The door leading in to that strange little building had given Duncan the blight. The same exact blight that the creep Bruce had given me that one time, all the way up my arms. It took days and a lot of potions and my Aunt’s magic, to stop it from completely rotting my arms off.
‘Duncan will you be okay?’ I asked him as I held on to his arm. He just smiled at me.
‘I’ll be fine, look it’s already starting to heal.’
I looked down at his hand, the blight had indeed started to shrink from his fingers. I guess that was the perk of vampiric healing.
I had contacted my Aunt through our telekinetic link and told her exactly where we were and what had happened. Within seconds, her group had made their way over to us and shortly after; so had everyone else. I was pretty close to the door of the building now and I was getting residual whiffs of that awful smell that seemed to follow Bruce around. I figured that he was using his weird magic to essentially curse the entrance, in order to deter people, or other beings from trying to get in.
‘Oh geeze what is that smell?’ Mai said as she held her sleeve up to her nose. I looked over to see a few of the other witches in my coven and some of the warlocks with faces of disgust. They could smell the residual bad energy of this guys magic too. My cousins Macy and Molly had full on wrapped their scarves around their faces, to keep the foul stench out of their nostrils.
‘Okay I think we can safely say that this murderer has been using this place for something.’ Mr Evans had stepped forward to get a closer look and a sniff. ‘Ugh that’s vile.’ He continued as his nose twitched. ‘Look round here though.’ Mr Evans pointed to a faint red line that appeared to be drawn all the way round the door hole itself. ‘It looks like it could be a barrier spell.’
‘It does look like one.’ Adrian added. ‘But for all we know he has those women he’s kidnapped somewhere in there, or maybe not we can’t be sure. But as soon as someone crosses that barrier without him here, he’ll know someone’s been trespassing.’
I wanted to go charging in there right now and save my friends and everyone else that psycho Bruce had abducted. I very nearly did until my Aunt started speaking.
‘We need to catch this guy in the act. He’s probably gonna be at his most vulnerable when he’s occupied with casting or what ever he does.’
‘Why can’t we go in now?’ I protested. ‘My friends are in there as well as the others he’s kidnapped, can’t we just break his stupid barrier?’
‘Maddie we cannot fuck this up.’ My Aunt said to me. ‘We can’t even be sure that there’s anyone even in there. And knowing who he’s trying to summon, as soon as someone does cross that barrier he’ll probably disappear and he won’t be brought to justice. For all we know he’s maybe even booby trapped this building.’
I felt a little downtrodden. All I wanted was for this to be over and everyone be safe. My Aunt strode over to me and laid her hand on my shoulder.
‘Look I know you want Katie and Victoria back safe, I do too kiddo. But knowing how these things go, he’s most likely a few more women short for his mass sacrifice. Everybody’s still probably alive and we want to get this guy when his keks are round his ankles. We need to prepare.’
My Aunt was right. I didn’t know how these things went, this was my first sort of bad guy hunt which sounded really weird thinking about it. I guess that horrible nightmare I had a little while ago was a vision of what Bruce would be up to and everyone in it, was still alive. Everyone was playing it cool and cautious, I could understand why going in half-cocked with no more information would be detrimental.
Everyone was standing to attention now, listening to whatever my Aunt was saying. Then my cousin Macy raised her hand.
‘Auntie M, wouldn’t it be an idea to keep an eye on this place? Like a stakeout or something?’
‘Exactly that.’ Auntie M clapped her hands together and pointed at Macy. ‘As soon as this creep returns here, we can all ambush him. Strength in numbers.’
‘We’ll need as many magic users as we can get at short notice am I right?’ Adrian asked my Aunt. She nodded in reply before she spoke again.
‘When demons are involved, we need as many as possible to help cleanse the space. But if any of you not able to come, please don’t worry about it. And if you’re hesitant or not feeling it, I won’t expect or force you to come. Remember we don’t want to put anyone in any undue danger, but you have to come willingly.’ She addressed everyone.
Our coven bowed their heads to her signifying they understood.
‘So we need to figure out our roles in all this.’ Marcus now spoke up.
‘My clan and I can take watch of this building.’ Arne offered. ‘And we can do… other things if needed.’ He continued. I think I knew what he was insinuating at.
‘Me and the pack are at your disposal Morrigan.’ Said Marcus.
‘Would you be able to tail Bruce? We need to keep an eye on him in the meantime, plus there’s every chance that he may take someone else, or have another place he’s using. I’ll send over his info.’ My Aunt said. Marcus agreed.
‘And we can help with the cleansing and other magic based stuff.’ Adrian added finally.
‘Great!’ Auntie M exclaimed. ‘Right I’d like everyone to stay in touch, please feel free to swap phone numbers and the like. I dunno we can create a whatsapp group or something, so we all stay on the same page.’
Everybody got their phones out and began exchanging numbers. Eden came over to me and gave me her number.
‘Hey maybe we should hang out sometime? I mean, if that’s okay with you?’ Eden said to me.
‘Yeah sure.’ I replied.
‘Awesome.’ Eden smiled. ‘In fact that’s better than awesome, I don’t actually have that many friends who aren’t in the pack. Especially girly friends.’
‘Well when all of this is over, I can introduce you to Katie and Victoria too. You can come hang out with us and we can go shopping and stuff.’
Eden squealed and threw her arms around be, engulfing me in a massive hug.
Looks like I had made a new friend.
Everyone bid their farewells to each other and eventually made their way home, or to wherever they needed to be. I stayed behind with my Aunt, Arne, Duncan, Liam, Constance, Darius and Mai who was looking up in to the sky. There were a few crows hovering and circling above us.
‘Are they crows? What are they doing?’ I asked.
‘They’re watching over us. Crows are a sort of universal familiar to both witches and warlocks.’ Mai said to me. My Aunt came over and nudged me. She had busied herself for a moment by making sure the building and the gate and fence surrounding it, looked like it had always done and hadn’t be disturbed in any way.
‘Hey Mai, you wanna show Maddie how to ask for their help?’
‘Of course. I was thinking we could vision bond or something? The crows could keep watch for us during the day then Arne’s clan could take over at dusk?’
‘Mai has all the good ideas.’ My Aunt grinned and shook Mai’s shoulder. ‘Maddie pay attention, this is a good, hmm sort of spell to know. I’ll go tell Constance and Darius, they offered to stay and take first watch.’
Mai turned to face me.
‘This is pretty easy, but you have to be nice about it. Just follow what I do.’ Mai said as she looked back up to the two crows that were circling us above the trees. She let out a quick whistle.
‘Excuse me, you two. Can we have a moment please?’ She raised her voice and spoke directly to the crows.
I watched as the two crows eventually made their way down to us. Mai lifted her arm out and beckoned for me to do the same. I followed her lead. I had read somewhere in the My First Coven handbook that crows were pretty important to us and could aid us in many ways.
‘Just speak to them and ask them nicely. If you have some food on you, they’d like that.’
I did have a biscuit I stashed away in my pocket but forgot to eat when we found the weird building. I pulled out the biscuit and crumbled it up in my free hand, giving some to Mai. One crow landed on Mai’s outstretched arm and the other landed on mine. We let the crows peck away at the biscuit crumbs, surprisingly they seemed pretty polite in taking the biscuit pieces and didn’t snatch.
‘Can we ask you two a favour?’ Mai spoke aloud to the black birds. ‘We need you to keep an eye on this area for us, only during the day though.’
The birds looked intently at Mai as she spoke, as if they properly understood what she was saying. She carried on talking.
‘We need you to watch out for a man going in to that building there.’ She pointed over to it. I then decided to speak.
‘He’s not a nice man, he takes women to sacrifice them to a demon. He even has some of my friends.’
The two crows cawed loudly, I guess that meant they knew what I was saying to them.
‘Would you do that for us? And let us see what you see?’ Mai asked the birds.
I didn’t know how they would agree to this, but a peculiar thing happened. I felt the crow on my arm hop it’s way up to my shoulder and it started rummaging around in my hair with it’s beak. I winced a little as the crow nipped a hair from my head and carefully, tucked the strand of my hair in amongst the feathers on it’s back. The crow on Mai’s shoulder was doing the same. A strange warmth had drifted over my skin and I looked the crow directly in the eyes. I didn’t know what to expect, but I jumped when my vision changed to that of the crows; looking me straight in the eyes for a split second. I shook my head and took a shaky breath in after that.
‘Woah that was… weird.’ I mumbled. Mai was just smiling at me. My vision was back to normal.
‘Pretty cool huh?’ Said Mai as she gave her crow the remnants of biscuit that was still in her hand. He tool the remaining bits, bobbed his head then flew back up in to the sky. My crow however had rubbed his beak in my hair again before flying off to join his friend. Mai then explained to me that I would get that weird vision flash again when the crow had seen something. She said they we’re pretty good at alerting you to exactly what you had requested and didn’t really spam you with visions of things they liked, or thought you would like to see.
The rest of us decided to go home. We had things to plan and we needed to eat and rest up, so we would be ready for everything. I said goodbye to Mai, Mr Evans and even Liam who looked absolutely knackered. I was surprised though that he was able to conjure his own portal. He was finally getting better at his craft.
