Page 33 of My Dark Obsession

‘A Day Or Two To Turn Blue-Dies Vel Ut Convertat Bue’

Amaya

Ravioli flew into the room not long after Ziel left, sat on his perch and ate the tongue I had forgotten I had left for him.

I sat by the fire in hopes of it warming the coldness that had seeped into my bones when Ziel had left.

Rí was still at the bar, Jerry was off doing whatever the ghost did, and Bri was probably tucked nice and warm in her bed.

My boys…I couldn’t think of them; it hurt too much, it took the air from my lungs and left me gasping.

My magic had indeed showed itself when my emotions became almost uncontrollable. So it was there. But I needed to use them with ease. I needed a clear head to get to my boys; I needed to be calm when I ripped Lyal limb from limb.

Looking to the floor I saw the books that had crashed back down. I picked up the one closest to me and put it on the table. Frowning I turned it around and read the title, ‘A Day Or Two To Turn Blue.’

I flipped through the pages, the old Latin unreadable, but towards the end of the book, just before I gave up, was a few pages in English.

When a pure-blooded Dark Witch dies, her magic intensifies and becomes transferable. This is usually done to help the next generation become stronger. A ritual is done to complete the process.

First a cleanse. The body is washed of any dirt or grime.

Then Wisteria petals are sewn into their wrists-a bracelet of the tree of life. A sign of respect to the First Lady.

Finally, they are buried in the Mountains cemetery with Willow moss roots and Wisteria petals scattered across the fresh dirt.

Once this is done, the power that was once hers, would transfer to the next generation.

However, this power can be stolen in the cruellest of ways. Unless willingly, the only way to transfer a Dark Witches power is when they are deceased. During the early stages of life upon Wisteria, certain supernatural believed that mating with the deceased witch would pass the power onto them .

After multiple attempts, the Dark Witches had to hold off a witch’s burial and incorporated a two day to turn blue rule. If the Witch had started to decompose, they would not be touched.

So the Dark Witches would surround the deceased, protecting her body from any male that may have tried to steal her power.

Cremation is not an option for a Dark Witch. In burning their body, they burn their power and along with it, the power of future generations.

I was nauseous. Sick to my stomach. The White Witches, and I knew it was aimed at them, would purposely mate with a witch’s deceased form to gain access to her power. And they said that the Dark Witches were the greedy power-hungry ones.

“That’s a very heavy read My Lady.”

I slammed the book and threw it to the table. I hated when people disrespected books but that one gave me cold chills and a horrid sick feeling deep inside my gut.

“It’s sick. Fucking sick.”

“Indeed, most history is most distasteful.”

Distasteful wasn’t enough to describe the horror that the witches had been through. The disrespect and utter fear they must have felt. Knowing what could potentially have happened to their body when they passed. Knowing that their temples of life were going to be violated and stolen from them.

“If all the Witches died during the war, did any of them…suffer this?” I asked frowning .

“The witches that perished in the war disintegrated into dust my Lady and disappeared into the wind. There were no bodies to bury.”

Is that why I was having so much trouble finding my power? If they weren’t buried and didn’t have the ritual, then the power wouldn’t have moved onto the next generation. To me.

“The closest bloodline of Lady Samara never needed the ritual to gain their powers.”

I frowned again, I was going to have permanent frown lines if this kept up.

“Yes, you are of her bloodline, the closest to it. You did not gain your powers from a ritual. Your power is and has always been inside you.”

Part of me had hoped that the reason I couldn’t access my powers was because the ritual hadn’t been done, that it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t find my magic. However, that would have been the easy way out, the weak way.

I wasn’t weak.

“What do I need to accept? Everyone keeps telling me to accept, but what?”

“Yourself my Lady. Until you accept yourself, accept who you truly are, your powers will not come forth.” He poofed from the room leaving me staring open-mouthed at his left-over glow.

It was that easy? All that time, all that time away from my boys, all this waiting and I just had to accept myself?

“Fine,” I called out into the empty room.

“I accept myself. I’m a Dark Witch. I’m from the Dark Mountain. Happy?” I looked to the ceiling as if it was going to answer me .

Nothing.

Nothing but the crackle of the fire and the noise in my head.

Ravioli blinked his beady eyes at me before shuffling on his perch.

I growled out loud and stomped from the room, up the dark stair way, past the cold judgy eyes of my ancestors and out into the cold night. I stomped my way to the cemetery and stood there with the wet moss seeping into my socks and the cold mist settling on my skin.

“I accept! I’m accepting it! Okay!?” The dead didn’t answer.

The waves below the cliff crashed against the rock, angry slams of water that created sprays of salty tears. The trees wept their purple liquid and the branches, for once, stayed solid and still.

“Please just…help me get to my boys. Please.” I whispered.

I had begged. I had begged my ancestors and the Dark Mountain.

I had begged for their help and yet they gave me nothing.

I screamed at the stone in anger. They would speak to Ziel, but wouldn’t speak to me, their only living relative?

Was I that much of a monster, that much of a nobody that not even the ancestors would help me?

My shoulders slumped, the anger seeped from my body and my pent-up rage diminished. I was failing. I was failing to protect the twins. I had let Lyal go too far and in doing so, he had killed me and took me further away than I could possibly have ever gone.

I truly was nothing .

“Mo Chridhe, what are you doing out here?” My dragon asked as he walked through the iron gates towards me.

His glowing kind eyes and soft smile were a comfort I didn’t deserve.

I didn’t answer him; instead, I let him see the utter soul-drowning sadness and guilt that seeped into my weary bones.

Because I was. I was sad for the twins and the life they had to live; I was sad I had missed so many days with them, sad for Cole and his sickness, sad for the witches and the horror they had to live through.

And finally, I was sad for myself, sad that I was everything that everyone had always said I was. A monster, a freak, a dud.

Rí smoothed my damp hair from my face, reached down and lifted me into his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he carried me back into the mountain, into my room and through to the bathroom that I never truly paid much attention to.

He put me down to the black tiled floor and turned the shower on behind a huge glass wall.

He helped me remove my clothes, placing a soft kiss to each ear lobe before following me into the hot spray of water.

Never once saying a word. He washed me with such gentle hands my cold heart warmed under his soothing touch.

“Ye’ have so much on ye’ mind. So much ye’ must do.

Let me care for ye’. Let me take some of ye’ burdens,” he murmured as he slowly rubbed soap into my shoulders.

I nodded slowly and closed my eyes, gave in to his warm touch and let him take control of the moment.

He was so loving, so kind. So utterly devoted to me.

The way he treated me made my eyes sting with tears that wouldn’t shed.

I had never been able to cry. The act just never happened; no tear ever spilled from my tired eyes.

I looked at him from under my lashes and placed a soft kiss to his soaking wet shirt. He had taken me into the shower, cleaned my entire body and not once had he made me feel like there was an ulterior motive. Not once had he made me feel we had to do more. He had simply wanted to take care of me.

My dragon had a kind heart.

I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it from his massive shoulders. Pressing a soft kiss to his chest I smiled at the purr that vibrated from him. I squeezed soap into my hands and began to wash him as he had me. I showed him with this act that I cared; I cared in my own fucked up way.

Once we were fully clean, he wrapped me in a large black towel and picked me back up, cradling me in his arms. He took me to my room, placed me on the huge bed and laid down next to me, pulling my damp head on to his chest. His heart beat slowly as his chest rumbled with his contented purr.

This man had truly taken me as his. Body and soul.

My eyes slid shut as his warmth spread through my body, pulling me into a deep slumber as my twins’ faces flashed in my mind. Their big blue eyes begged me for help, begged me for my protection.

“They’re gone!”

I jumped up, heart slamming against my rib cage as I looked around the darkened room; the fire crackled and fog thickened outside the arched windows. Looking down at Rí’s sleeping form, I noted the small frown and downward tilt to his lips .

Confused as to what had woken me up, I slid to the edge of the bed and picked up the fallen silk pyjamas. Dropping the towel, I shivered as the exposed air hit my cold skin.

“They’re gone, you know.”

I snapped my head up, holding the top to my chest covering my nakedness. A luminous glow stood floating at the end of the bed. It flickered before focusing into a small child, her pin straight hair and purple eyes an obvious sign of her being a Dark Witch.

“Who’s gone?” I asked quietly, hoping not to wake my dragon.

“Everyone,” she answered in her small childish voice.

“Who?” I whispered as I quickly donned my sleepwear. Shuffling around to the end of the bed, I stood facing her. So far Jerry had been the only ghost I’d come across.

Her eyes lowered to my chest, where the jewel Rí had given me rested between my breasts, warming the skin there like his touch always did to me.

“They all burned you know. They all burned and now they can’t be with us. You are all that’s left.”

She had to mean the witches; Jerry had said they all turned to dust. This could be my opportunity to ask her things only the Dark Witches knew.

“Who betrayed them? Why did they shut the portals?”

She sighed and twirled in a circle, her glow floating off her like whisps of fireflies drifting into the night. The bright whisps glided through the black mist in my eye before disappearing completely.

“Well, they couldn’t let them have the humans, could they? Greedy little things. ”

The humans? The witches were protecting humans? The very beings that had looked upon me as a stain on their perfect lives. The very beings who had abused me and created the noise in my head.

Why would anyone want to protect them?

“Why were they protecting the humans? From who?”

She spun and spun, making me dizzy. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her; I wanted to yell in her little glowing face and demand she answer me. I stood still and mentally told the voices to piss off.

“Why, the humans are innocent of course!” she giggled as her puffy dress spun and flared out around her.

That was something the humans were not; and that was innocent. They all lied, cheated, abused and slid their way around life.

I hated them.

“Without them, there is no us.” Whispered so close to my ear, the cool breath of its owner made me shudder.

I spun around and stared wide-eyed at the elderly lady stood before me. Her black gown glowed in the same manner as the little girls, and she stared at me with familiar purple eyes. Another ghost.

Were the witches finally answering me? Had they actually heard my beg of help?

“What do you mean?” I whispered watching her as she gazed around the room as if remembering a fond memory. This could have been her room; she could have sat in this very room and lived her life.

“The humans are life; we are them in death.”

The fuck? Did all ghosts speak in riddles?

Ravioli squawked from his perch causing the little girl to scream and poof from the room. The old woman pointed her gnarled finger at him and snapped, “What’s that?”

“My pet, Ravioli.”

“That’s not your Familiar,” she sneered before poofing away also.

A familiar? What was that! I was now left with even more questions! I huffed and climbed back on the bed, now wide awake as I stared across the room at my bird’s beady eyes. He was always watching me with an intensity I couldn’t fathom.

“A familiar,” I muttered to myself.

“He’s watching you child,” She whispered coldly into my ear once more. I jumped and my eyes flung open, burning from the brightness of the morning bursting through the open windows. Rí’s heavy arm was draped across my waist as I gently pushed it off me and sat up.

Had that all been a dream? Was I now making things up to try and get myself some answers?

I pulled at the silk top I wore and frowned.

Looking over at Ravioli watching me from his perch I squinted at him, if I really focused, it almost looked as though he also had the smallest of black mist floating around him.

A sleepy yawn from behind me and the toe-curling warmth of Rí’s arm sliding around my waist and pulling me back against his chest had my stomach fluttering.

“Wee on—”

“What’s a familiar?”