The Ritual: Urban Fantasy Suspense FF Romance (The Coven Unleashed Book 1)

by Adelaide Walsh

  The next day at work, both Stella and I appeared to be thoughtful and quiet. I longed to rush over and ask if she was thinking about the sacrifice, but it was hardly lunchtime banter. I sat at my desk and attempted to work, but all the while finding myself asking if I was a murderer.

  Eugene wouldn’t leave her alone that day. It made no sense to me. He had been lucky enough to get invited over to her place and get to kiss her. I would have thought that any sane person would have been playing it cool after that. He should have been treating her nicely and trying to weasel his way back over to her couch, but instead, he was incessantly flirting with her and making nauseating comments every chance he got. Eventually, I overheard her trying to end things at the water fountain right around time to leave.

  “Look Eugene, that was fun, but it was wrong. I am seeing someone else and it shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.” She hurried back to her desk and gathered her things before he had the chance to come up with any disgustingly witty retort. She looked flustered rushing to her car. Eugene hurried after her. I gathered my things and headed out. I still had a couple of things to handle, but seeing him rush after her, a dark feeling overtook me. I felt like something bad might happen.

  When I got out to the garage, Stella was on the third floor as always. Eugene had her pressed up against the side of the car. She was fidgeting with her keys and begging him to let her go. He appeared to be getting angrier with each rejection. He grabbed her wrist and slammed it above her head. She shrieked. He reached for her skirt.

  I ran up behind him and punched him as hard as I could in the temple. He fell down to the ground and appeared to be unconscious, but I punched him a few more times. I glanced around the third floor to be sure there was no one else around. I didn’t see anyone else. There were cameras, but our view was blocked by a big truck. I let out a sigh of relief. My car was parked near hers, as it had been ever since her second day at the office.

  “Stella, open my backdoor,” I instructed, handing her my keys. She opened the backdoor and I hoisted Eugene up into the seat. I climbed on top of him and yanked the tie from around his neck. I jerked his hands behind his back and tied them together before belting him into the seat upright.

  She followed me back to my place and helped me sneak Eugene into the house. When she pulled up next to me, I hopped out and greeted her as if it had been the first time that day. She returned the gesture.

  “By the way, Eugene got a little too drunk again at happy hour. Can you help me carry him in?”

  “Good god, Eugene, you’re such a loser. Getting so drunk you can barely walk, on a Wednesday,” she played along. We pulled him out of the car and pretended to help him maneuver up the stairs and into my house. No neighbors appeared to be watching, but I still did my best to hide the tie behind his back. Once inside, I took him down to the basement and gathered some rope. I had Stella help me tie him up more securely. Then, we gathered my wooden box and returned to the basement. It looked like he was just starting to come to, as I was setting out the necessary items for a spell that would put him in a coma until we decided what to do with him.

  “Wait, what?” he asked stupidly. We immediately launched into the spell, knocking him back into unconsciousness. This spell could hold him for weeks, or until we undid it.

  I was unsure what to do with him yet, but I knew that I probably couldn’t just let him get back to his normal life. The hate I felt for him grew more by the minute. I went and got his keys from his pants pocket, ran and grabbed my wand, and got into Stella’s car. She drove me back to the parking garage. It was empty except for us and Eugene’s car, which we found down on the second floor. I waited in her car while I summoned thousands of insects to cover the cameras. Once I could see they were covered, I jumped into his car and drove off.

  I wore gloves, to avoid any fingerprints, and drove carefully to avoid getting stopped. I drove to a grocery store between work and his house, and parked the car in the back of the lot, again, out of view of cameras. I left the keys sitting in the seat and exited the car, stashing my gloves in my purse. Stella met me inside the grocery store and we grabbed a few items and left in her car. This way, I figured his would either get stolen or towed, taking the suspicion off the workplace.

  The following evening, we met at the cemetery to check in with the coven. We listened patiently as others suggested people to be killed. Some suggested a cheating spouse, or a rude boss or a nosey neighbor. When it came to my turn, I told everyone about Eugene and how he was tied up in my basement under a spell that Stella helped me perform.

  A few other witches laughed at me for not bringing this up sooner. Everyone seemed to agree that Eugene sounded terrible and also that you can’t really come back from tying a guy up. We decided to make him our sacrifice. Since he was already in my house, we decided it best not to wait until the weekend, but to go ahead and do the sacrifice that night.

  A few of the coven went back with me, to help me sneak him out of the house. We put his body in an armoire and loaded it into the bed of a truck belonging to one of the witches. He assured me that he would bring the armoire back, which made me happy because it was one of my favorite pieces of furniture, though I was sure my neighbors would be curious as to why I was loading and unloading furniture. Better that they worry about furniture than murder, though.

  When we got back to the cemetery, we removed the body from the armoire and carried it to the empty grave. We laid him before the headstone, as Stella had lain during her initiation, and we performed a curse that would kill Eugene. It was fast and simple, but we did it together. His body was immediately sucked down into the ground.

  The sacrifice was followed by a sudden surge of energy. It was as if I could feel more magic being shot into my body. I was giddy. The meeting quickly dispersed. I trotted up to Stella and grabbed her hand. I pulled her into a sprint and we ran to the car giggling. We drove to a nearby park and played around with our magic. It was harmless, but there were things we hadn’t quite been able to do before. I figured out how to make flowers grow an extra inch and taught Stella. We also got them to change colors. Stella was able to call birds down to perch on her shoulder. It was so much fun.

  We had been laughing and running for what felt like an hour or two when we finally fell back into the grass and watched the stars. We both seemed to get quiet at the same time. I felt my body become heavy again, and the weight of what we had done dawned on me.

  “But we killed someone,” I finally said.

  “Yeah, why didn’t we care?” Stella pondered.

  “I mean it was Eugene, but still.”

  “The fact we were so happy, what is wrong with us? I’m concerned. I don’t want this to happen again. This is the kind of thing I was afraid of in the beginning.”

  “I know.” A pang of guilt hit my chest. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to protect you from things like this, but I do think it was just a one-time thing. I mean in all my time with them, they’ve never done anything like it. We’ll go back and get our reward and our power will be greater than ever. I’m sure we’ll never have to worry about this again.”

  “Yeah,” Stella reasoned, “like even if it’s just a Halloween thing, that’s only once a year. We have a whole year to figure it out.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 7

  After a week had passed, people at the office began to talk about Eugene. The more rumors that came out, the better I felt about our choice. Apparently he was into other kinds of trouble too. There were theories about loan sharks and scorned husbands who hated Eugene. There was even a story about a baby he had in another state.

  I didn’t read too much into the rumors, because I knew how the office gossip could get, but it did feel reassuring that there were so many bad theories about him. Stella and I were doing better than ever. It almost felt like there had never been a bump in the road for us at all.

  We received word that our rewards were ready to be received for the sacrifice we had commi
tted. Stella and I headed to the cemetery that night, hand in hand. I saw her face reflect the same excitement I had felt before my initiation into the realms. I felt pride and contentment. When we arrived at the headstone, everyone was waiting around it in a circle. We quickly joined.

  One of the elders said a few words in the ancient language and the grave opened up and spat out a wooden chest. The ground reformed beneath it. Everley moved forward to open the chest. When she opened the chest, we were all hit by a surge of power again. It was like the night of the sacrifice, but stronger. Once the power settled into our bodies, Everley reached into the chest and retrieved the rewards.

  There were 13 bracelets inside, each adorned with gems. Her eyes glittered knowingly. She stood and began passing the bracelets out to each of us, thoughtfully, as if they had our names engraved on them. When I received mine, I turned it over in my hand looking for my name, but didn’t see it. This meant that she had been assigning them intuitively. I thought that was pretty cool.

  “Each of these bracelets has been charmed. When you wear it, you will become automatically more powerful for any non-witch that you kill,” Everley triumphed. I shuddered, but tried to remain calm. “It will be like our sacrifice, but with no need for a meeting or a grave. Put them on.”

  I slid my bracelet on and watched as the others did the same. There was an immediate jolt of what felt like electricity. I knew that this was from killing Eugene, as he was the only person I had ever killed. It felt good physically, but I felt a little bit embarrassed and guilty for enjoying it, when I thought about how it was obtained.

  I looked around and saw a few of the others, including Stella and Allison experiencing the small jolt. I saw several others experience a much larger burst, which practically lifted them off the ground. Chills covered my skin when I realized what this meant. This had not been everyone’s first kill. In fact, this had only been a first for a few of us. I wondered if the kills had been done within the coven or on their own.

  “Excellent work,” Everley hissed, her eyes wide, looking exhilarated. “We must commit to this. By the first of next month, we must each have committed another sacrifice on our own. With this much power, our coven will not only summon entities of the other world, but we will summon our leader himself.”

  I nodded instinctively and looked around, my mouth cracked in disbelief. Almost every witch was nodding, clapping or cheering with excitement. Stella’s reaction was similar to my own. I avoided eye contact with her because I knew we would both break our facades. I clapped gently. At the end of the meeting, Stella and I raced back to my house to discuss what we had just witnessed.

  “Okay, I am so sorry. I feel like it is all my fault that you’re in on this now,” I gushed as soon as we got inside.

  “No, it’s not. You had no way to know,” Stella replied, shushing me.

  “And our leader. They just called him that. They said he was kind and generous, but he doesn’t really sound like it. I’m afraid to accept who he is, now. What are we going to do? We can’t just go killing people.”

  “We can’t. Can we just stop being witches? I don’t know how that works.” I was surprised to see that she was remaining calmer than I was.

  “I don’t think so. We devoted our souls to our leader. There’s not really an easy way out of witchcraft, but maybe we could just run away from this coven. Maybe at least for a short time we could just hide and practice on our own until we figure something out.”

  “Okay, yeah. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s leave tonight,” Stella chirped.

  We sprung into action, grabbing small, valuable things that would fit into backpacks. Once we were both packed, we took the bus to the train station, doing our best not to leave a trail. At the train station, we chose to head to California. We bought tickets for the southernmost stop and decided that we would get off and take buses around until we figured out where we would stay. After a few weeks had passed, we would go back in disguise and sell our cars and valuables.

  We waited at the train station for an hour, nervously looking around us to be sure no one had followed us. I kept getting the feeling that someone was watching. Eventually, I accepted that this was just paranoia, and held Stella in my arms while we waited. When the train arrived, we happily boarded. We made ourselves comfortable in an empty row at the back of our car.

  We tossed our bags into the seats across from ours. Stella sat against the window and I plopped down next to her, leaving an empty seat to my right. After an hour of riding on the train, I finally felt myself relax. Not only that, I felt excited. I looked at her and we shared a smile. With the nerves out of the way, I was able to rest my eyes and I quickly dozed off into a deep slumber.

  I dreamt that I was in the woods that I had seen in the other realm. Everything was foggy and shimmering. I was laughing and frolicking around like a child. I spun around and Victoria was there, but it was like she had never left. She made a silly face and spun me around again. I fell into her arms laughing. She kissed me softly. When she pulled away, she looked longingly into my eyes and caressed my cheek.

  “Everything is going to be okay, sweet Camille. I promise.”

  “But I’m so scared,” I pouted.

  “I will take care of you, lamb.”

  Her smile was soft and sweet at first, but it slowly became bigger and sharper until it had turned into a devilish grin. I started to pull away. She opened her mouth wide, revealing a huge set of fangs. She cackled. Her fingernails grew into talons. I shrieked and began running as fast as I could. She chased me, still cackling like a hyena.

  I awoke with a start, gasping for air. It was strange to have dreamt of Victoria at all, but especially disturbing to have dreamt of her in this way. I looked over to my right at Stella who was sleeping peacefully, leaned against the window. I exhaled a sigh of relief. She was my peace. It had only been a dream. As long as she was there, everything would be fine. Just then, I felt something in my hair. I snapped my head around to my left to find Victoria sitting in the seat next to me. She giggled, twirling my hair in her fingers.

  “Going anywhere, lamb?”

  Conclusion

  Thank you for reading The Ritual.

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  Bonus: Want to know more about the world of The Coven Unleashed?

  This book is only the first in a series where our heroes fight against the internal and external enemies, complete with vampires, shifters, and demons from hell. The series is a delicious mix of romance, urban fantasy, and thriller. You’ll be happy you picked up the first book and eager to read the next.

  I plan to publish more urban fantasy romance books, and you have the possibility to influence the vector!

  Fantasy, paranormal, witches, wizards, vampires and shifters – which story would you like to read next from me?..

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  Here’s a sneak peak into the story…

  I have never cared much for airports. They were just so busy and loud; it was impossible to keep in tune with my thoughts. The sounds of rolling suitcases, boot-clad footsteps, and frustrated passengers whose flights have been delayed were almost enough to send me over the edge of the balcony we were currently leaning against as my friends and I waited for our gate number to be called.

  “Aren’t you happy we’re doing this?” Rachel said as she leaned into my body, wrapping her slender arms around my waist. I looked down at her and coul
dn’t help but smile. Her face beamed with excitement. “I know you think that you can’t swing this trip with midterms coming up, but I promise that you’ll be so happy we did this.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure I will, babe.”

  Rachel, whom I had been dating for almost four years now, had thought it would be a fantastic idea for us to join a group of friends on a safari vacation in Kenya for a week just before our Pre-Law midterms. The idea made the hairs on my body stand on end. I slipped a hand into my pocket and fidgeted with my phone, tempted to pull it out and start researching, but decided against it knowing that Rachel would not approve of me doing so while we were supposed to be on vacation.

  “Gate forty-two is now ready for boarding. Gate 42 now ready for boarding,” chimed through the intercom. Our group whooped and cheered with excitement, and started towards the gate where two attendants were already scanning tickets and checking passports.

  Even though I longed to be as excited as them, the entire thing felt tedious. I grabbed the handle of my small carryon in one hand, and wrapped my other arm around Rachel’s shoulder. She smiled and leaned up to kiss my cheek, wincing as the scruff of my beard scratched her face.

  This was going to be a long trip.

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  More books by Adelaide Walsh

  The Great Keeper series:

  Shake

  Freeze

  Burn (coming soon…)

  Let’s have a closer look at the first novelette in The Great Keeper series, Shake!