Monster

“First, I would like to let you all know where I stand with the other two in my company. I know it is a lingering thought in all of your minds. However, I am only with them as a means to locate an unruly creature. I do not have loyalty, nor do I have a relationship with either of them,” Charles explained. “So, have no fear that they will come after you, as they will never know about your family,” Charles said, more to Martin. “Truthfully, the only reason I still stay in contact with the Elders is to keep my ear to the ground to protect my own family,” Charles said.

“Elders?” Autumn chimed in.

“It’s who sent us three here. They enlisted our help to track this creature after it had killed so many over these last few years, with little to no regard for their rules.”

We all had more and more questions the more he spoke, but I knew those could wait. I wanted to hear the story he was thinking of.

“Now, where to begin…” Charles muttered, his eyes narrowing as he sifted through the hazy memories of his past. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, his ever-youthful face etched with lines of thought that told stories of years lived and battles fought. “I suppose I should start with where I come from. It was a small village, a speck of life on the outskirts of what is now London. The details of those early days blur together, but the significant moments stay with you.”

A shadow crossed his features as he delved into the past, his voice taking on a more somber, reflective tone. “Back then, everything was made of wood. There were no metal structures, no bricks, no stone. Our village was a patchwork of wooden huts, hewn from the very forest that surrounded us. I was about fourteen when the fire happened. My father and I had ventured into the forest for a hunt when we spotted smoke curling up through the trees. Curiosity drew us closer, and what we found was a scene that anyone of the village would dread.”

He paused, his gaze distant as he recalled the devastation. “Our village was engulfed in flames. The fire roared with an insatiable hunger, consuming everything in its path. Men scrambled, carrying buckets of water from the river, their efforts futile against the bizarre, relentless blaze. The entire village was in chaos, with cries of fear and desperation filling the air. It felt as though the very fabric of our lives was being torn apart by the inferno.”

Charles’s voice dropped to a whisper, the memory still fresh with awe and disbelief. “And then, out of nowhere, she appeared. She was a stunning woman, her presence as unexpected as it was otherworldly. I always thought she must have come from the depths of the forest, having seen the smoke from afar. With an air of calm authority, she raised her hands and uttered words that felt alien to my ears. Her voice carried a strange, mesmerizing cadence. In an instant, she wielded a power I had never seen before, pushing back the flames with an invisible force.”

He looked around, his eyes reflecting a mix of reverence and nostalgia. “It was the first time I ever witnessed magic… or a witch, as we came to believe. The sight of her fighting the fire with such ease left an indelible mark on my memory.”

“Who was she?” Martin asked.

“She went by Agatha, and she was quickly praised as a hero. Nobody cared how she did it, they were just happy that our lives and our village had been spared. The villagers welcomed her as one of their own. She presented herself as a humble young woman who was raised in the woods by a mother that taught her magic. She said that her mother had died recently in their home, somewhere out in the far reaches of the forest. She said she was lonely and went out in search of a new place with new people.”

He took a break for a moment. He looked like he was reliving something inside of his head as he prepared to tell us the rest of the story.

“Over the next year, she had crept in with most of the village elders and family leaders. She had secretly been teaching others to do magic in private. Only, the magic she was teaching others was not the kind she led us to believe she practiced. This was very dark magic. It was tearing people’s lives apart, tearing families apart. But she was good at covering things up. She had to until she built enough power for herself. She started creating more witches under her own power. She had a coven.”

A coven. Just like we had under our own noses, right in St. Louis.

“It was only a matter of time before she was in full control of the village. She took over everything, put spells on villagers, killed our livestock, performed rituals out in the forest, and all other manner of secret acts. The village folk began to worship her, eventually turning over to the dark magic themselves. They had no escape or a way to fight her. They all just succumbed to the corruption. There were only a few families that abstained from her dark craft. Those with the strongest will to resist were the only to survive.”

Autumn was entranced in his story, “How did you fight her?”

“Actually, we didn’t,” Charles said, ashamed. “We lived like that, under her rules and power. She wouldn’t let us leave, and she had hexes and spells out in the woods around the village to keep others out. She was very paranoid.”

Martin spoke, “This is all sounding very familiar.”

“Yes… it does,” Charles responded ominously.

I could see now why Charles wanted to tell us this story.

“We could do nothing. We had no way to stop her. I witnessed others that tried to attack Agatha. I saw one of the men of the village burry an ax in her back one day. He tried to start a rebellion and get others to join him. It failed, for as soon as he cleaved her spine, she impaled him with a wooden spike without laying a finger on either him or the log. We had no way to kill her, so my father did everything in his power to keep our family safe. We kept our heads down and got by, day by day. We survived that way. But then…” he said,” then one day, a stranger came to our village. He came, and he knew exactly who he was looking for. He knew Agatha’s true name, which is a very closely guarded secret amongst witches. Her true name was Maria. It turned out that she wasn’t from the forest. That was obviously a lie like everything else. She had been alive for a very long time before she ever stumbled into our village and set it ablaze. Even stranger, there had been enchantments put on the land to keep out all kinds of creatures, warlocks, and rival covens. We were meant to be completely isolated until she was ready to move the coven. Once they were strong enough. Yet, he walked right into town, uninhibited by any of the magic.” He halted his story before speaking again, “Just as Sam wasn’t affected by the silver, your warding, or whatever preventive measures the coven had in place.”

We all nodded, adding more and more to the list of unanswered questions about our missing friend… acquaintance… whatever he was now.

“This stranger asked dangerous questions, putting the servants of the witches on edge. He knew Maria was her real name. None of them knew what to do. Even her own servants thought they’d be killed just for hearing it.”

“So, what happened?” Martin asked eagerly.

“It was the first night the stranger was there. I waited up all night in my bed, unable to sleep. I knew as soon as night fell that the witches would descend on the poor man, who somehow wandered along into the village. I was terrified of the sounds. I knew they’d come. I heard them every night the witches descended on someone; chanting, screaming, running, killing. So, I tried to cover my ears as the commotion began. But what I heard that night was like nothing that had happened before. At first, I heard the chanting begin, heard the footsteps circling outside, trampling through the muddied paths around our homes, and then I heard the screaming start. However, the screaming wasn’t of the stranger… it was of the witches. The voices of villagers I recognized, that had turned to Maria’s power, were terrified. Thunderous crashes shook the walls of the home we lived in. My father had us all huddled under a large table,” Charles stopped for a moment, thinking about his father. “Vicious snarls roared outside, and the screaming of the corrupt villagers pierced my ears no matter how hard I covered them. I’ve never forgotten those screams. The next morning, when we finally dared to leave our hiding place to see if we were safe, we found the streets littered with bodies. The witches and all the villagers that worshiped them were dead.”

“As we combed through the streets, looking to see who all fell victim in the attack, my father and I saw the stranger that morning. He was walking out of town, splattered with blood from head to toe. His hands were slick with the life of those on the ground. It looked like he had plunged his hands into buckets of blood.”

“So, did you ever find out what he was? Did you ever hear any other stories about it?” Eleanor asked.

Charles shook his head, “No, that was the first and only time I’ve heard of anything like this. Until now…”

We spent the entire morning engrossed in discussions with Charles about Sam. The conversation was intense and exhaustive, weaving through every possible angle of Sam’s situation. To ensure everyone was on the same page, I decided to call Frank and Wayland over, pulling them into the loop. Clara, however, stayed behind with Delilah, choosing to remain at home for safety’s sake.

Charles turned out to be unlike anything we had anticipated. His demeanor and insights were a stark contrast to what we had imagined, even differing from Martin’s expectations. Despite his revelations, we were still hesitant to share every intricate detail of our lives with him, wary of the potential consequences.

Autumn, on the other hand, was largely quiet throughout the discussions. She spoke only when she felt there was a crucial detail about Sam that we might have overlooked. It was evident that she was struggling internally. She had been deeply invested in Sam emotionally before everything took a dark turn. The revelation that he might not be entirely human—and could potentially be the very monster we had been tracking—left her feeling betrayed and conflicted.

Her silence was a reflection of her turmoil. She grappled with a whirlwind of emotions, trying to reconcile her feelings for Sam with the new, unsettling truths. The shock of discovering that someone she had been emotionally close to could be a threat was deeply disorienting for her. We all shared in that confusion, uncertain about how to process the new reality and what it meant for us moving forward.

A sudden change in Charles became apparent. He visibly moved his head down, looking at the floor and closed his eyes. It looked like he was concentrating on something. Martin shifted beside him, aware that his old mentors’ full attention was on something else.

“What is it, Charles?” Martin asked with a tinge of worry in his voice. Their relationship was strange but powerful. It seemed now, with Martin and Charles finally sharing the same regard for human life, they would become closer.

“It’s Mercy. She’s calling me,” he answered. He stared into the ground for a few moments more until he looked returned to normal. “It seems I must leave.”

“What does she want?” Martin questioned again.

“There are gypsies in the area,” Charles said, his voice tight with anxiety. “Mercy wants to see if they know anything about what happened to her coven. But don’t worry… I’ll make sure she doesn’t find out about any of you.”

Frank’s eyes widened with alarm. “Shit,” he muttered, “there’s only one family of gypsies around here…”

“The Wicklows,” Martin interjected, his face pale. “They’re part of this family.”

Charles paused, his expression darkening as he absorbed the gravity of the situation. The silence that followed was heavy with dread. “That is unfortunate,” Charles finally said, his tone laced with foreboding.

“Why?” Eleanor asked, her voice trembling with fear.

Charles’s gaze was intense, his words coming out in a rush. “I doubt Mercy plans to leave the gypsies the way she found them. If she knows about them, it means she’s already deemed them a threat to her power. Especially after losing Charolette.”

“Mom…” Autumn’s voice broke as she spoke, her body shaking with panic. “We have to do something.”

The urgency in the room was palpable, escalating to a frenzied level. Each second seemed to tick by with increased pressure, the gravity of the situation pressing down on us with suffocating force.

“Two families joined together?” Charles asked through the stress of the room.

“Three,” Eleanor answered shakily.

Charles looked like he was waiting for more details. I didn’t want him to know all of this, but things were happening so fast, and once Mercy was mentioned, everyone started speaking too freely.

“Our family is made up of three separate blood families. We are hunters, the Wicklow’s are gypsies, and the third family is cursed… werewolves.”

Charles seemed surprised. He was smiling, “And you all live and hunt together?”

“Not necessarily, but when we have to, we all come together, no questions asked,” Frank answered firmly, speaking of past occurrences in our shared history.

Charles began pacing the length of the living room, “Hunters… gypsies… werewolves… all together.” He continued walking in silence for another moment or two.

“Charles, what is it?” Martin urged.

“Tell me, if you converged all of your numbers, how many of you could you muster in one location?” he asked. “Hypothetically, mind you…”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking too hard about what he was thinking.

“Roughly… maybe six… seven gypsies, and the werewolves I do not know. They have numbers, but we don’t know specifically,” Wayland of all people answered.

Charles was running things through his mind many times over. He was thinking deeply about whatever plan he was hypothesizing.

“What are you thinking?” Martin asked, concerned about what was coming.

Wayland answered, “He knows that if Mercy hits the Wicklows, it is highly likely that one of them will tell her about us. The probability of her finding us just increased. But,” he continued, “Charles wants to help protect us for Martin, just as he would protect his own family. But he already knows we can’t fight on our own. We’ll need everybody.”

Charles smiled again, “You are very sharp, Wayland. He’s right. I know how Mercy operates, especially when she feels threatened. She’ll kill the gypsies, and anyone else linked to them if she deems them a threat.” He spoke surely, “I can tell you that if she knows there is a bond between families, either between the gypsies and a family of werewolves, or hunters, she will come for each of you. She will kill you all. You pose too great a threat.”

Frank asked, “If we had the numbers, do you think we can kill her?”

That was the moment when we all realized what Charles was proposing. The only way to save our family was to bring all of us together. We would have to fight.

Charles spoke carefully, “She will be hard to kill, but even harder to get to. Phineas, the last of us three, will be her first line of defense. He is not to be taken lightly. It will take all of you…” Charles looked to Martin and me. “All of us.”

Something unseen passed between Martin and Charles. Charles had a somber reflection in his eyes as he knew he owed it to Martin to protect him after their history. Martin had a thankful look of admiration, and something else I couldn't quite place.

I gritted my teeth as I looked at my family. I knew we had something ahead of us... something big. It would be one of the toughest fights we'd ever faced down together. It would take everything we had.