After the warden finally gets as sick of the sound of his voice as the rest of us, he goes into the smaller building, and the guards point their guns at us.
“Into the tower!” the leader barks.
Now that he mentions it, I guess the main building sort of does look like a tower, but a square, short one. We witches are marched in single-file, and the adulterers are taken into the smaller building. I guess they’re too good to be housed with us. The tower is made out of concrete shaped like stone blocks, sort of like the architect was trying to mimic castles and dungeons. There’s one room in the center that reaches all the way up to the very top of the tower, and a skylight lets in a sorry beam of sunshine, too filtered through the filthy glass of the window to be much good as illumination. The cell blocks are stacked in rings around the central room, and the bars are made of what looks like sturdy steel.
The guards pull one of the witches aside. She’s a huge woman, broad as an ox, even though she’s not fat. She’s built like a mountain. She could lay some serious hurt on a person, and she could probably take the guard who’s talking to her and break him in half over her knee. I really don’t want to have to tangle with her.
It’s pretty obvious that she’s like the halfway step between guard and inmate, because after he talks to her, she comes marching over to me.
“Kathleen Goode?” she says. Her voice is surprisingly light. I expected something throaty and deep, but she could do voice-overs in cartoons.
“Yeah,” I nod.
“Come with me.”
She leads me to an area on the bottom floor. There’s a desk there, and a row of lockers. The woman takes me to one of the lockers and raps it with one thick knuckle.
“This is your locker. Take off the clothes you’re wearing and put on the uniform that’s hanging inside. You’ll also find a bag of supplies.”
“What supplies?” I ask.
“Sheets, two towels, a wash cloth, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and soap.” She gave me the stink-eye. “That’s all you get, so you’d better take care of it.”
“I like the deluxe treatment,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Barbara, but everybody calls me Babs.”
She opens the locker and stands there, watching me. I get it, it’s prison. No privacy. The guards hang around and watch me. I take off the pantsuit I was wearing at my trial, which is now soiled from mud and sweat, and change into the prison’s uniform: black jeans and black tank top. Even the underwear I’m given is black. There’s no bra, but that’s okay. Damned things are binding.
“Right,” Babs says as I stick my feet into the black slip-on sand shoes the prison supplied. “Let’s take you to your cell.”
She leads me up metal stairs that ring and clang with every step, the noise echoing off the concrete walls. The cell I’m taken to is on the third level. The stairs reach a circular walkway that runs around the central shaft, and the cells are shaped like truncated wedges, the narrow part dominated by the steel bars of the door. Babs takes me to cell 13, which I take as a good omen, and opens the door for me.
There’s nobody in here right, but one of the two beds is already made. The top bunk has sheets, a blue blanket and a thin pillow. Apparently my cell mate is still out in the common area and I have the bottom bunk. I sincerely hope my soon-to-be best friend isn’t built like Babs.
The bottom bunk has a similar blanket and pillow, and a mattress that isn’t quite big enough to cover the springs. It’s not even two inches thick, and it’s covered with cracked vinyl, like the mattress from a crib that someone threw away. For all I know, that’s exactly what it is. Good thing I don’t really like to stretch out anyway.
Babs says, “Make your rack and I’ll take you back down.”
“I don’t have to stay in my cell?”
“Not if you don’t cause trouble.” She shrugs her giant shoulders. “We usually hang out in the common area until curfew, then we get locked in at night.”
“Do you know my cell mate?”
“Of course. Her name’s Con.”
“Connie for Convict?” I ask, because I can’t help myself.
Babs clicks her tongue in annoyance. “Connie for Constance, if you must know. You’d better watch that mouth of yours, Goode. You’re going to get in a lot of trouble that way. But I expect you already know that, since you already spent one night in the hole.”
I make my bed, and the fitted sheet is far too large for the pad that’s serving as my mattress. I tuck the excess in, but it occurs to me how those lumpy and awkward folds could easily conceal things.
“Do we ever get to go outside?”
“Every morning for roll call,” she nods. “Just like this morning.”
“Do we interact with the male witches at all?”
She sniffs. “There are no male witches. Just men who want to claim our power.”
That at least tells me that Babs is a witch, too. “I don’t know. I’ve known some…”
Her voice turns hard. “I said there are no male witches.”
Her dark eyes flash, and I can literally see lighting in the irises. Storm witch. Not good to cross. Choosing the path of least resistance for once in my life, I back down.
“Right. I’ll remember that.”
Babs nods at me. Her mouth is one of the only little things on her, and she has it pursed so it’s even smaller than normal. I hold my tongue and follow her back down to the common area.
The first floor common area, the base of the shaft that runs through the core of the tower, is set up with three sets of picnic tables, one television, and a ping pong table with no net, no paddles and no ball. I guess we need to beg the guards for the equipment or something. I’m pretty certain I’m not in a position to ask for anything, so I just follow Babs to one of the picnic tables.
A gorgeous redhead with a braid down her back is playing chess with one of the male inmates, and a guard hovers nearby. He doesn’t have a rifle, but he has his baton and a pistol. Babs nods to him, and he walks away to hover by another chess game on the other side of the room.
Babs sits beside the redhead, leaving me to sit beside the man. Both players look up at us in annoyance.
“Connie, this is Kathleen Goode. She’ll be your new cellie.”
The redhead looks me over with emerald, cat-like eyes, and I know a shifter when I see one. How the hell did she get locked up in here? Our eyes meet, and she smiles slowly. She’s the cat, and I’m the canary. This could be fun, as long as I end up getting eaten the nice way.
“Hi,” she finally says. Her voice is just a sexy as the rest of her. I think I’m jealous.
“Hi,” I answer.
The man says, “I’m Malcolm.”
He offers me his hand, and I shake it. There’s an immediate tingle, and I can feel the magic in him. He’s powerful.
I can’t take it anymore. “Okay, I have to know. What gives?”
“What do you mean?” Malcolm asks.
I lean into the table and speak softly. “We’re all still in control of our magic. Why are we sitting here and letting them keep us prisoner?”
Connie shakes her head. “You’ll find out.”
“How ‘bout you tell me, cellie?”
“How ‘bout you shut your mouth and listen before you get us all killed?” Connie snaps. “I saw what you did out there. You’ve got the smell of magic on you, and the hex dogs are going to find you tonight. Lucky me, we’re in the same cell.”
Babs speaks up. “You can stay with me tonight.”
“Thanks, Babs.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s a hex dog? And you can move around at will?”
“We can move around if Babs or the guards say we can move around,” Connie answers. “And as for the hex dogs? You’ll find out.”
They go back to their chess game, and it’s clear that nobody’s going to tell me anything. I want to go wandering around, but nobody else is getting up, so I think I probably have to stay
where I’ve been planted. I look around, though, and see Corwin on the very top level, leaning over the railing and looking down the shaft. I wave to him, and a man standing beside him, another inmate, glares down at me. He puts a hand on Corwin’s shoulder and pulls him away from the railing and into the cell.
One of the guards turns on the television, and the sound is loud. It echoes and bounces off the concrete walls so that the other inmates start shouting so they can be heard. The din completely conceals any noises from upstairs, and I wonder what’s happening to my boy.
I risk it. I stand up and head toward the stairs. A brunette with only one eye grabs my wrist and stops me.
“Leave ‘em be,” she advises. “It don’t do to stick your nose where it don’t belong.”
“He’s my…”
“Ain’t nobody your nothin’ now,” she says. She shakes her head. “You got a lot to learn, pumpkin, and you’d better start learnin’ it.”
I try to pull my wrist away, but she won’t let go, so I cast a spell with my other hand that gives her a hard shock. She releases me with a yelp, and all of the other witches move far away from me.
Fine with me.
I charge up the stairs to Corwin’s level, determined to help him. He’s special to me, and I don’t want some bastard touching what isn’t his. The racket from the TV almost drowns out the yelling from the guards, but I can hear them clattering up after me. I pick up the pace until I reach the cell that Corwin got pulled into.
I am unbelievably relieved to find that my boy is not being violated when I get there. The guy that grabbed him is jawing at him like there’s no tomorrow, though, and what I’m hearing sounds really unhinged. Corwin turns to me with a smile just as the guards make it up to our level and grab me. As they pull me away, I can hear my boy calling after me, but I don’t see his face.
I’m dragged down the stairs none too gently, going backward. It’s terrifying, because I’m positive I’ve going to get dumped on my head. The guards don’t drop me, though, and they drag me through the common area and out into the yard to the basement door.
Looks like I’m heading to solitary again.
They haul me into the basement and toss me into one of those stinking, bug-infested holes. This isn’t the one I was in before, and it smells like piss and rotting meat. I cough on the stench.
“Think you can do whatever you want?” one of the guards taunts. “Think again. You’ve used magic twice today. I’m glad you’re going to be down here where we don’t have to hear you screaming.”
I don’t know why, except that I might have lost it just a little, but I scream in his face. He winces and steps back from the sonic blast. I add a little magic to the sound and scream again, and he dives for the door, slamming it shut.
“Guess you heard it anyway, didn’t you, fucker?” I shout. He walks away, dabbing at the blood trickling out of his ear.
I cast to remove the stench and dry up the standing water, and then I do the only thing I can. I sit on the dirt floor and swat mosquitoes, planning all the terrible things I’m going to do someday to the Brotherhood and Jacob Harris.
I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of an animal sniffing at the door to my holding cell. There’s no light here, but I can see the metal slab door opening. A patch of darkness that’s somehow deeper than the darkness around it slips into the cell with me, and it takes up the entire bottom half of the door. I hear a soft growl.
I have no idea what this thing is.
My instincts tell me to hold very, very still. I hope that it’s like one of those monsters that can only see you when you move. Unfortunately, the way it’s sniffing, I’m pretty certain it can smell me just fine and doesn’t need to see me to figure out where I am.
It approaches, and I realize that I’m looking at a huge black dog made of shadows. It opens eyes like glowing coals, red and shining, and huffs at me. It takes another step toward me, and the telltale smell of sulfur reveals its true nature.
This must be what they call a hex dog. I know it as a hellhound.
It comes closer, and it starts to wag its tail, but stiffly. One of its ears rises, pricked up to listen to me, but the other stays flopped against its head.
“Jiggy?” I ask.
My old friend starts wagging his tail more rapidly, and he trots forward. His hot breath sears my face, and I pull away from his muzzle. He’s just trying to be friendly, though, so I hug him around his massive neck. He pants in happiness and wags that broken tail even faster.
When he was just a pup, my master sent him to me to help me learn some of the finger points of witchery. Jiggy was rambunctious and stupid, not too unlike me, and he crossed Sebek and got a broken tail and scarred ear for his trouble. He might not win any hellhound beauty contests, but I’d know him anywhere.
I scratch his neck. “Can you take me to my girls?” I ask.
He nods his huge head and then points his snout at his back. I’ve known him for years, so I know what he wants. I climb on top of him, and he shakes once. His shadows surround me, and we become one with the mist rolling out of the swamp.
Jiggy carries me through the prison walls and out into the black oaks. I take one last look and promise Corwin that I’ll be back for him when I can. In the meantime, I have a coven to reunite, and it’ll be no more Miss Nice Witch.
If the Brotherhood wants a war, they’ve got one.
The End
About the Author
Tiegan Clyne has been writing for longer than most of her friends have been alive. Armed with university degrees in Spanish, anthropology and history, she writes reverse harem and LGBTQ fantasies with dark, kinky edges and mystical elements. She also sometimes writes harmless fluff pieces about magical animals and the witches who love them. She loves music, could not stop writing if you paid her, and is a crazy cat lady in training.
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Nicked
A Prequel
(Avarice: House of Mustelid)
Emma Cole
About Nicked – A Prequel
A group of four hunters, known as a quad of Enforcers, are on the hunt for a thief making trouble for the Ghost Clan. Unbeknown to Vaughn, Bane, Iliam, and Lorca—the thief aka Avarice, is their mate. In this short story prequel, they find out what the consequences are when they don’t follow orders.
18+ due to content – Reverse Harem/WhyChoose
Vaughn
"You sure about this gig?" My quadmate Bane was getting on my last nerve. This was the third time he'd asked since we'd arrived in Ghost territory. Not to mention the twenty other times from when we took the job up until we got here.
"Dude, this should be a cakewalk. We catch this 'Avarice' asshat that's been robbing the Ruscov family blind, then we can get on with hunting down our bondmate. I swear I felt something when we came through town." Where Bane was our resident pessimist, Lorca was our glass half full member.
He wasn't wrong though. And as quad leader I didn't want to be irresponsible and get their hopes up, but I thought I'd felt the spark of a mate bond already. When I'd caught sight of the back of a female in a hooded sweatshirt with a lock of white hair escaping it, I'd had an insane urge to follow. It felt as if I were being tugged by a rope, leading in her direction. Unfortunately, we'd been under orders to pick up the slim dossier on the thief and set up immediately.
We'd been hired because we were one of the best groups of hunters. Only the singl
e quint group held a higher success rate by one catch.
"Alright, let's get set up and then we can go over the dossier over dinner. Illiam? You mind ordering pizza while we sort the rest of this?" I redirected my team to get on task and lead them away from the mating talk. I'd gotten a bad feeling about this during our conversation, but I couldn't pinpoint why.
I adjusted my balaclava to help hide my face and tucked a black beanie over my snow-white hair. Over that I put up the hood on my snug-fitting sweatshirt, angling it to shade my violet eyes. Tonight's job was paramount to retrieving the leverage my uncle held over a forger. He was using the man's family as collateral to force his compliance, and it was my mission to get them out of the crossfire. The little girl and her mom hadn't asked for the man in their life to dip his toes into organized crime. Unfortunately for them, a toe-dip is enough for the Ghost Clan to swallow you up. It didn't use to be so– awful. Sure, we'd been shady when my parents ran things, but the locals were terrified and the tariffs my uncle kept imposing were slowly strangling the town. No one could afford them.
I concentrated on stealthily escaping the compound and my mission to liberate the innocent. There wasn't a lock that could stop me, hence the Ghost Clan legend. The ability didn't appear in every generation, but when it did, it was usually heralded by the telltale albinism I carried.
Iliam
Something was off with Vaughn. I could feel it. Rarely was any of our intuition wrong, and mine was just as in tune as our quad leader's. We all sat absorbed in the information as we went over our packets and inhaled the pizza I'd ordered.
According to the information in the dossier, the target was suspected to be a Ghost. That meant this was an inside job and a betrayal to the entire clan. I'd imagine the Regent would want to keep it quiet that one of his own had turned on him. There had been whispers about goings-on that the leaders who oversaw the shifters wouldn't approve of happening in the region. If they were true, then it was some pretty devious and nasty shit. The Therian Council rarely got involved unless it was something that would expose the supernatural to the world at large.
Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories Page 17
