Spirit of the Earth Read online

  Spirit

  of the

  Earth

  Adriadne LeFox

  Copyright © 2019 Adriadne LeFox

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN:

  Cover Designed by

  Natasha Williams @ DAZED Designs

  Edited By

  Ashley Strom

  DEDICATION

  To my darling children and loving husband. You are my rock through it all. I want to give a shout out to my mother too. You have been the biggest cheerleader for me.

  “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” ~Mr. Rogers

  CONTENTS

  1

  First Day

  1

  2

  New Girl

  14

  3

  Stalked

  23

  4

  Running Away

  31

  5

  Restless Spirit

  37

  6

  Coffee Date

  44

  7

  What All Is In This World?

  54

  8

  Foxes and Kings

  65

  9

  Overbearing Family

  70

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Fox Spirit

  Marked for Life

  Check Ups are for Wimps

  Strange Reactions

  Rejected

  Knowledge is Power

  I AM NOT Weak

  Cemented in Desire

  Missing Wolf

  Drawn to You

  Witch’s Path

  Broken

  Past is the Past

  Unusual Protection

  Back to School

  Bitch Squad

  Bad News

  Nowhere Safe

  Building An Army

  Part of the Pack

  Faction Leader

  Demand Surrender

  Prepare for War

  Blood Will Flow

  Was is Here

  Blood on my Hands

  I Found Love

  Leaving for the Academy

  79

  84

  94

  104

  110

  116

  122

  128

  135

  139

  144

  151

  55

  160

  167

  174

  177

  182

  186

  199

  208

  217

  223

  229

  241

  245

  256

  275

  There comes a day when the sun turns dark and trees shed their leaves, that the vessel with both the power of the Earth, Sun and Spirit shall usher forth a new age without the corruption of the Hunters.

  1

  FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

  Kirsten

  I sat in the passenger seat of my twin brother’s Jeep Compass. The leather seats were cold against my jeans as I snuggled deeper into my scarf and leather jacket. My hands rubbed together between my legs. His SUV was parked in a parking spot some distance away from the new school we were supposed to attend. But classes didn’t start for another thirty minutes. I think he just wanted to torture me.

  My brother sat in the driver’s seat, his hands still on the wheel. His golden skin was turning white around the knuckles from his grip. He flexed his muscles occasionally, seeming at a loss for words. When he finally spoke, his jaw was clenched in frustration. “Kirsten, please keep your head down and stay out of trouble. We can’t afford to move again. Mom is slowly being drained with all of this.”

  I blinked at him. I knew the reason we had been to eleven different schools in the last three years was that I had a self-control problem. At my last school, I was bullied. I had been keeping everything under control until they took my clothes during a P.E. class and dumped them in the toilet. I had a very adverse reaction. My power came out to play, shaking the whole girls’ locker room and sending the girls screaming and scampering away like rats. I had to release the power, or I feared it would consume me. So, I funneled it to the football field, creating a large chasm down the middle. We moved that night and changed our names, well, our last names.

  “Kian, I promised I would behave myself this time. There are only six months until we graduate, so I need to finish out the year strong.” My slim fingers went up to my dark hair, twirling a piece unconsciously. It was a nervous tick I couldn’t get rid of. “I promised Mom. I know she can’t handle another sudden move like the last one. I can’t even do it.”

  Kian pried his fingers off the wheel and turned to me. “You are going to be one of the most powerful witches in the history of magic, and I would hate to see you killed off by a Witch Hunter. They are despicable and will stop at nothing to hunt down their prey. Right now, you are in the crosshairs of one of the top Witch Hunters. That’s not good. The other witches and I are doing everything in our power to keep him off your tail, but our magic can only do so much. You need your Protectors and your familiar, and you needed them yesterday.” It was an old argument had every time we moved, but it was true nonetheless.

  I bowed my head in shame. “I am trying to scry for them, but it keeps coming up blank. Something is blocking them from my second sight. As for my familiar, it will come when it is ready.” Grabbing the door handle, I turned away from him. “I will keep my head down, but can't I do anything about bullies?”

  My question seemed to catch him off guard. He stared at me for a moment before finally answering. “Let me know if anyone is bothering you, and I will stop it. You aren’t subtle at all.”

  Letting out a huff, I opened the door and slid out, dropping to the snow, crunching as I landed. I blew my brother a kiss before slamming the door shut. He was right, though; I needed to keep from being noticed, which was hard enough when you are the new kid.

  Huddling against the winter chill that was still biting in January, I trudged through the ankle-deep snow towards the brick building on the other side of the parking lot—which was filling up fast. I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings when I heard a car horn blare, jarring me from my thoughts. Looking up from the grey snow, I saw a Honda SUV stopped two feet from me, the driver laying on the horn again, like I didn’t hear them the first time. I threw the driver the middle finger before stepping, slowly, out of their way.

  What a way to start my first day of school. My power came up to defend me, but I was able to shove it down easier than ever, which was a surprise for me, although I wasn’t complaining.
I made my way through the snow, trying to avoid the slushy-ice made by the cars driving across the pavement. It was cold enough outside to freeze a tit off an ogre. I chuckled at my turn of phrase but simmered down quickly as I got closer to the swarms of students trying to get inside the warmth of the school. It was utter chaos near the doors, as people tried to find their friends, and others tried to squeeze past the ones huddled in groups chatting up a storm. I was one of the ones to weave my way through the mob.

  I wasn’t as careful as I thought I was; I ran into someone’s back while trying to avoid someone else backing up into me. My heart nearly leapt out of my throat as I hit an icy patch and started tipping backwards. I would have landed hard if someone didn’t sweep in to wrap me in their arms and lift me, bridal style. My heart turned over from the sudden altitude change, causing my head to spin. My arms automatically reached around my rescuer’s neck and held on tight. When everything stopped spinning, I looked into his face. And what a handsome face he had. His eyes alone were mesmerizing with the swirl of amber and green mixing within his pupils like I had never seen before. They were topped by shapely eyebrows and below were cheekbones to die for. I wanted to touch them, but I interlocked my fingers to keep them away from his face.

  “Well, hello, gorgeous.” A wicked smile crossed his features making his eyes twinkle in mischief.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to be in this stranger’s arms. Wiggling around until he released my legs so I could stand on my own two feet, I stepped away from him. “Thank you for stopping my fall.” I could at least be polite, even if everything in me wanted to give him some sarcastic response. I swallowed my pride and turned away before he could respond. It wasn’t running away… per se. My brother would be proud that I walked away. Maybe staying unnoticed would be easy, after all.

  I pulled the front door open with some effort and stepped through the doors to a whole new hell hole my mother was putting me through: new school, new faces, but the same smells. I was overwhelmed with the scent of unwashed teenagers, overly sprayed perfumes, and cleaners the school used to try to keep up with the demands of health codes.

  Standing on my tiptoes, I looked over the heads of the students milling around in the front, doing the same as the students outside. But the noise in here was more confined, so the sounds were louder, echoing through the hallways. I winced at the change in the volume level but quickly shook it off. The school’s office was just on the other side of the crowd of young people. Instead of going through them as I did outside, I made my way around the outside and along the wall, keeping myself away from the people moving like a swarm of flies buzzing around each other. It took me too long to get around them, but I finally did, sneaking through the open door of the office. The ladies behind the desks were busy moving around each other, never running into another, but coming close. It was almost like they knew where they each were without looking up from their work. I stood there watching them, in awe of the scene before me.

  When one of the secretaries finally looked up from a stack of papers and spied me, I gave a small little wave. She blinked owlishly at me. “Can I help you, dear?” I don’t know why she was calling me dear when she was maybe twenty or twenty-one. She was young.

  “Yeah, I’m new. My mom signed me up. I am here to pick up my class schedule and anything else I need.” Might as well be polite with her too. She was faculty after all, although it's not like that stopped my smart-ass mouth from blurting out things before. I stepped up to the counter that blocked the front of the office from the back area where the secretaries worked, and where the higher up staff had offices.

  The woman pulled her glasses off to hang around her neck because, of course, she wore glasses… what a cliché. “And your name, child?”

  Now I really wanted to correct her. Instead, I took a deep breath and pushed the comments down deep. “Kirsten Willow. I'm a senior.”

  The woman put her spectacles back on, muttering my name as she turned to her computer. Her blonde hair was impeccably styled into a loose ponytail at the base of her skull, and her smart dress suit looked out of place here at a small-town high school. Her fingers tapped away at her keyboard as she continued to say my name under her breath. If I didn’t already know my new name, I would now. I had to roll my eyes at the way the secretary, Bethany Turnbul—as stated by her nameplate sitting on her desk—was going about finding me in the system. “Eureka!” She clapped her hands and started clicking on the mouse and keyboard even faster. “I see you are in the system, so I am just printing out your schedule, and then I will get you a locker assignment. You can get your textbooks from your teachers.” The excitement in her voice was a little overkill for finding someone on her computer. I assumed she must be new. She didn’t have the worn look about her that every secretary I’d ever known had, and I’ve known a lot.

  When she got up and went to the printer in the back, I leaned against the counter, waiting for her to bring me the schedule so I could escape the confines of the stale office room. Slowly, I pulled my leather gloves off, the ones with the velvety rabbit fur inside. Smoothing them out on the countertop, I moved to my scarf next. The black material was soft but kept my neck warm like no other. But that could be because my mom also spelled it. Is that considered cheating? I’d like to think not.

  I was brought out of my musings as Bethany brought the paper over. She set it down and bent down to retrieve something underneath the counter. After a few muttered comments about organization problems, she pulled out a thick, black binder with gold writing across it. The words were starting to fade, but I could still read Locker Assignments across the front. It was dropped down with a resounding smack as it hit the surface. I winced at the sudden sound that startled the older women who were still buzzing around like little worker bees. I grimaced at the archaic method of assigning lockers. This must be a very low key school with little funding. I thought to myself.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to drop that, but it’s heavier than it looks.” She huffed as she opened the front cover, scanning down the page before turning it, perusing that one too. “Just need to find you a locker, dear.” She muttered to me. I didn’t mind since I wasn’t really paying attention anyway. I just wanted to get my shit and get out. I hated school offices. They reminded me too much of my bullied past, and it all getting blamed on me. “Here we go.” The secretary pulled a piece of paper off a stack of scrap papers and folded it in half. Her writing was very flowery as she wrote out my combination and locker number. When she passed it to me, she smiled. “Here is your locker information. And now for your schedule.” That was the next page she handed me, but I barely looked at it before she was reaching under the overhanging ledge and pulled out yet another sheet, handing that over as well. “This is a map of the school. I hear that new students find it very helpful in finding their way through this maze of a school.” Her smile was sincere, but I just rolled my eyes.

  “Thanks, secretary,” I mumbled.

  Her smile grew wider. “You can call me Miss Turnbul.” She leaned forward. “Let me tell you something.” Her voice went lower, “I am new here too. My first year.”

  I gave her a fake smile before turning away, swiping up my stuff off the counter as I did so, and heading back into the hall that was getting less crowded as the students flowed in with their friends and went deeper into the school. I didn’t even bother to look for my brother. He would find his own way. I just hoped we didn’t share any classes, but that was likely since it was a small school and we were the same age. With only a ten-minute gap between our births, it made it so that I was born on the following day and the Summer Solstice. Twins we may be, but we were so far from being similar.

  Shaking him out of my head, I followed the flow of traffic, keeping my eye out for lockers, while keeping my other eye on the map. It would be just my luck to get lost on the first day of school, so I tried to make sure I didn’t. I was jostled a lot as I walked, but I ignored them. They weren’t worth my attention at the moment.


  When I finally found my locker, I marked it on the map and pulled my combination out of the stack of papers I was handed. “Seven, thirty-two, eleven.” I had a bad habit of muttering my numbers out loud like that, but it helped me remember them in my head. The locker opened on the first try. I was so excited, I opened it up wide, not paying attention to my surroundings.

  A hand reached out and grabbed it before it could hit the locker next to me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. My heart was beating way too fast as I looked to my right, seeing a boy standing there. His deep hazel eyes bored into mine, stealing the breath from my lungs. His hair framed his face in long, wavy, chestnut hair. I wasn’t the type of girl who liked shoulder-length hair on a guy, especially when they can put it up in that awful man-bun. But this guy was rocking it.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my voice like honey.

  “You are the new girl.” The voice had me whipping my head in the opposite direction. Another guy was casually leaning against the lockers, his powerful looking arms crossed, and one leg kicked back with his foot, clad in leather boots, planted against the lower locker. His dark brown hair was styled up in quiff with the low fade at the sides. His eyes—oh, the things I could say about his eyes—were a deep, chocolate color and full of trouble. My instincts begged me to stay away from him, but I never really listened to them anyway.

  My glare did turn deadly with the newcomer. “What a great observation. You must be the douchebag who likes to sneak up on women.” I always shot to sarcasm when I felt cornered, or in this case, sandwiched.

  A smirk graced his handsome features. “Must be. We don’t get many new people here in little ole Greenville. What brought you to our small town in the middle of nowhere, Maine?”

  I turned away from him and hung up my scarf on the hooks provided. My gloves went to the bottom, laid out nice and flat. I took my time putting those few things in before grabbing my locker door. The guy holding it wouldn’t let go though, so my glare turned on him.