The Kelpie's Curse (book #1 in the Kelpie's Entrapment trilogy)

Day 14 Pt. 1

Several days had passed and Evelyn found herself counting down the days until they could go home. It was the ninth day of their vacation and nothing was going as planned. Renestrae had her nightmare every morning, nightmares that only seemed to be getting worse, they practiced with their new bows for a couple of hours, Dageus MacArtair came by after finding out about another attack, Kaloria went off somewhere with Ainslie, and she tried to find something to do around town. Fourteen days, thirteen victims and still the police were no closer to catching whoever was doing this than they were when Renestrae found the body on day two. To only make matters worse Officer Dean was still trying to arrest Renestrae for any infraction.

It didn't make any sense to Evelyn, sure Renestrae was an outsider but shouldn't he be wary of her and Kali too if that was the case. Then there was the fact that Renestrae had found the first body and had been present at the crime scene for the second one, but she hadn't been at a single one since. Why still suspect her? They were outsiders, there was nothing connecting them to any of the victims. Even she had to admit, and this truly was saying something since she knew next to nothing about bows and arrows despite Renestrae's lessons, that the idea of Renestrae opening up someone's chest with nothing but an arrow head was completely ridiculous.

That morning she had decided to stay home while Renestrae and Kaloria went into town. She told them that she was going to get some practice in and though she could tell that Renestrae hadn't fully believed her Ren hadn't questioned her either. That was the good thing about Ren, she supposed, she knew when to just let things be.

That was how she found herself in the forest Renestrae had taken them to, to practice when the fog rolled in. It was eerie, it moved in thick and slow and it didn't seem natural at all.

There she went sounding like Renestrae and Kaloria. Of course the fog was natural, it couldn't be anything else right? She didn't have her head in the clouds the way that her friends did. She knew that their supernatural things didn't exist in anything except their heads. So why did her heart suddenly feel like it was going to pound it's way out of her chest? Why did her hands feel clammy? Why did her instincts suddenly scream at her to turn the other way and run as fast as she could?

It was silly, she was just overreacting to Ren's stories, yep that was it there was nothing out of the ordinary going on here. None at all. In fact she-

"HELP!"

The sound of a woman's earsplitting scream broke her out of her thoughts and though she knew she should have ran away then she found herself running towards the source. Jeez what the hell was wrong with her?!

"NO! PLEASE, SOMBODY HELP!!"

As the woman screamed again Evelyn could feel determination flow through her. She had to do something. 'Just hold on' she thought as she ran faster through the trees. She had the bow Renestrae had helped her pick out, maybe she could intimidate him, maybe she could help. Maybe she could get a look at the killer.

Don't be a hero.

She gasped as she remembered what Renestrae had said just the day before. She had made it clear that this was for defense only and that only fools went rushing in like a hero. Hero's usually had a tragic end for a reason.

At the time Evelyn had emphatically agreed but could she just sit back and do nothing?

She couldn't and that was the problem. She couldn't just sit back while someone needed help, it just wasn't in her nature. Despite the joking she was the mother hen of the group after all.

Decided on her course of action she ran faster towards the screams and when she got there she saw a sight that she would never forget, one that would likely put her in the loony bin, and one that screamed one important fact that she had been denying.