Burkheart Witch Saga Book 1: Red Snow Page 4

  "You believed her? You really believed that I would cheat on you with some random guy? How could you do that to me, David?" She was trying not to cry herself. "The actual truth is that I was attacked. Some crazy bastard basically kidnapped me and tied me up in the fucking desert and was going to kill me."

  "Oh my God, babe, are you all right?"

  "Oh, now you're concerned? Just a minute ago, I was a cheating slut, now I'm 'babe'? You really drank because you thought I was cheating?"

  "I didn't drink. Your mom poured me some fruit juice. I felt shitty after I drank it, but I didn't drink any alcohol. I swear."

  "You trusted her? That could've had Drano in it, or it could have been some kind of fucking magic potion. I'm pretty sure that's where the vodka went."

  "I'm so sorry, Kayla. I should have known not to listen to her. I was fine when I got there, then she gave me that apple juice and started talking to me. It all seemed so logical. I don't know what the fuck happened. Please forgive me. It's like I was under some spell or something. I'm so sorry." He placed his head in his hands and started to cry for real.

  "I just need some time to cool down, David. I'll call you in a day or two. I love you, but this is too much for me to deal with right now." She summoned up the last of her strength and walked out the door. She didn't know then that she wouldn't be seeing David again for a long time.

  Chapter 4

  Kayla returned to her mother's house, planning to give that bitch a piece of her mind. She was so sick of her trying to ruin everything good in Kayla's life. She was her daughter for Christ's sake! Moms should be nice, bake cookies and give advice. This cow never baked a cookie in her life, and her only advice to Kayla was to tell her that she was worthless. Well, no more.

  Kayla strutted up the path and opened the front door. She expected Carolyn to be sitting in her recliner watching Maury or Oprah, but she wasn't there. The television was actually turned off for the first time, ever. There was a peculiar smell coming from down the hall. As Kayla sniffed to assess the source of the sweet, thick scent, she heard a voice, chanting. Yes, it was definitely chanting.

  The smell got stronger as she tiptoed down the hall, trying not to make a sound. When she approached the door, she realized that the smell was incense. Not the pleasant smell she associated with head shops or pot smoking parties, but a cloying, spicy scent that made her cough and gasp for clean air. The smell was familiar, like a nutty, mocha smell. Chicory. That's what it was, she was sure of it. But there was something else, a peppery, sulfurous smell. The chanting sounded like it was in Latin or something similar.

  Kayla heard movement inside the back room. She bolted to the bathroom across the hall. Peeking through the tiny crack between the door and the frame, she saw Carolyn emerge from the room farthest down the hall. She was dressed in a black robe with a high, stiff collar. The spicy sulfur smell followed Carolyn down the hall in a wave as she made her way toward the bathroom door. Kayla audibly gasped, and she prayed that Carolyn wouldn’t open the door.

  In a panic, Kayla unbuttoned her jeans and dropped them to the floor. She almost fell into the bowl as she flopped onto the toilet seat. She knew that she was going to have a big bruise on her butt cheek from this little stunt. The door handle began to turn, and Kayla sat perfectly still. As the door opened slightly, she shouted a warning to Carolyn, who quickly closed the door.

  "Occupied!"

  "When did you get home?" Carolyn asked with an air of suspicion in her voice.

  "Just a few seconds ago. You didn't hear me fly in the house and say I had to pee like a racehorse?" Kayla listened closely to try to decide if Carolyn was buying her story.

  "I didn't hear you at all. I was napping," Carolyn lied, sounding artificially sweet.

  Kayla pulled up her jeans and flushed the toilet for effect. She came out of the bathroom, but Carolyn had disappeared to the master bedroom. Kayla jogged into her own room and shut the door behind her. She caught her breath as she pressed her back against the closed door.

  Come to think of it, she had never been in that third bedroom. Ever. She couldn’t even recall being aware there was a room there at all. Trying to wrap her head around the mysterious invisible third room was giving her a migraine.

  "I'm going out to see some friends." Carolyn yelled, then gathered her keys and left the house.

  Kayla decided that Carolyn would probably be gone for a while, so she was going to investigate that smell and the secret room.

  She went to the front door, made sure it was locked, and then watched Carolyn's dark blue Cadillac pull out of the drive and speed away.

  Kayla tried the third bedroom door. Locked.

  "Fuck!"

  She had some experience at picking locks, but wasn't exactly confident in her skills. She wasn't a criminal, but she had weaseled her way into a few abandoned houses to squat or party for a night. A few of her former "friends" had taught her some valuable skills. It was time to dig into her memory bank and see how well those skills had stood the test of time.

  Fumbling with a bobby pin fashioned into a key, it took her six tries to get the tumblers to click. When they did, Kayla resisted the urge to do her happy dance. That urge abruptly vanished when she saw the contents of the hidden room.

  On the far side, there was a table filled with candles, incense burners and all sorts of magical paraphernalia. Carolyn is a witch? No way! Kayla had known quite a few Wiccans in her life, and they were usually sweet, down-to-earth nature lovers who were kind to most everyone. That did not describe Carolyn in any way, shape, or form. She didn't even recycle or give two shits about nature, or even other people for that matter.

  As Kayla looked more closely at the contents of the table, she sensed something was wrong. She saw items there that she'd never seen on any other Wiccan altar before. In the center of the table, there was a pentagram drawn in red ink. At least she hoped it was ink. The pentagram was inverted and surrounded by other strange symbols she couldn't decipher. In the center of the pentagram, there was a black skull-shaped candle that had been sprinkled with some type of bark or herb. A picture of Kayla sat to the left of the candle with more symbols drawn on it.

  Kayla took out her phone and snapped a picture of the table. Even though the phone had been useless ever since the big bad wolf had hijacked it, she could still use it to take pictures. Maybe she could find someone to interpret the writing. On the floor at the foot of the small table sat a folder filled with papers. Kayla did her best to keep an ear out to hear if Carolyn came home. Nothing yet, so she continued her investigation.

  When she opened the folder, a photograph fell out onto the floor. She bent down to pick it up and saw that it was a picture of her father. He was older, but Kayla still knew his face. The folder was composed of different pieces of information on him. He lived in California. His second wife had died, and they had no children together. There were medical reports as well. One of them stated that he had been diagnosed a month ago with stage four pancreatic cancer and had less than six months to live.

  Reading this news, Kayla felt a lump develop in her throat. This man had left her alone with a horrible, vicious beast. He had run away to California to be with another woman and deserted his only daughter, but she still felt grief upon hearing about his impending death. She choked back the urge to cry tears for her lost father while she continued her search. The next piece of paper was very telling. It was her father's life insurance policy. One million dollars payable upon his death. The lump in her throat returned for a very different reason. The policy was payable in full to Kayla Burkheart.

  She read over the document's fine print as quickly as possible. In the event of suicide, policy was void. In case of accidental death, an additional benefit was to be paid. In the case that the primary beneficiary was deceased or otherwise unavailable to receive payment, the secondary beneficiary, or next of kin would receive the entire benefit. Carolyn was listed as the secondary/alternate beneficiary.

  Kayla took pho
tos of every document, carefully put them into the folder, and placed the folder back where she found it on the floor. She looked at the altar, trying to decide what Carolyn had been doing exactly. The athame sitting to the right of the pentagram had something on the blade. Kayla leaned down to look closer, not wanting to touch anything on the table. The blade of the knife had a red liquid on it.

  "Please be red ink," she said out loud.

  Only it wasn't ink. It was blood. The same blood that had been used to draw the upside down pentagram and the other symbols on Kayla's picture. The same blood that filled a large silver goblet at the top of the table. But whose blood was it? Kayla got her answer when she looked under the table. In a large bowl lay the savaged body of a black cat. The small animal's gut had been slit open and its neck had been broken. Kayla hoped that the latter had happened first. Poor little guy, she thought.

  "Bitch ruined my life, too," Kayla said to the murdered feline.

  She got up and left the dark temple Carolyn had hidden from her for her entire life. She needed some time to think and thought she might just disappear for a day or two. A quick stop at the bank to cash her check and then a day or two holed up in a nice hotel would do her good. She could do some research on the things she found in that horrible death room and also reflect on why she was so pissed off at David.

  She packed a couple days' worth of clothes, her laptop, and a few other necessities. She didn't really care what the bitch thought, so she didn't bother to leave a note. At least two days of room service, relaxing, not doing a damn thing except enjoying her unemployment to the fullest extent possible was all she had planned.

  Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she walked out the door to begin her miniature vacation. The world would have to go on turning for a few days without Kayla Burkheart to keep it in order. She wished the world luck and got into her car.

  Also by Christine Sutton

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  Book 1 in the Burkheart Witch Saga Available Now!

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  Coming 2015

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  Burkheart Witch Saga In Audio will also be available summer 2015! Read by Julia Whelan