Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

51

Lucas approached the rock cautiously. He sniffed the poppet before prowling in a wide circle stopping at regular intervals.

Looking over to each place that he indicated, I saw a poppet. Some were concealed amongst the mulched leaves on the ground. Others had been wedged in shrubs or fastened on the low hanging branches of trees. Their dark colour was camouflage in the winter foliage that grew wild in the cemetery.

When Lucas reached the rock where we'd noticed the first one, I realised that he had travelled in a perfect circle.

Not good.

I bent to scoop up the first little figure to break the circle. The sound of a child laughing drew my head to the depths of the undergrowth. A young girl squealed in delight as she played some childish game.

I swallowed my fear. The cemetery was a park area. People walked dogs here, children played. It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that a child was joking around out here.

I tried to focus on the noise, but somehow the exact location of the child evaded me. The only thing that disturbed the natural terrain of the cemetery was a faint trace of hazy green that swirled in wisps around the outskirts of the circle.

The cemetery fell silent. All was still outside the circle. I bent down again, reaching for the poppet to break the formation.

Lucas let out a high pitched, agonised whine. The sound, torn from his throat, finished in a sickly gurgle that came from deep in his lungs. His large body slumped forward as his legs gave way beneath him.

Forgetting the circle, I rushed over to Lucas. My life-force buzzed inside me, sparked into action by my fear for his condition. The sound of metal crashing against metal filled my head as my silver magic crashed against the pack bond, straining to be free as I watched my Alpha's prone form.

Lucas's rib cage rose and fell in deep shuddering breaths. His long pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth. Something was very wrong, but at least he was alive.
Relief spread through my body, strengthening the pack bond, helping me keep control of my magic as it coursed through my blood, heavy and thick.

Evan and Emily joined me around Lucas's body. We stood in a small circle of our own, facing out, trying to understand the threat that had brought our Alpha down.

The child's laugh tinkled somewhere in the distance.

I whipped my head around, but each time that I thought I'd found it, the laughter stopped and then started up somewhere else. The sound became more affected until I wasn't convinced that it was a child that I was hearing at all.

What sort of adult would play a twisted game like this?

It didn't feel like Hazel's style. She had no need for games, the strength of her power meant that she could afford to take the direct approach. This was the work of a witch that used fear to feed their spells, and needed poppets to focus their power.

My list of suspects was getting smaller.

The air outside the circle whipped around the bushes and trees, shaking the branches and whistling through the gaps in the foliage, disguising any movement from outside.

Inside the circle it was as still as death. The air grew heavy, dense and hot.

"Ok, you bastards, you've got us. Come out and face us," I shouted, feigning a confidence I didn't feel.

The laughter echoed around the circle like it was everywhere at once, growing louder and more maddening by the second. The poppets twitched and shifted where they lay. Sharp, jerky movements brought them out of their hiding places, as they danced to an unheard song.

A huge gust of icy wind blasted through the circle's vacuum. My breath left my body, stolen by the suddenness of it. Gasping, I tried to fill my lungs with the freezing, fast moving air. Tears streamed from my eyes as I struggled to focus.

The poppets rose from their places and started spinning. They whirled past at ever increasing speeds until it was impossible to make out the individual figures in their dark cyclone, propelled by the unnatural wind.

Reaching out each of my arms, I grasped Emily and Evan's outstretched hands, forming a ring around the helpless body of our Alpha. The buzz of our connection kept my fear grounded enough that I didn't lose hold of the rising power within me.

The poppets whipped around us growing ever closer as the seconds ticked by. The dolls were almost in front of my eyes now.

Evan exclaimed in pain, causing me to twist my head in his direction. A drop of blood welled on his cheek. His eyes were wide and panicked, but there was a determined set to his jaw. Pride swelled inside me and I knew that Evan would hold the circle and protect Lucas for as long as was physically possible.

We all would.

Next Emily twitched. Her hand tightened on mine. A poppet spun too close to my face. It's nasty, sharp claw-like hand nicked my temple.
The sensation of warm blood trickling down my face surprised me before I even felt the stinging pain. I barely had time to register it before another, and another poppet swiped my exposed skin.

Emily and Evan were faring no better. Droplets of their blood seeped out of tiny cuts that covered their faces and hands. Tiny nicks that on their own would be little more than an annoyance, taken together merged into throbbing wounds.

Still we held our circle.

The oxygen disappeared, eaten up by the poppets both suffocating and slashing us in a double assault of misery.

The blood dripping from the tiny cuts on my face ran together, forming a large rivulet. One heavy drop fell from my chin. The instant that the blood left the skin of my face the poppets stopped whizzing around us. They held still, suspended in the air as the blood dashed against my hand before leaving my body to hit the floor.

In that moment time stilled.

I found myself noticing the poppets' tiny white hands made out of delicate, sharpened bones. Probably bird or rodent. I'd definitely need a tetanus shot.

I observed the warm wetness of the blood running down my face, and I found time to worry about how the cuts would scab over. Would they scar?

A pressure dragging me down from each side brought me back to myself. Emily and Evan fell simultaneously, like a well-rehearsed stage bow, but neither of them got back up.

As I fought to extricate my hands so that I wouldn't be pulled down with them, the poppets dropped to the ground.

A pair of familiar blue eyes laughed at me as my pack mates dragged me to the floor to join them in oblivion.

Blue eyes? Who could it be? Can Alice resist this warped magic?
Hope you're enjoying the story!