Summary: There's more than one secret in the world, but some secrets are more potent than others. One such secret is that of the witches, a silent number in the magical equation, known only by the Volturi and a certain vampire doctor. Channer Whitney is a young witch, not yet at the Time of Choosing. She heads off to college in Portland, where she plans to live in the witch community till she turns twenty-five. Portland is a rat's nest of problems, with wild vampire covens running loose in the inner city, covens of teenage witches meeting in the woods and meddling with the affairs of those who shouldn't know about them, and, on the fringes, a bizarre communion of vampires and shapeshifters. Throw the original Oracle of Delphi into the mix, and things are going to get weird. Portland is going to blow, one way or another, and only a berserker will be able to change the outcome.
I thought it would be interesting to throw in another magical 'race' in the Twilight world, and the plot wrote itself from there.
I don't own Twilight, or any of it's characters or concepts.
I partially own Sam the vampire, who will appear around chapter four. The first three chapters are pretty much introductions for the main-ish characters and attempts at explaining the witches.
I do own Channer, her family, and the conception of witches in this world.
Real plot should start in chapter six, and the chapters will get longer.
Thank you.
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Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Channer swung her backpack onto one shoulder. "Mama, don't let the boys get too rowdy. If I find they've wrecked my room, I'll commit painful murder on the four of them." She kissed her mother's cheek gently, the aged skin creasing slightly beneath her lips. It wasn't that her mother was truly old, it was that she had seen too much and lived through too much in her youth, before she hit twenty-five and chose to settle down like a normal woman. "Tell Papa, when he gets back from wherever he's at, that I won't miss his lectures, just him."
She turned to her four brothers, the twins and her older brother and youngest brother. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do- on second thought, don't do anything that my kitten wouldn't do."
"Does that mean no homework?" Rick, one of the twins, asked, hopeful.
She cuffed him. "Don't make me start a wrestling match again," she grumbled.
Jackson, the other twin, laughed and hugged his sister tight. "God bless," he whispered in her ear. He always made people feel better. Always.
Lawrence, her older brother, rolled his eyes. "Don't go for pretty boys," he advised, "They wouldn't last once you show off who you are."
"That's the last thing I intend to do," she snapped.
"Just remember it, Channy."
The youngest, hopeful, seven-year-old Maximillian III, who was too scrawny for his name, wrapped his arms around her waist. "Send me a pony from Oregon," he begged.
"They don't have ponies in Oregon, and Mama's already told you there's going to be one come Christmas," Channer said, fighting the urge to blush. She kissed Max's forehead and detached him from her waist, then walked into the security check line, head held high. Her red-gold hair, in a ponytail, swung begind her. Her tall, slim form was slow in disappearing, since she towered above quite a bit of the populace. At six feet even, she was distinctive, and with the former glory of her mother's looks, she was, while not beautiful, pretty at least.
Only one security guard stopped her, but it was only to ask what her number was.
She laughed. "I don't know yet. Going to college."
He sighed in disappointment, but let her move on.
On the plane, Channer curled up in her seat and pulled out her hasty graduation gift from her mother. It was entitled Witching for Women, and Why Covens Are Impractical. Channer, like the rest of her family, had been born with magic. She could tell when a being was magical, and she could do small charms to find stuff or to keep things from getting lost. Like every witch, she also had a special power that classed her into one of the five categories of magician. She was the rarest kind, like her grandmother, and her great-great-grandmother had been: a warrior-witch. Warrior-witches didn't so much do magic when they used their power, as they did change. They went berserk when they lost their temper, and became extremely strong and swift. Other witches called it amazing, but the warrior-witches called it losing control. Channer had only lost it so fully once, and it had been while she was being stalked by a vampire.
Vampires were no secret to witches, but witches were a secret to vampires. Channer, with the power fueled by her anger, and the knowledge every witch learned young that vampires were destroyed by fire, killed the two vampires who had been tracking her. She'd been both horrified and proud, and had immediately began to control her emotions till she was as good at holding them in as a hardened poker player.
Channer's brothers and father were witches as well, and her mother had given her oracular powers up at twenty-five, when every witch had to choose to live into immortality or to live as a human, without their power. Most gave their power up. Channer's father had not. He was an older witch, and had lived for two-hundred years before he met his wife. He was an elemental witch, who could manipulate the elements. He, like every witch who chose immortality, had limited amounts of oracular power, destruction power, healing power, and some of the warrior's strength and speed. His elemental power was strengthened by immortality, and instead of the limited control over mere candle flames, pebbles, glasses of water, and tiny puffs of air, he could use the elements as other magical creatures used their natural weapons.
Channer's brothers each had their own powers. Jackson was a healer, his twin a destroyer (they always came as twins), Max was an elemental like their father, and Lawrence was an oracle who had already chosen. He had chosen their father's path of immortality on his twenty-fifth birthday. His oracular powers were under far better control than they had been as a child and teenager. Instead of being half-insane with the visions that pressed upon him, he could simply ignore the visions. He had been homeschooled all his life, because they were afraid of having him sent to an asylum of some sort. Channer had grown up helping her brother and being his link to the outside world. She was seven years younger. The twins were seven years younger than she, and little Max was four years younger than they were. Their parents hadn't planned for such a thorough gap between all of their children, it had just happened that way.
She realized she wasn't really seeing the pages of the book, and sighed. She'd already read it three times anyhow. Covens gave you bad habits and made you think magic was too special to use for ordinary things. That magic shouldn't be used to help others, just to entertain oneself. That only an idiot would ever consider actually giving his or her power up.
Frankly, Channer wouldn't have joined a coven anyhow, not once she learned that most of them met in the nude. She wouldn't call herself a prude, but she really wasn't interested in dancing naked with a bunch of other random people, no matter how interesting and compelling she thought anatomy was.
She put her book back in her backpack, and fell asleep before the plane ever took off.