Fucking Cole. The White Witch had been a pain in my ass since he was a child. Always strutting about in his prim and proper ways and his superior complex. Yet lately, even I had noticed how tired he looked. He lookedsick, and definitely not himself. I knew that eventually our Mate’s mark would call to him, whether he liked it or not, and to be honest when Ziel had said he’d silently handed him the address for that White Witch, I knew then that he wasn’t as immune to her as he let on.
I hated how she worried for him, how he was just another worry clouding her head and pulling her down. I had planned to see what I could find out about him so she could concentrate on getting her powers to listen. There was only so many more days she would be without her twins before she broke. I could already see her steal resolve crumbling under the pressure to get back.
I left her in a pile of books on witches and their Familiars and took to the skies. I allowed my dragon to fully take over for a while, internally laughing at how he spun and flipped around in front of her high arched windows. Her silent laughter as she watched from the chair by the window was euphoric.
We gave one last spin before gliding off in our search for some answers for our Mate. I took back control and flew into the Light City, purposely keeping to the outer edges so to not be spotted. I shifted and walked from a forest of Wisteria and kept to the shadows as I made my way to Cole’s home, a stupidly big two-story mansion that screamed ‘White Witch’ with its perfectly trimmed bushes, white stone path and white door. I walked around the back, weaving in and out of the many bushes containing ingredients I knew he used for potions. I purposely stomped on a few as I passed them.
I had waited so long for my Mate, so long to provide her with happiness and love, to give her everything I had. The fact she had such an awful start to life pained meand filled me with so much rage I constantly had to swallow down the fire that threatened to burst from my mouth. I hated how I had to sneak around this prick’s home in search for answers for her; a Mate should never have to be unsure on the feelings of her Circle Mates. I wanted to squash his perfectly shaven face in my bare hands for ever making her worry for him.
Hot steam drifted around my face before I realised how irritated I had become again. Shaking my head and ruffling my hair, I located his back door, made my way towards it and wrapped my large hand around the dainty silver handle. Before I could even twist, the door opened swiftly, the sour smell of drugs burning my nose and irritating my dragon once more.
“We had the same idea it seems.”
“He’s going to smell the Mayfeaver ye’Fanan!”
He laughed at my Scottish use of the word ‘idiot’ as I shoved past him pinching my sensitive nose to his smoke. I looked around the pristine kitchen. It looked almost unlived in.
“I’ve looked around everywhere. Nothing interesting. The boring witch didn’t even have anything I wanted to steal.” Ziel rasped and leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen. His leather jacket creaked as it pressed against the pure white marble counter. He stubbed his smoke out on it, marking it with a gleam in his crazy ass-eyes.
I nodded once and made my way to the basement door; glad I didn’t have to snoop around the prick’s house. I trusted Ziel, as much as it annoyed me to admit it. I trusted him because I knew that everything he now did was for her.
Our Circle Mate. Our Link.
We were brothers now, forever more, a family.
The second my hand touched the door handle my dragon’s hackles rose. The crackle of black magic lingering in the air was stifling. My eyes jumped to Ziel who had also noticed the change.
We opened the door and walked down the dark stairway. My shifter sight allowed me to see every groove, every mark and smudge along the white wall. I could taste the spicey flavour of black magic. Its burn along my skin had my dragon creeping forward, ready to burst free if needed.
Black magic had always been a vicious whisper among the witches. White and Dark Witches always had the agreement that it was to be avoided at all costs. It had always been the one thing that they had agreed on together. It spread through your veins like a sickness that poisoned you from the inside out. It slithered around your brain and clouded your entire perspective of the world. It turned your veins black with its sickness and completely overtakes your thoughts.
The White Witches had accused the Dark Witches of using it during the war; they had claimed that it was the use of the black magic that had caused the death of so many and had closed the portals, that it was reason of the Dark witches’ demise, the reason they disintegrated into black dust and floated into the air as particles.
I called bullshit.
Vines slithered down the wall beside me as I flicked some flames from my hand and casting light around the large basement. The room was completely different to the vibe upstairs; the dirty walls and vile smell ofsomething dead was pungent. I actually much preferred Ziel’s sour drug then the one burning through my airways from the basement.
Right in the centre of the floor was a drain, stained and overflowed with thick sticky blood. Beside it was a silver tray, one you would usually see a surgeon with. I frowned, confused as to what we were seeing.
Ziel walked further into the room, knelt down and swiped his finger in the blood. His tongue peaked out as if to taste it, yet before I could bark a disgusted grunt at him, he straightened up, wiped his finger on his pants and aimed his now empty eye sockets at me.
“Something stinks of death here; it’s not dead though,” he rasped, swivelling his head around the room as if coating his now bony body in the scent surrounding us.
“It smells of death yet isn’t dead?” I asked scratching at my beard. I hadn’t realised how long it had grown the past few days.
He grunted, shifted back and grabbed another Mayfeaver with shaking hands. He relied on the drugs too much; his Darkness and hunger for souls needed a release and pushing the urges down were only going to cause more damage.
I shook my head at him and walked back up the stairs, my heavy feet stomping against the wooden steps. I needed fresh air, to get away from all the overbearing smells.
Why did Cole have a basement that stank of death and black magic? Why was there a drain overfilled with blood and surgeon tools.
What the fuck was that prick up to?
Ziel slowly strolled out the back door where I stood filling my lungs with clean air. The fucker was lucky the human diseases didn’t affect us; the amount he smoked was worthy of death in the human realm.
“I have a source who can help with the location of who used Black magic,” he muttered as he stared at me with glassy eyes.
“The location? We have the location. It was that smug prick.”
