Chapter 9

Up early the next morning, I had breakfast and was ready to go by 8:00.

“Come on Al, we have things to deliver,” I called to my Familiar. He’d had breakfast too but was more interested in going back to sleep than going out.

“Do I need to go?” he asked from his favorite napping spot.

“Yes, I need you to spot any demons that are waiting at any of the places we have deliveries,” I told him. Al stretched like cats do, and we moved out to the car. I checked it and all of the wards around the house and my property before we got in and set out. They were all at 100%.

Traffic was awful at this time of the morning, but we dealt with it. When I was growing up, there was little traffic in the town near where I lived, but today there is traffic all day everyday going in both directions. It gets worse the closer to Atlanta that you get. The deliveries required a bit over five hours, most of it travel time, but some was spent waiting for customers to be up and moving around when we arrived. There was also the time spent while Al and I checked for the presence of demons or other threats before approaching a customer’s house or business.

I cast a ward around each customer’s location to ensure that we wouldn’t be interrupted while there. It used a lot of Magic, but my philosophy now was better safe than burned. We finally returned home a bit after 1:00 that afternoon. I made lunch for Al and me after checking all of my wards again when we arrived home. There would be time to study this afternoon before I needed to start calling those scheduled for deliveries tomorrow. It required three more days to finish the deliveries, but I didn’t need to worry about paying my bills for a while. There had been no demons or anything else to interfere with the deliveries. There had only been a few customers who weren’t up, or who were out when we arrived, plus the traffic to contend with.

When we returned home on the second day of deliveries, Josh was parked in my driveway entrance waiting for me. I wondered how long he had been there.

“I’ll lower the ward,” I called to him, as I pulled up behind him. With the ward down, we both drove up the driveway to the house and exited our vehicles. Al had jumped out the open window of my car, and was rubbing up against Josh’s leg when I joined them.

“Hi Josh, have you been waiting long?” I asked in greeting.

“Only about fifteen minutes. I figured you were out when there was no answer to the alarm from the ward or the flashing light,” he told me with a little smile.

“Any notoriety from being on the news with me?” I asked, instead of asking him in.

“Yes, a number of people called me. They all asked what had happened. I needed to explain to all of them how we wound up down there. They were all surprised.

“I also got a couple of calls last night and this morning about what happened at the Witch store the other day. Did a demon really appear there and try to set you on fire again?” he asked in a scared voice.

“Yes, but I was better prepared this time, and sent his fire right back at him, and set him on fire. He vanished quickly following that,” I told him to a small smile from him.

“Maddy ... Maddy,” he started in a questioning voice and stopped.

“What’s wrong Josh? We can fix it, whatever it is,” I assured him.

“Maddy, it’s you,” he said following a short silence. “I still want to be your friend, but ... but, I just can’t go places with you anymore. It’s ... it’s just too dangerous!” he said in a frightened and confused voice.

I hadn’t been expecting this, but there it was. I was too dangerous to be around for normal people, or even most Magic users. How many more times was a demon going to try to fry me? Or how about other Ley Line users, especially Fritz Herkimer? I still owed him one for sending those hoodlums after me and for Bob also. Yeah, I was too dangerous to be around, maybe too dangerous for even Al to be close to me.

Coming back to the present, I noticed that Josh was nearly in tears at my not answering him while I was off thinking.

“It’s all right, Josh. You’re still my friend and neighbor. You’re right though, I am dangerous to be around and seem to get more dangerous all of the time. Don’t worry about it. We’re still friends. If you need any help with anything, just call, or come over if you need someone to talk to. I’m usually here. It’s just that I have some more deliveries to make tomorrow and the next day,” I told him.

“Deliveries?” he asked in a surprised voice.

“Yes, a number of people called me after seeing me on the news, and my phone was fixed. Thanks for helping me with that, by the way,” I told him before continuing. “I started deliveries yesterday, and have two more days to go, but I’m finished for today. Do you want to come in?” I asked.

“I’d like to, but I ... I had some calls for services also, and need to be on my way to deliver them. I just stopped by to ... to tell you about not going anywhere together. Can I come by next week some time?” he asked with that shy smile of his that I found so cute.

“Sure, I’m usually here. Come by and we’ll have lunch or dinner,” I told him.

I brought my wards back up after Josh had left and checked all of them to be sure they were still fully effective. We were inside before Al said anything to me.

“Josh is scared. He may be scared of you now. I could feel it,” he told me.

“Yes, it seems that everyone is scared of me except my enemies, who want to kill me,” I told him with a sigh but was really depressed. I’d never had a lot of friends ... just acquaintances mostly, and I was losing them rapidly.

“It’s time for lunch, Al. I’ll make us a special lunch. I always feel better when I cook,” I told him and made both of us a really nice lunch. I also noticed that we needed to go to the store again.

“Who eats all of the food? It’s nearly all gone already,” I wondered out loud, as I cooked.

“You do. It takes a lot more food to keep up that new body of yours,” Al told me from his favorite resting place. I wondered if he was right? We did always seem to be nearly out of food.

“Guess I need to go to the store this afternoon before I start studying. At least, we can afford it now,” I told Al. “You want to go with me?” I asked following that.

“Yes, I need to be sure you get the correct cat food for me,” he told me from close to my feet. I had just started frying the meat, and he was definitely interested. Following a very tasty lunch, we were off to the big box store for groceries, and I treated myself to a new pair of shoes. A girl can’t have too many shoes.

On the day after finishing the deliveries, I got in a lot of studying. It was that evening, that I found the passage in the third Book that disturbed me. I was reading a page about Familiars when I came to a line that read:

“To obtain a really powerful Familiar, you will require a Dragon to create it.”

My first thought was that I already had a powerful Familiar, but that was before I realized how the sentence had ended.

“Dragon!?” I thought. “Where would I find a Dragon?” and that was when the realization hit me.

“If it requires a Dragon to create a powerful Familiar, and I have one, that means that either my mother or my father had contacted a Dragon to create Al.

“How in the ‘h-e-double-hockey-sticks’ had they been able to do that?” I wondered. That was when I remembered that my grandmother had left these books for me with someone who had no Magic, yet the books had been undisturbed for what ... sixty or seventy years! Would it require a Dragon to cast a spell that lasted that long and how likely was that, I wondered?

Something else occurred to me then. My great grandparents had bought this land back around 1900. At the time, it had to be way, way out in the sticks. The road out front probably wasn’t even paved then. To top it off, they bought the one piece of land that had two very powerful Ley Lines crossing under it. Could that have been chance or coincidence? No, I didn’t think so. Something or someone must have directed them here. Something that knew about Magic and Ley Lines even then.

That was when I began to wonder if they knew about all of that, and if it was done on purpose. Just how far back and how deep did the practice of Magic go in my family, and why didn’t I know anything about it, or anything about my other relatives? My mother and father had never mentioned it or my other relatives before they both died several years apart?

Surely, going back four generations, there should have been cousins, or nieces or nephews, not to mention aunts and uncles as well as a second set of grandparents in there somewhere. Yet I knew of none of these relatives. It was almost as if my family was the sole members of their clan, without any outsiders. How else could I explain knowing nothing of any relatives, and I had never noticed this until just now. It was like a curtain being drawn back and revealing the truth to me but why now, I wondered?”

All of these thoughts had my head in a spin, and I found it difficult to get to sleep after going to bed with all of this on my mind. I finally did manage to drift off after much tossing and turning.

That night, I dreamed again about the Guardian. Again, I was walking through the mist and suddenly came upon her again. This time, however, she was not in a field of flowers, but standing in a large room, that was dark away from the large fireplace with the roaring fire that she was standing in front of. There were torches in brackets on the walls, but the dark seemed to drink the light. She was still wearing the same or a similar white dress, but it was covered in part now by a red robe. She still had the long blond hair.

“So, you come again, Little Witch. You have faced your first demon and defeated him, but I can feel that you have many questions. Questions that it is not yet time for you to know the answers to.

“There is one question that you may know the answer to presently. Yes, it does require a Dragon to create a powerful Familiar. And yes, it was a Dragon who created your Familiar Al,” she told me.

“But how did my parents contact this Dragon, and could I call on him to create a Familiar for Kennith Sweeney? He has looked for a long time and can find no one who knows how to do this,” I told her.

“You are not yet ready to know the names of any Dragons, and especially not the one who created your Familiar. Even hearing his name could possibly destroy you in your present state and knowledge of Magic. I will call him for you, so you may speak to him, but do not approach him too closely, or argue with him. Dragons are much more short-tempered than demons are, and they are much more powerful,” the Guardian told me. She waved a hand then, and I was frozen and unable to hear, see, or do anything.

When I became aware again, the fire had burned down, so I knew that considerable time had passed. The torches had also burned down and were providing even less light.

With my Magic, I could sense that there was another being present – a huge being, but it required time for my eyes to adjust further in the dark to be able to see it or him, as it definitely wasn’t a female. When I could see it, just the sight of it was terrible. All I could discern was a head and part of a neck. I could make out a huge head high above me in the darkness. The head was long with a mouth full of dozens of sharp looking teeth. The mouth was nearly as long as the head. At the end of the head and above the mouth were two large nostrils, but the most frightening thing of all were the eyes. The eyes that were now looking down at me. There was one on each side of the head. They were large with yellow Irises that had a vertical black line in the center and not a round pupil. All of this was on the white sclera background. They seemed to look directly into your very soul, and could see all that you were, and all that you had done; they were that piercing. The last thing that I noticed was that the face and that part of the neck that were visible, were a blue color, but a somewhat faded blue. It was an absolutely terrifying apparition.

“Do not worry, Little Witch. Even he may not cause much trouble on the Astral Plane. You may speak to him. He will be able to understand what you want. YOU must address HIM as Master Dragon,” the Guardian cautioned me in a quiet voice. She was again standing by the fireplace, which again had a large fire burning in it.

Looking back up at that terrible apparition, I swallowed several times before finding my voice.

“Master Dragon, would you create a Familiar for my friend Kennith Sweeney?” I asked in a fairly loud voice, but not screaming.

“WHAT?” came the roar from the Dragon, and some smoke drifted from his nostrils. It was loud enough that the fire from the torches was blown to the side and even the fire in the fireplace flickered from the gust of wind that one word had generated.

“You must speak louder and do not aggravate him again,” the Guardian told me in a solemn voice.

“Aggravate him? What did I do?” I asked in confusion.

“You must project your thoughts as well as your voice,” she told me.

“Project my thoughts?” I repeated, wondering how to do that. A passage from Book 3 came to mind then, and I did my best to follow the instructions it had given. Screwing up my courage, I thought very forcefully of what I wanted to say before addressing the Dragon again. This time the message must have gotten through, as there was no roar, or any strong wind, and no smoke appeared from his nostrils.

To my shock, something even worse happened. That huge head which had been high above me in the dark reaches of the building, suddenly dropped down to nearly floor level. I could now see that just the head was nearly as tall as I am, and those huge staring eyes seemed to pierce right through me. It was several minutes before the Dragon spoke again, and then in a more normal voice.

“Little Maddy!” It said almost in surprise, shocking me.

“Yes, I remember you now. I created a Familiar for you some time ago. Why do you need another? Is something wrong with the one I made for you?” He demanded.

“The Familiar isn’t for me, Master Dragon,” I said and thought to him.

“Not for you? Who then?” He demanded back in a grumpy voice.

“My friend, Kennith Sweeney, is the one who needs a powerful Familiar,” I told him.

“Kennith Sweeney,” He said, and the words seemed to roll off his tongue, like he had said them many times before.