“My mother loved my father.”
“He was a dirty savage!”
“No. He was a young warrior. Descended from shamans. They loved each other, and I come from that love.”
“He was a rapist and she a whore!”
“You are wrong Preacher Milton,” she defied the man who had frightened her ever since she was a little girl.
“Your soul shall burn for this!”
His blotchy skin turned beet red in his fury. But what had she to lose? He had killed her grandmother, turned the town against her, and was now set on killing her in this place. The very same castle she used to dream about living in as a child.
“Look at me, Demon spawn,” Milton hissed as he drew back his hand.
Holley ignored the stinging on her cheek after he delivered one final blow. She glared at him with hardened eyes. Anger was not an unknown emotion for her. She knew it all too well. Had felt it for the likes of the preacher and those small-minded members of the settlement they’d begun miles away in New Ark.
Times were changing. Talk of revolution and breaking away from England were all the rage. Holley was a fan of this search for freedom. Although, she doubted those men had the same ideas about it as she.
She was tired of being told she couldn’t do things because she was a woman, a half-breed, a Witch even. They feared her, cursed her name, and as such Milton was able to slander her to where her murder would go unquestioned. She would never understand how people who’d left their country to find freedom could be so unforgiving of those who differed from them.
Her heart squeezed with regret as her body trembled violently from the chill. Puffs of white formed from her breath, and she felt tears rolling down the sides of her face. So cold. So dark. Fear threatened to control her mind, but no, she fought against it.
“Struggle if you will, but I have finally found a way to purge your soul of the evil that inhabits it. My men have traced the images in your heathen books here for you to gaze at until you can see no more. True, you survived my attempts at burning you, and drowning the Devil from your blood, but here you will remain within these walls until you are only a memory!”
“No! No!” she screamed as the hooded cowards began to fill the gaping hole in the wall with brick and mortar.
Holley was going to die. Milton was right. Her wrists ached where the manacles cut into her skin. She’d been beaten and bloodied, starved, burned, and drowned, and finally chained like an animal only to be buried alive behind brick.
She did as he said she would and stared at the runes on the walls inscribed with her blood, wondering at the stupidity of men not for the first time. Closing her eyes to the numbness that had settled over her, Holley knew she did not have long. She chanted the words Granny Rose had taught her.
She could trace their ancestry back to the Lancaster Witches of England. She had magic in her veins on both sides. Power pulsed through her blood and she used that and the words she remembered to tap into the spirits of the Keep. The manetuwak.
Hear my call. Answer my need, great manetuwak.
The room warmed and pulsed as the power that resided therein seemed to take a liking to her.
Please, spirits of the Keep. I need your help.
She sensed them listening and wondered for a moment at their origin. Magic in and of itself was neither bad nor good. It was how it was used that determined its affinity.
As if it knew her doubts, the manetuwak began filling her head with information. Yes, it was built as she’d imagined, by supernaturals. The Keep was for an order known as the Guardians of Chaos. It was created with the intention of aiding and protecting all magic. Yes, it was a positive force, but remained empty as the New World had been overrun by normals far too soon for it to be used for its rightful purpose.
Abandoned to the piney woods that surrounded it, the Keep had noticed Holley when she and her grandmother had come across its lands.
Yes, she answered, we took many walks through your woods to collect herbs under the light of the full moon and I fell in love with this castle and built fairytales in my head around it.
The collecting of herbs was of course, just another mark against her and Granny. The locals called them Witches and had tried and found them guilty.
Holley had been hanged, drowned, and burned at the stake. She survived all three attempts at ending her life. Granny was not so lucky, she shuddered once more at the loss.
Please, I beg you, do not let them murder me. Protect my flesh, and keep my soul tied to thee, oh keeper of my body. Until the time comes when it is safe for me to awaken. Let me see through your walls and hollows, allow me the freedom to take space and shelter inside your heart, great manetuwak. Keep me safe, keep me hidden, as I will, so mote it be.
Holley felt her own magic rise and swell with each statement and every entreaty. She’d never tapped into quite so much, afraid of the consequences. Above all magic required balance, but this was necessary.
Her mind raced forward for a moment, it was lit up like the sun, then plunged into darkness. The pain went away. Her bruises and cuts healed as far as she could tell. Holley saw a miracle of stars and swirling clouds and mists. She heard a steady hum fill the spaces around her.
There was not one being there with her, but she felt the manetuwak’s presence and knew she was cared for.
Incredible, she thought as peace began to fill her.
The preacher might have imprisoned her here to die, but she would not perish. She would survive and one day she would walk the forests once more under the light of the moon. Holley would taste fresh air again, she swore it.
Even as she felt her human body freeze and grow still beneath the power of her entreaty, the spell of the manetuwak or the spirits of the Keep kept her mind focused and awake.
Until the moment when it was safe for her to awaken, Holley’s body would remain frozen in time within the very walls Preacher Milton used to try to kill her.
She was part of the great stone construct now.
Of course, Holley had no idea then that it would take nearly three-hundred years for that time to arrive, but each day she used her magic to try and reach the one man with the power to free her. The one man she had never expected to appear.
Her mate.
One
“It’s time. You must move on,” Neela’s voice called out to him through the veil.
He stood there for hours, days, sometimes weeks inside his dreams, waiting to catch a glimpse of his fallen mate.
Kingston Baldric could only visit that metaphysical place where the realm of the undead met reality in that precarious state between sleep and wake. It was there that he sometimes caught a glimpse of Neela, his fallen mate.
As time went on, her image began to fade. The vibrant blonde she-Dragon he had known in life was nothing but a pale shadow now. Was he responsible for that too? He could only wonder.
Their connection was less than it had ever been. The call to move on was too strong for even her fiery spirit. He was helpless to stop it, and yet, he still came to this place seeking forgiveness for sins of the past.
The vows he made were over, but how could he let go? His heart grew tight and his Dragon hissed. The great beast did not like it there. He hated being so close to death. It was something any near-immortal creature would naturally find repulsive.
“I can’t. I can’t let go.”
“You must,” she whispered.