Excerpt: Elemental Arcane

Book 1

Eighteen Years Ago…

“You leave this house tonight, of all nights,” George Hawthorne sliced his hand sideways through the air to emphasize his resolve. “And our marriage is over.”

Crisp October wind moved the trees outside the kitchen window behind his shoulder, heralding a rain of orange, yellow and red leaves as they struck the glass with a delicate tapping in the silence that followed her husband’s declaration.

Elizabeth “Eliza” Hawthorne faced the love of her life, her husband, the father of their smart, beautiful and precocious child sleeping in her room upstairs. Eliza squared her shoulders at the threat and made sure her expression was determined, but not angry. If she had to find a word to describe how she felt at that moment, she would say resigned.

The kitchen table separated them. George stood in front of the sink washing dishes, as he always did after dinner, and Eliza just inside the kitchen door, dressed in her day-job clothing. A pantsuit, boots and her Smith & Wesson strapped to her side. What he didn’t see were the ritual robes in the bag at her feet, along with everything she and her coven needed to rid themselves of an evil that had entered their world.

Eliza took in a sharp breath and allowed her shoulders to rise. “It’s work, babe. I caught a case and I have to go check it out.” 

“Can’t Boudreaux take it on his own? You’re getting death threats—and don’t deny it. I saw them, Eliza.”

“I can’t do that, George. I’m well aware of what’s threatening me, but I can’t risk my partner’s life when he doesn’t know what’s out there.”

George made a rude noise as he put his hands on his hips. “Can’t you put a protection spell on him with your hocus pocus and just stay home? Safe? With your family? Tonight, of all nights? Even I know that wind out there isn’t natural, and Halloween’s the worst night to be out, especially with a full moon. There’s a lot more crazies out there than usual.”

Hocus pocus. That was his name for what she could do. Eliza wasn’t angry with him, because she knew how scared he was. There was something out there hunting her, because she’d been hunting it. What she was and what she did sometimes frightened him as well. 

Eliza had been born a God Mother’s child, a daughter of Diana, a Little Bender.

A Witch.

It was written in Eliza’s blood, scrolled within the very cells of her being, and not something she could turn on and off at a whim. For eleven years she explained it to him, and when their daughter was born eight years ago, he asked if their little Samantha was a Witch as well. Eliza was honest with him. “She has the same Gifts that I do, and that my mother had before me. She will be a Witch of the Elementals.”

Her family had celebrated this, to have three Witches born with the most rare of Gifts. A daughter to a mother, as Eliza’s mother had been. Three generations of Elemental Magic.

Elementals were guardians in a sense, protecting mankind from creatures born to do evil. Eliza had chosen to serve in law enforcement to fight evil on the human front, and graduated at the top of her class, even as a detective. Now her search for an ancient, sickening darkness had come to fruition and tonight that evil would be removed.

Exorcised with a kind of magic the God Mother’s children were forbidden to use.

Eliza had accepted the responsibility such a thing could carry and had prepared for whatever punishment the Magical Parliament might force upon her, but she was prepared for however the magic would change her. Because this magic was born in the realms past their own. This magic held the secrets of life and death itself.

The Magic of Arcane.

No Witch that used it, unless tainted with the blood of the Demon Realms, could wield it without a price.

Because of this, because Eliza didn’t know if she would change or the magic would take its price from somewhere else, she’d safeguarded her family in case she didn’t return in the same way she departed.

It was a way to protect them. It was the only way she knew how.

“I can’t. This thing that’s threatening me isn’t something I can protect people from anymore. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with, but not through law enforcement. I’ve searched for it for three years, both as a detective and as Mother’s Tracker.” She didn’t use her official title within the coven often, but tonight it seemed fitting. “This evil has used up bodies, destroyed families and towns through the centuries. It tried to possess a politician just last month, but luckily I scryed what that evil was doing and we stopped it, we ran it down. Soon we’ll send it back to where it belongs, okay? When the time is right. But tonight I have to do my job.”

She surprised herself at how easy it was to lie to her husband. She and her coven hadn’t just run the evil down; they’d taken it and locked it in a hole to weaken it, where it couldn’t feed on blood and couldn’t call for help. Tonight was the night the ritual had to be done. Tonight, when the veil was thinnest between their world and the Demon Realms.

Eliza hated lying to him, but she didn’t want him to worry, and she didn’t want to worry their daughter. Once this thing was exorcised, and everything went well, they could get back to their life of simple things, like baking brownies and book fairs at the school, and the impending Thanksgiving cooking marathon at the end of next month.

If the Magical Parliament chose to sentence her for using Arcane Magic, Eliza assumed the worst they could do was warlock her, a means of banishing her from the coven and sealing her power. She could accept anything as long as it meant she kept her family.

The windows creaked as the wind kicked up, blowing heavier items like twigs and branches against the glass as if to emphasize her declaration of justice. Eliza didn’t feel as confident as she had before George confronted her. There was something ill about the weather, coming so quick and cold on All Hallow’s Night. In Mississippi, the cold shouldn’t be there before December.

She moved around the table to put her hands against the sides of her husband’s face. “I’ll be back before daybreak. Sam has her play tomorrow night for All Souls. Do you have the camera battery charged?” Magical energy played havoc with some modern conveniences.

Her husband, her love and her world, finally smiled at her. Worry and concern filled his eyes as he slipped his hands around her waist. “Yes,” he said, though his voice was muffled because he buried his face in her neck. “I love you, Elizabeth Hawthorne.”

Eliza’s eyes burned as he pulled back and looked into her face. She searched his handsome features and hoped the price of the magic would not be her eyesight. She would miss seeing his stunning blue eyes, the same color their daughter possessed. “I love you, George Hawthorne. Here and in the Summerlands.” It was how she always parted company with him.

The wind whipped her hair about as she stepped outside, bag on her shoulder, and closed the door behind her. Leaves and debris tumbled over the cold ground as she checked to make sure the house was locked and then held out her hand to check the wards and initiate the safeguards she’d put in place. A webbing of pentagrams flashed a bright white at her touch and she gave them a quick jolt of her Spirit to lock the spell. Her family’s lives and their thoughts continuing as if she were a suspended memory.

If she returned, she could unlock the spell and life would continue. And if she didn’t unlock it, then…

The wind changed against her back and she turned.

Her Bronco was parked at the end of the driveway, ready for Eliza to back out without disturbing her sleeping daughter. She opened the SUV’s hatchback and set her bagged supplies inside. When she closed the back door, the wind shoved her hard against the SUV. The whip and curl of it took her breath away as leaves stuck to her jacket and pants. Several seconds passed before she realized it wasn’t the wind that held the leaves to her suit, her skin, her face and her hair. She pulled at a large yellow leaf on the back of her hand.

To her horror, the leaf pulled her skin with it and left behind a raw, bleeding wound.

More leaves slapped against her with harder force. She held up her arms to protect her face as they fused themselves to her hands, binding her fingers together. More leaves wrapped around her legs, individually and then together as they bound her ankles and she fell on her side and rolled down the driveway, unable to stay upright and fight the push and pull of the maelstrom.

The leaves moved and crawled about her as they sought out the uncovered parts of her. Eliza whispered the words for Fire, summoning her power. Several of the leaves ignited, but they burned her as well and she screamed in pain as she rolled on the ground in an attempt to smother the magical fire.

Eliza soon found herself bound from head to toe in an autumn prison of yellow, brown, red and orange leaves. They covered her mouth, fused her lips together, and kept her quiet. The only parts of her left uncovered were her eyes, her nose and her ears.

A buzzing noise filled the night, drowning out the sound of the winds and she thought of a million bees. Eliza panicked, thinking something had summoned a farmer’s hive to sting her while she lay helpless.

But that’s not what she saw. Eliza realized the leaves had been focused to leave her eyes uncovered so she could see what was coming for her.

Down the road of her subdivision thundered horses. Nine in all. Their hooves were made of white fire and she wasn’t sure if they were truly striking the ground even though it vibrated beneath her. A woman adorned in gleaming silver, seated on a white horse whose silver caparison flashed with moonlight, was the group’s focal point and led them to where Eliza lay. 

Wolves materialized out of a thick mist that formed around Eliza. She made protesting noises and squirmed as she tried to roll away. The wolves, large and magnificent, in hues of gray, black and white, surrounded her and nudged her back into their center with their snouts.

They parted as the woman on the white horse inched her beast forward. Eliza looked up into the most beautiful of faces. She was as pale as the moon, with hair as dark as midnight, and lips the color of blood. Her gown moved with the colors of winter, pale blues, whites and grays. The fabric looked as if it were made of ice.

When she dismounted from her stallion, her feet never touched the ground, but floated atop the mist.

“Elizabeth Alexandra Hawthorne,” the woman said in a voice that was both commanding as well as luxurious and seductive. “You’ve made someone very, very angry at you. So they’ve asked me to make sure you don’t do that again.”

Angry? What? Who? She tried to ask questions but the pain of trying to pry her raw and bleeding lips free of the leaves prevented her.

“Aww…” the woman said as she knelt down. So close, Eliza could see the woman’s skin was as smooth and flawless as marble. Ethereal. And her pale ears parted her ebony hair in long, elegant points.

Faeries! No!

“Now, there’s no need for you to talk anymore, Elizabeth. No need to worry or think ever again. Your enemy gets what they want, and I get what I want,” she smiled, showing rows of sharp teeth. “I get another God Mother’s child of my very own.”

Eliza screamed as the pain from the leaves covering her intensified. She heard the fabric of her suit sizzle and saw smoke rise from beneath the leaves to mingle with the Faerie mist. She felt the searing burn of her flesh as it melted, and heard the crack of her bones as they mutated inside of her. She writhed and rolled around as her thoughts darkened and simplified and she knew the name of the woman. The name of her new master.

Medbh. Queen of the Unseelie Sidhe.

Soon the pain faded and she could stand on all fours. When she raised her head, she stood as high as the horse’s shoulder. And when she felt something touch her side, she looked into the sad eyes of another wolf.

Welcome, sister, came the voice in her mind. It softened the transition from being human to wolf for Eliza. But it didn’t replace the sadness.

As Medbh remounted her stallion and urged her wolves on, Eliza looked back at the house as all memories of her loving husband and little girl faded away.

The wolf howled and joined her new pack as the Faerie Queen continued on her wild hunt with one more hunting beast.

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