Chapter 8: Coven Secrets Unearthed
The city lights blurred into streaking gold lines as Cassian’s black SUV tore through the empty streets. He drove with a terrifying, silent focus, one hand on the wheel, the other clamped over Chester’s where it rested on the gearshift. The physical connection was a live wire, humming with his fury and her dread.
“Tell me exactly what Kael said,” Chester said, her voice surprisingly steady in the enclosed space. The researcher in her was clawing its way to the surface, a defense mechanism against the panic.
“Young wolf. Liam. Twenty-three. Was on perimeter watch. Missed his check-in. They found him an hour ago.” Cassian’s jaw was a hard line. “He wasn’t just killed. He was… displayed. On the old boundary marker.”
“The witch-marks?”
“Carved. Not painted. Deep.” He glanced at her, his green eyes reflecting the dashboard lights. “And the decay. Kael said it looked like he’d been dead for weeks, not hours. Meat falling off the bone.”
Chester’s stomach lurched. She’d read about accelerated necrotic curses, but they were theoretical, banned in every grimoire. “I’ll need to see it. Touch it.”
“No.” The word was absolute. “You’ll look. From a distance. That’s it.”
“Cassian, I’m a forensic researcher. If there’s magical residue, I’m the best chance you have at identifying it. My magic is weak for big spells, but for detection? For analysis? It’s perfect.”
He snarled, a low, frustrated sound. “Someone used magic to butcher one of my pack. I am not letting my mate put her hands on that.”
“I’m not just your mate,” she shot back, heat flashing through her fear. “You brought me for a reason. Trust me to do the job.”
He fell silent, his grip on her hand tightening almost to the point of pain. He didn’t agree. But he didn’t say no again.
They pulled up to a derelict industrial zone, warehouses standing like rotten teeth against the night sky. Four massive werewolves in human form, faces grim, stood guard at the open mouth of one building. Their eyes, glowing faintly amber in the dark, snapped to Chester as Cassian helped her out. The suspicion was a physical weight.
Cassian ignored them, steering Chester inside with a hand at the small of her back. The warehouse was a cathedral of decay. The air was cold, thick with the cloying stench of old oil, rust, and beneath it, the sweet, nauseating odor of spoiling meat and something else—ozone and burnt herbs. Magic.
In the center of the vast space, under a single hanging work light, a shape lay on a stained tarp.
Kael, Cassian’s beta, stepped forward. He was almost as big as Cassian, with a shaved head and a scar through his brow. His nod to Cassian was curt, his glance at Chester wary. “Alpha. The scene is preserved. No one’s touched him since discovery.”
Chester approached, forcing her breath to stay even. The young wolf, Liam, was on his back. The cause of death was obvious—his throat had been torn out. But that wasn’t the horror. The skin visible on his face and arms was mottled grey and black, sagging, liquefying in places as if beset by a voracious rot. And on his chest, carved over his heart, was a series of interlocking, angular symbols. They were dark, not with blood, but with a glistening, tarry substance that seemed to absorb the light.
Her professional detachment clicked into place. She knelt, ignoring Cassian’s tense presence behind her.
“The decay is localized to the body,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone. “The tarp beneath him is clean. It’s not a field effect, it’s targeted. The magic is consuming him from the inside out, even post-mortem.”
She hovered her hand over the carved marks on his chest. A faint, violet light emanated from her palm, her detection spell—a simple, meticulous weave of energy. The tarry substance in the carvings sizzled. A tendril of black smoke curled up.
“Definitely cursed ingress,” she whispered. “The symbols are a channel. A delivery system for the necrotic agent.”
“Can you tell whose?” Cassian’s voice was gravel.
“Not yet. It’s… familiar. But corrupted.” She needed a closer look. The answer was inside. The unnatural decay suggested a magical catalyst integrated into the tissue. Without thinking, she reached for the gaping wound at the throat, her fingers poised to trace the ruin.
A blistering hand locked around her wrist, yanking it back.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Morrigan stood there, dressed in head-to-toe black, her violet eyes wide with fury and disbelief. She must have slipped past the guards unseen. Her gaze darted from Chester’s poised hand to the ravaged corpse, to Cassian’s protective stance.
“You’re working with them now?” Morrigan’s voice was a horrified screech that echoed in the hollow space. “Cutting up dead wolves? Is this your new alpha-mate party trick, Ches?”
Cassian moved, a blur of motion, inserting himself between Morrigan and Chester. A deep, warning growl rumbled from his chest, shaking the air. “Touch her again, witch, and you lose the hand.”
“Or what, mutt? You’ll set your little lab technician on me?” Morrigan spat, but she took a step back, her eyes fixed on Chester. “What are you doing?”
Chester shook off the shock of Morrigan’s arrival. The accusation stung, but the mystery in front of her was more pressing. “I’m trying to find out what killed him, Morri. Something’s inside him. A physical focus for the curse.”
“So you just… root around in his chest?” Morrigan looked genuinely sick.
“Yes.” Chester’s tone was flat. She turned back to the body. Cassian was still bristling, but he gave a sharp, tense nod. He would allow it, but he didn’t like it.
Chester took a breath, centering herself. She ignored the smell, the terrible softness of decaying flesh. She pushed aside the torn skin and muscle at the throat wound, her delicate fingers probing deeper, into the cavity.
Her magic tingled, guiding her. There. Something hard, lodged near the spine. It was pulsing with a sick, cold energy. Gently, she worked it free.
As her hand emerged, the object caught the dim light. It was a stone, about the size of a robin’s egg, but jagged and ugly. It was obsidian black, shot through with throbbing veins of violet and sickly green. It glowed in her palm, and the decay on Liam’s body seemed to intensify, a fresh wave of putrescence filling the air.
Cassian’s snarl was pure violence. “What is that?”
But Chester wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the stone, her blood turning to ice. The pattern of the veins, the specific frequency of the magical resonance… it was a signature she’d seen before, in her mother’s old, locked journals.
Morrigan took a staggering step forward, all the color draining from her face. Her anger evaporated, replaced by a dread that seemed to shrink her. She stared at the stone in Chester’s hand as if it were a viper.
“Oh, fuck,” Morrigan breathed, the words barely a whisper. Her eyes, huge and terrified, lifted to meet Chester’s. “Chester… that’s Blackwater Coven magic.”
She swallowed hard, her voice cracking.
“That’s your mother’s coven.”
The silence in the warehouse became absolute. The hanging light buzzed. The stone in Chester’s hand throbbed, cold and malevolent, a little piece of her own forgotten history screaming from the hollow of a dead wolf.
Cassian’s gaze snapped from the stone to Chester’s frozen face. His protective rage didn’t diminish, but it shifted, complicated by a new, chilling understanding. The threat wasn't just out there anymore.
It was in her blood.