Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (10 page)

Morgan glided towards
him while Keon readied himself and did not stop until she was
merely inches away. She then held out her long green arm and
gestured to the wall to her left.

"Do you see that
mirror?" she asked in her usual raspy voice.

Keon nodded.

Morgan instructed him,
"Go to that mirror and look into it."

"Why?" the question was
out of Keon's mouth before he could stop it.

"It is a revealing
mirror. It can reveal what you wish to show us so that we may see
it for ourselves," Morgan explained.

Keon nodded, walked to
where the mirror hung, and looked into it. Morgan followed along
beside him and placed her clawed hand on the mirror’s
edge.

Keon’s jaw dropped at
what he saw: himself. This in itself revealed how special the
mirror was, for like every other vampire, he cast no
reflection.

“It has been so long…”
he whispered, and held up a hand to touch his reflection. Keon had
been young when he was turned, making him an ideal agent for his
post. He was tall for his outward age, and muscular, but not quite
bulky. He wore his black hair in a ponytail and had a firm, square
jaw. A sinister expression was more or less permanently etched on
his face, showing through even his astonishment.

Then the face of the
mirror seemed to swirl like ripples in a pond. Keon’s reflection
distorted and melted into a redheaded girl looking lost in a school
hallway, wearing a light jacket, a purple shirt, and flower
patterned boot cut jeans with sneakers.

"Is this the girl you
wish to show us?" the Sovereign asked Keon.

Keon, both amazed and
intimidated, merely nodded.

"Morgan?" the Sovereign
prompted.

“Mmm…” Morgan breathed
out a moan, but said nothing meaningful.

The Sovereign growled
in frustration and said, "What do you sense from her?"

"Oh yes," Morgan
replied, nodding slowly. “I sense a great deal in her. Strength and
confusion. She has an old soul.”

“That sounds about
right,” the Sovereign said. “But is she the one?”

"The substance of
reality does not bend easily to our wills, my lord. In order to
know who and what she really is, I must have something precious to
her, and it must have her blood on it."

“Keon,” the Sovereign
thundered.

"Trust in me and the
rest of my clan," Keon replied. "We shall retrieve what you need. I
have already stationed one of my subordinates observing
her."

Keon could only see the
Sovereign’s chin and nose slowly rise and fall under his
cowl.

"If you wish," Keon
further proposed, "we can snatch her right now and bring her to
you. Or snuff her out and end this now.”

“You will do no such
thing,” the Sovereign replied. He was quiet, almost whispering.
Keon had never felt such fear or intimidation before.

“It will be as you
command.”

"Keep her under
constant surveillance and report any unusual activity to me
directly. When it is opportune, snatch something that meets
Morgan's criteria. Be absolutely certain no one notices you doing
so. Am I understood?"

Keon nodded. The
Sovereign jerked his head toward the exit, and Keon left the throne
room. He turned sharply toward Morgan, his meaning clear. She, too,
disappeared.

Coming forth from the
shadows, Rome said, “If I might be so bold, my Sovereign, I rather
liked that ferret’s suggestion to put her down now.”

“Finish what you failed
to complete two centuries ago?” the Sovereign replied.

Rome, only mildly
chastised, went on, “I understand if you don’t entrust such a task
to a Night Shadow. He and his clanmates are clowns. I would be
honored to take the assignment. I would not fail you
twice.”

“No, I imagine not.”
After a brief decision, the Sovereign explained to Rome, "If she
were anywhere else in the world, perhaps, but not in Salem. Of
course that is where she would surface. By now, other hiddens will
have noticed her. If she disappeared, questions would be
raised."

"You need not answer
those questions," Rome insisted. "Your word is law!"

"True," the Sovereign
acknowledged. "And I became Sovereign by taking only necessary,
calculated risks, Rome. Right now, she is impotent against me. One
whisper of protest, though, could incite a rebellion, and I will
avoid that outcome.”

Rome nodded. “As a girl
in high school, she is controllable, but as a martyr she could
damage your standing.”

“You pick up slowly,”
the Sovereign said, “but you can learn. Vampires follow me without
question,”
mostly
, the Sovereign thought, but left that part out. “Other
hiddens still question my rule. Many factions do not yet accept me.
If I make any move that they find suspicious..."

"You are above them,
Sovereign," Rome protested. “Your power is vast, and not merely
political. You would win any war. I would ensure that.”

"No doubt, but when we
start my war of conquest, it will be at the time of my choosing,"
the Sovereign concluded with an evil and handsome grin.

The Sovereign lingered
for hours, studying Aradia's reflection. Until Morgan wiped it, the
image would remain in the mirror like a newly painted
portrait.

A slight, whooshing
displacement of air betrayed Morgan’s return.

“I did not bid you
come.”

“No, you did not,”
Morgan replied with uncharacteristic simplicity. For a while
longer, the Sovereign ignored her.

"It's hard to believe,"
the Sovereign said finally, still staring at the mirror, "that this
little thing is the sole survivor of her people. Look at her. I
have faced and defeated far more powerful looking creatures than
her, including witches.”

“You underestimate her
strength,” Morgan replied. “Her power. You cannot feel it as I can.
She has great potential.”

"Tell me about it," he
commanded.

"You should not
underestimate her, for if there is one thing I sense, it is that
she is anything but impotent against you." The Sovereign was not
surprised to learn that Morgan had been eavesdropping on his
conversation with Rome.

Morgan braced herself.
She expected an inevitable, furious outburst from the Sovereign for
her impertinence. Surprising her, the Sovereign instead chuckled
and kept his eyes locked on the mirror.

After studying it for a
while longer, he said, "I need not explain myself to you any more
than to my servant Rome.”
Whatever she
is, last witch or not, I’ll not act until I know how she will be
most useful to me. If I decide to crush her, my action will be
swift, decisive, and impossible to withstand
.

"Hey, did you hear?"
Everett asked as he sat down at the table a few days later with
excitement dripping from his voice.

"You were talking? Yup,
I’m not deaf, I heard that," Aradia quipped.

“My mom’s deaf,”
Everett replied quickly.

“You’re not ever going
to let me live down that anti-depressant thing, are you?” Ever
since the medication comment, which she’d successfully kept from
becoming a disaster, whenever Aradia had said something even the
slightest bit sensitive, Everett had replied that either he, or a
parent, or a friend, or a pet, or somebody in his life had suffered
from it.

“Nope!” Everett said
cheerfully. “But seriously everybody, did you hear?”

When nobody bit, he
went on, “I’m talking about the unsolved murder. The hardware store
guy that was killed."

"Oh yeah. No blood, two
puncture wounds on the neck. The Vampire Murderer. I read about it
in the paper."

"Felix, you must be the
only person our age who still reads the newspaper," Calvin
grumbled.

"Well, get me an iPad
like yours for my birthday and maybe I’ll think about switching to
something electronic," Felix replied.

Calvin opened his mouth
to argue, but Everett cut him off. "Anyway," he said, dropping his
voice dramatically. "I heard on the news, the police are thinking
about declaring it a 'cold case file.'"

Aradia's ears perked up
a bit. Rhonda asked Everett, "What is a cold case file?"

"A case nobody can
solve," Calvin explained.

Everett expanded, “The
odds are that they are never going to solve the case, which means
whoever killed that guy will probably get away with
murder!"

“The odds are also
good,” Aradia contributed gravely, “that whoever committed the
crime lives right here in Salem.”

"You mean there’s a
murderer among us?" asked Rhonda, voice shaking a bit. She hadn’t
really followed the story as it broke or considered the
implications until just then.

Everett
nodded.

Calvin said, "I don't
see how this is really such a big deal."

"I do," said
Aradia.

The others had not
heard Aradia sound so serious before. They’d also not seen her
directly contradict Calvin, which tended to lead to
arguments.

Calvin raised an
eyebrow and said, "Yeah? By all means, please explain."

"If someone got away
with murder, it will make them think they can kill
again.”

Aradia usually liked to
do her homework right after school. It was only her second week,
and she was still working out her new routine. Salem High was only
a short detour on her dad’s drive home, so the timing seemed to
work pretty well so far.

Her favorite place to
get her work done in Arizona had been underneath the basement
stairwell in the gymnasium. She generally didn’t have to face other
students and their ridicule there. Of course, her dusty, creepy
hideout had only given them more fodder for which to ridicule
her.
Hindsight’s
twenty/twenty
, Aradia thought with a
mental shrug.

She figured she’d try a
more public setting this time around, and after wandering
aimlessly, she found herself at the football field.
Bleachers to sit on, plenty of room to spread
out, and maybe some cute guys to stare at. This could
work
.

So there she was,
taking notes on her bio reading and listening to the football coach
as he yelled at the players. De Sylva coached Track and Field and
Cross Country, but not Football. Football was coached by a gruff
man in his early fifties named Stan Gardner.

Coach Gardner was as
much a stereotype as Aradia had ever seen. Proud American good old
boy who had been the star quarterback when he had attended Salem
High, he’d gone on to play college football and do fairly well.
When he failed to get recruited to the NFL, he’d returned to his
high school alma mater to coach. He’d been at that for about
twenty-five years or so. By now he was pretty much an institution
in the small town.

The students grunted
and heaved through their
various, torturous
drills. It provided good background white noise for Aradia as she
did her work.

After a while Aradia
checked her watch; her dad would be arriving soon. She’d finished
her Biology, World Studies, and English readings. She had already
completed her Latin homework during Study Hall, and so far she
hadn’t been assigned any homework in her 2D Art or Personal Fitness
classes, which only left Algebra to do at home.
Not bad
, she
assessed.

When she was almost
finished packing up her books, she suddenly felt very uneasy, and
turned to the field just in time to see the quarterback slip and
fall. At first the other players laughed, but when the QB did not
get up, they stopped what they were doing and hurried over to
assist.

At first, Aradia just
watched as people swarmed around the kid. He was still conscious,
which Aradia took as a good sign. She thought about getting
involved, but the coach and sports nurse the school kept on hand
were both on the scene, so she kept her distance for the moment.
With help the boy got upright, but when he tried to stand on his
own, he screamed in pain. Aradia grew more alarmed.

The coach helped him
hobble to the bench at the sideline and let the nurse inspect the
injured area.
His
ankle
, Aradia noted.

“Looks like a sprain,
Jayce,” the nurse, whose name Aradia hadn’t learned yet, declared.
He went on, “Sit out the rest of practice. If you still can’t stand
on your own, I’ll call your folks and drive you to the ER
myself.”

Aradia watched as a
couple members of the team approached the injured quarterback. He
snapped them away like an irritated crocodile.
Some leader
, Aradia
thought sarcastically
.
After that, the other boys stopped trying,
shrugged, and left him as they finished their practice.

Strong leader or not,
he didn’t deserve to suffer needlessly. He had his head buried in
his hands and was shaking it vigorously when Aradia
approached.