Return of the Demi-Gods Read online

  Contents

  Hexe Volume 3

  Legal

  Dedication

  Forward

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Author Notes - Rex

  Social Links

  Magic: When Ruthless Ambition is not Enough

  H E X E

  WITCHES, WARRIORS, MAGIC & MURDER

  By Rex Baron

  V O L U M E T H R E E

  RETURN OF THE DEMI-GODS

  Hexe (this series of books) is a work of fiction.

  While some of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are based on real people and events, everything that happens to them are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  This book Copyright © 2019 Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron

  Cover Design by Jeff Brown

  Cover copyright © ProsperityQM LLC

  ProsperityQM LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  ProsperityQM LLC

  1500 South Lamar Blvd, 1050

  Austin, TX 78704

  First US edition, 2019

  Version 1.01.01

  Hexe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2019 by Isobella Crowley, Rex Baron

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to the Power and Magic that lies deep within each of us.

  — Rex

  RETURN OF THE DEMI-GODS

  HEXE VOLUME 3

  JIT Beta Readers

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Kelly McCormick

  Raine Ward

  Kimberley Beaulieu

  Nora McGuirk

  Suellen Wiseman

  Mary Morris

  Sara Keyes

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  Sarah Kante

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  Thank you for reading HEXE.I hope that you will find it an enjoyable and exciting experience. But it is important for the reader to be aware that although there are any number of historical personages characterized throughout, the events described surrounding them and their interactions with the fictional characters are largely imagined and presented as such, strictly for the sake of storytelling.

  There is no intention on the part of the author or publisher to demean or malign the reputation or character of any historical person represented and any reference to their sexual orientation or personal actions is simply hearsay, based on information collected from outside sources.

  A great deal of research has gone into the creation of this series, and every effort has been made to ensure historical accuracy—even to the descriptions of the recipes for spell casting, which have been researched from credible, centuries-old sources and included (in part) to enhance the story’s authenticity. This being said, HEXE is not intended as a primer on witchcraft and much of what is described that deals with Wicca and Witchcraft is left for the reader to further investigate for their own enjoyment.

  It might also be noted that because much of the storyline is set before the new millennium, when the notion of political correctness was not in place culturally, some of the language and description of characters might be judged as harsh or even inappropriate by today’s standards. But in the times when the events of the story are set, this was assuredly not the case. The manners and language of the 1920s differs greatly from that of the 1930s, and certainly from the parts of the story set in the 1980s or present times. In order to give the correct “feeling” to those times, I have made a strong effort to depict situations and people as they would have been seen and described then, with all the flavour and gusto of those unique and exciting times.

  I do hope you enjoy your journey into the fascinating world of HEXE, “the chosen”, and look forward to continuing the saga until its fateful and exciting conclusion.

  So Mote It Be REX BARON

  Fountain Hills, AZ, September 2019

  CHAPTER ONE

  1926 Bayreuth, Bavaria

  “You haven't gone queer on me now, have you?” Claxton asked with an irritating smirk. “You've been leering at every woman passing this café for nearly an hour.”

  Helen pretended to ignore him, then resigned herself to his insinuating expression.

  “I'm not leering, only seeing what they consider attractive in this place. After all, we're on the other side of the world. I can't assume that what captivates in California or New York will do the same here in Bavaria.”

  “A disturbingly superficial perception of the world, but one with some logic in it,” Claxton nodded, as he polished the silver handle of his walking stick with a fawn-colored glove. “However, I'm sure anyone with eyes to see you and ears to hear you can’t be anything but captivated by you.”

  Helen sighed with boredom. She picked a crust of bread from her salad plate and placed it on the edge of the starched white tablecloth for one of the attentive little finches to carry away.

  “Stop doing that,” Claxton snapped, annoyed that she had no response for his compliment. “They're nothing but flying rats. It's disgusting of you to encourage them.”

  Claxton gave her what he thought to be his “now we'll have the end of it” look and stared off peevishly at the stylish young people who paraded past the outdoor bistro, annoyed that most of them must be having a more amusing afternoon than he.

  Helen pushed the stiff veil of her hat away from her face so that she might see his angry face. Her red mouth turned up in a faint smile, not at the eager little flying supplicants, picking delicately at the morsel in her fingers, but at the unsettling effect her harmless action had on her companion.

  Keeping one eye on him, she whispered to the bird as if speaking to a baby. “There now, don't be so greedy.”

  “They're filthy, nothing but scavengers. I hate birds,” Claxton sputtered. He tolerated their presence for another second, then wiped the table clean of them with the length of his silver-headed cane.

  Helen threw back her head and roared.

  “I'm glad you're enjoying yourself at my expense,” the little man snapped, drawing his neck into his shoulders and crossing his arms instinctively.

  “I am,” Helen smiled. “You are the one who is always saying that we can only truly be ourselves with each other. We have to be charming and elegant for other people, sometimes maybe even a little deceitful, but when we are together, apart from the rest, I can be myself. Perhaps you're forgetting, dear Claxy, that I'm not a very nice girl.”

  She leaned across the table and planted a passionless kiss on his nose.

  “In fact... I'd say, by most people's account, I'm a very ba
d girl.”

  Claxton regained his air of control, as unfounded as it was, and tried to laugh with her. It was one of a thousand such taunts he had endured in the last three years, more public but less brutal than most. He was in love with Helen and had long since learned the price of her capricious affection. He had tasted of the bitter cup, a glib expression he had always used to describe those who had descended into the state of torment that comes with love, a whirlpool of passionate obsession, the murky waters that left lovers bloated and scarred with all the life drained from them, like a corpse he had once seen being pulled in from a river with a sharp hook.

  Here he was, struggling to stay above the dark waters of his own despair, and yet, he was not immune to their infections. It was as if the sickness was carried in the water supply, tainting it like typhoid. He had merely opened the tap and drank, then turned to see Helen for the first time, not as his creation or a thing to be toyed with, but as an indispensable and inescapable part of himself.

  “Oh, you're quite the little cesspool of wickedness aren't you… or so you'd like to think,” he said, hoping to strike a nerve.

  Helen appraised him from across the table, his legs and arms crossed unconsciously against his body for protection. She found neither him, nor his words threatening. She had other, more important things to think about than making the little man she despised uncomfortable.

  “I should certainly need to be more than wickedly charming if we are to win over the Prince and that lot of fossilized flora and fauna they call the aristocracy,” she said.

  Claxton smiled at her shallowness.

  “So, we're going to a party given by Prince Henry. If I remember correctly, you do some of your best work at parties,” he said with a smirk.

  It had been a long time since the party at Jesse Lasky's, where Helen first began to draw in the nets around Lucy and Paulo Cordoba. Claxton had been amused by her ambition and single-mindedness then. He fancied her his willing pupil, a fellow dabbler in the Dark Arts. But that had all changed with the news of Lucy's death at sea. Helen was no longer a mere dabbler, but a murderess, Shiva, the dark goddess of retribution, a willing consort to the dark powers and a prize to be aspired to, even by him.

  But now, the fabled Prince, of whom Lucy had spoken in her tenuous moments of intimacy, had sent for Helen and arranged a ball in honor of her opening in Tristan and Isolde at Bayreuth. She had been a great success at the New York’s Metropolitan, in spite of the fact that the critics had constantly compared her, in an unfavorable way, to Lucy. Nearly three years had passed before Helen finally received the telegram, summoning her to star in a series of revivals to be sponsored by the Prince of Prussia and performed in Germany.

  When they arrived, Helen was surprised that the country was still very much shattered by the effects of the Great War. In America, business was booming, especially in the movies, and the war had created a new kind of extravagant prosperity. Everyone had a new motorcar, paid for on credit, and each of the years that had passed since the Armistice was marked by new fashions in dress and lavish up-to-date styles. But in Germany, Helen had seen few new automobiles and women on the street wore threadbare coats and dresses of varying lengths, each one a product of some past fashion trend, each one obviously re-cut and altered to try and keep in step with what one saw in the American magazines.

  What had unexpectedly worked to Helen and Claxton’s advantage was that the rate of exchange of currency from the Reichmark to the American Dollar fluctuated drastically, and a single dollar was worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Marks, depending on which of the political parties, vying for preeminence, was the most popular. As a result, Helen was able to engage a young woman as a personal maid and paid her only a few dollars a week. Claxton had contemplated hiring a driver as a chauffeur and paying next to nothing, but, for the time being, he preferred to wander about on foot, perusing the shops and peering into any hidden corner of the city that held the promise of being exciting and sordid.

  With the money they had brought with them from Helen’s success in New York, and the exchange rate wildly favoring the dollar, Helen determined that they could pull off a lifestyle that would make them appear to be already at the top of the social pyramid.

  Helen had never been to Germany before, or any of Europe, for that matter. She had only read of the glittering nightspots of Hamburg and Berlin, where famous Americans like Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald reveled with expatriate artists and performers. That was the world she wanted to experience, the dazzling world of forbidden pleasures beneath the grimy poverty of a country barely making ends meet.

  But, for now, she had to content herself with what Bayreuth had to offer… the opera and the patronage of a prince. It was the moment Helen had been waiting for. She knew that in New York she could never be more than a poor imitation of Lucy. She had managed to keep the box office open with what the newspapers referred to as 'a small voice, handsomely compensated by a deliciously vulgar appeal.' This engagement in Germany would give her the opportunity to win the international acclaim to which she aspired. With the help of the Prince and those like him, she could become the most celebrated artist in the world.

  Claxton closed his eyes and tried to think. The Prince, as a man, was no rival for him. That was not his fear. When they had been presented informally in his small study, several days after their arrival in the country, the aging man sat hunched forward, wearing a smile as thin as the linen of his blue suit. In spite of his air of distinction and grace, Claxton had been pleased to find him unwell and old past caring.

  The courtly old man had taken Helen's hands in his and asked her about her friend Lucy. He was pleased that she had written to him, years before, consoling him on the death of his protégé, and welcomed stories of the little confidences the two women had supposedly shared as dearest friends in the last months before the tragedy. The fact that she was posing as Lucy's closest companion and confidant was the sole reason for the old man's intimacy. It was clear that he had hoped, in some way, to find in this dark girl some small measure of his lost, golden darling.

  It was not the man but the image, the idea of the Hohenzollern Prince of Prussia that threatened Claxton's position as supreme protector and sometimes lover of Helen. He had seen how her face glowed at the attentions of the older man, softening her exotic features to those of a fresh-faced girl. She had dressed for the meeting in his study in a color that was foreign to the palette of her usual wardrobe… Lucy’s favorite, pale blue, because she said it radiated a quality of higher wisdom and beauty, a chastity that she had, before now, only concerned herself with presenting on stage.

  Claxton opened his eyes. His attention was drawn by a small finch lying helpless on the pavement next to the table, vibrating its broken wing against the concrete. He felt sorry that it had paid the price of Helen's inattention and had suffered his wrath.

  “Let us only hope that you get on a bit better with the old Prince when next we meet,” he said. “You were rather unsuccessful on your first attempt, if you don't mind my saying so.”

  Helen narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean? He and I got on beautifully.”

  “Well, you aren't Lucy, and Lucy is what he wanted I'm afraid.”

  Claxton again took up a posture of superiority and sipped the last of his tea, while Helen remained silent, turning over in her mind the possibility of having fallen short of her mark.

  “Of course,” Claxton said brightening, “with what I know magically, and what you and I are capable of together, his sentimental penchant for our dearest departed friend should not pose too great an obstacle for us now, should it? We'll charm the doddering old dear into eating out of your hand like one of your loathsome birds.”

  Once again, Claxton saw the expression of curiosity and wonder on Helen's face, that spark of ambition that he recognized as having bought him a little more time.

  He leaned across the table and explained about a spell, an ancient Roman one that he had bee
n told dated from the time of Pliny. She took his arm as they walked and listened attentively as he described it to her.

  “It’s an enchantment philter, designed to be instantaneous,” he explained. “Whoever one touches while wearing the charm will be irrevocably smitten with helpless passion.”

  Helen laughed.

  “I hope it’s not too much for the old boy. He may insist on dancing himself into a brain seizure, and then where would we be?”

  As they walked along the narrow cobblestone streets, flanked on one side by the high stone wall of the Hofgarten, they passed a pompous little Victorian house, handsomely appointed with a somewhat oversize bronze bust nestled in a plot of grass just outside the front door.

  “That's the Haus Wahnfried, the house of Richard Wagner, the composer,” Claxton informed her, singling out the house with the end of his walking stick. “The great Opera here in Bayreuth was built by him with the money from the State and poor mad King Ludwig, of course. That's Ludwig there in bronze. Like Salome, Wagner asked for a head on a plate and got it. Quite an esotericist too, I'm told. The house is being used now by a student of Dietrich Eckart, the recently deceased poet, mystic and all around ne'er-do-well. It's rumored around that the locals commune with Wagner, the deceased local divinity, who apparently appears on the unmarked slab in the garden that covers his tomb. Isn't that wonderfully diabolical? You see, my dear, I do my homework,” Claxton said with a wink.

  “You do amaze me,” Helen smiled. “In every little town we've been, and sometimes even within a hotel, you seem to spot every mystic, sorcerer and bonafide witch in attendance, no matter if it’s a Grand Duchess or the chambermaid.”

  “I do have my instincts,” Claxton sniffed. “A great aunt of mine used to say that the only true people with instincts, capable of finding out their own kind, are homosexuals, alcoholics, and witches. She proved her point by marrying a string of hopeless drunks then crawled into a bottle herself sometime after middle age hit her like a run-away lorry.”