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

thirteen.

Ezra.

The deaths of Raymond, Amarié and three other witches was as it should've been- a shocking disaster.
The covens were livid and mournful. But it was the disappearance of Lisette St. Ours which drove them to near insanity.
The banquet party after the parade had started off in a spree of music, champagne and mingling. The Manor had been decorated and decked in finery than I ever saw it in.
I'd gone home after leaving Senoy to Lionel, which I was finding really hard to keep from running after them, to change into the tux I would wear tonight.
I would accompany my father and Fiona along with other few chosen Legion to the party which the covens were throwing for the ceremony.
"Why can't we come too?" Joshua pouted as he sat on my bed.
His twin brother was with our father probably disturbing the poor man to let them come.
I winked at the boy through the mirror as I adjusted the bowtie on my neck.
"Because you won't be as handsome as your big brother, in a bowtie."
Joshua snorted heavily with a sardonic glower at me. Yeah maybe I was a bad influence.
I went to him and ruffled his hair, he didn't like it, and sat by him. "You'll go when you're older, right now I want you to take care of the house. You and Ephraim are the protectors when Dad and I aren't around."
That seemed to please him out of his sullen look.
He raised his chin proudly and jumped down from the bed. "Yes of course, we're going to protect the house. Ephy!" And he scurried out to find his twin.
I love my brothers so much that I'd do anything to keep them safe. Tonight might be a jolly gathering with posh prissy setting but with a gathering of the Agnate, one cannot be too careful.
Especially since I had rejected Margot and her family's desire for an alliance with me. Senoy was right to say the witches were vindictive and would want to strike back for such humiliation.
So Joshua and Ephraim would have to be in the safety of Legion House with dozens of Hounds to keep them safe, far from harm.
"Don't you look dapper." I looked up as I put on my shoes to see Chris and Micah entering my room but I was surprised also to find Dinah.
They were already dressed, the latter as gorgeous as ever in a cerise red dress with a plunging neckline.
"Emily's been asking me if Senoy's going to be at the party." Dinah put forward as she slapped my hand away and straightened my tie.
I'd been hesitant to introduce my close circle of friends to the boy I'd began to fall for. But Senoy had easily wormed his way into their affections.
"No he isn't. He has this...thing to do with Lionel."
Dinah's adjusting hands paused and met my eyes with curiosity before they narrowed dangerously. "Ezra, did you do something?"
I frowned. "Why do you suppose I did something?"
Micah scoffed, "You always do something stupid."
Chris leaned to throw the football he'd picked, up into the air and caught it again. He said. "Like allowing Lionel steal your man for a date."
Dinah gaped as I threw a glare at Chris. Why do I even bother with these dickheads?
"Are you that confused about how you feel that you let him go out with other people?"
I stepped away and replied dryly before leaving the room. "I'm not fucking confused. I really like him and don't think I didn't try to stop him. Now if this damn intervention is over, we have a party to get to."
We took the three black Ford Sierra, mostly because Dad loved to show off his security detail.
Though he left capable Hounds to guard the house. I was in the same car with Chris, Micah, Dinah and her girlfriend Emily.
They had a cheery conversation, I was absent from it. My mind trailing far away from the moving car and wondering what Senoy was doing with Lionel.
When we arrived at the Manor St. Ours, we were the last of the Agnate guests to arrive as Dad had wanted.
Grand entrances and all. Sometimes I wondered who was the dramatic one between us.
"Eleazar, Fiona! How elegant you both are!" The eccentric pitched voice of Katerina Moza called.
I smirked at Fiona's exasperated sigh and whispered before the redhead mistress of the Shifter clans reached us.
"Why so glum? You're the one who invited her for Thanksgiving last year."
"I didn't think she'd get so attached."
Dad scoffed as his wife took his offered arm like a lifeline, "Shifters always get attached."
Fiona pasted a smile and greeted Katerina, a voluptuous woman closer to the age of forty with deep red hair which her styler had opted to look wild and tousled yet attractive.
The Shifters were a matriarchal community unlike the Legion and they chose their mistresses with gruesome tests which they kept secrets.
Each Agnate community had secrets they didn't want to share lest they confided their strength and weaknesses to the other.
It was constantly a game of politics and schemes for dominance. And I detested it.
"Oh my, Eleazar. Your boy's really getting more handsome than you ever were." Katerina chimed as she faced me.
Oh and female Shifters were incorrigible sex junkies.
I stepped up and took her hand to courteously kiss it. "Madame Moza."
"And well mannered too. Hmm it's a shame you gave him away to a witch."
Like I'm some Olympic gold medal. I wore a tight smile and said coolly. "I'll see you old people later."
And I left them to find the Champagne-Ardenne I saw passing in the hands of guests from trays.
"So this is how the witches live. I'd thought more of chocolate walls and gingerbread fences, vanilla icing for ceilings."
I rolled my eyes but smiled as Micah downed his glass to the awed look from Emily.
"They haven't built their homes like that since the 1400s, Emily."
She shrugged and turned to probably look for Dinah and stopped with a perfect arched brow.
I saw that Dinah had finally gotten the attention she wanted with her atrocity of a dress.
Four coven young men in crisp dark suits surrounded her, eager as hungry dogs lapping at all she said.
I recognized a few from school, not in our year because they'd graduated a few years ago. One of them, I knew matter of fact as Jean St. Ours. Margot's elder brother.
"What is she doing?" Micah remarked with an amused smile.
"A game we play to spice things up." Emily grew a mischievous sultry smirk as Dinah waved pointedly at her.
Her admirers obviously liking what they saw in Emily, had even more of a desirous glint in their eyes.
I knew the sort of games, the two of played. I'd once walked in accidentally on one of them with a few guys.
They'd fit right in with the Shifters.
"Be careful, Emily. That's Jean St. Ours, he plays nasty. I hear."
She scoffed and sashayed over to her girlfriend, saying over her shoulders. "We can handle a few witch boys."
After what seemed like hours of mingling and socialising as my Dad expected of me, I was planning on bailing the party to probably stalk Senoy and Lionel.
I'd been disturbed with imaginations of their date all evening- if they were having fun, Senoy laughing at Lionel's jokes, holding hands or more...
Fuck I need to get out of here.
But then Johann St. Ours came up to me and with three young women, one was Margot, and introduced.
"Ezra, I'd like you to meet Margot's sisters. My eldest, Lisette and Fleur."
I smiled at them politely. Lisette was the carbon copy of their mother, her brown hair taken into a bun but tall and with slightly more meat on her.
I caught an engagement ring, with a winking diamond on her slim finger. Her only assessors to her black lace dress. "Congratulations, I think."
She blushed and I was stunned to see it was the same look Senoy usually had when he was flustered.
"Thanks, it came as a surprise." Lisette said with an inflection of an accent.
"Not much of one." Fleur chirped and batted her eyes at me. "Everyone knew there would be no one else but Ben for her."
This sister was much like Margot though the latter was prettier- haughty, capricious but had that mad glint in her eyes like her father.
"I hear the two of you would be as likely joined, as well." Lisette, looked from me to Margot who had sidled up to me and slipped her arm through mine.
I opened to speak but Johann talked over me. "Indeed. What a handsome couple they'd make."
Somehow I don't know when or what, but perhaps it was their beaming laughter at some inside joke.
But I couldn't hold back anymore. I peeled Margot's hands off me and glowered at her.
"I'm sorry, Mr. St. Ours but I'm afraid you have me at a loss. I thought Margot already told her family of my decision."
Johann's smile died and his dark eyes almost seemed maniacal. I knew she'd most definitely tell him which made this show of pretense a mockery of me.
"It is not your decision to make, boy. This has been decided from the moment Margot was born, by me and your father. This is only a small matter of nervousness and teenage uncertainty. But the best solution to that, Ezra, is to listen to the adults and do as your told."
I wore a dangerous smile at the man who just called me boy.
"I'm neither nervous nor uncertain. I've never not known what I wanted and what I want is nothing from your house."
His daughters gasped just as Margot sneered at me. "Except of course that filthy halfbreed, I'd thought you came because you've changed your mind. But you'd choose that low born bastard over me."
"Even in another life. From what I've heard of you it's a shame Senoy wasn't born with the violence of my kind."
I turned to leave the St. Ours and eventually their home entirely but I was caught by the forearm and pulled to the empty foyer Hall of the house by my scowling father.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
I yanked my arm from him and straightened my jacket before answering.
"What does it look like, I'm leaving. I can't smile and greet those people for another minute."
Dad narrowed at me. "What's this about? And don't you say it's because of that halfborn I've been hearing you've been hanging out with?"
I swallowed hard. Of course he'd sooner find out.
I raised my face, stoic and impassive which gave him the answer he needed.
"For the sake of the Saints! I didn't want to believe any of that gossip garbage going around."
"Believe it. This is me backing out from whatever backwater arrangement you had with the St. Ours. I'm not marrying someone whose had a hand in doing despicable things to their own."
Dad growled exasperatedly. "Whatever they do to their own is their concern, Ezra. This alliance was to bring the covens back to the table, they've been cut off for too long that the other Elders are skeptical they wouldn't rebel."
"Then find another way."
My father eyed me for a moment, the sort of piercing gaze that used to frighten me as a child because he'd know I've done something bad.
"You like this halfborn, that's why you're adamant. Like him more than in a platonic way."
I glared at his sense of perception. "What of it? And don't tell me I can have both of them, I'm not like you and grandfather. I won't bind myself to someone for politics and duty and later follow my heart's desire. I won't do that to Senoy or to myself."
Suddenly I caught worry in his eyes. His bushy brows furrowed together as he sighed out.
"Oh my son, you have no idea how dangerous it is to desire a Fey."
I would've argued but then house shook from an ensuing earthquake. Sudden dread filled me as the rumbling earth groaned and quivered.
"What in the Saints-"
The chandelier jingling noisily overhead, guests in the shrieking from the sudden disorientation.
Then a bloodcurdling scream howled through the air from outside.
Dad and I rushed outside, our extrasensory abilities working to locate the source of the scream.
And then we did. But later than we thought because a crowd was forming around an aged oak tree in the backyard of the Manor.
More screams and instinctively I looked up into the night sky and horrified realisation dawned on me.
"Dad, it's a full moon."
I saw him pale with a shared despair but marched forward, clearing through the crowds of guests till we stood over the bodies.
Five, gutted and mutilated in the same ritualistic verse as the others. They were dressed in formal black tie so I guessed they'd been at the party.
Dad stooped and touched the spilled blood with his fingers.
Tereze St. Ours gaped in horror as she waved a hand flimsy in the air till I saw a shimmer of blue glyphs floating intertwined in the air except for a gaping smoldering hole at the centre.
"The wards were cracked through. But how?"
Her sister, an older woman in black sequined dress and a silk turban about her head quipped tightly. "Ley lines."
She pointed to the ground and for sure the familiar lines of streaming icy blue energy ran underneath us, pooling around the dead bodies and surging forth into the night.
My father's head jerked to me, cold determination and anger.
"Ezra, it's still warm."
I nodded, understanding immediately as I called out to my guys.
Chris and Micah were already at my side, Dinah only a feet away and looking hysterically about for Emily.
"We turn, and fan out. The kills are fresh so it means the murderer could still be close. Micah pick up the scent and follow me."
This was what being a Hound was. We were foremost guardians of the Agnate.
I heard Sophie St. Ours running frantically, calling out. "Lisette! Where's my daughter!"
Was she one of the victims? I hadn't looked at the faces very well earlier to recognise anyone.
"Dinah you go with Chris."
She shook her head in mild defiance. "Dinah, Emily is fine. She's with Fiona. Now do as I say, my father's already calling for his team."
While they went about their instructions, I pulled out my cellphone and dialled Lionel.
Thankfully he picked at the first ring.
"Where are you? Is Senoy still with you?" I shot out the bolt of jealousy in my head.
"Yes h-he's with me...I-I don't think we're good to talk..." Lionel sounded winded and speechless.
"I don't care, give him the phone. It's important."
There was a brief pause which I hoped meant Lionel had listened to me.
"Ezra this isn't a good time." The sound of his voice sent elation through me.
I didn't want to think what he and Lionel were doing that made it not a good time.
"Where the fuck are you, you need to get home now. Something's happened at the Manor...the ley lines cracked open the wards nearly wrecking the entire house."
"What?" His shock sent the connection static for a moment.
But I said into the phone. "And... your sister Lisette is missing, we just found five more bodies. Senoy be careful."
"I'll be there as soon as I get rid of our friendly demonic beasts." He hung up before I could ask.
I fucking hope he doesn't mean exactly what I think he means.
"Ezra!" A vision of shadow beasts fled from my mind as I turned sharply to the direction of Micah's call.
I ripped off my jacket and kicked my shoes off before losing control and allowed my ravenous Hound self fully take over.
I bounded in powerful strides before falling to my fours and speeding up till I was engulfed by the forest.
I heard Dinah a few miles ahead, growling to send a signal to the others but I was quickest so it was only a few short minutes before I crossed e clearing to get to where a large mottled brown wolf stood.
"What did you find?" She gestured to the tracks distorted by struggles and burnt marks in the earth. Three pairs of abandoned shoes left a few  meters away.
There was a heavy smell of brimstone and sulphur in the air that made my gut rumble with discomfort. It was the same we had smelt two months ago.
Chris and Mic bounded for us and talked to me through the telepathic link of our Hound forms.
"We got nothing."
"Almost as if they vanished into thin air."
I growled with dissatisfaction because it was just as bad as it were since the first killings. Eleanor had died and no one could track the villain who had done the deed.
Magic was impenetrable to whatever darkness was aiding this psycho. But what confounded me was how he could attack Senoy and Lionel and still have been here to kidnap those witches.
Holy fuck... Senoy!
"Ezra, he's with Lionel!" Chris called after me as I started to race in the opposite direction of the Manor St. Ours where he should've gone if he heeded my advice.
"Tell my father I had to go." I rallied to them.