Page 9

CHAPTER 9

FIONA

W e crouched behind the crumbling stone wall. Magical energy crackled around my fingers as I prepared my distraction. The corrupted wards pulsed with sickly purple light against the darkening sky. My earlier bravado about explosions aside, even I had to admit this situation called for something special. The kind of special that usually ended with Aislinn giving me that worried look she'd perfected.

"Ready?" I whispered to Violet and Aislinn. They nodded, their faces grim in the unnatural light. My magic stirred restlessly under my skin. It was responding to the ancient power that saturated the Blackwood manor. It felt like being too close to a live wire. I had the distinct sensation that touching the wrong thing would end very badly.

"Try not to bring the whole place down," Aislinn murmured as she scanned the perimeter for any sign we'd been noticed. "We still need to search it for clues."

"No promises," I replied with a wink, though my heart wasn't really in the humor. The weight of what we were dealing with pressed against my chest like a physical thing. The cult, the shades, the First Ones. It was the kind of mess that made me wish I'd stayed in bed that morning. Or at least had another glass of that Fae wine first.

The magic formed into spheres of pure kinetic force. They were grenades made of condensed chaos. Perfect for creating the mother of all distractions. Each orb pulsed with a different frequency. They were designed to mimic wildlife and hide our presence. It was the kind of complex spell work that Grams taught me. She’d been trying to cram a lifetime of learning into the last couple years. She had to keep our magic from me my entire life after she and my mother discovered I was a nicotisa.

“Three.” I counted down as the power built. "Two." The wards pulsed again and created a window of opportunity. The timing had to be perfect. "One."

I released the spell and sent multiple orbs of magical energy arcing through the air. They struck the ground around the house in a carefully orchestrated sequence. The resulting explosions were honestly rather beautiful. If you were into that sort of thing. Which I am. The blasts sent snow and debris flying in all directions, created a spectacular light show. It drew the attention of every minion in the vicinity.

"Subtle as a brick through a window, aren't you?" Violet muttered before she moved forward. Her magic reached out to probe the weakened wards.

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" I grinned as we avoided the minions investigating the disturbance.

"Now!" Violet whisper-hissed as she finished working on the wards. Her magic was enhanced by her phoenix heritage and blazed golden against the purple corruption for a split second. Aislinn's Fae power joined hers and her wind held the temporary breach open. The combination of their magic was like watching an artist paint with light. It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

We slipped through the gap and into the house. The foyer looked like something out of one of those gothic horror films Violet loves so much. There was dusty furniture, cobwebs, and that distinct feeling that we really shouldn't be there. "Well," I whispered as we moved deeper into the house, "this is creepy. Anyone else expecting the portrait eyes to follow us?"

"Don't even joke about that," Aislinn shuddered. "Remember that haunted gallery in Bath?"

"How could I forget? My hair didn't lie flat for a week after that ghost tried to possess me." That had been our last attempt at a relaxing outing. Even our day trips ran into problems.

The walls were covered in symbols that matched those we'd found on the victims. They pulsed with that same sickly purple light. The corrupted magic made it hard to breathe. It was incredibly unpleasant to continue the journey through the house. But that didn’t stop the Backside of Forty. We were stubborn like that.

"These markings," Violet said, examining one particularly complex pattern. "Is the whole house one big ritual space?"

"I really hope not," I muttered. "It’s probably to keep up the aesthetic. Nothing says 'evil cult headquarters' like turning your entire house into a magical circuit board." Aislinn snorted and Violet smiled as we continued in silence.

"This way," Violet murmured after a moment. She was pointing toward a corridor that seemed darker than the others. My magical senses were going crazy and picking up traces of shade energy everywhere. "Something powerful is down there. Can you feel it?"

I nodded. The magic was like a weight pressing around me. It made each step feel like walking through molasses. "Yeah," I replied. "I’m getting some seriously bad juju vibes."

"Must be Tuesday," Aislinn quipped while her hand was tight around the protective amulet she wore.

We followed Violet's lead. I cast a silencing spell so our footsteps made no sound on the ancient floorboards. The corridor led us to what must have been a study. Books lined the walls. Their spines were decorated with symbols that moved. It was the massive oak desk dominating the center of the room that caught my attention. Its surface scattered with papers and ritual implements.

I walked over and scanned the items. "Anyone else feeling like we just walked into the evil version of Grams' study?"

"Grams doesn't keep bloodstained ritual daggers next to her paperwork," Violet pointed out as she gestured to the implements on the desk. Fresh stains marked their surfaces. I really didn't want to think about what – or who – they'd been used on.

Notebooks filled with cramped handwriting detailed the process of ‘preparing vessel’ in clinical, horrifying detail. The author's enthusiasm was evident in the way certain phrases were underlined multiple times. ‘Perfect resonance achieved’ and ‘successful separation of essence from vessel’ featured prominently.

And there, pinned to the wall, was a map of Hambledon. Locations were marked with push pins. Red strings connected different points and created a pattern that made my magical senses scream in warning. The inverted pentagram was fitting in the situation, given its association with evil.

"Bloody hell," I breathed. "They've been planning this for years. What do you think each mark represents? A potential vessel? Look at how they're arranged. It's like they're creating some sort of magical circuit. "

"Bloody hell, this is disturbing," Aislinn said as she carefully flipped through one of the notebooks. Her face had gone the color of old porridge. "These absolute nutters are building some sort of magical battery using supernaturals."

"Like hybrids," Violet added grimly. "People with multiple types of power that can be harvested and combined. See these calculations? They're trying to find the perfect combination of energies."

"Well, that's not terrifying at all," I muttered as I examined a diagram that showed how different magical signatures could be ‘harmonized’ through what looked like an extremely unpleasant process.

A floorboard creaked somewhere above us. It was a reminder that we weren't alone in the house. The minions were still out there, searching for whatever had triggered their alarms. We needed to move faster.

"Grab everything that looks important," I said, already stuffing notebooks into my enchanted bag. "And maybe some things that don't. Better safe than sorry."

"Since when are you the voice of reason?" Aislinn asked as she helped gather documents.

"Since we started finding instructions for turning people into magical batteries. Call it personal growth." I smiled at her and then narrowed my eyes. I noticed something odd about the bookshelf behind the desk.

The magical energy flowing through the house seemed to concentrate there. It created a sort of void in the corrupted power. It was like looking at a hole in a sheet. "Hey," I called softly to the others. "Anyone else feel the gap? Because either I'm having a very specific hallucination. Or that bookshelf is doing something weird with the magic."

Violet came over and studied the shelf. "There's a concealment charm here. It feels like it was placed here decades ago. And was recently activated. See how the energy flows around it instead of through it?"

"Can you break it?" Aislinn asked as she kept watch at the door.

"Give me a minute," Violet replied. I joined her as she started weaving counter-spells. "It's complex and has multiple layers of protection. They’re tied into the house's wards."

"So that's a yes?" Aislinn clarified.

"That's a 'stand back in case something explodes’," I whispered.

It took us a few minutes to dismantle the magical locks. Each layer we removed revealed another. It was like peeling an onion made of razor wire. Finally, with a sound like a sigh, the shelf swung open to reveal a hidden room. And holy mother of magic. What a room it was.

The walls were covered in photographs and news clippings. They were all connected by strings. These might have been red, but they were glowing brightly with that purple energy. Some of the photos showed familiar faces. At least two were of the victims we'd found in the forest. They had stalked them and identified them as potential targets. There were also several shots of the three of us going about our daily lives. Someone had been watching us for a while. But, why? We lived a few hours away and had never been to Hambledon.

I forced my gaze to move to the artifacts that practically screamed ‘dangerous magical item’. They sat on shelves and hummed with power. I recognized a few from conversations with Artemis. They were things that should have been locked away in Nylah’s secure vault, not sitting on display like trophies. It was the altar in the center that really got my attention. It was a massive stone slab carved with runes that dominated the space .

"This is..." Aislinn's voice trailed off as she took in the scene.

"A shrine to crazy?" I suggested as I got a closer look at the disturbing array of items arranged on the altar's surface. "Because that's what this looks like to me. The kind of crazy that usually ends with someone trying to resurrect ancient evil or dissolve the barriers between realms."

"Both, probably," Violet muttered as she carefully photographed everything with her phone. “Why are they interested in us?”

“No idea,” I replied, but my attention was elsewhere. The ritual tools that were carefully arranged made my magical senses recoil. It was the shifting mass of shadows in the center of them that had my feet shuffling. It sounded like the whispers we heard in the forest.

"Shite," Violet blurted from where she was pawing through personal items like a raccoon at an all-you-can-eat dumpster. She held up what looked like an ID card that couldn't make up its mind about what it wanted to be. Tilt it one way, and you got a respectable businessman with a stick up his ass. Tilt it the other, and you saw something that would make horror movie monsters piss themselves. "Our mystery douche is from the Shadowmere Pack."

"The what now?" I asked. My stomach was already doing the cha-cha of doom. Anything with ‘shadow’ in the name was about as trustworthy as gas station sushi.

"Bloody hell," Aislinn said. "They're one of the oldest packs in Britain. They used to be guardians until their Alpha got cozy with some dark mage about two centuries ago. Now they're like that one cousin everyone pretends isn't in the family photos. He began thinking that summoning demons was a fun weekend hobby."

"An evil werewolf on magical steroids is behind this? What's next? Secret vampire council? Ancient dragon conspiracy? Girl Scouts selling cookies laced with transformation potions?"

"Don't even joke about that last one," Violet warned. "After what the Shadowmere Pack did to the London Conclave, evil Girl Scouts might be an improvement. I can't see how a member of the pack is the leader behind this. He couldn’t perform the ritual. It’s more likely the evil mage."

“We have a bigger problem,” Aislinn said as she waved a list of names in our faces like a red flag in front of a bull.

My hand flew out, and I snatched her arm. Our names were at the bottom. Each one was written in what looked suspiciously like blood. Regular ink wasn't dramatic enough for these people.

"Well," I said, trying to keep my voice light, "I guess we know why we kept stumbling into this mess. We weren't just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were meant to be here. Someone's been playing chess while we thought we were playing bingo."

"They're targeting us specifically," Aislinn confirmed in a tight voice. "Back to your earlier question, why? What makes us so special?"

"Besides our charming personalities and tendency to blow things up?" I asked as I scanned the rest of the list. Some names were crossed out. My chest squeezed when I realized they had to be victims and were likely already dead. Others had notes beside them, listing magical abilities and potential resonance values.

Something shifted in the magical energy around us. The shadows in the corners began to move, and the temperature dropped so rapidly I could see my breath. The whispers from the cluster grew louder and more insistent.

"It’s a trap!" Violet shouted just as the first wave of shade energy slammed into us.

I threw up a shield because I still hadn't learned that optimism gets you killed in this business. The corrupted magic chewed through my defenses faster than my Uncle Dave through an all-you-can-eat buffet. And let me tell you, that man can devour. The house decided this was the perfect moment to have an architectural crisis.

Ancient power surged through the walls like the world's worst electrical problem. Stone cracked and wood splintered. Everything started going full earthquake simulator. The only thing missing was the safety warnings. We added the "holy shit, we're going to die" parts. The ceiling joined the party by projectile vomiting dust and chunks of plaster. Obviously, death by falling debris was on tonight's menu of potential catastrophes.

"Time to go!" I yelled and grabbed as many documents as I could reach. "Unless anyone fancies becoming part of the local ghost stories?"

"Been there, done that, got the therapy bills," Aislinn shot back as she snatched up what looked like a particularly important grimoire.

We ran for the door, dodge-rolling under a beam of purple energy that turned a chair into ash. I hadn’t realized that death by magical laser beam was on the menu tonight. The corridor looked like someone had taken chaos, multiplied it by crazy, and sprinkled ‘there’s no way out’ on top. The Alpha's minions were hopped up on dark magic and were climbing the walls like reject Spider-Man extras. Their eyes were glowing that special shade of purple that screamed, ‘evil overlord approved’.

A thing that used to be human shot across the hall. Its form wavered like a bad TV signal between there and not. It moved like someone had taken all the bones out of its body. It stretched and warped as it tried to clothesline us with arms that reminded me of Mr. Elastic. I dropped and rolled under them. The cold void where its humanity used to be chilled me to the bone.

Violet, being Violet, decided that was the perfect moment to show off. She vaulted through the thing. Her phoenix fire turned its mass into screaming ash. The sound it made? Was like static and a scream had a baby. Two more proto-shades came at us from opposite directions. They probably thought they were being clever. News flash. Trying to attack someone who could manipulate kinetic energy? Not the brightest idea. I redirected their half-formed bodies and let them disperse into each other. The way they merged and split apart like oil in water was deeply disturbing. Violet kicked another that had grabbed hold of Aislinn.

We burst out of the house just as the first floor decided gravity was more of a suggestion. The corrupted almost-shades vanished right before that just like they had in the cellars. The building made the kind of noise usually reserved for horror movie climaxes. Decades of dark magic threw a tantrum and took the structure down like a toddler dropping building blocks. Windows exploded. Each pop was accompanied by purple fireworks. Very festive, in a ‘holy shit we almost died’ kind of way.

We didn't stop running until we reached my car. We were gasping like we'd just run a marathon. Through lava. While being chased by demon bees. The Blackwood Manor house performed its grand finale, imploding with all the subtlety of a drunk dragon at a fireworks show. Yeah, Argies had a little too much fun last July when we visited my kids in the United States.

"Everyone alright?" I asked as I slumped against my car's hood. My muscles felt like they'd been through a supernatural CrossFit session.

"Define 'alright’," Violet wheezed. She was clutching stolen documents like they were winning lottery tickets. " Because I think my definition needs a serious update after tonight."

Aislinn's silence hit like a lead weight. When I turned to look at her, her face had gone whiter than a ghost at a bleach convention. She was staring at my side with that special kind of horror usually reserved for British people who've run out of tea. I followed her gaze down to where something warm and wet was doing its best impression of a leaky faucet across my jacket. Oh. Well, that explained the weird tingles. Funny how you don't notice getting mauled by a shade when you're busy trying not to die in other exciting ways. "Well, hell," I said softly.