Witches of Twisted Den 2

by Tim O'Rourke

  “Morten explained that the witches who once lived there had vanished,” Calix said, covering the gunshot wound with his hands once more.

  “What happened to these witches?” I asked.

  “It beats the shit out of me,” Calix said before wincing once more in pain.

  “Are you okay to carry on talking or would you like to rest for now?” I said, noting how the black blood that covered his hands and stained his chest looked dry and flaky.

  “No, I’ll be okay,” he said with a shake of his head. “The wound is already starting to heal, I can feel it. I always heal – eventually.”

  “So what happened to the witches?” I asked once more.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think Morten really knew what had happened to them,” Calix said. “He believes they fled when the war broke out between the werewolves and vampires.”

  Looking back over my shoulder at Flint, who sat listening to our conversation, I said, “Do you know what happened to the witches?”

  Unable to answer me even if he had wanted to, Flint slowly shook his head from side to side in response to my question.

  I turned back to Calix. “So what happened when you came to Shade?”

  “It was during our first night in Shade that your mother cast a spell over it. It was incredible. She was incredible,” Calix said. “Or so I first thought.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “At first we were all amazed by what Julia had done, but it made her ill and weak,” Calix tried to explain. I could see that he was struggling to find the right words. After a moment, he continued. “Casting the spell over Shade seemed to weaken her. She bled from her ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. You know me well enough by now to realise not much disturbs me, but to see your mother in that way scared the shit out of me. I think it scared all of us. She was unconscious, so we carried her to the house where you have been living since coming to Shade. Your mother was unconscious for weeks and I secretly wondered whether she would ever wake again. But your mother, Julia, was full of surprises.”

  Once more, I couldn’t help but notice a smile creeping around the corners of Calix’s lips as he remembered her.

  “What happened when she did eventually wake up?” I asked.

  Turning his dark eyes on me, Calix said, “That’s when the trouble really started.”

  Chapter Three

  Mila Watson

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  Instead of answering my question, Calix ran the tip of his tongue over his cracked and dry-looking lips. He glanced over my shoulder where Flint sat, then back at me. “I don’t suppose you wanna try swapping spit again? My throat’s so dry and there’s still so much to tell you.”

  I glanced back at Flint, feeling uncomfortable at Calix’s insensitive remark. I knew that he was starting to feel better already. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted Flint to know, not just yet, that anything had happened between myself and Calix. As far as Flint was aware, I was his girl. Ignoring Calix’s remark, I looked at him and said, “Perhaps one of the others will bring some water.”

  “They’re not going to bring us shit,” he said with a grimace. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they left us to rot down here.”

  I suspected that Calix was probably right in his assessment of the situation we now found ourselves in; however, I still refused to be swallowed up by a pit of despair. I knew I would have to remain hopeful if we were to get out of here alive. So I turned the conversation back to my mother.

  “You said there was some kind of trouble, what happened?”

  Digging the heels of his boots into the hard ground, pushing himself a little further up the wall until his back was almost straight, he took a deep breath before speaking again. “Julia was insistent that we try and find a truce with the vampires. But Rea was opposed to the idea. But it wasn’t just that idea that they were at odds with. Trent had been slipping Rea a length for years but their love affair had come to an end. Rea wasn’t happy about that as she still had feelings for him. She became jealous of Julia because she thought that perhaps Trent’s feelings for the witch were more than just friendship.”

  To hear Calix say this, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my own suspicions that perhaps my mother and Trent were more than just friends were true. But before I’d a chance to press Calix any further on the matter, he had started to talk again.

  “Rea came up with the idea that perhaps she, Trent, and Rush should travel back to our homelands and bring the rest of the wolves back to England and to Shade. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Rea just wanted to put some distance between Trent and Julia. But Julia was against the idea of them returning to Switzerland.”

  “Why?” I asked, wondering whether my mother hadn’t wanted to be separated from Trent either.

  “Your mother still believed that she could find a truce between the werewolves and the vampires, and she believed that bringing more werewolves to England before a truce had been found would only make the vampires suspicious – suspicious that perhaps we were forming part of an army that would one day attack the vampires. But Rea, being as headstrong as ever, didn’t listen to Julia and returned to our homelands with Trent and Rush. The only people to remain in Shade were myself, your mother, and Morten. It was during this time that your mother and I became good friends. I was surprised one day when she asked me if I would teach her how to shoot – just like I’ve taught you how to shoot, Mila.”

  “Why were you so surprised by her request?” I asked him.

  Shifting himself once more against the wall to make himself comfortable, Calix said, “Your mother was a peaceful young woman. She was non-violent. She believed that violence bred only more violence.”

  “So why did she want you to teach her how to shoot?”

  “Julia planned to go into Maze and negotiate the peace deal she had come to England in search of,” Calix said. “She was desperate to negotiate peace before the others returned with more werewolves. But she knew going into Maze alone was a great risk and I think the gun was there just in case the mission went wrong. I secretly believe that she would have actually turned the gun on herself rather than kill a vampire if her peace talks had failed. I agreed that I would teach her how to handle a gun only if she let me go to Maze with her. But unbeknown to me, Julia took one of my guns and sneaked out of Shade alone. She also kept secret the fact that she had been meeting with a vampire – the bloke you now call Uncle Sidney. Through him, Julia had arranged to meet with the leader of the vampires, who we later found out was called Veronica Scarlet. But the peace meeting she had arranged, failed.”

  “How?” I asked him.

  “This vampire named Scarlet ended up dead,” Calix explained. “She was found dead on your mother’s bed. Julia was adamant that she hadn’t shot Scarlet but Trent and the others believed that your mother had killed the vampire leader. They panicked – they feared the vampires would come to Shade and avenge her death. So Trent and Rea made a deal with the vampires.”

  With my heart beginning to thump in my chest, I said, “What kind of deal?”

  “To prove that they had paid no part in the killing of the vampire leader – this Veronica Scarlet – the vampires demanded that we kill your mother, burn her at the stake and…” Calix broke my stare and looked away.

  “And what?” I asked him.

  Slowly, Calix turned his head so our eyes met once more. And in a voice that was so low it was barely a whisper, he said, “That we hand you over to the vampires. Give you, Mila, to them.”

  I felt shocked, hurt, and angry at hearing this. I’d been led to believe that the vampires snatched me away – that they had taken me as their hostage. But it was the werewolves – the people I’d believed to be my friends – who had given me away. I guess my mother had felt the same crushing kind of betrayal that I now felt. The wolves had simply handed both of us over so as to save their own werewolf skins. I looked back over my shoulder at Flint. He continued to sit stock-still an
d watch me as I learned the painful truth from Calix. And where had my father been during all of this? If what Calix had said was true, and my mother hadn’t been pregnant when she first arrived in Shade, that meant my father was one of the werewolves who inhabited this place.

  Turning to look at Calix once more, I said, “Which one of you werewolves is my father?”

  Again, Calix broke my stare and looked away. With the chains dragging around my wrists, I reached out, gripped hold of his jaw, and turned his head so he had to look at me. “Who is my father?”

  Calix stared hard at me with his jet black eyes. “Julia told me that your father is Trent.”

  Feeling as if I’d been punched in the chest, I slumped backwards and took a deep breath. My suspicions had been right. Those visions – those memories or whatever they were of my mother and the wolf-man making love in my bedroom – were true. My mother had been having a love affair with one of the werewolves of Shade. She had fallen in love with Trent. But had he ever been in love with her?

  Chapter Four

  Mila Watson

  To try and convince myself that Trent had loved my mother would have been easier than telling myself that he hadn’t, because the pain that I now felt would have been less. But I wasn’t stupid. Trent had never loved my mother. If he had, he wouldn’t have burnt her at the stake. How could anyone do that to somebody if they truly loved them? If he had been in love with my mother, could he have so readily handed me – their daughter – over to the vampires? To know this made my heart bleed. Trent had given my mother up and given me away. What kind of monster could do such a thing? But Trent had been right when he’d said that all werewolves had a monster living deep within them. My hands began to shake – my fingers twitch – uncontrollably as tendrils of power began to reach out from my core and entwine themselves around my veins and internal organs. I could feel those wisps of power grow strong like vines. But those vines that had taken hold of me pierced my heart. Leaning forward, hands twitching and shaking in my lap, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the electrifying energy that was now seeping into my bones and making me stronger. I made fists with my hands because I was terrified of what might spring from them if I uncurled my fingers. I might not be able to control that power. I feared that the power was far stronger than me. I was scared I would be unable to make it bend and flow to my will and that it would race about the cell – rampant and beyond my control. I had no idea what that power could do if it was unleashed. Because the energy inside of me that bubbled in my fingertips felt full of anger and rage. I didn’t want to aim that anger at Calix, nor Flint. I wanted to unleash it on those who had truly hurt my mother and me.

  With my eyes still screwed shut, I took a deep breath as if I were sucking up that power – drawing it back from my fingertips, up my arms and into my chest. When that surge of energy felt like nothing more than a twisted knot in the pit of my stomach, I opened my eyes again and looked straight at Calix.

  I needed to know if Calix had betrayed my mother just like the others had. Fighting to keep my voice even and steady for fear of that energy surging back to life within me once more, I said, “You said that the others believed my mother had killed the vampire leader, Veronica Scarlet. Did you believe my mother was guilty?”

  Calix said nothing. He just looked at me, the blood that was once leaking from the wound in his chest now congealed – the bullet hole now nothing more than a festering looking sore.

  “Answer me!” I demanded.

  “Yes, but I was confused,” he said.

  Taking another deep breath in an attempt to control that writhing knot of power, I turned my back on him. I couldn’t look at Calix for fear that I would become too angry and release that energy on him. I knelt, bent forward at the waist, head low. I shut my eyes and listened as Calix started to talk again.

  “I believed your mother was guilty at first because she had killed before. She killed a vampire…”

  “Liar,” I hissed under my breath.

  “It’s the truth, Mila, she told me herself,” Calix insisted. “Julia told me how she once loved a vampire named Theo, who had committed a crime. I dunno – he shot up some guy out on the road – it was a prank that went wrong – or something like that. The police hunted this Theo down. Julia believed that he had been killed by the police so she moved on with her life and fell in love with another Beautiful Immortal, a werewolf named Pariac. But this vampire – Theo – wasn’t dead and years later he came back into your mother’s life. But she had moved on, she was now in love with another, she was in love with the werewolf, Pariac. A fight broke out between your mother and Theo and she killed him. To save your mother, Pariac took the blame for the murder and he was executed. So yeah, there was a part of me that first believed perhaps your mother had killed again – that a fight had broken out between her and Veronica Scarlet and Julia had shot her in self-defence. Julia had stolen my gun after all. But…”

  “But what?” I whispered.

  “There was a part of me that couldn’t believe she would do such a thing,” Calix explained. “Julia was desperate to find a truce – some kinda peace – it was like she believed that if she did make peace between the vampires and werewolves she would somehow make amends for her past crime. So deep in my heart, I knew Julia would’ve never killed Veronica Scarlet.”

  Turning once more, I said, “So even though you believed my mother was innocent, you still stood by and watched her die?”

  Calix shook his head. “No, I saved her – or I think I did.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, and instead of feeling a flash of anger deep inside of me, I thought I felt a spark of excitement. Hope. “You either saved her or you didn’t.”

  “The night your mother died, I came to this cell,” Calix said. “This is where she was imprisoned and this is where you were born, Mila.”

  Hearing this, I looked about the filthy and damp conditions of the cell and could only imagine the horror that my mother would’ve faced as she had given birth to me. “Why did you come to see her? Had your guilty conscience got the better of you?”

  “Perhaps it had,” Calix said. “But I came to tell her that I couldn’t set her free but I might have been able to save her. Your mother, Julia, held me for the last time. It was then that she tattooed me with these words,” he said, glancing down at the odd-looking rows and rows of letters that covered his chest.

  “So it was those words – that spell – that you used to save her?” I asked, desperate to make sense of what Calix was telling me. Hoping beyond hope that perhaps my mother was still alive.

  “No, your mother once showed me another spell,” Calix said. “She once turned a fly to stone. But she hadn’t killed it – just protected it beneath a shell, like a cocoon.”

  “Did she teach you the spell?”

  “No, your mother had a spell book which I’d taken for safekeeping…”

  “Safe keeping from whom?” I cut in, knowing that the spell book he was talking about was now tucked securely beneath the waistband of my jeans and covered by my sweater.

  “I was keeping the spell book safely away from Rea,” Calix explained. “She wanted the spell book. Rea wanted to learn your mother’s magic. She hoped that if she could somehow learn your mother’s magic, the wolves would no longer need your mother’s help. Knowing this was Rea’s plan, I crept into Julia’s house one night and took it. I hid the spell book before Rea found it. And then, nineteen years later, you came to Shade, and I crept back into the house and placed the spell book back into the hole in the wall behind the painting. That’s the real reason you found me creeping around your house that morning – the morning you were in the shower.”

  “You didn’t have to stand and watch me,” I told him. “Why didn’t you just tell me about the spell book? And why was there a picture of Trent tucked between the pages?”

  “I couldn’t just give you the spell book. You would’ve asked me where it had come from and why I had it,” Calix said. �
��You’ve got to remember you were totally unaware of your real mother’s existence. And as for the picture, I was trying to give you a clue. Despite what the werewolves have done, I couldn’t just betray them, they are my people.”

  “But you did betray them, you say you saved my mother,” I reminded him.

  Chapter Five

  Mila Watson

  To even start to comprehend that perhaps my mother was still alive was mind bending. Those feelings of hope and anticipation flared-up deep inside of me again.

  Calix must have seen the spark of excitement in my eyes, because he said, “Don’t go getting your hopes up, Mila. I only said, I think I saved your mother. I can’t be sure that I did.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked him, not wanting my hopes to be dampened.

  “When your mother was burning at the stake, I hid amongst the trees and the shadows – away from the others. I opened Julia’s spell book and began to recite the spell I’d seen your mother use on the fly,” Calix started to explain. “I wasn’t sure I was even saying the right words or even what I was doing. But sure enough, your mother started to turn to stone. She became a statue, Mila.”

  Hearing this, I couldn’t help but remember seeing though my mother’s eyes at the stake Flint had tied me to. I looked back at him once more and wondered why he had done that to me. But now wasn’t the time to ask him and I turned my attention once more to Calix. “Last night, when you freed me from the stake in the woods, I thought it was me who was burning to death, but now I understand it was my mother. But as I looked back at where Flint had secured me, I saw that statue – I saw that statue turn to dust. Where is it now?”

  “Just like they told you, Trent and the others believed your mother had turned to stone,” Calix said. “They believe that was how witches died. They believe that in death, a witch is turned into stone. They still believe that and have no idea that it was the magic I used, which changed your mother that night…”