Vigil's Echo

Chapter 1

"Mr. Saltzman, please! You have to listen to me! I swear, I--" my pleads were cut off.

"I've been listening, Brenna," Alaric Saltzman grumbled, a pained expression darkening his face, "and...it's okay," he soothed. "We've found a solution."

"You're gonna kill me!" I screamed, backing away from his advances. He had been trailing me through the forest behind the Salvatore Boarding School for hours now and I was exhausted. I'd burned through most of my magic. I knew I couldn't fight him anymore.

"No, Brenna. I would never do that. Not to Bonnie, not to you," he promised. 

I took a moment, closing my eyes and steeling myself as I backed into a tree, growing rigid as my magic drifted in a sphere around me. It rose over Alaric's figure and soon I could hear this steady rhythm of his heart, the even circulation of air flowing in and out of his lungs. He wasn't lying. He wasn't going to kill me. But my magic caught something else. Someone else. Several someone elses. "No, but you're planning something worse," I cried, slumping back against the tree as tears fell from my face. I looked up at him as he stood a foot in front of me now. "Ric, please! I wasn't trying to kill her--"

"But you did kill her, Brenna! You murdered a fellow student right in front of the entire student body! I'm sorry...I-I can't just look past it this time..." a look of pity crossed his face, and in a blink, it was gone and in it's place, cold hard resolve. "I thought I could help you, Brenna. But it seems your presence here has only made things worse," he said, looking to something at the side of the tree.

Suddenly, my hands were bound around the tree and whispered chants drifted through the forest. Torch fires appeared and I found myself surrounded by a circle of witches. Most of them were the faces of strangers, but one I'd recognized and it broke something in me. "Emma?" I cried, seeing my former guidance counselor holding her own torch, chanting as she approached me. My heart sank and my stomach churned as a heavy breeze waded through the trees making their chanting almost inaudible. 

Ric pulled a vial from his coat. It looked like blood, but I couldn't be sure as the flickering lights of the torches wavered in the darkness of the starless sky. I lifted my head, reclining it against the tree behind me and wailed, shaking as the sobs escaped me. I was supposed to be safe here. Bonnie had sworn Alaric and Emma would take care of me, help me become a better witch and a stronger person. After spending years being tortured at the hands of Alex St. John who had murdered my mother, Lucy Bennett, before I ever really got the chance to know her, Bonnie found me. She said there was a place for people like me, one where I could learn about my magic, hone my skills. A second chance at life. The stabbing ache in my heart triggered something dark within me. The pain twisted into something else and my cries turned into furious screams. 

Rage burned the faces of Alaric and Emma into my brain as they closed in on me. When my eyes drifted closed, Bonnie's face surfaced. She had promised to protect me. "We're family, we stick together," she'd said. Well, where the hell was she now? Did she know about this? When I asked her how she found me three years ago, she claimed it was a feeling, that she could sense when someone in her magic bloodline was close to death. If this wasn't close to death, I didn't know what was. 

Ric pulled something else out of his jacket. Something small, spheric and made of gears from what I could get. He handed it to Emma, pouring the liquid from the vial over it as she chanted something different from the other witches. She stopped chanting, glancing at Ric who nodded at her, and stepped to my side, placing the small tool in my hand. Before she could pull away, I gripped her hand tightly. "I will never forget this," I hissed, angrily, "and you won't either," I glared, muttering an incantation I had never heard of before as she screamed out in pain, jerking away before I could do anymore damage. The tool dropped to the ground beside me but floated up as the wind picked up, whipping my messy long locks around my face. A searing white light blinded me for a moment and slowly faded back to the empty darkness of the forest.

Something was different. Something was wrong. I blinked my eyes opened slowly, looking around. They were gone, all of them. The witches, Emma, Ric. They had vanished. The rope that had bound my arms to the tree felt looser. I closed my eyes and focused on untying the knots and soon, the rope fell and my arms were free. I stepped away from the tree and drifted around the tree, the leaves crunching beneath my feet as I wandered through the forest. I thought about returning to the school, but fear bested my curiosity. Maybe I had escaped somehow. If that were the case, they would be waiting for me at the school to finish what they'd started. I wouldn't give them the opportunity. 

I flitted quickly and quietly past the trees until I found a clearing on the other side. My calves were burning, my feet aching, like I'd been running for hours. By the look of the sky with dawn just on the horizon, it had been hours. At the edge of the clearing, I spotted the backside of a subdivision full of grand houses. It looked to be two, maybe three miles away. I huffed, squaring my shoulders and took off towards the cluster of houses. I went through various scenarios of how I would rectify this, but they all held the same theme: vengeance. Vengeance on Ric. Vengeance on Emma. And if my cousin had anything to do with their plan to kill me, she would be added to the list as well.

As the memories of what had just happened flashed through my mind, I felt the same rage pumping from my heart, sending a surge of odd energy I'd never felt before rushing through my veins and soon, my legs no longer ached. The throbbing in my feet subsided. I wasn't tired anymore - in fact, I'd never felt better.