Witches of Ash and Ruin

by E. Latimer

  “We don’t even know how many cycles we’ve been through,” Calma snapped. “This is why we fail…every cycle up to this, every kill outside Carman…it’s all been pointless.”

  Dubh shook his head. His brothers understood nothing. “None of those were failures. It was all leading up to this.”

  All the other women had been dress rehearsals, preparation for the real event.

  It would be perfect this time. They had the book.

  Now he understood why he’d been so driven to come here. To this country, to this town. The book had been calling him all along; every cycle it had been the one thing they were missing.

  Dubh continued to page through it with shaking fingers. It had taken him longer than usual for the memory to come back, which was unnerving. But as soon as he’d seen it, it had all come flooding back. He’d known what it was. That it belonged to him.

  He hadn’t expected to attack her. Hadn’t even remembered how to shift until he saw her hovering over the book, and then some instinct kicked in.

  Just the thought was enough to send a thrill through him, and he tried to push it away, to force himself to concentrate.

  The list was there, laid out page by page. He flicked through, a fire burning in the pit of his stomach. Yes, he’d been correct both times. And the third he’d suspected, though his memory had grown fainter as the list went on. She was next. The storyteller, the fool.

  Crichinbel.

  He traced a finger over the illustration, a pen-and-ink drawing of a woman with laughing brown eyes. He recognized her. He’d familiarized himself with anyone in town who had even the smallest touch of magic. She was an older woman, a dabbler.

  He’d walked into her shop the first day he’d arrived here, like fate was guiding him.

  The real question now was, what was he supposed to take?

  Tongue and eye. Hand and foot. Blood and bone, ash and soot.

  Dubh felt that force rise inside his chest, prompting him to pass a hand over the page. He hadn’t realized he still had blood on his fingers. When he pulled back, there was a smear of red running across her eyes like a blindfold.

  He smiled. Climbing to his feet, he tucked the book inside his jacket before turning to his brothers. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SAMUEL

  The coffee at the station was completely disgusting, and Sam was on his third cup of the morning.

  Since the family only had one car—a bone of contention he brought up at least weekly—he’d walked over to the station from Morgan’s house, and his father had ordered him to sit in one of the empty offices and plan for next week’s Bible study. When Sam arrived, his father had been on the phone, red-faced and yelling. The second murder seemed to have sent him over the edge completely.

  Absently Sam ripped into another sugar packet and emptied it into his mug, listening to the dull thud of booted feet move past his door as he scrolled through the forum.

  A few people had replied to his query.

  UnknownPotato: They saw that ages ago. Nothing but uneven paint on the wall.

  AlexaPanda: Maybe it’s blood.

  CrimeBuff69: I dug into this a bit and found…a lot. There’s tons of wacko theories.

  There was a link below, which led Sam to a website that had blown up the grainy footage and traced shaky lines over the red on the wall, creating a circle with a vague, squiggly blob in the center, and several white dots around the outside. Underneath was a long, rambling post about how the Butcher was supernatural, and he trapped his victims with black magic. Sam blew out a breath, shaking his head.

  So…aside from insane theories and possibly imagined ghostly markings, he had a whole lot of nothing. The lack of clues should have frustrated him, discouraged him, even. Instead it just seemed to goad him onward, to fan the constant, low burn of his curiosity into full flame.

  He needed to uncover what was really going on. Something in his soul demanded answers.

  Sam sat up straight a second later when he heard his father’s voice outside the door.

  “Bertie, make sure desk three is clear. I can’t stop NBCI coming, but they certainly won’t be setting up shop wherever they please.”

  Sam listened intently. If they were calling in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, then maybe his father was finally taking this case seriously.

  There was a high-pitched electronic beep from the front door, followed by Bertie’s cheerful greeting. A moment later the office door creaked open, and Samuel’s breath caught. Dayna stood in the doorway, hands in the pockets of her red sweater.

  “Hey. What are you doing here?” He added hastily, “I mean, not that I mind.”

  “Your mother told me you were here,” she said. “You mentioned earlier that you had some new info, so I thought I’d drop by.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Looks like a lot of activity going on back there.”

  As she stepped closer it seemed there was something different about her. Maybe the way her skin seemed to glow, though that might have been a flush from the wind. And…did she seem taller? She was holding herself differently.

  She hadn’t answered his text from last night, and he was still thinking about who she might have been with; Carman was too small for a wide dating pool. Whoever it was, they were a traitor as far as he was concerned. Everyone knew he still liked Dayna, so who the hell was this guy to move in on her?

  He pulled himself together a second later and dragged the chair out from beside him. Her timing couldn’t have been better; he hadn’t really had anything new when he had texted her, but maybe this was something new. “I’m eavesdropping. I’m pretty sure NBCI are on their way.”

  Dayna hurried across the room and settled in at the desk, shoving her bag onto the table. “Shit, really? Did your dad say that?”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat, determined to ask about her date last night. “Hey, so, when you texted—”

  The beeper above the door went off again, and they both fell silent. Sam rose from the desk as quietly as possible and shoved the door open an inch. A second later he felt Dayna’s presence at his elbow. She smelled like mangoes.

  Through the open door he could see two men talking to Bertie at the front desk. After a moment his father joined them. To his frustration the men spoke in low voices, too low to overhear anything.

  The strange men wore black suits and ties and seemed utterly serious. They couldn’t have looked more like Men in Black if they’d tried.

  He needed to know what they were saying, and he only had a minute at most before they shut themselves in his father’s office. He turned to Dayna. “Quick, let me borrow your phone.”

  Dayna blinked at him, but she reached into her pocket and unlocked it. Sam pulled up FaceTime, pleased to see his contact was still at the top. He hit the button and waited for his phone to ring.

  “What are you doing?” Dayna whispered. He hit the answer button and put Dayna’s phone on mute.

  “Stay here and tell me if my dad comes.”

  Surprisingly she didn’t protest as he slipped out the door and down the hallway. The offices were mostly full, and a few officers even glanced up from their desks as he passed, but none of them stopped him. It wasn’t a big deal for him to visit his father’s office. He did it all the time to get extra paper, or to pillage the jar of candy his father kept in the drawer.

  Still, his heart was beating hard by the time he snuck into the office. He glanced around quickly and set his phone facedown on the middle shelf in the bookcase behind the desk.

  While he was there, he grabbed a handful of wrapped spearmints for Dayna—she’d always had a sweet tooth for them—and turned for the door. He stopped short, heart jumping. His father was in the doorway, flanked by the two men in suits, who were currently regarding him as if Sam himself might be the Butcher.

  “Gentlemen, this is my son. Sam, this is Sean Smith and Dan Wesson, agents from NBCI.” The sergeant’s expression was unreadable, which
usually happened when he was angry. Sam held up the handful of candy and gave his dad a wide grin. “Sorry, Dad, just raiding the candy jar.”

  He slid past one of the agents in the doorway, stomach churning. The man barely moved, and he gave Sam a long, piercing look.

  A minute later, back in the empty office with Dayna, he let out a breath of relief. She was already leaning over the phone, her hair obscuring her face. The voices were slightly muffled, but they could make them out clearly enough.

  “…what you know so far,” one of the men was saying.

  “Information from previous cases.” His father’s voice was low, and Sam could hear the undercurrents of anger simmering there. “Look, I only called you because it’s procedure, but…a serial killer in Carman…the idea is ridiculous.”

  There was an audible pause, and Sam winced. His father clearly wasn’t bothering with politeness.

  When the agent spoke again, his voice was quiet, but there was a definite edge to it. “You’ve had two murders so far. Not only should you be treating this like the Butcher may be back and already lining up his next four victims, you should be keeping all of this out of the press. Which is clearly not the case.”

  The sergeant grunted. “We have a leak. One of my men, no doubt. Some of them don’t like the way I do things.”

  “Then I’d say they’re a sight smarter than you are.”

  “What?” The sergeant sounded ready to explode.

  “You have completely cocked up this investigation from the start.” The second agent’s voice was like the lash of a whip, and Sam’s grip tightened on the edge of the table. Beside him, Dayna was staring at the phone, openmouthed. “You’ve done nearly everything wrong as far as I can see. You didn’t tent the scene, and now it’s completely ruined. You’ve a leak, so there’s going to be loads of tourists tramping all over, and you can bet you’re going to have press flying in from out of town. This is going to be a complete nightmare to work, and it’s entirely your fault.”

  Another pause. Sam thought he would have given just about anything to see his father’s face right now.

  “You will be very lucky if you don’t end up unemployed after this,” the agent continued. “Possibly even facing charges for actively hindering the investigation.”

  “Unless,” the other agent broke in, “you cooperate with us fully. We may be able to save you some of the utter humiliation you’re bound to go through if headquarters gets wind of how badly you screwed this one up. You get it?”

  Another pause, and then the sergeant said reluctantly. “So, the Butcher…Why come here?”

  “We think he was injured during the last murder attempt, years ago,” the same man said, and Sam sat up straighter. “Small town, small police force. Probably he figured it’s easy pickings. The real question is when is he going to strike next? He seems to be escalating.”

  “Maybe he was shook up after the injury,” the sergeant said. “He’s…in a frenzy or something.”

  Sam pressed a hand to his mouth. He glanced up from the phone, watching Dayna’s face as she listened. Her hair kept sliding over her shoulder and into her face, and she pushed it back impatiently.

  The sergeant added, “Oh, and…I thought I’d ask. Does the phrase widow incorporated mean anything to you? You know, from the last Butcher case?”

  A beat of silence, and then one of the men said, “No. Why do you ask?”

  “We found a scrap of a paper at the first scene, on the judge.”

  There was a rustle of clothing and the clomp of footsteps, then: “We’ll be going through the case file as soon as we set up. We’ll bring our equipment in from the car.”

  Sam bit the inside of his cheek. It was annoying they hadn’t touched more on the last victim from the previous cycle. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed likely to be the missing piece.

  Everything he’d researched about the Butcher told him the killer was careful not to leave loose ends, the way he stalked victims beforehand, learning their routines, the lack of DNA at the scenes. Last time, his final victim had escaped before he’d finished his work…. That had to have bothered him. Especially if she’d inflicted a real injury on him—he would have had time to think about it, to stew over it for years.

  There was a reason the Butcher was here of all places, in the middle of nowhere. She was here, the one that got away. The gardai didn’t even seem to be considering that.

  Another shuffle, and then a thump of the door closing, and Sam shot up from his seat. “They’re heading this way.”

  Dayna jammed her finger into the button, hanging up the call. She straightened and slid her phone into her pocket just as the door opened and the sergeant poked his head in. His face was still a bit red, but he looked like he’d collected himself. Just behind him was Samuel’s mother, who was tugging at the strap of her purse nervously, glancing back over her shoulder at the agents.

  “Samuel, your mother is here to pick you up. Come help the agents with their equipment first though, will you?”

  He vanished back down the hall, and Sam’s mother walked into the office, smiling at Dayna, who grinned weakly back at her.

  “Um, okay.” He shifted in the doorway, reluctant to leave the two of them alone. His mother wasn’t going to beg Dayna to get back together with him, was she?

  “Dayna and I will wait here. Go on and help the gentlemen unload.”

  Sam turned to follow the agents out to their car. The taller agent smirked as he handed him a black case from the trunk, and Sam grunted.

  “Too heavy for you, champ?”

  Sam scowled at him, turning back to the station. “It’s fine.”

  Once inside, he set the case down on the desk, his back muscles screaming. Dayna was just coming out of the spare office with Sam’s mother behind her. She looked silently furious, her face pale, lips pinched together. His mother said, “Thanks for stopping by. I know it’s hard to forgive, but I’m glad you did.”

  It felt like he’d swallowed a brick. He didn’t say anything, only stared at his mother in dismay. He had a very good idea what she’d let slip.

  This was going to be bad.

  Dayna was already turning away, hurrying for the door without saying good-bye, and Sam followed her. Once they were out on the porch he reached out and caught her arm. “Dayna, wait—”

  She whirled on him, and he took a step back. “You were the one who told your Bible study. You knew I thought Morgan was the one who had gone snooping in my notebooks, and you just let me believe that. You outed me to everyone, and then you lied.”

  He stared at her, panic rising in the pit of his stomach. “I—I would have told you, but I didn’t know what to say….”

  “There’s no excuse,” she hissed, and then turned and stomped down the stairs, across the gravel lot. He trailed behind her. “There is nothing you can say to make it okay. They gossiped about it for weeks. My dad nearly had me sent away—” She broke off, eyes suddenly filled with tears. Sam felt like he might be physically sick.

  So that’s why she’d shut down. Her father had almost sent her to Camp Blood of the Lamb. Everything made a horrible kind of sense now, why she’d broken up with him, how withdrawn she’d become. She must have been petrified of being sent away like her mother. “I’m so sorry, I—I didn’t know. It was just a prayer request—”

  “So you were trying to pray the gay away, was that it?” She flung the door open. “Leave me alone.”

  “Dayna, please. I’m sorry. Dayna—” The car door slammed shut on the other side, and the old beater gave a roar as it shot backward in a cloud of exhaust. Then Dayna peeled out of the parking lot and around the corner.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CORA

  It had been three days since she’d called on Caorthannach, and she had been able to feel the goddess in the back of her mind ever since. It was hard to describe the sensation; the closest she could come was the time she’d had her appendix out. She’d forever been bumping the
stitches, forgetting they were there despite the dull throb in her side. Every time, she’d been shocked they were in her skin, stitching her together. That they were part of her body.

  It was like that, if stiches were a millennium-old goddess with an insatiable appetite for blood.

  Even now, she could hear the whispers. Hungry. Insistent. They were getting stronger every waking minute. Like a radio in the back of her mind, slowly tuning into a station she wasn’t sure she wanted to listen to.

  It scared her, and it excited her.

  Cora leaned against the wall under the pub sign, foot kicked up against the bricks, a cigarette clutched between her fingers. It was full of light and noise here, a good distraction from what was going on in her head.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the ascension, what that feeling of power—her power—would be like. And after that, the ritual Gran was teaching her, a gateway to even more power.

  The words from the ritual kept running through her head. The chant seemed to be stuck on a loop, repeating over and over in her mind. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was still replaying the kiss in her head. Meiner’s lips on hers had brought back memories, bittersweet and exciting.

  Her fingers shook, and she gripped the cigarette tighter. She was sick of this. They shouldn’t be fighting; they were the same. Both abandoned by relatives—Cora’s aunt and Meiner’s mother—both power-hungry and driven. It made sense they should be together, with Cora as the rightful leader of the coven.

  This was her destiny. Once she had enough power she could prove that to Meiner.

  She took a long drag of the cigarette, the orange tip flaring. The taste and smell of smoke was an assault on her senses, enough to fill her up and banish the ebb and flow of the whispers. The bell over the door jangled beside her. Cora looked up, releasing a thin stream through her nostrils.

  A man and woman stumbled out of the pub, the woman wobbling precariously on a pair of thin stilettos.

  The woman’s companion looked past her slouched form, bloodshot eyes combing briefly down Cora’s body before he smiled and turned away, saying something to the woman. Cora wasn’t paying attention; as soon as the man had locked eyes with her, the whispers had surged.