Prologue

Crammed into a small wooden ship for months, they rocked to the turbulent waves of an angry sea until reaching the quiet shore of the New World. They brought with them centuries of earth knowledge in healing, herbs, and spirituality.

The witches cultivated the land into a livable masterpiece and named it, New Berwick. They chose a portion of the region and built their communities. They named it, Falcon Haven, after the birds that made its trees their home. A hundred years passed, and humans also settled there, but the witches kept their identity a secret.

The witches claimed that the earth spirit, Asase Ya, had appeared  before their high priestest in the form of a spider and had made a covenant with them—payment, the spirit had said, for their restoring the land. Asase Ya vowed to be their protector and benefactor for as long as they worshipped her and obeyed the covenant rules.

But Corina Brewer, a headstrong young witch, ignored the rules. She abused her powers—and led other witches into consorting with the dead, a practice forbidden to Covenant witches. 

Corina was rebellious even as a child.  In the winter of 1810, she and younger sister, Hollie, and best friends, Gunner Lenox and Amber Moore found an old bat cave; they sat cross-legged in a circle on the stone ground and held hands. An ancient spell rose from their lips that enticed the darkness.

They chanted until the lit candles floated several inches off the ground and a chilling wind stirred inside the cave. The candle fire glowed in the breeze like a pair of fiery red eyes. Hollie's mouth stiffened as she shook nervously and spurts of urine warmed her thighs. Amber's heart pounded; she squeezed Corina’s hand until the magic ring Corina was wearing sliced into her finger. But Corina felt nothing as her green irises rolled to the back of her head, and the white shone like two tiny boiled eggs. 

A huge snake-like stream of black smoke swirled several times around them. A pale figure emerged from the thick blackness and hovered above them. It had no arms or legs; there was no face—just wavering grey fogs inside the slits where eyeballs should have been. The top of  its head popped back like a flip-top cap, and a dark forked tongue slid from the opening. Hollie screamed and tore her hand away from Gunner. The figure shot back into the smoke and the cave walls sucked it in.

“Damn you, Hollie. You idiot,” Corina shouted. 

Gunner had tried to grab Hollie, but she was too quick for him. She bolted from the cave screaming. She never stopped running until she reached home.

***

“Corina is the evil one,” the senior witches once said of her. Though she proved a thorn in the Coven's side, the local council refused to banish her because they believed she was worth saving.

 “She’s young—a little patience is all the girl needs,” Hilda, an elder witch said to members of the local council. 

Hilda was short and stout in a grandmotherly fashion. She was considered by the student witches as their advocate. Whenever they got into trouble, they would run to her. She treated them as if they were her own children.

“Oh, that girl will be the ruin of us all, if we don’t do something,” Harriet said, slamming her palm down on the conference table. 

Harriet was tall and thin. She had a thick nose that sat in the middle of a thin wiry dark face with dark, close set eyes. Her mousey brown hair was pulled back in a bun. She despised Corina and resented her getting away with mischief that witches in Harriet’s day would have never dared.  She constantly snooped around trying to find anything she could on Corina and her fellow delinquents.

As young as thirteen, Corina proved dangerous around humans—especially those in the public school where she attended. She had this gift for being charming and sweet, but deathly cold at the same time. She had a stare that seemed to burn straight through you.

When she was sixteen, Brad Crawly, a mortal, dumped her for the new girl, a pretty redhead.  Corina seemed civil enough and asked Brad to meet with her one last time–to bring a friendly closure to their relationship, she’d told him. The next day in Art class, Brad casually got up from his seat, walked to the front of the classroom, stood next to Mr. Carter, the school master, and slit his own throat from ear to ear.

The blood splattered a jagged line across Mr. Carter’s face. In shock, Carter stumbled back against the wall and slid down to the floor. The children thundered from the classroom like a spooked herd of cattle—some screaming, and some vomiting in the hallway. Other students huddled together outside on the school grass shaking and crying.

Gunner and Amber watched as Corina just stood there in the classroom doorway looking at Brad lying on the floor, his head nearly severed from his body. Her cold eyes traced the stream of blood from his throat as it pooled under the desk and around the legs of the chairs. She cocked her head as if she were fascinated. Her stare seemed lifeless with eyes like marbles peering through the wooden face of a manikin.

As a young adult, her powers had grown stronger and her personality more sinister. Over the years, she and her small group of followers continued being rebellious and Harriet’s snooping paid off.  The group remained loyal to Corina with tight lips. But Hollie and a few others broke under intense interrogation, which included forcing their heads under water while chained creatures snapped their massive jaws just inches from their faces.

Harriet stood like the cat that just ate the canary. “I knew she’d bring trouble. But did anyone listen to me?”   

“Yes, yes, we know,” Hilda answered, “but you often made those accusations without merit.”

The local council had each of their living quarters searched. They found much evidence of forbidden arts; such as, books with human skin covers,  vials of blood, small animal parts, a severed hand, daggers with skull and cross-bone handles, and voodoo dolls that resembled a few of their human school teachers who had suffered unexplainable sicknesses throughout the year.  Not even Hilda could save them now as they stood before the Witches of Darmieth (The supreme high council of dead witches) who sat in mid-air with the tips of their red velvet and gold trim cloaks barely touching the white marble floor.

Hollie was no longer the quiet, silly, shivering little girl she’d once been. Though she broke under interrogation, she had hardened over the years and her only weakness was her fear and loyalty to her sister.

“You have disobeyed the rules of the sacred Covenant made by Asase Ya,” said Isadora, High Priestess.  “You have broken your vows,” said another; “shamed your families,” a third council member said.  “Provoked darkness upon your community,” said the fourth.”  “And defiled Mother Earth with forbidden magic.”  When all five had spoken, Isadora announced the sentence to the fallen faces of many witches, but to the delight of Harriet. 

“The Witches of Darmieth, find, Corina Brewer, Hollie Brewer, Amber Moore, Gunner Lenox, Isabella Wrighthorn…”as she read off the names, Hollie felt as though she were floating above the room with Isadora’s voice sounding far away. Her body hovered over the tops of windows, skid across the surface of the high walls, up to the colorful artistic ceiling of  humans  sacrificed to sacred dragons; up through the ceiling to the pale blue sky, where she sailed on a cloud before being carried away by a soft wind. Finally, she snapped back and heard  the last few names on the list, “… Rosie Stevenson, John Pepperwill, and Wendell Higgins have been found guilty of necromancy—and is hereby banished from The Mystic Circles with all coven rights and magic permanently terminated.”

“You think this is the end of me, you dead bitches?” Corina shouted as the other outcasts hurried past her.

“Careful girl,” Hilda begged, after seeing Isadora’s eyes blazing.

“Come on!” Hollie said, pulling Corina by her arm.

Corina stumbled along sideways, but looked defiantly over her shoulder wanting to say more. But Hollie continued pulling her until they reached the outside where horses and coaches waited with their belongings.

No longer under the protection of the Covenant, the outcast settled in Necropolis, a cemetery world where the worst of evil were buried, and where the undead roamed restlessly. After decades of dark art failure, Corina and her followers finally regained supernatural power from absorbing all the magic from the dead bones of the most powerful sorcerers of the ancient world. She founded a kingdom and called it Ironforge. For not even magic, outside her own, could penetrate her fortress.

In the early 1900s, after getting wind of Corina's powers, the Covenant witches cast a mystic shield around Ironforge, so that  Corina was confined within her fortress; however, if sign warnings were ignored and people ventured too closely, like a magnet, the wall pulled them into the stone and mortar. Human flesh made the wall stronger.

To the mortal eye, it appeared just a huge wall. Only the witches  could see the true horror. They could see thousands of beings, from the waist up—their middle body and lower extremities fused with the mortar in the wall. Each clothed in rags of their own century—their terrifying faces silently screaming—their arms flailing and struggling to pull free.

It was clear to Covenant witches that Corina’s powers had grown dangerously stronger. And that her anger had followed them into the twenty-first century.

***

High, in a secret tower of the fortress, Corina stood looking into a large cast iron pot that lingered a few inches off the floor in mid-air. A green fire blazed under it. Inside the pot, a brown liquid substance bubbled noisily as a mini transparent tornado swirled two feet above the liquid. Within the swirl was the region of New Berwick. Like the news, flashing from one part of the city to another, Corina could see people walking about, traffic bustling, deputies directing traffic, children playing on school grounds, bikers and joggers, sailing ships and low flying helicopters: Falcon Haven, Greyscott Falls, and Sheerfield City, all visible to her in virtual glory.

“My new playground,” she said, gazing into the swirl. 

Hollie, Amber and Gunner looked over at the dark queen, eager to hear her plans.

Corina’s green eyes glittered like those of a deadly snake. "Patience, My Darlings, patience.”