Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Roux
It had been a while since I’d been topside, and the air felt heavy in my lungs as I materialised in Maleficavae.
It wasn’t often that I came into Witch Territory, and magic pulsed and prickled against my skin like a thorn bush.
The magic of the living had always irritated me.
I always figured it was due to my magic being fuelled by death, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Then again, I wasn’t sure of much at the moment.
“I still can’t believe your new pets left a Ferral carcass on the front lawn,” Atticus said with a wide grin on his face that he was failing to hide.
“Don’t act like you find that annoying.” I found Atticus playing with the Lycaon on the front lawn just before we all left to come topside. He’d been like the biggest kid rolling around with them, and my heart melted while watching them.
“Didn’t they almost bite your arm off in the Vault?” Magnus quipped as he strode between the twins.
“Yeah, but now they’re friendly,” Atticus replied as he led us towards the scene of where the first witch went missing.
Raevyn was going to meet us there and talk us through their investigation into the missing witches.
She’d been looking into them, but she hadn’t been able to figure out who had taken them or why.
They just seemed to vanish without a trace.
Luckily, no one had gone missing since last month, but did that just mean that whoever was stealing them had enough for what they needed?
It was only then that I realised we were missing someone. “Has anyone seen Daire?”
That incubus had been elusive since being ordered to remain with us. He’d dumped his stuff in a room at the mansion, but I hadn't seen him since.
“Apparently, he’s gone to see Hades,” Atticus said. “But I’ve got the impression that he’s utilising his longer leash from the Guild to deal with something personal.”
Huh. I wonder what that was all about. I’d have to ask him the next time I saw him. There was something a little untrustworthy about the guy, and I still wanted to pick his brains about his ability to see the love lines between me and the guys.
“Does anyone else think it’s quiet around here?” I asked as we walked down the main street through the village.
“Witches are probably too scared to leave their homes,” Thane said from behind me.
“Yeah, but I thought there would still be some people wandering around. The place just feels… empty.” I peered through the shop windows and couldn’t see a living soul. The café was empty, and not even the outdoor seating was set up. It was piled high inside the café and covered in a dust sheet.
“It’s like a ghost town,” Rafe mused, his gaze darting in all directions as if he were expecting something to jump out at him. Rayne mirrored his twin, and the pair of them looked lethal dressed in their customary leather jackets with all sorts of weapons attached to their hips and thighs.
Magnus was kitted out with a large blade strapped to his back, and he looked just as deadly. He glanced over his shoulder at me and caught me checking him out. He threw me a cocky wink, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“How much further is it?” Atticus asked.
I pointed to the next street. “Should be just around the corner.”
A shiver of foreboding rippled across my skin as we approached the street. That couldn’t be a good sign. It sank in my stomach, churning and folding over itself until I thought I might throw up.
“What is it?” Erebus placed a hand on my forearm, halting my steps. The others carried on towards the street, their stride steady and cautious.
“I don’t know.” I blew out a breath of frigid air. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel what?” His red eyes were bright with concern beneath his pinched brows.
There was a coldness in the air, something that felt like a bite of frost that chilled me to my core.
“Guys,” Magnus called to us over his shoulder. “You need to come and see this.”
I broke away from Erebus and jogged to where the others were standing at the mouth of the street that led to the square where the witch was taken, but what I saw there made my feet falter.There was a summoning circle in the middle of the square, but it was nothing like one I’d ever seen before.
Two circles were carved into the road, glowing with a faint white hue.
The surrounding runes were like the ones I’d seen in the mark of Nyx in the sky, there but rudimentary. Carved by a novice.
Obsidian shards and skulls marked the cardinal points, and black candles lined the edges, signalling this to be a summoning based around necromancy.
It was all pretty standard stuff—apart from being carved into the actual road.
But it was what was in the centre of the circle that had my steps faltering.
Three jars sat in the middle of the circle.
A jar of blood.
A jar of essence.
A jar of magic.
There was also a small, flat wood box. It was closed, so I couldn't see inside, and I wasn't desperate enough to enter the summoning circle without fully understanding its purpose.
A resonant thrum filtered through the air, vibrating from the inner circle. It slithered across my bones like a snake, coiling around me with an unbreakable grip. I had the disturbing feeling that this was here for me.
“What is this?” Magnus asked as he took a step closer.
Rayne shot a hand out to hold him back. “Don’t go near it.”
“We don’t know what the purpose of this is,” Rafe added.
What was this? Was it someone’s attempt at creating the God Killer?
“It looks familiar,” Erebus said as he crouched down to examine the runes.
I knelt next to him. “You’ve seen this before?”
“Not exactly,” Erebus muttered. “But there’s something in the way it’s constructed that reminds me of someone.”
Thane walked the circumference of the circle, his lips pursed and a finger tracing his Cupid’s bow. “It’s complex, with many levels. It would take a while to decipher this.”
“So why does it look like it’s been drawn by a ten-year-old?
” I asked as I stood back up. We needed to secure the area and investigate further.
This circle can’t have just appeared, and I had the distinct impression that someone was watching us like we were their own personal show.
“Rafe, Rayne and Magnus, set up a perimeter. Let’s see if anyone is here.
Thane, get hold of the Deathwatch. They should be here with Raevyn and find out what’s holding them back. ”
I wanted to make sure that nothing untoward had happened to them. It couldn't be a coincidence that we discovered this necro-circle and Raevyn has mysteriously failed to appear on time. She was always on time.
“Righto,” Magnus said cheerfully as he headed off with the twins.
“Be careful,” I called after them. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rafe smiled at me over his shoulder. “So stupid is off the table, but murder is okay. Got it.”
“No! That’s not what I’d said. Rafe!” I shouted after them, but they were gone. “Dammit. Every time.”
Atticus chuckled as he watched them disappear into the distance. “What do you need from me?”
“You said you had a little bit of witch running through you on your mother’s side, can you help Erebus and me figure this out?”
“I’m not sure how much use I’ll be, but sure.” Atticus walked around the circle, his eyes cataloguing everything he could see.
“Surely this is only a fraction of what has been stolen?” The jars in the circle weren’t massive and probably only held about two litres of liquid. So where was the rest of it?
This circle was only the beginning of whatever plan someone had.
“And the rudimentary signs will make it weaker,” Atticus mused as he crouched by the rune for ‘life’.
“But what are they trying to achieve?” I didn’t know enough about magic to understand how the runes worked.
I knew the basics: it all depended on the order you wrote them in, how clean they were, and hell, even what they were written in affected the spell.
These were carved into the road and then filled with some kind of shimmering dust.
Erebus stood back up and braced his hands on his hips. “It looks like a soul-catching spell entwined with some kind of transference. There are some runes I don’t understand here, but I think that’s the gist of it.”
“And what about the jars?” Where the hell did they fit in?
“No idea,” said Erebus as he fixed me with a look that seemed to show curiosity. “But I have to admit, this magic is impressive. It would take someone with immense knowledge to put the circle together.”
I took a slow walk around the circle, looking at all the various objects lining the runes. There were animal skulls, human bones, dolls made from hair, a broken arrow, a Reaper’s token, a—
Shit. “Look at these objects.”
“What about them?” Erebus asked, peering up from one of the runes.
“I think these somehow represent us. The Reaper’s token, the skull of a dog, and I’m pretty sure that is the arrow that killed you, Atticus. I—”
A slow clap reverberated around the square.
I instantly went on alert, pulling my scythe from the shadows. Fuck, where were the others?
How had this person got past the twins and Magnus?
“I knew you were smart,” a female voice sang. It was cold, cracked, raspy, and grated against my eardrums like sharp nails. A sign of dark magic, the kind that got you thrown out of covens.
Atticus and Erebus stepped up to my back, watching my six.
“Can you see her?” Atticus whispered in my ear.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
Where was she?
My eyes roved the buildings around the empty square, but only dark windows stared back. My fingers clenched around the handle of my scythe, the knuckles turning white, and I could hear Erebus’ heavy breaths as he slowed his heart down, ready for battle.
“Who are you?” I shouted out, hoping to call her out into the open.
“I am many things,” she replied darkly. “But to you I’m someone you knew once.”
“I did?” What if she was someone from my past? Someone who knew me before I died? “How?”
“That’s not important right now,” she said, her voice sounding from all around the square. “What is important is that you step into that little circle of mine.”
“Oh, so you’re responsible for the toddler scribbles?” I provoked. I couldn’t help it. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way.
Atticus huffed a little laugh but didn’t say anything. However, I took it as encouragement to proceed with my antagonising line of enquiry.
“I was taught by a master,” the woman hissed. “The knowledge I possess could topple worlds. Who are you to—”
“Whatever. If you’re so high and mighty, why are you skulking in the shadows?” I stepped forwards and rested my scythe on my shoulder.
“I am not skulking,” she replied. “I’m trying to build some tension. Perhaps I should just throw some magic at you instead and behave like a buffoon.”
“At least it would be more interesting than this,” I sighed.
“Do you know how difficult it was to get to this point? The amount of sheer fucking planning that went into getting everyone here. I had to kill Atticus for one, then persuade Prometheus to let you destroy the Vault and—”
“You killed Atticus?” I saw red. Absolute fucking red.
Power surged in my veins in response to her words, and I wanted to throw it all at her. I wanted to make her blood boil and her eyes melt out of her damn skull.
“Yes,” she goaded. “I did. Didn’t count on Thanatos getting all possessive, though. That threw a spanner in the works.”
Atticus traced a hand down my spine. “I’m still here, kitten.”
I knew that, I did, but she was the reason he’d died, and she was standing within a few feet of me. “Why?”
“Why?” she laughed. “Because if your mate were dead, you’d be lost to the darkness.”
“Nyx,” Erebus muttered.
I turned my head sharply to him. “What?”
Erebus’ eyes moved frantically as his thoughts tumbled behind them. “I think this is all about Nyx. If you had lost your mate, you’d be thrown into a devastating grief. I think she was trying to manipulate you into a state of mind that would unlock the door to Nyx.”
The mysterious woman cackled like a witch. “Ding, ding, we have a winner. You’re not just a pretty face, are you, skiá?”
“What?” Erebus hissed. “How do you know that name?”
“Because Nyx told me. She’s told me a lot of things about you,” she taunted, that low rasp of hers ringing in my ears.
Who was she, and how did she know all of this?
Something in Erebus snapped. His shadows burst from him, thundering into every crevice of the square.
“Show yourself!” he roared, his rage getting the better of him. The woman just laughed through it all, the sound of it loud and jarring.
“Erebus, stop.” I tried to hold him back, but he ripped himself from my grip.
“Where is she?” Erebus yelled as his shadows swept around the square, looking for the woman. “Show yourself!”
“We need to do something,” Atticus said, his voice by my ear. “This is getting out of hand.”
He was right, but how was I going to stop this mess?
I looked at the circle. Then at Atticus.
“No,” he said. “Don’t even think about it.”
But I was thinking about it.
There was more at play here than this badly drawn circle, and this was probably the only way to get answers.
Whoever this woman was, she wouldn’t reveal herself until I’d done what she’d asked.
Hell, she’d manipulated us all here; she probably had a backup plan that would involve murder and maiming if I didn’t step into the damn circle.
I grabbed his arm. “You said it yourself; the shitty carvings made it weaker. Perhaps it won’t do anything but tickle.”
Panic laced his brow. “No, Roux. You can’t.”
“I love you,” I said, and I yanked my arm from his grip.
His fingers scrambled to hold onto me, but it was too late. I jumped into the circle and braced for whatever was going to happen.