by J. C. Diem
The house was antiquated enough to still use actual keys rather than plastic keycards. I stepped inside my room, locked the door and shook my head at the feeble security. Someone with a bobby pin could probably break in easily enough.
It was late and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep, but I took the time to unpack and to take a quick shower first. Reece had the same idea. I could sense him on the other side of the wall as I soaped my body. A flash of heat went through me when I caught a glimpse of his thoughts. He was recalling pinning me down and bringing me to the edge with his hands and mouth. Did he know that I could see what he was thinking and did he have any idea what it was doing to me?
Shaking my head to dispel the image, I turned the water off. Drawing back the curtain, I let out a silent gasp of fright when I saw that I wasn’t alone. A man stood a few feet away. His expression was eerily calm. Before I could let out a scream, I saw that he was floating. Realizing he was a ghost, some of my alarm faded.
The spectral intruder was a clean-cut, handsome man in his early twenties. He courteously turned his back as I snatched up the towel and pulled it around me. He was even more shadowy than the other two had been. His skin and clothes looked faded, like an old photograph that was losing its color. He wore an outfit similar to the small boy, but in black rather than brown. His hair was short and neat and was an indiscriminate shade of brown.
“Can’t a girl have a shower in peace?” I hissed quietly at his back. “What do you want?”
Turning to face me again, he mouthed something. I tried to read his lips, but I couldn’t work out what he was saying. “I can’t understand you,” I whispered quietly enough that I hoped Reece couldn’t hear me. It was bad enough that I could see spirits. Now I was talking to them as well.
Frustrated, the ghost moved over to the mirror. There was enough steam in the room to fog the glass. I watched in astonishment as he drew his finger down the mirror and left a mark. It took all of his concentration to leave me a short message. Exhausted, he gave me a meaningful look before he faded.
I read the message again, feeling chilled despite my warm shower. It read; ware the coven. I wasn’t an expert, but I was pretty sure a coven usually meant witches. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that witches existed. There was very little that could shock me now that I knew that monsters were real and that I had become one of them.
₪₪₪
Chapter Seven
Falling asleep wasn’t easy when I was trying to keep one eye open to watch for ghosts. Eventually, I slept and woke to a knock at the door a few hours later.
“Rise and shine!” Kala called far too cheerfully. “Mark wants us to meet downstairs for breakfast in ten minutes.” I heard Reece groan through the wall. It was his only acknowledgement that he was awake and that he’d heard her message.
“We’ll be right there,” I called back. We’d raised our voices for the benefit of the humans who were still in their rooms on our floor. We had to blend in and that meant being as ordinary as possible.
Ten minutes wasn’t long enough for me to recover from only a few short hours of restless slumber. I splashed cold water on my face, which helped a little. My long black hair was a tangled mess and I brushed it into a semblance of neatness.
I studied my reflection and noted how wan I looked. My eyes were dark brown, but now tended to lighten a few shades just before the full moon came around. That was only one week away now. If we were lucky, we could wrap up this latest mission before then.
I didn’t even want to think about the consequences of being stuck in a small town when we turned next. Without the thirty foot high, electrified fence to keep us under control, people would surely die.
Dressing in fresh jeans and a black t-shirt, I took the stairs down to the second floor. I paused at the photo that the female ghost had been staring at last night. There was something eerie about the six siblings and I examined their faces closely. It took me a moment to spot what was troubling me. I couldn’t pinpoint how old any of them were. Their clothes and expressions made them seem like they were in their forties or older, but their faces were unlined. They might be a lot younger than they seemed.
Voices drew me downstairs and into the dining room. Most of the guests had already eaten and had left. Mark, Kala and Flynn had dragged two of the tables together so we could sit in a group. I took a seat next to Kala as Reece ambled in behind me. He sat beside Flynn, opposite from me. Mark sat at the head of the table. At a quick glance, he could have passed for our dad. Only Flynn’s mocha colored skin shattered that illusion.
A woman in her fifties entered, pushing a trolley ahead of her. It held a variety of food including toast, fruit, cereal and less healthy alternatives such as bacon and scrambled eggs. “Good morning, I’m Margaret. I hope you had a pleasant night.” Her smile was friendly and welcoming. Her figure was plump and her choice of dress was floral and bordering on dowdy.
“We did, thank you,” Mark said on behalf of us all and not entirely accurately.
Margaret began offloading the food onto the table. Kala beat me to the pot of coffee and smirked at my sour look. Taking pity on me, she poured me a cup first. I must have looked even crankier than I felt.
“I understand that you can see the deceased,” Margaret said to me. I nearly dropped my cup in surprise. “May I ask how many of our ghosts you’ve seen so far?”
“Three,” I replied. The other two hadn’t shown themselves yet. I kind of hoped they’d remain hidden. This new phenomenon was disturbing. It was one I wished I hadn’t been burdened with at all.
She showed only mild surprise as she placed the last dish on the table. “You must have a strong gift. Does it run in your family?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, but I sincerely doubted it. “As far as I know, my Dad can’t see spirits. I lost my mother when I was very young and I know little about her.”
Instant empathy flowed from her and she patted me on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry to hear that, dear. Your mother must have passed this gift down to you.”
I pressed my lips together to contain a highly inappropriate and cynical laugh. She’d passed it to me by biting me and draining my blood. Thanks to her unholy appetite, my soul was now in a struggle between remaining a wolf and becoming a vampire. It was a gift that I could have done without.
“Thank you for a wonderful breakfast,” Mark said to distract her from her line of questioning. He knew I didn’t want to talk about my mother. It wasn’t a topic I wanted to discuss with my friends, let alone with a stranger.
“Will I be seeing you for lunch and dinner?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, yet. We might be otherwise engaged,” he said. “I am certain that we’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow, though.” Even making that commitment was a stretch. There was no way to tell what would happen during our missions. We weren’t even sure what we were dealing with yet. All we had to go on was the advice of a ghost. The rest of the team wasn’t even aware of that development yet.
Too polite to question us about what business we had in the area, she left. I waited until she was out of earshot before I spoke. When I did, I kept my voice quiet. “One of the ghosts gave me a message last night.”
Their surprise was almost comical. “What was the message?” Mark asked.
“What ghost?” Kala asked at the same time.
“He was young, only a few years older than you,” I said to Kala. “He tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear him. He wrote a message on the mirror with his finger.”
Flynn paused with his spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth. “What did it say?” he asked.
“It said ‘ware the coven’.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” he asked our boss.
“It’s archaic, but he probably meant ‘beware of the coven’,” Mark replied. “That has to mean we’re dealing with witches.” He didn’t seem very happy about that prospect.
“Have you dealt with them before?” I a
sked. I’d read only a fraction of the PIA archives and hadn’t come across any files relating to witches yet. I’d brought along my laptop just in case I had a chance to do some more reading. I couldn’t remember downloading any cases about witches onto it.
“Yes, unfortunately. They’re generally a nuisance, but every now and then they can be truly dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?” Kala asked. She bit into a piece of toast that was heavily coated in strawberry jelly. It made my teeth ache just looking at it. That much jelly would be far too sweet for my liking. I stuck to cereal and filled a bowl to the brim.
“They can cast some very nasty hexes on their victims,” Mark explained. “You don’t want to know the details.” She took him at his word and didn’t pry. She, Reece and Flynn had only been members of the TAK Squad for the past five years. I wasn’t sure who Mark had worked with before then.
“Could they be the reason why we’re here?” Reece queried. Mark’s boss hadn’t been very forthcoming about why he’d sent us here.
“Possibly. I did some digging and discovered that Bradbury has a reputation for random, unexplained disappearances. This has been occurring ever since the town was first established,” Mark explained. “The missing are a mixture of both men and women. They are always young and attractive. The same number of disappearances occurs every year.”
Remembering the ageless faces in the photo, I had a sneaking suspicion of who might be behind the disappearances. “I’m guessing that six people go missing each year, right? Three male and three female.”
Mark looked at me with his brows raised. “How did you guess?”
It was nice to be able to surprise him for once. “I saw a female ghost staring at one of the photos last night. I think the people in it might belong to the coven.” It didn’t seem possible, since the photo had been taken so long ago, but that was the hunch I had.
“Which photo was she looking at?” he asked as he stood.
“It’s the first one on the second floor.”
He motioned for the rest of us to continue eating breakfast. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
I concentrated on eating my cereal and the others did the same. As promised, Mark returned quickly. He’d taken a photo of the old picture with his tablet. He handed it around so the others could see. I’d already had a good enough look at the coven and handed the device to Kala after a cursory look.
“Wow, they look like they’d be a lot of fun at a party,” she observed with a straight face.
Mark took the tablet back and ran a search on the group using a facial recognition program. His tablet was far more sophisticated than usual. It came equipped with all sorts of extra apps. This particular program was apparently designed to search the local newspapers for photos.
It took only a few seconds before news articles began to appear. “They’re very prominent in Bradbury,” he said after reading the article. “They are on every town committee and are heavily into charity work.”
“Great,” Flynn said with a grimace as he leaned over to look at the photo. “They’re hiding behind do-gooder reputations while in reality they must be stealing the life forces of the townsfolk in order to stay young.”
Mark handed the tablet to Flynn. He studied the article then handed it to Reece. He read it quickly then reached across the table to give it to me. With new clothes and in a far more modern setting, the coven no longer looked like they were in their forties. Their expressions were still stern and unsmiling, but they appeared to be only in their late twenties now.
“Do witches usually steal people’s lives to keep themselves young?” I asked Mark as I handed the device to Kala.
“This is the first case I’ve heard of,” he replied and took the tablet from her when she was done. He slid it back into an inner pocket of his jacket. As always, he wore a dark suit. This one was charcoal gray. He’d teamed it up with a light blue button up shirt and a dark blue tie. Even if he’d been wearing casual clothes like the rest of us, he’d still look like a federal agent. “Most witches are benign,” he explained. “Many believe that causing harm to others will bring harm back upon them threefold.”
“It sounds like you’re talking about wiccans,” Reece said. He’d devoured his cereal and had pushed his empty bowl away. He was now working his way through six slices of toast.
Mark inclined his head. “Some are. Others think of themselves as white witches. They abhor the evil arts and classify dark witches as their enemies.”
“I guess that means we’re facing a dark coven,” I said. “What can we expect from them?”
He paused to search through the files that were stored in his memory. “Witches and warlocks can have a variety of abilities. They’re similar to the Seven Deadly Sinners in that respect.” He was referring to the telepaths that we’d hunted down when I’d first joined the team. “Their abilities range from being able to befuddle minds, to casting spells and curses. This coven must be very powerful to have hidden in plain sight for so long.”
“How have they managed to pull that off?” Flynn asked. “Surely the townsfolk must have noticed that the witches aren’t aging.”
“There are spells they can cast to mask their true appearance,” Mark replied. “The townsfolk see only what the coven wants them to see. If I were to dig into the past, we’d find that they’ve changed their names many times over during the past couple of centuries.”
“How old are they pretending to be at the moment?” Kala asked.
“In their fifties.”
“I wonder what we’re going to see when we meet them?”
“Since we are already aware of who and what they are, hopefully their glamour won’t affect us.”
“We can’t just march up to them and gun them down,” Reece pointed out. “We don’t have any proof that they’re behind the disappearances yet.”
Our job was to track and kill anything that harmed humanity. We had to be especially careful when our quarry were human. Proof was required before we could detain or eliminate our targets.
Mark drummed his fingers on the table as he thought through our dilemma. “It would be a bad idea to enter the town as a group,” he decided. “Five strangers showing up all at once will be noticed. We’ll have to split up and investigate the coven without their knowledge.”
Reece flicked a glance in my direction and Mark held up his hand in appeasement. “Lexi will remain with me, of course.”
I’d only turned eighteen a few weeks ago and was considered to be the baby of the team. To be honest, pairing me up with someone was probably a good idea. I had a distressing tendency to run into trouble whenever I was alone.
₪₪₪
Chapter Eight
Bradbury was only a ten minute drive away from the bed and breakfast. Dense trees grew on both sides of the road, creating a shady corridor. The woods that enclosed Dawson’s Retreat on three sides extended right up to the edge of town. We passed several roads that led deeper into the woods to destinations unknown.
I grew nervous when I saw the sign welcoming us to town. I’d seen plenty of movies about witches and few of them had been nice. We already knew the coven was dangerous, thanks to the ghost’s message. We had no way of knowing just what they were capable of yet. We would learn more as we performed surveillance on the town. Watching them without their knowledge was going to be tricky. We were strangers and we’d stand out no matter how hard we tried to blend in.
The instant that we crossed the town line, Mark jolted as if he’d been hit with a small surge of electricity. “Where are we?” he asked in confusion.
“We just entered Bradbury,” Reece replied with a sideways glance at him.
Mark looked out through the windscreen and studied the houses and trees that lined the road. “This doesn’t look like Colorado. Which State are we in?”
“West Virginia.” Reece was frowning now and his concern was growing.
“What are we doing here?” Mark’s bewilderment might almos
t have been funny if it hadn’t been so frightening. Unsure about what was going on, I exchanged worried looks with Kala and Flynn. They looked as clueless as I felt.
“We’re hunting a coven of witches,” Kala said. “Don’t you remember anything about our mission?”
Mark put a hand to his forehead, as if thinking hurt him. “I don’t know. There’s something…” His brow furrowed then he groaned in pain and doubled over. Blood burst from his nose, quickly painting his clothes red.
Reece stomped on the brake and we screeched to a halt, drawing the curious stare of a young woman walking her Pomeranian. I instinctively knew that staying in town would be the worst thing we could do. “We need to get him out of Bradbury,” I said. The witches had cast a spell that had wiped his memory. Did they know we were coming and had laid a trap in advance? If so, why hadn’t the spell worked on the rest of us?
In full agreement, Reece swung the SUV around. We zoomed back across the town line far quicker than we’d entered. I turned to look through the rear window, half expecting to see six figures chasing after us on broomsticks. The only thing I saw was the young woman staring after us in astonishment. Her small dog barked shrilly in excitement.
Mark’s groan of pain cut off as soon as we left town. He stared around in confusion, as if he couldn’t remember where he was again. Blood caked the lower half of his face. The red stood out starkly against his white shirt, but could barely be seen against his dark jacket. The smell clogged my nose, drowning out every other scent. “What happened?” he asked in a daze.
“The coven must have set up wards around the perimeter of town,” Flynn said as Reece pulled over on the side of the road. There was barely room for another car to pass by without sideswiping us. The town was fairly secluded and ours was the only vehicle we’d seen so far. It was unlikely that anyone would be driving past in the next few minutes. “Do you remember our mission now?”