Brewing Them

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By the time we returned to our hometown, Woodpine, there was frost everywhere and wherever our heads turned. Winters were here just as we expected. The chilly weather and the smell of firewood bought me some comfort but it wasn't the same as the warm sun hitting my skin as I enjoyed swimming in lake water with nothing but myself.

I stared at the small picture Alexandria Sven had give me for hours and hours. The pentacle. The symbol of life and what it was surrounded with. There were a hundred questions in my head, none answered. I didn't let my curiosity catch up with me.

Not this time.

I had to get to work, I needed to find these men that had a tattoo or an imprint of the pentacle on their bodies.

"You've been staring at that for way too long, Viv!" My mother exclaimed while stepping outside with a cup of hot coffee in her hands.

I placed the picture aside and grabbed the cup from her before it burned her hands. "It's just something—how are you today?" I asked her, quickly changing the topic.

I couldn't tell her about the pentacle or the deal I had made with Alexandria Sven, the Queen of the underworld or the men she needed me to capture. It was too much for her to understand.

My mother was always against me practicing black magic, but if it wasn't for her, I would've never dipped my fingers into it.

"Good, good. What about you? I heard you shuffle around the house the whole night. Something keeping you awake?" She took a seat beside me and rocked on the swing outside in the porch.

I gave my head a quick shake, taking off her worries, "No, I slept fine. Just woke up in the middle of the night when I got a bit too thirsty." I replied before taking a sip of the coffee.

It was refreshing, just what I needed.

We sat together for a few good minutes, taking in the cold weather before I went back into the house and downstairs into the basement whilst my mother began with preparing lunch.

The basement reeked of dead flowers, dirt and dried out bones of dead birds. I tried to suppress the smell, but it took in a lot of work to clear out the place and even then, the scent remained behind, reminding me of what I had done.

I turned away from the smell and placed the drawing of the pentacle over the wooden table where hundred of mixtures were scattered all around, some of them beginning to rot while some of them were blooming with power and life. Once I learned about black magic, I had created potions, all types of potions but never managed to use any of them. They sat in the basement for months and months.

Grabbing onto a clear bottle, I removed the cork and rolled the small piece of drawing before tucking it inside. My eyes pressed shut as I slipped my palm across the knife and forced myself to bleed. Droplets of my blood fell into the clear bottle and over the image of the pentacle, the mark of those men before I closed the bottle.

With a clear conscious, I knotted strands of my hair around the bottle and sealed it shut.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but I hoped it would.

I needed to see something, anything about those four men Alexandria wanted. A vision, a dream, a glimpse of them or who they were. Even their names were sufficient enough for me to find them.

"Okay, going to give you a few days." I whispered before setting the bottle on the table and heading back upstairs before my mother got any suspicious.

She knew whenever I went down into the basement, I went to do black magic.

I found her in the kitchen, a frown over her face as she marinated the lunch over the countertop. Soon enough, I knew what she was thinking.

"You haven't gone down there for weeks. What's happening?" she asked, her eyes glued onto the lunch as she didn't want to meet with my gaze.

I sighed, and opened the fridge, hoping to find something to switch the topic but there was nothing in there except for orange juice.

"I think I should do some groceries," I suggested at the emptiness inside the fridge.

"I asked you something else, Viv. Don't change the topic. Tell me what you were doing in the basement. I hope it's not what I think it is." Her hands parted from the chicken she had been marinating. I felt her gaze burning through my shoulders and even then I didn't dare to look back at her.

Gathering my thoughts, I replied after a moment, "It's nothing. I just was cleaning up the space. All the mixtures are beginning to rot, I might need to throw most of them out."

I turned to her and her brow rose. She didn't believe me. She knew me. I was her daughter and I suppose it was the fact that I had killed her husband by the same black magic now I brewed inside the basement of his own home or that his body had burned suddenly in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping and his ashes were still everywhere.

Nothing else burned except for him.

My father.

I burned him in rage.

Read up to chapter 50 on Patreon; www.patreon.com/miakerr