“Smart thinking,” he says, the admiration in his tone clear.
“This is not my first encounter with portal magic,” she says. “Though I can’t say it’s my preferred mode of travel. Goddess above, I’d rather be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a packed bus in the Holland Tunnel than go through that again.”
“That makes two of us, Tats.” I pull out my witchweed, grateful it made the journey with us, and turn to offer her one. “Ciggie?”
“You know, I don’t mind if I do.”
I light one up for her, then offer the pack to the rest of our rag-tag crew, but they all decline.
Guess it’s just me and Tats with the oral fixation, which is fine by me. I’ve got no idea how long we’ll be stuck here, and I’m not keen on running out of these babies.
We finally come upon an old tavern and inn that looks to be in pretty good shape, aside from a thick layer of dust coating every surface inside. Not sure what the upstairs holds, but on the main level there’s a decent sized kitchen, two bathing chambers, and a bar and dining area that opens into a big common room with a couch and overstuffed chairs and a gloriously massive hearth.
An untouched stack of wood leans against the stones, and I get to work building a fire to chase away the chill, if such a thing is even possible here.
“Where are the demons, then?” West asks the witches, joining me at the hearth. “There were so many… It’s weird that we aren’t seeing any evidence of them.”
“The demons likely haven’t materialized,” Fleur says. “They’re here, but not in physical form. They were only just summoned from hell, bound to the mages whose bodies they inhabited. But the mages themselves died the moment they were possessed, which meansthosebodies are still in the cathedral. The demonic entities… They have nothing to tether them to this realm yet. So they merely… exist.”
“And what of the diabolical residents of Wintermoon,” Draegan muses, more to himself than to anyone else as he paces the perimeter of the rooms, inspecting the shelves and cupboards. Tension radiates from his every muscle, his eyes alert for danger.
“I don’t think there’s anyone left,” Tatiana says. “I can sense energies, and this place is… It’s dead. But there’s an undercurrent of anger here, too. Resentment. Same sort of echo you might find after a person has been murdered. Whatever happened here, it affected scores of people. It was sudden and unexpected, and it didn’t happen all that long ago. A few weeks, perhaps.”
“What makes you say that?” Rook asks.
“It’s the intensity of the energy. The sharpness of it. I can almost taste their fear, their anger.” She glances around the space. “The fact that the inn seems to be in relatively decent condition speaks to that as well. It doesn’t have the same feeling of utter neglect that places get after they’ve long been abandoned.”
“I’m feeling it too,” Auggie says, his face pale. “A lot of darkness. Rage. Strong, strong vibes.”
“The question is,” Rook says, “if all these fae were murdered, where the hell are the bodies?”
Tatiana shakes her head and closes her eyes, holding out her hands as if she’s trying to literally feel for an answer. “Whatever event took them, it was magical in nature, and it was evil. Pure evil. That much, I can say with certainty.”
A collective shiver ripples through us all.
“Augs. You good?” Sensing his discomfort more than anyone else’s, I nod for him to join me and West by the fire, which is just starting to crackle to life. “You don’t look so good, mate.”
“I’ll… I’ll be okay. Just need to shake off this bad mojo. I’m gonna go clean up, then check out the food stores in the kitchen. See if there’s anything salvageable.”
While the rest of us wash off the blood and gore from the attack and the humans find some warmer clothing to change into, Augs manages to cook up a stew of potatoes and herbs and carrots and some sort of dried beef I don’t bother asking him to name, because it’s hot and hearty and that’s what matters most right now. Westlyn, of course, gets the veggie version. We even found some wine and ale in the cellar, and between that and my fire fit for a king, the mood is considerably lighter.
As we all go in on seconds on Auggie’s stew, a thing that pleases him immensely, Westlyn fills us in on the rest of the details about what happened in the library last night: her strange nightmares, the woman from the Judgment card in the Tarot, all the things Verrick told her when she came to consciousness in the cathedral.
She tells us about Brian and his alleged attempts to protect her from this fate, about her apparent command over the demons, and her suspicions that Verrick double-crossed Zorakkov and the Forsythes, intending to steal the demonic army for his own dark deeds.
“But now that we’re here,” West says with a sigh, “I really don’t get it. He said he wanted me to rule in his stead in Wintermoon once he reclaimed the earthly realm for the dark fae. But…whatdark fae? And who, exactly, did he want me to rule over? This whole realm feels like a ghost town. Does he have all his minions stashed away somewhere, awaiting his triumphant rise to power in our realm?”
“All questions that need pondering,” Tatiana says, “and answering.”
I pass her another witchweed cig, sensing she’s about to get philosophical, and light one up for myself.
The witches are just starting to get into the nitty-gritty on all that Moon Blessed prophecy lore and West’s connection to the Codex when I decide that in addition to the weed, the conversation also needs more wine.
I’m about to head down to the cellar to find a few more bottles when Westlyn suddenly bolts up from the table, a look of sheer panic in her eyes.
“He’s here,” she breathes, and her skin comes alive with glowing fae runes.
It’s all the warning we get before Verrick crashes through the front door on a frigid wind.
