Some were turned to ash. Others grew appendages in all sorts of unusual places, that burst from their bodies. The majority of them were turned inside out in one way or another. The ground outside her home was dyed red, covered in the mutilated corpses in various states of distress.
Mona smiled wickedly throughout the carnage, even laughing at some of the shapes her victims made when they were ripped apart piece by piece. She was relishing every spell she brought down on her foes, basking in power that most would never be able to contain.
Her own coven looked on in horror. They knew their leader was capable of atrocities, but they never saw firsthand the depths of her sadism. Realization fell over them all at nearly the same moment and they knew that they had made a mistake.
As much as they wanted a taste of that magical power, they knew now that it was poisonous.
They were going to be following Mona Greer into Hell.
When the dust settled, most of their village had been destroyed. The ones who remained were part of the coven, but they all looked at the wreckage with newfound understanding, and newfound concern.
“What ... what have you done?” one asked.
“The inevitable,” Mona said, tapping her foot against an ash pile that had once been a man. “This was always going to end in violence. That is the way of the world. They try and burn away everything they don't like. I've reclaimed much of the lost knowledge ... but not all. Not yet. Everything I can here, though. We will move on to a new home and learn what we can from there. And then another after that.”
“These were our friends! Some were family!”
“They were inconsequential,” Mona hissed. “Mere insects next to us.” She stomped on a mangled corpse just for the effect of squashing a bug. “We had nearly depleted this whole village anyway. We will find new blood to help us hone our magic.”
Her followers had lost faith. The slaughter of their community had opened their eyes to what Mona really was. The way she now spoke ... she was hardly human at all. She was something else—something rotten.
They knew that Mona's vile presence couldn't be allowed to fester any longer. Their village was just the beginning. Her dark magic would spread like a plague, burning away everything in its path. Her power would grow until she was unstoppable. If they wanted any chance of bringing her violence to an end, they would need to move quickly.
If they tried to oppose her directly, they would end up like that mob of villagers. They may have some magical knowledge, but they weren't nearly as experienced or powerful as their leader. Mona would overcome their magic with ease and tear them apart with her own. Even with their greater numbers, they would be nothing against her, and none of them wanted to be turned to ash or split apart by the curses and hexes at Mona's disposal.
So, they bid their time. They stuck with Mona, as she began her new explorations and started abducting new victims. Every time they considered striking, they hesitated. They all knew it may be their only chance and didn't want to waste it. If they made one mistake, they'd all be butchered by the woman they once trusted and gladly supported.
The time finally came on a fall night while Mona slept. They decided it was the only way, but even asleep, they were concerned that Mona had cast protections around herself. A slumbering monster was still a monster, and they couldn't risk waking her.
One of her most trusted slunk into her room as she slept, and took possession of her book of shadows. Hopefully, severing her from all of that accumulated knowledge would give them an edge.
They all made their move at the same time, being sure to keep Mona from speaking any of her incantations as they did. They pulled her from where she slept and through her snarls and attempts to bite their hands, they dragged Mona outside and tied her to a tree, keeping her quiet with a rope between her lips.
She stared at them with wide, vindictive eyes. Her gaze shifted to her book and she grew even angrier, writhing and contorting between her constraints. They all trembled at the sight, knowing they would all be dead if Mona was even allowed an inch of freedom.
“It's time for this to end, Mona.”
They held lit torches, but they weren't going to use them for the illumination. They would make for a fine tool of execution. They splashed Mona with pitch, staining her in its black gleam. Her two furious eyes stood out even more on her body and they saw utter contempt in them. It was clear that she was thinking of all of the gruesome ways she would punish her treacherous coven.
Thankfully, they wouldn't give her the chance to seek retribution for the betrayal. They would burn her, purge her evil from the world—and they did. They held their torches to the pitch on her body and watched the fire rise up her body until she was entirely set aflame.
Mona Greer never screamed.
She simply stared at her murderers through the smoke and flame, as the fire consumed the rest of her body. Her eyes kept staring until she was nothing but ash. Even then, many of the coven still felt her scornful gaze on them.
Once the deed was done, they stood around their former leader's execution ground. They all stared at where Mona had been burned alive, half-expecting her to rise from her own ashes. It seemed impossible that someone so powerful could actually be gone, but they'd done it. She never expected her followers to turn on her. She thought they were too indebted to her for the power and knowledge she shared with them ... but their loyalty to her had limits. They weren't the monsters that she was.
They all huddled around the book of shadows, too afraid to even open it. The one holding it—a young man named Bartholomew—prepared to open it with his trembling hands.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed onto his wrist.
“No.”
“No?” Bartholomew looked to Maura, whose fingers were still wrapped around him. “You must want to see what is inside!”
“I do not,” Maura said firmly. “I have no desire to hear the fleeting thoughts of Mona Greer. She is gone. We ended her. Let us destroy what's left. Put an end to all of this.”
Bartholomew considered her reasoning but couldn't agree. They had seen how powerful their leader was. The things she was capable of were beyond imagination. Why let it all go to waste? Perhaps they could use it differently than she had. They could use that magical knowledge for something positive rather than the destruction that Mona Greer was so obsessed with.
The faces around him all stared at the book. Some looked afraid, while others leaned forward curiously, wanting a better look at the journal in Bartholomew's hands. Trepidation surrounded him but his curiosity couldn't be stopped. He needed to know. There was only one way to know.
Bartholomew opened Mona Greer's book of shadows.
He almost immediately let the book fall to the ground and kicked the cover over it to hide what was within. Most of the others managed to get at least a glimpse of the page inside and they all retreated a few steps, muttering nervously among themselves.
“Now do you see?” Mona asked him. “We need to destroy it.”
Bartholomew was practically gasping. It felt like he'd been hit in the gut by the contents of the book. Part of him wanted to gouge his own eyes out to avoid even the chance of seeing what was inside again. “ ... Agreed.”
Bartholomew struggled to even pick the journal off of the ground, suddenly fearful that its touch would harm him. What was inside was certainly poisonous and now that he knew its contents, who knew if it could make him ill?
The tree that Mona Greer had been tied to was still burning and Bartholomew brought the book to the flaming pyre. He didn't hesitate to toss it into the flames. He would be glad to be rid of it, just like the rest of the coven. The last remnants of the monster that they let control their lives, that they willingly would have followed into Hell. Now she was there alone, and soon her lingering thoughts on page would join her in the eternal flames.
They watched the paper be overtaken by fire and waited for it to catch and burn away just like its author. They stood there observing for what felt like
hours, but the book just lay there, completely intact despite its surroundings. It didn't burn.
“No...” Bartholomew groaned. “No, that can't be.”
He held out his hand and whispered an incantation that should have created an explosion of flame within the book. The burst of fire erupted but the book of shadows was unfazed by the spell. Everyone began trying their own spells to destroy the book, but their knowledge was limited compared to Mona Greer's. Whatever protections she had placed on her journal were too advanced for any of them to break through. She had made her journal—and by extension her thoughts—impossible to destroy.
They prodded the book out of the flames and attempted to tear it apart, all being careful not to look at its contents as they made their attempts. It couldn't be ripped. It couldn't be damaged at all. Mona Greer made it so her written word could never be erased from the world. Not fully.
All they could do was pull the pages away from the bindings, but the pages themselves were invulnerable to any further wear and tear.
It took a long while, but they finally came up with an idea of how to proceed with the new challenge of getting past Mona Greer's protections she had made over her writing.
The members of the coven took each other's hands and stood around the pages in a circle, while Mona Greer's work lay on the ground at their epicenter. They began to chant together in unison, all reciting the same words with the same tones and at the same time in perfect harmony.
The pages they encircled swayed from the combined power coming from the group of witches. They all tried to avoid looking at the actual writing and drawings sketched on the papers, both out of precaution and complete terror. Instead, they all focused their thoughts on getting rid of Mona Greer's work. If they couldn't destroy it, then they could at least try and hide it from ever having any other readers.
As they spoke the spell, one singular incantation being echoed by many voices, the writing on the papers began to move freely. Letters slithered away from the words that they had been a crucial part of forming. The crude diagrams Mona drew twisted apart and became a tornado of ink on the page. Words bisected and flew away from each other, unwinding like yarn into incomprehensible scratches of ink.
The coven continued their chanting and could feel their magic rubbing up against the protections Mona had placed on the pages. She clearly anticipated that there was a chance someone would try to destroy the page, and her magic ensured that didn't happen. However, it didn't seem like Mona Greer ever considered that there were other ways to get rid of something without having to destroy it.
Of course, the coven would prefer that their former leader's book of shadows be completely disposed of but that couldn't be done, no matter how hard they tried. So, scrambling the words on the page and stopping anyone else from ever reading the chaos inside that book would have to do for the time being. As long as Mona's words weren't easily found or used, then it would be enough. It had to be.
The words on the pages continued to splinter, shatter, and spiral in opposite directions from each other until the papers were all covered in a layer of black scribbles. They had all become completely impossible to decipher—just like they wanted.
The coven ended their synchronized chant and stared down at their accomplishment with varying expressions. Some were relieved to have found a way to stop Mona's work from infecting any minds in the future. Others looked uncertain, like they were expecting the words to all reform and for the pages to fly back into the book. They all waited, and after a few minutes of no change, they began to ease.
It was done then. Mona Greer's knowledge would forever be hidden away, far from the minds of any future generations.
“You all know what this means,” Bartholomew said.
“Yes,” the rest of the coven replied, almost at once, like they were still connected by the spell they all performed together.
One by one, the former members of Mona Greer's coven stepped up to the papers laying in the dirt. When each member did, they also took one page with them. The important thing now was to keep the contents of that horrible journal far away from each other, where they would hopefully be forgotten and never touched ever again.
The coven separated that day just like the book of shadows had. None of them ever spoke to any of the others again. They all shared a challenging time together, following the will of a mad witch with no qualms about studying the darkest of magics. But they all understood the newfound importance of staying apart. They could never let that book be put back together. The world would be far worse for it, if it did.
With that, the last remnants of Mona's coven broke apart, each hiding one of her scrambled pages somewhere they hoped they could never be found. It seemed possible at the time, but they didn't know the lengths people would eventually go to dig up the past.
Over the years, the decades, and now over a century, the stories of Mona Greer softened and never did her cruelty justice. Many people in the witch community painted her as far less dangerous than she actually was at the time. She became a controversial figure in her own right. A Wiccan wanting to conserve the older, more natural ways of heading ... or a witch hell-bent on sacrificing humans to increase her own connection to magic.
Her former coven knew the truth. They knew that she was a plague that they had to stop, so they did. Her book of shadows and its hidden contents became nothing more than a fable for generations. Very few really believed the book was actually out there, and even less believed that the book had been split apart to parts unknown all over the world. They would never understand that the page's separation was protecting them from Mona's evil just like it was protecting the rest of the world from it.
For a long time, that had been Mona Greer's legacy: a powerful practitioner of some vile and savage, old magic with a mysterious book that no one dared to even try and look for.
It was only when her book of shadows would be found, though, that people would understand the true depths of her wickedness. They would see her the way that her coven eventually did: as an abomination.
They would understand why the book of shadows should never be read.
The trailer rumbled around them as the truck dragged it across Scotland. It might have been nausea from the ride, but Sasha felt unusually anxious. She sat inside the trailer, surrounded by her fellow Black Sun operatives—fellow soldiers just like her. It was a sight and feeling that she should have been used to; dutiful warriors in body armor, doing a last-minute check of their weaponry, preparing for the mission ahead of them.
It was all very familiar for a mercenary like Sasha.
So why did she feel so unsettled by it all?
Sasha had often participated in operations that were supposed to be suicide missions. She had been part of teams breaching heavily fortified facilities. She'd been pinned down by enemy gunfire. Grenades had been rolled in her direction, had tumbled right up to her feet seconds before exploding.
This mission for the Black Sun—this operation Julian had been so focused on since his revival—would be easy in comparison to everything else Sasha had survived over the years.
So why was it that she still felt so stick to her stomach?
Why was this so different to anything else she'd done before?
Their objective was simple: take everything from David Purdue. That wouldn't be hard considering he didn't have the faintest idea that they were coming for him. Even if he did have a clue of what was to come, he hardly had the means to defend himself against their order. He would need to buy his own private army to do that—Purdue could probably afford it, but that would require him to know that he was in the middle of a war with an almost invisible enemy.
Sasha tried to center herself, refocus, and get her head back on straight but none of it felt right. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, Nina Gould had a point, and her words were bouncing between Sasha's ears. All of her questioning about how Sasha could willingly work with someone like Julian. Sasha hadn't answered Nina, because she
didn't owe that woman any answers, but Sasha knew the truth. She knew exactly who her leader was.
Sasha was following the orders of a man who was so obviously unhinged. His first days leading the Black Sun already had such a needlessly high body count.
The Order of the Black Sun had never been used as a personal weapon for just one person to wield for their own ends; at least, not to the degree Julian was using it. Instead of following Julian's crusade against Purdue, they could instead be finding other relics, or influencing world powers, or even recruiting new members. Instead, they were spending all of their time and resources going after one man. Just one. Granted, he had been a frustrating man but just one man nonetheless.
Sasha had spent some time with Purdue back when they were looking for the Spear of Destiny. She didn't particularly like him, but she also didn't really care about killing—or ruining—Purdue. Getting rid of him wouldn't suddenly make the Black Sun better. It would just serve to please Julian and little rodents like Galen. It was all a waste, and not at all necessary to the betterment of their society's future.
If this was the new direction for the Order of the Black Sun, Sasha was not a fan.
But she couldn't say anything about that. She couldn't question it or even try and come up with alternatives. She could only do as she was told because she liked being alive. The only way for her to live at this point was to live under Julian's thumb.
So that's where she remained—but Nina's questions still plagued her mind every few minutes.
Galen sat across from her. He very clearly didn't share her discomfort or uncertainty. He was quite the opposite; glowing with child-like excitement, giddy at the prospect of taking down David Purdue. His jealousy for Purdue had turned to hatred, and he wanted nothing more than to tip his old acquaintance's life upside down. He couldn't wait to see Purdue's face when they reunited because he wouldn't be able to look down on him anymore, like he usually did. No. This time, Galen would be staring at him eye-level, on equal footing, or perhaps even from a little higher up.
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 9 Page 50
