Chapter 30 - When magic becomes dangerous.

LENA HAD CONVINCED REBECCA to take her to the library where she got the diaries from, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they didn’t know if Alaric would actually allow it. The councillor had eventually left so there wouldn’t be a problem having him around and all that. The huge problem, as Rebecca explained it was that after she had made such a fuss about it, she wasn’t entirely sure if Alaric would allow Lena to go anywhere near that library.

Lena couldn’t help but laugh when Rebecca told her about the secret key and suddenly it made sense how she could move around the pack house undetected. She had the master key to the pack house. Lena wasn’t surprised to hear that Alaric didn’t even know about the master key. They talked about sneaking Lena out of her room, but then Lena didn’t like that idea.

Things between her and Alaric had finally reached civilized proportions. The last thing she needed was for him to be angry all over again. When he was angry, the pack got angry and that just snowballed into people hating Lena all over again. No, Lena insisted that they get his permission first and if he didn’t agree, then Rebecca would go to look for something and if she found anything about blood magic, she would sneak it to Lena.

Rebecca found one book after searching all morning and she brought it to Lena as soon as she could get it out of the library. It was a spellbook and Lena paged through it very quickly. She had never seen those kinds of spells and although it wasn’t the kind of information she was looking for, it did open her eyes to what else there was in blood magic.

Lena knew that not all witches were good, and not all magic was good, but that spell book only contained really bad spells! Since Rebecca was still young and Lena didn’t feel comfortable letting a book like that lie around, she decided to do the one thing she knew Rebecca wouldn’t be happy about. Lena had to show the book to Alaric. If he accidentally found it in her possession … No, she had to tell him about it. She had to tell Rebecca first though. She knew Rebecca wasn’t going to be happy, but the book was dangerous.

“Rebecca, we need to give this book to Alaric.” Lena was expecting huge resistance from the little girl but when she nodded, Lena was surprised. But then again, she did explain how dangerous the book would be in the wrong hands. It didn’t look as if it was someone’s grimoire. It almost looked like a textbook to disaster! Like it belonged to some medieval school that taught dark magic children. Rebecca called Alaric and Lena almost backed out on her plan when he walked into her room frowning.

“Rebecca brought me this to read. She thought it would help to make me happy, but Alaric, this book is dangerous.” Lena handed the book to him and he frowned as he opened it. “The spells in there …” Lena wasn’t sure if she should continue.

“Where did you find this?” He growled softly as he glared at Rebecca and Lena suddenly wished she hadn’t said anything! The man was so damn prickly!

“In mother’s library. It is the only one that has that kind of magic in it. I thought Lena would like to see one of our spell books, but she told me those spells are very dangerous so we agreed that we should give it to you.” Rebecca stood looking at Alaric with a deep frown on her face and both her hands firmly planted on her hips.

“Are you sure there aren’t any others like this?” Suddenly Alaric looked confused as his eyes darted from Rebecca to Lena and back and Rebecca confirmed it was the only one. She told Alaric that she would show him if he didn’t believe her and he sighed, showing signs that he knew he had lost.

“Alaric, if you can’t destroy the book. I suggest you keep it locked away where nobody but you know where it is. Don’t even tell me or Rebecca where we can find it. The book is already calling for me and that kind of power … It’s the kind you fought against in the war.” Lena felt the tears filling her eyes. She had never seen anyone from her coven do that kind of magic, but they were taught how to recognize it in school. Alaric asked Lena how they could destroy the book and she explained that some books were protected by very heavy protection spells so they could never be destroyed.

Her hand slipped over the book once and she sighed, telling Alaric that she had a feeling this book was protected like that. She told him that the quickest way to find out was to try and burn the book. He burst out laughing when she told him to just dump it in a fireplace. To hasten things along, Alaric had the two girls walk with him to his office where he lit a fire in the fireplace.

As soon as the fire was crackling along nicely, he tossed the book in the middle of the glowing embers. A green flame burst out around it, but not a single page caught fire. There weren’t even scorch marks on it when Alaric fished it out of the fire and he told the girls he would hide it. Lena didn’t tell them, but she feared that this could have been one of the reasons her parents and their mother’s coven came after their parents. Was their mother into dark magic that she kept that book around? She didn’t want to dig too deep since she could already see the wheels in Alaric’s eyes. He must have already made the connection.

The girls left him to hide the book, but not before Rebecca asked for his permission to take Lena to the library. He agreed without even so much as the slightest hesitation. Lena had been right. Giving him the book was the right thing to do. Not only did it keep it out of the wrong hands, but it showed Alaric that she wasn’t whoever he thought her parents were. Before they left his office, however, he did ask if she had told him if there were any more books in that library that could be dangerous.

He didn’t want his little sister meddling when it wasn’t safe for her and Lena agreed. She was looking at the little one who was comfortably seated on one of the couches. Rebecca showed Lena the story she was busy reading and Lena almost breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was an actual story. While Rebecca relaxed, Lena went through the shelves row after row. The magical collection wasn’t that big, but there were some books that Lena would love to read.

She found what she was looking for and sat down opposite Rebecca to read about the history of her people. Granted, it wasn’t specifically about her coven. It was yet another book that looked like some kind of text book and it started with the history of the first blood witch. Lena knew that history very well. It was the same story every parent in their coven told their children over and over to stop them from doing any dark magic.

The first blood witch was burned because she killed an entire village’s children just so she could stay young forever! Soon after she found her powers, she realized she could do whatever it was that she wanted. According to the legend, she didn’t care about the consequences of her magic, but Lena always thought that the poor girl probably never realized what the consequences of her magic would be. No witch was ever allowed to do magic for selfish reasons. At least, that was what Lena was taught. After the damn war, she knew better!

She knew that witches constantly did magic to serve their own damn needs! She saw that with her own eyes during the war. Witches who were hungry grew greedy and conjured the kind of food royals would have which was entirely unnecessary and then they would refuse to share. That was the biggest one of all. They didn’t conjure just what they needed and they sure as hell didn’t share.

It didn’t stay with just the conjuring of food, of course. They were in the middle of a war. Some conjured weapons to amplify their powers, and all of them paid a hefty price. Lena, went through her rebellious years, but she followed her parents' instructions to the letter. She only conjured what she needed and never anything that was overly abundant, and then she made sure to share what she had.

That was when she realized how incredibly naïve she must have looked when she originally told Alaric that her people wouldn’t have done what he said they did. She had been a damn idiot. She still didn’t believe that her people would have done everything he accused them of, but she was beginning to believe that her father killed his parents.