A rustle made me step back as Gerard came straight back in. His back was rigid, his eyes wide.
“Aw, you came back for me, how kind.”
Going over to the seams of the tent, he ran his fingers up it. I was about to ask what the hell he was doing when the officer from earlier shouted from outside. “I know you’re in there. You’re trespassing on a crime scene, so you’d better come out.”
“Why didn’t you just run?” I asked Gerard, my fingers tingling at the threat.
He grunted as the tent gave no leeway. Why was he looking for a human way out? “Come here, let me just…”
I was cut off as he grabbed my extended arm before I could unleash my magic. “No, these materials are magically protected. We won’t be able to use our power to get out of here.”
Oh shit. Well, that was me caught then. How else would we be able to get out?
A gun poked through the flap of the tent. Great, and now the policeman was going to shoot us, kill us and probably never even tell anyone we had died.
“You know what? I’m not going to stand here and be threatened by a human,” I said, striding straight up to the gun.
The policeman was obviously afraid of what we were going to do, otherwise he wouldn’t be waiting outside like a coward.
Gerard wrapped his arms around me just as I was about to grab the gun out of the man’s hands and stick it where it would hurt… A lot.
“What are you doing?” I almost screeched as Gerard dragged me back.
Dropping me, he took out a dagger and asked me to hold it. I did, almost letting go as a scorching heat seared the skin on my palm.
“I thought that might work,” Gerard said as he slipped out of his jacket.
The sound of gunfire and a pop right next to my head made me duck low, swearing in the process. The policeman had got trigger happy. I could hear the two of them talking amongst themselves about what they were going to do.
As my heartbeat resounded in my head, Gerard wrapped his hand in his jacket before taking the dagger from me. His eyes stayed on it, watching for some sort of reaction. Although, I didn’t quite know what he was doing.
“Good, the power has been drained.” Stabbing the blade into the white plastic material of the tent, he sliced it open in one smooth movement.
Another shot made me thrust against him, his bulk solid and unmoveable as I grabbed his arm. He didn’t say a word as he grasped the material and ripped further. Sliding his arm around my waist, he guided me through the hole. A shout on the other side of the tent made me spin, ready to fight the officers.
Gerard shoved me as he came through the new exit, hissing into my ear. “Run, we cannot get into a fight with them.”
They wouldn’t be able to see us, I had forgotten that. For a split second, I had wanted to stay and fight. How dare the humans fire a gun at us? I could’ve been killed. And, we were kind of on the same team.
Instead of confronting them as they came around the tent and saw the hole, I ran after Gerard who had managed to get some distance between him and the crime scene. He glanced over his shoulder, his frown evident when he saw that I had hesitated.
“Slow down,” I muttered, my legs pumping as I tried to catch up to him.
My muscles tingled from effort and excitement. Adrenaline slipped through my veins, heightening my strength. I knew that they weren’t after us because they couldn’t see us, but the whole experience made me on edge.
“You seriously need some basic cardio training,” Gerard said as he jumped out at me when I rounded the corner.
I squeaked, not expecting him to be there. Smacking his arm lamely, I glared at him as we both slowed to a walk.
“I hate the gym.” I puffed, trying to get my breath back. “I prefer swimming.”
Clenching my fingers in and out, I tried to stifle my magic. It wanted an outlet, to let off some steam. Having both types of magic often made it hard for me to keep a good balance.
The traffic was busy as we waited for the lights to turn red before we could cross. Sweat lined my palms, so I clicked my finger, switching the lights to red instantly, causing the cars to screech to a halt.
“Did you just…?” Gerard dismissed his question when I grinned up at him.
Trotting across the road, I held back a laugh. “What can I say? I want to get back to the agency so we can find out whose blood is on those swabs.”
“Liar,” he said, checking around us. I assumed it was to make sure that we weren’t being followed. “You’re just so used to using your magic, you have to funnel it somewhere.”
Well, he was a proper therapist now, psycho-analysing my behaviour and everything. If he was going to do that, I might as well show him what I was capable of.
We were coming back up onto the bridge, the invisible spell still over us. Rubbing my fingers across my palm, I envisioned a ball of magic. It appeared in my palm, the bright yellow colour almost blinding my eyes. Holding it in front of him, I may have gloated just a bit when his eyes widened.
“Put it away,” he growled, as if he were chastising me for getting my phone out in class or something.
“Why? Are you jealous that you can’t do this?”
The grin was wiped from my face when he spun, wrapped his fingers around my wrist and squeezed so tightly, my bones almost cracked. Tears popped into my eyes as pain shot through my arm. And yet, my ball of warlock magic stayed in my palm.
Bending down so that his face was almost level with mine, he looked straight into my eyes. “You don’t have to prove yourself. You want to be something special, yet, you don’t realise that you already are. Stop the self-sabotage and you might actually learn something.”
Releasing me, he stormed off, leaving me standing in the middle of the bridge. He was right. I had never felt like I belonged anywhere, so my defence mechanism had been to muck around. To not take anything seriously, except my magic. So, why was I acting so childish in front of him? I wasn’t being myself.
My phone beeped, bringing me back to the present. Throwing the ball of magic over the side of the bridge, I didn’t look to see how much of a splash it caused, not even smiling when I heard the water move under my power.
Opening the message on the phone, I almost choked. It was from Maxwell Maddocks. And it said just two words:
Times Up.
Chapter Five
“We’ve been following you for a few months,” Justina said as we stood in the lab.
I hadn’t been listening, my eyes too absorbed in the trinkets, spells, herbology, and everything else a witch’s lab could contain.
Kurt was grinding a selection of herbs in a pestle and mortar. I watched him, the rhythmic movement mesmerising. Apparently, he was an expert at herbology. Had even taught it around the world at different witch coven workshops.
“We’ve established our own way of evidence testing,” Kurt said when he caught me looking. “The police are good at what they do, but they don’t always get it right. They don’t allow for anything that isn’t concrete. Which means a whole host of possibilities lie undetected. The crimes that never get solved…well, our magic would allow us to finish the job, but the government doesn’t want to rely that heavily on us. Nope, we just have to take care of our own.”
“As I was saying,” Justina interrupted. “We’ve been following you, Devon. We’ve seen you on CCTV. We know that you’re able to use witch and warlock magic, but you’re inconsistent.”
For the first time in my life, someone was genuinely interested in how I worked. In the past, supernatural beings had been scared of me. Gerard’s telling off had hit a nerve. Although, he had called me special. So, he wasn’t that stupid.
Sighing, I pushed the thought away, reminding myself that it was just those types of thoughts that kept me in denial.
“You need to focus.” Kurt added a touch of something else to his mixture, a smug expression appearing when a puff of smoke arose from it. “Or, someone to give you a good seeing to.”
&n
bsp; My jaw dropped open. Justina threw a pencil at his head, but it missed.
“Don’t be so unprofessional!”
He shrugged, his gaze tracing the both of us, amusement evident in the quirk of his lip. Ignoring him would be the best option.
Looking at his pot as he laid the pestle on the work surface, I tried to work out what he had made with his herbs, but it had never been my strong point.
The room had several worktops, cupboards, nooks and crannies. Everything a witch could ever want was in there somewhere. It was dim, an old small skylight providing the only light. The lightbulbs were low too, allowing a few shadows to hide in corners.
Dried and fresh herbs had their own corner, the splash of green the only colour in the beige room. I had always been useless at herbology. Spoken spells had been the easiest witch magic for me. It had always helped me to keep grounded in my body. The warlock magic was a little more in my head.
“I do need focus, you’re right.” And for once, I didn’t have a sarcastic comeback.
Maybe Gerard had got to me a little too much. Considering he was such a morose character, maybe he needed to analyse himself more. Speaking of the man, he had disappeared as soon as he’d reported our findings.
“I’m going to go and test this out,” Kurt told Justina, his eyes dancing as he winked.
“Okay, you big kid,” his partner replied, her cheeks blossoming with a pink tinge.
Chuckling, he gave me a salute as he left with a small skip in his step. He was blunt, and kind of intimidating, and yet, a youthful spirit inhabited his witch body. One that I hoped I’d see more of in the future.
Justina was working on the blood plates, casting a spell over them to germinate enough to bring the DNA to the surface. Settling on a wooden stool opposite me, she leant her elbows on the table.
“Gerard is worried that you’re too hot headed. That you’re not experienced enough to be out in the field yet. Even with his training. I understand that I threw you in at the deep end, but I do that with everyone to see how they handle it. I want to give you this dagger, just in case you’re ever in a position where you can’t use your magic.”
Feeling under the table, she brought out a long silver blade and offered it to me. Licking my lips, I pushed down my immediate reaction. I would not react to whatever Gerard had said about me. He was the perfect agent. I could see how much he meant to the agency. Although, if he thought I was hot headed, he had to be the coldest creature alive.
Taking hold of the cool handle, I felt the weight of the weapon in my palm. It immediately felt right, which meant I should have it. The handle was golden, the edges on it rough. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
Opening my jacket, I placed it in the inside pocket. I would have to find a better hiding place, but it would do for now.
Thinking about what Justina had said, I looked her in the eye. “Thank you. I… I may have a slight problem with authority,” I admitted begrudgingly.
Sitting forward, Justina let her hair fall in front of her face. The almost white blonde caught the light as she moved, tucking it behind her ear. A small smile was wiped from her face as our gaze met.
“So do I… Why do you think I became my own authority?”
Nodding slowly, I allowed myself to smile. Gerard might have ruined my high from the morning, but I had needed the kick up the arse. “So, that’s why you started the agency?”
Tilting her head to the side to lean on her shoulder, she glanced off in the distance, as if she was remembering something.
“Actually, that’s only a very small part of it. The main reason I wanted to start hunting witches is because I was kidnapped myself.”
My jaw was getting a workout today. If I wasn’t fit in the rest of my body, at least my mouth wouldn’t have any trouble working.
Justina’s revelation changed everything. I had been fairly oblivious to what was going on in the underground world when it came to our people. I had recently been involved with another part of the underworld when a well known man of myth actually turned out to be real. His grandfather was Thor, so he had his own mission. And, somehow the rest of the underworld had got roped into his stuff. Thunder Hunter had managed to somehow placate everyone, just by disappearing to another city. He was the reason I’d been possessed by the Dark Crawler, but that was the past. Something I didn’t need to remember.
“What happened?”
Drawing Justina’s attention back from wherever it had gone, I sat forward, ready to listen to her story.
Her pretty blue eyes blinked, her small pink lips pursing before she took a big sigh. “Five years ago, I was walking the streets of London, on the way to visit my new witch boyfriend. He’d asked me to meet him at his apartment, but as I got nearer, a sense of unease came over me. The address he’d given me was in an industrial estate.”
“You walked straight into a trap?” I said without thinking.
A slight nod of her head and a quick glance to the left showed me how uncomfortable she was at sharing that information. She had become a strong agent since then, probably unable to believe she was once that naive. I knew the feeling.
“I did. He was there with a couple of friends. A mixture of male and female witches. They told me that I was going to be sacrificed. Of course, I put up a fight, but they managed to get me down. I had tried to dial my father, who was a powerful witch…”
“Was?”
Her quick blinking made my stomach flip and my heart speed up. I knew that look. The look of grief when a person had lost someone they loved.
“They tied me up and cut my wrist before forcing me to hold hands with another witch. I’m not sure what they were going to do exactly because my father turned up then. He managed to kill most of them, except my boyfriend. He shot my father. That’s how cowardly he was, he couldn’t face him with magic. He knew that he’d never defeat him.”
Justina stared at the wooden work surface, her eyes tracing a line of powder left over from Kurt’s herb brewing.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, tears coming to my eyes. “I know how it feels to lose a parent…or two.”
It had been a long time since I had allowed myself to grieve my parents. In fact, I couldn’t remember if I ever did allow myself to feel those feelings of loss. Seeing Justina reminisce about what had happened to her father cracked me open a little.
Straightening her back, she cleared her face, ready to come back to the present. “I started to look into the kidnappings of witches. Maybe becoming a little obsessed in my hunt to find out why they had taken me and what they were planning to do. When the government got wind of what I was doing, they approached me and shared a ton of information that helped. That’s when I decided to set up the agency. Too many witches were being taken. And, it seemed that most of the kidnappers were witches themselves. There’s a lot of wanted witches on the agency sheet.”
Licking my lips, I rolled them together as I thought about what she had told me. I would never have dreamt that I would hunt my own kind, but if they were doing to others what they had done to Justina, they had to be stopped. And, in a way, being responsible for taking down our own kind gave us a little control over the way we did it. Humans in power weren’t known for their compassion when it came to supernaturals. Discrimination was a major factor in how the city of London was run. As long as we kept under wraps, the government would allow us to live our lives. If we ever threatened to expose ourselves to the public, we would be taken out instantly.
“I’ll be honest with you, I’ve not had any direction in my life. Yes, I’ve perfected my craft, but for what…? I’ve not had anything to use it for…and I want to use it for good.”
My chest blossomed in warmth at my confession. My life had been pointless, until now. Just twenty-four hours into my new job, and I felt a flicker of excitement at the possibilities. If witches like Justina were being taken, they needed to be defended. We had to find out why. And, stop the perpetrators.
Justina smiled at me,
her hard exterior melting the whole time we had talked. “Good. I had a gut feeling about you as soon as I saw you. You need some training, but I think you’ll be perfect.”
Just her open and welcoming vibe made me want to be perfect. Which was something that no one was ever capable of achieving, but for once in my life, I wanted to try.
“Okay, Agent Jinx,” she said, getting up from her stool and going over to the blood slides.
“Agent Jinx! That sounds so professional.” I couldn’t help the small excited hop as I moved to join her when she waved me over.
Looking through the microscope, Justina went silent as she studied the blood. Had the spell worked? Did the small sample have enough blood to test for DNA?
“What will you do now?” I asked, staring down at the small blob that had grown from the spell.
Justina moved the slide and went over to another apparatus. Fiddling around, she did something that I couldn’t see.
“I’m extracting the DNA. After I’ve done that, I’ll see how much DNA I have so I can amplify it to make copies. If I do that, it’s easier to characterise. This part is all science. Magic is too unreliable.”
Her back was turned to me, but she spoke to me as she did her work. If Justina knew how to find DNA matches without magic, she must be super intelligent. The process intrigued me.
“What next?” I asked, for the first time genuinely curious in something other than magic.
Glancing over her shoulder, she raised her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t take you for someone who would be interested in how science works.”
Shrugging, I leant against the wooden bench, not quite tempted to go and watch. There was no point, I wouldn’t understand what she was doing.
Turning back to her work, she laughed softly to herself. “Well, I’ll separate it to help me permit identification. Once I’ve done that, I can compare it to the DNA profiles I already have. The witches on our system also have a magic DNA, so that makes it extra easy. I can even match it to a family line.”
Hunted Witch Agency Box Set Books 1-3 (Hunted Witch Agency Set) Page 4