Vaile

Mavis VII

Mavis woke up in the back of a caravan. Around her, others were chained to the wall of the scarlet painted wagon. The floor was carpeted in a red cotton, and various magick supplies were scattered on the floor. The other captives looked like normal civilians, maybe caught up in a bad case of "wrong place wrong time", but the girl next to her. She had a mane of red hair, and thick black kohl around her glinting grey eyes. Her plump lips made her heart shaped face rather round, but she had the strongest aura Mavis ever felt. It wasn't intense and arrogant like Zel's, but hers was a tense, yet knowledgeable force.

Mavis looked at her, but when the girl looked back at her, Mavis' soul turned to stone in absolute fear. It was then she realized that she never really knew fear before. Mavis already knew her eyes were yellow.

"Who are you?" Mavis whispered hoarsely, trying to suppress the urge to summon another wraith to take this stranger out.

The girl cocked her head and replied "Xanthe." The tension crackled between them, and the other passengers could feel it. It was like an angel and a demon sitting next to each other on a bus.

Mavis wasn't taking any chances, but without Charli here to help restrain her, it was like a Great Dane finally let loose off of a leash, except this Great Dane could summon wraiths and worse. It was a Great Dane against a German Shepard, equally strong. Now was the ideal opportunity to do something stupid, most of the mortals were sleeping.

Mavis pushed deep inside her mind, past her conciousness and pulled forward an beast, like one might pull a card out of a deck.

There was barely time for Xanthe to react to the hellhound that leapt onto the wagon all of a sudden, it just appeared, complete with gold eyes and all.

The muscular creature looked at Mavis, who nodded at it, right before it charged at Xanthe. She ducked out of the way before it crashed into the front of the caravan, a high pitch feminine scream was silenced by the sound of a throat being severed in two, followed by a man screaming,

"Cherokee!"

Xanthe rolled so she was facing the hellhound, holding her palm in front of it. She chanted a few words in Latin, and in her hand, her right hand with the hamsa hand tattoo, was a ball light energy. The tendrils of light wrapped around the hellhound, and it screamed in pain, before literally catching fire and disintegrating into a heap of crimson sand.

Mavis pressed herself against a wall of the caravan, wishing she was a part of the wood- she was going to die. Xanthe looked at her, a look of pure hatred in her grey eyes, before rushing to the dead. Putting her hamsa tattoo on their foreheads, murmuring until their souls turned into the same light tendrils, which sank into the Earth in peace.

Once she was done, Xanthe stood and crossed her arms, glaring at Mavis in a standoff that lasted minutes.

"Aren't you going to kill me?" Mavis asked, beginning to recover composure- she was disgusted at herself, for adding more people to the body count for her magick-which had started as simple seances.

Xanthe twirled her blue glass bracelet around her wrist. "No, not quite yet. But I can't let you go." she said

"Please don't send me to