Even Merlin, who thus far has remained mostly stoic, pales a little at the words.
I hear a muttered curse overhead, and then excited footsteps before Nicholas’ head finally re-appears in the hole. “Sorry. It’s all clear! Come on, you’re gonna want to see this.”
The manhole opens up into a back alley almost as narrow as the secret tunnel below. A couple crates are stacked up haphazardly to the side, which Puck hastily rearranges to conceal the entrance.
It isn’t just Merlin who has to brush himself off once we emerge. I have dirt in my hair, up my nose, and somehow in my underwear too—though no amount of subtle shimmying does anything about that. I have to stop and pretend to be adjusting my tights when I catch Nicholas giving me some serious side-eye.
“Come on,” he says again, beckoning.
I catch a twinge of annoyance on Puck’s face when Nicholas takes me by the hand and starts tugging me towards the end of the alley.
“I knew I shouldn’t have invited you two along,” he mutters again.
“As if you had a choice,” Merlin says, brushing past him to follow close behind me and Nicholas.
More crates and boxes are piled up at the end of the alley, making it difficult to see what’s on the other side until we’ve actually stepped through—and straight into a bustling city street.
Throughout my childhood, I grew accustomed to the way that humans decorate for the holidays. We even went so far as to put up a tree inside some years, and I watched as my mother blew enchanted snowflakes at any carolers who decided to knock on our garden door.
I guess I always knew that witches’ traditional decorations were different, but I never imagined this.
Though the ground is surprisingly dry and clear of snow, flakes fall from the sky in little flurries—it just disappears before ever reaching the street. Little orbs of light hover overhead, bobbing slightly in the gusts of wind that occasionally whip up the coats of passers-by.
At first glance, it’s almost cheery. All around us, witches in dark garb hurry past the frosted shop windows with packages under their arms while a distant music box tinkles a cheery tune. Another gust of cold air swirls around me, blowing long strands of hair into my face. When I brush it away and give the street another look, however, the charm quickly fades.
Hanging on every door and from every window are wreaths and sprigs made from some dark tree—the branches and leaves of which are both black as charcoal. Dark icicles drip from the tips of their leaves, leaving pools of liquid staining the cobblestones beneath.
It’s too dark and too thick to be water. I start stepping closer to one, but Nicholas’s grip grows tighter around my fingers.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he says, stopping me in the middle of reaching out to touch one of the nearby icicles. I stop and examine it a little closer, and immediately feel my stomach turn.
I was right. It isn’t water.
All around me, dripping from the walls and smeared across the ground, is blood. Fresh blood. Where did they get so much blood?
I can’t even take a breath without smelling the scent of it. Now it’s inside me.
I try to take a step back, but I just step right back into Nicholas. He seems oblivious to the way the sight’s affected me. He just keeps grinning, clearly glad to no longer be trapped in the tunnel underground. His broad smile shows no sign that being surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of decorative blood is anything other than normal to him.
Merlin meanwhile can’t conceal the way he stands, uncomfortable, his eyes shifting constantly up and down to the ends of the street. “We shouldn’t just stand around. Puck? You had a place in mind?” As he says it, his eyes follow the back of a passer-by’s head. “I’d like to get Wren out of here before someone recognizes her.”
“That’s very unlikely,” Puck says, but still he nods down the street and starts leading us away from the bustling shop corner.
The cheery lights mock us as we avoid stepping in blood puddles on our way. I still try to get a peek at the shopfronts between the bloodstained and spattered windows. I saw glimpses of the city on my way to the school—a city full of magic that doesn’t have to hide.
It’d be a lot more wondrous if it wasn’t also dripping in what I can only hope isn’t human blood. I can’t even dare think it might be witch blood.
Still, there’s a part of me that still wonders at it. We pass shops with self-stirring metal cauldrons in the window, and beside it, a chintzy-looking potion seller who promises to sell us the recipe for eternal youth. A small note pinned to the wall behind him warns all passers-by not to believe anything he might say.
There are shops selling demons, and even more shops promising to banish them. There are markets, magical clothing shops, color-changing candy makers, and bakers that promise to give me a mouth orgasm I’ll never forget.
Dark Witches were banished to live amongst themselves, to have little contact with the outside world. It was meant to isolate them, punish them even, for the magic they practiced.
Instead . . . I’ve never seen witches so, well, alive. They don’t have to hide here. They can practice their magic and sell their wares without having to hide at all. In condemning them, Highborne Witches gave them more freedom than they themselves have ever possessed.
No wonder Warlock Wright and the others have grown to hate them.
While Merlin throws more furtive glances down every alleyway we pass, and Nicholas just keeps gaping into shop windows like he’s the one who’s never been allowed outside before, Puck leads us away from the main street. At long last, we arrive at a dingy-looking door in the wall. A peeling sign groans in the wind as it swings overhead.
The Purloined Pub
Inside the main door in a small sort of waiting room. It’s cramped and smells vaguely of piss, with water stains on the wall and smudged posters advertising a local witch band from like thirty years ago. Merlin stands at the ready, his hand twitching at the base of his wand sleeve. Nicholas, meanwhile, has crouched down in the corner to examine what appears to be a dead rat.
There’s a final scraping sound as Puck steps in and shuts the door behind us. With all four of us here, there’s barely space for Nicholas to stand up without stepping on the rat—which he does anyway, confirming both our suspicions that it is in fact dead. Puck shivers and shakes the few flakes of snow that’ve alighted on his shoulders.
I’m about to ask if this is where he was taking us, a tiny dirty room about the size of an elevator, when there’s suddenly a loud clicking sound from the wall and another door, partially hidden behind the many posters, slides open.
A burly man greets us with a stare from the other side. He’s dressed in a long dark leather coat and a beard that looks like it’s actually just a mummified raccoon pasted to his face.
He glances over each of the boys in turn, until he gets to me. His eyes narrow, going unfocused in that way I know well. But before he can comment on my unusual aura, Merlin steps forward and money exchanges palms. After that, he moves aside and lets us through . . . but not without making sure to stare at my ass as we do.
From the way he grunts in appreciation, next time, I could just give him a little peek rather than having one of the boys pay a bribe. Sometimes I forget what a valuable commodity a young female Dark Witch can be these days.
The inside of the bar looks like it was made from a salvaged shipwreck and squeezed into the nooks and crannies between two adjoining shops. Three floors of termite-eaten balconies lead down to the drink counter at the bottom floor. From the entrance on the top level, I can lean over the rickety railing and peer down at the heads of those swaying under the influence of alcohol down below.
We squeeze our way past patrons on stools and leaning up against more poster-covered walls, working our way down flight by flight. In the dim light inside, even I hardly get a second glance.
The moment our feet hit the groaning wooden planks at the bottom, Puck disappears. Every so often I catch a flash
of silver hair in a reflection or ducking under a set of bar stools, just enough to reassure me he’s still here—somewhere.
Merlin, meanwhile, finds us a table in an especially dark corner and goes to the bar to order us a round of drinks. My preparations leading up to tomorrow’s ceremony doesn’t allow for alcohol, so though he comes back with dark whiskeys for the two of them, I’m handed a hot chocolate with extra marshmallows to sip on like a little girl out of place in a dirty dive bar. Secretly, I don’t mind. I’m still reeling from the effects of the witch alcohol at Highborne, and still slightly convinced I made up half of what I saw that night because of it.
But only slightly.
Merlin and Nicholas, meanwhile, both knock back their drinks without making so much as a face. For Merlin, this doesn’t surprise me. But watching Nicholas nearly makes me spit out the hot chocolate in my mouth.
“I didn’t take you to be the drinking type,” I say, pretending to give him a thorough once-over while actually giving him a discreet once-over.
Nicholas smiles sheepishly and waves his hand so the bartender fetches another round.
“How else do you think he stays so cheerful all the time,” Merlin says, picking up his glass to admire the smudged fingerprints along the outside rim. “I tell you, it isn’t natural.”
“What isn’t natural is the way you always look like you have to take a giant shit,” Nicholas says, nonchalantly. This time, I do spit out my chocolate—but not from my mouth. Hot liquid comes streaming out my nose and all over the already-stained tabletop.
Merlin leaps to his feet, narrowly avoiding getting blasted by my hot chocolate nose-cannon. Nicholas just doubles over laughing while trying to hand me fistfuls of napkins to clean myself up.
Puck, of course, chooses this exact moment to return. He stands over us shaking his head.
“I leave for one minute, and this is what I come back to.” He wags an accusatorial finger at Merlin. “And you said I’d be the one to get us in trouble.”
“Fuck off,” Merlin growls, carefully wiping his seat before sinking back into it as Puck climbs over the table to squeeze in beside me in the booth. “What’s that?”
He nods at something tucked under Puck’s arm that I didn’t notice before.
I finish wadding together all the soiled napkins and pile them up unceremoniously at the end of the table.
Puck shifts his weight and slaps the box on top of the table in front of him. It’s long and slender, made of a dark sort of velvet-covered cardboard, and tied neatly with a silver thread.
“This,” he says, hovering his hands just above the top of the box, “is what we’re really here for.”
“Oh, you mean this dirty literal hole in the wall isn’t supposed to be the highlight of my first trip out of the academy?” I ask.
He ignores my snide remark and starts slowly pulling at the ends of the thread. “I think even Merlin would agree that if we didn’t do this, this whole trip wouldn’t count.”
Merlin squirms a little in his seat, but he says nothing. He and Nicholas keep their eyes glued to the box as Puck unwinds the last knot in the thread. I find myself leaning closer, my breath stilling as the threads spool out across the table.
Puck wiggles his fingers excitedly before finally sweeping off the lid of the box with a flourish.
Cradled in more velvet inside, are four pairs of identical black masks.
All three of them stare into the box hungrily, but I can’t help glancing between them while raising an eyebrow. “So . . . are we going to rob the joint or something?”
“No,” Merlin says, reaching into the box carefully without so much as looking up at me. He, along with the others, are eyeing the masks with an unexpected lust. He picks up one of them carefully, his fingers careful not to smudge the matte black surface. When he does finally look back up at me, it isn’t until the mask hovers just in front of his face. “Though what we are about to do is just as dangerous . . . almost.”
He presses the mask to his face. His eyes bore into mine for a moment, locking onto mine as the rest of him starts to shimmer. The mask on his face turns transparent and then disappears entirely. As it does, the features around it start to change. He grows a little taller, his shoulders more stooped, his hair sprouts and lengthens, and the shadow of a beard darkens the line of his jaw.
The only part of him that doesn’t change is the bright blue of his eyes looking out at me.
“Very nice,” Nicholas says, reaching for a mask of his own.
Puck smacks his hand away, however, and hands him one of the others. When Nicholas fixes the mask to his face, he shrinks—turning into a blonde-haired man with soft features and teeth a little too white. Or, it could just be that he can’t stop grinning at the way I’m staring back at him.
“You next, little bird,” Puck says, handing me the mask he took from Nicholas.
I weigh it in my hand a moment. “What exactly are we going to do with these?” I ask.
He just shakes his head. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.”
With the fourth mask in Puck’s hands, we put them on together. The first thing I notice is the way my hands change.
The moment the mask touches the skin of my face, the tips of my fingers start to grow. My nails shorten and callouses form on the pads of my fingers. My whole body feels like it’s swelling—getting larger, heavier, stronger. Even the bench beneath me registers the change, groaning under the shift in weight. But it isn’t until I feel the shoulders of my blouse grow suddenly tight and burst at the seams that I realize just how much my body has changed.
“Oh shit.”
I look up from my hands.
There, sitting beside me, is a brown-haired girl with full, red lips and boobs so big they can’t even be hidden by Puck’s now vastly oversized boy’s clothes.
I guffaw—and nearly scare the shit out of myself when the voice that issues from my throat is deep and gravelly. I have to lift one of my new bear-like arms up to my mouth and clear my throat several times before I can speak.
“So . . . this is your fantasy girl, huh?” I ask, my eyes lingering on Puck’s new exaggerated proportions. “You do realize you look like a sex doll, right?”
“Quick, switch with me,” Puck says, reaching up to take off his mask.
I shoot out and catch his wrist to stop him.
“We only have a few seconds to undo it,” he says, his voice high and whiny. But try as he might to wrestle his hand free, it doesn’t budge.
“Huh,” I say, giving his wrist a bit of a squeeze. “So this is what I’ve been missing out on my whole life. It’s kind of nice.”
“Ouch!” he says, his face twisting up. “That hurts.” I let go of his hand, and he clutches it to his chest—only to immediately get distracted by his own boobs. He unfastens the top couple buttons and peers down his shirt admiringly.
I bark out a laugh again, scooting forward to slap my hand on the table. As I do—I feel something twitch between my legs and almost let out the giant lumberjack equivalent of a blood-curdling shriek.
I flip up the top of my skirt, frantically prepared to crush a rat or something that’s climbed up into my lap—but I have to stop.
It’s not a rat.
There, between my giant muscular thighs that’ve all but shredded my tights, is the biggest, giantest penis I’ve ever seen. My lacy panties had no chance against it. It’s got to be eleven inches long.
“Hey, careful now,” Nicholas says, standing up to block any glances from nearby patrons. I notice he conspicuously averts his eyes from my new giant crotch rocket. “You can’t just go swinging that around in public.”
“Oh my god,” I say, glancing back down at it. This is the sort of dick that would do that helicopter thing really well. I’ve got to try it. I never needed to do it before, but now I do.
For the boys’ sakes, I rearrange my skirt to cover my lap again. Puck is still wiggling uncomfortably to my left, and across from me, Merlin
keeps shooting me sidelong glances out of the corner of his eye.
I lean back in my seat and survey my new view of the bar. “Yeah, I’m not switching with you, Puck.”
He huffs, his tiny shoulders lifting and dropping down with a sigh of surrender.
Nicholas finally sits back down across from me. Now that my dick isn’t out on full display, he’s the only one who keeps staring at me. Compared to me now, he looks like a little fairy. His stolen face is slender and pointed, with a narrow chin and cupid’s-bow lips.
Beside him, Merlin is the very picture of tall dark and handsome. It’s actually not that far off from his usual appearance, but something about the change makes him look like that hot young professor every girl longs to drool over.
I lift my massive hands up and run them along the base of my sharp, square jaw and the beard that’s appeared there. For a second, I’m distracted by the lines of veins popping out of my exposed forearms.
And then, of course, there’s Puck.
He still looks sour about how things have turned out, but that could just be his mask’s resting bitch face . . . since he still seems pretty preoccupied with how to keep his new boobs together.
“So, I’m guessing you got these masks from some kind of sex shop?” I ask, trying to shift in my seat only to discover I also have balls—and they’re surprisingly difficult to arrange without shoving my hand right down between my legs. My split panties have left me bare-assed on the bench, and it’s not a good feeling. I hope balls aren’t too prone to splinters.
“No,” Puck mutters, “but I might as well have. I mean, there’s no way I’m going out like this now.”
The bartender reappears at the table and sets down the drinks Merlin ordered before we all decided to do a body switch. He doesn’t seem to notice we’re not the same witches who sat in these seats minutes earlier.
“Did you see that?” Puck says as soon as his back’s turned. “He totally stared at my tits.”
He pulls the blouse back shut and scowls.
“Ha,” I say, sitting back up, “welcome to the club.” I snatch Puck’s drink out of his hand and slide the rest of my hot chocolate in his direction instead. My fingers flex against the now-dwarfed glass. I bet I could crush it in my hand if I wanted to. Instead, I throw it back like a shot.
Dark Witch: A Paranormal Academy Romance (Academy of the Dark Arts Book 1) Page 25
