Across the dining hall, Litha Brandywine half listened to her companions while she watched Storm dine with Director Tvelgar, a man with model cheek bones and piercing blue eyes, and two people who were obviously a couple - a beautiful couple. He was either elf or fae. If there was any difference, she'd never been able to detect what it was.
After dinner, she decided to make her way to the Office of Records and find out more about the tall, dark, and striking knight.
Twenty-seven years earlier, Litha had started life as a Dickens cliché, having been left on the church steps in the tiny village of Clitheroe on the edge of Pendle Hill, Lancashire; a region of Britannia most noted for legends of witchcraft and strange goings-on. The Anglican priest who discovered her was entertaining an old friend at the time; a Cairdeas Deo monk visiting from California. When discovered, the pretty baby was not crying and fussing, but kicking happily at her blankets while patiently waiting to be found.
Brother Cufaylin, who had one of the seven gifts, recognized her as something special. He appealed to his friend, Father Daugherty, to let him take the child home to the monastery four thousand seven hundred miles away. He vowed the other monks, his brothers, and he would love her like a daughter and dedicate themselves to seeing her thrive, helping her reach toward her potential and find her destiny - whatever that might be. While Father Daugherty had his doubts, he'd heard too many stories about the bleak futures of hapless children who were orphaned or abandoned to a system that worshipped nothing but bureaucracy. Brother Cufaylin's offer to give the little girl the best of everything was very tempting. In fact, he didn't see how he could refuse.
Although he never would have offended his friend, Father Daugherty also had misgivings about the nature of Brother Cufaylin's beliefs. The Cairdeas Deo sect was far too mysterious for his comfort. There were even indications that perhaps they were not strictly Christian. Still, he supposed the baby's fate would be better off with atheists or alchemists than the alternative.
So, they managed to acquire the credentials that would allow Brother Cufaylin to pass through immigration and attain legal guardianship. After a quick course on the care of an infant from a village woman who had served as nanny to the high-born when she was younger, he carried the pretty babe home to the vineyard monastery at Bodega Bay.
The Cairdeas Deo monks had been "hiding in plain sight" for centuries, disguised as a Christian sect since the term automatically created a societal mystique that functioned as a protective barrier against close examination or typical standards of rational thought. The Cairdeans actually served the twin masters of the Merkaba: truth and life force, privately calling themselves the Friends of Life.
Brother Cufaylin brought the child home to the Sonoma Coast winery on the very day of the Summer Solstice and dubbed her Litha in celebration of the Feast Day of that name. The monks were, at the same time, celebrating a very fine review of their handcrafted, bottled-in-bond, one hundred proof, seven-year-old brandy. So she became Litha Brandywine, precious daughter to seven monks who could not have been more surprised that an odd twist of fate brought them the opportunity to be proud parents.
They were in a unique position to help Litha develop and channel her very special talents. Her mind was polished and refined on the turning wheel of free thought. She was exposed to every myth, doctrine, superstition, and philosophy according to the principle that minds with little education form a narrow palette of capability which is far too easily manipulated. Their view, that mental strength requires a perpetual diet of new material to digest, found perfect expression in Litha's step-by-step development.
She never felt that she missed out by not experiencing a more typical family environment. Nor did she ever spend a minute of her life wanting for love or attention.
What Brother Cufaylin saw in the infant that day at Father Daugherty's Anglican church was his secret, but he judged truly when he concluded that she was special.
In point of fact, Litha was the daughter of a practicing Pendle Hill witch and the demon she conjured.
Litha’s mother had been told that her great-great-grandmother was reported to have summoned a demon. The seed of that tale grabbed hold and took root in such a way that her future was then deprived of real choice. No one knows what sets the heart on an intractable course, but Litha’s mother yearned to repeat her great-great-grandmother’s adventure into the occult and worked tirelessly to discover the key that would enable her to do so.
One of the central issues in the practice of witchcraft has always been unpredictability and the inability of the witch or sorcerer or magician to replicate results. In the case of demon summoning, the craft took a wrong turn sometime early in the Dark Ages that could be traced back to a practitioner who successfully conjured a demon and documented the episode. The problem was a faulty conclusion based on incomplete data. The magician’s assumption was that a recipe of steps involving tools and words of power had wrought the event whereas that was only true in part.
The practitioner had accurately performed the steps necessary to cast an ether net which was the true cause. The effect though, was not that a demon had been summoned, but that a demon slipping dimensions had been caught within the net that was cast. Future witches and sorcerers would ponder the unpredictability of summoning for centuries without ever realizing that the process is exactly like fishing. Cast an ample net in which you may or may not catch a demon.
Tomes on craft were full of legendary accounts of the downsides to conjuring. Naturally demons were rarely happy about being caught in a witch’s web. For one thing it was a little painful, like getting a righteous zap from static-filled carpet.
Further, it was quite unsettling, even for demons, to set out for one destination and suddenly end up in another. And a pissed off demon wasn’t likely to be in a mood for granting favors.
Of course there are exceptions to every rule and one was the case of Litha’s mother, Rosie Pottinger, the apothecary's daughter, who caught the incubus demon, Deliverance, in her web. He appeared within her Circle with a loud pop that startled her into releasing an embarrassingly tiny squeak and jumping back. She was taken by surprise partly because of the noise and partly because of the shock of being successful. After all, who ever really ever expected to conjure a demon?
She gaped as he hissed and roared. “Cromm the bloody Crúaich!” Through a red haze of indignation he spied a culprit, vaguely registering that it was a female witch. “Tarnation woman! Do you know that bloody well hurts?”
Into the palm of his hand he spontaneously pulled a sphere of fire a little smaller than a bowling ball and drew back his arm to launch it, thinking he would teach this witch a lesson to reverberate through the annals of magical notation for generations. As he was about to release the fireball he focused on the woman for the first time. The flames spit a couple of sparks, turned blue and then evaporated in his hand as he stared.
Rosie Pottinger still stood wide-eyed and gaping at the demon while he stared back. He sensed a trace of something more than human in the young witch who could have taken her name from the brilliant color in her cheeks. Apparently Rosie’s great-great-grandmother had done more with the demon than just summon him.
Deliverance dropped his arm as his mouth spread into the sort of spellbinding smile that could only be managed by an incubus.
He lowered his volume to dulcet tones and, when he said hello, Rosie Pottinger felt her knees go weak. His accent was tinged with a gypsy dialect that was far from aristocratic. That was because he had learned Anglish in the shadows of The Tower of London.
The shirtless figure stood before the witch inviting her to look her fill as he drew her nearer to a trap of his own device. The candle flames danced in his black eyes like they were mirrors as they tracked her tiniest movements. His thick, silky hair fell to his waist, the color so intensely black that it reflected light like the glossy surface of polished slate. His coppery skin gleamed with a promise of heat and molded lovingly over musculature that demonstrated the artistic principle of shadow being equally important as light.
Indeed. Deliverance was fashioned as the personification of female sexual fantasy and desire, a perfectly designed instrument of seduction.
There are many degrees of desire. Temptation means that denial is possible. Deliverance inspired the sort of desire that burned two steps beyond that. Just the sight of him was enough to push the strongest-willed woman past need, past longing, all the way to compulsion.
Deliverance wasn’t an actual sex god as demons are not deities in the sense of mythos. They are simply a distantly related race of beings, but why quibble over details? Deliverance had never known the disappointment of rejection because he was - quite literally - irresistible.
Within the hour the apothecary’s daughter, with her comely curves and light brown hair, lay on the stone floor inside the Circle that contained the demon - or so she thought - being pleasured beyond the limits of mortality.
Certainly you might expect to know what is on the next page; that the incubus demon, Deliverance, took his pleasure from slightly misguided Rosie Pottinger and continued upon whatever demonly errand had occupied him before the interruption of his journey. But that is not the way the story goes. The demon may have intended his encounter with Rosie Pottinger to be a brief and pleasant diversion, but her demon blood called to his and, as he slowly stroked her luscious body with his own, the sweet f**king turned into lovemaking.
He stared into the witch’s eyes, green as the water standing in the lava pools of Ovelgoth Alla, absorbed her scent into his essence as he nuzzled her neck, and fell in love.