Witches of Twisted Den (Part One) (Beautiful Immortals Series Three Book 1) Read online

  Witches of Twisted Den

  (Beautiful Immortals Series Three)

  Part One

  BY

  Tim O’Rourke

  First Edition Published by Ravenwoodgreys

  Copyright 2016 by Tim O’Rourke

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Story Editor

  Lynda O’Rourke

  Book cover designed by:

  Tom O’Rourke

  Copyedited by:

  Carolyn M. Pinard

  For Lynda

  More books by Tim O’Rourke

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  Written by Tim O’Rourke & C.J. Pinard

  You can contact Tim O’Rourke at

  www.timorourkeauthor.com or by email at [email protected]

  Witches of Twisted Den

  (Part One)

  This story is set in a where and when not too dissimilar to our own…

  Chapter One

  Mila Watson

  “You’re lying! You’re nothing but a bunch of liars!” I shouted at the wolves who continued to circle me. I looked directly at Flint. “None of what you have said is true. I’m not a witch and neither was my mother. There are humans left in the world, and I’m one of them.”

  Flint broke my stare like it was too painful for him to look at me as the truth of what they’d told me slowly began to sink in – bleed beneath my skin and permeate my flesh.

  Rea took my hands in her claws and gently eased me to my feet. She slipped one arm about my shoulder and pulled me close. I looked at her wolf-like face. Her eyes were bright yellow, the colour of topaz, and the hair that now covered her face was dark and bristling, yet looked soft as silk. She offered me a kind and reassuring smile. Behind her lips I could see that her teeth were now sharpened into points. Rea held me close and for the first time since meeting her, she offered me some kind of compassion. I didn’t want to be held by her or any of them. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to get out of Shade and head back to Maze. I wanted to speak with my Uncle Sidney. Sidney would tell me the truth. He would slip one of his solid arms around my shoulders and tell me that what the wolves and Flint had said was nothing but a pack of lies.

  As if being able to read the doubt and confusion in my eyes and etched across my pale face, Trent looked at me and said, “I know there is a lot for you to understand and take in, Mila, but everything we have told you is true. Let’s all take a breather – gather our thoughts – head to the Weeping Wolf so we can all sit and talk – give us a chance to explain. I think it’s about time you knew the truth about your mother.”

  “This witch – this Julia Miller – that you talk of is not my mother,” I said, clenching my fists at my side. They were beginning to tingle with that sensation I’d felt before – that feeling of energy that spiralled up from my core and pulsed through my veins and into my fingertips where it needed to be released. “My mother came to Shade with my father. They were both looking for a statue and now you tell me that none of that was true? Who were these people that raised me? Were they impostors? I don’t believe you…. I don’t believe any of you…”

  As if realising that standing out in the dark surrounded by werewolves was going to do little to convince me that I was a daughter of a witch named Julia Miller, Trent turned his back on me
and looked at the wolves gathered about us. “Come on, give us some space. There’s nothing to see here. Go back to your beds and get some sleep. Rea and I will sort this out.”

  Without saying a word, the other wolves slipped away and back toward their homes. As they went I couldn’t help but notice as they slipped back into the shadows at the furthest reaches of the park that their bodies seemed to twist and contort – looking like humans once more.

  Flint stood staring at me. What we had once shared had to count for something, didn’t it, even if he did now claim to be a vampire? What we had once shared mattered to me. Alone now with just my friends remaining in the park, Rea looked at Morten and said, “Take the vampire back to the crypt. We will deal with him later.”

  With his hands still chained in his lap, Flint could do little to resist as Morten – still looking very much like a werewolf – began to yank Flint’s chains, pulling him away and back in the direction of the church and the crypt which was hidden beneath it. And although I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore, I knew deep inside of me I still felt something for Flint. The feelings that I’d once had for him had not yet burnt out. There were still flickering embers inside of me for him. We had shared too much for them to have completely been snuffed out, even though I now realised that I’d never truly known him at all. I’d grown up believing that Flint, like me, was human. He had been my first love, the first and only man I had ever slept with. That had to count for something, didn’t it? What we had once shared mattered to me, although now, I wondered whether it had ever meant anything to Flint. He had kept the fact that he was a vampire secret from me… and the knowledge that I was meant to be the daughter of some witch.

  As he was led away by Morten, Flint looked back over his shoulder at me. I had to fight the urge to call out to him, perhaps even go after him, but before I’d had the chance to do either of those things, I felt a hand curl around mine and pull me in the opposite direction. It was Rea who was now holding my hand. She no longer looked like a werewolf – none of them did. The thick bristling fur, pointed ears, and cone-shaped snouts had disappeared, morphed away, revealing their very human faces once more.

  As I followed them across the park and in the direction of the Weeping Wolf, I let my hand slide from Rea’s hold. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to hold her hand. I’d had problems trusting Rea before – not knowing whether she was a true friend or not – but now that she had revealed herself to be a werewolf – I no longer knew who I could trust. Making our way through the narrow and cobbled streets of Shade, I glanced sideways in search of Calix. He had remained very quiet since the werewolves had revealed their true selves to me. In fact, he hadn’t spoken to me at all. Unable to see him at my side, I glanced back over my shoulder and discovered that he was walking some distance behind the rest of us, like he wanted to set himself apart from the others for some reason.

  Looking front again, I followed Trent, Rea, and Rush into the narrow alleyway that ran alongside the Weeping Wolf. Again, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being stretched somehow. Just like it had been explained to me before by Morten, I stared straight ahead, fixing my sights on the moonlight that shone at the furthest end of the alleyway. And within a heartbeat I was stepping out of the alleyway and into the street at the opposite end of it. A half-moon hung high in the sky and the stars seemed brighter than I’d ever seen them before. Oddly, the stars shone so big and bright, it felt as if the sky was somehow pressing down on me, making me small and flat. As I stood at the mouth of the alleyway staring up at the star-shot sky, I felt someone brush up behind me. I glanced back to see that it was Calix who was now leaving the alleyway and stepping into the street. I tried to make eye contact with him but he just wouldn’t look at me. His pale face was suddenly haggard-looking like he carried the weight of the world upon his shoulders. As the pale moonlight struck his face, it gave his skin the appearance of being made from wax. Calix made his way into the pub and I followed behind the others. Rea closed the door behind me. The pub was warm as there was a fire lit in the hearth and the dancing flames sent black smoke and sparks up the chimney. Despite everything I’d learnt in the last half hour or so, the heat radiating from the fire made me feel suddenly snug and cosy, like I wanted to curl up in front of it, shut my eyes, and fall away into a deep and dreamless sleep. The shadows and light that the fire cast up the stone walls of the pub was hypnotic somehow. I shook my head from side to side reminding myself that I was not to get too comfortable. I hadn’t come to the Weeping Wolf to relax with friends. I’d come to find out the truth about who I really was and whether the witch, Julia Miller, was my mother.

  Chapter Two

  Mila Watson

  We sat around a table near to the fire. Rush had made some coffee, setting down the steaming mugs before us. I picked mine up and took a sip, and over the edge of the mug, I could see that Calix was now staring at me. His eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them before. I couldn’t understand why he was looking at me so hard and intently. It was almost as if he was trying to pass some telepathic message to me, one that he only wanted to share with me and not his friends or brother.

  Rush took his seat at the table. A silence fell over us, which was only broken by the hissing crackle of the flames just a few feet away. Now it wasn’t just Calix who was looking at me – the others were, too. There was a kind of expectancy in the air as if they were waiting for me to start the conversation. But where would I start? My brain felt splintered. Everything I’d known or thought I’d known about myself, my family and friends, seemed to be nothing more than a pack of lies – if of course I was going to believe what the wolves and what Flint told me. But the question that was screaming the loudest in my mind and the one I could least ignore was whether Julia Miller was truly my mother. So that was the question I asked first.

  “How well did you come to know this witch, Julia Miller, my mother – if that is truly who she was?”

  Those gathered about the table shot a look at each other, apart from Calix, who continued to look straight at me. He hadn’t picked up the mug of coffee that Rush had set before him, but instead, he sat with his arms folded across his broad chest. The front of his long, dark coat was open and once more I couldn’t help but notice the lines of those strange words that he’d said the witch had tattooed across his chest, back, and arms. Did he know more about Julia Miller than the others? Was he keeping secrets from me and the others? Had I been wrong to trust him, to let him kiss me, to let him get close to me, when it was Rea, Trent, and Rush whom I should’ve put my faith in?

  “Not everything we have told you has been a lie,” Rea said. “Some parts of what we have said have been the truth.”

  “What parts?” I asked.

  Rea glanced at the others once more, as if seeking some kind of reassurance, then back at me. “We did travel from our homeland in Switzerland. It is true that our home there had been destroyed by the war between the Beautiful Immortals. We hoped that we could find a place – a safe haven – in England. But we were wrong. We came ashore in the dead of night, but none of us had ever been to England before. We were unsure of the lay of the land and what we might find here. We set off through the dark hoping that we might find a place of safety – a place free of war – where we might make a home. But it wasn’t long before we came across what I can only describe as some kind of facility…”

  “What kind of facility?"

  Before continuing, Rea plucked a cigar from the breast pocket of her denim shirt she wore and lit it. With streams of grey smoke curling up from the corners of her full red lips, Rea continued. “Perhaps facility is the wrong word. We stumbled across what I can only describe as a human farm. It was here that we discovered the true horror of what the vampires were capable of.”

  “What horrors? What are you talking about?” I asked, knowing that if it was true what Flint had said – and I really had been raised by vampires in Maze – I wanted to know what they had done, and what these horrors were.
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  Tapping ash from the end of her cigar with one long, slender finger, Rea looked at me and said, “The vampires enslaved the humans like cattle and were breeding them for food. We wanted to free the humans, of course, but we came under attack from the vampires. Barely alive ourselves, we managed to escape and fled to this town, Shade. And this is where we hid, but always knew that it wouldn’t be long before the vampires found us.”

  The others sat silently as Rea seemed happy enough to do much of the talking.

  “Then one day,” Rea continued, “a young woman named Julia Miller walked into Shade. She was extremely ill and weak. We nursed her back to health in the house that you have been living in. For days she lay in a state of unconsciousness but when she woke she surprised us all by telling us that she was pregnant.”

  “You said that she just arrived in Shade. Where had she come from?” I asked. It seemed more than strange to me to be sitting with these people who I had grown to believe were my friends and finding out they had been keeping the truth about my mother from me. But was this woman that Rea was talking about, really my mother? I didn’t know if I could accept that – and why would I want to? My world had been turned upside down and had left me feeling sick and dizzy.

  Lacing his thick fingers together on the table, Trent picked up from where Rea had left off. “Julia – your mother – said very little about who she was and where she truly came from,” he said. “But over the coming days and weeks we all formed a friendship with Julia and she confided in us that she had been involved in a secret relationship. When that relationship had been discovered, she had fled the place she had come from.

  “Why had this relationship been kept secret?” I asked.

  Gulping down the last of his coffee, Rush set down his mug. He looked at me. “We believed that your mother, Julia, had been having a secret love affair with a Beautiful Immortal and when the pregnancy was discovered by her own people – the Wicce – they had banished her. Mixing between a Wicce and a Beautiful Immortal is forbidden – forbidden by the Wicce, at least.”