The Beast Within (The Beast Withon Book 1) Read online

  “So, you all wish to speak with us?” Hogarth asks more than states.

  “Yes,” Ty stands up and begins to pace the room, “There have been some interesting things going on today.”

  “Such as?” Gareth asks as he takes a seat at the small oak table in the corner of the room, which I hadn’t even noticed a moment ago.

  “Well, for one, everyone in town seems to have been changed.” Ty stops and looks back and forth between his uncles. “Have you something to do with this?”

  “Why would we tamper with the towns people?” Gareth asks, seemingly unaffected by the accusation.

  “That, I’m not sure.” Ty answers.

  “Now that I think about it,” I start, “everything seemed to have changed when I left here this afternoon. Before then, while I was at school today, everything was the way it always was.”

  “What exactly has changed?” Hogarth moves to the island next to Chase, just as Nolan enters the room behind me. We all stop to look at him.

  “Am I late to the party?”

  “No, not at all. Renee was just about to explain the changes she has noticed today.” Hogarth motions to him to take a seat.

  “Well, I went home after I left here. My house looked as if it had been cleaned by Mr. Clean himself. Not a single object in sight of anything that had to do with magic.” I took a sip of tea, and explained all that had happened at home with my father and brother. Then Ty, Chase and I explained what we witnessed at the party.

  “Hogarth, everyone in town is acting differently. It’s like their character has been altered.” Chase adds to help.

  “This sounds like magic interference, but I can assure you, it’s not our doing.” Hogarth shared a look with Gareth, and the worried looks come back.

  “There is something more,” Ty adds, “There are new Mietitore in town.” He sits once more, but this time next to me, and I get the feeling he is trying to protect me from those that we met tonight, even though they are not here with us.

  “What? How many?” Gareth gets up and walks to the island.

  “There are six, so far that we know of.”

  “That you know of?” They both ask.

  Nolan gets up from the table and walks to the fridge. As he opens the door, I notice it’s full beyond its normal limits. It looks as though the back of the container is twenty feet away, even though the outside resembles a regular sized appliance.

  “There will be more,” Nolan adds as he sits down with a bottled soda, “and more than likely it will be every one of us that has been stuck here. No doubt they have been stranded all over the country, and have been traveling for the last year. Everyone can sense her,” he says pointing at me with the tip of his bottle, “Ever since the sigils no longer work to hide her from us, she is no longer hidden from them either.”

  He sits and looks as though he were contemplating world domination, “There will be more, we just do not know if they are on our side or the side of Ourobus.”

  “Okay, so if magic is still possible, then why is magic not working in my house?”

  Hogarth regards me with his response. “It’s your mother’s absence.”

  I’m brought back to reality once more, my mother is still missing. She had been my protector, and now she is missing.

  “She’s not in this world, and there is no passage to the other world, so her magic no longer works here.” My own response startles me.

  “Well, there is always a silver lining they say.” Gareth starts, “If more buio are to come, then so are more luce to come. We shall have a fitting fight.”

  “A fight?” The reality of this scares me to my bones. “What kind of fight?”

  “Is it not obvious my dear,” Hogarth regards me, “A fight to protect you. Well, until the curse can be broken.”

  “Umm…”

  “Oh, before you say it, there may be another way to do it, besides marriage.”

  I relax a little as all eyes are now focused on my reaction. The fight for dark and light should not be based on whether or not I marry someone I do not even know.

  “Good, can we figure out what that is, and fast?” I say to the eyes staring at me. Chase laughs and Nolan just shrugs before leaving the room.

  Over the course of the evening we discuss what needs to be done. It is already irrelevant to reform the sigils to hide my location, but we decide to add them back to the house anyway. Also, Hogarth and Gareth walk me through an assortment of spells I will need to protect my home and to defend myself against the coming storm. Ty, knowing I need further instruction with magic and has offered to give me lessons. The elders agreed that he was better suited for the job, which I don’t entirely understand.

  Ty and I walked back to my house in silence, and once there, preformed the protection spells together. Luckily the magic used to spell the house clean did not remove the sea salt, anise, rue or fennel from the cupboards. The short incantation was easy enough to remember in English, but with only a few hours of practice in Italian I was stumbling, but with repetition the spell became easier. So we chanted together:

  “Grande Dea del giorno e della notte

  Proteggere questa casa con tutte le forze.”

  Once Ty felt the deed was done, he stopped the chant and then we just stood starring at the house.

  “I feel like I should tell you something. I just don’t want you to over react to it.” He said to me after what seemed like hours of silence.

  “Okay.”

  “I have not been completely honest with you… about who I am.”

  My heart began to race and all the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head. I started to feel faint and dizzy, the world started to spin. I caught a glimpse of Ty running towards me, I thought he was calling out my name, but the scene playing in front of me was blurry and in slow motion. I could feel his arms around me as I felt myself falling, and then there was only darkness…

  -11-

  The farther they walked, the farther from their destination they felt. They knew they were going the right way. Since their last sighting of the girl who erupt laughter into a group of Buio, they had now seen her four times in the last three days. Tabby had considered they make themselves known to the little girl so she did not have to travel alone, but she did not think Chris would be ok with the idea. She seemed to be looking after her from afar anyway.

  Chris had been cut off from society for years now, and Tabby knew that’s how she liked it.

  “So, do we have a name?”

  “What?” Chris was watching the girl try to use magia to spell a tree that had fallen in the wood. The hill side led them to more rainforest like scenery. They had come upon the girl again this morning, and have been following her all day. She stopped along the way every few hours to practice her spells. Chris believed she was a novice, probably forced into magia because of this passage nonsense. Tabby thought Chris might like to help her practice. She was after all part of the clan sent to this world to do just that, even though she left her family and those responsibilities as soon as she turned eighteen.

  “A name, you know a family name for who we are looking for. Do you know who the other clan was?” Tabby exaggerated on the question.

  “Yes, of course I know who the other clan is. It’s a royal clan, everyone knows of them.”

  “I did not know they were royalty.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought… you know, your family, I thought they would have told you.”

  “My family did not tell me much before I left them.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. I don’t know much about any of them anymore.” Tabby added.

  “After a while you start to forget, especially if you don’t want to know about them.”

  “Speaking from experience, are you?” Tabby jabbed to lighten the mood. She did not like to talk about her family. It was always a topic that killed her spirits.

  “Yes,” Chris laughed a bit. “I always thought my mother was this o
verbearing mother-hen.” She picked up a stray branch and started pulling at its leaves.

  “Now, I just wish I had stayed home, and… oh I don’t know, learned more.”

  “You’ll find her. Remember, she’s with your dad, and they’re probably working just as hard as everyone else to get the passage open.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why don’t you think so?”

  “You obviously don’t know the stories.” Chris threw the branch down and looked through the forest to see if the girl was still in sight. She was still practicing her spell.

  “When I was little, my mother told me and Jamie about the wars. How the Buio had become so dark, that the only way to stop them from trying to come here and create a new clan was to bind the passage.” She kicked a rock and then looked up at Tabby.

  “I’m sorry. I think the buio elders are responsible for the passage being down. I also think something went wrong, because my mother would have never chosen that world over her children. Their stuck and we have to fix this world.” She noticed the girl had given up on her attempt at such a large spell, and started to move on.

  “We should go.”

  “Chris, you don’t have to be sorry. I chose to come here, and chose to leave my family behind. I’ll help you fix things here, and we can find a way to get her back. But don’t be sorry for me, I’m good.” Tabby squeezed Chris’ hand in reassurance.

  “Let’s go. Your student is getting away from us.” Tabby then added after a beat.

  As the sun went down it was harder to keep the girl in their sights. They decided to just keep pushing forward anyway. They had just two more days, by Chris’ calculations, before they reached their destination. Tabby relented at the idea of sleep, and figured the quicker they get there the better. Traveling was starting to get to her, and Chris.

  ---------------------------

  “Christina, you need to practice. I won’t always be here to help you.”

  A young girl, all of twelve, with long dark hair sat in front of the small camp fire in her family’s yard. She concentrated on a ball of fire suspended in the air above the pit.

  “Mom, I want to play with Celia.”

  “I know you do, but this is important. You will be the protector of a great family of Luce someday. You need to know your magia.” The woman spoke with reverence. “You can play with your sister when you’ve finished.”

  “Why don’t they have to practice?” She turned from the fire to face her mother. The ball of fire dropped into the pit and sent embers flying all around.

  “You’re the oldest Chrissy, I’ve told you this. This will be your job.”

  “Chris! Chris, wake up. Someone’s here.” Tabby shook her friend.

  Chris sat up startled. “Who, where?”

  “There!” Tabby pointed in the direction they had come from just the night before. Two maybe three boys walking through the trees, making no noise were heading straight for them.

  “What do we do?”

  Chris pulls herself together and shoves her blanket in her bag.

  “Let’s just get outta here. Any sign of her this morning?”

  “No, I’m guessing she got pretty far ahead of us last night.”

  A loud pop and then a crack erupted. A large tree limb falls behind them, and they turn around in time to see the boys fall underneath a large pile of tree branches.

  “What the..?”

  “WOW, I’ve been trying to do that all week.” The young girl they had been following jumps down out of a tree nearby. She stands there looking up at them. Chris was right; she was no more than eight years old, blonde pigtails with ringlets, blue eyes and freckles on her cheeks.

  “You two slept in, so I figured I’d give it a shot.” She wiped her hands on her tattered jeans and started to leave. “We should go though, I doubt that’s gonna hold them for long.”

  -12-

  I wake with a start; the room is warm and bright. Morning, it’s obviously morning. As I try to sit a hand touches my shoulder, and the pain in my head, that I did not feel before makes me lay back down.

  “Renee, try not to move.” I relax a little at the sound of Ty’s voice. I try to reopen my eyes, but the light is blinding.

  “Hold on.” I feel him move away from me and the light dissipates a little. Then I realize he has shut the blinds, and I open my eyes to see I am in my room, lying in my bed.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “The spell was a bit too much I suppose. You passed out.” He looked tired.

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “Yes, I slept in your chair.” He glanced towards the over-sized arm chair beside my bed. I noticed now he looked a bit nervous, hands in the front pockets of his tattered jeans, and he was rocking slightly on his heels.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were ok. I’ve never seen anyone pass out after doing a simple protection spell.”

  “Well, it was the first spell I’ve ever done.” I tried to sit again, and he was by my side in an instant.

  “Go slow, you might be dizzy.”

  “I’m ok.” I said shrugging.

  I managed a sitting position and looked at myself in the mirror attached to a dresser, across the room. I quickly grabbed the hair band off my wrist and pulled my hair into a loose bun to tame the wild ringlets.

  “Well, I guess I should go then. When you’re ready later come by and we can start training. It looks like you’re going to need it.”

  “Wait, I have to ask you something first.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m remembering it correctly, but when you rematerialized that first day…?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You had a Luce sigil on your chest.”

  “Is that a question or a statement of fact?” With this he laughed and shrugged.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I am Buio, I carry the same curse as everyone else in my clan. That just doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, I guess not. So then why was it there?”

  “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

  “Yes, I know the difference.”

  “I don’t know… I just don’t know how to explain that.”

  I thought about it for a moment. At the time I did not even think about it, but now I’m curious. He was clearly a beast; my brother had been training to hunt with me. He insisted that the men could hunt as well, whether they had magia or not.

  “Well, maybe we can figure that out together.” I said.

  “Okay. Later?”

  “Yes. And then maybe you can finish telling me what you were trying to last night?”

  “Listen, Renee about that… I …um, okay, we can talk later. Get some more rest; it’s still early yet.”

  I looked over at my bedside table to see it was only 7:30, and a Saturday morning too, it was very early for me.

  I looked back toward the window and Ty was gone. I hadn’t even heard him leave the room. I decided then to lye back down, and as I did sleep came quickly.

  The light was such a pretty green, the color of an emerald. The hue was radiating from behind a hill overlooking the towns welcome sign just beyond the town limit. Then like shadows in the light a large group of people walked up over the hill towards the town boundary, the light shining at their backs. At first they were seemingly quiet, but as they got closer they sound more like an angry mob. I try to turn, but my feet won’t move. Oh no, I’m stuck… Can somebody help me? I try to scream, but nothing comes out.

  Then there is a bright white light from behind me, and another group of people start approaching me from out of the light. What in the world is this? I try to scream and run, but again I’m silent and can’t move my feet.

  Then all is silent…

  “Renella, you must choose!”

  I wake with a start, and realize that I am also screaming. I slap my hand over my mouth and wonder where my brother and father are. Then I re
member Ty staying the night in my room. Did they know he was here?

  “Hey, you okay.” Xander pokes his head in from his room next to mine. “Nightmares still?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I’m okay.”

  “Alright, I have to make an appearance at work. Catch ya later.”

  “Um…sure. Have a nice day.”

  I started to recall my dream for a moment; the lights and people, and that voice. I couldn’t make out who it was, but it called me Renella. That much I remembered. Nobody knows me as Renella. That’s a fairytale name I had made up for myself when I was little. I wanted to be the fairy princess, but I never told anyone that name, not even my mother.