“Max,” Liz Parker whispered into the darkness. “Max are you there? Please Max…God…Max answer me.” Liz was crying now. “I’m here Liz,” Max’s voice came back gruffly in the darkness. “Follow the sound of my voice and come to me.” Liz sniffed and crawled over to where her boyfriend, the reason she’d left her parents loving home, sat on a cold floor. “How long have we been here Max?” Liz asked with a sob as she leaned on him completely. “Two days,” Max said as he looked at his glow in the dark watch face. “You’ve been passed out the whole time. They, whoever has us, brought us some bread and water early this morning. That’s all that I know. Do you remember how we got here?” “I remember making out with you on the couch,” Liz said honestly as she sniffed and tried not to cry hysterically. “I remember someone knocking on the door and getting up to answer it with you. I don’t remember a goddamn thing after opening the door except for a lot of pain and a really bright flash of light.” “I remember a voice,” Max said as he gently kissed his girlfriend’s forehead. For the first time since he had brought her into the world of the Hunter, he regretted his decisions. “I don’t know whose voice it was,” he added with a sigh, “but I know it was a voice that I recognized.” “They’ll come for us won’t they Max?” Liz whispered faintly. “The other Hunters would have realized by now that we were taken and would have started looking for us wouldn’t they.” “They’re looking for us,” Max said reassuringly. He kissed Liz gently again and then sighed in relief when she fell back asleep against him. God what had he brought her into? He was an idiot. Just because he didn’t want to loose her to that loser delinquent Romeo named Sean, he’d told her about what he was and what he did. He had taken her from her family, from her safe happy little life and had brought her to this hell hole just because he didn’t want to lose her to someone else. And now he didn’t know how to tell her that he had possibly bent the truth a little when explaining his role in the life of the Hunter world. The others would look for them, but not for another week or so, because Max wasn’t really in their world…not yet, he hadn’t passed their all their test to prove himself. And for some sinking reason in the pit of his stomach he knew that they didn’t have a week to wait for the real Hunters to find them. And that funny feeling that was making him quite nauseous, was screaming at him that whatever it was that had them…well it wasn’t witchcraft. Whatever the hell that light had been, it had been something from a witch and that sound…not the voice, but the sound that he purposely didn’t mention to Liz…it hadn’t sounded remotely human. Something had growled at them before he’d passed out from the pain of that flash of light, something that he had never come across or even heard of before. ****************** “Are you watching her?” Kyle whispered to Tess across town while Max contemplated his surroundings. “We have to keep a look out for anything…” “Kyle,” Tess said in exasperation. “I love you, but if you don’t stop babbling and shut up, I’m going to turn you into a toad. Courtney’s a bitch, but she’s not deaf. She’s going to hear you if you don’t shut up.” “Sorry,” Kyle mumbled and blushed. In front of him, since he couldn’t see her face, Tess gave into the urge and smiled hugely, since she couldn’t give herself away and giggle at him. “I’ll be quite now.” Tess managed to stamp down on the almost overwhelming urge to giggle and nodded, glad that he couldn’t see her facial expression. They’d told the others that they would watch Courtney for the afternoon to see if the conniving little…well….to see if she did anything out of the ordinary. They had doing pretty well at it for about an hour after school until Kyle had started getting fidgety. To make a long story short the Buddha worshipping football player was bored out of his mind. And after an hour and a half of annoying himself, he was now working on annoying his girlfriend and new found soulmate. “Oh Goddess,” Tess squealed. “She’s coming this way. What are we going to do, she’ll know we’ve been following her if she sees us and she’s definitely going to…ummph…” Tess’ voice came to an abrupt halt as Kyle affectively shut her up by kissing her senseless. At first the kiss was all business, both knowing that it was just a ploy to keep Courtney from knowing that they were watching her, but quickly that resolve flew out the window. About two seconds into it and both Kyle and Tess forgot that there even was a girl named Courtney Boyd in creation, much less walking right past them with a snort of disgust in their general direction. In fact, by the time Alex and Isabel came up to the two of them and pulled them apart, Courtney was long gone. “You know,” Alex said dryly as he pulled his new found soultwin away from Kyle, “it’s a really good thing that Courtney just happened to walk by were Michael and Maria were hiding out or you’d have to face the wrath of both of our esteemed leaders.” “Umm…” Tess said with a disgruntled look at her oldest friends. “We were just kissing so that Courtney wouldn’t question both of us being here…” “Uh huh,” Isabel said with a raised perfect eyebrow. “I’m sure that’s it alright. And the fact that Courtney walked past us about ten minutes ago and is now five minutes away from there to be where Michael and Maria were hiding out doesn’t bare any importance at all does it?” “Nope,” Kyle said firmly. A blush working its way over his features. Had he really been making out with Tess for the past fifteen minutes on the corner of one of the main street in downtown Willow Oaks? “That has no baring on the situation at all.” “That’s right,” Tess said as she looped an arm through Kyle’s. “We are just method actors, we wanted our all consuming passion to look believable. Didn’t we Buddha Boy?” She asked him without a single spot of embarrassment showing on her beautiful and angelic features. “Buddha Boy?” Alex asked with a laugh as they all began to walk towards where Michael and Maria should still be waiting. “Oh Kyle here worships the Buddha,” Tess said with a dimpled grin at her boyfriend’s now squirming in embarrassment profile. “My soulmate…a football playing jock, who is a Buddha worshipping, Calvin Kline boxer wearing, lap trimming,” that comment had Kyle turning an awful shade of red and Alex and Isabel looking at both of them in confusion, but Tess just continued on, “…country loving, half witch-half shapeshifter. Who would have thought it?” She finished with a confused sigh of her own. “Hi Michael, hi Maria,” she added with a bright smile as the final two of The Royals joined them. “Do you think that the locket’s had time to become activated yet?” “One way to find out,” Maria said as she looked at Kyle in confusion. Why was her brother looking like a really funky shade of purple? “Let’s go in mom’s shop. She’s out for an early dinner with your dad,” she said as she threw an arm around Kyle and walked them to the shop that was locked up and closed for the day. She opened the door with her set of keys and the others filed in, Michael in the rear and he was left with the task of shutting and relocking the door. “Come on to the back, we can do this back there.” “Bout time you got here,” Jessie said when the six of them enter the back room. “We’ve been sitting here forever.” Everyone but Michael looked at the Juniors in shock. “Are we going to hex Courtney or what?” Jessie continued from where she sat Indian style on the main work table, Trent leaning against the table beside her. In chairs at one of the smaller tables sat Ryan and Leigha, calmly holding hands. Maria shook off her initial shock at seeing them there and moved over to the wall where a huge mirror was hanging. “Isabel, Tess,” she called out, “I’m going to need your help with this part.” The two girls grinned at each other and moved over to help Maria activate the mirror. It had been the three of them that had done the spell, and now it would take the three of them to perform every part of it. Together, as a unit, the three most beautiful girls of Willow Oaks put there hands on the mirror and whispered the incantation to turn it into a devise that would allow them to view Courtney and all she did. The ten high school students cluster around and sighed in relief when Courtney’s visage appeared on the glassy surface. “How’d you get the locket to her anyway?” Alex asked as he sat in a chair and pulled Isabel into his lap. “Oh that was easy,” Maria said with a grin. “Tess, Isabel and I just told her that we had found it in the locker room after cheerleading practice. She snatched it from us like we had stolen it and then put it on without another word to us. Now what the hell is she doing?” They all grew silent as they watched Courtney walk through the woods on the outskirts of the town. Then all but Maria and Michael gasped when they heard the girl curse when a branch caught her sweater. “Please,” Maria said with a mock glare at their amazement, “like I would make this a silent film. She’s our, we can view her thoughts, her actions and her words all we want now…all we need is us three,” she looked at Tess and Isabel, “and any mirror.” “That’s my girl,” Michael said as grinned proudly and kissed Maria soundly on the lips. “You are such a devious little witch. Is it any wonder that I love you?” “You guys are so disgusting is it any wonder that we all want to throw things at you profusely?” Trent said with a happy sneer at them. Beside him Jessie whacked him soundly on the head. “Owe!” “Shut up…I didn’t hit you that hard,” she said as she stuck out her tongue. “And I think they’re cute.” Her eyes went from dreamy blue pools of gooey warmth to two narrow lakes of ice when she caught him mumbling something that sounded remarkably like ‘you would’. “What was that Trenton?” she asked in false sweetness. “Nothing,” Trent said firmly as he moved away from her a little. Sometimes Jessie could get a little scary…even to him, she was like her brother in that respect. “That’s what I thought…” “Will you two shut up!” Isabel said in exasperation. Both Jessie and Trent blushed and glared at the blonde goddess perched happily on Alex’s lap. “Shut up everyone,” Michael said, his amber eyes locked on the mirror. “What the hell is that?” They all watched as Courtney moved towards a shadow. They couldn’t make out who or what it was, it was just a mass of darkness to them. In the mirror Courtney bowed down at what they supposed where the feet of whatever thing that was. They all held their breath when they saw her lips begin to move, none of them wanted to miss anything that she said. “I have come Master,” Courtney said as she knelt at his feet. “I have come for my awakening.” TBC

Part 27