“What the hell is this?” demanded Cat as they pulled up at a locked gate several kilometres out of Witchaven. Right beside the gate stood an unmissable sign which read:

  ‘STRICTLY NO VEHICLES OR MAGIC PAST THIS POINT!!’

  “Guess we’ll have to walk,” Amanda said.

  They had done a shuffling of cars on account of Indi driving one. It seemed they’d gotten through their quota of dragons yesterday and it turned out they had even less distance to go by car than expected, but unfortunately much further to walk.

  They parked up and got out. Cat noticed Amanda looking worriedly at Lily.

  “Do you want me to carry her?” Cat offered.

  “I can walk,” Lily insisted, and as if to prove how much energy she had today, she hopped over the fence

  Indi stood looking worriedly at another sign. “Err guys, how many kilometres is it to Witchaven from here? That sign can’t be right can it?”

  The others gathered around.

  “Seven kilometers isn’t far,” Cat remarked.

  Indi groaned. “It will be in these boots.”

  Amanda frowned. “I thought you went shopping in Nowhere?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t really have any proper stores, it was all outdoor sports shops.”

  Cat gave her an incredulous look. “And you didn’t think walking shoes might be a good idea?”

  “These are walking shoes, I just didn’t think we’d be walking that far.”

  “Those are not walking shoes.” Kass was balanced on one foot, currently swapping her own shoes to something more suitable.

  Indi looked down at her own shoes with a frown. “But I walk in them.”

  Amanda considered them thoughtfully. “You’ll probably be alright for 7 kilometres. The heel’s not too high. Cat, yours don’t look much better.”

  “These are my comfy shoes,” Cat replied, looking insulted.

  “Gonna be honest,” Zephyr remarked as he looked down at his loafers. “I didn’t really expect to be doing much walking either, but it could be worse it than seven kilometres.”

  After a bit more faffing about, they were finally ready to start moving, when Amanda suddenly asked, “Where’s Lily.”

  They all went quiet while everyone scoured the area. But Lily was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but dense bush and a glimpse of farmland up ahead.

  “Lily?” Amanda called. “Lily?”

  Soon, they were all calling out Lily’s name.

  Amanda hopped the fence but the result was no different on that side.

  “Fan out,” Sirius suggested.

  “Stay in pairs,” Amanda added.

  Nobody except Arianna and Zephyr listened.

  Falco would have followed the advice to stick together, if only Indi hadn’t gotten over-excited and disappeared off into the bush so fast that he’d soon lost track of her.

  “Indi? Lily?” he called. But the bush was so dense that it muffled many of the sounds and he could only faintly hear Sirius calling Lily’s name off to the left somewhere, but no sound of anyone else.

  And then he couldn’t hear Sirius either.

  The bush was quiet but for the occasional twitter of birds that stayed out of sight.

  Suddenly, Falco felt like he had to be quiet too, lest he disturb... something. What that something might be, he did not know. “Lily?” he called in a hushed whisper. “Indi?”

  Suddenly something leapt out of the bushes on his right.

  He grabbed for his knife, ready to fight, but the thing was already gone. A wolf-like shape had rushed past him in a blur and disappeared into the bushes on his left. Had that been their Wolf or a different wolf?

  He waited a moment, knife at the ready, in case it wasn’t their Wolf and it came back. But the silent and uncanny stillness of the forest returned and remained, and so he continued onward.

  As he pushed his way through yet another tight squeeze and narrowly avoided some thorny plants, he wondered if he should turn around instead. There was no way Lily had come this way or this far in, surely?

  But then he broke through into a clearing, and there was Lily, kneeling by a thicket of trees with her back to him. She was very still and she was staring down at the ground.

  “Lily?” Falco asked. He managed to keep the trembling out of his voice but he felt like there was something very not right about this situation.

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  He took a step forward and tried again, a little louder.

  “Lily?”

  This time she spun around to face him, her hands tucked behind her back.

  Falco was relieved to see that she still looked like her normal self, except, it looked like she’d been crying, and was that blood on her shirt?

  He shook his head. It was probably just sauce from breakfast. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Lily looked back at the ground where she’d been staring only a few moments before. “Poor bunny,” she said sombrely.

  The carcass of a speckled brown rabbit lay at their feet. Falco was surprised that he hadn’t smelt it. It must have been fresh. The blood still looked wet where its neck had been ripped wide open by some predator.

  “I guess a wolf or something got it,” he remarked, thinking of the one that had dashed by him earlier.

  Lily nodded but she wouldn’t look at him. All the while she kept her hands tucked behind her back.

  Falco sighed. It was still early and already he’d had enough adrenalin running through his system. “Come on kid, let’s go back. The others will be worried.”

  He turned and started to walk back across the clearing. He stopped at the edge of the bush and looked back to check if she was coming. She was still standing by the dead rabbit.

  “Lily?”

  She glanced up, nodded, and then trotted obediently after him.

  They were halfway back when they heard a gunshot. If he wasn’t mistaken, it had come from somewhere behind them.

  “Quick! Quick!” he urged Lily in a hushed voice.

  They increased their pace to a jog. Falco kept looking back and holding branches out of the way so it was easier for Lily to get past.

  They reached the road in one piece, where a worried looking Amanda swept Lily into a hug. Falco did the same to Indi, who had managed to find her own way back from whichever direction she had gone.

  Cat was eyeing the bushes, hand on the weapon at her hip.

  “It was probably just a hunter,” Sirius remarked.

  But Kass, who was standing nearer the bush, almost as if she were about to jump back into it out of sight, shook her head. “It sounded like a pistol.”

  “Maybe it’s a farmer shooting rabbits,” Amanda suggested, although she sounded unsure.

  “We did just see a dead rabbit,” Falco offered, forgetting that it hadn’t been shot at all.

  Arianna was huddled up next to Zephyr, who had his arm around her. Both of them were looking worried. “Do people shoot rabbits with a pistol?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.” Amanda nodded. She sounded a little more sure of herself now.

  “Where’s Wolf?” Kass asked.

  Wolf had shifted into werewolf form and managed to track Lily’s scent pretty quickly. He’d been right on the trail of it when suddenly, he’d scented something else, something much more concerning.

  He’d changed direction, giving Falco a fright on his way past. Falco hadn’t been far from Lily at that point so Wolf had continued to track the new scent. The scent of death.

  He had no trouble moving fast through the bush. Movement was more of an issue when one was Falco’s height. But for a wolf, it was easy, to duck under branches and twist past tightly gathered shrubs. A werewolf skin was tough and thorns didn’t bother him. He went in almost a completely straight line toward the smell.

  It was taking him in the direction of Witchaven, right up to the back of a farm, where a small woodshed stood in an open, relatively speaking, but secluded area beneath a gathering of pines.

  Wolf padded forward slowly. Death was all around him, buried in the soil. Not just one body, but many. Buried shallow too, covered with dirt and pine needles, but only just. The stench was strong and some of the soil had been disturbed recently. Some of the bodies were fresh, but not all. Some were very old. This area had been used as a grave site for quite sometime now.

  Different plots had been used and Wolf walked between them, sniffing. It gave him a sense of the layout. Each square plot, much larger than a typical grave, had been used for multiple bodies, but most within a given plot were a similar level of freshness. The oldest were nearest the farmland, the more recent closer to the thicker parts of the bush. He wondered if they started with a deep hole and added the bodies as they had new ones. It was strange that none of the sites were marked though. Not even a blank river stone. Nothing to indicate where the graves were or who was buried in them.

  Wolf did not know much about the humans of Witchaven and their customs. Perhaps this was completely normal? And humans did live shorter lives then witches. From what he knew of the new world humans, their customs were supposed to be similar to that of the witches with a funeral and a burial and a marker. Although, sometimes they burned their dead like the vampires did. Vampires had ridiculous celebrations, almost more like a party, several months after the event. Werewolves liked the thing to be over as quickly as possible and once it was done, the grave was left with no unnatural marker. Sometimes a tree or some flowers would be planted, but that was it.

  Nothing had been planted here. There was no way to know what lay buried unless one had a sense of smell like Wolf did. To anyone else, the forest floor would have looked completely normal. But Wolf knew he would only have to dig a few feet to find an arm, or a leg, or a head, or some other decaying piece of flesh.

  His investigation was halted by the sound of a gunshot.

  He froze. His ears twitched.

  It was a pistol if he wasn’t mistaken. Not the sort of gun one usually hears in the bush. It had come from his left, back in the direction that Lily had been.

  A cold chill swept through him. Had it finally happened? Had she turned?

  He ran in the direction of the gunshot. Eventually he could smell it, and something else familiar too, more death.

  This death belonged to a rabbit, a brown speckled one.

  The shooter was gone, only her scent remained, as well as a faint whiff of wine and peppermints. It wasn’t anyone he recognised. No one he knew smelt that strongly of peppermints.

  The rabbit confused him. It had been shot once in the head, and then it’s brain had been crushed, and it had been left behind. The shooter, it seemed, had also taken the bullet with them, for he could find no trace of it in the remains.

  The crushing of the head had been done by a rock, but that too was strange because there weren’t really any other rocks around here. It looked out of place, as if they had brought it with them.

  There was something else that was worrying. Around the rabbit, Wolf could smell both Lily and Falco too. Three people had been here and one of them he did not know.

  Wolf’s nose took him out in a wider circle. He found their tracks, all three of them. He hesitated. Follow the shooter or follow Lily and Falco?

  Lily and Falco seemed to be heading back in the direction of the road. They were probably fine. Curiosity got the better of him. He followed the stranger.

  The scent was female definitely and early in her monthly cycle. She was young and she’d showered recently with a neutral scented soap. Her deodorant was also neutrally scented and not heavily applied at all. Neutral moisturiser too if she wore any. She was strangely unscented, apart from the wine, the peppermints, and the gunsmoke, maybe just a hint of hand cleaning chemicals now that he was paying more attention. Most people had far more scents attached to them though. The scents of pets, and perfume, of food, or their shower products, the place they worked, the food they’d eaten for breakfast, the places they’d walked. But this girl was decidedly clean, too clean. For one to have so few scents was very strange indeed.

  Then suddenly, there was no more scent at all. The trail stopped.

  Wolf circled around and backtracked several times but it was just gone, like she’d teleported away. Perhaps she had. But why? Why come here, kill a rabbit and go? It was weird, too weird. Wolf didn’t like it. Furthermore, he’d been away from the group for far too long. It was time he headed back. They were probably getting worried.