Witchling Wars Read online

  Witchling Wars

  Kruxa Echelon Books 1 - 4

  Shawn Knightley

  Copyright © 2019 by Shawn Knightley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  BLOOD MARKED

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  GRIM DEFEAT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PERIL UNBOUND

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  DEATH HUNT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Want More Books?

  COMING SOON

  Message to the Reader

  About the Author

  BLOOD MARKED

  BOOK I

  Chapter 1

  “No!” I mumbled quietly. The light seeping in through the curtain was so harsh that I had to pull the covers over my face.

  ‘Note to self. Get thicker curtains.’

  The sun was nothing more than a harsh reminder that another day had begun without me. Charging ahead and not looking back. There were people outside the house carrying their morning coffees in their hands from their French Press or their Keurig cups, sipping it slowly as it cooled and they got into their overheated cars to head for work. Kids were walking down the road to the bus stop for school. Laughing, playing around, even teasing one another until I heard the grind of the bus’s brakes come to a halt. Then there were the birds. The birds I had once thought made such pretty sounds were doing nothing more than screeching as loud as they could. They might as well have been inside the bedroom with me given how noisy they were. Then there were the squirrels barking away at the birds when they flew too close. It was as if there was a battle going on between them as the birds tried protecting their nests and the squirrels stored their nuts.

  The world kept going. Kept reminding me that I was stuck. Trapped. Hidden away in a dark room with nothing to really force me from my bed. Why should I get up anyway if Caleb wasn’t there? What’s the point? He was supposed to be there every single morning. For the rest of our lives. In sickness and in health. For rich or for poor. Until death do us part. I just never thought in a million years that I would be doing the rest of our lives part on my own. Without him. Without anyone.

  I slowly lifted the sheet away and let my eyes get used to the harsh rays of sunlight piercing into my bedroom, staring at the sliver intruding on my slumber in the window with pure venom. To the right of the curtain my dresser was giving off a reflection from the glass over the top, right into the turned over picture frames. Mostly of me and Caleb. I turned them over so I didn’t have to look at them anymore six months ago. It didn’t go unnoticed when my sister Madison came to see me. She eyed them but didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t understand. Having to look at Caleb’s face in photographs where I was happy and he was alive was something I couldn’t handle. At least not right now. But I did have something to be proud of. It had been two weeks since I last shed a tear. And two weeks without crying was a new record. If I started weeping this morning as my burning eyes so desperately wanted to, I would have to start my record over again. I would take any small victories where I could on days like today when I didn’t even want to get out of bed.

  My cell phone rang on the nightstand next to me. Yet another noise to remind me that the rest of the world was moving on without me. And repeatedly reminding me that if I didn’t stir from my bed, or at least reach for the phone, it would continue to do so and leave me far behind.

  I reluctantly reached for the phone. It was a number I didn’t recognize. If it was a sales call, I swore to God someone might die.

  “Hello?” I answered in a groggy haze.

  “Mrs. Williams. Oh, uh… I’m sorry, I meant Miss. Ashwood,” said the voice on the other end of the line. People didn’t know what to call me anymore. They switched between my maiden name and my married name. I could hear the man on the other end of the line quietly scold himself for his error before he began speaking again. “This is Officer Parker from the Sheriff’s Department.”

  Oh lord. Not again. I already had enough encounters with the police dealing with Caleb’s death. I didn’t need another one. Was there something they didn’t cover? Something that they missed? Because if so, I didn’t want to hear it.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” It was then that my mind honed in on the name he had given. Officer Parker. The same Officer Parker that used to do some security work for my high school. The one that would walk around during the day while I was forced to run laps in gym class. The same Officer Parker that made so many girls giggle and flirt uncontrollably as he walked by in his freshly pressed police uniform before classes started. The same Officer Parker that would come in for a cup of coffee at the local cafe where I worked for an after-school job a few years back.

  I couldn’t help but cringe. He knew. He was one of the few that knew. Or at least suspected that there was something very off about me.

  “Do you have a few minutes to speak with me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  ‘How in the hell did he get my number? Does the station have it on file from Caleb’s death or something?’

  “This may seem like an odd request, but I find myself in need of some extra help.”

  “With what?”

  “A case.”

  ‘A case? What case? Christ, just leave me alone!’

  Oh, holy Jesus. He could only mean one thing.

  Innocent. I had to act innocent. Ignorant. Anything to get him off the phone as fast as possible.

  “What do you mean, officer? What can I do?”

  “I think you already know, Miss Ashwood.”

  My maiden name. He chose to stick with my maiden name after all. Why didn’t this guy just quit while he was behind? Or be like those annoying police donation phone calls that always ask for your money because ‘the fallen police officers’ and so on? Because there were so many of those in the violent hotbed town of Dilton, Georgia with a population of about three thousand people. Give me a break!

  “No, I don’t, sir.”

  Oh, I knew. And he knew that I knew. One day when he came in for a cup of coffee at the cafe
years ago, I had thoroughly freaked him out. And sent my nerves into a tailspin in the process. He walked in between shifts to get his usual ice coffee with no sweetener and no syrup. Our hands touched for the briefest moment when I was handing him his coffee. I must have looked dazed and confused because the next thing I knew he was leaning into me. That weird lean people do when they don’t know if you’re going to faint or be sick.

  “Are you alright?” he asked me.

  It took me a few seconds and a shake of my head to regain focus. I never really knew when these little bits would hit me. I guess you could call them visions. There was definitely a weirdness to them that I knew others would consider paranormal. I just knew them as little glimpses into people’s lives. A sort of skill that all my kind possessed.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I had answered him.

  A wave of sadness struck me as the images in my mind shifted. I saw an older woman, warm in her bed, but with labored breathing. An oxygen tank hooked up to a plastic wire was taped just above her upper lip. She was clearly in a hospital bed. Her long white hair flowed down to her chest and her eyes slowly shut, never to open again. Her chest started struggling to raise upward. She was dying. When she failed to take another breath, I could see that she was gone. A profound feeling of relief struck me. She had been in pain for so long. And that pain was gone now. But her family’s grief remained. I often tried to block out the emotional transference I received when this type of thing happened. Sometimes I could prevent it in time. Other times I wasn’t quite so lucky.

  “Are you gonna be sick?” he asked me, starting to get the feeling that he should be backing away and not leaning forward. He must have thought I was going to projectile vomit or something.

  “No, I’m just so sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?” he asked. The old woman. I knew her. She used to work as a teacher’s aid when I was in elementary school. Officer Parker was in high school back then and his grandmother had moved in with his mom so she could care for her. She would come to my school and read to the kids once in a while to get out of the house. She had the most soothing reading voice. She loved being around the kids. I didn’t know she had passed away.

  “About your grandmother,” I said softly. “She was always so kind when I was a little kid and she came to visit our class. Did she read to you too when you were growing up?”

  Officer Parker looked at me with bewildered eyes. “Who told you?” he asked, shifting uncomfortably where he stood. He lowered his voice. “Who told you my grandmother passed away?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, not yet realizing my mistake. “I heard it from someone at school.”

  “Who?” he inquired even harder.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  “Um…”

  “Hey buddy, other people need their afternoon caffeine hit too,” a guy from behind him said roughly.

  I glared at him. Who talks to a cop like that? Even if this was a small town, who does that? So much for southern manners.

  Officer Parker reached for a lid to his coffee before speaking, probably moving slowly just to piss off the guy behind him. “She died in a hospital in Mississippi. We didn’t tell anyone. No one outside our immediate family knows yet.”

  At first, I thought I was going to have to come up with some crazy reason as to why I knew such a thing, but then again, maybe I didn’t. People around town already knew me as a bit of a loon. Well, maybe not a loon. Perhaps not even crazy. But different. I was the weird girl who ran a psychic booth at the fall carnival right before school started and sometimes read fortunes from my house. I read tarot cards, oracle cards, and sometimes I got various ‘feelings’ about things. Things that other people didn’t know. Couldn’t know. And often times people came back to me just to tell me how right I was. To thank me for telling them to visit a doctor about a certain pain in their side. That yes, in fact, someone’s husband was unfaithful. That yes, their life was about to take a different path and a new opportunity was ripe for the taking. I often didn’t go into detail. And other times, I gave them just enough to know that they needed to make a change due to a very specific reason. I was good at it. Maybe a little too good at times. Especially when I knew I had to hold back because I could sense a lot more than I let on.

  Officer Parker stiffened, tipped his hat at me with a smirk as though he was from a completely different century, then walked away. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my weirdo status had just been confirmed. And not to just anyone. To a local police officer.

  ‘Great. Just great.’

  My heart still ached for his grandmother. She truly was a great lady. And when he turned back to look at me as the new customer barked what kind coffee he wanted, I could see in his eyes that he appreciated my words. And that he thought there was something strange about me. Something that others wrote off as the local crazy girl who thought she was psychic. All towns have one, right? Or at least that was the veil I operated under. Tarot cards, oracle cards, and psychic readings were the smoke and mirrors desperately trying to hide the truth. That I was something more. Something else. Something no one in today’s world even thought existed. Centuries ago they would have believed it in a heartbeat. In today’s world, they would look at someone like they were crazy to even consider my kind were walking about in the streets.

  Before I could say another word, Officer Parker left the coffee shop and got into his police vehicle. I was left to make more coffees.

  I snapped back to the present, trying to focus on how to answer Officer Parker over the phone as I rolled over and adjusted my sheets.

  “Officer, what I do is just for show,” I insisted. “It’s to entertain. I read cards. I started by reading one of those ‘Idiot’s Guide’ books to learn how. It isn’t real.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true. You know things. Things that people don’t tell the world. Personal things. My little sister Annie went to you at the carnival last year. She told you about a dream she had. The one about her scumbag boyfriend.”

  I remembered the one. She was a tall young woman with wavy brown hair. I asked her what troubled her and she said a dream she had about her boyfriend. When I asked what was upsetting about it, she said she had been in a relationship with a guy she worked with for a few months. Things were good. They were happy. Or so she thought until one night she went to sleep. As she slept, she dreamed she was swimming in a pool. Her leg cramped and out of nowhere, she was drowning. Her boyfriend saw her. He was standing right over her on the edge of the pool, watching her struggle and screaming for his help. He didn’t move. He didn’t jump in. He didn’t even lean over to offer his hand to get her to safety. He watched her as she drowned. Not the kind of dream someone wants to have a few months into a new relationship.

  “My sister found out a week later that the scumbag she was dating was married,” he continued. “She said you tipped her off. You told her that she was capable of loving very deeply and that she would love again one day. And that the current life path she was on would teach her to be careful in the future. She was so mad at first. Called you a quack. She even wanted to start a Facebook page telling everyone that you were a fraud, all because she didn’t want to believe that little shit was doing her wrong. Only to find out you were right. What else are you right about, Miss Ashwood?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, still trying to act as though I didn’t have a clue.

  “When you do your thing with the cards and touch people’s hands like you touched mine that day back at the cafe, what else happens? What do you see? Or feel?”

  “Dry skin,” I said sarcastically.

  He sighed. I knew the facade wasn’t working. He was a horse being led to water. Thirsty and knowing that if he just got his lips to that stream, he would get everything he wanted.

  “Look, I have a couple of cold cases sitting here on my desk. Some are really old, others are fairly new. One that hasn’t reached the papers, thank god. And I’ve got a buddy over in Sealing that could really
use a helping hand. He’s asked our department for help, but I don’t know what more I can do. Other than go to someone else. Someone who can… I don’t really know the proper terminology. But someone who can sense things I guess. Know things. See things between the lines. The gray that no one else can see. You and I both know you’re one of those people. And I would be immensely grateful if you would stop by the station a couple afternoons a week to give me a helping hand. Just for a while. I want to see if there’s anything you can tell me.”

  Sense things? See things between the lines? Okay. If that’s what he thought of me, then I was apparently in the clear. I don’t know why I worried sometimes. Or why I let my mother’s warnings get to me. Her voice was constantly in the back of my mind. Telling me to be careful. Not to reveal too much when I did my readings. We lived in an age where my kind was confused with teenage goth kids practicing Wicca and thinking that Ouija boards were the height of teenage spiritual rebellion. A little local psychic wasn’t at much risk of being discovered as one of the kruxa. A witchling. A low-tier witchling, but a witchling never the less. My kind has been hunted for centuries by those who know what we are and what we can do. So few of the kruxa are still alive. And those who are only remain alive by keeping a very quiet existence.