Chapter One

August 1, 2040

 

WAKING IN A bed of tangled sheets, coated in sweat, was nothing new for Storm. Every night of the last fourteen years had been predictable, from the racing heartbeat and the slow-fading memories, to the shaking of his right hand every time he reached for a cigarette. He took his first puff, raked a hand through his hair, and swung his legs out from under the thin sheet.

Storm walked into the bathroom and started the shower. Eyeing the mirror, the inevitable awaited: black smoke as dark as his magic swirled in his eyes, tempting him to delve into the darkest of powers, a birthright no one had bothered to teach him. If he’d known how to wield forbidden magic, he wouldn’t have spent his adult life having night sweats and nightmares, all because the Fates were bickering bitches.

The thin line along his top lip suggested he was dehydrated. His tawny skin showed paler than usual, meaning he could add anaemia or vitamin deficiencies to his worries. That was all part of living in the West of Scotland, he supposed: sea air and lack of sunshine. Pushing aside the long fringe of his raven hair, he wondered if the time had come to move somewhere new, less conducive to invisibility. If he wasn’t careful, he’d fade for real.

Ignoring the temptation to test his untapped abilities, Storm showered to wash off the shakes, sweat, and lingering memories of the worst night of his life. He dressed in the invisibility of a white T-shirt, black jeans, and a black leather jacket, the same thing everyone else wore in this neck of the woods who came here to disappear. There was a reason he lived above a biker bar, miles from the nearest town, deep in the heart of the woodlands. The storms were turbulent here by the sea, and most witches knew better than to settle where magic was at its wildest.

Storm was safer living far from other magic users, friends and enemies alike. He’d come here to escape the world of magic, laws and backstabbing, and the politics of guardians, gods, and elements. Running didn’t exorcise his demons. He took them everywhere he went. If anyone was desperate enough to seek him out, they knew where to find him. The wind could tell them if they had the sense to listen.

He didn’t bother with keys or a wallet as he left the apartment and descended the steps. Wards carved into the wooden door frame kept everyone out. His bar tab was paid at the end of every month, when he got his pathetic human salary from the docks, and Storm kept strict control of his vices and exit strategies.

Magic coursed through his veins like a torrent of the most volatile cyclone. Nothing calmed the raging heat and hate beneath his skin like working on the docks, unloading the fishing boats. The movement, the lack of a routine, and never knowing what tomorrow would bring was the unpredictability his soul craved, the freedom and life of a drifter, with no job, boss, or family to tie him down.

On solid ground, with nothing but compacted earth and weeds beneath his black boots, he stopped. Storm tipped his head to the sky and basked in what the world could tell him. Rain was coming; not an unfamiliar warning in this area, promising not to be heavy or dangerous. He mentally pushed the warning aside and moved on to the next. The wind wanted him to know magic was in the air, someone powerful approaching from the west. He’d suspect someone was passing through, coming for his help, but the wind seemed unsure. When Storm stuck his tongue out, the first drop of rain brought little clarity. Something was coming. A deeply buried instinct screamed Beware! Nosy. Too curious. Whoever was on their way, the rain thought they should mind their own business.

Around Halloween, curious kids would drift through town in hopes of seeing the crackpot Storm Tera: prophesied Chosen One, mage of the elements and earth. Too early in the year for that, he wondered what was hunting him and why they made the wind nervous.

Storm mused over what was coming, wondering if they would be brave enough to approach or if he’d get to keep his peace for another day. Hopefully, the latter.

He went into the bar beneath his apartment, ignoring the stale air and sticky floor to focus on the familiar hints of hops and cigar smoke. The latter came from the old man in the corner, a permanent fixture since Storm moved here three years ago.

He smiled, remembering the first time the man had spoken to an invisible companion. Storm had tapped into his powers, wondering if a spirit, demon or creature was toying with the man, but there had been nothing.

Storm caught the bartender’s eye. He gave a nod of greeting and took the centre stool at the bar like always. No one spoke to him; they never did. The bartender tended to flirt late at night when Storm was leaving. He’d get that look in his big blue eyes, tip his head in curiosity and wait for Storm to make the first move. He never did, never would.

How could he explain the nightmares that plagued him each night? No ordinary person, those who lacked even the simplest magical gifts, would understand the black mist clouding his eyes whenever he felt too strongly, all because he didn’t know how to suppress the darkness in his veins.

Settled in his stool, Storm tapped out a cigarette and used Ithen’s old lighter for his second smoke of the night. At barely after midnight, he’d only left the bar a few hours ago but no one would remark on his return. They never did.

A glass of scotch appeared along with a tentative smile. When he didn’t react, except to lift his glass and take a drink, the bartender moved on, knowing better than to hover.

A lesson he wished the rest of the world would learn.

*

TWO SCOTCHES LATER, Storm glanced at his watch as the hairs on his arm rose in warning. He’d been here for thirty minutes, impatient for someone to make an appearance.

“Why don’t you start talking?” Storm said aloud, refusing to give the mysterious presence the recognition of turning. If they planned to hover behind him, they better get to the point.

Three seconds, three staccato heartbeats, and the click-clack of shoes brought them to his right side. A young girl leaned her forearms against the bar as she clasped her hands and heaved a sigh. “I can’t believe I found you.”

Storm rolled his eyes. He should have known better than to hope the entity the elements warned him of would be passing by. He glared at the girl who stood by his stool. She had black hair, a single electric blue strand on one side, tucked behind an ear that was pierced along the top ridge. Her nose ring glinted in the light reflecting off the bar bottles, and her face turned ashen white at his stare. “Whoever sent you, go home and tell them to piss off. I’m not interested.”

The girl reached into the pocket of her cropped leather jacket and slammed a ring onto the counter: the ring he’d ripped off his finger as he’d walked away from the massacre fourteen years ago, thrown into the flames to forever be forgotten; the ring that symbolised everything that made him the Chosen One.

“You need to return to your coven and fix this.” The girl held onto her anger until the door squeaked open and a single crow’s caw made her flinch.

Storm smiled at the message that resonated loud and clear. “Fix what?” he asked, taking another puff of his cigarette as he rolled the crow’s words over in his mind.

Leave. Run. Ithen.

The last word stung, but he wondered how one caw had translated into three individual, separate commands that the crow thought Storm needed to acknowledge. Why would those words make the girl flinch?

“You’re the Chosen One. You could have prevented this,” she said with obvious desperation, laying the blame at his feet.

He wouldn’t deny things had changed the night of the massacre. Storm had committed his first and last murder, and the covens had fallen apart. No longer with a founding family to follow or protect them, they’d splintered across the globe, putting entire countries between the few families left who cherished the old ways.

“Be specific. By ‘this’ do you mean magic?” Storm asked, taking a punt at the reason she’d come here. He’d sacrificed the Copry coven and refused the request by the mages and witches left after the war to form a new coven. Without him, they lacked a leader. “The world is better off without magic. Makes life a fairer playing field,” he said, wishing he’d known that before one of his closest friends died because he was human and had no ability to meet the Coprys in a fair fight.

“We have the power to send you back,” the girl whispered, leaning closer and darting her gaze around the bar, as if afraid someone might hear. Even if they did, Storm doubted they’d care or understand. The bartender had a touch of magic, an empath, and the old man in the corner stank of rotten magic never tamed. Everyone else was too drunk to notice.

Storm was the last of his line, the last Tera—the earth coven—after everyone in his family had died due to the complications of dark magic. The joke was that they’d been hated by the other covens since they first discovered their talent for the forbidden arts. If magic hadn’t wiped them out, Storm didn’t doubt the other covens would have. Yet they expected him to lead them?

“Tell us when the prophecy fell apart, and we can change everything! We can stop this from happening,” she said, the heat in her voice suggesting a personal stake beyond reclaiming magic.

Storm evaluated her out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t eradicated magic, only levelled the playing fields by taking out the most powerful coven, the Coprys. Four other covens remained, and they kept out of his way. Tapping out a new cigarette, Storm imagined the impossible and wondered when the tide had turned against them. When Denver died? When Cesa Copry found the amulet to boost his coven’s powers? When the bastard accidentally killed his son with a curse meant for Storm? When Ithen died?

Storm could bring Ithen back, stop Cesa from getting the amulet, and stop Denver, Foley, and even Rowan from dying. He’d have to go far back, to before he botched his training, before he came into his powers. He’d need to have his memories to make this mean something. Without them, he wouldn’t know what to do differently.

Could he change anything? The Fates had all the power. If this was how they’d determined his life should go, there was no fighting, no changing his destiny, or denying them their pound of flesh. The Fates were the queens of magical power. Beyond the elements, and light and dark magic, there was no other more powerful…not even the Chosen One. Not wanting to miss a golden opportunity to stick it to the hags who had given him this shitty life, Storm gave in. He led the girl to a table in a quieter corner of the bar. If she had a way to send him back to where this prophecy shit started, he’d hear her out. Once he was seated in the wooden chair and placed his scotch on the table, Storm gave her the signal to talk.

Sliding into the booth opposite and brushing her long fringe over the top of her head, she introduced herself: “I’m Grace. Grace Glade.”

“Ah.” Bloody-minded and stubborn as hell, Grandma Glade had taken Storm in when his parents died. She said the Fates were foolhardy to let him walk the world without guidance, so she took him home and taught him what she knew. A white witch, one of light and goodness, she never knew the dark magic he needed to win the war, but few knew the dark arts like his family.

Her name was a blast from a past he’d rather forget. Gladys Glade—Seer, Woman of the Waters—her power was second only to his, as far as Storm was aware. She’d been out of the country the night Cesa Copry used the amulet to boost his power. They’d been thrust into a world of uncertainty and chaos, forcing Storm to step into a position he wasn’t ready for. If she’d been there, Gladys would have stood by his side and helped him hold the tide of cursed Coprys. Storm bet ten to one she had the same regrets he did. He could see her now, rushing to the woods outside his little shack where he lived alone, hoping she’d arrived in time, terrified by the wave of power and the tipping of the balance.

Averting his gaze to the slow-filling bar, Storm wondered what Gladys thought after she walked through the massacre he’d left behind. Was she ashamed? Did she understand what he’d done and his reasons?

By the looks of the waif, Grace was Gladys’s granddaughter. She had the same stubborn look in her eyes that swore she wouldn’t leave unless Storm went with her, the same force of nature batting at his magic. She must be an untrained seer if the trickle of contact meant what he thought.

Good luck to her. Gladys was the only one who had ever read his mind, his cards and his future. No other seer or reader, no matter how talented, could bear the burden. A girl in his high school had read his tarot cards once, but her hand kept shaking when she tried to turn his future card. Storm had taken pity on her and done it himself. He’d never told anyone what the card was, not even Gladys.

The Ten of Swords marked the lowest point of his life with nowhere to go but up; the Three of Swords signified rejection and betrayal; and the Tower meant disaster and groundbreaking change in circumstances. They should have been a foreboding three-card spread for the girl, but they’d soon found that two cards had been stuck together. Trapped beside the Tower was one further card that had the poor girl’s hand shaking. Storm turned over a reversed Ten of Wands and knew there was no hiding from his fate. Signifying a failure to delegate and a breakdown, the card only added to the reading that blatantly warned of a life-changing event likely to end in regret and failure. None of that could be a coincidence when he was yet to face the final war that changed his life.

Storm wondered if he could go back in time far enough to undo that reading, but that had been two years before the war and there was only so much he was willing to risk.

“Grandma Gladys said you would remember her,” Grace said with a glimmer of hope.

She must be a novice witch because Storm had learned before the age of ten that Gladys was always right. “She never was any good at staying out of other people’s business,” Storm remarked.

Grace huffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Grandma says she was practically your mother so it is her business to poke around in yours.”

That was exactly what Gladys would say, though she’d give less attitude and a slap to the back of his head. Unable to resist, Storm levelled her with a hard stare and set his glass on the table. “What exactly is wrong with this world?” he asked, needing to hear her stake in this. “I eradicated the crooks: the guys using their power to make everyone else look like kids playing games, the guys on a path to destruction. I did what I had to do and fulfilled the prophecy—saving the world from power-hungry madmen with magic.”

“You disrupted the balance,” Grace replied, the words rolling off her tongue with the weight of truth. “You left witches without the balance to safely practice their magic. The elementals are literally losing their minds without contact with magic, and my brother has been chosen to fix your mistake!”

Normally he’d have smart words for her, a warning that payback was a bitch, that karma was kicking the Glades in the ass for not dragging themselves away from their cushy life to help him, but the thought of anyone else being chosen made him bristle.

“Excuse me?”

“Grandma read his cards. The Fates are putting him on the same path they sent you, hoping he’ll succeed where you failed,” Grace revealed, her tone laden with sadness and regret, and a flash of an image Storm was sure she didn’t intentionally share.

She was strong, potentially the next matriarch, though currently only fifteen or sixteen. The image came through loud and clear and set Storm’s teeth on edge. Her brother was fourteen at a push and far younger than Storm had been when he faced that hellish day.

“I don’t know who your brother is but he’s not my family, and he’s not a necromancer. He can’t fulfil the prophecy,” Storm argued, because there were only two ways to fulfil the prophecy: being a Tera and being a necromancer. Storm was the last of both.

“Exactly. He’s destined to repeat your failure,” Grace shouted, her voice loud enough to attract attention. The moment her control snapped, Storm raised his hand in a dismissive wave, and a quick silencing charm surrounded their table. “He’ll fail and lose everything, maybe even his life, all because you’re too scared to fix what you broke!”

Now he knew her reasons and why Gladys had sent her. They were breaking the rules, stomping on the covenant between witches, mages, and the Fates.

One lesson he’d learned from Gladys was that time belonged to the Fates. No one messed with time without their permission, and to ask required a necromancer. Death was the bargain made while resurrection would allow them to perform the spell if the Fates approved, and if they didn’t…well, the necromancer wouldn’t be needed.

“How?” Storm wondered, reminding the girl she’d told him to fix the past.

Her breathing calmed and she lifted her gaze, blazing with anger. “Stop resisting who you are. Become the dark power you were always meant to be.”

Yeah, the same old shit. She needed to be more specific, but after the bombshell she’d dropped, he wasn’t ready to get snarky. He needed to think clearly. “How do you know that going back will change anything?”

Grace reached with her right hand, hesitating with a jingle of multi-coloured bangles before touching his hand. The image she sent was intentional and clear, showing Storm a vision of himself at Adam’s Grove, his favourite place to think and clear his mind. Sitting on the grass, Denver and Foley were nearby laughing, Ithen sat by his side with a hand on his thigh, and Rowan lounged in the grass, though he’d never been a part of their friendship circle. Storm had been afraid to make friends with him, being a Copry son and a forbidden crush, and it remained one of his biggest regrets.

The vision was everything he’d wanted when the war was over: peace in place of death.

He didn’t need to ask, nor did he need to know where she’d taken those images from, since all his nightmares started as dreams and ended in blood, death, and blame.

She was a seer: Grace Glade, the next matriarch, the Girl of the Gales. Her talent was more forced than Gladys’s but strong, powerful. and unshakable. Whatever Grace set her mind to would fall into her lap because she was a bulldozer, a true believer in the Fates and their powers, a girl hell-bent on wielding her power to get what she wanted.

Instead of questioning him, Grace set her jaw and gave a brief nod. “Grandma has found a spell to send you back, under the blood moon. Tomorrow—” She paused and shook her head, her eyes closing in pain. “—tomorrow our matriarch will pass on to her next existence, and we’ll have lost our chance. Without her, we don’t have the power, and I wasted months trying to find you after your last disappearing trick. Don’t waste this last chance to change your life…and save the world.”