Cresent Prophecy

breath was vaporizing on the air.
Screw winter.
Screw the snow.
Screw everything!
I had a score to settle.
I practically tore the village apart looking for Alex. I checked Mary’s Teahouse, peered in the windows at Molly McCreedy’s, walked through the car park, inquired at the bed-and-breakfast, but it was he who finally found me by St. Brigid’s church.
“What are you doing lurking in a graveyard this time of morning?” he asked with a chuckle.
“You’ve gone too far,” I said, turning on him. “There’s a line, and you crossed it miles ago.”
“Whoa,” he said, holding up his hands. “All I did was give you a little kiss.”
“Get out of my life, Alex!”
“We both know that’s not happening.”
“Like hell, it isn’t.”
He grasped my arms and pulled me close, causing panic to spike. We were alone behind the church at the butt crack of dawn. Not even Father O’Donegal was pottering around inside preparing his sermon for Sunday. Something didn’t feel right. The air tingled with an unknown energy, and I began to feel the same fear I’d experienced the night Boone and I had lured the craglorn to the hawthorn.
Lucy warned me, I thought. She warned me about his malice…
“Let go of me,” I demanded, struggling against his grasp.
“Skye, don’t fight me,” he crooned. “You want to be here. You want to be in my arms. You want to go back to Australia where things were easy. Don’t you?”
I sank into his touch, his words making my head swim. Maybe he was right…
“You don’t need these people,” he went on. “You don’t need Boone. He walked away from you, remember? You told him how you felt, and he didn’t want you.”
“I…” But I hadn’t told him because the words had stuck in my throat.
“Shh,” Alex murmured. “I’ll make it all better. Just come with me, and you’ll forget all about this place…”
He tugged at me once more, and I sank against him, pressing my cheek against his chest. His hand began stroking through my hair and over my shoulder, soothing the panic from my heart. Focusing on his fingers, I sighed. Maybe he was right.
I stilled as the air shimmered around us. It was so slight, I almost missed it, but for a second, his fingers had turned blue. Blue like the man I’d seen at Aileen’s wake at Molly McCreedy’s.
Remembering the image of the man who’d shimmered into a blue humanoid monster with long pointy teeth, and I gasped, breaking out of Alex’s grip.
That was how they did it. That was how they hid among us.
I was almost too afraid to look Alex in the eye, but I raised my head, knowing if I was right, then I was in a shiteload of trouble.
The air shimmered, and his face was no longer the Alex I knew. His skin took on a sickly steely blue hue, his eyes bulged, his hair grew long and black, and his teeth became razor-sharp points. He appeared to me in his true form for the blink of an eye before his glamour returned.
Ew! He’d kissed me!
“No…” I murmured, taking a step back. “That was you… At Aileen’s wake…”
He was a fae, and that kiss at the tower house had been a spell. He’d taken my ability to tell Boone I loved him. He’d stolen my words and destroyed Boone in the process.
He’d stolen my words!
At that moment, I should’ve been alarmed. In the least, I should’ve attempted to hold onto some kind of rational thought, but all I saw was the enemy. The enemy who’d taken Boone away from me. The enemy who’d divided us in order to get to me, the last Crescent.
The enemy.
Alex was a fae, and he was working with Carman…but was it Alex? Had they snatched his body and possessed him with magic? Or was he an illusion? Or, more worryingly, had he been a fae the whole time I’d known him? Before and after the Crescents called me home.
If I were thinking a little more clearly, then maybe I would’ve made a different choice. Maybe was a terrible word in hindsight. But my faculties were definitely not in order. They had been completely blown apart.
“You took my words!” I shrieked, seeing red. “Give them back!”
He chuckled and shook his head. “There’s only one way you can do that.”
I narrowed my eyes. He was talking to me like I should know, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to break his stupid spell, and it was infuriating.
“You don’t know how to use your magic,” he stated, looking surprised. “That’s new.”
“You know shit all,” I exclaimed. “You and that bitch Carman don’t know anything about me.”
Fae-Alex laughed, clearly not believing I was in control of my Crescent abilities. I wasn’t, and I didn’t have the athame like I did when I fought the craglorn, but I knew how to smack him down. Magic was about instinct and intent…and boy, did I have a single intent when I looked at the fae who’d tricked us all.
He’d said there was only one way to break the spell he’d kissed on my lips. Death was the obvious choice and clearly, he thought I wasn’t capable.
“Carman is coming for you,” he said, laughing. “There’s nothing you can do to stop her returning to Ireland. When she does, the doorways will be opened, and the witches will be punished. You worst of all. The Crescents will suffer.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” I demanded. “I am Skye Williams, Crescent Witch.”
Raising my hand, I called on my magic and launched myself at him with a roar. His glamour dissolved as my power lashed out, revealing his true form.
We fell to the ground, and I straddled his body, not letting him go for a second. I felt the golden light stream from my hands and spear into his body, stabbing into his repulsiveness like I was wired with twin blades. I didn’t need the athame this time because I was the sword.
“Skye,” he said, moaning as my golden light engulfed him. “Skye,