The Witch: Book Two of The Sorceress Saga by Taliesin Govannon (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📗

he set me down gently without having to be asked. He squeezed my shoulder, smiled at me, and then melted into the crowd.

                I walked to the edge of the circle, and then made my way to the side she was on. I soon saw her, dressed in black, waiting for me.

                “Hi.” I said as I reached her, grinning.

                “Annabelle.” she said, smiling. “It’s good to see you.”

                “It’s good to see you, too.”

                “Have you enjoyed the festival?”

                “Yeah. It’s probably been the best time of my life.”

                “That’s good.”

                “Except for the fact that you weren’t there.” I said, my face suddenly serious. “That sucked.”

                Her own smile faded. “Yes. It’s odd… “ she continued, “I’m sixteen hundred years old, and this week was one of the only times I’ve felt lonely.”

                “Angelique, I’m sorry… “ I stammered, feeling bad about her feeling lonely but rebelling against it all because of my right to set barriers.

                This frustrated me. “Dammit, Angelique!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up. “It’s fucking scary, the feelings here! I mean, my life has turned upside down and inside out over these past two years.” I started to pace. “I’ve discovered an incredible man who’s been loving me for ten thousand years, and oh yes… I’m a legendary magickal figure with powerful enemies plotting in the shadows against me. Can’t forget that!”

                I walked to her and cupped her cheek with my hand. “Angelique,” I said softly, “my dear Angelique. You bring out memories of a love that reaches even farther back than Vincent in my lines of incarnations. A love so powerful that you’ve spent your entire extended life searching for me every time I drew breath on this earth. A love that feels like it’s based in… destiny.”

                “You’re not wrong.” Angelique said, a tear in her eye.

                “Angelique,” I continued, “can’t you see how… big this is? How momentous? I was overwhelmed… I was afraid of drowning.”

                “And now?" she said. At that moment, the ancient vampire queen disappeared, and I saw the nineteen-year-old girl before she was turned.

                I drew close to her. “Now I’ve realized that love doesn’t drown you, it lifts you up and refreshes you. It shines a light into your soul that shows only beauty. I know now that, should I truly be facing a powerful foe, I’m going to need all of the love I can get.”

                I kissed her. It was as sweet and tender as I had remembered from my past lives, and I could feel a sense of joy echoing up and down my line of incarnations that I had, once again, reclaimed the first love my soul had ever known.

                Our kisses turned from tender to passionate very quickly. I traced every contour of her body through her dress, remembering it as I went. Our tongues were hot as they met, and I soon wanted more of her.

                “Let’s go,” I said breathlessly, “to the woods. I need you.”

                “As you wish.” she smiled, and in a second we had moved across the field to tall grass beyond.

                I pulled her dress off, and she stripped me in turn, our mouths kissing and teasing along the way. A full moon high above cast silver light that blended with the distant bonfire, and it made Angelique’s alabaster skin look like it was burning with silver fire.

                I laid back against the grass as Angelique kissed her way down my stomach. “Love me.” I said, and she answered me in the most wonderful way possible.

Chapter Eighteen

                From the Diaries of Angelique Dupre

                12/24/1589

                Roanoke Colony

                The deed is done. Sarah is dead, and I am alone.

                It all started to fall apart when her enchantments started failing. She’s powerful, yes, but it takes a decade or more for a Sorceress to truly master her powers… if Petronia tells the truth, which I know she does.

                She had, at her high point, almost a hundred English and Native peoples under her spell. Then some of them started to wake up out of her influence, and while she quickly re-enchanted them, it started lasting for shorter and shorter durations. She eventually lost her ability to dominate their minds and took to killing them when they wouldn't submit.

                One of the men she had dominated was a violent, angry man in life. Sarah took to torturing him, making him do things with other men that he found “un-natural”. She had taken the man’s teenage son as her ‘pet’, making him wear a dog collar and sit at her feet when he wasn’t satisfying her desires. When this man snapped, he took a terrible revenge.

                The scene was horrifying. Everyone was dead. Men, women, children… all had been stabbed with the knife that the women used to skin and dress deer. To keep them from fighting over her, Sarah had commanded her thralls not to fight. This left them defenseless, and all who hadn’t fled were slaughtered. The violent man hung himself from the beams of his old home, surrounded by the bodies of his children.

                I found Sarah there, staring at her slaughtered ‘subjects’. She was simmering with rage.

                “They did this… “ she seethed, “THEY did this!”

                “Who?” I asked, trying to keep my voice soothing.

                “That bitch of a wife of his!” she said. “She took his youngest and took off. If she had stayed, she could have stopped this!”

                “The man killed his own children.” I had answered. “She couldn’t have stopped him.”

                “Liar!” she shouted, pointing at me. “They’re to blame, and now they must PAY!”

                I watched as she gathered up her power. It was raw, undiluted rage, a muddy mix of browns and blacks that crackled with blue-light energy.

                “They're too far away." I said over the crackle and hum of the energy. "Send that into the sky, and it'll lose energy and fade away long before it reaches its target. Just stand down… we can make