Haunted

Eight

"The war had been going on for what had already seemed ages. Shifter packs we're banding together when they weren't fighting over territory...

The Ancients of the vampire society had just lost control of their citizens and they were feeding off the humans with a bit too much enthusiasm and fighting for new territory. The family of humans with the sight had gone into hiding and no one knew where any of the Oracles from Delphi had disappeared to. Djinn were running rampant...

Every single class of creature you can think of were leading revolutions and rebelling against the powers meant to control everything... But some of us... Witches... Had been able to avoid the fray. At that point, most of us focused on preserving nature and healing...

Entire covens had turned their communal homes into hospitals for the wounded, and would send out parties to heal war-scarred patches of earth." It's hard to watch Casper as he starts to tell me the tale he thinks might change how I feel about him...

My beautiful Cassie averts his unique shattered eyes, swallowing hard before he has the nerve to continue what may well be a cautionary tale to any young witches in earshot, "We weren't one of those covens. Our leader at the time didn't want us to be involved at all. The whole family was to remain neutral... But.. But all covens answer to what we call the Council.. A collection of grand witches that govern us as a whole... Kind of like how you and your Alpha choose what's best for the pack as a whole. And the Council felt that participating in the carnage in certain ways could be profitable. They..."

Casper's dewy hand finds mine and gives me a hard squeeze as his face begins to lose some of its color, "They asked for volunteers... Rather... They demanded it. One from each family. They didn't tell us what they were really doing... Just that we would turn the tide of the war, and that we'd finally bring peace to all the races.

They wrote it into the deeds of the land parcels that they handed out to us...

That whoever accepted and lived on the gifted land would have to give up a witch to them directly to collect whenever they felt necessary to call on the land dwellers. By the time they actually pointed out the clause we had all already settled. There was no going back to England at that point... There wasn't really anything to return to. We had moved because the war had been on our doorsteps. I-", another hard swallow and an even tighter grip on my hand makes me pull Casper just a bit closer... As close as I can without pulling him into my lap in order to comfort him.

"You should know that I wanted to help people. I wanted to be a healer... I thought I was volunteering to be a magic medic...I...I'm sorry, Liam... I can't do this!" I thought I had finally gotten my lovely mate just where he needed to be, but as tears fill his eyes he pulls away from me.

He swats my hands away from his sides and pulls himself off the front porch swing stopping only to grab his cane before limping quite quickly away from me... Off the front porch and to his car, the card I had poured my heart out on to now on the ground next to the vase full of flowers starting to wilt in the afternoon sun.  He doesn't even look at me when he climbs into his car, my body stunned into silence as he whips his car out of my driveway leaving me alone.

...
Casper
...

I can't drive fast enough to escape my demons...

By the time I pull to the side of the road because I can't see past my tears I can't tell if the screaming that's making my ears ring is from the ghosts of my past or if they're coming from my own mouth.

All these years later and I still can't forget the way it felt to be held down by the elders I had placed so much trust in...

To be tied to the gurney and pushed into the procedure room to endure what blackened my very soul...

The methods they had chosen to train the tainted blood coursing through my system...

Pumped into my veins against my will...

The way they had shamelessly rented me and so many others like me out as machines of war...

Extremely unstable magical bombs that could go off an infinite number of times...

Loaned out to whatever pack, race and demon cluster that could afford us until they had enough of us to turn on their clients and attempt a takeover on a scale not seen before...

A failed coup...

One that had left so many dead...

One that had managed to rip my still-beating heart out of my chest and successfully crushed it in front of my face.

I can't talk about it...

I've never talked about it. 

My family had had to piece together bits of information from the officers that had brought me home...

And then from the officers that returned to fetch me when I was court marshaled not too long after society managed to get back on its feet again...

From the trial at which I and the other warlocks that had been misled by the original council got sentenced to 200 years each for the crimes we had been forced to commit.

So much of it is so painful... So many of the scars haven't healed...

I can feel the curse trapped in my leg throb as it feeds on the terror that fills my system that won't release me.

I can't breathe...

But I also can't die...

Not even as the grief over what I've done chokes me, the sacred chains that keep the curse at bay just below my knee burning me under my skin as a constant reminder of the wrongs I've committed and the lives that I've watched end.

Liam wants me?

That charmingly innocent man wants to set his hands on me and treat me as if I'm gold when all I am is a dull, rusted piece of iron soaked in the blood of lives ended too early...

My skin crawls as I'm confronted by image after image of things I had seen... Things I had done... All of it flashing through my mind with no hope of me stopping them.

Closing my eyes only makes them feel more real, so instead I leave them open and lean forward until I can rest my head on the steering wheel as they drag me back under the depths of my now almost constant despair...

How dare I let myself believe even for a moment that I deserved to be held the way Liam held me...

Brushing his teeth and rinsing his mouth a thousand times would still not be enough to wash the grit of me out of his mouth... He'd need entire bottles of soap to clean his hands..

If only I could tell him...

If only he knew.