Chapter 93

Lucille rolled her eyes so far back that they grazed the bottom of her frontal lobe.

“Darling, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stalking me.” Lucille hissed through clenched teeth, but her hand slowly crawled to the hilt of her sword and closed around air.

“Seven hells.” Lucille hedged under her breath; she’d forgotten her sword, a rookie mistake.

“Name yourself!” Benedict thundered.

He could see better than the girl and smell better, and the creature hunched casually on the wooden park bench was not his friend.

“You don’t control me, Wolf; I’m not like other Fae.” The witch laughed darkly, stretching to a full seven feet. She was not as tall as Benedict, but the top of her midnight black hair stopped just under his chin as she moved with a speed not accustomed to witches.

“Stop!” Benedict bellowed in his alpha voice, which made Lucille shudder with trepidation. She sometimes forgot just how powerful Benedict was.

The graveyard seemed to stop too, freezing the witch in her shoes.

The songbirds had stopped their crowing; only the hoot of a distant owl punctuated the eerie gray darkness.

The witch had dragged something behind her when she stood. As the pair approached her, the Alpha’s burlap coat scattering the thin fog, Lucille stifled a gasp when she caught a peek of the white skeletal hands that’d shot up from the earth to grab the witch’s ankle, dragging her to her knees as they reached and rooting her in place.

“Name yourself.” Benedict growled; his brown hair was coming in thicker, and his voice had become more wolfish than human.

“Esmeralda, her name’s Esmeralda.” “I knew her once.” Lucille whispered, swallowing heavily as she raked her fingers to lift her hair, pressing shaky hands to her hot temple.

The witch only snorted; the back that was facing them stiffened when the werewolf spoke.

“What do you have there?” Benedict grunted, and the Witch started to shake as the Alpha rested on his haunches and flicked open the tarp with one long, iron claw.

Lucille screamed and stumbled back, not at what she’d expected to be Benedict’s hand but at the horror the witch had wrapped in the tarp.

There was a body in the black sack; the eyes were sunken through, and Lucille could see that the face had been half eaten. Milk-colored maggots, fat with rot, wriggled freely between the gaps in the teeth.

They were not going to find Benedict’s friend in the park behind Graveyard Café because Esmeralda had eaten him.

“What the fuck, Esmeralda?” Lucille screamed in the witch’s grinning face, slapping her hard when she saw the flash of her blackened teeth, so that a few of them flew straight out of the witch’s mouth.

“It’s only a little flesh.” Esmeralda chuckled, spitting blue-black blood from her split lips.

Lucille backhanded the dark witch again, causing her neck to snap in half, seeming to fold in on itself as the witch’s head grazed the hollow of her back before snapping up and rotating to face them again.

Lucille was not impressed. The witches were expert contortionists.

Esmeralda’s eyes had hardened, changing from a lifeless black to a bright pink spotted gold, the color of possession. Someone else has taken over the witch’s body.

“I curse you, forgotten daughter of Lilith, destined to roam the three realms alone and have the very one you love die at your cursed feet.” It hissed before Esmeralda’s eyes changed back to their midnight black, and she gave the pair a cheek-splitting grin.

“What have you done?” Lucille gasped, her eyes wide with horror. She was shaking her head, backing away from the woman.

It took Lucille longer than it should have to realize that the werewolf had been far too quiet.

“No! No! gods no!’ Esmeralda’s shrill scream made Lucille spin around just as the fully shifted werewolf tore off the witch’s head with a meaty snap.

“Ben! Stop!” Lucille cried out in horror, but it was already too late; the werewolf had ground Esmeralda’s oblong head in half between its giant jaws, slapping it on the ground until it was a little more than minced meat before he gutted the body.

Lucille’s hand cupped her midriff as she turned and projectile vomited all over the open graves beside her.

It wasn't that she hadn’t seen gore before; a lot of leprechauns had lost their heads on the edge of her silver blade. But killing a High Witch was different; the Order Council of Elders required blood for that, or a damn good reason.

And it smelt like the air around them had been soiled with the remains of a septic tank. The werewolf didn’t seem to be disturbed by it.

Lucille’s mother always told her she had a weak stomach.

Benedict had shifted back into his garb when she looked back.

He was licking the dried blood lightly from his still-hairy paw; at least his claws were retracted.

“Great! Now we’ve got nothing!” Lucille huffed, disappointed. How could she find her sister if her partner kept gobbling up all their leads like it was the chicken special at Blood and Joe’s, the shanty breakfast bar across her street? They did have delicious chicken wings, but to Lucille, that wasn’t the point.

“Nobody eats my friends Arkavis,” His rich baritone boomed in her ear, and Lucille turned to look at him. She didn’t understand why it sounded like a threat to her ears.

“Granted, I’m a semi-degenerate, but I’m not some mindless carnivore, Ben!” Lucille groaned, throwing up her hands in resignation.

“I heard what she said to you.” Benedict snarled, flashing his curved, yellow canines; he was not about to apologize for putting the witch back in hell.

Lucille was quiet for a spell, still unable to wrap her head around it as Benedict buried the witch’s remains in one of the open graves and sealed it.

A detective committing murder and hiding a body? Lucille gurgled with delighted perversion.

Welcome to the dark side, she thought in her head, eyeing the scowling man with star-studded eyes, although she suspected this darkness was nothing new to him.

His hands, now brown and human, did not falter or shake once on their walk back.

Lucille would know; she’d been watching him.

“So, what happens now?”

You keep your mouth shut if you still like the weight of your tongue in it. Saint’s voice in her head again. Lucille closed her mind against the snarkiness. What Saint didn’t know wouldn’t condemn her.

“Don’t worry about it.” Benedict sang, tilting his head to flash Lucille a sidelong smile that sent a chill down her back.

It was wrong; all canines had dead light in their eyes.

Lucille was starting to think Benedict had other reasons for helping her find her sister.

A grim, ulterior motivation.