Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Author Note - Bradford Bates
Author - Bradford Bates
Author Note - TS Paul
Author - T S Paul
Legal Stuff
Copyright © 2017 TS Paul and Bradford Bates, All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction of any kind is strictly prohibited unless written permission granted by the authors.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
Rebecca
Have you ever been left at a party because your best friend ditched you to hook up with some random guy? Well, that was me now. Walking home in the dark without shoes, ‘cause you know, party shoes aren’t exactly made for walking. I was stewing a little, but I’m sure I’d get over it especially if Sasha had a juicy story to tell me tomorrow. Juicy stories eased the pain, but if she thought she would be getting out of this without a little bit of retail therapy, then she was dead wrong.
The walk wasn’t all bad, though. It was helping me do some serious, sobering up. That would save me from the late night lecture from Mom. You would think being twenty-one would give a girl a little leeway, but that just wasn’t the case. It was a ‘my house, my rules’ kind of thing, but I couldn’t afford to move out, so I had to deal.
The world seemed so different at night. Not a single moving car or person in view. The city seemed quiet, almost as if it had decided to slumber as well. The light at the end of the street had been green for at least ten minutes, and if a car didn’t come along soon, it’d stay green until the morning.
A cool gust of wind washed over me. It carried just the tiniest hint of smoke. That was something else I enjoyed, a good fire on a cold night. I wondered which one of our neighbors was up at this hour. Hopefully whoever it was, was having a better night than me.
I was tired of walking. My shoes felt like they weighed a million pounds as I carried them in one hand, and my purse was weighing me down like someone had tied a cinder block around my neck. Oh yes, Sasha was going to pay for this. She owed me big time, and I wasn’t going to let her forget it. At least the rando had been hot, not ditch your best friend hot, but still hot.
Hanging a quick left brought me onto Pine Street. The smell of smoke intensified and I wondered for the first time if the scent wasn’t coming from a chimney. No sirens were headed in this direction, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. With the entire neighborhood asleep they might not notice if a house was burning down.
This night just kept getting better and better. Not only had I been ditched, but I might actually have to use my powers. That always left me feeling drained, and I hated it. Life was so much simpler without magic. No covens, no councils, just the ability to live your life the way you wanted. Instead, if you were like me, there was a certain sense of responsibility that needed to be lived up to. Responsibility wasn’t exactly my thing.
A fire would be a nice chance to slip back into my family’s good graces. My little sister Rachel was always doing stuff like that. Lost your cat, she’d find it. House burning down, not if Rachel was nearby. It was like she had some kind of sixth sense about these things. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t hate her for stealing the spotlight. She was beautiful, smart, and her magic was stronger than mine.
Still, that didn’t mean she had to be right about everything. It also didn’t mean that she had to rub her good deeds in my face while Mom and Dad were around. Yes, you were the perfect sister, and I was the one they wished would step aside. Who knows maybe if I just disappeared it would be better for everybody.
Another left put me on Cherry Avenue. Yeah, so our streets were named after trees and fruit, get over it. I learned to deal with it when I was a kid. Not everyone got to live on a street with a cool name. Those were just the breaks.
A hint of orange caught my eye, and I realized that I had forgotten about the fire. It was just like me to get so wrapped up in myself that I tuned out everything around me. A bright flicker of orange flashed across my vision again, and then I started running. My shoes fell from my hand, and my purse would have followed if it wasn’t hanging off one shoulder. Subconsciously I moved the strap over my head to secure it as I picked up the pace.
This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare. Seriously, it was one of those dreams where you were giving a speech in class, and everyone started laughing, and then you realized that you were naked. Sure, it didn’t make a lot of sense. I mean, there was no way you were getting into a school naked these days. Just walking through the doors, you passed more security than they did at San Quentin.
That didn’t make the dream any less terrifying. Just like knowing my magic-using parents could put out a simple fire, didn’t make seeing our house in flames any easier to see. No one was out in the yard, did they even know what was happening?
My speed picked up as the adrenaline pumped through my system. I wasn’t going to lose them. Not tonight, not ever. I passed some flaming plants on the way to the front door. It would have been easy enough to extinguish them, but I had a feeling it was going to take everything I had to deal with what was happening inside.
Two of the windows had been broken on the front of the house. Flames licked hungrily at the panes as I crashed into the front door. The wood was warm as I nudged my shoulder into the door. I turned the knob not even thinking about the fact that I hadn’t used my key yet. The door swung open, and a blast of heat caught me right in the face. It was that same feeling you got when you opened the oven after it had been on all day.
My hands came up as I took a step back. Water flew from my fingertips. It might not be enough to put out the flames, but it was a start. A path to the stairs was open even as the flames tried to reclaim the damp carpet. This was my chance, it was now or never.
Ducking through the door, I rushed to the stairs. The steps flew under my feet two or three at a time. When I reached the top, I sent another blast of water down the hall. “Mom! Rachel! Dad!” I continued shouting their names as I ran.
Rachel’s bedroom was the first one on the left. The knob felt relatively cold. I remembered that was a good sign from some movie I had watched. I readied my magic and turned the knob before throwing the door wide open.
A scream froze on my lips. Everything was fine until you looked at Rachel’s bed. That was where normalcy ended, and lunacy began. She was lying there in her favorite pink jammies. All of her clothes were still on, but that really wasn’t much of a comfort. Blood had soaked through her sheets and was dripping onto the wooden floor below.
There was no way she could be alive, but I had to check before I left her there. Mom and Dad would never forgive me if I saved them and let her die. They’d both rather be dead as long as their girls lived.
The flesh of her neck was clammy against my fingers. I knew she was dead, but I still waited to see if there was a pulse. After a minute of feeling nothing, I resigned myself to the fact that my sister was dead. Trying my best to ignore the ragged wounds that had torn through her body I picked up the comforter from the foot of the bed and covered her with it. This would be my last chance to tuck her in.
There was blood on my hands. Not just any blood, but Rachel’s blood. If I ever found out who did this, I’d end them. It didn’t matter to me if the Witches Council put me in the ground afterward. Killing the people responsible was worth it.
The top half of the hallway was a dark cloud of rolling smoke. The door to my room was open. A quick glance confirmed that it was empty, but someone had ripped it apart. Maybe they were looking for me. With a thought, I blasted the glass out of the window and cast a spell to start sucking the smoke out. It wouldn’t last for long, but it should be enough to get me into my parents’ room before I passed out.
My parents’ room was much of the same. All of their drawers had been ripped out and overturned. Whoever was behind this wasn’t exactly subtle. They probably didn’t know about the safe, which was a small blessing. Possibly the only blessing that would come out of tonight.
Dad was pinned against the far wall. I didn’t know what was holding him there, but I couldn’t look. One of my hands shot out and made a grabbing motion before I pulled it towards me. Dad’s body ripped away from the wall. The sound it made would haunt me forever, but I couldn’t leave him there.
Kneeling beside him and feeling for a pulse quickly confirmed the worst. My vision was blurry from the tears. I wiped hurriedly at my eyes leaving streaks of blood and tears across my cheeks. I was sure that I looked like a serial killer from some B-rated horror film. No one was going to see me here and screw them if they had the guts to say something.
Now all I had to do was find Mom, and I could get out of here. The floorboards were warm under my feet. It wouldn’t take long before the entire house burst into flames. Despite our advancements in fire prevention, nothing would stop this house from being a pile of ashes by morning.
Mom was lying against the wall in the closet. The safe was open, and our family’s most prized possession was clutched in her hands. The grimoire looked untouched. It made me wonder if this had been a robbery at all. Maybe this had been personal. Someone that hated the family? Still, whoever did this could be searching for the book. I was never going to let them have it.
Kneeling down by my mom I reached out and placed a hand on the grimoire. I gently pulled it away from her and held it against my side. “Oh, Mom. Why did this have to happen?” Reaching out I touched her cheek. Was this really it? Would I never see any of them again?
I knew what she would want me to do. Secure the book and rally the coven. I wouldn’t let her down, not this time. I gave her one last look and then started to stand. Her hand clamped down on my wrist forcing me to drop the grimoire. Her bloodstained face looked up into mine, and when our eyes met, she let go. I could see how much that small amount of effort had cost her.
She coughed, and a little bit of blood trickled down her chin. “Take the book and run. Never come back to this place.” It came out gravelly, but her words were filled with power.
“Maybe I can save you.”
She waved me away, and then her arm slumped to her side. A coughing fit tore through her body. Her eyes pleaded with me to just do this one thing. "Don’t argue with me this time, Rebecca, just do what I damn well said."
I picked up the book, and then leaned in and gave her a small kiss on the forehead. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love…” She started coughing again, this time she didn’t stop until her body went into spasms.
That was it. She was gone from this world. At least she knew that I loved her, and I could continue on knowing that she loved me too. I tried to close her eyes like they did in the movies but it didn’t work. All of what happened tonight was starting to catch up with me, but I couldn’t break down. Not here and not yet.
Standing again I looked in the safe. The cash was still there. That was good; I was going to need it to disappear. I grabbed everything that I could get my hands on. Then I used one of my mom’s shirts to make a sack. I had to leave now before anyone came back to check on their handiwork.
Turning I started to leave when something tapped against my ankle. I looked down at Mom, and while I had been getting things out of the safe, she managed to write a word on the wall in her own blood, or maybe that note had been there all along. It was hard for me to remember anything other seeing her laying there when I walked in.
I double checked to make sure she had actually left this world, before turning back to what she had written on the wall. The writing was smeared, but it got the point across. I ran out of the room the word burning on the tip of my tongue. “Ash.” My mother’s second in command. She was right, I had to leave and never come back.
Chapter Two
Rebecca, Three Weeks Later
The house looked empty from the outside, but that didn’t mean much. With all of the windows heavily covered, they could have been having a party inside, and no one would have known about it. That didn’t really change much for me, I needed to get in there and get the package Rubio wanted. That or I needed to come up with fifteen grand.
Since the money didn’t materialize when I thought about it, that meant I needed to make a choice. Did I risk going inside or do I keep running and hope for the best? Living on the run wasn’t exactly fun. I bounced from one crappy rent-by-the-week hotel to the next. Never staying in a city big enough that I could be tracked easily. Cameras were everywhere in the big cities while the small town folks tended to shun them.
I was also getting tired of paying for everything in cash. Carrying large wads of cash with you wasn’t exactly safe, not to mention that paying for everything in cash meant working for cash. Most employers wouldn’t risk paying someone under the table, especially this close to the border. No one wanted to end up like that carwash chain that lost everything for importing illegals. It might have been the first time a CEO actually went to jail in our country. So, working for cash meant taking the jobs no one else wanted and getting paid poorly to do them.
Staying off the radar was more important than my feelings. Ash had already found me once in Florida and again Texas. She would never stop coming for me. Not until she had the grimoire or I was dead. So, shitty jobs it was unless I could get my hands on a new identity. That’s where Rubio came in. He had them, I needed one and now. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be sitting outside of this dilapidated stucco home trying to get my courage together to do what needed to be done.
The yellow paint on the squat one-story structure was faded and peeling. The waist-high chain-link fence had seen better days. Half of the post caps were missing, and the fence had been shredded in a few places. The grass inside of the fence had died a long time ago, although here and there a few tufts hung on for dear life. Some things were just too stubborn to die.
There was a metal security door covering the front entrance, and the windows had bars. A quick look at the neighbors confirmed that this was a little unusual for the neighborhood. That didn’t mean this was the good part of town. It probably just meant that some folks around here didn’t have anything worth stealing, or anything that was worth more than the expense of putting bars up.
The street was deserted minus a few parked cars. None of them had moved since I pulled to a stop down the block three hours ago. I told myself that I wanted to watch for a while so that I felt a little safer, but the truth was, I was still trying to psych myself up to go through with this. I’d never stolen anything in my life, and I really didn’t want to start now. I also couldn’t stand the thought of living on the run indefinitely.
So it was time to put on my big girl panties and man up. My Dad always used to tell me, when you have to do something you don’t want to do it’s better just to do it as quickly as possible and get it out of the way. That was good advice. I had the tendency to buil
d things up in my head creating these insurmountable hurdles that didn’t really exist.
Slipping out of the car, I scanned the street. Was that what an actual tumbleweed looked like? They seemed so much cooler in the movies. Although if this were a movie, I’d prefer not to be stuck in a western with tumbleweeds. We all know that towns with tumbleweeds were never really empty, and something sinister was waiting just under the surface. That’s when the shooting normally started.
No one was shooting at me yet. Standing by my car, I spun in a slow circle looking at all of the houses around me. I didn’t see any movement. Maybe no one actually lived here. It could just be a stash house of some kind.
Since I was out of the car and starting to sweat in the midday sun, I decided it was time to just get this over with. Rubio had my ID ready, all I had to do was claim it. Walking across the street, I kept my eyes peeled for any kind of movement, anything that would send me scurrying back towards my car and away from here. I might have even been hoping to see something. Then I wouldn’t have to feel bad for not following through. Instead, the only sound was a dog barking in the distance the rattle of the fence as a gust of wind hit it.
With nothing jumping out to scare me, I kept moving forward. I couldn’t make out any runes or magical protections on the house. Just to make sure I cast a simple spell to detect magic. When the results came back negative, I didn’t know if I should be happy or terrified. There wasn’t anything holding me back, now it was time to act.
I pulled on the bandana that was hanging loosely around my neck and moved it up to cover my mouth and nose. It wouldn’t be enough to fully disguise me if they had cameras. But I didn’t plan on sticking around after the job. I’d had enough of the desert heat, and it was time to make a change before Ash had a chance to catch up with me again.
I stood in front of the door holding my breath, hoping that no one was home. It wasn’t likely, or Rubio could have hired any schmuck to do this. The knob on the security door didn’t turn, so the lock had to go. The magic came to me more easily this time, maybe because I was using it on a daily basis now. The blue orb of fire appeared in my hand the second that I thought about it. I focused on making it hotter and placed my hand on the lock.
Witching Hour Page 1
