Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume (34 page)

Ultimately, it was Dax who pulled
away. "So what will you do?"

"Oh Dax, I want you! Only you! You
are my only love, my only life! You are everything to me!” Aradia
cried out.

"So will you choose me as your
consort?" Dax asked her.

"Yes! Yes! If you agree to be mine
I will be yours forever!" Aradia cried clinging to him
tighter.

"Then in that case Aradia," Dax
said in a soft but very firm voice. "My answer is no."

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

"What?" Aradia croaked slowly her
voice overflowing with confused raw emotion. "What did you
say?"

"I said I cannot be your consort,"
Dax said, staring at her as plainly as if he was saying no to
wearing jeans to church.

Aradia drew back from him, her
mouth opening, and closing in confused silence. "But
why?"

"I do like you Aradia," Dax said,
"But I do not know if I love you. It's true I have gotten to know
you better over the last six months, but still I cannot honestly
say that what I feel for you is love and besides..." He sighed and
glanced away. "The last woman I loved was my mother, and I failed
to protect her. I swore to myself I would never let that happen
again, and if that means never loving anyone again then so be it. I
am sorry Aradia. I truly am sorry."

Aradia turned away from
him.

After a few silent minutes filled
with enormous tension, Dax asked, "Are you alright?"

Using every ounce of self-control
she had left, Aradia turned to glare at him.

She then muttered under her breath
very slowly and dangerously, "Let me out of the car
now!"

"This is so cool!" Robbie shouted
as he saw Aradia burn another rock into ash.

"Just shut up and pull!" Aradia
shouted.

Quickly Robbie obeyed and this time
Aradia used ice to freeze the stone completely.

Robbie had stopped over a few hours
ago to show her his latest science project: a wooden catapult.
Sensing an opportunity to vent some of her anger, Aradia made up an
excuse to show off her powers to Robbie. The two of them then
proceeded to spend the entire afternoon loading any kind of object
into the wooden catapult, pulling the lever, and watching as Aradia
blew it to smithereens! After she froze the stone, Aradia watched
as it fell to the ground, and shattered. Just like my heart, Aradia
thought bitterly, after Dax broke it.

Aradia had spent the last few weeks
avoiding him like the plague. She never spoke to him, never looked
at him, and changed seats so she would not sit near him in class.
She ignored his phone calls and text messages. Most especially, she
blocked him from her Facebook so he could not even message
her.

The nerve of him, Aradia thought,
the damned nerve of that guy! That bloodsucker! How dare he play me
for a fool, and then dump me! How dare he!

Grunting, she shouted again to
Robbie. "Pull!"

Envisioning Dax's face as she
materialized a metal knife in her hand, Aradia shot it right
through the block of wood.

"Aw," Robbie whined, "I wanted to
see it explode!"

Aradia clenched her fist, and
almost immediately the wood exploded like a firework on July
4.

"Happy now?" she
snapped.

"Jeez what's your problem?" Robbie
asked.

"Nothing," she snapped
again.

Suddenly, she felt tired and
stomped over to the wooden picnic bench that was in her backyard
and buried her face in her hands.

Eventually, Robbie strolled over to
her and also sat on the bench. "Man trouble huh?"

Aradia stared at him with a very
puzzled expression.

"Should the fact that you are
asking me this and you are only nine concern me a little?” Aradia
finally asked him after a moment of stunned awkward
silence.

"Okay first of all, my dad has
satellite TV so you would be surprised with what I know and second,
I am eleven not nine!" Robbie said sounding extremely
annoyed.

Aradia groaned. "Look, it's
nothing! I am just dealing with some stressful situations
here."

"So it is man trouble," Robbie
grinned with satisfaction.

Aradia groaned again. "Has anyone
ever told you that you are a lot like Al?"

"Yeah why?" Robbie asked
her.

Aradia hid a smile before saying,
"Nothing I was just curious."

"So," he then asked Aradia in a
dramatic tone. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

Aradia glared at him,
sarcastically. "You're eleven, what do you know about
girls?"

"I know enough to recognize when
one of them is sad,” said Robbie without missing a beat.

Aradia groaned yet again, and
buried her face in her hands. She then raised her head, and saw
Robbie watching her.

"You see I have been hanging out
with this guy," Aradia began.

"Ah-ha! Man trouble knew it,"
Robbie interrupted clapping.

Aradia glared at him, silently
letting him know that he was not to interrupt her again. Robbie sat
back, humbled, and waited.

Aradia nodded. "As I was saying, he
and I were hanging out when I found out that the reason he was
dating me was because he wanted to get the dirt on him. He played
on my infatuation and used me. However, we had talked and I decided
to give him another chance. Guess what? He ends up playing me
again!"

"Why would he want to use you?"
Robbie asked her.

She sighed and explained, "It’s
because being the last witch has all of sudden given me a celebrity
status, and everyone wants to date a celebrity. He and I were
hanging out after I just found out that the Hidden Council wants me
to choose a consort. I was ready to tell him that I chose
him...guess what he ends up doing? He turns around
and..."

"He dumped you didn't he?" Robbie
asked bluntly.

Aradia swallowed a sob, and nodded.
"The funny thing is I don't think you can dump someone who
technically speaking you were never really dating in the first
place but that is of course from his point of view."

The two of them then sat for the
next few minutes in silence.

"You know," Robbie finally said,
"If you need a consort that badly I'll be it!"

Aradia chuckled, and ruffled
Robbie's hair. "Good to know Roy's sweet personality runs in the
family."

"We need to talk!" Roy shouted as
he stomped over to where Dax was standing in front of his
locker.

Dax turned to him and asked, "What
do you want?"

"What did you to do to Rai-Rai?"
Roy demanded.

"None of your business."

Dax then slammed his locker shut,
and started to walk away.

Roy then grabbed Dax by the shirt
collar, and slammed him against the locker.

"Listen to me, you pathetic excuse
for a Count Dracula impersonator! I know you do not like me, and
quite frankly, I do not think it is possible to hate you more than
I already do! What I do like, however, is Aradia! I like her hell
of a lot! Since I like her so much I do not want to see her upset.
Before she took off with you that night after the meeting, she was
fine. Now I have never seen her look so angry or so sad! Needless
to say, the concept of the 'before and after' effect has helped me
to narrow down the possibilities of what might have happened to
her. My guess is you said something to her that hurt her feelings,
and I want to know what they were. Like now!"

Dax sighed, looked Roy in the eye,
and repeated exactly what he had told Aradia.

Roy said nothing for a few seconds
before grabbing Dax's throat with both of his hands.

He then asked through gritted
teeth, "Give me one good reason why I should not kill you right
here and now?"

Dax sighed with indifference,
"Because right now we are in school and if you kill me you might be
late for class?"

Roy gaped at him in
astonishment.

He recovered himself just in time
to say, "Not good enough!"

Dax did not wait for Roy to make a
move though. He grabbed Roy by the wrist, twisted it, and then
pinned him against the lockers. Roy cried out not in pain and
anger.

"Look mate, just because I look
eighteen does not mean a bloody thing. I am still three times your
age. Therefore, I have three times the experience you have in
fighting. So why don't you be a good little werewolf, and shove off
with your tail between your legs?"

Dax then let him go, and took off
down the hallway. Roy glared at him with his eyes positively
glowing with hatred.

No sooner did Dax reach the
stairwell when he stopped, and started thinking. He hated to admit
it, but Roy had a point he had never seen Aradia so upset. She was
usually so happy, bright, cheerful, and always smiling.

It is because of me, Dax thought
bitterly, Roy was right. I am the reason she is acting so
miserable. It is not my fault, he argued with himself, I was just
being honest with her. I really do not know if I love her or not.
Should I have lied to her? No! I swore to her that I would be
honest with her, and that is what I was doing. I was doing the
right thing.

In spite of his reasoning, Dax's
mood still plummeted.

If I was doing the right thing, he
asked himself, then why do I feel so poorly?

He leaned against the stairwell,
and stared at the ground. Ever since he had told Aradia that he did
not want to be her consort, she had avoided him like a plague of
locusts. Weeks had gone by without her even looking at him and Dax
had not been able to sleep, eat, concentrate, or anything. No
matter what he did, Aradia's face haunted his thoughts and dreams.
Her laugh, her jokes, her smell, her boldness practically
everything about her swirled around him like perfumed smoke. He
tried calling her, visiting her house, emailing her, texting her,
even parking his car across the street, and waiting for her to come
home.

All this to no avail. Aradia had
ignored his calls, and her parents would tell him to buzz off
whenever he rang their doorbell. She bounced back his emails, and
she blocked his number on her cell phone so she could not get his
texts. As for waiting for her, whenever he got out of the car to
try to talk to her she would literally disappear in front of his
very eyes, and he wouldn't be able to find her anywhere. Worst of
all, since he could not control her mind he could not make her talk
to him. He could neither tell what she was thinking or where she
was going. Worst of all, because he could not read her mind he
couldn't tell if she hated him.

"Oh bloody hell Aradia." Dax
dropped his books, and slid down to sit on the floor. "What have I
done?"

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

"So is the plan ready?" Korrigan
asked Dunc eagerly.

Dunc shrugged, flicked a thumb to
where Keon stood, and said, "Ask him."

Korrigan looked past him to Keon
who was standing by a window blocked by black curtains.

Korrigan inhaled a deep breath, and
began to approach him.

Before he even got a word out, Keon
spun around to face them. "So are all of you ready?"

"Dude, I have been ready for the
last three days," Tavis muttered.

Keon ignored Maurice's
comment.

"So does everyone know what the
plan is?" he asked.

Everyone nodded.

"So when do we start?" asked
Korrigan.

Keon smirked. "Right
now!"

Saul slipped away and followed
Korrigan to his room. While his brothers were prepping for battle,
Korrigan was busy trying to prep for what seemed like a date. He
looked like he had just showered, was wearing new clothes, and
humming. All the while constantly checking his reflection in the
mirror. Saul figured that since Korrigan was part Witch, he still
maintained his reflection.

Wish I could say the same for his
sanity, Saul thought grimly, the way he acts is probably why no one
turned a witch into a vampire before. When the bloods of the
different hiddens mix they start to unhinge the individuals grip on
reality. Korrigan here is clearly no exception.

Saul sighed, and turned to leave.
He stopped, however, as soon as he noticed something. Plastered all
over the wall were photos of Aradia! When she was at school, at
home, talking to her friends, and dancing at her club. There was
even some of her while she was in the bathtub!

Korrigan noticed, and chuckled.
"Daciantiful isn't she?"

"Who?" Saul asked.

Henry's laugh sounded more like a
shriek. "As if you don't know whom I am talking about! But it
matters not, all that does is the fact that I am seeing Aradia and
she will finally be all mine!"

"Why do you care so much about
her?" Saul asked trying to keep his voice steady.