by Jayne Hawke
The man quietly moved aside and pressed himself against the duck egg blue wall. I sniffed the air, hoping to catch the scent of desert, snakes, or Cole. There was nothing. It was entirely sterile. That couldn’t be right. There should have been the scent of food and people if nothing else.
Briar growled behind me.
“May I ask what exactly you’re looking for?” Kyra asked.
I stood a little taller and stared her down.
“We have reason to believe you’re working with Apophis. We’re here to inspect your coven house and find evidence to support that theory,” I growled.
“Well, why don’t you come to our altar and ritual space. You can see for yourself that we’re nothing but simple Epona witches.”
I swear there was a soft hiss to her words. The necklace had definitely moved that time.
“Lead the way,” I said.
Kyra nodded, and two more young witches emerged from the living room to our right. The small group led us down the long hallway with the well-worn dark blue carpet and the bare duck egg blue walls. There was nothing personal there. I had expected some photos of horses, trinkets, something. It was entirely barren, as though it was a show home that had people flitting around it temporarily.
We followed the witches down shallow steps into the basement. It struck me as an odd space to conduct magic, but what did I know? I kept my ears pricked and sniffed the air, waiting to catch some scent. Any scent. It was unnatural to be entirely devoid of smells.
The basement was far larger than I had expected. It stretched a good thirty feet in both directions. The bare concrete floor was covered in a fine yellow grit that almost concealed odd symbols scratched into the grey. Our footsteps barely made a sound as we crossed the large empty space towards a simple altar.
“You really thought something thrown together so haphazardly could fool me?” Fionn said with great disdain.
I pulled my guardian dagger and prepared for what was coming.
“I have no idea what you could possibly mean,” Kyra said in syrupy tones.
The elf rolled his eyes and moved to lean back against the smooth grey wall.
“I am an elf prince; are you really so arrogant to believe you could hide that pulse of magic from me? We are beings of pure magic,” Fionn said, disdain turning to contempt.
Kyra’s face split from an unnatural grin. Her canines were far too slender and curved down far lower than they should have.
“It doesn’t matter now. We have the guardian. Her blood will complete the transition,” Kyra said with a distinct hiss.
I knew it was a trap.
44
Kyra’s skin split open and peeled back to reveal a snake woman with deep brown and soft cream scales. Her eyes held mine as she ripped away the human shell, discarding it in papery chunks on the sand-covered floor.
Fionn leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, watching with mild disinterest. The other witches were circling around us, hissing, with long fangs protruding over their bottom lips.
“Does this mean she’s an avatar?” I asked Amy.
“No, she’s just drunk a bit too much of the holy water.”
“So she’ll die like a normal witch?”
“Should do.”
That was all I needed to know.
Kyra retrieved a wicked wavy blade, a kris blade, from behind her alter. Her elongated torso was bared, revealing an entirely serpentine upper body with pale cream belly scales and long slender arms. Her legs, however, remained entirely human, encased in a pair of ordinary jeans.
One of the other witches, an older man with dark eyes and a buzz cut, shot forwards and tried to sink his teeth into Adam’s shoulder. Adam punched him in the throat and drove him back. He glanced at me, torn between remaining with the pack, or pushing forward and ending the witch.
He opted to stay with the safety of the pack.
The witches suddenly moved into action, each of them darting forward, trying to sink those awful fangs into my pack. Kyra, however, took her time sauntering over to me, a smile upon her lipless mouth. There was something haunting about her now, the lack of nose, the flat cold eyes, and the faint sheen of her scales.
Briar cried out, a sound of pain that twisted into wild fury. I glanced over to see blood trickling down her arm as she savagely plunged her knife into the stomach of the female witch before her. That moment of distraction was exactly what Kyra had been waiting for.
She moved too quickly for a human. She crossed the space between us in barely the blink of an eye. One second she was almost taunting me, and the next her eerily long fingers were wrapped around my throat. I grinned at her, a wildness filling my veins as my instincts kicked in. Her eyes narrowed slightly, revealing some humanity buried in there.
I drove my knee up into her lower abdomen and followed it with a thrust of my guardian dagger into her chest region. She hissed at me and darted away. I was torn between remaining with my pack and going after her. The room was a closed space. I could return to them if they needed me.
Sky was feral in her attacks, slashing at their soft stomachs and exposed throats. Amy was brutally efficient as she took their legs from under them and drove a knife down into their eyes. They would survive without me for a few moments.
I followed Kyra across the room and began the age-old dance. She remained just out of arm’s reach, slowly circling around, guiding me over some symbol on the floor. I caught the sight of blood there. It was no surprise that I wasn’t the first sacrifice. It was, however, offensive that she thought I would be so easily led.
Tilting my head slightly, I stopped dead and opened my arms wide, daring her to come at me. How could she resist? I was practically begging her to sink those long fangs into my exposed flesh.
She couldn’t. She shot forward in a flash of movement, but I was ready for her. My dagger cut through her scaly stomach as I side-stepped at the last second. Dark blood oozed from the wound as she wailed, a hissing alien sound that filled the room and made everything pause.
Witches were fallen. Heaps of cooling bodies bent into shapes no human body should have been able to make. Blood stained the yellow sand, forming clumps of red against the dark grey. The symbols were clearer now. Soft-edged and round, slowly twisting and spiralling around the room, pulling the victim into the very heart of it.
Kyra’s spell was broken, and I lunged forward, hacking and slashing at her belly until organs were exposed and bulged outwards. Her hands clawed at my skin, but there were no nails or claws there. No harm was done. In one last moment of desperation, she used her last remaining energy to lunge forward and aim those long fangs at my throat.
She was too slow. Too clumsy. I knocked her to the ground and stomped down on her throat, ensuring she would never move again. Her eyes remained open, reptilian and somehow relieved. Her face relaxed, and there was almost a mask of serenity there. Or perhaps I was just trying to make myself feel better about the fact that killing was getting easier.
45
Fionn pushed off the wall and casually stepped over the broken forms of the witches. Crouching down next to Kyra, he reached out and snapped off one of her fangs, the crisp sound echoing around us in a mockery of what he had just done.
He gave me a small shrug when I watched on in horror.
“It may be useful,” he said mildly.
“Elves,” Briar muttered.
He gave her a predatory smile sharp enough to make her take half a step back.
“Now what?” I asked.
“One coven down, many more to go,” Fionn said.
That was no comfort. It felt as though we’d done nothing more than taken some lives. I should have been happy that there were fewer Apophis witches in the world, but it hadn’t brought me any closer to Cole.
Amy had made sure that Briar was healing ok from the witch bite. Thankfully, the pack worked like an efficient unit and no one else had been bitten. Fionn watched on with curiosity but said noth
ing. The elf’s gaze was setting me on edge. He was cataloguing every little gesture and movement; they would be used against us at some point.
“We need to understand the political landscape with the witches. Going around killing all the covens we suspect isn’t going to get us the answers we need,” I said.
“It does feel really good stabbing snake people though,” Sky said.
Fionn had made himself comfortable in the middle of the kitchen while my pack milled around him. We had made ourselves coffee and dug out Pop-Tarts and cinnamon rolls. Briar and Adam gave the elf a wide berth, and Amy ignored his presence entirely.
I nudged the elf with my elbow before I took the seat next to him at the kitchen table.
“So, do you have any good ideas?”
Fionn took a sip of his tea, ignoring me. I wanted to poke him harder and make him stop being an ass, but that would only make him win this little game. My chest tightened as I realised how similar this was to the game I played with Cole. Quiet and unspoken as we tested and teased each other.
“The Brigid coven and the other Tuatha De Danann in the area would be logical. As would the Morrigan coven Sky came from,” Fionn finally said.
“We need to understand how the covens fit together, who has suddenly come into power, influence, money. How can we do that?” I asked Amy and Sky.
“I still have access to the witch web, we’ll look through the records there,” Sky said.
The idea of looking through numbers didn’t really appeal, but marching around like mindless killers wasn’t going to get us what we needed. Lines had to be drawn.
We gathered around the kitchen table with our laptops, and Sky gave us all access. Briar put on some modern rock music, and we settled into a comfortable work pattern.
Fionn looked over my shoulder and watched as I opened up the website expecting something brutally simple. The site was sleek and elegant with a white and silver theme running throughout. News sat high on the page, records were perched on the slender bar at the top.
I watched as gossip ran in real time down a Twitter-style timeline on the right hand side. Anonymous names talked about how witches were sleeping with members from other covens, someone had stolen a pet crow, and there was a mention of a party out in Colorado.
It felt too normal.
Amy and Briar were looking into the Brigid coven, Sky had the Lugh coven covered, Adam was checking into the Morrigan coven, and that left me with everyone else.
There were more covens in the state than I’d realised. Somehow I had thought of them as having bigger, more sprawling territories than they did.
“A lot of it is business and digital. There aren’t as many hard boundary lines as shifters have,” Amy said.
“So we need to dig into business records and such?” I asked.
“Afraid so.”
This was going to be a long night.
46
It was coming up on sunrise. Adam and Briar had crashed out a couple of hours prior. Amy was struggling to keep her eyes open, but I was determined to keep pushing on. Cole was out there. He needed us.
We had found that the Brigid coven had been remarkably steady. There had been some pressure and comments from a Bast coven about their status as fae witches, but nothing had really come from it. The Morrigan coven, however, was looking disastrous.
Sky’s jaw had clenched so hard I was worried she would break something. It had turned out that the Morrigan coven had been corrupt for quite some time. Humans had been paying them to take out rivals under the guise of their harming supernatural beings and drawing the Morrigan’s attention. The businesses were almost bankrupt, and then suddenly they could afford to buy up new businesses and positively flourish.
There were a lot of strange transactions and staff changes within the businesses we could find. It was also noted that the coven leader had suddenly stopped taking on Morrigan work.
“Bethany had retreated into her quarters away from the rest of the coven a couple of months before I met you, but that was assumed to be relatively normal. We were a very strict coven. No one asked questions above their station. I should have asked more, but I was happy. The Morrigan gave me good work. I was comfortable. It wasn’t perfect, I certainly didn’t have friends there, but the high points felt so good,” Sky said.
I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. There was no point in blaming herself.
“So we remove the Morrigan coven, and speak with the Brigid coven about an alliance,” Fionn said.
Sky narrowed her eyes at him when he said ‘remove the Morrigan coven’.
Fionn sighed and levelled a very weary expression at her.
“They are no longer your coven and we need to remove the Apophis influence entirely.”
“We don’t know if the entire coven is corrupt. I wasn’t.”
Fionn shrugged.
“Then we take out the top echelons and leave the new council to deal with the rest.”
He made it sound so simple. We were just wiping out some of the strongest most fearsome witches in the area.
“We need proof,” Sky ground out.
“Are you really telling me don’t have enough? Would you like a neon sign saying ‘Apophis witches are here!’?”
Sky rubbed her temples.
“We need sleep. We’ll discuss it later.”
With that, she stood and retired to the living room, leaving me with the elf.
“You understand it needs to be done,” Fionn said flatly.
“I do.”
There were too many rumours, too many business transactions, and too many ties to the Epona coven we’d taken out. The top echelon, at least, were corrupt and involved with Apophis. I understood that it hurt Sky, but this was war, and we couldn’t afford to lose.
“What about the garou and shifters?” Sky asked around a mouthful of croissant.
I hadn’t been able to sleep very long so had gone on a baking spree. It had been too long since I’d lost myself in the simplicity of baking. Before I knew it, I had a dozen muffins cooling and a large batch of croissant dough. Pastries weren’t really my thing, but they and the pain au chocolat had come out beautifully. It gave me something happy to focus on, the delicate layers of the pastries.
“We have the Blue Dagger pack on our side. Digby’s whatever is a definite enemy-”
“Sleuth,” Briar said.
I looked at her.
“A group of bears is called a sleuth.”
“Ok, well, Digby’s sleuth is suspicious as hell.”
“You’re not just saying that because they’re bears?” Amy asked.
“No. She’s right,” Fionn said as he helped himself to another raspberry and white chocolate muffin.
For such a lithe man, he could really eat. I supposed that shouldn’t have been that surprising, but I still hadn’t expected him to eat more than the rest of us.
“What about the cougars?” Amy asked.
“We’ll look into them after breakfast.”
“I have a good feeling about the shifters,” Adam said.
“Oh?” Sky asked.
“They, we, have very little interest in gods. Most shifters treat them with a mix of hostility and mistrust. I think it would have been too difficult to sway shifters over to Apophis. That and shifters really don’t like snakes.”
That sounded good to me. It made me breathe a little easier, the idea of shifters, beings so like myself, turning to Apophis didn’t sit well at all.
Sky had been quiet and withdrawn through breakfast, which was actually at 4PM. It must have been hard on her, finding out about her coven like that.
Amy put her arm around Sky’s shoulders.
“Being a solitary witch isn’t so bad, you know.”
Sky smiled at her and exhaled slowly.
“I know. It’s just, there’s a lot in my head right now.”
“What about the Hephaestus coven?” Briar asked.
Amy flinched and took a gulp of her coff
ee.
“There’s no way the techno witches would go dark side,” Sky said.
Amy smiled and gathered up the dirty plates.
“Have we checked their records?” Fionn asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” Amy said quietly.
Fionn went to speak, but I put my hand up to stop him.
“Thanks, Amy.”
Fionn raised his eyebrow at me. I mouthed ‘we can trust her’, back at him.
He shook his head and continued eating his muffin.
47
My phone rang, startling me out of my thoughts about how best to deal with the bears. Erin, alpha of the Blue Dagger pack, had been eager to handle them. It seemed she and her pack had some unpleasant history with the bears.
Rowan, the Blue Dagger beta, and Amy’s future life-bond, had come over to help us pull together the big picture for the politics in the area.
We had found that the Brigid coven had snubbed the Epona coven entirely, and they were in the clear. I was tasked with bringing them onto our side. Amy’s old coven was also in the clear, and Amy was tentatively reaching out to them in hopes of talks.
The cougars looked to be good too. Their position wasn’t as strong as it had been in the area, which gave me confidence that they’d join us without too much trouble.
“You should put the alpha of the cougars, Erin, and Cole on the new council. Then keep the Brigid witch, add a techno-witch, and Amy for the witches. The fae are suitable as they stand,” Fionn said.
Amy paled.
“I’m not sure, I mean the council is a huge responsibility.”
“And someone needs to speak for the solitary witches,” I said.
“She’s right. Solitary witches are treated worse than dirt. Having a strong voice on the council will help a lot of people,” Sky said.
Amy pursed her lips and returned to tidying the kitchen while she thought about it. I knew that it was a big ask, and we were assuming we’d get Cole back to stand on the council. In truth, the expectation was that I would sit on the council, but Fionn was being oddly kind and saying Cole.