Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

one.

The second set of dead bodies were found on the night of the full moon, under the Allais bridge. Five of them; gutted and displayed at the  banks.
Like the last ones had been on a full moon but the bodies had been deposited in the early hours of the morning for a jogger to find at the townsquare and have a heart attack.
Everyone's first suspect were the Hounds.
Isn't it simple and obvious? They argued. They are most savage on nights like these.
They were throwing baseless accusations around to alleviate their panic; the Sunslavers who were bloodthirsty but wouldn't waste their sustenance in such a way, or even the Fey whom they would blame if the sun cracked open.
I would've agreed though none of them would dare listen to my opinion, had I not gotten a closer look on the corpses.
They weren't torn apart by the obvious feral viciousness of the Hounds or had any belying MO of the other races.
They were the same as the first five discovered last month.
Gutted from neck to abdomen, stuffed full of thistleweed, yarrow and hellebore and the bodies laid in position of a pentagram.
All of it pointed to the handiwork of a witch. The Agnate had initially dismissed it with the deaths of five mortals however gruesomely, didn't point to the supernatural.
Now with another incident. They seemed more attentive.
The corpses were, this time left halfway submerged in the river; upper bodies held up by their tied wrists, blood from slashed throats turning the stones at the river bank pinkish.
A Hound suffering under the compulsion of the full moon would have no need for such precision to detail when overwhelmed by rage and bloodlust.
The covens just didn't want to accept the truth staring at them in their faces.
That both murder scenes were ritualistic and pointed a guilty finger at them.
I amused myself that night listening to Mom and her sisters trying to calm the rest of the agitated covens that had gathered at the Manor when news had spread, hearing the heaps of fucked up evidence as to the Hounds' guilt.
The Redwood police department had already placed a curfew and manhunt for its tenth serial killer in history but those of us born to the wilder and arcane side of the world knew better.
I knew that just as it was here, the Legion House would be raucous with anxiety and anger to the rumours spread against them.
Up in the second foyer parlor, a flight of stairs separating the two, Jean held court with his cohorts; comprising of our siblings and other young witches.
They, unlike the adults, were intrigued by yet another gruesome murder.
I wondered how the adults hadn't tried enough to keep their children in their homes before coming to the Manor for this imperative meeting.
Since the first day of my last days in high school and ultimately with this disreputable lot, started in a few hours.
At least Sinclair, Montgomery, Wilkin and Blasé should have.
Though I wasn't the feeble child who ran and hid from the Jeans' tyranny, the four brought out the daring obnoxious side to my brother Jean.
A few years ago my family had soon realized I was no longer defenseless against their jibes and offensive assaults; most especially my siblings and cousins.
They found that I was more of a lightning rod; I'd absorb their torturous words and painful pranks but once the limit has been reached I retaliated with the worst of mine.
Once, I had taken the vowels from Jean's speech and he spent a month talking like a caveman- all gibberish and blunder.
Vain Margot who found unsettling ways to lord her beauty over everyone else especially me.
I charmed her into a worm and kept her in constant terror of Tromos and Apelpi.
Till Aunt Tereze turned her back and had her sisters enchant the Manor against unsupervised spellwork. Even that I managed to maneuver around soon enough.
Hans was the smartest of them all. Smart because he knew how well to avoid me or place blame to a cousin he quarrelled with.
He was the one sibling I tolerated and who in turn didn't bother like the others.
When I had my fill of eavesdropping on the emergency gathering, I pulled the drain of the sink for the water and lily petals I had used to cast the clairaudient spell, to drain out.
Leaving the bathroom and back into my room, I stopped dead to find the Jeans waiting and my room in upheaval as they ransacked every drawer.
"What the fuck are you doing?" I snarled and lunged forward to stop my brother.
But Bo Sinclair and Raymond Wilkin started forward in a bid to catch me.
They would've had better chance stopping me with magic but physically they were just lumbering oafs.
My reflexes and strength have been honed through the years; from wrestling and swordplay with Fey knights on May Eve and from trying to outrun irritable dryads.
Jean's cohorts were no match to me. I threw them both aside like flicking leaves from my trousers.
With a quick judo flip, I slammed my cousin Luca to the ground.
I reached out to stop Jean from getting to the secret compartment of my closet.
But Jean turned to me and blew a handful of salt at me.
The pellets burned my face red and I fell to my knees on the carpet floors.
I hissed back in the pains the salt inflicted on my skin as it tore my glamour off.
Jean laughed as Bo kicked my back so I fell face first to the handwoven carpet.
"What did you do to me?" I groaned out even as I used the hem of my shirt and wiped at my blistering face, careful not to let a single pellet in any orifice.
But then I felt a searing pain spreading through my arms and crushing my lungs so I could barely breathe.
My brother dropped to his hunches in front of me, pulling at the gamboge red dreads of my hair to raise my face to his.
"Hexed salt, one of Lisette's which I stole before she left for grad school. I had a feeling it'd come in useful one day."
I remembered now, Lisette had spent hours of full moonlight to spell bottles of salt and weave rowan twigs with wards.
All because I had grown impervious to most charms that had once been used to weaken me.
She had never used it but Lisette purposely made sure I knew she had them as a hanging threat.
I glowered at my brother; square jaw, shining chocolate brown eyes that our mother had gifted all her children excluding me, and built like an ox.
He looked so much like his father Johann that they could be twins separated by a generation.
Only three years older than me, Jean and the rest of his gang had taken a year off from college much to Johann's frustration and my shattered hopes of a Jean-free senior year.
"Hans mentioned you had some sort of collection of nasty toys from the Moors."
I didn't know if my heart sped because of the panic of salt burning through my veins or that he knew about that.
"Hans doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about?" I gritted my teeth and received a punch from Luca.
My tongue dulled from the outburst of metallic taste from my blood.
Jean rose upright and moved to my closet.
He already knew where to look to find where I stashed my Fey things away.
I should've known the few secrets I brought back with me from the Moors wouldn't be left alone.
Hans took an infuriating specialty in unearthing hidden secrets which he would use as some kind of currency to his reputation.
Clever Lisette, Fleur was aloft and self centered, Jean the brute who acted first and rash before thinking.
Margot disguised cruelty with beauty like belladonna and then Hans the wily, played mind games as good as a fox.
"Jean stop...only Fey hands can touch them without harm." I coughed out.
I wasn't concerned for him. He could disembowel himself with the dagger of jaguar bone for all I cared.
It was Mom I was cautious about.
She found new ways to punish me for even the slightest wrong ever since my powers started showing.
If Jean killed himself with one of my stuff, I'd follow him to the ether.
"Then maybe we should cut his hands and use them to take it."
Luca always the first to resort to cruelty suggested. It was something that drew him and Margot as close friends.
More than close friends in some instances in the past years.
"Isn't that a thought?" Raymond smirked at Jean.
I kept my eyes fixed on my brother, searching his face for an inclination to his friend's words.
Jean smirked but shook his head. "It'd make a mess. And I don't want to have to wake up smelling his blood, for weeks."
Bo threw his head back and laughed. "I heard the stench of Fey blood could go on for miles."
Jean pulled out the thumbsized bottle that held more of that salt. From an angle, the pellets gleamed an iridescent blue.
He uncorked it and poured a few onto his palm. I cringed back, dreading he would force it down my throat.
Instead Jean grabbed the handle of the hidden drawers I had paneled into the left end of the closet.
With it he dispelled the enchantments I had laid on the hard oak wood of the wardrobe.
Like it had done to me, the salt hissed and burned and then a creaking sound echoed as the wardrobe made a one-eighty turn to reveal the other side of it.
"Guess Hans was right." Jean threw a cocky smile over his shoulder at me.
But when he reached for the fist sized pin cushion with dozens of needles gleaming a peculiar shade of moon silver, he got burned.
Jean howled and drew his hand back and gaped at his blackened hand. It made me snicker with delight.
"Even your salt cannot protect you, brother." I sneered.
Jean scowled and marched up to me with resentment drowning his eyes.
He grabbed me by the neck, strong enough to hoist me to my feet by his grip and drag me forward.
"Give me that or I'll empty the bottle down your throat. It'll be easy to tell Mom that you got reckless testing it out."
I tried shaking him off but Jean muttered a spell that paralyzed any of my struggles.
I could still talk. "She's not stupid to believe that shit."
His grip tightened and he shrugged. "Does it matter? Nobody will miss the filthy halfbreed shame of the family. Give it to me."
That always seemed to hit me hard and he knew it. Jean knew how much I desired acceptance from our mother, respect from Johann and the rest of the coven.
Even if I had shown nothing but apathetic arrogance in the last few years, I still felt the blows of their spite and prejudices.
So I reached forward and took the cushion of iridescent needles from the shelf and thrust it out to my brother.
Jean was still cautious but I was tired and weakened.
I needed to get this over with so I could expunge the salt from my system and have some sleep before school.
"It won't do anything now that I've taken it from the shelf. Take it and get the fuck out."
Jean beamed, taking it from my hand before shoving me aside.