“Where is she going?”
I hear Winnik demand of Jedrek when I leave the room. I don’t even know. Not really. In fact, now that someone has asked, I falter, realizing I am moving to confront, standing on the front lines, and not do my normal one line volley from somewhere safe.
Jedrek doesn’t have time to answer her. The knock on the front door is loud, demanding, and not something one would hear on a casual drop by from a friend. This is a drum of war announcing intentions with three solid strikes.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get it!” I mockingly shout to the two powerhouses still sitting in the other room. “It’s just a bunch of angry werewolves, who aren’t allowed to be here, but are here, demanding their witch back, who I thought only lived in bad teen movies and Netflix shows focused more on more dick than plot. No big deal. Just another Thursday.”
“Isn’t she fun?”
I hear Jedrek ask before he appears beside me. His face may be his trickster signature, but it doesn’t reach the blue of his eyes or his stone set shoulders.
“What’s the plan again?” I whisper, trying to cling to this false bravado I’m displaying. My mouth is always brave. It’s my brain who is late to the party.
“Don’t die?” he offers in jest.
“Is that a possibility?”
“Death is always a possibility,” Winnik’s voice interrupts our exchange. “But not today. Not for us, anyway.”
“Just to be clear,” I ask them both. “Wolves are bad? Witches are good?”
“Today, yes.” Winnik smiles and I’m shocked to see it possible. “Tomorrow may be a different answer.”
“Glad to see everyone talks in riddles,” I mutter, not quietly, but not as loud as GiGi would.
Winnik and Jedrek are too focused on the door to pay my attitude any attention. They seem to both be listening, but in different ways. I can feel Winnik’s magic filling the space around me. In fact, it’s the first sense of magic I have felt from a house which is supposed to hold the witches of this area. Only the house felt powerful. Not a sense of a person. That annoying alarm bell is chiming again, but it may be too late.
Whatever Jedrek is doing has made the corners of the house dark with shadows that seem to move when watched from the corner of your eyes. There’s a chill in the air, waking feelings of fear and of being watched.
It feels as if I, too, should be doing some type of prep, but when the glass smear of a word forms again on the hutch, I take the unspoken advice. I do nothing. Waiting and unsure of what my role is supposed to be in this supernatural stand-off of broken rules.
“Open the door,” Jedrek requests.
The door opens on its own. Swinging slowly, those on the wide front porch come into view a few at a time. They are all dressed the same. Forsaking the Ripples’ normal high-priced look, the family, and a few too many who were not at the graveyard that night, are all wearing jeans and tank tops. From torn to worn thin, their jeans were not chosen as fashion. Nor were their faded tops. If I were born with an IQ, this would worry me. Instead, that easy to amuse part of my brain is hopeful this means I’ll get to see their other side and something other than tea and cookies.
“Not a good time to smile,” Jedrek whispers.
Dropping the corners of my mouth, I nod, trying to replace the eager smile with some sort of ‘game face’.
Deon emerges from the center of well-built men. She, too, is dressed in the same attire with a ponytail pulled tight.
“Greetings, Winnik,” Deon shouts from where she stands surrounded and protected.
“You’re trespassing, Deon. You are not invited nor welcome.” Winnik doesn’t call out the way Deon had. With her magic flaring like the rattle of a snake, her voice is the same cold, collected tone.
“Hand her over and we will leave. No reason to risk your own for one who is not a part of your house.”
Deon’s words flutter my stomach. Stepping an inch further behind Jedrek before I can stop myself, my mind races for options for escape should Winnik agree.
“Slave trade is for the wolves. I do not participate in such things. If you want her, you must come take her.”
“You would risk your own house, and all those in it, for this one witch?” Deon sounds disgusted with Winnik as she asks, but she hadn’t prepared for Winnik’s reply.
“You would risk your own house, and all those in it, for this one witch?” Winnik asks, turning the tables of logic upon Deon like the reversal of a sword, but she isn’t done. “You would risk all treaties, past and present, voiding all agreements held, for one witch? Then if you must, Deon, then you must.”
I hadn’t heard the other women come down the stairs. I feel them. It’s a wave of power with an undercurrent threating to drown us all. With so much magic surrounding me, pushing at me, I can feel my own awaken.
“No,” Jedrek barks. “You don’t have control.”
I want to say that’s an obvious observation. It’s the one-word admission I wasn’t able to admit in time. This twin flame Jedrek named as my power, flares to life while I stare at him. My skin glows the faint green with almost wisps of green smoke circling my arms and hands.
“Do not let your hair down,” Jedrek pleads, but that, too, is too late.
My fingers have already found their way to loosen the tight bun, letting the spiral waves from being put up wet drop dramatically. Lifted as if by an unseen breeze, my red hair moves around me, alive and waiting.
“Do not kiss me right now,” Jedrek suggests again and when I feel my face wrinkle with it, he nods before turning his attention back to where Deon stands beyond the door. “Good. For a moment there I thought you were just purposely trying to piss me off.”
“I can smell the necromancer in there,” Deon shouts. “Is that your little ace in the hole? Is she why you dare stand here to defy me?”
“She came of her own accord,” Winnik almost giggles as she answers. “Seems you have more enemies than you are aware of.”
“Powerful people always have powerful enemies,” Deon shrugs. “It’s the way of our world.”
My feet are moving before I know they are. Jedrek does his best to sidestep, blocking whatever path I am on. With a simple twitch of my fingers, he is down on his knees, sighing and annoyed.
“You talk too much, Deon,” I announce when I come to stand beside Winnik. “Your father was right. You’re still pretending you have any authority.”
My words sour her whole posture, but she still doesn’t take the bait.
“Where is your twin brother?” I ask her. “Does he know you’re here?”
The werewolves standing around her turn to look at her. There is whispering coming from those further towards the back. Just as the voices had suggested – Deon is here on her own, against the wishes of her family.
“What I do is none of his concern!” she shouts, addressing not just me, but those around her too.
“You’re going to break all treaties without his concern?” I make a tsking noise. “Whatever would Daddy say? Shall I go ask him? Shall I bring him back, and bring him to you? Shall I parade him down main street, shouting ridicule for you and your grab for power?”
Clenching my fist, I pull the slumbering dead from the unmarked graves around the house. These protectors who sacrificed their eternal rest so long ago, awaken easily, eager to protect those inside of this house. They don’t stand as shambling corpses. They stand around the wolves as if it were the day of their death, wide awake and ready for whatever road Deon takes us down.
“Or maybe I should just kill you now, where you stand. I’m within my rights,” I tell her, not sure of how I know such things, but not willing to interrupt whatever this bitch trip is I am on.
I can see Deon weighing her options. Those around her have tensed, waiting for any command or signal. The ones on the back rows, not so much, but that could be because they are the closest to my new little friends.
“She’s
mine, Harper,” Deon says through teeth so clenched I worry for their enamel.
“I will find her,” is all I offer.
“And you will bring her to me!” Deon almost screams, rattling the nerves of those she has brought.
“I will find her,” I repeat, not agreeing nor denying her request. My green smoke grows thicker responding to both of our building emotions.
We stand, our two sides for what feels like hours, watching and waiting for the other to change our standoff. This is more than just a test of power. This is a stand for survival and for today, as Winnik has suggested earlier, witches are good. Wolves are evil.
“Kill them all,” are the words which turned our world upside down.
Three little words and the sky fell, and the walls ran red with blood.
The wolves on the front are running faster than I can react. Jumping in midair, their change is fluid, instant. I answer with adrenaline and instinct.
Those I had summoned are already falling upon the ones closest to them. Their screams are filling the air as their brothers and sisters fill it with growls. Their family doesn’t turn to help those screaming their names, begging for some kind of help. They are left to die, already written off as casualties lost.
Shadows I had only thought were moving earlier now race past me. Jedrek pulls me back, away from the black curtain formed around the door and entryway. When the wolves crash through it, it steals whatever magic had turned them. Nude crawling men and women fill the hallway. They are dazed, shaking their heads as if to clear it, but still, the women lined along the stairs hold back.
When Deon finally walks through the dark barrier, she stands in the middle of the weakened crowd of her family. To say she is pissed does not fully cover the rage she is wearing.
“Now,” Winnik nonchalantly says.
The screams from those along the floor are a mixture of howls and human pitches. They wither, clawing at their skin, their eyes, the one next to them, tearing flesh and thicker meats from bones and their bodies. Veins are sliced, arching blood in wide arches along the near walls. It soaks the carpet. It seeps into the wood floors as if watering a garden. There’s meat and blood everywhere and the sight of it steals my bravery. My magic seeps away as their lives are doing the same.
“Enough!” Deon screams, almost pleads as those who have been mauled try to reach her, stretching their hands out to their leader, the one who brought them here, for help.
“Is it?” Jedrek asks her. “I thought you were ready to risk your whole house?”
“Whatever would Roman think?” I ask her, but also myself.
“How do you know his name?” Deon isn’t hiding her rage. It covers her voice, her face, and the tears gliding down her high cheeks.
“The same way I know he doesn’t know about this. Nor does Gabreile. I know all that the dead know and the dead here know all about you.”
I’m not bluffing. If she wanted, I could even tell her the shade of the thong she’s wearing, but I don’t think it would be the least bit helpful amid all the dying around me.
“Take the ones who can stand. The rest belong now to me.” I say this with that voice that isn’t entirely mine.
Deon stares at me in horror. She twists from where Winnik stands, blocking her any further entrance in the house nor near her coven, to face Jedrek. He rests against a wall dripping with the bright blood like reverse icicles along the white paint. Neither of them offers any argument, or expression of support, for Deon’s nonverbal request for help.
“I won’t just hand over my brothers and sisters to you!” Her voice has dropped dangerously low, warning of what her next actions might be.
“You already did,” Winnik reminds her. “I asked you if this is what you must do. You had your chance to leave. Instead, you offered up your whole house to her and now your house she owns.”
Deon’s face melts from rage to shock. She was so confident in her plan, she never thought to consider the outcome of any other occurrence. Words are sacred with witches. They have been handed down from generation to generation to teach spells, bindings, and potions. When a witch offers you her words, she offers you her word and her trust. And thus, words are binding, binding them to you and you to them. Deon never stopped, lost in all her ego and anger, to think of what she was saying to the witches inside of this house.
“Unless I kill her,” Deon muses.
I know the lights of my eyes are dancing. I can almost see them, little ripples in my vision which blur things around me and yet don’t at the same time.
“Yeah,” Jedrek tells her, whispering the second part, “Good luck with that.”
“Go to your brother and sister, Deon. Go before you cause more damage you cannot undo,” Winnik says, offering her advice instead of a taunt.
Those of her family who can stand, in some way or another, have already began to exit through the dark curtain of Jedrek’s summoned shadows. The ones unable to stand are no longer moaning for help. They have accepted their fate. They watch with sad eyes as their leader backs away, before those same eyes fade to empty shades of death - but the eyes of Deon, those eyes are filled with anger and their color is only growing.
There’s an audible exhale from the room once she is gone. The celebration is mild, mostly hugs shared among the nameless women behind Winnik. Jedrek, for all his worry before it began, is eyeing the collection of bodies with cold disinterest. His look reminds me of a toddler discovering a vegetable of their torment on their dinner plate.
With my magic gone, and my eyes back to my own, I feel exhausted. My muscles ache as if I have just run a marathon, uphill, in the snow, both ways. My head is heavy. Before I can put the many reasons I shouldn’t before me, I drop to the floor in a less than graceful attempt to sit.
Staring at the many dead who are almost on the same level as myself now, I wonder why that part of me wanted to keep them. Remembering how I raised the dead outside without any ceremony, I wonder how I did that, too.
“You’ve always been able to,” says one of the witches who has come down the stairs to stand in front of me. “You were taught how to restrain yourself. Not how to embrace yourself.”
She’s petite, almost fragile looking with hair as ashen as her complexion. Her drape styled dress hangs on her frame in the popular boho style. She’s staring at me as if I’m some rare bug pinned behind a glass frame. It’s weird, and unnerving. Mostly just weird.
“You’re reading my mind, aren’t you?” I ask her when the feather sensation trails along my skull. “Seems rather rude.”
“I can only hear your current thoughts,” she remarks, almost offended. “Your walls, even in this weakened state, are too strong for even me to pry the bricks loose.” Turning to return to her post near the bottom step she says over her shoulder, “You’re keeping them as pets to remind the Ripples of who you are and what you are capable of. You will need that.”
“Why?” I ask, wondering why I keep insisting on pushing my luck.
“Because Deon’s thoughts weren’t hard to read,” the witch tells me.
“Tell us where she is,” Jedrek requests from Winnik. He’s staring at his nails as if they are caked in something robbing them from their normal gleam.
“I don’t know where the one you search for is hiding,” Winnik says, throwing her hands up in the air when the shadows start to move again. “I do know where one is who may know. We banished her name when I discovered her dealing with a certain cursed necklace. She said she had received it from a wolf witch, not knowing its origin.”
Falling backwards onto the carpet, hoping for a split second the blood hasn’t seeped this far before I land, I ask with my exhaustion tinting my words with a southern accent, “There’s more than just the one trinket loose? What the fuck does this one do?”
“I expect there are many, as there often is at any time. Normally, witches aren’t the ones with them. We let the mortals have their little game of consequences
. As long as the mortal agreed of their own free will, there is nothing anyone can do. It’s how the demons have been playing their game for centuries.” Winnik put scorn in every word, not hiding how she feels about the other side’s tactics.
“Why do witches have them now?” I ask the collective staring at me.
“One witch,” Jedrek corrects with an air of annoyance. “One very brave witch.”
“Great, so back in the car to go somewhere else. I feel like all we have done this whole time is ride in your car somewhere or sit at my house. I used to have a day job. Maybe a little Netflix obsession, too. Now, just car and home to car and home.”
“You done?” Jedrek asks from where he stands.
“Would it matter?” I return.
“Nope,” he says with a genuine smile. “Tell me where to find this banned witch of yours, Winnie.”
She almost smiles when hearing his chosen nickname. I’m surprised by the jealous lurch my heart does when I see it. I’m not surprised when the blonde witch snaps her head in my direction.
Winnik walks to a side table and writes on a piece of paper tucked inside one of the drawers what I hope is the address. I hate myself for watching her walk to him. I hate her when she does smile, offering the slip between two clasped fingers.
“Never a dull moment when you arrive,” she tells him, and for the first time her voice has warmth in it.
“Aim to please,” he tells her, and the smile they share makes me want to punch them both.
The dead man nearest me twitches a little, opening his glazed eyes to stare at me. “Shhhh,” I tell him. When he falls back limp, an empty shell, I cringe a little.
“Playing with your toys so soon?” Jedrek asks, standing over me to offer a hand. “March them home, littlest witch. They won’t all fit in the trunk.”
“March them home?” I repeat his phrase. “Can I even do that?”
“You can do anything you ask your magic to do,” the annoying blonde, as I have now dubbed her, tells me.
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 15
