Curses and Cream Puffs

After the encounter with the specter, there was an unspoken agreement that Damien and Lena couldn't leave without finding it. His job was just for the Hadewell family, nothing more. Letting them escape to safety was a good feeling, and if there was more he could learn from this witch using blood magic he definitely wanted to do it.

Lena was able to follow the traces of dark magic to the outskirts of town. There was a gated home there, nearly completely hidden by trees and looking regal in appearance. It was eerily quiet. Lena and Damien stood just outside the gates, staring at the house with bad gut feelings.

"Okay," she said softly. "Go on, then."

"What?" Damien frowned. "You're the one following the magic traces. You go."

"The hunter goes first," she argued.

"Fine."

He stepped forward to try and push the gate open but it simply swung open with the lightest touch. Strange for such heavy iron, but at least they were let inside. The closer they got to the house, the more Damien realized how neglected and shabby the building looked. It seemed as if it had been beautiful at a time, but it had been dark and abandoned for years. The front door nearly fell off the hinges when Damien knocked on it, and he used his weight to slam it open the rest of the way.

"There's something really wrong here," Lena told him. "The energy is awful."

"Yeah, I could've told you that," he mumbled.

He unsheathed his weapon cautiously as they moved forward into the parlor. It was dark and dusty, but the fire was lit in the hearth and illuminated a portrait of a beautiful woman above it. Lena moved a bit closer to him, then pointed towards the rug.

"There," she said. "It's coming from there."

Damien slowly moved to the rug and lifted the corner. He flipped it over to reveal a door hidden underneath. It took a bit of strength to wrench it open and they were immediately met by a horrible stench and cloud of dust. Lena covered her mouth and coughed, her eyes starting to water. Damien realized that whatever he was feeling was probably a hundred times were for her.

Damien climbed down the ladder first, holding a knife between his teeth in case something was waiting for him down there. Lena came down after him, looking a mildly panicked. Whatever they were looking for was nearby.

Damien heard a soft whimper nearby and his gaze landed on a small, shriveled figure in the corner. He realized that it was a young girl tied to a chair, her eyes sunken in and looking deathly ill.

"Go get her," Damien told Lena.

She rushed over to the girl, quickly untying her and helping her to her feet. Then they heard the creaking of someone approaching from the shadows.

The woman looked like the one in the portrait, but only vaguely. Her hair was stringy and matted and her skin was so pale that it nearly looked transparent. The most unsettling thing were her eyes, which were completely black. When she spoke, her voice was raspy. This was the witch he had spent the last ten years learning about. Lena held the girl, backing her away while the witch stepped towards Damien.

"The boy was supposed to shield me," she said. "His recklessness was a distraction."

"Not distracting enough," he told her. "What did you do to the girl?"

There was no answer, but the room suddenly erupted in flames. Lena and the little girl jumped back as a wall of flame separated them from Damien, locking him in with the witch. He unsheathed his sword and swung at her. She jumped back and whipped her arm towards him, sending a vine-like twist of flames that wrapped around him. He managed to cut through it, but not before it burned his right arm. Great. Right away, his dominant hand was weakened. His father would have been disappointed. Not that everything else wasn't enough of a disappointment already, but that was something to worry about for a different time.

"Damien!" Lena called through the flames. "The hearth!"

There was another hearth near them, and Damien realized that the witch seemed to be getting power from that flame to create bigger ones. He nodded to Lena. Putting out that flame would cut her control. She put a cloak over the girl and instructed her to keep her nose and mouth covered, then created a barrier around herself and jumped into the circle of flames with Damien.

"You take care of the flames, I'll cover you," he told her.

She gave him a nod and let him charge ahead towards the witch. He managed to catch her while she was distracted by Lena and pin her to the ground, holding the blade at her throat. She struggled and shrieked as Lena released a blast of wind that immediately put out the fire in the hearth. Almost immediately, the flames in the room seemed to take a mind of their own and grow. They were no longer in the witch's control.

"We need to get out!" Lena told him.

The girl was beginning to fade in and out of consciousness so Damien picked her up. The three of them ran back towards the ladder with Lena's barrier of light around them. She went up the ladder first and reached down to take the girl from Damien's arm and help her to safety. He went up next, but the witch had managed to escape the flames and yank the ladder from underneath him. Lena caught Damien before he fell down. The witch shrieked and jumped to grab his ankles, but he managed to kick her in the face and knock her back down. Lena struggled to support Damien's weight, but was able to lift him enough to grab the edge of the doorway and pull himself the rest of the way. They shut the cellar door and both held it down as it began to grow hot. He could feel things hitting the door and some strong blasts of magic to try and get the door open.

"Those flames are going to eat up the whole house," Damien said.

"Not the house," Lena told him. "Just the room. They'll last as long as their creator does."

"So we burn the witch?"

"I guess so."

They had to hold the door closed for a few minutes before the screaming and yelling finally stopped and the door cooled down. They waited until everything was still and silent before hesitantly opening the door again. The inside of the cellar was dark and cool in temperature, with no sign of any fire being there. There was a black layer of ash in the shape of a person on the floor, but it was the only thing to indicate anything that happened.

"Did she burn up?" Damien asked.

"Not from the fire," Lena said. "From her own magic. Dark magic does that."

That was that. They closed the cellar door and turned their attention to the young girl. Lena wiped dirt from her face as she weakly opened her eyes.

"She'll be alright," Lena said. "She just needs rest to recover. The witch must have been using her energy to power her magic. Young energy."

It took some coaxing to find out where the girl lived, but eventually she managed to tell them where her parents were. Damien carried her and followed Lena to find the house. The girl's parents sobbed with relief when they saw their daughter was safe and would recover well, hugging both Damien and Lena tightly. Damien wasn't sure he'd ever been hugged like that before.

Later, Damien and Lena had gotten a couple rooms at a local inn. They both sat in silence in Damien's room, on the edge of the bed. Lena held Duchess in her arms, absentmindedly stroking her fur. Finally, Damien was the one who spoke.

"You were right," he told her. "Not all witches are bad. They certainly don't deserve a death sentence."

"They don't," she agreed.

"But some of them are truly dangerous," he added.

"But we can't all be grouped together," Lena protested.

"I never said I was grouping you all together," he told her. "Just listen for a minute, alright?"

"Alright."

"If I choose to leave the life of a hunter behind," he started, "My targets will just be given to someone else. Someone like Louis, who won't think twice about killing an entire family like the Hadewells. If I continued the work, I'd be able to save some of these innocent targets before they're hurt. And if someone truly is dark, then I'd be able to stop them. But I've come to realize that without your help, I might have been too late to help that girl. I likely wouldn't have even found that witch, because I would assume the boy was the one to kill the livestock. At the end of the day, I don't know about magic, but you do."

"I suppose."

"What I'm trying to say," he continued, "Is that I think we could do a lot of good. Together. I continue taking these jobs, and we can make the decision on our own. Moving past the old ways."

"Do you really mean it?" she asked firmly. "Really and truly?"

"I do," he said.

She was quiet for a few moments, staring him down, then nodded.

"Then I think we should do it," she said.

She stood up, picking up the hare and heading towards the door to go back to her own room. She stopped in the doorway and looked back at him.

"Goodnight," she said.

"Goodnight."

He was sure that this was the first time she had walked away from him on a good note. If this worked, maybe they could make a difference for an innocent family or two.