Witches of Twisted Den (Part One) (Beautiful Immortals Series Three Book 1)

by Tim O'Rourke

  Feeling somewhat perplexed by what they had just told me, I said, “She killed all those children…”

  “Not Clarabelle, she didn’t kill anybody,” Trent said. “It was the monster that did that. All of us have monsters lurking just beneath the flesh, Mila.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  Rea eyed me. “Are you so sure about that, Mila? You’re a Wicce – your monster is called a witch – but it’s just a monster by a different name. And if your father really is a Beautiful Immortal, well…” She trailed off.

  “Well what?” I demanded.

  With what looked like a smirk playing at the corners of her lips, Rea said, “This is going to be interesting.”

  “Interesting, how?”

  “Have you noticed any changes within you?” Trent asked.

  This one simple question couldn’t help but make me think of how I’d been recently feeling. That sudden rush of energy bursting up from my core, down my arms and into my fingertips. It was a feeling that I’d been having when angry or frustrated – when the villagers had stared at me during the town meeting in the church, and when I’d been accused of letting Annabel run into the woods where she had been killed. It had been those times when I had felt that sudden flush and surge of power within me.

  As if being able to read my mind and sense my internal indecisions, Rea asked me another question. “Mila, have you had any injuries on your body that have inexplicably healed recently?”

  I thought of how quickly the scratches on my hand, which I’d received while digging up Annabel’s grave – had vanished almost overnight. I could also remember that time, when discovering the two skeletons in the outhouse on my uncle’s land, and how I’d managed to bring the wolfsbane back to life with a few drops of my own blood.

  Once again, and as if being able to read my thoughts somehow – like she was looking into my soul – Rea said, “Because if you have, then perhaps you are more like us – more like a Beautiful Immortal than you first realised.”

  Not wanting to hear any more, and unable to be confronted with the reality that perhaps I was more like a Beautiful Immortal than I was human, I turned my back on them and made my way across the pub toward the door. I needed time to think. I needed time to make sense of everything I had just been told.

  As I curled my hand around the door handle, Rea called out to me and said, “You should think long and hard about Flint’s future.”

  Turning in the doorway, I looked back and said, “And why do I have to think about Flint’s future?”

  It wasn’t Rea who answered my question, it was Trent. “It was you, Mila, who Flint came in search of. It’s the reason why the vampires returned to Shade. You need to decide which side you’re on – the vampires’ side or ours, the werewolves’. If you kill Flint, you will be sending a message that you trust us over the vampires.”

  “Please stay with us in Shade,” Rush said. “The magic that your mother created all those years ago is now fading and growing weaker by the day. The magic used to once reach as far as the wooden wall that surrounds this town, but it has since begun to retreat, shrink back as far as the Weeping Wolf and the alleyway.”

  Hearing Rush say this, I at last understood why I felt so strange each time I passed through the alleyway. It was the last remaining remnants of the magic – the invisible wall my mother had once created around Shade – which I could feel.

  “If you don’t kill Flint,” Rea said, “if you set him free then he will return and keep returning until the vampires have killed us all. And if you refuse to join them, they will kill you, just how they killed your mother.”

  With Rea’s warning haunting me, I turned my back on them once more and left the Weeping Wolf.

  Chapter Five

  Mila Watson

  I pulled the hood of my sweater up to protect my face from the driving rain. It hit my cheeks and forehead like little ice pellets and the wind whipped up all around me. Before stepping into the alleyway, I paused. It seemed strange to me to believe that I was about to pass through a magic spell that my mother had created some nineteen years ago in this town called Shade. And if Julia Miller really had been my mother, did I too have the same kind of power lying dormant inside me? Would I be able to create such magic one day? Although it would have been easy for me to dismiss the notion that Julia Miller – the witch – was my mother, it was something I couldn’t easily shake off. I knew in my heart that Julia Miller and I shared some kind of connection. Why else had I been able to see through her eyes when I was tied to the stake in the woods? If there was no connection between us, how had I witnessed her making love with that wolf-man on the bed in my room? Rea had been right, I had felt a change in me, something I hadn’t felt before coming to Shade. I did sense that there was a growing power inside of me. Perhaps, because I was living in the house were my mother had once lived, she was somehow nurturing that power deep within me.

  Driving my hands into my pockets and bowing my head, I stepped into the alleyway. I felt that feeling of being pulled forwards and backwards – and up and down – all at once. And just like I had so many times before, I stared straight ahead, imagining the street in the distance. Placing my right foot forward, I moved and within a heartbeat I was stepping out into the street at the end of the alley. I followed the twisting and winding road, my boots slapping against the wet cobblestones and sloshing through puddles. It was still night and as I glanced upwards toward the sky, I could see that the array of stars were now hidden behind a slow-moving bank of stormy-looking clouds.

  Reaching the edge of the park, I cut across it. I hadn’t gone very far when I heard the cry of the swing as it swayed backwards and forwards in the wind. Looking up, I could see that it wasn’t just the wind that was causing it to sway back and forth. Clarabelle was sitting on it, alone and in the dark. She cut a lonely figure in the pale moonlight and my heart couldn’t help but twist a little as I wondered how awful it must be for a young girl to spend so much time alone. As I approached the swing, Clarabelle dragged her bare feet through the puddle that had formed beneath her in the rain-soaked ground.

  “Hey, Miss Watson,” Clarabelle said with a smile. She always looked happy, but I wondered whether that was just a mask she wore to conceal the untamed monster that haunted her inside.

  “Hi, Clarabelle,” I smiled back. “You know you don’t have to call me Miss Watson the whole time. You can call me Mila, just like everybody else does.”

  “Okay, Mila,” Clarabelle said, beginning to sway gently backwards and forwards on the swing again. She seemed undeterred by the driving wind and rain and indifferent to how her long black hair lay plastered to the sides of her pale face. It didn’t seem to bother her the slightest how her knee-length white dress clung to her fragile-looking frame. How such a delicate looking creature could be responsible for so many deaths, I failed to fathom.

  “Don’t you think you’d be better off inside and in the warmth instead of out in the rain?” I asked.

  “I’m not allowed home until just before daybreak,” Clarabelle said, swinging backwards and forwards in the rain.

  “We could always go to my place,” I suggested. “I could make us both some tea. I know I could use some right now.”

  “Thanks, Miss… Mila… but I don’t think my father would be very happy if I went home with you,” she said.

  “Why…?”

  She cut in before I’d a chance to say anything else. “Give me a push?”

  Taking my hands from my pockets, they began to feel cold at once, and I wondered how it was possible that Clarabelle wasn’t shivering from head to foot in the howling wind and dark. Placing my hands on her bony shoulders, I gently pushed her forward on the swing.

  “Now that you know we are werewolves, will you leave Shade?” Clarabelle asked me.

  Thinking of how I’d like to head back to Maze and speak with my Uncle Sidney, I shook my head and said, “I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “I don�
��t want you to go,” Clarabelle said. Her response took me somewhat by surprise.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I like you, Mila,” she said, dragging her feet in the puddles once again. “You seem kind.”

  “Kind, how?” I asked, a little flattered by her comments.

  “Well, you haven’t been cruel to me,” Clarabelle started to explain. “The other children used to be unkind to me the whole time. They would taunt me, you know, say nasty things.”

  As Clarabelle spoke, I could clearly remember how one of the other children had attacked Annabel in the classroom. It had been this assault that had made Annabel flee into the woods where she was killed.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt those other children,” Clarabelle continued. “I only hurt them because they were mean to me and my sister. I was just trying to protect the both of us. And now she’s gone and I’m totally alone, left to wander Shade while the others sleep – all because I have a monster inside of me.”

  I didn’t know what to say or how to comfort Clarabelle, but before I had a chance to conjure up any sort of response, I heard someone shout from the edge of the park. Both of us looked in the direction of the voice. I could see Clarabelle’s father standing some way off in the distance. And even though he was some way away, I could see that he was still wearing that bloodstained apron. His hands were covered in the red stuff too, as was the meat cleaver he always seemed to carry with him.

  “Get in,” he shouted across the park at Clarabelle. “It’s almost daybreak, so come on! Don’t make me ask you twice, or there will be hell to pay.”

  Without saying a word or even a goodbye, Clarabelle jumped down from the swing. Slowly, she made her way across the park in the direction of her father. As I watched Clarabelle walk away, I knew then what I should have said to the young girl before her father had so suddenly appeared. I would have told Clarabelle that there is a monster of some kind living inside each and every one of us.

  Chapter Six

  Mila Watson

  Closing the front door behind me, I headed up the stairs and into the study where I’d shot Trent earlier that night. That felt like a whole lifetime ago now. The world had seemed a little bit more ordered then. I had still believed my friends were human and not the werewolves I now knew them to be. Christ, I’d believed I was human back then. How had so much changed for me in such a short space of time? Within a matter of hours, I had not only learnt that my friends were werewolves, that my ex-boyfriend was a vampire, but more importantly, my mother had been a witch, and in all probability, so was I.

  Taking the picture of the black iron steam train from the wall, I reached into the hole once more and took out what I now believed had once been my mother’s spell book. But why had she hidden it away? And had it been the spell book that Trent had been looking for when I’d caught him searching the room earlier?

  Holding the spell book in my hands, I headed down the landing and into my bedroom. Here I stripped off my wet and soggy clothes. I put on a fresh T-shirt that was long enough to double as a nightdress. Sitting in the centre of the bed with my legs crossed, I thumbed through the spell book. It was full of the same writing that was tattooed across Calix’s body. Calix had told me that the writing had been placed there by the witch – my mother. He had said that it was a spell of some kind but he didn’t know what. I suspected that I would only ever know what those words meant if I was able to read – decode – that constantly shifting writing which seemed so alive on Calix’s body. With thoughts of Calix occupying my mind, I thought back to the kiss we had shared in the woods by the river. It was as that kiss grew ever deeper and more passionate between us that the writing had started to shift and bleed all over his chest, back, and arms. It was like the shifting writing had caused Calix a great deal of pain. If it hadn’t have been for the discomfort he’d felt, the kiss we had shared would’ve led to something more. There was no doubt in my mind that we would’ve ended up making love in the woods that night. But maybe the writing caused him pain deliberately so that we had been unable to take that kiss any further. But why? Was my mother’s spell trying to give me some kind of warning? Was my mother trying to warn me away from Calix for some reason? But why Calix? He had saved me in the woods after Flint had tied me to that post. I was truly hurt by what Flint had done to me. However, I couldn’t forget how my heart had secretly leapt with joy on seeing him again. Yet, my heart had also felt crushed on discovering that he was a vampire. Would I have felt so much pain – so let down and betrayed – if my feelings for him weren’t that of love? If I didn’t love Flint why did I now feel so much hate for him? But it wasn’t just feelings of hate for Flint that now consumed me, but feelings of hate for my uncle and my parents, too. All of them had lied to me – deceived me in some way. All of them had been responsible for killing my real mother, Julia Miller. As I sat and considered their treachery, I felt that surge of energy spiking up from my very centre and slicing its way through my arms and into my fingers again. My hands began to shake and tremble violently. My fingers twitched. Tears began to stream from my eyes. Feeling as if I was going to suddenly suffocate, I began to take deep breaths, clutching my mother’s spell book to my chest, as the night began to fade outside. I lay on my side and closed my eyes.

  I followed a narrow path through the woods. And although it was full dark, there was enough moonlight shining through the overhanging branches to light my way. I had no idea why I was in the woods or where I was going but something deep inside told me that I needed to follow the trail and see where I ended up. Every so often a gap appeared in the canopy overhead and when I looked up through the leafless branches, I could see the stars which peppered the night sky. The stars were not static – not like pinpricks of light, tonight. They raced across the sky at speed, like the flaming tails of comets.

  “They’re lying to you, Mila,” I heard someone whisper just ahead of me.

  I looked in that direction but couldn’t see anyone there.

  The voice came again. “They’re lying to you, Mila.”

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar, so I inched my way toward it. The twigs broke underfoot and I looked down. It was then that I noticed I had nothing on my feet. In fact, the only thing I wore was a large, baggy T-shirt – the one I’d put on before climbing into bed. My long blonde hair lay thick and heavy about my shoulders and it gleamed in the shafts of moonlight that radiated down from above.

  “They’re lying to you, Mila,” the voice whispered once more. But this time the voice was coming from behind me. I spun around, spraying up a wake of dead leaves. And to my surprise, I could see someone. Whoever it was stood in the clearing among the rows of trees before me like twisted black railings. Combing loose strands of hair from out of my eyes, I made my way toward the clearing and the person who stood waiting there for me.

  “They are lying to you, Mila,” the voice said again.

  But this time I was close enough to the clearing to see who stood at the centre of it. It was Flint. My heart suddenly ached with joy at seeing him there. He no longer looked like the vampire with the misshapen head and jagged fangs. He looked as handsome and as beautiful as he always had, with sky blue eyes and sandy blonde hair. So happy was I to see him, I rushed into the clearing.

  “They’re lying to you, Mila,” he said again, taking me into his arms.

  But instead of asking him who had been lying to me, I smothered his lips with mine. And kissing him reminded me of those glorious days we had spent together in Maze – just the two of us in some secret place – enjoying each other’s company and each other.

  He broke my kiss, but I wouldn’t stop. As I kissed his cheek, ear, then neck, he said again, “They’re lying to you, Mila.”

  With my eyes closed, and between my kisses, I whispered, “How can you be so sure that I’ve been lied to?”

  “I know because I love you,” he said, entwining his fingers with mine and pulling me closer still. “I love you so much, Mila. I love you
more than anyone or anything and always have. And that is why I have to warn you…”

  “Warn me about what?” I asked, although I was more interested in unfastening the buttons down the front of his shirt than listening to what he had to tell me.

  “You are in great danger,” he said, lifting the hem of my T-shirt, and working his hands up my back.

  “I know what you are, Flint, you’re a vampire,” I whispered, my lips seeking out his again. “But I’m not scared of you, I’m just scared of losing you.”

  “And that is why I came to Shade,” Flint said, pulling the T-shirt free and throwing it on to the ground. “I’m scared of losing you, too. I was scared of losing you to a werewolf just like your mother did – she made a mistake…”

  “It’s my choice who I want to be with," I said, standing naked before him in the moonlight. Reaching out with my hands, I tore his shirt free of him.

  “You don’t understand…” he started. Before he’d finished, I was kissing him again.

  “I have to stay here, I have to stay in Shade,” I told him between kisses.

  “Why do you have to stay? There is danger here,” he said, his teeth nipping at my earlobe.

  “Because Calix is here, and I think I’m in love with him,” I sighed as Flint cupped one of my breasts in his hand.

  “If I can’t be with you, Mila, I would rather be dead,” he said. But this time his voice sounded different. He didn’t sound like Flint at all but another.

  I opened my eyes just a fraction. I peered between my eyelashes and could see that I was no longer being held by Flint. I was now lost in Calix’s strong arms.

  “I’m not going to lose you again,” Calix said. “If you leave this time, I’m going with you.”

  Slowly, Calix kissed me. I kissed him back.