Series 1/Chapter 1: MONSTERS AMONG US
*
As the two cauldrons lit the area of blank blackness all around him a beautiful woman suddenly appeared directly in front of him from a plume a black and green smoke that flowed around her like a storm cloud then evaporated as soon as her entire sleek body materialized. She was summoned here,. to this dark world from the surface. From earth, where she held a place for her mortal side.
She came here For him. For his plan. She was his minion. His follower. His disciple.
An antichrist.
"I am Morgana of the family Casador and will do as you ask, I shall find the human and bring forth the child that will be your, Caspian Casador. Forever. And ever." The sorceress replied reciting her own vows and identifying the dark man as the dark lord Caspian Casador.
"Forever." Caspian said as he stepped forward from the cauldrons that suddenly moved from either side of him and merged into one large pit of fire that exploded in a large flame symbiosing their unholy unity. Caspian then touched his new bride by the shoulders and drew her near him kiss her.
As their lips interlocked, the witch Morgana bit Caspian drawing his dark red blood. She licked her lips and smirked. He wiped his mouth, and grimaced at her savagery. This woman was not like the others he had attempted to use in creating the child. Those other women were feeble and had failed him time and time again, she was forceful and cunning. The bite was her way of marking her own territory of the man who ruled her in spirit, it was a strange feeling---he tilted his head at her unsure if by choosing her he made a mistake.
Morgana's history and reputation in the coven of witches had proceeded her. She was dangerous and at times unruly which made her appeal to be his dark-bride much more attractive. But would she be too wild to control on the surface?
As the tiny drip of blood clotted on his lip,. Caspian suddenly had his doubts of his new wild bride.
But it was too late. They were interlocked now and she had her mission.
"Go now and find the human male that will one day bring me a son." Caspian said.
"You won't regret this. I promise you. Everything now, is for you. All of me. Every last inch of my body I will give to the child that will come from it." Morgana said.
She then lifted her arm and allowed the dark black sleeve of her dress to cover her face causing her to suddenly vanish from his sight, now preparing herself to soon become the mother of the child of Caspian Casador.
****
-- present day --
W E L S H P O R T , M A I N E
In a small cottage home in Welshport, Maine a young woman sat at her bedroom vanity nervously staring at a large manila envelope that came by registered mail from a private investigator. She anxiously scratched at the old chips in the wood of her vanity while the steam from her cup of morning coffee lifted from up in curly swirls like the smoke from a train that twisted and turned around it's tracks.
Her name was Caitlyn Frost and for years and years she had wondered where she came from. Caitlyn was adopted by the Frost family as a 2 month old baby but the adopted had been closed and she wasn't given any information. Her childhood was a happy one. She grew up the only child of Joan and Jonathon Frost who adored her and doted on her every need. But there was always an empty hole in her heart---the truth of where she came from.
Caitlyn's mother Joan did all she could to fill in all the gaps she could but where she was born and where her birth family came from never materialized. The mystery of her back-ground was a constant reminder especially when she looked at photos of Joan and Jonathon, they're dark features were just one of the obvious contrast to her own bright blue eyes and sunny blond hair.
But now things were different. The investigator had sent her this envelope with information, information that could lead her to her big truth. Who she was. Where she came from, and possibly more.
"You ok?" A tall dark and handsome man asked as he stepped out of the adjoining bathroom in nothing but a towel around his waist, still wet from his shower.
"Huh?" Caitlyn asked, seeming to break from her trans at staring at the envelope. "Oh! yeah, I'm ok. This came." She said to her freshly showered boyfriend Nicholas Falconer
Nicholas looked at her and could tell she was unsettled.
"What is it?" He asked.
"It's from the investigator, he called and said that he'd be sending over this information. It's probably more about my birth family." Caitlyn replied.
Nicholas, a tall beautiful man of Native American decent, looked at Caitlyn in the reflection of the bedroom mirror as he got dressed for work. He pulled the white shirt over his still thick black hair and scrunched his face showing confusion with her demeanor.
"I thought you'd be happy that you'd finally get something from him. It's been over 10 months and he hasn't said anything until now. This is good!" Nicholas said, zipping his pants up.
He walked over to Caitlyn at her vanity and picked up the manila envelope. As his skin touched the paper, he suddenly felt a jolt of energy rush through his body. It was like a fire running through his veins and with this powerful jolt a vision came to him, a vison of fire and pain and screams. He couldn't tell what it meant, he couldn't see where it was coming from or who was involved but it scared him to death and he through the envelope back on the desk.
Nicholas himself had his own secrets that Caitlyn didn't know. He was in touch with aside of his mind that many people were not. He could see things. His ancestors were native people who were thought to be seers. They saw things, truths, futures, fortunes. It was the way he'd always been But he kept it secret. He never felt one with his family's gift and certainly never told Caitlyn.
"What is it?" She asked as the envelope fell back on to the chipped table.
"Nothing. Nothing. Uh... why don't you open it so we can see what he sent you?" Nicholas asked.
Caitlyn, still unsure of what she just witnessed with Nicholas' strange reaction to her investigators envelope, his sudden jolt like he had received an electric shock at it's touch, shrugged it off and opened it.
Inside there were papers and papers. Birth certificate with redactions. No names, just a place of birth where the investigator had marked with a post-it-note that read "YOU'LL WANT TO START HERE."
"What's it say?" Nicholas, a Portland Police lieutenant, asked as he put on his gun holster.
"Its a note. It says for me to go here...Savannah. In Georgia." She replied, feeling a twinge of happiness that there was actually a starting point for her mission.
"Savannah? Really? Do you think ...." He said before she interrupted.
"It's where I was born. I was born in Savannah, Georgia!" Caitlyn cried as she leaped from her vanity chair knocking the leg of the table and spilling the coffee.
"WHOA WHOA!" Nicholas said, holding his girlfriend in his arms as she squealed with happiness at finally having some sort of information.
"I was terrified to open this. I had no idea what I'd find, and honestly I thought it was going to be a dead-end, but Nicholas, this is great! This is such a great start! I can get to Savannah by the end of the week and start my search there!" Caitlyn exclaimed.
The vision Nicholas had repeated in his mind. He gulped and furrowed his brow at the idea of Caitlyn going all the way from Maine to Georgia in search of something that gave him such a psychic jolt.
"Well I mean we can pay him a little more and send him there for you, can't we?" He asked.
"What? No! I want to do this. My parents died before they could get any closer than this. I mean how did they even find me? How did I get from Savannah to an orphanage Maine? There's so much I need to know. Look, this birth certificate names a hospital. I can start there." Caitlyn replied, as she turned back to the paperwork and began to wipe up the spilled coffee.
"But, Cait, I don't. Do you really want to open this can of worms now? Are you sure you want to do this?" Nicholas asked again, his reluctance show obvious.
"Don't you want me to? I thought you knew how important all of this was. I need to know where I came from. I have to have other family out there. Nicholas, I need your support. If I don't have it, I .... I have to have it." Caitlyn replied.
Nicholas knew how determined she was. He had always known. It was one of the traits in her that he loved the most. How much head-strong and determined she was. But the visions of fire and screams he had when he touched the envelope were frozen in his mind. It was a clear warning from his ancestors. They always did so, they always looked out for him and sent him psychic messages that he often overlooked, but years ago, on his 25th birthday, the visons and messages became more and more powerful and clearer. He could not ignore them or brush them off---especially when they were like the one he felt when he touched the envelope and involved Caitlyn, the women he so loved.
"Ok. But....I'm coming with you. Just give me a few days to get off work and we'll go to Savannah together. How's that?" Nicholas replied, knowing with him by her side, he could protect her from whatever the vision he had was warning him about.
Caitlyn jumped for joy and back into her handsome boyfriends strong arms. He held her tight and lifted her up in the air. They kissed.
Nicholas set her Caitlyn down again and grabbed his coat before leaving for work.
"Thank you." She said with a grin.
"I just want us to be careful and to be sure we understand that whatever we find down there, may or may not be what we're looking for." He warned, ever the good and practical secretly psychic cop he was.
"I know, I know." Caitlyn replied. "Listen you finish getting dressed, and I'll run out and grab us some bagels for breakfast. You have about an hour before you have to be at the station. Its a celebration!" She said.
"Bagels, huh! You only get me bagels when we're really going to party!" Nicholas joked.
Caitlyn made a funny face at his sarcastic joke and grabbed her purse and rushed out, "don't go anywhere!" She ordered.
"I love you." he replied he replied.
As soon as she was out of his eye site he stared back down at the envelope that came from Caitlyn's private investigator. He slowly walked towards it. His hand, flat and extended and in almost in slow motion, reached down and touch it.
No vision. Blank. As if he was given everything in that first burst. But he could smell something. Smoldering. Smoke. Brimstone. Fire. He quickly lifted his hand and the smell was gone,.
There was a fear in Nicholas-- but not just for Caitlyn and what these messages were trying to tell him. For himself too. Her truth, her roots for the first time had shown that they were leading them both into a strange place. His intuitions, the ones handed down in psychic visions from his native ancestors told him there was so much more to her past than any redacted birth certificate from Savannah could truly tell.
She needed protection, and Nicholas would never leave her side.
****
S A V A N N A H , G E O R G I A
In a egg-shell painted, green fern filled Victorian home just off the Broughton street in Savannah, Georgia an woman sifted through a small leather pouch filled with tarot cards that she carefully pulled out and placed on a table in a small parlor room filled with old books and paintings. The walls were wood-paneled and ancient. She was covered in a black shall with fringe edges that dangled like little earrings all over her body.
Her hair was a dark black with sprinkles of white and her face still youthful defying her true age. This woman filled with wisdom and spiritualty was also a vessel of anxiety from the world she came from: a world of dark magic and devils, frightening spells and tormented souls. It was a world that she abandoned decades ago on her own moral grounds. She just could not take the terrors in her sleep anymore, the nightmares and the screams of the souls taken from the one dark lord she once served.
She escaped and found her salvation here in Savannah, and she brought with her terrible secrets that could un-do so much of the past, she was a protector and a guide and the world and safety she had created seemed to now be cracking.
On this day, as she quickly shuttered the windows of her small parlor from the bright Georgia afternoon sun, she plotted out the cards from the leather pouch on a table covered with a red and gold speckled cloth, she worried.
She flipped the tarot cards over and read to herself as her stomach clenched in her body. These cards told a fortune that she had feared would come after the decades she left the dark world. It was a fortune that she had attempted to thwart for two reason: The safety of the two younger women in her coven that escaped the shadows with her and had been hiding in Savannah all this time.
The three witches hiding in plane sight and known to Savannah society under assumed mortal names; the oldest a woman named Mae (her witch name Azira) acted as this small coven's leader. Mae flipped a final tarot card over hoping it would reveal some kind of hope and light to the others, but it only revealed more future calamity, fire and pain.
The cards read like a death sentence: The inverted Sun card that showed darkness coming, the queen of cups showed a woman would come with danger in her heart, the black Knight on his horse meant an uprising of the evil one, and finally, the last card, the Knight of swords---meaning betrayal and death.
Mae's heart sank. She knew who the knights were. For all the years she lived as the homely woman in Savannah as Mae Watanabe, she hid away her true self: the witch Azira for this reason.
She knew and could feel her small coven of three was in deep danger as each card was flipped to view. And just as she began to flip the final cards over, a knock came on her old Savannah home's door.
It was the two other women in her coven: Amira, a young witch of 30, ho went by the name of Gabrielle Loures in the mortal world. Amira's youth and position in the coven was that of a healer and the one who brought light, and in the mortal world Gabrielle was a doctor who had been through a terrible ordeal in her past. Losing the love of her life, a mortal man who left her hurting and broken. After her love's death, as Dr. Loures, she devoted herself to her hospital patients. Everything inside her was turned to heal the sick, comfort those in pain and keep the community she lived in safe from harm.
The other member of this three witch coven was Hydren, Azira's soon to be heir and apprentice. Azira was the main thread to all that this coven was protecting. She was the lynchpin in their desertion of the dark side. She was the key to unlocking many dangerous worlds. Hydren's past wasn't always that of dark magic however. She came from a long line of Savannah high society that the entire city recognized. She was a member of the powerful shipping Craine family that for years had ruled the seas from the rocky coast of Maine to Savannah shoreline. Many had thought the family went extinct but when the three witches returned to town 20 years ago, Hydren took up her former identity as the wealthy town heiress: Cressida Crane, A woman of great prestige, in her late 40. Famously, the last of the original family.
As Mae opened the door to her house and let the two others in she grabbed Cressida's hand and squeezed it tight.
"The cards have told me he is coming." Mae said to Cressida who's eyes widened.
"Are you sure?" The young Gabrielle asked as she closed the front door behind her.
"Come." Mae said ushering in the Cressida and Gabrielle.
The three witches, Mae with her flowing dark hair, Cressida with her blond bright hair and blue eyes, and the youthful Gabrielle of honey colored skin, dark curly hair and hope in her eyes sat around the small circular table in Mae's parlor where the cards were placed.
"Encircle us and tell us powers that bind us, surround us with light and truth but bring us not the lies and distortions that HE wants... show us what to wait for, show us how to proceed." Mae said as all three clasped hands and closed their eyes and looked up at the ceiling.
Suddenly a bright breeze filled the room, the paintings on Mae's walls began to shake on the walls, the ferns in the room began to sway and the tarot cards on the table began to levitate and flip and turn violently above the three witches as they all, in unison, opened their eyes to see.
The cards morphed together into one large disc of light that acted like a mirror shining a bright yellow light on them, in that light they saw a woman, dark haired and blue eyed, covered in black staring down at them from the disk. Neither of the witched could truly see her face, they could not make out what she really looked like aside from the obvious, that she seemed to be a mortal being. But in their hearts, they could tell she was not, and that she was like them: a sorceress.
"She comes." Mae said to the group.
"Who is she?" Cressida asked?
"She's young. She's ...so young." Gabrielle replied softly.
"She comes to do his bidding, the same bidding that he once attempted with you Cressida. He's attempting to reignite the prophecy." Mae answered.
"But he can't!" Gabrielle shouted.
"HE CAN!" Mae shouted back. "I warned of this. I warned of this so many years ago and now he's come back and he's ready to begin this all again."
"Do you think he will find them? I've done all I could to hide...." Cressida said but was soon hushed.
"SHHH! Speak not of the truth out loud." Mae replied silencing Cressida, quickly snapping her fingers forcing the disk of light to return to the their card formation and falling down to the table like leaves falling off tree.
"But if he's coming, I have to take provisions. Maybe this woman in black is his messenger. We've fought other messengers before, we can do the same with this one, can't we?" Cressida asked.
"She seems different. Her heart seems more withered than the others, I can feel her hunger to please him." Mae replied.
"We have to force a binding of light around us, there's no other option." Amira said, attempting to woo the group into a method of witch craft that would turn their outer exteriors into something new, changing their faces again and moving them away from Savannah, to a new place. A new and safer place from HIM.
Mae, slowly got up from the table and walked over to her shuttered window. She touched the white shutters and felt each groove and opening. The light from the outside cast lines of light across her old face while she stood in silence and in thought.
"Hydren" Mae said, using Cressida's witch name "he is coming to fulfill what he failed to do. He will seek you, you know what you need to do." Mae warned.
"I..." Cressida began before Mae spoke over her again,.
"Keep the darkness out and keep the truth of what you did away from his hands. If he should return, find the coin you hid away safely all those years ago, it will destroy us all...it will destroy humanity as it is. He must not find the coin, Hydren, me must not find the coin!!" Mae exclaimed as she slowly turned around and looked at her two other coven members.
"I promise. I won't let him find them, with all that I have I will protect them. I have protected them. Forever." Cressida reassured.
Mae knew Cressida and Gabrielle would do all they could to protect the important coin of their coven that had been hidden away from the dark one all these years. The coin were essential to their survival and if found by the dark one the world, humanity, and everything good would be destroyed and lost forever.
Mae excused herself to her bedroom where she'd rest leaving Cressida and Mae in the parlor alone. Amira was nervous, she shuffled the tarot cards and displayed them on the table and each time she flipped them over...they were blank.
"Blank." Gabrielle said surprised, twirling her finger around a curl of her hair. "What do we do now? If that monster is truly on his way back, could he find us?" Gabrielle asked.
"He cannot find us or the coin. We can't let it happen. We have to stick with the plan we've promised and bound ourselves to with this coven all these years. That's all we can do, as long as we hide as mortals ---we will survive. He can't find us this way. The coin is what he is after." Cressida surmised.
"He can try. We know he can try. And there's no telling how he will do it this time." Gabrielle reminded.
Cressida, grabbed a key that was round her neck on a glistening golden necklace and squeezed it. The key she kept around her for safekeeping. No one could or would touch it. It opened a door that would lead to the sacred coin that this cover was hiding from the dark one. She was the soul keeper of them and knew their power should the dark one find them.
"I will will die before Caspian ever sets his evil feet on this plane again." Cressida said, her eyes narrowing and her determination every clearer.
"What if he's after more than that? Mae mentioned he was trying to fulfill his prophecy again. We know how that worked out when he.../." Gabrielle began to reply but was shushed by Cressida.
"Don't say it. Don't repeat what happened."
"I'm sorry." Gabrielle said, her voice soft knowing the dangers of speaking of Caspian this way.
Cressida knew the danger they were in now all too well. Caspian's obsession with Cressida spanned centuries and she escaped him with with Mae and Garbrielle…and with the sacred and coveted coin.
"There is nothing I won't do to protect the coin. Mae is old...she may not have a lot of fight in her left, but ....I do. Gabrielle, .will you help me? Will you help me protect the coin? I don't know what that will entail or how much of our lives we'll give but I can't do it alone. I will need you in any form you can give." Cressida asked gabbing on to Gabrielle's hands.
This was a no-brainer for Gabrielle. As her human persona amongst the mortals of Savannah she was a beloved doctor, a woman who was sworn to help and heal all around her, and her coven sister needed her. They were two of three and when one sought the help of another ---the word NO was not an option.
"With my life I will help you. With my life! Even if we're the last two on this plane I will. The coin's protection and safety isn't just on you Cressida. Its on me too. " Gabrielle replied loyally.
Their pact was strong, as Cressida and Gabrielle lived in the world outside of magic and darkness and together would need to do all they could to keep Caspian Casador from the knowing the truth: That the coin he so coveted had not been destroyed as he was lead to believe and was attempting to revitalize with the new witch Morgana.
The coin still existed and was hidden in plain sight and old Mae had helped her two younger witches escape the darkness of Caspian for the safety of the coin. Cressida and Gabrielle were hiding it themselves right there: in the shadows of Savannah.
