"First, I would like to let you all know where I stand with the other two in my company. I know it's 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 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…." he pondered. "I suppose I will start with where I am originally from. It was a small village located outside what is now London. I forget most things about those days that were so long ago; however, the big things stay with me. This memory has always been hard to forget. I guess you could say it has always been an unanswered question," he smirked.
"It was ages ago, back when everything was built from wood. There weren't any metal, brick, or stone buildings that I knew of. Our entire village was built from the wood of the forest. When I was about 14, my father and I were hunting in the forest when we spotted smoke. We went to investigate and came upon our village burning. Almost everything was on fire. The men ran with buckets of water from the river, but they couldn't quench the strange blaze. The whole village was in a panic. Everyone thought their lives were about to be stolen away in the heat of the fire. Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful woman appeared. I thought she came from the woods behind us, spotting the smoke just as we had. She raised her hands, spoke a few strangely foreign words, and fought the flames back with an unseen power. It was the first time I ever saw magic, or a witch."
"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 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 who 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 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. Until she had a coven."
A coven. Just like we had under our noses, right in St. Louis. None of us knew that; not me, my family, not even the Wicklows with their sight. Only Sam knew the truth.
"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 manner of unforgivable acts. The village folk at the heart of the coven 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. There were only a few families that abstained from her dark craft. Those with the strongest will were the only ones to survive."
Autumn was entranced in his story, "How did you fight her?"
"We didn't," Charles smirked. "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.
I could see now why Charles wanted to tell us this. The coven Sam had slaughtered was supposed to be guarded like the one from Charles' story.
"We could do nothing. We had no way to stop her. I witnessed others who tried to attack Agatha. I saw one of the men of the village bury 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 pike without laying a finger on either him or the wooden beam. 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."
"He came with a name…" I said more to myself.
"What's even stranger, there had been enchantments put on the land to keep out all kinds of creatures, warlocks, and rival covens. 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, the wards, or anything Mercy's coven had in place.
We all nodded, adding more and more to the list of unanswered questions about our missing friend.
"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 in the mud outside, trampling through the paths around our homes. Then I heard the screaming start. However, the screaming wasn't of the stranger… it was of the witches. Thunderous crashes and thuds shook the shack of a house we lived in. My father had us all huddle 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. It was hard to forget. 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 who worshiped them were dead. As we combed through the streets, looking to see who had fallen victim to 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 blood of those on the ground. It looked like he had plunged his hands into buckets full 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 talked with Charles all morning about Sam. I even called Frank and Wayland over to keep them in the loop. Clara stayed home with Delilah, just to be safe. Charles was different than any of us, including Martin, had thought he would be. Even so, we weren't ready to give him every detail of our lives. So we kept Delilah away.
Autumn remained silent through most of the morning, only chiming in when she thought of something important that we were missing about Sam. It was clear that she didn't know how to feel. I think she was in love, or falling in love with him, before everything went down. Now, with the thought of him being not wholly human, and also possibly being the very monster that we had been hunting, she felt betrayed. More than anything else, I think she just felt confused about how to feel for him. We all were.
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 were close.
"It's Mercy. She's calling me," he answered. He stared into the ground for a few moments more until his look returned to normal. "It seems I must leave."
"What does she want?" Martin questioned again.
"There are gypsies in the area. Mercy wants to see if they know anything about what happened to her coven. But do not fear, I will keep you all a secret from her."
"Shit," Frank said. "There's only one family of gypsies around here…"
"The Wicklows," Martin said, "they're a part of this family."
Charles was silent for a moment, processing what we meant.
"That is unfortunate," he said.
"Why?" Eleanor was afraid to ask.
"I doubt that she plans to leave the gypsies the way she found them. If she knows of them, then it is already too late," Charles said.
"Mom…" Autumn was shaking, "We have to do something."
The urgency of the situation had just skyrocketed.
"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 actually seemed surprised. He was smiling, "And you all live and work together?"
"Not necessarily, but when we have to, we all come together, no questions asked," Frank answered firmly.
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 don't 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 for 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 skyrocketed. 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 everyone."
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."
Frank asked, "If we had the numbers, do you think we could 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 summon the entirety of us, and we would have to fight.