Dangerous Diabolical: Book 1 (Iridescent) ✔️

3.3

A week passed, and Willow found more and more bizarre stories about the zombie apocalypse. The only common denominator was, as Leofstan had said, supernaturals without many defensive abilities.

Pity.

After the stories had finally reached her ears, it was difficult to separate which tales might be linked to the so-called 'dead rising', compared to ones that were made up. Amongst the more boring ones, deciphering if the spell cast may have been on purpose by witch cultists, or other things with necromantic tendencies, was near impossible.

To be frank, so many people died under weird circumstances or then turned out to be not dead, that I wasn't too concerned with keeping track. Like most reporters or investigations the SPCC would eventually grow bored or over-saturated, and turn their interests to something else.

It certainly wasn't worth losing sleep over.

My day began with a very sharp stab to the back, waking me from a fitful sleep. Even whilst dreaming, the image of the gems was imprinted into my closed eyes. In the quiet dead of night, I swore I could hear their whispering to be picked up, Leofstans dream hand offering them out endlessly. No matter how many times I took them from him, there were always more.

With a second stab to the back, I groaned, pulling a gold crown free from my bed sheets and propping it back on the corner of the headboard. Solid gold, containing a whole spectrum of precious stones set in, it was one of my favourite pieces of my hoard. Unsure how I'd managed to miss hiding it away I made a mental note to move it later.

The first duty of the day was making my house reach acceptable standards, and that meant cleaning the overdue fish tank and finding a home for the crown. The whole tank took me almost two hours. It wasn't overly large but my attention span quickly went from cleaning, to; shiny shiny fishes, to cleaning, to pretty pretty scales. I sighed. They were so pretty the way they caught the light, and they were much too small to even consider eating.

To polish the aquarium off and make sure they felt spoilt, I retrieved the gold crown to set in the rocks as a new display for the week, removing a laughing Buddha and giving him a rub on his tummy for luck.

Once I was satisfied fish were swimming around the new accessory, I made breakfast. Branching out, a lamb was on the menu. The bone marrow from the creature wasn't my favourite, but the bone thickness was pleasing.

Combined with the smell of meat, the glorious air freshener had begun to seep into the very brick of the house itself. Content I wrapped up warm and sat on the patio step in my garden, the chains of the necklaces entwined in my fingers, and the rest of breakfast.

Miraculously overgrown, flowers tangled into each other creating a small patch of natural beauty I could call my own.

It also made it more difficult for the local wildlife to dig up any wayward carcasses.

Or for the neighbours to notice.

As I bit through the last bone with a satisfying crack, my toes wigged as a pleasant beam of sunlight caressed my skin.

My hand rolled the red stone necklace in what had become a very irritating habit. On the surface I couldn't pry any secrets from it, I could feel the magic in it, but if it wasn't for Leofstan's word I wouldn't have had a clue what it did. The spell cast on it was so disgustingly neat, it put anything I could do to shame.

Thoughts drifted to Leofstan and the other stone. I held it to the light, watching the beams scatter through the heart. Emerald, a beacon charm. Red, a warning charm. Both he linked to himself. Did he have a way to sever them if they went astray? It was impossible to even comprehend how something that complicated could be spun.