222 Witch's Burrow
When Vincent stepped in front of Eve, facing the witch who continued to wobble her head, he said in a low voice, “If it weren’t for the reason that I need your help, I would have torn you apart. You ruined my clothes.”
Eve’s eyes fell on Vincent’s back, where his inner coat and shirt had been ripped from where his wings had earlier appeared.
The witch grit her uneven teeth and glared at Vincent. She started to run away from Eve and Vincent. They ran after her, following her.
While they continued running, Eve asked, “Do you think she will help us?”
Vincent pulled out a ball from his pocket and threw at the witch that hit her leg. Soon the witch stumbled and rolled to the ground, hitting one of the nearby trees.
Vincent smiled and turned to Eve, “Told you she is just feeling shy, and needed some coaxing.”
They walked to where the witch struggled to get up, and Eve noticed wires strapped around the witch’s ankles to stop her from running. The witch turned back to the beautiful woman Eve had seen the first time they met.
Gwendolyn pleaded with a soft voice, “Let me go! I have not stepped into town for two months!”
Vincent pulled out a gun and placed the gun’s nozzle on the witch’s head. The witch quickly blurted, “One month! I didn’t kill anyone except for animals!” Her appearance turned back to a hideous witch, clicking her teeth and staring between Vincent and Eve.
“Where’s your burrow?” Vincent questioned the witch.
“Right over that rock and under the ground,” the witch quickly replied, and when Vincent pulled the cork of the gun, she begged, “Don’t kill me!!”
“Who said anything about killing you?” Vincent’s smile was cynically bright enough to shine with his sarcasm as he was still furious about his ripped clothes. He said, “Do something like what you did earlier and you won’t have a head. Lead to your burrow.”
The witch half glared and half bowed her head, “I will find whomever you want.”
“Great. I wonder if you can find people’s common sense, as it seems to have left many of them,” Vincent remarked. He freed the witch’s legs, and she got up, walking towards the rock, and they followed her.
They entered the burrow that was slippery, muddy and wet with nearby trees’ roots that hung around the walls. There were jars filled with dirty mud, which Eve didn’t dare to look further because she knew she would find something disturbing. On the other side, stood a wide fireplace that burned.
Vincent demanded, “We are looking for someone.”
“Did you bring the blood for it?” The witch asked, while slightly limping on the even ground and looking around her shabby house to pick the ingredients. She placed them all on the table.
Eve leaned closer to Vincent and asked him, “How do we know she’s going to do what you say?”
“Good question. If she doesn’t she knows I will blow her head off, don’t you, Gwendolyn?” Vincent questioned the witch, who glared at him before standing at the table. He pulled out the vial that had Eve’s blood and placed it on the table. He then said, “Where are your other friends?”
“Ran away,” Gwendolyn sneered before snatching the vial and looking at it. “Name of the person. Who needs to be found.”
“Rebecca Barlow,” Eve answered the witch, whose eyes fell on her.
It didn’t go unnoticed by Eve and Vincent, with how the witch watched her as if she wanted to taste her organs.
The witch placed a mortar and a pestle in front of her, and soon she started to add things along with Eve’s blood. Mixing it with the pestle, she dropped the liquid at the centre of the table. Taking a closer look at the table, Eve noticed the markings of towns, villages, forests and other lands. It was a map.
Gwendolyn started whispering something under her breath and Eve’s knees started to shake.
Vincent held Eve’s arm to support her. He said, “As we are using your blood, the witch’s spell draws out your energy so that the said person can be located.”
“The Council can make use of the witches to find missing people. They should hire some of them,” Eve murmured, feeling her body under pressure.
“Will never work for those shitty people, you slut!” The witch’s eyes went wide in anger by just the mention of it. Vincent pulled the trigger, the bullet pierced through the witch’s shoulder, and she yelped in pain. “You bastard! You are going back on your words as before!”
“I said I won’t kill you, but I didn’t agree to not shoot you for stopping in the middle of my work,” Vincent jerked his head towards the table, and the witch went back to the spells.
The still liquid on the table started slithering like a snake, moving elegantly and left a trail of redness behind it. It then stopped at one point, and Vincent remarked,
“Looks like her body has already been dug out with the others this morning.”
It was because the trail of blood had stopped at the scribbled writing ‘Darthmore Council’ on the table’s surface.
A sigh escaped from Eve’s lips. After all these years, she would finally reunite with her mother after many years… only that she was reuniting with her mother’s skeleton. Her dream wasn’t wrong, her mother’s body had been buried in Darthmore.
“What will happen to the other bodies that have been dug out?” Eve asked Vincent, as she wasn’t sure what the Council would do with them.
“Lesser known people who belong to the lower status will be thrown away. While people of status if present, which we are aware, will be buried in the cemetery,” Vincent chimed, and Eve nodded. He said, “If the Council has already cleared the women, you can find your mother out of the three.”
She just had to wait until the council members wouldn’t be hovering around the bodies to identify whose it was.
The witch took the opportunity of the slight distraction and suddenly picked up something and threw it at the table, which created a cloud of smoke in the burrow. Eve coughed, the smoke irritating her vision, and tears filled her eyes. The witch cackled, ready to escape from there, but the cackles were interrupted, and soon it sounded as if she was choking.
The flames in the fireplace increased. When the smoke started to settle down, Eve’s eyes fell on Vincent, who stood next to the fireplace, watching the witch burn.
And just like that, the witch was dead.
Vincent was the first one to get out of the witch’s burrow. Turning around, he noticed Eve struggle to climb out.
“Need a hand?” Vincent offered his hand for her to take.
Eve’s eyes fell on his hand and then at Vincent, who had cocked his head to the side. As much as she didn’t want to rely on him, it seemed hard not to do it. There were some things that she couldn’t do alone.
Holding his hand, she felt him help her out of the slippery burrow. She asked him,
“Are all witches like that?”
“You would be surprised that all are the same. Beautiful and pleasing outside and ugly inside. Just like some of our own kind but exaggerated. Humans, vampires, werewolves or sirens. Given the opportunity, she would rip out of our hearts and eat them for supper and breakfast. Using the rest of the body parts for sacrificial use,” Vincent responded to Eve.
They started to walk away from the witch’s burrow, their footsteps causing a soft, squelching sound on the wet forest ground because of the rainwater.
“You think mermaids are pure?” Eve questioned him, a subtle smile on her face.
“I am yet to see a mermaid who is selfish. If you want, maybe you can initiate it,” Vincent turned to look at her. The corners of his lips tugged as if he knew the in and out of mermaids. “If vampires, werewolves and sirens mostly comprise the darkness of our world with their greed, selfishness, amid the humans; then mermaids are the light because of their naive faith in things.”