Wearing His Ring

By Alledria Hurt

Born a witch and adopted by a powerful coven, Melina Camp has an unenviable family life of being loved by one but not by all. After the celebration of the Renewal Moon, Melina's life is further turned upside down by a curse descending on her family. Seeking help, she turns to the Immortal Death, her mentor in magic. Together they seek the Immortal of Knowledge, the Melasan, who may hold the answers to bringing Melina's family back to life. With the Melasan, they come face to face with a greater problem as someone seeks the Kumon, the book of Immortals. Melina is faced with the choice: Find the Kumon and save the Immortal she loves or break the curse and return her family to life. As with all things, the choice is hardly cut and dry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alledria Hurt
• Release date: Feb 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311586698

Alledria Hurt

Born in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Alledria Hurt has traveled Europe and the United States. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and her Master of Arts in Liberal and Professional Studies degree from Armstrong Atlantic State University. When she’s not writing, she prefers video games, reading, and long walks with her dog, Xerxes. She currently lives in Savannah, GA with her family.

Book preview

Just another pizza day at Sun City High until Jeffrey Davis decided to annoy Melina Camp. She sat at the corner of the cafeteria with a look of disinterest in her slate gray eyes. She took in the splash of aquatic mural, a leaping gray dolphin wearing a red football helmet against the backdrop of a sunny beach with a goalpost sprouting out of the tawny sand, without really seeing it. Nothing new about it. Unremarkable. Her eyes flicked down to the cooling slice of pizza on the tray in front of her. Pepperoni with little green flecks that might have been bell peppers. She didn't want it, but her stomach growled for it just the same. Her breakfast of half an apple with peanut butter had been a while ago.

Other people sat close enough that they could say they sat at the same table but far enough away to say they weren't sitting with her. Melina preferred it. Small talk had never been her forte. She kept her head down most of the time and got along. Good enough.

Long fingers twisted the edges of her curly brown hair away from her face.

Ten more minutes. She had to make it ten more minutes before she could go back to class and hunker down through the rest of the day. Closing her eyes, she willed the time to move quicker. Part of her felt too exposed in the lunch room, as if she were a lone wolf escaping a dozen hunters. They might have been stronger, faster, smarter, better armed, but she had desperation and determination on her side. She would make it out alive, even if no one else did. The counselor said she had picked that up as an orphan, not that she consciously remembered it. Like many things, it worked its way up from below the surface.

Motion caught her attention, a blue streak against the taupe colors of the cafeteria walls, too high to be someone sitting down. With a languid motion, she raised her gaze. The boy standing across the table from her leaned forward and put his hands down flat. He had chewed up fingernails and scarred knuckles on too white hands. She traced her way up his arms, a bruise on the right standing out a livid purple, to the face hanging like a moon in front of the mountains of his shoulders. His eyes were brown, muddy and a little bloodshot. Melina tilted her head and waited for him to speak as if his intention weren't in every line of his frame. He meant trouble.

You Camp? He obviously had heard enough to get her name; otherwise, he wouldn't have been standing there. He would have found someone else to bother, but at Sun City there were few outcasts with as much of a past as her. Most of them were newly made, kids who had been kings and queens of their social circle before falling from grace by the loss of material wealth or a parent or a beginning drug habit. Most of them sat as far from her as they could get because she liked her space and they liked what little standing they had left untainted.

Continuing to take him in, Melina watched him flick the surfer boy long sandy blond hair away from his eyes. He smelled of anger looking for a way out and the remains of a bag lunch. She heard his breath with a slight rasp as if he fought a cold and lost the first round.

You are? Melina asked. The answer meant nothing. She labeled him loser in her mind. The sound of her voice settled across the room and others turned to look, some even rising from their seats. The anticipated spectacle wasn't far away.

Jeffrey Davis.

Nearby another person moved, bubblegum pink over black, Melina's cousin Christina. She hovered at the edge of Melina's vision as if she didn't want to cross behind Jeffrey for fear of catching his crazy. To say the cousins were friends would be like saying all Americans spoke the same language, it just wasn't true. Blond and blue eyed Christina was everything the swarthy gray eyed Melina was not. She had a mother and a father, though she chose her father over her mother. Christina knew where she came from while Melina's past was pure speculation. Popularity followed Christina like a puppy and avoided Melina like the plague. They were polar opposites who occasionally shared a room.

Melina nodded to her cousin in acknowledgment of her predicament and crossed her arms over her chest. What she did not do was rise. If Jeffrey wanted a piece of her, he would have to come and get it. She wouldn't bring it to him. It gave her something to plead when it came time for her to be suspended. At least, she didn't start it.

He leaned in closer as if that would make the conversation more intimate. They were the centerpiece of the room now, people had stopped walking to stare. Teachers at the edge of the room readied their radios to call for help. If Melina went after him, blood stood a good chance of being spilled.

You the big deal they say you are?

What a question.

The wrong one to ask.

It should have been, You the big deal they think you are?

What others thought and what they said were two different things. Experience had taught Melina that. People only said about half of what they think, though it might have been the greater half or the lesser half. Either way, it was far from accurate.

No, she said without changing position. She imagined him with a bloody fat lip and a black eye. It didn't make him more dashing, but it would likely make him go away. If she didn't hurt him, he might try again on another day. If she did hurt him, she was going home. No matter what she did, this would not end well. She shut her eyes against the vision. His breath reminded her of breakfast with the heavy peanut butter scent. Her ears perked to shuffling off to her right. Five feet away, Mr. Shooter stood with his clipboard taking note of the situation. His soles sounded as if he were always walking on carpet.

I bet you're not as bad as they say you are. More exhaled peanut butter. More certainty he would not leave this encounter without at least a new bruise. She opened her eyes to slits and scanned what she could see. He dominated, but beyond him, a couple of girls sat with their knees together whispering to one another undoubtedly taking bets on who would win.

Few bet against her anymore.

She saw the look on Death's face when she told him she'd been ejected from school for fighting, again. His eyes would fall and she would look away from the growing disgust on his features. He would ask her why she couldn't seem to avoid something as simple as a fight and she would remind him that he had never been in high school. Immortals didn't have to keep their place in the pecking order through interaction. Among them, the order was stone. First came the three: Death, Life, and Time. Behind them were Connection and Conflict. Then finally Body, Chance, and Knowledge. A set order.

So much cleaner than high school.

Christina joined the two girls sitting together by putting down her tray and leaning in to join their conversation. Her blond ringlets bounced as she giggled.

You're not listening to me, Jeffrey said. Melina had stopped listening to him because he had nothing new to say. She knew how this conversation worked out. He had already said the magic words, You're not as bad as they say you are, which meant he was going to test out their theory. He was going to try and hit her or something similarly smacking of poor planning and she was going to hit him back. They would scuffle. The teachers would separate them. He would get off with a warning, despite being a boy picking on a girl, and she would go home because she was a magnet for fights.

No.

He snatched at her hair, intending possibly to drag her head forward and down into the table. Melina snapped her head back and avoided those clumsy hands. He might have been a teenage boy but he still had the awkward gwakishness of someone younger despite his size.

Stop that this instance, said Mr. Shooter. His muffled stomping drew closer. Melina backed off her seat, sliding her legs around its roundness, and brought her hands up. Having missed his first strike, Jeffrey tried for another and missed again.

She obviously had more fights under her belt. Melina snapped her hands forward and grabbed his face. Digging her fingernails into the sides, she heard him yowl as she slammed him face first into the faux wood top of the table. Jeffrey rebounded and slid to the floor. A moment later, Mr. Shooter took ahold of her arm. Melina shrugged him off. The tall man let her be, standing to one side and waiting for her to calm down.

On the other side of the table, Jeffrey seemed to be regaining himself. His muddy eyes uncrossed then focused.

You bitch.

Enough of that language. Both of you are headed for the Principal's office, Mr. Shooter said.

Jeffrey looked around to see who intended to back him up. No one moved. Melina tensed in preparation of Jeffrey coming flying across the table at her. Shooter couldn't stop it, but she had an ace. Like always. Scrambling to his feet, he then put one foot on the stool in front of him and launched himself across the table. Melina stepped to one side as he came across and let him come. Shooter reached out to stop him, but Jeffery's eyes were full of his supposed prey.

He swung.

She ducked and grabbed him by his lower jaw.

In her hands, corruption waited like a coiled snake bent on striking. The power reared back and snapped forward biting into his skin with her fingernails. Beneath them, Jeffrey's skin softened, blackened, then peeled. Where her nails left moon impressions, blood welled up. Jeffrey screamed and his knees buckled. Somewhere close by someone retched as the scent of rot perfumed the air. Melina sniffed the weak scent and blew it out through her nose. He would survive. She didn't really want to kill him.

A hand landed on her shoulder. Mr. Shooter attempting to break the two of them up. Melina let go and Jeffrey dropped to his knees and brought his hands to his face. Blood, clotted and dirty, slipped from between his fingers. Five deep grooves, rimmed in black, bit into his skin at the jawline. Melina wiped bloody fingers on the front hem of her shirt. The fingerprints stood out against the white.

You are going to the Principal's office, Mr. Shooter said. Behind Jeffery, Mrs. Rawn had come from the other side of the room. The old battle-ax stood with her arms crossed over her bosom and a sour expression on her face.

She hated magic. So did Shooter. Neither of them said anything more as Rawn helped Jeffrey up off the floor. Around them, students began to resettle into the groups they had been in before the altercation started. No one raised a cry of outrage as the pair were escorted from the room. Injustice it might have been, but no one intended to fight it.

Principal Murphey's office was quiet with an undertone of classical. The idea being that calm music made for calmer children. No one argued with him about that point. The secretary, Mr. Edmund, sat behind his desk with the phone to his ear. His expression as the two were brought in changed only slightly to become the long suffering martyred look of someone who has seen far too much of everything. Jeffery continued to hold his face together and kept his mouth shut. The two teachers stood as silent sentinels waiting for the Principal's door to open. He had windows enough to see what went on outside his office from his desk, but he decided who entered by inviting people in.

Off the phone, Mr. Edmund said,

You'll have to wait a few minutes. He's in with a student.

The teachers shared a glance and then Mr. Shooter left. Mrs. Rawn stood over the pair without a word just waiting. The wood of the waiting area absorbed the sound of steady breathing. Mr. Edmund straightened his cornflower blue tie.

So what's happened now?

These two hooligans couldn't wait until after school to go after each other.

Hooligan. She had been called worse things. Though Melina hardly thought it fair she was lumped in with him. She had been minding her own business at her own table when he came up. Not as if she went looking for him.

Is he injured?

Yes.

Then don't you think you should take him to the nurse?

I will, just as soon as Murphey decides whether or not he's staying in the building. We'll need to call his parents and they can pick him up from the nurse's office. Mrs. Rawn's logic made sense, despite the fact that Jeffrey moaned every so often in pain. The clotted damage on his face looked as if he had gathered the plague from some foreign country. Melina crossed her arms over her chest and waited. Murphey would be less than happy. He had told her, a week ago, to stay out of trouble. The end of the year was coming. All she had to do was make it to the end of the year and she would be home free.

Except here she was sitting outside of Murphey's office again a week after he told her to behave for the rest of the year. Just what she needed. Looking up, she counted the obvious gray in Mrs. Rawn's hair. Though she was hardly out of her thirties, the woman had enough gray hair to pass for her fifties. The rest of it stood out as a rich brunette, but the gray couldn't be more obvious. Melina waited another minute, keeping her eyes focused somewhere between the top of Rawn's head and the ceiling, before saying,

I really didn't do anything.

The way Rawn's color rose, Melina must have said something embarrassing. Yet the woman said nothing.

Jeffery, still awake but quiet, didn't raise a voice of protest.

Murphey's door opened and Dustin McCoy came out holding 'Podcasting and You' to his chest. He scratched his head then resettled his blue-black hair. Melina imagined how silky those strands would feel between her fingers and the general closed eyed contented look that would cross his face. She had seen him happy a few times, but she wanted complete relaxed contentment between the two of them. It would be perfect.

Principal Murphey, he said. I didn't mean to keep you so long. Looks like you have visitors.

Don't worry about it, Dustin. You go to class, Principal Murphey stepped into the doorway and took it up with his stocky frame. Older than Mrs. Rawn, he kept his gray hair buzzed short to make his growing bald spot less obvious. Seeing those waiting outside his office, he shook his head.

Mrs. Rawn, I'll take it from here. You two, in my office. He headed back to his desk with every expectation he would be obeyed. It was rare when he wasn't.

Melina went in first with Jeffery not far behind and sat down in the chair furthest from the door. The plaques on Principal Murphey's walls spoke highly of his abilities as a teacher and as a principal with one of them even noting he had once been teacher of the year some years previous. Now however, he looked at the two with hard brown eyes.

Who wants to tell me what happened? he asked.

Jeffery opened his mouth, looked over at Melina, then shut it without saying anything. Murphey watched him and then turned to Melina as well.

So what happened?

He came up to my table and started a fight. I won, Melina said. Her stance had gotten only more defensive for being in Murphey's presence despite that fact she had done nothing overtly wrong except maybe not stopping the fight when there was every chance someone would get hurt.

Murphey let out a sigh.

Is that what happened?

I, Jeffery said. I just wanted to find out if the rumors were true.

I'm not going to ask which rumors because I'm fairly certain I know which ones you're referring to, Murphey said. Mr. Davis, you do realize you will be suspended for fighting. I don't allow that kind of nonsense here at Sun City, regardless of your reasoning. Melina, did you do that to his face?

Yes.

You realize you can be expelled for physically damaging another student?

Expel me. I didn't do anything wrong, but it won't be that hard to believe.

Rubbing his eyes, Murphey turned to the phone on his desk. He dialed the front office and asked,

Mr. Edmund, would you come in here and escort a student to the nurse? He'll be going home from there.

Yes, sir.

Melina sat back in her chair and looked at the gray squares making up the ceiling. The slightly uneven edges told her someone had been moving them around, though she couldn't tell how recently. Mr. Edmund opened the door and poked his head in.

Jeffery, go with Mr. Edmund to the nurse so she can look at your face. I doubt anything is too badly damaged, but better safe than sorry. Melina--

He called her name and she didn't respond, tracing circles inside of the squares with her eyes.

Melina.

What?

Don't give me that attitude, he said. The door to the outer office was shut leaving them alone. You know better than to indulge in these antics.

All I did was defend myself.

You can defend yourself without hurting anyone. I've seen you do it. What did he do that made him special?

Nothing. Bad timing. Maybe I'm PMSing.

You know I have to call Arabella and send you home, now, don't you?

She'll be hyper-pleased to hear from you.

I'm certain, he said, picking up the phone. When she gets here, you can go around to your teachers and collect your homework before you leave. I refuse to let your temper be the reason your education suffers.

Thanks, Melina said, slumping down in the chair. Homework. On a Friday. That meant she probably wasn't going to be expected back on Monday either. Great. Closing her eyes, she sniffed the air. Murphey's office always smelled of furniture polish, paper, and busted pens and was about as warm as an unused kitchen. She listened as Murphey talked to her mother, Arabella, and waited for him to hand her the phone. When he did, she brought it to her ear.

I know, I messed up.

You did. Again. I'm sorry to hear about it. I'll be there to pick you up in a half-hour.

I need to pick up my books and my homework.

Well, then you should do that before I get there, or do you need an escort to keep you out of more trouble?

I don't think I need someone shadowing me to keep me from getting into another random fight. This one picked me. Not the other way around.

Whether they pick you or not, you should know by now to keep your hands to yourself. Violence is easy for you. It's harder for them.

Sorry.

We'll talk about it, once again, when I've got you in the car; however, I want you to be ready to go when I get there, so take Murphey with you and get your stuff. I don't intend to be in that school for very long at all.

Yes, ma'am.

I'll see you soon. Good-bye.

Bye.

Hanging