“We’re here… may as well. Just don’t let your guard down, and don’t hesitate to use your gifts.” Meadow hisses under her breath, and I scoot up right behind Carmen to fall back in line. Flanked by two femmes and still unsure if this witch is a friend at all. Sierra told us she was, but this doesn’t feel like someone willing to bend over backward to do anything for anyone except herself.
We quickly follow close to her, aware of the pitch darkness, and I wonder how we’re meant to stay out here if she ups and leaves us now. We don’t know this terrain. The truck is far enough away that we’ll encounter a fight if vampires come upon us, and I have no mental space or physical energy for any of that. My adrenaline is firing high, and I’m already exhausted.
Missing Colton has become the biggest drain on my soul; craving him, needing his touch, his presence, and I seem to start the day already fatigued, no matter how much I sleep.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Carmen’s haughty tone cuts into my thoughts, and I blink up and look over her shoulder as a tiny derelict cottage comes into view. Offering little to no protection from outside invasion and a fire burning within its tumble-down walls. Smoke trickles through the disintegrating roof's hole, glowing from inside and highlighting the lack of solid foundations or full walls. I realize this is where she wanted us to go. Exposed at night, sitting around a campfire in a strange place of a ruined building, with only a witch we don’t know. Not a good move and I glance skywards and pray the fates know what they’re doing this time.
“What? Afraid of things that go bump in the night? I thought you were a big bad lycanthrope… never took you for being afraid of the dark. Don’t worry, wee lassies. The scariest thing out here is me.” Leyanne mocks us from her slight distance ahead with an amused tone and wanders into the cottage casually. Using the completely absent side wall as her path in to perch herself on some chunky logs settled around the glowing flames. It seems this is her resting place, and she is already set up to sit by the fire to see the darkness out.
She watches with amusement as we three follow slowly, glancing around on high alert and timidly placing ourselves close together on the other side away from her. We keep our backs close but spread, so we take in three angles to watch through the fallen stones, aware and looking around with caution.
“Aren’t you afraid of being out here?” Carmen is the one to question it, always so verbal with her thoughts, but Leyanne shrugs nonchalantly. She relaxes onto her makeshift seat, stretches her legs, exposing laced-up knee-high Victorian boots, and adjusts her skirts.
“Why would I be? Any creature stupid enough to tackle me deserves what they get. Who should I be afraid of? Nothing can kill me! I know because they’ve all tried.” She kicks up some dirt at the flames with her heel, causing instant green sparks and crackles to ring through, and I jump, on edge and antsy. “This is a temporary resting spot for you wee fellows to rest. I have something I was doing before I intercepted Sierra trying to locate me. Needless to say, I like solitary abodes and only had short notice to detour.” She picks up a large black kettle that has been nestled beside her feet and hangs it up on a metal bar sticking out across the fire at an angle. Seemingly unfazed and making boiled water, we gawp and sit stiffly as rods observing her.
“So that’s how you knew about us? Sierra somehow alerted you with the locator spell?” my interest is piqued as I home in on that detail, and she nods. I remember I was meant to give her the vial around my neck, but it seems she doesn’t need proof of my connection.
“When you try to use magic to find someone like me…. I know about it. Especially when you use the spell I wrote for the purpose. So then, naturally, I had to investigate the why with the help of my birds. I may know a lot about who you are and why you’re here, but I don’t have all the details. My little gossip mongers are only good for Chinese whispers of things they witness. It’s a long trek from your mountain to here, and ears and mouths of passing crows are not always reliable.”
I glance around at the birds flocking the trees to watch us and squint at her term for them. A visual of birds enjoying drama and storytelling and spreading it through flocks across the land. I guess mine and Carmen’s conversation by the trees that day was reported along the line, with every single time we spoke freely on the grounds of the homestead. It’s weird and makes me feel we should watch all those innocent creatures back home if this is the truth of what they do for witches. If it is, then Tawna running. They would have known fast that she did if the birds were messengers. Our forest is teeming with them; they are always around day and night.
“What do you want to know?” Meadow interjects, ignoring what she probably mentally summarized about the birds too, and Leyanne ponders her for a long moment, quietly.
“Everything, but that takes time, and I can’t linger for long. So maybe I can see for myself with your permission. Condense, rapidly learn, and extract what is necessary from all the other boring tidbits of life.” Her words bring my eyes back to her in wide surprise, my mouth falling open, guessing she’s hinting at being able to pass mentally as we can.
“You can mind link?” I’m awed, unsure I have ever heard of any other species apart from ours that can even do that, but she looks at me with a ‘please’ of sarcasm across her face. That air of boredom that we seem to underestimate her at every turn. Just who the hell is this witch?
“I mean, sure.” I hesitate, a little flustered with her response, and lean forward without a second thought to get up when she raises her hand to still me. Once again, ignoring my question, she gets up and walks to me instead. Gently laying her fingertips on my temple, I’m startled by her skin's unearthly warmth and tenderness. It’s a soft, almost maternal touch that doesn’t coincide with her demeanor at all.
Immediately a strange sensation tugs at my skull, unlike when we mind link as wolves, and I feel like warm rivulets of my body heat are flowing right out of my head. It’s almost pleasant, and my eyes grow heavy with tiredness as I begin to relax and feel pleasantly soothed.
I blink up at her, seeing her eyes are locked on mine, unblinking, glowing a little eerily, but not blue like Sierra's. No, this witch’s eyes are the darkest chocolate with glowing veins of honey amber threads around the inner pupil in an eerie ring. I close my eyes to shut out how my body trembles at seeing them. It takes only seconds, this tugging, draining of my energy around my face. Sleepiness invades a little too abruptly the longer she goes on, and then she stops suddenly and releases me, so I blink awake. The effects instantly dissipate as though being hit in the face with a blast of cold air again
“Interesting…… very, very interesting.” Is all she mutters softly and wanders back to sit down with a thoughtful glance at me, then Meadow, and then Carmen. It’s as though she’s sorting through the thoughts, filing them into an orderly timeline, and working out our relation to one another.
“So, you saw the fog. You know what to do?” Meadow zeros in and tries to pull her attention, but Leyanne stares at me in an unnervingly intense way. Her face poised, still, a slight frown over one brow and a hint of a little dimple at one side of her pretty mouth. Showing a slight strain in her expression.
“Hmmm……” that’s all she says, and I gawp at her sudden lack of verbals when I have just given her god knows how much backstory. Unlike when wolves link and we can filter and control what we share, I had no insight into what she took, saw, or dug into, and she might have seen my whole existence for all I know.