

Tired now, I pulled back my sheets and jumped as a large rattler struck out at me. A wave of my hands and the beast exploded to cover my white silk sheets with bloody flesh. Bits clung to my hair and with loathing I fished out a piece that had found its way between my breasts and tossed it onto the floor in disgust.

I heard a hard laugh on a gust of taunting wind. Damn the foul man. Why snakes? I hated the vile creatures. Even a rabid wolf would be far more preferable. Snarling, I knew I couldn’t let my anger get the best of me. His parlor tricks were just that. He couldn’t kill me unless the death was caused with his own two hands, but we had been subtly tormenting one another over the years.

He wanted to play, did he? Well, fine. I closed my eyes and muttered a dark curse deliciously:

“Be ye dark and be ye green,

May ye bite viciously and mean,

Upon this night, fly with haste,

And feed upon his flesh, posthaste!”

Tonight the foul beast would sleep with scarab bedbugs.

My eyes fluttered for a moment. For a brief instant I was fearful, instinctively knowing I was not alone. But then I could feel his familiar hands upon me in the darkness. Randar’s powerful fingers stroked me with hesitancy, arousing me into wakefulness.

This was how it always began. After my incantation was performed, we had become connected. This was the most dangerous of times for my poor Randar. The whale would remain deep in slumber, vulnerable upon the ocean floor, while Randar’s human body and soul would be given to me. He must be of man and whale to create our water witch.

I turned from my belly to my back. I lifted my hand to brush his wet, sleek, dark hair from his confused brown eyes. I smiled tenderly into his handsome face. He looked so bewildered. My poor Randar; one moment he had been swimming, hunting, perhaps playing with a sibling. Rolling and tumbling through the waves. Now he was a human man, and in the arms of a human female.

“I don’t understand.” His words were garbled, infantile, but that was to be expected; he was only a few moments old. Speech would come in time.

I placed two slight fingers against his rosy, moist lips. I stroked soothingly at his back. I loved that he never looked upon me with fear his first times. Indeed, what would a powerful killer whale have to fear...except for Alistair.

“Hush, my darling. You will know all soon enough. For now, just trust in your heart that this is right and good.”

I drew his lips to mine and drank deeply from his delicious mouth. His taste was sweeter than honeydew, a liquid rainbow, so beautiful. He groaned as his tongue searched for mine; they met and danced together.

How I loved this part of our mating. I coaxed him with my hands to love me. For a moment he released his hold upon my mouth and gazed down into my impassioned eyes. I could feel my excitement lighting them with heated candles. Oh, how I loved him so.

“Who are you?” The words were not quite so garbled.

I knew my expression was then one of flickering sadness, as his questioning, cautious look, turned tender.

“Please love me, my darling Randar. We haven’t much time.”

I chose not to tell him his whale body lay unprotected. While in human form, he was mine to protect; in whale form, the water gods’. His soul, once leaving the safety of the water, made him mine, but during this time he remained connected to his host.

So for now, he belonged to neither the water gods, nor myself. This mating must take place of his own free choice, for that he must be free of any influence. Our child must be pure of trickery, or she would be an easy conquest for the dark side to overtake for their evil cause.

Alistair could strike now if he had somehow figured out which whale Randar was. He could kill my beloved, taking the hope of our child once more to the grave. But he wouldn’t have me, and it was ultimately me he wanted. He wanted me to suffer for the death of his son. I wanted his demise for taking my daughter’s life.

Once more I drew Randar’s delicious mouth to mine. He waited mere seconds before he crushed me to him, showing me he had made his decision. Oh, the power of a manly beast was mine for that short hour. I would revel in our loving. Every second with him was surreal magic.

I had slept nude this night, after changing my covers with another set of silken sheets, and hoped my scarabs would keep Alistair busy for at least this short, important time. Randar was also, of course, unclad.

For a few moments his actions were brutal and fumbling. He had, after all, recently been a killer whale and had been in possession of fins, not fingers.