Chapter 11: Two Witnesses and a Reason to Stay

Alix stood in her kitchen about to make a pot of tea when she heard Adam wake up in the other room. He shuffled in behind her just as she snapped her fingers in front of the stove, starting a fire inside as frost crept across the front and the wall behind it.

"How did I get here?" He voiced his confusion, wincing when the kettle began to whistle almost immediately.

"You may have gotten bigger Adam, but you're not so big I can't carry you anymore." She spoke softly as she poured the hot water over the tea leaves into a cup for him, ignoring the look of indignance he wore. "Drink, it'll help with the hangover." Adam looked about to argue that he was fine, but one raised eyebrow from Alix and he thought better of it.

"Why are you still here?" He broke the silence that fell and she looked up in surprise. "I remember your game Miss Swanson, you've disappeared from so many places—so many cultures so many times you've got it down to a science. I know it doesn't take more than a day for you to vanish completely." He paused briefly, "So why are you still here?" She opened her mouth to reply, but he didn't give her the chance, "And don't tell me it's because I was passed out on your sofa." Alix closed her mouth again in silence, thinking over his question for a moment longer before she finally answered.

"I like Glastonbury and… to be honest, I'm tired of running," she flashed a smile to match her words. "I'm old; I've been around for far too long and, come what may, Lucifer will never get me to return with him to Hell, but he also won't take no for an answer. It'll be a stalemate between two true immortals until Revelations or some other apocalypse comes to pass or we piss off the Corvid Prince, whichever comes first," she spoke quietly, as though she was trying to convince herself as much as she was him because when it came down to it, she didn't know why she'd stayed.

Maybe she'd felt she had to.

Or maybe, for the first time in a very long time, she'd legitimately wanted to stay…

To have somewhere permanent to call home.

Adam regarded her as if he was trying to decide what to think of her reply, but in the end, it didn't matter and he wasn't going to push for a straight answer when she so clearly had none. After the silence had fallen again, he finished his tea and stood from his seat.

"Thank you for letting me stay for the night, but I should be going. I'm supposed to help load the next shipment for the states." Alix nodded slightly rather than speak as she watched him go; this was familiar to them, they'd done the same many times before and goodbye never needed to be spoken. Truth be told, Alix knew full well that Adam's next boat didn't ship out for another month and he didn't really have anything he needed to do, but he was still struggling with the decision to run now that he knew hunters and Lucifer had moved into the area and there was no doubt a storm coming that not many would survive to see the end of; she couldn't blame him for wanting to flee her presence. Alix sighed into her tea, reading the leaves while she sat in silence. The leaves spoke to her, told her things she could've told them, things like a battle was coming in which she would lose a great deal if she stayed her course; things like intense guilt and pain that would be etched into her soul with the loneliness that was already there.

She finished off her cup and stood.

#

Late evening, Alix sat at her piano. She'd already filled out today's entry in her journal, taking meticulous notes on everything that had happened and now she sat trying to will away her overwhelming mix of emotions at Lucifer's appearance in the area. She played beautifully, the music pouring through her fingertips from her soul to the keys, the instrument itself loud enough that if the wind was right, the melodies would be carried down to the streets of Glastonbury nearest her home. This was part of what had started the rumors of her home being haunted, a laughable idea in her opinion considering the only ghosts haunting her home were the ones inside her head; ghosts of the people she'd loved and lost.

#

On this particular day, the melody that drifted down was just loud enough to reach the ears of Nathaniel and Marie Rivers as they drove down the street in their La Mancelle steamcar. Marie heard the sound and grabbed her brother's arm, forcing him to pull over the vehicle to listen more closely. They'd heard the rumors of the witch that lived in the little haunted castle up the hill, but neither of them had put any stock in the claims until now. They didn't know much about Alix, they'd really only seen her twice and it was only for brief moments, but they had seen her perform a magic of sorts when she'd—accidentally—caused one of the largest blizzards of the century to escape them.

"Maybe we should look into that castle after all," Nathaniel spoke in an indifferent tone to his sister after they'd listened to the faint melody a moment longer. Marie, who wasn't keen on the idea of hunting to begin with, agreed quietly as though she was hesitant to risk finding out the stories about the woman up the hill were true.

Of course, regarding Alix, the rumors rarely did her justice.

The two hunters started their steamcar up again and turned toward the small dirt track to the castle. When they reached the entrance of the track, they turned the vehicle off and climbed out, the old track too narrow and overgrown to continue any other way than on foot. Alix sensed souls approaching up the hill to her door and paused, fingers still poised over the keys of the piano. She cocked her head to one side and looked toward the lights, faint as they were through the stone walls. It was two people approaching on foot, but likely no one important enough for her to head them off as they were both humans even if their souls looked a bit different. Alix began again to play her piano until they came to a halt on her front step with a knock on the door. She breathed a heavy sigh, taking her time to respond to the summons. Keep stood in the entryway, his hackles raised and sharp teeth bared in a silent snarl. Alix paused briefly to run her fingers through the wiry fur at the scruff of his neck, careful not to cut herself on the sharp spines along his back. Then she opened the door, her hand remaining on Keep's scruff as much to reassure herself as to restrain him. Her liquid mercury eyes narrowed into an annoyed glare, flashing like cold steel when she saw the two hunters on her step. Nathaniel and Marie stared in shock, neither of them sure what they'd expected when they knocked on the door, but it wasn't this. Marie reached for the knife on her hip and Nathaniel for the crossbow on his back, but Alix moved faster than either of them could hope to match. She struck both of them in the chest with the heel of her palms hard enough to lift them back a few yards, but not quite hard enough to break bones just yet. Before they could even catch their breath, Alix had assessed Nathaniel as the bigger threat by a small margin and pinned him, his sister's blade against his throat so that if he so much as swallowed, it'd bite into his skin. Marie moved to help her brother, but when Keep seemed to melt from the shadows to block her path with vicious teeth bared, she let out a frightened shriek and halted. It was a reasonable response, Alix supposed, when Keep stood at about 12 hands and was built of solid muscle.

"It'd be best if the pair of you left me alone." Alix's voice was low and cold, "I don't have the time to play with a pair of children nor the restraint to keep from breaking you should this continue." Outrage wrote itself across Marie's face at Alix's words, but Keep wouldn't let her near his master and the sight of an aggressive wolfish beast that looked more and more unnatural the longer it lingered was enough to curb whatever she had going for her, be it courage or stupidity.

"We're not here to 'play'," so she settled for shouting, "we're after you because we've seen you with a dead body and about to kill an innocent woman!" For a moment, Alix was silent, but then she began to laugh, the light, almost musical sound dumbfounding the siblings as she sat back on one heel, keeping Nathaniel pinned beneath her knee.

"That dead body was a vampire, which you'd know if you stuck around till morning, and as for the 'innocent' woman," she laughed again, "there's a very good reason I call her the Wicked Witch of Cestrescir." Marie's eyes widened slightly at the mention of Cestrescir; they both knew the stories, they'd been raised on stories like that of the rash of brutal murders in what later became known as Cestrescir.

"B-But you're still—how could you—that was centuries ago." Alix raised an eyebrow at Marie's protests before she shook her head slightly and stood, the stolen blade hanging loosely from her fingers while her posture drove home the fact they posed no real threat to her.

"I'm older than I look," she shrugged, "so is Este." It was the understatement of the millennia, but Alix didn't feel the need to go into detail.

"You're an unwelcome pest." She scoffed at Nathaniel's comment as he scrambled to his feet, his gaze wary, "Just waiting to be exorcized."

"Lesser demons, the ones you've probably met in the past, they're the pests," her voice was filled with a mix of disgust and hatred, "too weak to hold their forms outside of Hell, they're nothing more than bloody parasites."

"How are you any better?" Alix flashed him an almost cruel smile.

"I'm not," she cocked her head to one side as if studying an insect, "trust me when I tell you I am far worse than a parasite." Her smile turned dark with her ever-present insatiable hunger. "You, however, are the ones not welcome at the moment and I suggest you leave before I really do decide to eat you." Nathaniel seemed to honestly consider.

"You wouldn't," Marie spoke with about as much conviction as she could muster, which wasn't much, and yet Alix still hummed in response as though agreeing with her.

"No, you're probably right," she smiled again, her mercury eyes glittering with a mad light, "I'll probably just feed you to my Hounds." As if to drive her point home, Keep bared his teeth again in a silent snarl turned almost grin while the cold eyes of the rest of the pack appeared in the shadowy woods around them, summoned by her words. Marie started to back toward the trail, her brother shifting slowly in the same direction while Alix watched. "I suggest you run." At her advice, the pair bolted back down the path to their steamcar, the Hellhounds close on their heels until they reached the edge of the woods. There they paced among the shadows of trees, semi-fluid shapes watching hungrily as the hunters scrambled to start their steamcar and run as far as it would take them. Without an audience to play for, Alix allowed the smile to slip from her lips as she broke the silence that hung in the air. "They're His, aren't they?"