The Witch of Willow Lake

Chapter 1

    Just shy of a year had passed since the night I watched my home burn and I still recalled the event so vividly, as if it had only happened yesterday.

    I tried to forget; I longed to wash the memories from my mind, but it was impossible. Even now, there were times I could still smell those awful smells, and most nights came with nightmares of the experience.

    My parents never came, nor had my brother.

    I had stayed curled in my bed for days, my eyes fixated on the door, waiting for them to come through the door and tell me everything was okay.

    At first, I told myself they were still back in Willow Lake, trying to repair the damage done. They just needed a few more days before they came for me once they knew it was safe.

    However, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and almost a year on, there had been no sign of them. Now I was in the safe house alone, hunting small animals, picking wild berries, and drinking water from the lake nearby to sustain myself.

    I'd wondered if I should go back to the village, but a part of me was too afraid of what I might find. I was young and defenseless, and if I'd run into trouble, I would have been as good as dead.

    There was another part of me that felt that if I left, that would be the moment they might return, and I would miss them. They told me to stay, so that's what I did. However, one year on, it was becoming too much to stay here, especially with my birthday looming ever closer.

    It was mine and Zach's sixteenth birthday in only two weeks, and it would be the first birthday I spent without my family, without my twin.

    The thought shattered my already broken heart, leaving pieces scattered in places where I'd never find them again.

    Turning sixteen in our village used to be a tremendous ordeal. At least, for Zach and the other children.

    The children born into the coven got a small taste at the age of ten. After then, the powers would slowly grow and develop until the child became full-fledged Warlocks at sixteen. It was on our sixteenth birthday, the power's we'd gained in our previous years blossomed into full fruition.

    Our powers were our battery life, however. Every time we used our abilities, it would drain us. You could comfortably live to be over one hundred if you rarely used; yet, you could also die well before thirty if you abused them.

    That was, except for me. I never gained powers, unlike my twin brother.

    I was not even supposed to have been born. Typically, the families would only give birth to one child, a boy. It was only the men who held the powers; the women were pagans or human.

    However, for reasons we were unsure of, my mother had fallen pregnant with me, as well as Zachariah.

    For years our village had been terrified of me, so much so, my father built the safe house to hide us away. My grandfather, who at the time was head of the coven, was forced to call us into exile by the other families. They tried to sway him to have me executed, but he wouldn't allow that, and he insisted we waited to see if I gained powers, too.

    Our coven had been afraid because, in all our history, which backdated to the early fourteen hundreds, there had only been one other female born. She had grown to be far more powerful than any other witch and turned rogue.

    In the early eighteen hundreds, she'd rallied a small army and fought against our covens eight bloodlines. The war had obliterated our previous settlement and forced survivors to move and rebuild.

    When the war had ended, only four survived the Popes, the Williams, the Edwards, and finally, my family, The Davenports.

    She had even watched on as she burned her mother and father alive in black fire, so I was told. While they had known other Warlocks to turn bad, none had been as evil as she had been.

    They assumed her dead after a mighty fight arose between her and my ancestors. Although, while my ancestor's, Harry and Georgeson bodies had been discovered, no trace of The Rogue One had been found.

    For a long while after, everyone feared she lived; however, years passed, and our coven relaxed. If she had survived, she'd surely have perished after time.

    Yet, when my parents fell pregnant with Zach and me, the fears arose again.

    Twins had never appeared in our history, and I was the first female born since Elizabeth, The Rogue One. I was also being born as a Davenport, the strongest of the families, and the coven leaders.

    However, my powers never came to be, so, just a week after my tenth birthday, we left the cabin and rejoined our coven.

    For five years, I lived with my family and our friends, living life as an ordinary child. I was happy, surrounded by the people who loved me, and those I adored, playing with the other children, especially the boy called Thomas. After a difficult start to my life, things had worked out, and we were free to live as we should.

    That was until they came, the Vampires. The red-eyed monsters who destroyed my village and left me alone, without a family, my friends, and without a home.

    I threw my minimal belongings into a fabric sack I'd fashioned out of the skin of a deer — a little food and a canister of water along with a compass.

    I couldn't stay in the safe house anymore; being here had become too hard.

    Even a year on, I still desperately wanted them to walk through the door. Each day they didn't broke my already shattered heart a little further, and I couldn't take anymore. Soon enough, I feared I'd have no heart left to break if I did not find a way to move on.

    I needed to start a new life, as a human, like I was. I had no idea where I would go or what I would do, all I knew is that I wished to see my home one last time and leave it all behind me to start anew.