Volume 1.41: The Price of Magic

Type: Series
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Rating: M

Characters:  April, Cadence,Carmella, Ethan, Eugénie, Luca, Rachel, Romulus, Rudi, Sonja, Stella, Willow
Word Count: 4299

Glossary: 

Warning: coarse language, bloody images, picture heavy

I have spells that warn, spells that bind, spells that burn and spells that blind.
My clan, they do not know the cost of magic. Do you?

Zaha - The Secret World

By the time Rachel reached the manor, she was breathless from running and as hysterical as Carmella was earlier when she left Rachel’s house. It took some time for Sonja to calm her down and get the whole story from her.

“I told you it wouldn’t work! He’s obviously figured out the Star we gave him is a fake.” April was the first to fall apart. And it wasn’t long before everyone had something to say, and tensions reached an unbearable point.

April thought they should go ahead and open the door, and get the hell out of Twinbrook, leave the pack and Sonja’s coven to deal with Ethan’s wrath.

Luca and Andrew refused to entertain her. They couldn’t sit back and watch the town go up in flames; they had an obligation to help them. After all,  this time around Ethan’s retaliation was solely on them.

“Did they fucking help us, twenty years ago?” April couldn’t keep a lid on her emotions. She and Luca went head to head, exchanging heated words. For the two of them, years of tension had finally boiled over. But for the others, their verbal war was devastating to watch.

April thought Luca was ‘too nice’ and she blamed him for everything. As harsh as it sounded, he knew it was all true. If they had stuck to their original plan and kidnapped Cadence, took her blood without her consent, and compelled her and Rachel to help Willow cast the unbinding spell they would have long opened the door.

“You had to fucking ruin everything and fall in love with her!” April screeched. 

“I told you from the start that’s not how I do things!” Luca bared his fangs, his eyes flashing red. He was having a hard time keeping his temper in check. 

“See where that got us!” April fired back, and from there things rapidly spiraled out of control. 

In a heartbeat Luca had April in his arms, shaking her violently. He stopped short of strangling her when out of the corner of his eye, he saw how petrified Cadence looked. 

“Do it!” April taunted him. “Kill me. Go ahead and rip my throat out in front of your pet. Or better yet, rip off my arm like you did Ava’s!”

“What does she mean about Ava? Luca, what did you do to her?” Cadence asked shrilly.

“You are fucking insane!” Luca growled under his breath at April, completely ignoring Cadence’s question. It wasn't the time and place for confessions.

April laughed a high pitched, bitter sound. “No, you just don’t have the balls to do it. Love has made you soft.” She said it so softly but her words carried through the room. The others all held a collective breath, convinced that April’s words were the last she would ever utter.

With a loud, angry bark, Luca flung her away from him.  She hit the bookcase with a sickening thud, but she was back on her feet and coming back for him faster than the speed of light.

“That’s enough!” Sonja’s firm voice put an end to their senseless fighting. “We have to stop Ethan before he even starts.”

She had a plan. They had the Star, the binding spell and Cadence's blood. They could lock Ethan’s clan away. 

“Where would we lock them though?” Willow was all for the plan, but she just didn’t see Ethan walking into the manor willingly.

“His lair,” Sonja replied.

An uneasy silence wove its way into the room as they all sat processing her announcement. If they went with Sonja’s plan they would be doing the very same thing her coven had done to Luca’s clan twenty years earlier. They didn’t like the implications at all.

“What other choice do we have?” Sonja asked, reading the indecisiveness in their eyes. “We are out of options people. It’s either that, or the town. And let’s face it, your clan in Hidden Springs won’t make it here in time for whatever hell Ethan wants to unleash on the town.”

Sonja made a convincing argument. The longer the others sat on it, the more they warmed to the idea of being rid of Ethan for good.

While they ran through Sonja’s plan again the doorbell rang. Luca went to get it. He was surprised to find Emme there. She’d never set foot at his home before, even when his parents were still alive. Her distrust towards his kind had run way too deep long before she’d lost her child.

They stared at each other for some time, both struggling to come up with the right thing to say.

Luca was the first to find his voice though. “Thank you, for helping us with the Star.”

“Anything for Cadence,” Emme replied. 

He could do this the whole day. The staring contest. But he had Ethan to deal with, so he forced Emme to state her business. “What brings you by, Emme?”

“You need me. I heard Ethan’s planning an attack. Carmella’s hysterical. She’s telling everyone to leave town.” 

“And you think you can help how?” Luca raised his eyebrows, his interest piqued. 

“Can I come in?”

He hesitated. He really didn’t want her around, but out of gratitude for what she had done for his clan and Cadence, he found himself moving aside to let her in.

April and Andrew were not thrilled with her arrival. They wanted her gone immediately. But since Sonja had seen her powers, she thought they should give her a chance.  So for the next ten minutes they all listened to what Emme had to say.

“Let me get this straight, you’d willingly go into Ethan’s lair and scale his quarters?” April couldn’t hide her disbelief.

“Yes.” Emme replied.

“Why? What’s in it for you?” It was Andrew’s turn to sound skeptical.

"He killed my daughter,” she stated, her face expressionless, but the pain in her voice couldn’t be ignored by any of them.

“Look, Emme. You’ve done a lot for us. Sending you to Ethan’s lair is suicide.  As much as we appreciate your offer we can’t accept it,” Luca told her.

“It’s suicide for a mortal. In my true form Ethan wouldn’t even know I’m there!” Emme argued.

“Yes, she looks like an insect,” Rachel, who’d seen her in her sprite form earlier, vouched for her. Her childlike statement brought smiles to all their faces, easing some of the tension in the room.

________

They set off for the woods lining Ethan’s lair shortly after midday. Luca and his clan led the small procession.

For Luca, who was still having doubts about the plan, they reached their destination too soon. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong, it was the same feeling of dread he'd had when he last saw his brother twenty years earlier. The plan was too rushed. Too simple.

Andrew though had different concerns. Even though they were obscured by the trees lining the perimeter of Ethan’s expansive grounds, he felt they should seek better cover.

But April argued, the spot was perfect, they had a clear view of all entry points into Ethan’s lair. Since Emme was going in first, should something go wrong, they’d go to her aide in no time.

“You all need to stop worrying. You’re in good hands,” Emme told them just before she vanished through the trees.

She walked a few feet, putting a bit of distance between herself and the small group, before she took her true form.

As much as she wanted to help she was still very guarded about her powers, and the last thing she wanted was to transform in front of the Vampires. Sonja and Cadence may trust them, but it didn’t mean she had to, after all it was their kind who had killed her only daughter.

In her sprite form she could easily fit into anything, even an air vent.

And it’s through ones of these she entered Ethan’s lair.

She knew every second counted, so she got to work as soon as she was inside.

She scaled the second floor first, searching and checking every room. When she didn’t find anything of intrigue, she moved on to the first floor, and then the ground floor. There was nothing of interest there too.

All the warning bells rang in her head when she reached what she could only describe as a storage room in the basement.

For a moment she couldn’t move, she was numbed by fear as she stared at the rows and rows of cages holding Ethan’s small army.

She counted sixteen in total, all in various stages of blood lust.

The sound of a door creaking to life somewhere inside the house startled her. She let out a small gasp. The creatures caught the sound or maybe it was her scent they latched onto.

Whatever it was, it sent them in a mania. They all started rattling their cages wildly. A few even went as far as throwing themselves against the steel bars, trying to break free. Others chewed and gnawed on their own limbs. It was a disturbing thing to see, and Emme understood now why Carmella was so hysterical. God forbid, if these…things (she couldn’t call them Vampires) managed to break free, the town would be finished.

She fluttered her wings, getting ready to hightail it out of there.

But she flew straight into Eugenie’s face as she entered the room. Mistaking her for an insect, the vile creature swatted her away with a flick of her manicured hand. Emme flew upwards and hit the fluorescent light. She bit her tongue hard to stop herself from screaming out in pain when the heat singed her wings.

“Quiet!” Eugenie bellowed at the caged fledglings. But her loud, screeching voice seemed to have the opposite effect, it stoked their frenzy.

When it became obvious they wouldn’t take orders from her, she turned on her heel and left the room, hissing “imbeciles!” under her breath.

Emme stuck close to her, fluttering behind her, taking in everything about her. From her perfectly coiffed hair to her scarlet lips and the cloyingly sweet perfume she could tell Eugenie wasn’t like the others. She was sane and well fed. But not any less dangerous. 

Eugenie stopped walking suddenly prompting Emme to plaster herself on the ceiling and stay there.

With her fangs bared, Ethan’s concubine sniffed the air suspiciously. And Emme knew then that the incident in the cage room was no coincidence. The vampires could sense her. They couldn’t make out her scent for sure but, they were aware of her presence.

Eugenie looked around again. When she was satisfied that indeed she was alone, she carried on down the hall. Emme followed suit, flying close to the ceiling.

The vampire entered the crypt and slammed the door behind her before Emme could peek inside. She was tempted to find another way into the crypt and make sure Ethan was inside. But, she knew if she stuck around, she ran the risk of being caught, so she looked for the nearest exit and hightailed it out of Ethan’s lair…

______

“What took you so long?” Luca demanded as soon as Emme took on her human form again in the woods where she’d left them. 

“I got tied up,” She replied. 

“Did you find them?” Sonja asked, sounding anxious. Emme nodded her head and filled them in, giving them as much detail as possible.

When Luca heard about Ethan’s small army, he wanted to abort the plan. It was too dangerous. They’d been banking on the fact that Ethan and his fledglings would be resting, and at their weakest. But knowing they were awake and seemed lucid enough, he didn’t want to take a chance and risk all their lives.

“He’s locked them up in cages, if and when he realizes what’s happening, he won’t have enough time to release them all!” Emme argued.

“No!” Luca wouldn’t change his mind.

April decided to settle the matter the old school way. She called for a vote. 

Cadence was on the fence. She understood the urgency, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to be responsible for damning more people to a life of isolation. She was still struggling to forgive herself for putting her father away, and robbing Luca and his clan of twenty years with their loved ones. She didn’t want to go down the guilt road again. She wasn’t strong enough. 

The rest of the group though, wanted to go through with the plan. It was the only way they could prevent history from repeating itself.

With the decision made, Willow and Rachel mixed the magical reagents for the spell. When they were done, they passed the knife and the bowl to Cadence.

But she hesitated. She couldn’t go through with it. “I can’t. I’m sorry. They are people, just like my father. Just like all of us!”

“Darling, if we want to bind Ethan it has to be now!” Sonja shook her gently, forcing her to focus. “They are not human anymore. They are in blood lust, and they will stop at nothing to destroy this town. The best thing we can do is to lock them away, for everyone’s safety.”

Before Cadence could take the bowl, Luca took her hand and led her away from the group, “I have a bad feeling about this Cadence. I promised your father that no harm would come to you; I want you to walk away from all of it!.”

“What choice do we have? It’s Ethan or the town,” Cadence whispered, trying her best to keep her wits about her. She hated the effect he had on her, hated how quickly her body betrayed her at every turn, and how easy it was for her heart to forgive him even when her head told her she shouldn't.

"We can find another way to save the town.” Luca suggested, but they both knew he was clutching at straws.

“We all know this is the only way!” Cadence wiggled out of his arms when she heard someone sigh impatiently behind them, she guessed it was April.

She took the bowl and the knife from Rachel, and turned to Luca again, hoping he’d make things easy on her. But he shook his head and looked away.

As she pricked her little finger with the knife, Cadence said small prayer, asking for forgiveness for what they were all about to do. A dull ache shot up her hand, but it was gone before she’d even milked the first drop of blood into the bowl.

With the reagents mixed, the protection and cloaking spells cast, the four witches and Emme advanced to Ethan’s lair. 

Luca’s clan and Rudi stayed behind in the woods. They’d wanted to come with them, but since none of her cloaking spells worked on Vampires and Wolves, Sonja had pointed out that Ethan’s fledglings would catch their scent from a mile away. And the last thing they wanted was a blood bath. They wanted the ambush to be peaceful and mess free.

Beyond the stained glass windows there was no sign of life. Ethan and his clan were obviously still resting. But still, they had to act fast; they couldn’t allow themselves to relax.

Willow drew a magical circle near the front door steps to serve as their altar space. Sonja placed the reagents and the Star in the center of the circle. Rachel arranged the black candles around each point on the pentagram and lit the incense, while Cadence invoked all their magic.

The binding spell required three witches, but Sonja didn’t think one more would hurt, so the four of them took their places around the pentagram, and softly chanted the words of the universal spell.

“Star of Chaos 
Watchers of the Light

Join us in the circle 

For this rite

To These Walls

We bind Ethan 
and his clan

With the blood 
of one who's pure

These doors for eternity we seal

By our magic and your might

Never again 
shall these dark spirits

Roam the night

As we desire

So shall it be!”

They’d just finished casting the spell when the Chaos Star on the ground began to glow. A golden beam shone from its center and extended over the house. 

The breeze, gently rustling through the trees just moments before, picked up speed, heaving and blowing everything in its path. 

The few opened windows in the house banged shut with such a force, glass pieces flew everywhere, causing Rachel and Cadence, who’d never cast such a powerful spell before, to momentarily let go of the bind and cover their eyes.

Sonja and Willow though, the seasoned witches they were, quickly took hold of their hands again to reinforce the bind.

Thunder groaned in the distance. An angry flash of lightning streaked across the sky seconds before the heavens above opened, releasing a blast of heavy rain.

The four witches, caught in the eye of the storm, had nowhere to run so they had no choice but to stay put and wait it out as they clung to each other.

The icy shards spilling from the swollen clouds gradually thinned until they were nothing more than a tired humid mist. The few trees, miraculously still rooted to the ground, moaned and swayed against the roaring wind as it simmered down. Slowly, inch by inch, like the gentle hands of a lover seducing his beloved, the sun rays peaked through the clearing sky.

The four witches reluctantly let go of each other, a look of bewildered wonder in their eyes as they stared at the rainbow painted across the sky. Life was back to normal. The only reminder of the nightmare they’d just lived through was the debris in the front yard, the shattered remains of their magic left in the wake of the storm.

A chilling howl pierced the air, breaking the afternoon calm. And they all turned to the house. Ethan had freed his fledglings from their cages, but a minute too late it seemed, judging from the way they were banging on the windows trying to escape. It was painful to watch, the senseless way the fledglings kept clawing and biting at each other. But as horrific as the scene before her was,  Cadence couldn’t look away.

“We did the right thing,” Cadence heard her mother say. She didn’t doubt Sonja’s conviction. But she couldn’t ignore how wrong it felt. Before Ethan turned them into bloodthirsty monsters, they were breathing, living human beings, like her, like her father, they had hopes and dreams, and some probably had families.

“Come on, let’s go home. It’s over,” Sonja pulled her away from the house, and Cadence reluctantly followed. 

“Where’s Emme?” Rachel asked as they were about to slip through the gates.

 “She-” Willow began, but her voice faded in her throat as she stifled a scream. 

In the far corner, outside the Mausoleum’s entrance, Emme lay flat on the ground, her face turned up to the sky, her wings spread out beneath her, the bright colors caught in the sun, creating a beautiful kaleidoscope. She looked so peaceful, like she was relaxing, soaking up the sun. But the large bark of the oak tree crushing her chest told a different story.

In the woods, where the witches had left them some thirty minutes earlier, Luca was still reeling from the storm, when panic swept over him. At first it was a little more than a gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach. But with each passing second the feeling of dread increased tenfold, rapidly making its way upwards, to his heart. Hard as he tried though, to shake off the feeling of impending doom, he couldn't. Something was terribly wrong, he could feel it.

All at once, Cadence's frightened voice came at him from every direction,  "LUCA! PLEASE! COME! QUICK. I. NEED YOU!" 

Each syllable pounded in his heart with a heaviness so complete, it  drove out everything else around him, the birds chirping in the trees, Rudi's steady heart beat against the afternoon silence, the smell of wet soil after the rain, and his own awareness of himself. 

"I'm on my way!" He pushed the thought out back to Cadence with such force it shook his very core. He swayed on his feet, like a drunken sailor after a night of endless rounds of gin and rum, as he blindly made his way to one of the trees. He held on to the trunk, steadying himself.

"Luca what is wrong with you, you are acting strange!" April sounded as panicked as he felt as she tugged at his arm, demanding his attention.

"Leave me alone," He flung her away from him, she stumbled backwards, but Andrew caught her before she could hit the ground.

A stunned silence settled over the small group. April glared at Luca, expecting an apology. Andrew mirrored her stance, but he was more interested in an explanation.

"Look-I" He began, but he didn't finish what he was about to say, Cadence's second cry resonated deep within his mind. "Please, Luca I need you, something is terribly wrong." 

This time she sounded tearful, doubtful even, like she didn't really expect him to come and reaching out to him in this manner was a last ditch attempt.

"Cadence is in trouble," he said before he closed his eyes and blinked from the woods. April and Andrew followed suit.

They materialized in Ethan's front yard less than a minute later, expecting to find the worst.  All three released huge gusts of relieved sighs when they heard the inhuman screams careening from the house, the spell had obviously worked.

Luca quickly located Cadence and the others near the mausoleum. She was hunched over Emme.

From her labored breathing, and the slow, faint way Emme's heart fluttered in her chest in perfect harmony with the wings beneath her, Luca knew they were too late.

Reluctantly, on legs heavy as cement blocks, he approached the impending heartbreak.

"Please help her," Cadence looked up at him, her face puffy and ashen, her eyes red and swollen from crying. At that moment, with her heart breaking all around him, he would have given everything to rewrite the ending to this day.

Wordlessly, he lifted the tree from Emme's chest long enough for Cadence to pull her from under.

Cadence got up from the ground and took his hand, "Heal her!"

Luca shook his head, "I can't!" 

"Yes, you can! You can! You can save her!" Cadence wailed on his chest. 

"I'm sorry. I can't do it. I don't have the gift-"

It was the last thing Cadence wanted to hear. She bolted from his arms, and ran to April. She pleaded with her, promising her the world, bargaining for Emme's life. But April stared at her feet sadly, unable to meet her eyes. 

Cadence turned to Andrew then. He, too, had a look of regret in his eyes as he shook his head. None of them had the ability to heal. Even if they did, it would never work on Emme.

When there was nothing left to do, Cadence sat down and gently lifted Emme from the ground and held her.

"I'm sorry. This is my fault."

"No, you silly girl, none of this is your fault. None of it. I wanted to help. It was my choice. I thought I could outrun the storm, I guess I've grown slow in my old age," Emme whispered, laughing, but  her eyes shone bright with pain.

"We shouldn't have. We shouldn't have cast the spell, if we hadn't-"

"No! We did the right thing, we saved the town," Emme cried weakly.

"And look at the cost," Cadence murmured.

"Hush now. It's done. No regrets. No regrets!" Emme reached up and touched her cheek as she gently brushed away her tears.

Cadence caught her hand and kissed it.

"Promise me you'll go to Bridgeport, and set the stage on fire. Promise me, you'll never stop dancing."

"I promise," Cadence said. It was an easy promise to make, and one she intended to keep. After all, her mind had already been made up about Bridgeport. 

"Good," Emme settled back in Cadence's arms and for a little while they talked, about dancing and magic and Fae. About life, love and death.

As they waited, Cadence softly hummed music from Swan Lake, rocking the two of them back and forth, like a mother soothing a wounded child. Emme laid still, her eyes closed; the sounds of her labored breathing were oddly comforting to Cadence. They were a reminder that she was still alive, still holding on. And for as long as she was still breathing, Cadence would never let go.

"Cade," Emme opened her eyes, the glazed look in the dark depths was gone now, and in its place a bright awareness burned hot. "I have to go now, they are waiting for me. Fae's waiting for me."

"No!" Cadence sobbed in her hair.

"You have to let go, you have to learn to let go. Your father, it wasn’t your fault. And none of this is your fault. You have to forgive yourself. And you have to let go…of me, of all of this," Emme told her.

"I can't!" Even as she said the words, Cadence knew it was useless. Her heart broke into a million fragments as she watched her teacher shed her human form, and flutter softly into her hands.

With both hands raised out in front of her, Cadence blew a kiss into her palms, "Bright as light shall you glow, up above in the heavens you go."

The cloud of pixie dust swayed gently in the afternoon breeze as it danced upwards into the sky...

______

Credits: Special thanks to Fae for the ritual poses. Without you those scenes would have been impossible to shoot. Thank you.

AN: Thank you to all TF readers for your patience. I'm sorry it has taken me this long to come back to Twinbrook.