Witch Infernal (Infernal Hunt Book 3) (30 page)

The fae had slept on the couch and armchairs for a few hours while the rest of us continued scouring the maps. We had covered every square inch and pinned down five potential sites for the ritual when they woke. I rang Elise hoping for some new information, but she had nothing. Her lady was satisfied that everything was in place to play out as required. Felix had nothing. They couldn’t pin down a scent or get a trail anywhere. We had no choice but to gather as many people as we could and attack all five places.
 

“We will be weak!” Azfin snarled.

“What other option do we have?” I shouted back.

He paced around the living room. “We need to narrow them down,” Azfin growled.

“How? Do you have more information?” I snapped back.

He sighed and deflated. “We have thirty-six hours. Take twelve to rest and gather your people,” I said.

Azfin curled his lip but said nothing. He and Haeyl left without another word. I slumped down onto the sofa where Lysander wrapped his arms around me.
 

“It’s better than nothing,” he said softly.

“Raif, can you call in some favours with the lycans and get more of them on board?” I asked.

He growled quietly. “I am not well thought of among the lycans.”

I smirked. “I heard they tell bed time stories to their cubs about me to scare them into behaving.”

Raif smiled. “Fair point. I’ll do what I can.”

Lysander carried me to bed before I could argue. Quin and Kadrix were already asleep on the sofa, they’d crashed the moment Azfin left.

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to narrow down our options, to put an end to this. Lysander stroked my hair and nuzzled my neck.
 

“You’ll make our group weaker if you refuse to sleep, Evelyn. You know this.”

I sighed and did my best to let sleep claim me.
 

Sixty-Three

I woke up to a strange shuffling sound outside our front door. I dragged on Lysander’s T-shirt and ran to the door, peering through the peephole. Someone or something dark vanished down the stairs as I got there. I grabbed the long knife that sat behind the door for just such occasions and slowly opened the door. The hallway was empty. I almost shut the door again, thinking that I was over-reacting to a neighbour, when I saw the crisp white envelope on the floor in front of our door. I poked it tentatively with my toe. Nothing.

Lysander came up behind me. He rested his chin on my shoulder and looked down at the envelope.
 

“It smells of witches,” he growled.

After I’d poked it once more I picked it up by the very tip of a corner and carried it to the living room. Raif emerged from his room.
 

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Something from the witches,” I said as I dropped it on the table.

He and Lysander circled around the table, inspecting it. Kadrix and Quin woke up and watched with bemused expressions.
 

Finally, Raif said, “I don’t see any harmful magics on it. We can open it.”

“Can you verify that, Kadrix? No offence, Raif, but I’d rather not be blown up.”

The cub gave a small shrug. Kadrix stalked over to the table and glared at the envelope for a long moment before he snatched it and tore it open. His face paled before his ears turned pink and pinned back against his skull. He threw the thick card on the table.
 

“They’re playing with us.”

Quin ran his hand up the elf’s back as I leant over and looked at the card that had been in the envelope. Elegant gold script informed me that we’d been invited to a very special event, and we were the guests of honor. It then gave us one of the addresses we’d picked out on the map. I rang Elise and told her.
 

She barked a harsh laugh. “They plan on us being the final sacrifices. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Prepare for war, Evie.”

She hung up before I could respond. I took a long deep breath. We were walking into a trap, but there was no other choice. We’d go in armed to the teeth and kill as many of them as we could. Failure was not an option.
 

Kadrix and Quin had run off to the elf’s workshop moments after the phonecall ended. Raif had spent the time growling and snarling on the phone to what I assumed were lycans. I took my time attaching as many blades as I could.
 

“Do not forget your fire, Evelyn,” Lysander said as I handed him a third knife.
 

I smiled and gave him a nod while I fastened the final throwing knife. Kadrix burst into the flat with a small army behind him. Azfin, Haeyl, and another elf that I didn’t recognise were hot on his heels, with Felix and a number of lycans behind them. Raif flashed me a satisfied grin; he’d gotten the lycans on board.
 

Quin marched over to us and handed Lysander, Raif, and I pouches full of magical orbs along with a fresh pouch of anti-magic powder. Elise slipped in shortly afterwards.
 

She shouted over the increasingly loud discussions about how this was going to work, “Quiet!”

Everyone stopped to look at the small priestess standing in the middle of them. One of the new lycans looked down around him before his eyes finally settled on Elise, with a look of pure fury on her face. The lycan shrank away.
 

“This is a complex ritual, but they are prepared for us. We must kill every bitch we can. Do not take any risks. Rip their throats out; near-fatal injuries are not good enough.” She looked around the group making sure everyone understood. “There will be a battery powering the ritual. Most likely a man. He will be surrounded by blood runes. Kill him and they cannot go ahead with the ritual. Everyone clear on what we’re doing here?”

“Kill them all!” a lycan shouted.

Elise smirked. “Exactly.”

A baying howling noise erupted from the group. The fae snarled and cried out war cries. The lycans yipped and howled. Even Raif and Lysander joined them. The energy rippled through the group. We would not be defeated.
 

Horns began honking outside. Azfin held up his hands to quiet everyone down. “There are vehicles waiting outside. More of our kind are joining us. They stole our friends. Our lovers. They killed our family in the fae realm. We will have our vengeance!”

“What are we waiting for?” I shouted.

Everyone turned and squeezed out the door. A neighbour peered out of their door as they watched our small army march down the hallway and jog down the stairs. I smirked to myself.
 

It would give them something to gossip about.
 

Sixty-Four

We headed outside to find the varying fae in cars outside on the street. We piled into a sleek blue thing that Azfin was driving. I’d barely shut the door when the tyres squealed and he took off down the road.
 

“We’d have a better chance of saving them if we arrived alive!” I shouted.

Azfin ignored me while I battled to put on my seatbelt
.
I was going to need it.
 

It felt like we were doing urban rally driving. He swung the car between other cars, squealed around corners, and ducked down gaps that should have been far too small. The others cars in our group remained hot on his heels
.
The fae could drive. They’d make fantastic getaway drivers
.
I had to wonder if
,
perhaps
,
they did. They were quite fond of shiny things
,
after all.
 

“How long?” I called out to Azfin while clinging onto the seat and the door handle for dear life.
 

“Thirty minutes, forty if we hit traffic.”

That seemed like a long time to survive his driving. I muttered a small prayer to the moon goddess to watch over us. The surroundings changed at a break-neck pace. They shifted from simple yet classic buildings with angels strewn along their facades to blocky communist buildings with garish colours splattered between the greys. We were making real progress when the large apartment buildings shifted to roman
-
style houses with bright red tile rooves and green trees in courtyard
-
style gardens. The roads were narrow and winding
.
Azfin was a firm believer in driving through the corners instead of around them. I was pretty sure at least one guy ended up in a field trying to avoid a head
-
on collision.
 

We screeched to a halt in a gravel
-
covered area bordered by old pine trees. I looked around for any sign of life and couldn’t see any; there hadn’t been a house or other building for a good mile. All the better to hide the bodies and dispose of the cars. We piled out of the car. Azfin had gathered quite a few fae, elves, pixies, and Sidhe, all emerging from the various vehicles. Fire rippled over my hands and I began spinning my blades while the Sidhe talked amongst themselves.
 

“Evie
,
would you stop doing that,” Quin hissed.

I put my blades away; I hadn’t even realised I was doing it. Lysander sniffed the air
.
Raif quickly followed suit. Their ears pricked
,
and they began walking into the trees. Everyone stopped talking and watched them. The small group of lycans stiffened and watched them intently. Raif pushed forward; furry ears sprouted from the mop of hair on his head. Lysander looked back at us, his muscles tense.
 

“We have their trail.”
 

“Go
,
then,” Kadrix shouted.

That was all they needed. Raif shifted into his wolf form mid-run and took off into the trees. Lysander remained mostly human; black ears pushed through his hair
,
and his face elongated a little. The cub was bloody fast. We ran through the tense forest, jumping small logs and pushing through dense undergrowth. He slowed his pace when he was almost out of sight. Lysander led the pack with Kadrix close behind him; I kept pace with Elise and Quin with the fae around us. Shimmering lines kept catching my attention as they wove their way through the trees. The further we got into the forest
,
the denser the lines became. Raif stopped dead; Lysander paced around behind him, both of them sniffing the air. A rustle caught their attention. They both spun around, ears pricked as they listened intently. The shimmering lines were dense all around us. I couldn’t help but feel as though they were a web, and we were the poor fly caught in the middle.
 

Sixty-Five

I had my celestial blades in my hands as we slowly walked between the trees. The hounds were listening to every small noise, not that the fae made any noise. The trees stopped and formed a very neat circle around a large cabin that was surrounded by dark grey gravel and totem
-
pole
-
style carvings. They were tall tree trunks, entirely devoid of smaller branches, topped with what appeared to be wooden carvings at first glance. We circled around the clearing; upon closer inspection
,
the carvings turned out to be carcasses. What I had thought was old wood was in fact weathered skin pulled tight over gaunt bodies. I looked away and cursed to myself. Witches were vile creatures.
 

We stuck together as a group; we didn’t know what we were facing
,
and there was no benefit in allowing them to pick us off one by one. A full circle around the clearing showed us that there was no way to approach the cabins without making a lot of noise. The trees around the clearing were coated in the shimmering threads
,
and the gaps between them almost hummed. I trusted that the fae must have seen that and knew what they were doing. Lysander looked to me for some form of guidance; Raif was sniffing around the edge of the clearing.
 

Kadrix turned to the group and said, “Evelyn, take your people and Mila and attack the back entrance. I will take my people and the lycans and attack the front. We will meet in the middle. Every witch you find is to be killed. No survivors.”

Mila was a dark-haired pixie, small and deadly. Her sharp features shivered before they slipped away to reveal her full pixie form, complete with a mouth full of very sharp teeth and long claws. Raif whined and paced just at the edge of the clearing. The Sidhe had all taken on their full fae forms, all sharp edges and sharper teeth. The lycans growled as they shifted into their full wolf-beast forms. Dense coarse fur covered their tall, muscular bodies. Their eyes shone as a dark ember, jaws extended and filled with sharp canine teeth. I grinned. I was in my element.

Kadrix gave a nod before he led them through the trees and ran at the porch. Quin and I led our group to the back door.
 

That was where things went wrong.
 

The back door flung open and three witches hurled curses at us. Elise waved her hands and muttered something while I threw a knife at the closest one. The witch laughed, a hoarse corvid sound, before she began forming curses between her moving hands. I dove to the side, dodging a large ball of curses. Elise landed besides me.