Witch Myth Super Boxset: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery

by Alexandria Clarke

  The two halves of the coven met near the inferno of the yew tree, and as Gwenlyn cleaved a demon in two with her baseball bat, saving another witch from its clammy grasp, a wave of confidence in my family rushed over me.

  “Nice of you to join us!” I shouted to Gwenlyn, firing a shot over her shoulder to dispatch one particularly overweight ghost.

  “I got here as fast as I could,” she called back and swung the bat upward, between the legs of another demon. It collapsed on top of her, and she shoved it off with a disgusted groan. “Take me to dinner first. Sheesh.”

  I laughed, dancing around Gwenlyn to fire at will. My hand was already sore from the kick of the gun, but I pulled the trigger over and over, ignoring my cramping muscles. Nearby, Malia and Laurel fought back to back, nearly invisible within their swirl of witchcraft. Karma had retrieved one of her voodoo dolls. She now stood on the bench beneath the yew tree, protected by a three hundred sixty-degree force field, calmly manipulating the demons closest to her into disassembling each other.

  “Morgan!” she called out to me. She pointed across the way, toward the tree line. “Your boyfriend’s here.”

  I craned my neck to take a look. Sure enough, Dominic had finally appeared from the shadowy depths of the woods, and he was not alone. A fresh group of demons accompanied him, but they formed a strange barrier around something that I couldn’t see.

  “Karma, what are they protecting?” I shouted over the din, taking aim at yet another advancing ghost.

  Karma peered off into the distance. “Oh, you’ll never believe this.”

  “What?”

  “It’s his mother and sister.”

  A demon’s head snapped back as I fired a bullet through its gaping nasal cavity. “Seriously? Dominic must still think he can sacrifice us to help them. Let them get as close to the yew tree as possible, then take out the demons. Leave Dominic to me.”

  Karma nodded, keeping a keen eye on Dominic’s advancing battalion. The demons surrounding Dominic’s family steadily marched forward, but the coven followed my lead in pretending not to notice them. Dominic himself lingered behind his fresh soldiers. Was it fear that inspired him to stay away from the battle, or did he have something even more malevolent up his sleeve? Whatever the case, I kept Dominic in my peripheral vision, waiting for the best possible moment to catch him by surprise.

  As the demons approached the brawl, another witch stepped up to the bench to join Karma. Together, voodoo dolls in hand, they began to trim down the number of demons protecting Dominic and his family. I body slammed another demon into the yew tree, and another swell of satisfaction ripped through me at the sight of the fire consuming its corpse. When I glanced back at Dominic’s shield, I caught a glimpse of his mother and sister through the wall of bodies. Karma had taken down enough of Dominic’s puppets for a gap to appear in his defense. They were close now, only five or so yards from the base of the burning yew tree. I leapt up to Karma’s bench in the hopes of a better angle and raised the pistol. I closed one eye, peered over the front sight of the handgun, and, with an ease that almost shocked me, fired two shots.

  As each bullet found its mark, an alarming amount of things happened at once. My ancient runes grew to an intensity that nearly blinded me, Dominic let out an anguished howl of disbelief, and the yew tree’s fiery trunk split open to reveal the same portal to the otherworld that had once transported me to the gloomy bank of that gray river. It seemed so long ago that Dominic had made the mistake of trading me for his family, like another era entirely, so when his mother and sister, whose names I had never learned, embraced the portal with no hesitation, it felt as though a cycle had been completed. In the last moment before the two women vanished, I saw their gaunt, drawn faces revert to their original selves. They had been beautiful women, but the reversal of death was more of a curse than a blessing, and the look of divine relief upon their newly angelic faces was enough for me to know that I had done them a favor. They stepped forward, allowing the yew tree to swallow them, and the portal closed, once again leaving Dominic Dobbes alone in the mortal world.

  Distracted by the drama, I didn’t notice that another spirit had set its sights on me until it had wrapped its arms around my legs and pulled. My feet swept out from under me, and Karma made a wild grab to rescue me, but there was no stopping gravity. My torso landed heavily on the stone bench, and I heard the unmistakable crunch of cracking ribs. I gasped, which only exacerbated the paralyzing pain in my midsection, but managed to jam the pistol up beneath the offending ghost’s throat and pull the trigger. As the spirit dematerialized, I let my head fall back onto the burnt brown grass near the yew tree, holding my damaged ribs with my free hand.

  Karma jumped down from the bench, warding off another ghost with a fresh attack spell. She kneeled next to me as I tried to sit up. I drew in shallow, ragged breaths since the pain in my chest was too intense to consider doing anything else. Karma conjured a healing spell of her own making, and her lilac-colored aura began to swirl around me.

  “Punctured lung,” she said, as I feebly angled the handgun to shoot a demon that had risen behind her.

  “Super.” I gasped with the effort of forcing words out. “You can fix it in the next ten seconds, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Severe injuries took longer to heal. Not only did Karma have to focus on the punctured lung but my various broken ribs as well. She drew on the coven’s collective power, both of her hands pressed to either side of my torso. I winced as the witchcraft worked, arranging bones and repairing the tissue of my lungs, but tried to stay alert and aware of the battle around us. More than once, I fired the pistol, but I was not prepared for the moment of violence that accosted us next.

  Gwenlyn’s baseball bat swung through the air, connecting with Karma’s skull. The light left her eyes in under a second, and she slumped over before the healing spell had a chance to finish its work. I could breathe properly now, but my ribs still throbbed with a dull ache. Trapped under Karma’s weight, I tipped my head back to see who had wielded Gwenlyn’s bat so mercilessly, but something told me I already knew the culprit.

  Dominic stood above me, grinning maniacally, the blood-covered baseball bat swinging from his hand. He looked no more alive than his walking corpses, drained by the power he had expended in keeping his army intact. I raised the gun, aiming at him upside down, but Dominic was too quick this time. He swung the bat like a golf club, knocking the pistol from my hands. I heard it land with a thump in the grass.

  Unarmed, my only chance at survival was to get as far away from Dominic as possible. In one swift movement, I wrenched my legs out from beneath Karma’s limp body, forbidding myself from wondering if she was dead or not, and swung around to face Dominic. I expected him to attack again, but he only watched with a distantly amused expression as I used the nearby bench to pull myself up to standing.

  “What did you do to Gwenlyn?” I asked, one hand hugging my tender midsection. The battle still raged around us, but no one paid us any mind. Ghosts, demons, and witches blew by in a blur of action, and yet it was the bloodied bat in Dominic’s grasp that worried me the most.

  “That pathetic brat?” Dominic flipped the bat up in the air and caught it again. “I dispatched her with her own weapon of choice.” He brandished the bat with a wicked smirk. “With any luck, she’ll never be able to stand again.”

  Forgetting that I was still injured, I launched myself at Dominic with an attack spell at the tips of my fingers. Dodging his last-second swing of the bat, I landed a witchcraft-infused punch to the base of his throat. He made a savage gagging sound, and the spell left a red burn on the skin of his neck, but that didn’t stop him from tossing the bat aside. I barely got my other hand up in time to block his incoming blow, and when his fist connected with my forearm, I realized just how out of my league I was. A close-range hand-to-hand fight wasn't exactly ideal for a woman of my size.

  I ducked under Dominic’s next punch, aiming a jab to his sola
r plexus. As he doubled over, breathless, I bent down to grab a handful of dirt and tossed it into his face. He roared in frustration, wiping at his eyes, but when I tried to dart away, his hand shot out faster than I could imagine. His fingers closed around my wrist, and he drew me closer until my body was locked against his. No matter how I twisted or turned, I couldn’t free myself from Dominic’s vise grip. Then, in a movement so abrupt that I didn’t see it coming, he slammed his forehead against mine. I sagged in his grip, my vision doubling.

  “No more,” he hissed, and his arms tightened around my waist to support my weight. I blinked rapidly, trying to free myself of the daze of Dominic’s headbutt. “You’re dead to me, Morgan Summers,” Dominic went on. “And soon, you’ll be dead to the world.”

  His stale breath washed over me. This was not the way I wanted to go, trapped in the arms of a sociopathic warlock with mommy issues, but the end seemed dangerously close, and I prayed that the coven was strong enough to make it out of this alive on their own. As for me, I knew my chances of survival were slim to none, especially now that I had stripped Dominic of everything he had worked so hard for. His hands made their way up to my throat, and a rotten pleasure gleamed in his blue eyes as his fingers began to contract around my neck. I refused to close my eyes, staring defiantly into Dominic’s face as my airway sealed off.

  “Hey, dumbass,” a tenacious voice said to our right.

  Dominic’s fingers loosened ever so slightly, his attention wandering away from me, and when I glanced over to see who had managed to distract him, I sucked in a tiny, restricted gasp of absolute relief.

  Gwenlyn stood atop the stone bench, a glorious heroine framed against the backdrop of the fiery rage of the yew tree. In her outstretched hand, she held the beast’s pistol in line with Dominic’s head, and the scar on her forearm seared with the incandescence of ancient witchcraft.

  “Lights out,” she said.

  And fired the gun.

  10

  In Which Yew Hollow Finds Peace

  “I am not wearing a flower crown, Laurel,” I said, pushing away the wreath of pink roses and baby’s breath that Laurel was trying to bestow upon my head.

  “Please? I made them for everyone.”

  “Yes, but everyone else’s is white. Why is mine pink?”

  “Because we’re honoring you, of course.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  In the week following the battle beneath the yew tree, the coven had been too busy cleaning up the wreckage in the town square to put together the official ceremony of inducting a new coven leader. There had been too much to do. With Dominic’s death, the ghosts had vanished and the demons abandoned their borrowed bodies, leaving the coven with the distasteful responsibility of reburying the corpses. It took a few days to figure out who belonged in which grave, even with the help of our witchcraft, and we cast a protection ward over the cemetery just in case there were any residual effects of Dominic’s curse. In the end, I was glad that we had gone to the trouble of returning those poor souls to their resting places. It seemed only fair after Dominic had interrupted their eternal slumber.

  Dominic, on the other hand, did not receive such a respectful sendoff. Gwenlyn’s bullet had torn a path of destruction clear through his brain, killing him instantly, but unlike the ghosts, he didn’t disappear into the otherworld. We cremated his body, but the coven agreed as a whole that no one wanted his ashes anywhere near Yew Hollow. A few of the witches volunteered to drive out to the coast, where they unceremoniously discarded his remains in the ocean. No one offered him peace in the afterlife. Personally, I hoped that Dominic would spend the rest of forever on that darkest level of the otherworld with those manic voices repeating his sins to him over and over again.

  None of the coven suffered any lasting injuries, including Karma. Though Dominic had managed to inflict some serious damage with the baseball bat—she had a serious concussion and an even more serious brain bleed—the coven had pooled their abilities once more to revive her. She’d spent the majority of the last week in bed, recuperating, but that morning, she’d joined the rest of us for coffee and breakfast with an exhausted smile.

  Gwenlyn had become the coven’s golden child. The witches doted on her any chance they got, often fighting over whose turn it was to spend time with her. At first, Gwenlyn had reveled in the glory, but her introversion soon got the best of her. The few children in the coven had taken to reenacting the last moments of the battle, and when they pleaded with Gwenlyn to watch, yet again, as they theatrically mimicked Dominic’s final gasping breaths, Gwenlyn cast a spell that rooted the children in place and silently walked away. I couldn’t help but laugh as the children pleaded with her to free them, and in return, Gwenlyn also relieved them of their voices for the afternoon. Since then, I often found Gwenlyn sitting alone, either out on the swing set or in my old bedroom on the third floor of the main house, staring absently out of the bay window. I understood Gwenlyn’s taciturn attitude and need for solitude. After all, she had killed someone, and even if that someone was the scum of the earth, snuffing out another human’s life took a toll on your conscience.

  I had spent the week explaining away the wreckage in the town square to the mortals of Yew Hollow. They had been under Dominic’s trance for so long that nearly everyone I spoke to had a lingering sense of exhaustion about them. I came up with the easiest excuse possible for the disaster area: that a monster of a nor’easter had raged through town and a bolt of lightning made quick work of the yew tree. Thankfully, Dominic’s trance had left the townspeople rather pliable, and no one questioned my patchy story.

  The yew tree itself was a sorrowful sight. All that remained of it was a blackened trunk, splintered and warped, protruding from the earth like an old headstone. I had only been to the town square once since the battle to help the coven tidy up as much of the mess as we could, but I had kept my eyes averted from the yew tree. Yew Hollow felt vacant and unbalanced without the presence of the tree’s aura, and since its destruction was essentially my fault, the burnt remains were an awful reminder of all that had changed.

  Now that the dust had settled, the only order of business left was for the coven to officially instate me as the head of the Summerses. It was more of a formality than anything else. After all, the power of the previous leaders had already been transferred to me during the yew tree’s sacrifice. Though I had protested, the coven insisted on carrying out the ceremony. Admittedly, I didn’t put up much of a fight. If the witches needed a silly tradition in order to feel normal again, I was more than happy to oblige. I’d never been to a leader ceremony—my own mother had gained control of the coven before I was born—but I’d heard that they were meant to be beautiful parties, a celebration of our powers, and from the preparations, I could tell that the coven had gone all out.

  “Laurel!” I batted away another sneak attack of the flower wreath.

  “Come on, Morgan,” she whined, brandishing the crown.

  Gwenlyn bounced down the stairs and into the dining room, her own head adorned with a similar ring of white roses. “For Pete’s sake, Morgan, just wear the damn crown.”

  “Ha!” said Laurel and plunked the crown on my head.

  I harrumphed, reaching up to adjust my new headwear, but finally conceded. I glanced at Gwenlyn, who wore a cream-colored dress that flowed all the way down to the floor. “You look nice,” I said. I’d never seen Gwenlyn in anything but jeans and ratty, hand-me-down T-shirts, so it was almost jarring to see her hair done up in an intricate braid and a hint of makeup on her face.

  She shrugged, picking at the skirt of the dress. “Karma dressed me. I see she got to you too.”

  This was true. Karma had unearthed a dress for me as well, though mine was the pale hue of periwinkles. Malia had done my hair, then disappeared to assist the coven with setting up the ceremony.

  “It’s almost time,” said Laurel. She reached out, tucking a wisp of my hair behind my ear. “Let’s go outside.”

&nbs
p; Together, the three of us headed out to the backyard. The sun was on its way down, and the sky was a collage of pink, orange, and blue. Despite my initial reluctance at taking part in the ceremony, I couldn’t help but take in a little gasp when I saw what the witches had been working on all day. The coven had constructed a beautiful trellis out of pale wood and decorated it with a collection of different-colored roses. The witches themselves had gathered in a loose circle around the trellis, awaiting my approach, all dressed in various shades of springtime.

  “Here we go,” I muttered, more to myself than to Gwenlyn or Laurel. I stepped off the porch, holding my chin level as I made my way to the trellis.

  The ceremony itself was blissfully short. I stood alone beneath the trellis while the coven joined hands and sang in Latin. At some point, the aura of each witch reached out to embrace me, and I closed my eyes as I was swept away into a disembodied state of mind. When all was said and done, the witches erupted into cheers, and despite myself, I couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across my face.

  A firelit feast followed the ceremony. Several aunts of mine had spent the day cooking. We all sat down to dinner in the backyard at one long picnic table that another one of the witches had conjured. I sipped sparkling wine, enjoying the smiles of the coven. After so much strife, they deserved a little bit of happiness together. It wasn’t long after dessert, though, that Gwenlyn sought me out. She beckoned me away from the coven, and after a hesitant glance down the table to make sure the rest of the witches were still occupied with each other, I sidled out of my seat and joined Gwenlyn.