Fire Witch: A Thrilling Dark Fantasy Novelette (Night Order) by Rachael Boucker

Author:Rachael Boucker [Boucker, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerie River Publishing
Published: 2022-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Sneak Peek of “Shades Of Night” Book one in the Night Order Series

1: The Blight of Brook Moor

Bells toll, and an urgent shout peals through the open window into this frigid rented room.

“The watchers must have spotted something.” There’s no need for me to ready myself. Rodents skittering over the floorboards close to where I lie have kept me alert all night. I toss Dellena’s pack at her.

She groans and rolls over, still clutching her battleaxe like a child’s comforter. “I’m not deaf, Shade. Morons probably saw another suspicious shadow.” She rubs her cheek against Death’s Breath’s handle and snuggles back into the stained hessian mattress.

A hissing cockroach crunches beneath my boot. With a grimace, I wipe cracked shell and goo across the dusty floorboard. “Be that as it may, we came here for a reason and are duty bound—”

I need not finish my sentence. The watchers still shout, but a new voice sends chills through my skin, and Dellena bolts upright. The words of the demon curse echo around us, loud and commanding but spoken in the sweet voice of a young woman.

“Once upon a murky lake…”

Dellena secures the axe onto her back and pushes me through the door.

“I drowned myself in love’s high stakes. The Devil took my willing soul and dragged me through a glass-lined hole…”

My sister speeds through the rundown inn, almost pushing me down the stairs in her haste to reach the girl.

“He whispered to my darkest dreams and left me gasping in my screams.”

I duck behind the door, allowing my sister to pass first, and enter the torch-lit street behind her as the final line of the verse punches out like a stiff breeze.

“For all is fair in love and war, unless you are the Devil’s whore.”

Those words are imprinted in my mind, burned there. The verse is a danger to all young women, except to witches who have come of age. In memory and on parchment, they are harmless, but to speak this curse aloud is to release its power.

It takes a moment for the gathering of barely dressed men hovering in their doorways to take action.

Dellena moves to restrain the girl herself, but Aiden, the innkeeper who has been overcharging us for that flea-infested room, slaps a hand to her chest and says, “This is village business. Doesn’t concern strangers.”

I stay huddled in Dellena’s shadow and tilt my head lower, shrouding my features inside my hood.

Dellena’s hand slinks behind her back, fingering Death’s Breath’s handle, but the innkeeper moves on, and her axe remains holstered.

The villagers approach the girl cautiously, circling her, heads flicking this way and that as though they are eyeing their escape routes, preparing to take flight.

“Once upon a murky—”

The innkeeper lunges at the girl as she starts up the cursed verse again, striking her in the jaw, then pulling her arms taut behind her back. “Grab the knife from my belt, Steven.” Aiden digs inside the girl’s mouth and pulls her tongue down her chin. “Quickly now, lad. It’s sharp.

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