Hunted Witch Agency Box Set Books 1-3 (Hunted Witch Agency Set)

by Rachel Medhurst

  Relaxing, I released my clenched muscles. The pain in my head slunk away, leaving a warm glow filtering through me.

  “You will not defeat me!” The scream of Vernon as he swirled his arm made me stare.

  A tornado of wind, multi-coloured magic and fire made me back up against the cold stone wall. There was no way we could put him down.

  “Darling…” The woman who stood to my left spoke as she grabbed my hand. “…work with us.”

  “Mum?” I croaked, my voice cracking.

  How were my parents there? They couldn’t be. They were dead. Weren’t they?

  The woman who had taught me to be a witch shook me, bringing me back to the present. Her brown eyes contrasted against her fair skin as the wind whipped her dark hair around her head.

  “We can beat him!”

  Yes, we could. I could. They could. If we worked together, our magic just might be enough to bring him down.

  Glancing at my father as he moved closer to the ever growing swirl, I tried to hold my emotions in check. He wasn’t exactly tall, but his broad shoulders were familiar to me. I had sat on them plenty of times when I was young.

  “Mum,” I said, taking her arm when she tried to drag me forward. “I’m too weak. I… it’s hard to explain.”

  She shook her head as she looked into my eyes. “I know all about your magic.”

  Holding up my dagger, I smiled. “So, you know about this, too?”

  Her eyebrows lowered. No, apparently not. Okay, that was a good thing. Maybe she would trust me to do what I needed to do.

  “You need to go with dad. Weaken Vernon. I’ll do the rest.”

  Her nod made me straighten my spine. She didn’t question whether I could do it. In fact, she took my word for it. That was crazy. She shouldn’t trust me, I wouldn’t.

  Planting my feet firmly on the ground, I held the handle of my dagger with both hands. The blade pointed downwards as I tried something new. The air around me intensified as Vernon’s crazy assault started to expand. He stood, his head thrown back and his arms spread wide. He had completely lost it.

  “Okay,” I whispered, suddenly wishing Kingsley and Gerard were there to support me. “Come on mother earth.”

  Closing my eyes, I shut out the chanting of my mum. Her Essex powers would probably lend us a lot more magic than I’d realised.

  Concentrating on the earth beneath my feet, I bent down and placed the tip of the dagger against the hard ground. A zap of energy flung into the silver, making me gasp. Yes, I could do it.

  Instead of drawing the magic up through my body, I would bring my warlock power straight into the blade. That way, it couldn’t strip me of my witch magic.

  Opening my eyes when my hands jerked, I bit back a smile. I’d done it. The whole dagger was covered in yellow flames. I was ready.

  “Let’s do this.”

  Standing stock still, I held up the dagger and got ready to throw. My mother was on Vernon’s left, and my father on his right. A stream of white magic spurted from my dad’s hand. What the…? It went straight into Vernon’s chest, sinking into his skin.

  My mother then flicked her wrist, sending the funnel of magic flying into its owner. Vernon crashed against the wall, the force of his own magic pinning him. Now, it was my turn.

  My arm muscles tensed as I flung the dagger towards my target. Vernon laughed as he brought his head forward and stared at me. The dagger stopped just before it hit his face. No!

  “Kevin Jinx, your daughter is someone to be reckoned with. But, I’ll still kill her.”

  My boots thumped against the floor as I ran straight for the warlock. The shock on my mother’s face made me grin. She looked impressed. And, so she should be. I was Devon Jinx. Half witch, half warlock.

  “Careful!” My father shouted as the dagger flipped.

  The wind was strong, my body slow. It felt like I was moving through mud, and yet, I pushed through. He would not win. I still had too much to do.

  Dodging to the side, I watched as my dagger flew into the stone wall. And dug itself deep. Hum. Maybe I should’ve listened to Gerard when he suggested I lift weights.

  “Devon, go!” My mother shouted.

  They were still using Vernon’s magic against him. His whole body was shuddering against the wall on the opposite side of the room, but his fingers were working loose. Once he was free, we were all dead.

  “Thanks, Mum!”

  It took me three leaps as I almost ran straight into the wall. My fingers wrapped around the handle of the dagger, the magic in it almost burning my palm. Oh, my power was good. Almost too good.

  “Duck!” I shouted as I wrenched the loosened blade from the wall.

  Spinning, I launched the dagger to my left, hoping the momentum would bring it round full circle. My father dropped to the floor as the funnel of wind snatched the blade, sending it slicing straight through Vernon’s neck, the flames exploding in his face.

  My mother ducked as it carried on, smacking straight into the stone beside my head. Shit, that was close.

  As the magic in the room dropped, so did I. My knees couldn’t hold me any longer. I had used all of my magic and borrowed some too.

  “Devon,” my mother called, coming straight over. “You did it!”

  They were by my side, holding me, crying against me. I let the tears stream from my face as the two people who had brought me into the world held me against them. My heart exploded in my chest as my world crumpled around me.

  “Is everyone okay?” Kurt’s bellow made us pull apart.

  He thundered into the room, followed by Justina. I gripped my father as he lugged me to my feet. Gerard…

  “Is she okay?” His deep voice was weak, but it was there.

  He came into the room, supported by Maxwell. The others were checking that Vernon was dead. Which he was. Thanks to me.

  The corner of Gerard’s lip lifted into his cheek when he spotted me. He heaved a sigh of relief and then promptly sat on the bottom step of the stairs he’d just negotiated. He had literally come to check on me.

  “Well done,” Kurt said coming over. “Who are you?”

  Laughter bubbled in my chest as my parents frowned, obviously affronted by Kurt’s blunt manner.

  “These are my parents,” I introduced them, grinning like an idiot.

  My chest swelled as I looked around at my team. They were covered in blood as they surveyed the area, making sure we were safe. Gerard watched me, pain etched into his features. A small smile danced on his lips. He was happy. Which made me happy.

  Justina came over, her hands planted firmly on her hips. Okay, her composure wasn’t as welcoming as I’d expected. In fact, Kurt’s gaze also narrowed on the people I had lost.

  “What’s going on?”

  Reaching unconsciously for my mum when Justina bit the inside of her cheek, I almost blocked my ears. For some reason, I knew that whatever she was about to say wasn’t going to make me jump for joy. Or, even for shit. Nope, it was going to be much, much worse.

  “Devon, I think your parents forgot to mention one very important detail.” Justina’s glare was lethal. Shit, it was bad.

  “What’s that?” My question was tentative, almost inaudible.

  Releasing her breath, Justina crossed her arms over her waist, her ire aimed directly at my parents. “They failed to tell you that your grandmother is the one who’s kidnapping the witches. She’s the leader of the witch slave trade.”

  Magically Betrayed

  Book 3 in the Hunted Witch Agency Series

  By Rachel Medhurst

  Copyright 2018 © Rachel Medhurst

  Chapter One

  The cold stone floor pressed against my cheek made me jerk awake. Stone? Cold? Wait. Why was it pitch black? I always left a small night light on for Kingsley when I slept.

  A low hum made my swimming mind snap awake. I wasn’t at home. Why wasn’t I in my bed? I’d had two beers the night before, but I hadn’t got drunk enough to pass out
on the pavement.

  “Wake up!” The masculine voice made me spring to my feet.

  A hand shoved me in the dark, sending me flying into a wall. My shoulder wacked into the hard surface, making me clench my teeth. My arms flailed as I got my balance.

  “Who the hell are you? Where am I?”

  The fuzz of my head wasn’t helping my co-ordination. My senses were blurry, unstable. I’d been drugged. This was serious.

  “You’re right where she wants you. Sit down.”

  A light came on overhead, the tiny bulb spluttering into life. The room illuminated, the small cell only big enough to hold a couple of people. My heartbeat resounded in my eardrums as I shook my head. How had I got there? Where was there?

  Bending, the bulky man with an ugly face and untidy dark hair, pointed to the floor. I rocked on the heels of my feet as I tried to keep my balance. Was the man batshit crazy? I had just woken up in a freaky place, and he wanted me to sit down? I was going to kill his massive arse.

  “You need to step out of the way and let me out. Now.” My tough words were slurred, unthreatening.

  “You need to sit down and drink this!” Holding out a bottle of water, he took a menacing step towards me.

  Throwing my fist out, I grunted when it moved in slow motion, hitting him gently on the arm. Where had my strength gone? I was Devon Jinx, a bloody agent at the Hunted Witch Agency. Half witch, still half warlock, although that wasn’t going to help me in this situation.

  His hands grabbed the top of my arms. Pushing me down, he forced me to plonk my arse on the hard ground. My squeak went ignored as he tugged my hair back and shoved the plastic bottleneck against my mouth, laughing when I almost choked on the liquid that poured down my throat before I spat it at him.

  “Bitch! She’ll hear about this.”

  I tugged myself out of his grip, scooting back to press myself against the wall. I was weak. Stupidly so. How long had I actually been in this prison?

  “Trust me, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  His chuckle as he turned his back on me gave me drive to stumble to my feet. Reaching out, I tripped, my legs turning to spaghetti as he reached the old wooden door and opened it.

  “She wants you to remember,” he said as he slammed the door closed.

  My whole body crashed against the ground as my head swirled. My eyes closed instantly, my brain unable to keep up with the images that ran through my mind. Gerard. My mum and dad.

  “Devon,” a voice said in the distance. My mum. “We’ve been watching you from afar. We know about Isaac Senior.”

  Wait. I’d had this conversation with my mum after we’d defeated Vernon Jupiter. We’d spent days in interviews with the agency, with me watching from the other side of the two-way mirror. Justina hadn’t allowed me to sit in on the conversations. Too much personal interest, apparently. Yeah, I got it.

  “I… I didn’t mean to kill him.” My weak voice was pathetic, now I could hear myself in hindsight.

  What? Ugh. I was hallucinating the first conversation I’d had with my parents when the interviews were done. That bastard had given me drugs. I’d never been a good drunk, let alone anything more.

  My mother’s arms had come around me as we both sunk onto my sofa. Justina had allowed us to go back to mine to talk. It hadn’t been the easiest of conversations.

  “We know you didn’t. He took care of you for thirteen years, always looking out for you, but he knew what dark crawlers did to a person, sweetheart.” My mother had glanced at my father who stared at the spell on my wall. “Didn’t he, love?”

  My father’s eyes were full of water as he looked down at us. My shoulders dropped at the same time as my stomach plummeted. As much as my father loved me, I could see the sadness in his eyes.

  “Warlocks are in danger. You’re making it up to him by being an agent. He would’ve been proud of how far you’ve come.”

  His words were quiet, like him. He had always been a contemplative man, one who didn’t often make a lot of noise. I had been the opposite. And, yet, at night, when it was time for bed, it had been him I most wanted to read me a story.

  An itch in my hair brought me back to the present. Trying my hardest to press up from the ground, I rubbed my hands through the dirty strands. Ew. What if there were rats in the cell with me? Not that I usually minded rats, Kingsley was… Kingsley! Who was looking after my pet while I was locked in this hellhole?

  “We had to keep out of sight. My mother knew we were on to her.” My mother’s voice pulled me back to the hallucination. “We faked our death to protect you from her. She made it clear that she had a vendetta against warlocks, but I had no idea she would go this far.”

  The woman who had given birth to me had long dark hair, just like mine. Her skin was pale, the pink blush to her cheeks a constant part of her appearance. Her body was rounder than I remembered, her small frame just topping mine.

  “I understand, although, I resent you for leaving me behind. Why didn’t you take me into hiding with you?”

  My father had lowered himself onto a clear space on the coffee table, sitting right in front of us. He leant forward and took my hands in his. “We didn’t want you to have a life of suffocation. You’re wild, Devon. Always have been, always will be. It’s in your nature. You needed your freedom. Your grandmother… well, she…” His gaze dropped to the floor before he looked at me again. “She despised me, which in turn made her…”

  “Hate me?” I finished for him.

  The sound of a door closing far away made me lift my head slightly. My brain was literally swirling, my mind flickering from the past to the present. Where was I? Why would they drug me?

  Tears hovered in my eyes as the memory tried to pull me back. I fought it, desperate to stop feeling high.

  “As you know, we’re Essex witches.” My mother stroked my hair away from my face. “Your grandmother, Helena Welles, is from one in four remaining pure Essex witch lines. She married your grandfather when she was a teenager. She inherited the task of looking after the ley lines with three other female witches when she turned twenty.”

  I vaguely recalled memories of this story. It had been told to me when I was a child, but I’d long forgotten it, never needing to know my history in detail.

  “She got a bit greedy, didn’t she? Had the privilege taken away?”

  Nodding, mum hummed her agreement. “Yes. Her husband died not long after that, leaving her vulnerable. She fell in love with Vernon Jupiter and got kicked out of her coven. I was a child, barely dragged up in her world.”

  The squeak of something in the cell made me sit up. Bracing my arms against the wall, I tried to focus on anything other than memories. It had been two weeks since my parents had moved into the agency building. Justina had agreed to give them protection on the condition they told her everything they knew.

  “Wake up!” A hand slapped me around the face as I opened my eyes and stared at the man who had forced me to drink water.

  Growling, I attempted to get up, but I couldn’t. My body was completely useless, unable to do much at all.

  “She’s asked me to sober you up, so she can talk to you. So…wake up.”

  The splash of water that attacked my face made me splutter. My eyes opened and closed as I rubbed my face. I couldn’t concentrate. He had just bloody drugged me. How did he expect me to instantly come out of that? Stupid man. A man who was going to be minus his manhood at some point in the future. I didn’t care how disgraceful my thought was, he deserved not to be a man anymore.

  “You need to stop that,” I said through my teeth when he shook me by the top of the arms.

  “Devon.” My father’s voice again. “Helena went a little crazy when Vernon ended it. She swore vengeance on warlocks. No one took her seriously. Until your mother married me.”

  My brain was switching between the damp cold cell and the image of me in my apartment. My messy, but ever so comfortable apartment.

  “Fine. You’ve
got half an hour to sober up,” my tormentor said. “Or, I’ll start hurting you. Maybe you’ll wake up then.”

  As the door slammed closed behind him, I slouched against the wall, allowing the hallucination to take over.

  My mum was standing now, her hands on her hips. “Helena left you alone for so long because she didn’t even realise you were still alive. We were in danger from her allies. I first realised what she was doing just after I married your father. She had harboured her pain for so long, she’d turned extremely bitter. I had no idea she would try to wipe out the warlocks. I just knew she was taking witches to boost her own magic.”

  Magic. Shaking my head to get rid of my parents, I blinked the vision away. I could use my magic to kill the son of a bitch who was holding me captive. I just had to…

  “We were always watching you, darling, making sure you were safe. We had found an old home of hers when she found out that we were on to her. We decided it was best to let the professionals handle it, so we reported it to the government. They told us to stay in protective custody and let them deal with Helena.”

  “It’s taken them that long to find her?” I had snapped.

  My dad bent his head, shaking it sadly. “No, they didn’t bother. They let the case go. We were trapped in a new life, constantly told that they were working on it. Eventually, they let us know that it had been handed to a new agency that hunted witches. We’ve been watching from the side lines, wishing we could help.”

  Frowning, I glanced at them both. “But, you’re here now?”

  A smile came to their faces. “Yes,” my mum said, wringing her hands together. “I dropped the ‘my daughter is an agent, we’ll be perfectly safe’ card. They let us go from protective custody once they’d spoken to Justina. That’s how she suddenly knew who the slave trade ringleader was. We could finally tell her.”

  My brain suddenly snapped, my mind alert and awake. The damp smell of the cell filtered up my nose as I sat up. The man was standing in front of me again, a wand held out in front of him. Ah, he had used magic before I could.