THE COVEN HAS RETURNED.
Nightmares are awakening Kelly Stewart every night. She is being summoned back to the coven. Not as little Kia Stewart the kidnap victim; but as a witch, embracing her destiny as Kelta, Warrior Queen of the Coven.
15yr old Rebequah Robertson knows her best as Kelly Stewart.
After a cemetery séance gone wrong, Beq discovers she has invited a demon into her house! As crazy things begin to happen all around her, and Kelly disappears for the second time in a decade, Beq starts asking questions.
What happened to Kelly 9 years ago?
Was she really kidnapped?
Were Beq's parents involved in her rescue?
Why would she return to her kidnappers?
Beq realizes she is probably Kelly Stewart’s only friend and is stubbornly determined to find her, come hell or high water!
Meanwhile, Jesse Davies is developing feelings for Beq after years of shallow friendship and mutual taunting. He may not care much for Kelly, but he vows to protect Rebequah with his life, whether his feelings are reciprocated or rejected.
Set in the South Australian bush, in 2003, this Christian romantic suspense thriller will have you on the edge of your seat as it bridges the gap between the resurgence of Coven-999 in 1994 and its final destiny in 2012.
Download your copy today to find out the fates of Kelly Stewart and Rebequah Robertson.
Exceptional character development. You will want to know what happens to each and every character in this story, even if you haven't met them in book #1. They all have their own lives, personalities and adventures in this book. It is the most light-hearted of my 3-part series.
I think people will enjoy watching Rebequah grow up, trying to navigate life as a teenager, her feelings for boys, her relationships within her family and her peer groups. She is one spicy, independent character, who wants to honor God, while also being true to herself.
6
Cemetery Séance
Walking into the cemetery seemed eerily familiar to Kelly even after nine years. Her life had changed forever in this place. And yet, she did not feel afraid or upset. Strangely enough, she felt as though she had come home; to the place where it all began. There was a strong sense of destiny here.
She walked down the gravel road that divided the cemetery in two, with headstones to her left and right, until she reached the back fence that separated the cemetery from the bush. She lit a cigarette and puffed on it, staring into the rows of trees; remembering.
It was out in that bush that she’d learned the truth about her mother. The truth that Loraine was only her aunt, and that her biological mother had only brought her into this world for one reason: to sacrifice her to Beelzebub.
She had been unloved and unwanted from the time she was conceived.
The witches who had held her captive, followed the initiation process, telling her she must choose her destiny. She could either kill Aunt Loraine—Livy, as they called her—or she would be sacrificed to the gods.
She remembered the spirits filling her with strength and power to enable her to kill the only mother she’d ever known. And she had tried—or at least, she thought she had. But something had gone wrong. She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, just that the spirits, both angelic and demonic, were involved. Next, she woke up in a hospital bed, free of the coven, under the custody of the woman she’d attempted to murder.
Nine years later, peering into the same bush that had changed her life forever, she felt as though she was standing at a crossroads. For nine years she had dreamed of the witches that kidnapped her. She had peered into the eyes of the spirits that followed her around at home every day. She had learned to suppress normal human emotions, and one feeling had taken over: the conviction that someday they would come back for her.
There was no escaping the truth. Little Kia Stewart was dead, and she knew who she must become: Kelta Warrior Queen. All that remained was for her to follow through.
Tonight’s meeting was more for her benefit than for Beq and her silly school buddies. They were simply pawns in an experiment. It would confirm the inevitable:
Kelta had re-emerged.
~
Rebequah Robertson, Brandon Scott and Steven Wood gathered at Nicola Phelps’ house at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday evening, ready to trek to Echunga cemetery.
Beq had told her parents they’d organized a sleepover on a school night because they had a science project to get done as soon as possible. They would hang out with the boys at Nikki’s place and then study. It was partially true: the boys were coming to Nikki’s and they did have a science project. But it wasn’t due until Monday and they weren’t likely to get any work done on it that night.
Linda Bartlett was told by her daughter Nicola that the four of them were going out for pizza and then the boys would be going home while Nikki and Beq studied. They planned to be home by 9:30 p.m.
Brandon and Steve told their parents the same pizza story, adding in that Steve would sleep at Brandon’s that night. Beq doubted the boys’ parents were half as concerned as her overprotective parents about what they were doing.
All four of them wore jeans and thick jackets to brave the chilly autumn air of the Adelaide Hills. The two girls wore gloves and scarves as well: Rebequah’s were pink and purple; Nikki’s were green. Nikki also carried her mother’s black, longneck torch to guide the group’s footsteps. Her hand was shaking with nerves as they walked down the long dirt driveway of the farming acreage Linda had inherited, so Steve snatched the torch from her and courageously offered to lead the way.
Nikki had tried desperately to talk them all out of going. She had no desire to encounter the same kind of hair-raising fear she had experienced once before. But, as usual, Beq had to have her way. She used a few tormenting words like ‘chicken’ and ‘gutless’ and Nikki predictably caved in.
With Steve in front, Beq and Brandon walked behind him hand-in-hand, trying to convince Nikki that it wouldn’t be like last time. It did nothing to reassure Nikki: she needed a distraction. “So, tell me about Jess.”
“Jess who?” Beq retorted, knowing her friend probably meant Jesse, but for some reason, she hoped not.
“You know—the guy who was at your party on Saturday?”
“Oh, Jesse Davies? What do you want to know about him?”
“Is he single?” was the first question that came to Nikki’s mind.
“Umm, I’m not actually sure. I don’t talk to him that often,” Beq replied. It was a half-truth. She doubted Jesse had a girlfriend because she would have heard about it or seen him with her, but she couldn’t be sure. Why she was trying to hide this from her friend, was another matter altogether. She didn’t really like the idea of Jesse having a girlfriend. It would be strange to lose his friendship and playful banter if he had someone else to occupy his attention. Maybe his teasing wasn’t so bad after all.
“He’s really not your type,” Beq continued. “I mean he’s always tormenting people. He says some of the stupidest things any boy could ever say, and he’s a goody-two-shoes like his sister. Don’t you want someone a bit more daring? A bit more masculine?”
“Masculine!” Nikki exclaimed. “He looked pretty masculine to me. He’s tall, he’s got broad shoulders. Looks like he works out or plays football or something.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” It was true, Beq hadn’t really noticed. She had spent so much time trying to avoid being around Jesse, that she hadn’t paid attention to what he looked like. She’d noted at her party that he was taller than Brandon, but she couldn’t remember what color his eyes were.
They’re not as dark as Brandon’s. Are they blue, or are they an ocean blue-green like Beth’s? Beq recalled the older girl’s eyes because she was jealous of their soothing color; her own eyes were just a dull brown.
Brandon suggested that Nikki should reconsider a certain boy in their class and they discussed the most recent school gossip for the rest of the trek. It took the four of them about half an hour to walk down Nikki’s long driveway, followed by the two dirt roads that led to Echunga cemetery.
Then, the rusty metal gate on wooden hinges appeared before them and Steve shone the torch on the sign that read:
DISTRICT COUNCIL OF MOUNT BARKER
ECHUNGA
CEMETERY
Beq could see lights flickering somewhere on the property. “Shine the torch over there,” she pointed. “I think Kelly’s here.”
Steve jerked the torch ahead and to his left where they could make out the shape of Kelly’s body sitting on the ground, with a circle of five candles around her.
“Turn that thing off!” Kelly yelled back at them.
“I’m going to be sick,” Nikki whispered to Beq, shivering from head to toe.
“No, you’re not,” Beq said, clutching at her friend’s arm. “It’s just a bit of fun!”
Beq snatched the torch from Steve’s hand and pointed it to the ground, so that they could see just enough to climb over the gate which was about waist-height. They could easily put their feet in the wire diamond-shaped holes to boost themselves over.
Once the four of them were past the gate, Beq turned the torch off and headed down the cemetery road toward the dim candlelight at the back. Kelly was there waiting, behind all the gravestones, just in front of the barbed wire fence which was the only thing that separated them from a bush full of trees that rustled suspiciously in the cool evening air.
Kelly sat silently with her eyes closed behind one of the candles. Beq didn’t dare break Kelly’s reverie, she simply sat behind one of the other candles and her friends did likewise, forming a pentagram.
“Join hands,” Kelly said softly.
Beq could see Nikki’s wide, anxious eyes across from her. She sat between Brandon and Steve, while Beq sat between Kelly and Brandon: girl, boy, girl, boy, girl.
“Do you want to know what happened to me, here in this cemetery nine years ago?” Kelly asked, her eyes still shut.
Beq hardly knew whether or not to speak, although she did want to know the answer, so she squeezed Kelly’s hand.
Kelly would have answered anyway. Whether they wanted to know was incidental to her; she wanted to tell her story and scare the wits out of them. They might not believe her initially, but she predicted they would believe her by the end of this little adventure.
“When I was nine years old, I was kidnapped from my school by a woman who could control my physical body with her telepathic mind. She convinced the teachers that she was my Aunt and baffled them so much that they couldn’t even remember what she looked like afterwards. In actual fact, she was a witch.”
Kelly tightened her grip on Rebequah and Steve’s hands. She wanted no one to break the pentagram, and she knew that with the slight squeeze of her hand, she, like Nicia before her, had a forceful energy within her that would cause their grip throughout the pentagram to become unbreakable.
“Ouch,” Nikki winced softly, as she felt Steve and Brandon’s hands tighten around her wrists. They all glanced at their hands wondering what was happening to them. It felt as though there was a magnetic force flowing between them with such spiritual energy that they couldn’t pull apart.
“The witch drove me straight here to Echunga cemetery and threw me into a grave, on top of a rotting corpse.”
“That’s awful!” Beq exclaimed. Could it be true? Her mother had said something about witchcraft when she’d once asked what had happened to Kelly, but of course Tori had avoided details, saying something about young ears not needing to hear such things! Beq resented that. Her mother was always treating her like a little girl instead of a young woman. She never seemed to trust Beq with the truth.
“Now I’m really gonna be sick,” Nikki muttered to herself. She felt nauseated as her afternoon tea of two-minute noodles churned around inside her stomach, and her body swayed, though she was sitting. If it were daylight, they would have seen a green tint to her face.
“Get serious,” Brandon remarked.
“I’m deadly serious.” Something in Kelly’s deep voice caused the group to fall silent. “I was left here overnight, in the freezing cold—right around this time of year—with that stinking, rotten corpse all over me. The smell has never left me.”
Beq shuddered involuntarily. Somehow, she knew that was only the beginning of the trauma Kelly had suffered, and not the worst of it. But she couldn’t imagine how a girl so young could have survived that night. What if that had happened to me?
“So, who do you want me to summon from the dead?” Kelly asked almost flippantly.
“Maybe you should resurrect the corpse you slept with!” Brandon joked sarcastically.
“His name was Harold Thompson,” Kelly lied. She didn’t have a clue whose corpse it was, and it didn’t make any difference. She didn’t actually know how to perform a séance or summon a ghost. What she did know was that there were spirits all around her that would answer her call and do whatever she bid them do. Even though she had never really asked them to do anything for her in the past, she often fantasized about this authority that she knew she possessed deep down inside.
Kelly started chanting under her breath. She was calling the names of the demons she remembered from her childhood. She spoke softly enough that the group would not understand a word she said, but loud enough for them to realize that this so-called séance had begun.
She was calling the spirits to gather and give this group one heck of a scare. It was just a test in her mind. A test to confirm to herself for once-and-for-all, that she was in fact a witch.
She had avoided the truth for so long; it was about time she faced it. She was born into a family of witches and her destiny—to become one of them, or die for them, or both—was imprinted on her soul.
Brandon glanced at his girlfriend’s eyes in the candlelight. She looked apprehensive. He could tell she believed the story Kelly had told, and it made him wonder. Beq was not so gullible, although she did believe in God. She must believe in a lot of spiritual things. So, what was he going to believe?
Until now, he’d never cared much about whether gods or ghosts were real. Yet there was something in the air that made him very uncomfortable tonight. And it wasn’t just the fact that he was in a cemetery. It was more than that.
Nikki’s trembling became more apparent. Her shaking hands sent shock waves around the pentagram and her teeth chattered loudly. She could feel a cloud of evil all around her, thicker than she’d ever felt before. Even the séance she’d participated in a couple of years before seemed like child’s play compared to this! Whatever Kelly was chanting about, it was no joke, and if she could have loosened the hands that restrained her, she would have run for her life! But her own hands were like a vice, and that scared her most of all.
Steve, too, was feeling anxious. This wasn’t right. This séance seemed far too real! He could almost feel the corpses in the ground rolling around beneath them.
Sure enough, the ground started to shake and rumble. Nikki and Beq both began to scream.
Brandon and Steve used all of their strength to try and break the grip of the pentagram, but when they couldn’t, their screams mingled with the girls’.
Kelly’s voice became louder. “Arise Harold Thompson. Show your eyes to these morons so that they will know once and for all that you really are a ghost.” The group was obviously terrified and this seemed the most appropriate thing to say, as she ushered in the climax of the evening before she released them.
Suddenly, in the center of the pentagram a pair of blood-red eyes blinked open and swiveled around so that every person in the group could see them.
With that, Kelly relaxed her grip. The four screaming onlookers felt the magnetic pull relent instantly and realized they were free. They jumped up and sprinted hysterically toward the cemetery gate.
The boys helped the girls over the gate, and the four of them kept running pell-mell down the dirt road. No one had the presence of mind to pick up the torch, and it was difficult to see with only the moon and starlight above them, so they were forced to slow to a rushing walk.
“What the hell was that?” Steve exclaimed when they were completely out of earshot of anyone or anything in the cemetery.
Both of the girls were in tears. Beq tried to comfort Nikki by putting an arm around her as they walked. No sooner did she touch her friend’s back than Nikki bent down and threw up.
“Hell may actually be the word for it,” Beq interjected. “That was supernatural. Those eyes… they were demonic or something.” Beq hesitated, while she made up her mind. “I think we should pray.”
“What for?” Brandon asked. “It wasn’t real Beq! It was some sort of trick. Kelly’s a freak!”
“If Kelly’s a freak and that was a hoax, then why were you screaming? Why were our hands glued together like they had magnets in them? How did she make the ground shake like we were in some kind of earthquake?”
“I don’t know!” he replied with frustration. “But I’m not stopping to pray to God, I just want to get the hell out of here.”
Nikki stood up straight and started walking toward home again. The others fell quiet and followed quickly; the panic subsiding. Beq felt awful. It was strange that Brandon wasn’t trying to comfort her. He seemed too shaken up to even consider how she felt.
I shouldn’t have arranged this. If I’d known this was going to happen, I certainly never would have subjected Nikki to it—she’ll probably never get over it.
But Beq had to admit, now that she’d calmed down a bit, she was intrigued all the more. What happened out there? Were those eyes demonic? They reminded her of the ghost she’d seen when she was little. It was time she found out more about ghosts and demons. And she wanted to know what had happened to Kelly Stewart all those years ago. Why wasn’t she running scared like the rest of them? I want the truth!
When the four classmates arrived back at Nikki’s house, the boys called Brandon’s dad to pick them up and stood in the driveway together waiting for him to arrive. No one had anything to say.
Beq guessed that the boys were probably embarrassed by their reactions to the séance. But if anyone had been there, they would have been just as terrified.
Steve was polite enough to say, “See-ya,” to the girls before leaving, but Brandon didn’t even turn to look at them.
Beq couldn’t understand it. Why was he being such a jerk? He was supposed to be her boyfriend.
“Nikki, I’m so sorry,” Beq turned to her friend.
Nikki had stopped crying, but she was still very shaky. “Beq, I’m worried about you!”
“Me?” she asked.
“I don’t think you should be spending time with Kelly. I think Brandon’s worried to.” Nikki’s voice lowered. “Kelly’s evil.”
“Evil?” Beq responded. She’d never thought of that possibility before. Could Kelly be an evil person, just because she could summon—whatever that thing was in the cemetery?
“That story she made up was disgusting, and the way she made our hands lock and the earth shake—it was like something out of Harry Potter! I could feel the evil all around me, Beq, and I really think you should stay away from her.”
“I’ll think about it,” Beq said. They walked inside and got ready for bed, but the girls struggled to sleep in the old, two-story farmhouse.
Rebequah could hear Nikki tossing and turning in her bed for an hour or two, through her own fitful sleep, and then heard her suddenly call out: “Get away from me!”
She hopped up from her mattress and shook Nikki gently awake. “You’re having a nightmare.”
Nikki gasped and sat up, but quickly lay back down. “I can’t believe you talked me into that,” she sulked angrily, and rolled over so that her back was toward Rebequah.
Beq crawled onto her mattress, praying for sleep to come. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw those evil, blood-red irises staring straight through her.