Author’s Note:

Before I began this story there are a few things that you need to know about. The first is that it contains elements of wicca and paganism. It is a common belief that witches and pagans are devil worshipers, but they are not. They do not form cults and they do not sacrifice people’s pets. That having been said, if you still feel uncomfortable with the ideas of wicca religion I don’t recommend that you read this. To give you an idea of what this story may contain look up the Sweep series by Cate Tiernan.

The second is that with this story I might get more than a few wicca aspects wrong. I’m doing as much research as I can. If you are knowledgeable with these facts feel free to share. Also, this story is not new. I have written and posted it before. I have decided that I wanted to finish this story, even if it kills me.

Recreating Magick

Book One: Spellbound

Prologue

A whirl of bright symbols spun around him, stark and blinding in their clarity. His lungs were on fire, his blood agonizingly slow. His body grew numb; the human senses eluded him as his body became too heavy for his legs to support him. He lifted his head up into the sky as he sank to the ground and took his last breath. Around him the symbols grew in intensity until the brilliant white light consumed him.

New York, 1905

You are nothing but a disgrace to the family name. A roughen out to get his kicks in the street. A playboy looking for a cheap thrill. The angry words of his father played in Louis Coleman III mind to the point that Louis wanted to rip out his hair in frustration. His father had always been like that, a constant drone of responsibility, business, and lectures. Never once had Louis seen his father out of a business suit or outside of his office. His father was all business, business, business. Never mind that his son was now a man of nineteen years. Samuel Coleman cared nothing for his son, never had and never would.

You can’t carry the family business! Hell, you’re not even going to college. All you care about is stroking your ego. You care nothing for other people and certainly care nothing for the position at the company I was willing to give you. The only thing you care about is yourself.

‘What father do you expect from me?’ Louis wanted to scream at the seething image of his father. ‘I wasn’t meant to work at the company. I couldn’t stand the small office, the sneers of the colleagues, the calls of “daddy’s little boy” behind my back. I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t be you!’

You are a disgrace Louis. A disgrace! Get out of my office. I don’t want to see your face! The memory of his father had yelled, slamming his hand on the polished desk. Louis clenched his hands in a fist so hard, his nails bite into his palm, trying and failing at dismissing the memory. It was no use. He would never be what everyone wanted.

‘I need to get out of here!’ Louis’s mind screamed. ‘I have to get out!’ He hated his father, his heritage, and everything that had to do with the Coleman name. He just didn’t fit in with the high-class life. He couldn’t be what people wanted him to be. He couldn’t turn himself into the perfect son, born and breed to take over his father’s tobacco company. He wasn’t able to be a Coleman.

Desperately, Louis ripped off the dark tie from around his neck and threw it into the dirt. His snatched the vest off his chest, snapping the buttons completely, before tossing it into the air. He felt like he was suffocating under his father’s oppression. What was so wrong with wanting something else from life other than business and useless higher education? What was so wrong with going out into the world, discovering who he really was meant to be?

‘Everything’ he thought bitterly. Like a drowned man searching for leverage, Louis sought out an escape route from his reality. At night he would leave the lavish estate in his father’s Model T. It got to the point that Louis wouldn’t return for days and weeks until his father sent his cronies after him. Louis evaded them every time, laughing out loud with delight when they gave up and returned home. He became a master at the art of illusion and deceit, sneaking out whenever he wanted and only returning when he wanted. No one could control him.

Furiously, Louis tore off the leather gloves adding them to the trail of expensive finery he had ripped off. He didn’t need them; they weren’t comfortable, and belonged with the rest of the expensive rummage he had to wear everyday. On the ground, in the dirt, smeared with dust and mud, soiled like the Coleman name.

His father had taken the Model T from him, locked it into a large steal shack in the back of his property. He thought Louis didn’t know where it was. He thought Louis didn’t know how to pick the lock to the shack. He thought wrong.

As one last act of rebellion Louis seized his finely woven hat, imported from Britain, and flung it into the dirt as well. His golden hair was automatically assaulted by the wind but Louis could care less. He unbuttoned the first three buttons on his bleach white high collared blouse and released the cuffs around his wrist. For the first time he felt truly free.

A sudden storm reflecting Louis’s mood had gathered around the industrial city chocking the light of the sun as Louis headed toward the shed. Louis paused in his march to the back of the property. It was strange that a storm like this would pass overhead whenever moments before it had been clear and sunny. The once white puffy clouds had darkened in an almost murderous intent. The calm winds became intense, slashing at his clothes, and roaring in his ears making it difficult to hear if the lock to the shack had clicked open. Cold, angry sheets of rain had yet to fall, but by all indications from the chaotic sky, it wouldn’t be long before the heavens opened up.

Quickly Louis worked the bolt on the shack. With a strangled click, the lock popped open and Louis hurried through the doors. Inside the sounds of the growing tempest were muffled, but the echo of the wind racking against the rusted metal was not. He had little time, very little time. Expertly, he started the vehicle and threw it in reverse. The elements outside were becoming more threatening. A tree to the left of Louis was forced to bend in half under the mercy of the wind. Louis had less chance of standing up to the weather than that tree. However, the thought of staying on his father’s grounds any second longer had even less of an appeal. Hellish storm or not, Louis was leaving, and he was not coming back.

The icy rain fell from the heavens, stinging his eyes, rendering him blind. He cracked open his eyes with difficultly, hissing at the pain of having to do so in the terrible downpour. Just one more block, one more block and he was home free. He would stay with a friend, live with him until he could get his life back in order. ‘I will not be a pawn anymore!’ he thought angrily, ‘I will live my own life!’

Looking back on it, what Louis had said was almost ironic. As soon as the words left his mouth, he lost control of the Model T on the slick road, and slammed into the back end of a horse and buggy. Louis experienced all of it in slow motion. As if he was watching a movie picture Louis saw the front end of the automobile being crushed, rising like a tidal wave of broken glass and snapped metal to trap him within it. Shards of glass split the air, and the smell of raw fuel filled Louis’s senses. He didn’t feel any pain, in fact, he felt numb. He wasn’t even sure he was alive.

Lightening crashed through the sky filling the air with popping electricity. A single spark, Louis realized, could ignite the Model T, and he would die in the explosion. He had to get out of the vehicle before something ignites the fuel tank. Desperately, he groped around the debris of the vehicle, searching for a way out. He found the handle to the door and pulled it. Miraculously, the door opened, and Louis rolled out onto the cobblestone street disoriented but alive.

He got up, unsteady on his feet, and pushed himself to get away from the wreck. He couldn’t see; his world was a vague image of blurry shapes of indistinct sight and color. Blindly, he stumbled into a pitch-black ally. He pressed the palm of his hand against the side of the brick walls, and walked onward. Seconds later, an explosion tore through the gale.

His eyesight was coming back little by little, and though he was tired, pure adrenaline keep him going. Nothing was broken, he felt no pain, and everything was working. Either, he was dead or he had gotten really lucky.

Louis closed his eyes, the fatigue had become too much for him to control. Still walking he let his mind float. Inside his minds eye he saw his father’s estate, but it was older, worn out from time and age. Louis concentrated on his window, the one at the very top of the mansion. Gradually the window came into focus almost like he was sailing through the air toward it. Inside the window he caught a glimpse of a woman, around his age, or maybe a few years younger. He couldn’t make out any distinct features, no matter how hard he tried. All he could see was that she was beautiful. A word came to mind. The word “Stephan”.

Abruptly Louis smacked into the back of something very hard. He stumbled to the ground and as he fell he heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering against stone. Winching, Louis opened his eyes to find himself looking into the eyes of a battered old man.

A bone-chilling shiver ran up the length of his spine. ‘Who is this man?’ the automatic thought flitted through his mind, ‘there’s something not right about him.’ Indeed, the man was not a normal sight. His eyes were a deep endless black without a single hint of a sparkle within the depths. His face was sunken in and hallow. Dark circles of fatigue stained the skin underneath his eyes causing them to stand out in stark contrast against his pale skin. His hair was snow white, falling in uneven clumps in front of his face. He wore common clothes, though darker than normal. He leaned heavily on a cane made of some substance that Louis couldn’t quite identify. The gentleman looked old, but moved with ease beyond his years. It was impossible, yet the man’s face seemed to shift and become something else altogether even as Louis watched him.

“Well, well, well” cracked the smoky voice of the stranger. “If it isn’t the young rascal who ran into the back of my carriage. I’ll have you know young man that I was barely able to get away before your infernal machine blew everything sky high. Damn things shouldn’t have even been invented.”

Louis let the man rant while he stood awkwardly. A glitter of silver caught the corner of his vision as he stood. Down below the coot’s legs was a shattered mirror. The hair on the back of his neck rose up. The mirror, it wasn’t really a mirror. There was a movement inside it. Figures of people. Apparitions.

“Ah,” whispered the man, “you can see them can’t you? I wouldn’t expect anything less from Louis Coleman III.”

Louis’s head snapped up and his eyes widened.

“Yes, I know you’re name. You have, after all, broken my mirror.”

The gentleman smiled and another shiver ran up Louis’s spine. The smile was animal like, similar to a predator about to eat his cornered prey. “In that single act you have murdered a thousand people. For that, you must be punished.”

What? Louis wanted to ask, but the ability to speak had been taken from him. All he could do was listen and watch.

“On your soul, Louis Coleman III, I place a curse to avenge the thousands of lives you have killed.’

‘This can’t be happening,’ Louis thought, ‘I never crashed father’s Model T, I did not nearly die, and I certainly didn’t wander into the back of an ally where some odd warlock decided to place a curse on me.’

“For a hundred years you will be imprisoned. The ability to interact with the outside world will be torn from you. You will live as the souls you have destroyed have for thousand years.”

‘I will wake up in my bed and find out it was all a very strange dream. I’ll go to the tobacco company, work on paper work, and come home to have a formal dinner with father. We will argue, as we always have and then—

All of sudden the old man’s voice deepened and grew stronger. Louis was struck from his mussing to the images in front of him. ‘My god…’ he thought.

The old man was no longer old. His whole body was shifting before Louis’s eyes, reverting back to the man’s youth. His face lost his paler and lines. It became smoother with more color, the dark circles under his eyes disappearing entirely. His hair grew thicker, longer, until it was well past his shoulders. The raven strands were bond back by a single knot of twine. His eyes became sharper and deeper, but remained the same pitch-black shade.

Louis backed up away from the sight until he could go no further. This couldn’t be happening. It can’t be real, but it was. The strangers clothing also began to change, morphing into a midnight robe speckled with strange symbols and images that Louis couldn’t understand. His staff disappeared, replaced by a foreign star necklace around his neck.

The transformation complete the wizard turned toward Louis and spread his arms wide. In a deep throaty rumble the warlock began to mutter strange syllables that wove around one another and sounded completely alien to Louis’s ears. It wasn’t English, French, or Latin, all of which Louis had been forced to learn. The sounds were of a different dialect altogether. As Louis listened he began to feel the air become weighed down by something. ‘Energy’ he thought ‘he’s building up energy.’ As the energy built up around them the man’s words became faster and louder.

All of sudden Louis began to notice a hazy white light build up on both of the wizards hands until it was so blinding that Louis could not stand to look at it. Using his index finger like a quill pen, the warlock began to draw symbols in the air similar to the ones on his robe. In dozen’s of different colors the symbols hung suspended in the air as the witch used the air like a giant piece of parchment. Louis gazed at them amazed. The symbols began to move and swirl in and about one another. The man’s chant grew lower in a steady beat and the symbols seemed to follow the pace of his words.

Spellbound, Louis felt like he was drowning in a sea of brilliant colors. His lungs were on fire, his blood agonizingly slow. Still, he could not tear his gaze away from the display of magic. His heart faltered a beat, than two. Unaware Louis hardly felt his body grow too heavy for his legs to support him. He didn’t feel his skin prickle, or realize that the normal human senses were slowly eluding him. He was only aware of the feel of magic seeping into his flesh, becoming a part of him.

Around him the witch’s words ebbed and the symbols began to grow brighter. The colors became one, a single brilliant white light overtaking everything. Louis lifted his head up to the sky as he sank to ground. Over and over the crash of a mirror shattering against the cobblestones played in his mind beneath the faint screams of a thousand souls.

Consumed by the spell, he took his last breath.