A Witch's Tale

ISBN
             
1481023977

EAN
             
978-1481023979

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

‘A Witch’s Tale’
is published by Taylor Street Publishing
, who can be contacted at:

http://www.taylorstreetbooks.com

http://ninwriters.ning.com

'A Witch’s Tale
' is the copyright of the author,
Maralee
Lowder
, 2012. All rights are reserved.

A
ll
the
characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.

Chapter 1

“Hey! Watch it, you moron!”
Mac widened his stance, planting his fee
t more firmly on the pavement.
This mob scene should not have come as a surprise to a r
eporter with Mac’s experience.
Nothing like a good burning at the stake to bring out the crowds, he reflected, sizing up the gathering mob.

Jockeying for a more advantageous position, he cast a searching glance over the rapidly growing mass of humanity.
At least a couple hundred people, both reporters and locals, had converged before the front steps of the tiny courthouse.
The sidewalk had long since reached critical mass, forcing citizens and the media alike out onto the street, until it had become necessary to divert traffic around the growing crowd.

Though he’d used the term ‘witch hunt’
often enough in the past, Mac had never expected to actually witness one.
And yet, here he was, smack-dab in the middle of a scene that belonged more in the seventeenth century than the twentieth.

Unconsciously licking his lips, he thought of the story he would file, one that had drawn him to this small tow
n on California’s north coast.
It was a story which possessed all the elements of a paranormal mystery, complete with a
coven of lovely young witches.
Before he was through with it, every man, woman and child in the USA would be afraid to sleep at night, sure that, left
unguarded,
their souls would be ripped from their unsuspecting bodies by evil witches.

Though the late September morning air was cool, Mac’s pu
mped up adrenaline warmed him.
His senses keyed into the scene around him, until he was one with the frenzy of the crowd, feeling their anger, smelling their fear, ta
sting their hunger for revenge.

He spotted several familiar faces in the crowd, other reporters and photographers he’d known throughout his rather checkered career
.
Not that
he was surprised to see them.
He hadn’t expected for a moment that his paper would be the only one to latch onto a story as bizarre as this one, although it was the type for which his rag was most noted.

Contempt deepened the shade of his dark brown eyes until they were nearly black at the thought of the
newspaper for which he worked.
Writing for
The Inquisitor
was about as
low as a person could go.
He felt guilty even calli
ng himself a reporter anymore. Who was he kidding?
No one reported the news at
The Inquisitor
.
They invented it.

The crowd suddenly surged forward, nearly forcing Mac from his
perch on the courthouse steps.
Widening his stance, he braced hims
elf for yet another onslaught.
Years of experience had taught him how to stake out his own share of turf and hold onto it no matter what.

An ominous rumble began building at the outer edges of the crowd, gaining volume,
then
deepening with h
ostility as it surged forward.
Unspent anger filled the electrified atmosphere, releasing even more tension into th
e mass of humanity, metamorphos
ing th
e mob into a huge, ugly beast.
The scent of hate hung so heavy in the air it threatened to choke any but the most insensitive.

Mac glanced from one familiar member of the press corps to another, gaugin
g their take of the situation.
Time and again he saw it, the gleam of the hunt gl
ittering in their hungry eyes. Yes, they sensed it too.
There was no question about
it,
this crowd was just one step a
way from becoming a lynch mob.
A surge of adrenaline raced through his body.
Perfect, just perfect!

Another angry murmur rippled through the crowd as the front door of the sheriff’s office opened
and two women stepped through.
Both were fairly young, in their mid-twenties and moderately attractive, although not the type w
ho would stand out in a crowd.
Faces averted, they leaned towards one another as if this physical unity could protect them from the angry mob.

Two uniformed policemen cleared a path, hurrying t
hem through the jeering crowd.
The cops were good, Mac reflected with chagrin as the two women were ushered into a waiting police car and swept away before he or any of his cohorts were able to coax so much as one word out of either of them.

His attention was drawn back to the top of the steps by the unrelent
ing force of the surging mass.
The jostling for sp
ace became even more vicious.
Mac’s reporter’s instincts thrilled
at the escalation of emotion.
More than idle curi
osity was driving these people.
A gut-
wrenching mixture of hatred and fear masked the faces of people who under normal circumstances were mo
st likely simple, gentle folk.

Ignoring the door at the top of the stairs for a moment, Mac turned his camera on the surging crowd, snapping
quickly, hoping to capture the essence of the mob’s emotions in the reflectio
ns of their hate-
filled eyes.
His editor would love these shots, he thought grimly as his camera captured the image of one distorted face after another.

Ugly epithets hung in the air like the stench of filthy garbage, polluting th
e atmosphere with their stink.
A tiny core of Mac’s humanity cringed at the viciousness of the words, but he pushed it brusquely aside, reminding himself that he was only there to o
bserve and record what he saw.
If he ever allowed his emotions to get involved with the stories he covered he might ju
st as well hang up his byline.
If you go soft, you damned well better get out of the business
, he reminded himself grimly as he turned his attention back to the main door of the sheriff’s office.

Suddenly the door swung wide, allowing thre
e more people to pass through.
Two police officers flanked a girl who appeared
to be barely out of her teens.
The petite woman was dressed in faded jeans and a gray sweat shirt bearing the logo
PETS ‘N STUFF
in purple.
Flaming red hair brushed her shoulders, framing a face th
at would have suited an angel.
Topaz eyes, accented dramatically by a complexion totally devoid of color, gazed back at the jeering mob.

Mac’s first thought was
that her eyes reflected fear, b
ut then he realized it wasn’t fear he
saw in them, it was defiance.
Raw, barely-
controlled anger radiated gloriously from her, forming an aura of power about her that was nearly palpable.

“Hey, Cassie!
Over here, honey.
Give us a smile!”

“Can you tell us if it was a ritual murder?”

“How many people has your coven sacrificed?”

The reporters shouted their questions, snapping as many pictures of the girl as they were able to in the scant seconds before she too was ushered into a waiting police car.

“Is it true Myra Adams is your mother and that she was the one
who actually did the killing, o
r did you all participate in the ritual?”

This last question drew no more of a
reply than any of the others.
All it earned the questioner was a scathing glare from the beautiful young witch.

“May the Lord smite you with his vengeance,” a man in clerical garb intone
d in a deep, resonating voice.
Mac had long experienced the baser side of humanity, but even he was shocked at the unabated hatred that fla
shed from the man’s cold eyes.
The shear adulation Mac observed in the
manner of those who surrounded
him alarmed Mac all the more.
It was if the man’s gaze alone, shifting from one person to another, was all it took to control their volatile emotions.

“Damn
you
,
witches.
Damn you all to hell!” a man standing next to the preache
r screamed at the young woman.
The man glanced at the preacher, apparently hoping to see an expression of approval on his leader’s face.

“Think you ca
n get away with it, don’t you?
You Sata
n worshipers are all the same. S
cum!” yet another of the minister’s followers yelled.

“Give us the girl!
We know how to take care of her sort!”

The crowd surged toward the police officers and the girl, grasping hands reaching out for her.

For a brief moment Cassie Adams knew real fear, a fear more powerful
than any she had known before. Would the nightmare never end? These were her neighbors. They knew her.
How coul
d they be saying these things?
How could they believe she or any of her sisters in Wicca could be guilty of such an atrocity?

But
then anger replaced the fear.
How dare these people accuse her mother and her friends of such a despicable
crime?
Every single member of the coven had served the comm
unity with total selflessness.
They had asked nothing in return, only trust, a trust which they had each earned a hundred fold.

The hate reflected in her
neighbor’s eyes bewildered her b
ut the hunger she saw in the faces of the news m
edia was even more disturbing.
They wou
ld devour her if she let them.
They would feed on her fear, feast on the misery of those she loved.

But then, just as panic threatened to overwhelm her, she found herself gazing directly into the eyes of a tall, darkly handsome man, a man who managed to be a part of the crowd and yet at t
he same time separate from it.
The angles of his face were hard, giving him the look of a soul who had seen too much of mankind’s cruelties.
             

Their gaze held for what s
eemed to be an eternal moment.
A sense of hope fill
ed her as their gaze deepened.
Turbulent emotions were instantly replaced by
a beautiful sense of serenity.
The roar of the jeering crowd faded, becoming little more than the buzzing of a swarm of bees.