Home > Sancte Diaboli : Part Two(8)

Sancte Diaboli : Part Two(8)
Author: Amo Jones

I push my phone away. “You guys are coming?”

Ivy, Frankie, and Alessi are following behind her in a trail of white.

“Of course! We can’t wait for this time of year.”

“This time of year?” I ask, just as Alessi opens the front door and gestures outside with a wave of her hand.

“The Hunt is when we get to meet with male witches!”

“I still don’t know what that means.” I step outside and pause when I see six white horses, waiting for us in a line.

They’re already saddled, standing obediently, when Veronica steps to the side of me, winking over her shoulder. “Well, come on, Saint. We’re going to show you what you’ve been missing all these years.”

Veronica is wearing black. Shocker. Though the style is similar to mine, only where I have one slit carving up the side of my leg, she has two. Her black hair has been tousled in messy waves, falling down past her butt. She always looks elegant and beautiful, even when she’s not trying, and it almost always seems as though she’s not trying. I still can’t pin her age. She gracefully swings herself onto the saddle and turns over her shoulder to look back at me. “You’re not married, are you?”

My eyes widen. “What?”

Ophelia hooks her arm in mine and directs me toward the steed behind Veronica. She chuckles. “Never mind.”

Ophelia points to the stirrup. “Put one foot in there and swing your other leg around.”

I do as I’m told, grasping onto the leather rein as the horse shuffles under my weight. I pat its long mane.

“Good boy. Be nice to me. I’ve never done this before.”

Once everyone is on their horse, Veronica leads us down the long driveway. Oversized candles are alight at the edges. As we trot past, shadows of trees form at the side of my eye and I have to double take to make sure they’re just that—shadows. The wind is rustling, but only softly. When we’re halfway down the drive, Veronica calls out to me.

“Saint, come ride with me at the front.”

I kick my horse a little until it trots forward and finds its stride, just slightly back from Veronica, but close enough that we can have a conversation. “Did you know we are often drawn to animals because their energy and minds are quiet? Much like plants.” She guides us off the driveway and onto an off-road path, noting the candles are now directing us through a rough yet flat clearing of the forest.

“I didn’t know that, but I’ve always loved animals.”

“Do you have any?” she asks.

I nod, even though I know she can’t see me. “I do. I have two Dobermans and a pet snake, Medusa.” Even thinking of them makes my heart clench. I miss the companionship that only animals can give me.

“Hmmm.”

Was that a smile?

“Why am I not surprised?” She mutters the end of her sentence, but I catch it anyway.

“Veronica, what’s The Hunt about?”

She sighs, looking up to the sky. It’s then I realize we’re on a full moon, and not just any full moon, but a blood moon.

“Every blood moon, witches join for festivities called The Hunt. It’s meant for reproduction. Nothing more, and nothing less.” She pauses, and even though there’s already an eerie silence to the night, her silence somehow fills it. “I’m hoping things start changing for our Coven, Saint.” We continue through the forest, following the candles through the trees until we come to a clearing where ivy and flowers twist and knot around an archway. We stop. The soft orange light illuminates and warms my skin.

“Once you enter this game, there’s no opting out.” Veronica’s hand is gripped around the ivy that blankets off whatever is on the other side. “Are you ready?”

I think over her words. Witches and… would that make them warlocks? The Hunt. Deep in the back of my mind, I know that Brantley would despise me being a part of anything to do with any one of the male species, let alone male witches. But his betrayal still stings, so I can’t seem to bring myself to care. He put me here. He obviously trusts Veronica, for reasons I still don’t know, so he will have no one else to blame but himself.

I bring my eyes to Veronica. Wolf gray against dark brown. “I’m in.”

 

Tick.

Tock.

I craned my head, taking a seat beside her in the corner. “Are you ever going to stand?”

“Why do you keep doing this to me?”

“Now, now…” I silenced her with a finger pressed against her soft lips. I licked my own. She was so delicious. I’d always seen the obsession. “Don’t kill my dream too soon. It has only been two visits.”

“Two?” She narrowed her eyes at me, and I had to admit, she had balls. No doubt they came from her caretaker. “You’ve been doing this for months, only in different ways.”

“Ah.” A smirk curved my lips. “I guess I have. Tell me something…” I turned to her fully. “Are he and I the same?”

She clenched her jaw. “No.”

“Oh, don’t be so kind to him.”

“I’m not,” she purred, tilting her head back to rest on the concrete wall, unaffected by the way moss was growing between the cracks. “He’s so much worse.”

A deep chuckle erupted from my gut as I stood to my full height and started walking backward. “You say that like I’m not sent from Hades himself.” I tapped on the single light bulb. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Maybe.” She smiled, and it tilted me off-balance at how confident she was, even in the eye of an enemy. “But what does that tell you about him, if not even you scare me?”

She was brave, I’d give her that, but if she wanted to play games, all right then. We’d play.

I punched the light bulb, and everything went black.

 

 

Brantley

 

It was dark. I didn’t know what I wanted or needed to do, but I always somehow found myself in front of Saint’s bedroom. As if my soul ached for her while my flesh bled through my pain. This time was different, though. I finished a job like always, but this one. Was. Different. This one would impact her in years to come, and I knew that. I knew that if at any time I could free her from the cage I’d built around her, this… this would come back to haunt her. Fucking Lucan.

I opened her door, not caring fuck all if she heard. I never came home much anymore, but I needed to see her. To check on her. Ending another life always made me want to see her still living hers. As if I needed reassurance that God hadn’t started punishing me because he knew the first place to start.

Nothing good would ever come to me, and the only good I had in my life I had to fucking force to keep. I was a piece of shit. That was a given. But as she breathed the same air we did, smiled whenever she saw me, and walked along the haunted floors of the Vitiosis Manor, I knew. I fucking knew it was all going to be worth it. She was going to be worth it.

The door slammed against her wall and the bottle of rum I had clutched in my hand dropped to the floor as I clenched the doorframe with the same hand. She shuffled in her bed before her body shifted up and her soft little voice sang out, “Brantley? What are you doing? It’s—God, it’s four a.m.” Not a hint of fear in her tone. She had never been afraid of me. Not when I’d come home with blood on my clothes and a haunted kind of darkness in my eyes. Not ever. She was never afraid. That scared me most about her.

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