previously titled beserk
A young gay witch with deadly powers on the fringe is traveling the U.S. in search of a substitute for suppressing his magic and a way to control his powers. Ezra Pierce was born into a religiously strict family with no one...
"they were young. they didn't know what life had planned for them." w o r d c o u n t : 1,121
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Resting his feet on the dashboard, Ezra flipped through the file he recently 'borrowed' from the Seattle city hall on their way to Portland. Rosalie wanted to drive with a lack of anything better to do and Ezra searched tirelessly for leads into Aloysius' coven and their actions in the city.
They were close to human, well, closer than shifters and vampires. Using their powers exhausted them, they had to eat and sleep soon after. They'd need a place to rest. But witches born into covens didn't have the same mannerisms as humans. There were different taboos, different things to take offense to. Someone was bound to notice their odd behavior and as it turned out. Someone did.
Three days before Nik was killed, a police report was filed. Public disturbance and assault. As it turned out, the coven had stayed in a small motel just above a bar and when a drunken patron did something inadvertently offensive, leading to an all-out fist-fight that landed two of the witches and five bar flies in jail.
The witches made bail within an hour while the men were forced to spend two nights in jail before they could be released and by the time they were, the coven had left town.
But in their statements, they described the mannerisms to a T. Tense, uptight, and obedient. In a coven, seniority was a big thing. A witch could give orders to anyone under them in years with the coven, omitting special circumstances of course.
Witches were in covens pretty much for lives and treated them like arranged marriages so they knew nothing but the culture and mannerisms of their kind. So when one of the witches bumped into a bar goer, obviously she apologized. The man made a common mistake. He didn't accept the apology, instead, he merely brushed it off. To anyone, these would be the same but they took this as the man, not only denying a sincere apology, but as his disdain toward them.
A fight ensued between the two and soon the girl kicked his ass, having years of practice.
He thumbed through the mugshots before he came upon the first witch, the one that started the fight. Ezra felt his muscles tense and freeze, shock leaking into every gap in his being as he recognized the young face.
Ezra's eyes fell shut and he could see it again. Her hands on Niki's neck, burning violent blisters into the soft flesh and emitting a revolting smell. Her fingers wrapped around the blade that dug so deep that another few inches would have taken it off entirely.
Short ginger hair was cropped close to her head, not even an inch long, making her appear even younger than she already did. Her pale, almost translucent skin stretched taut against bone, appearing almost corpse-like. Clothes hung loosely off her thin frame and she seemed impossibly weak but that proved not to be the case. Her eyes, a rare charcoal color for her hair color, seemed to be staring directly through the picture and at Ezra.
From her mugshot, she looked to be thirteen or fourteen, older than he previously anticipated when he first saw her, but that was a perk to being a witch. The species lived unnaturally long, some even reporting thousand year life-spans. And through a complex ritual, a witch could pause their outside aging and appear one age for the rest of their life.
Many picked their late teens since it's usually the peak of ones' physical shape, though some chose younger or even older. But it's rare to see one older than forty.
In the last few months of a witch's life, you could see their age catching up with them. They'd deteriorate, their looks rapidly catching up with them before they withered away. If they were a coven leader, the witch would accept any challenger and whoever killed them would be granted the coven. The rest simply disappear, though it's thought they've joined the spirits of the ancestors and their physical body turns to the magic that powers them.
Rosalie broke Ezra from his stupor, clearing her throat loudly. "What do you expect to find from these people?" She asked, eyeing the heavy bag strapped gingerly in the back seat.
"If Aloysius was being honest, and I do believe he was, then he's got important ancestry. People are bound to know him. So we're gonna find someone who does." Ezra declared. "For how much product I brought they're gonna owe me."
Rosalie's fingers tightened around the wheel, a distinct crack echoing that did nothing to loosen her grip. "Tell me we're going to find him and I can rip his head off."
"Aloysius has others do his dirty work. It wasn't him." He thumbed through the file and grabbed the picture, handing it to Rosalie.
"Is this-" He cut her off, unable to bring himself to hear the rest.
"Yes. That's her."
Rosalie scoffed. "She can't be any older than thirteen. She's just a child."
"I doubt that. I think she's two-hundred. Maybe older. We can stop our aging process until the last few months of our lives and we die of old age. But by her skills, I'd say she's at least a hundred." He explained absently, tucking the picture back into the file and cramming the file into his bookbag. Ezra peered ahead at the street sign. "Turn up here."
Rosalie rolled her eyes, jerking the wheel abruptly to the left. "If my car gets stolen you're buying me a new one." She commented dryly, slamming the gear shift into park.
A large warehouse stood tall, with shattered windows leaving shards of glass on the sidewalk in front of them. Graffitied murals decorated every inch of available space, including the windows, showing in the colored slivers of glass that stuck to the ground.
Ezra walked up to the door, his eyes scanning the area. It reminded him of his years spent roaming the streets with no real direction, running from the police and other grifters alike. He stole and cheated to survive and he got smart and strong quick.
There was a part of him that always felt guilty and always would. He lived in a fancy house with a cushy lifestyle while all the people that helped him survive were still forced to remain on the streets.
Pushing his guilt aside, Ezra shouldered the heavy bag and rapped three times on the door.
