by Tim O'Rourke
Witches of Twisted Den
(Beautiful Immortals Series Three)
Part Two
BY
Tim O’Rourke
First Edition Published by Ravenwoodgreys
Copyright 2016 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Tom O’Rourke
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
For Lynda
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You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.timorourkeauthor.com or by email at [email protected]
Witches of Twisted Den
(Part Two)
This story is set in a where and when not too dissimilar to our own…
Chapter One
Mila Watson
I dropped the smouldering match from between my fingers and ran as fast as I could across the clearing to where Calix now lay. Dropping to my knees, I knelt beside him. I could see that he was bleeding badly. Calix had a large gunshot wound in the centre of his chest. I pressed the flat of one hand over the smouldering hole. Blood pumped through my fingers and it felt ice cold. The writing my mother had left across his chest became blurred and lost beneath the streams of blood that gushed from the wound. Calix lay with his eyes closed, head back, and arms and legs spread wide. Taking my blooded hand from the wound, I gripped his shoulders and shook him.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” I pleaded with him. “You can’t die, you’re meant to be immortal.” I shook him again, but he just flopped and rolled lifelessly on the ground before me. “Please, Calix, wake up. Who will bring me my supplies? Who will get under my skin and piss me off with their bad attitude and cockiness?”
I heard a groaning sound, and at first I couldn’t be sure whether it was the wind whistling through the surrounding trees. Leaning closer into Calix, I turned my face to one side so my ear was just an inch above his lips. The groaning sound came again and this time I was sure that it was coming from Calix as he fought for breath. Still not knowing for sure whether Calix was going to die or not, I pulled him up into my arms and whispered into his ear.
“What did you mean when you said the wolves killed my mother?”
Slowly, he opened his eyes. But he didn’t look at me, he looked over my shoulder and toward Trent, Rea, Rush, and Morten. “They killed Julia Miller. They killed your mother, not the vampires.”
Still clutching Calix in my arms, I looked back at the others who were looking at me. I could hardly get my words out, they tripped over my lips in jagged gasps. “Is this true? Did you kill my mother?”
Instead of answering my question, Trent shot a look at Rush and said, “Take her to the crypt. Take all of them to the crypt.”
Easing Calix from my arms, I slid one of my guns from its holster and pointed it straight at Rush and the others. In a series of fluid and rapid movements, they drew their guns, too
.
With a cigar smouldering in the corner of her mouth like she was chewing on it, Rea looked at me and said, “You can’t shoot all of us at once, Mila.”
Knowing that she was right, and knowing that if I shot Rush, they would shoot me, I lowered my gun. I knew I was beat – for now. Holstering his own gun, Rush came forward and snatched mine from me. Sliding it into the waistband of his jeans, he then went to Calix and pulled his guns from their holsters. I went back to Calix and took him into my arms again. I looked over his shoulder and could see Morten was untying Flint from the pole. From over the rim of the muzzle that covered the lower half of his face, Flint watched me. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, but words failed me. I felt more than sorry. I felt like a fool for believing Trent and the others. I felt pathetic for letting them manipulate me. But Flint was a vampire and he had kept that from me. I felt utterly confused and shaken up. I looked away and back at Rush, who was now dragging Calix from me. Calix could barely stand as Rush heaved him up onto his feet. Blood still continued to pump from the wound in his chest. I scrambled to my feet and went to him, but Rush pushed me away.
With his breathing sounding deep and rasping, Calix looked up into Rush’s face and said, “I thought we were brothers?”
With a look of hatred that I thought impossible from Rush, he stared at Calix and said, “We had different mothers.”
“Yeah, and didn’t she like to constantly remind me of that fact,” Calix muttered through his pain.
Hearing this, Rush scrunched his hand into a fist, and drove it into Calix’s face. His head snapped backwards and he fell once more to the ground.
“Leave him alone!” I shouted. Using all of my strength, I shoved Rush out of the way, bent down, and helped Calix get to his feet once more.
I looked in disbelief at the people I had believed to be my friends – the people I had put my trust in. I felt stupid and naïve. I felt hurt. I felt angry. With that feeling of energy – power – bubbling up in me, I opened and closed my fists as they hung at my sides. The urge to fling open my hands and release whatever was making my fists throb was terrifying. With my lower lip trembling, I directed my anger at Trent and the others and shouted, “It was you all along – what Calix says is true – it was you who murdered my mother! And you would’ve let me kill Flint. What is wrong with you, you freaks!”
As I screamed at them, I felt my hair begin to shift and move about my shoulders as if caught in a strong breeze. But there was very little wind tonight. Unable to control my anger and rage any longer, I lifted my arms and threw open my hands. My fingers twitched – but that was it. No great power or energy leapt from my fingertips and destroyed my mother’s killers. Screwing up my eyes, I demanded that the power that raged throughout me be released – set itself free. Nothing. Not even a spark or fizzle. Seeing my frustration, Rea began to chuckle. I opened my eyes and looked straight at her.
“Bitch!” I screamed, launching myself forward at her. Before I’d taken more than two strides, a bullet thundered into the ground at my feet. I leapt backwards amidst the spray of leaves that the bullet had shot up into the air.
Rea cocked her smoking gun and took aim at me again. “Next time I won’t miss,” she smiled. She then waved the gun back in the direction of the church. “Move.”
Knowing that there was nothing I could do but submit to Rea and the other wolves, I reached for Calix. Looping my arm about his shoulder to give him some support, I helped him across the clearing.
With their guns trained on us, Trent and his cohorts led me, Calix, and Flint back through the woods and toward the church. Before leaving the clearing, I looked back once more and caught sight of Clarabelle. Wearing a pretty smile, she raised one hand into the air and waved at me, before I was shoved in the back by Rea and forced in the direction of the church and the crypt which was hidden beneath it.
Chapter Two
Mila Watson
Trent shut the cell door with such force that the sound it produced as it slammed in its frame made my bones jangle beneath my flesh. Calix grunted and groaned with pain on the cell floor. Before leaving us alone in the cell, Trent and the others had fastened our wrists together with chains. In the light from the candles that were fixed to the walls, I could still see blood trickling through Calix’s fingers and over the backs of his hands, which he had placed over the gunshot wound. Flint had pulled himself up and was sitting against the cell wall. He still wore the muzzle across the lower half of his face. He sat motionless and watched me with his bright blue eyes. I felt suddenly uncomfortable at the look of hurt I could see in them. I knew that Flint had every right to feel hurt at what I had nearly done to him in the woods. But I still felt angry knowing that Flint had lied about what he truly was. But I couldn’t deny the fact that if it hadn’t have been for Calix blowing out the match, Flint would now be burning to death in the clearing in the middle of the woods. I felt guilty about that.
As Flint continued to stare at me from over the top of his muzzle, I said, “I’m sorry, okay? I was confused.”
Flint didn’t respond in any way to what I just said to him. He didn’t nod his head or shake it. He didn’t even blink. He continued to look at me with those big, sad-looking eyes. I knew that now wasn’t the time or place to justify my actions or my reasoning for what I’d done, and if I were being honest with myself, I truly didn’t understand myself.
With the chains clinking about my wrists, I turned my attention to Calix. He continued to lie on the cell floor with his bound hands pressed against the gunshot wound in his chest. His fingers looked black and sticky with blood in the candlelight. His breathing now seemed a little more measured and he was no longer trying to draw deep lungfuls of breath to stay alive. His eyes were open and he was looking at me. A feverish sweat glistened on his forehead like dew drops.
“What in hell is going on?” I asked him.
“Help me sit up,” he wheezed through gritted teeth.
With my hands bound, I did my best to try and take hold of Calix’s arm at the elbow and ease him into a sitting position. Bending his legs at the knees, he drove the heel of his boots into the ground in an effort to help me. Realising that it would be impossible to get Calix up on my own, I glanced back over my shoulder at Flint. But would he really want to help me after what I’d nearly done to him in the woods? To my surprise and relief, Flint stood up, came across the cell, and with his wrists bound just like mine, he took hold of Calix’s other elbow and helped me pull him across the cell so he could sit against the wall.
“Thank you, Flint,” I said.
Without looking at me, Flint turned his back, and sat back down against the wall on the opposite side of the cell.
Turning my attention once more to Calix and seeing that he was a little bit more comfortable, I said, “Despite everything we’ve been through, Calix, I do trust you, so please just tell me the truth, whatever it is.”
With his hands locked together and pressed against his chest as if in prayer, Calix said in a voice that was deep and low, “Trent and the others have lied to you, Mila. Everything they have told you has been a big lie. Julia, your mother, wasn’t pregnant when she came to Shade. We first met her in our homelands – in Switzerland. It was like she suddenly appeared out of nowhere.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
Shifting himself slightly against the wall as if trying to make himself more comfortable, Calix said, “Julia told us that she had arrived on a steam train at the old railway station up in the mountains. But that station hadn’t been used in years. As far as I was aware, a train hadn’t passed along those tracks for as long as I could remember – not since the war started. Me and the others had already decided to head to England to find a place of safety for our people. Julia said that she would come along. We knew that she was a Wicce and powerful, so it seemed she would be an asset to our mission. On our first night in England, we took shelter in a desolate barn in some remote field. There was a farmhouse nearby
so we went to investigate. We believed it to be deserted, or so we first thought, but after close inspection we found two children hiding upstairs. It was these kids who told us about the human farm. Julia cast some kind of spell, I’m not sure exactly what it was, but she made them disappear somehow into the shadows. It was then I first realised how powerful she was. But there were vampires everywhere, so we had to flee. Eventually, we took refuge in a derelict church and that is where we first met Morton.”
“So Morton never travelled from Switzerland with you?” I asked.
Calix shook his head. “No, he was already here. He told us how the vampires had taken over the whole of England. He said the last of the vampires – the ones that had survived the war – were living in a nearby town called Maze. This was where their main base – headquarters – was. As Morten was a werewolf like us, we let him join our pack and we left the church behind. Julia was keen to go to Maze and speak with the vampires. She believed she could find a truce and peace with them and it was clear that this was her true mission and the reason why she had travelled to England with us.”
As Flint sat in the shadows and listened to our every word, I looked at Calix and said, “So did my mother ever reach Maze?”
“No,” Calix said. “We all thought going to Maze was, like, a really bad idea, so we persuaded her to wait until we had found a place to set ourselves up. And it was as we searched for such a place that we came across the human farm which the children had told us about.” Raising his bloodstained hands, he pointed across the cell at Flint. “The vampires had enslaved the humans and were breeding them for food. Julia, your mother, wanted to save them. She wanted to save everyone – even us,” he said with a wry smile. “But we came under attack. We barely managed to save ourselves, let alone any of the humans. As we made our escape, Morten told us about Shade, a desolate town where we could hide from the vampires. There was also another town, called Twisted Den, where witches lived.”
“So why didn’t you head for the town of Twisted Den if there were witches living there?” I frowned. “Wouldn’t they have helped my mother? She was a Wicce like them after all.”
