A Shower of Arrows

Chapter Three: The Alderidge Siblings

"What are you doing here?"

Oliver and Hazel demanded this at the same time. Harry picked up Darcy and took her upstairs. 

"Don't play coy with me. I received your message, or summons should I say with your burning arrow." Liam rolled his eyes at Oliver. 

"Oliver never summoned you. He would've told us." Hazel spoke softly but firmly. 

"Fine, if it wasn't you then who was this from?" Liam sighed and walked back to the entrance hall. They all followed him and saw him open his bag. He pulled out an arrow with the Alderidge family crest on the arrows head, and a note. Oliver grabbed the note off him and read it. 

Liam, 

You need to come home. Willow and Hazel have been taken. You're all I have left. 

Oliver

"I received that this morning so I came straight here. But it was obviously a sick joke." Liam shook his head and rolled his eyes. He picked up his bag and went to walk back out the front door but Oliver stood in his way.

"The only sick joke here is you. How dare you fake this note? How dare you threaten the lives of MY family?" Oliver could feel his anger growing.

"Typical Oliver. Always worried about your precious self not anyone else. You even sent your own mate away."

Oliver launched at him. 

"Oliver!" Willow shouted to get his attention. 

A flaming arrow zoomed through the room and landed between the four of them, with a note attached to it. 

Oliver picked up the note which wasn't burnt so that immediately told him witches were involved with this. 

Alderidge Family,

My, my squabbling like children what would your mother have to say about this?  She probably would've encouraged it being a ruthless child murderer.

Pity you just found your mate Oliver. 

A friend. 

Harry held the note in his hand. The dropped it suddenly. Gasping and leaving the scent of burnt flesh in the air. The paper caught on fire and they could hear laughter coming from the flames. 

Willow spoke first. 

"We need to alert The Society. This is an act of war."

None of them wanted to think about getting The Society involved. Before Oliver could even think about it, Harry spoke. 

"Liam needs to stay here." Harry said quietly. 

"No!" Shouted Oliver and Hazel, causing Liam to roll his eyes. 

"Look, I don't like it either and I don't want him around Darcy or the new baby, but the witches have a point. If we work together and find out who this is and stop them. We need to protect each other, protect my children and they mention Grace in this letter, she knows nothing about this world and needs to be protected. Same with her daughter."

Harry was right. The more people we had working on this, the better off we were.

"Fine but there will be ground rules. One, you will leave Darcy, Grace and Lacey alone. You will not interfere with them so no little remarks to Grace or I will remove your tongue permanently. Two, you will help us figure this out. You need to be contributing to this problem and be sorting it out. Three, this fixes nothing."

"Aw brother you must really miss me."

"Shut up don't make me regret this."

Willow walked Liam upstairs and showed him to his old room. Willow was always the closest with Liam and was the one who was hurt the most when he left so Oliver was sure she would be happy with this result.