Howl

Chapter Six

A/N:

Dedicated to one of my closest freinds for being a good friend, reading this story, giving feedback, illustrating my cover, and editing :)

Artemis's POV

     "Howl?" He is knelt over the limp body of the girl- Sophie. She looks like she was burned to death. Howl suddenly rises to his feet, his extra inches showing, as he looms over me.

     "Distract me, Artemis."

    "How?"

     "Answer me this," he looks sinister, darkened, instead of his wide, toothy, beautiful smile. "What is that mark on your arm? Why did you carve it into your arm? The truth," he nearly whispers.

    "Well, I . . ." Howl nods, as if to urge me on. "It is a fixing ruin. I carve it into my arm, over the scar of the same mark, each time. Then, I carve it into whatever it is I wish to fix and smear some of my fresh blood on it." He did want the truth.

    "Where did you learn this kind of Sorcery?" Howl nearly hisses. "Please tell me it wasn't a woman by the name Solomon! Tell me, Artemis!"

    "It was not any Solomon," I reassure him. Whoever Solomon was, she seems to have messed with the wrong wizard! "I thought maybe you could teach me how to control my powers!"

    "What are you talking about?" Howl looks at me, one of his brows raised.

    "This," I nod at Sophie's body. She was surely dead, "happens everywhere I go. Sophie- It has to be my fault!" As I turn to leave, Howl grabs me by the wrist and forces me to face him. He scans my eyes, his own darting back and forth, as he studies my face and the pain I am certain is apparent on my features.

    "Artemis," he starts, "this was not your fault. Sophie is always messing with my potions. Surely," Howl continues, solemn and dark," you know a spell or rune to reverse this, correct?"

    "There is one-"

    "Do it! Use whatever it is before all of her organs completely shut down, Artemis!" Howl doesn't understand, in his greivous and shock stricken state.

    "Howl!" I shout back at him. "It is only a rumor. I don't thinnk it will work . . ."

    "Try it anyways," Howl hands me a silver dagger to cut the runes. He paces and watches me like a hawk does a hare. I start to cut a rune I knew had been created in another's desperate hour. Something in me recognized that the rune would not work, even as I cut the sign of David's star onto my left shoulder, where I had carved many runes before, overlain with the sign of the Demon's star, which was the same rune for fixing things. At last, I cut the healing mark atop the two previous marks. The healing mark could be described as a spiral intertwined with a vine around another stick, supposedly the staff of a magical medic of the past.

    "What are they?" Howl asks, as I use the blood coated blade to cut the same patterns atop one another above where I estimated Sophie's heart to be.

    "The first is David's star, which is a symbol of protection. The second is the fixing charm, as I explained before, and the last is a healing symbol. Together, they are rumored to bring back the dead," I explain. Obviously, Howl used a completely different way of channeling his pwers and using his magic. He had mentioned potions before hand. I have heard that the greatest of the wizards could use their magic just by directing their thoughts, as if creating a movie in their mind to show what they wanted to do.