COVEN

#4

She found the cottage easily.

As she landed, her wings swirled up a storm of dirt and dried out night leaves, scattering them across the stone path and knocking over an empty bucket. She took the time to right it, setting it back beside the quaint wooden stairs before she walked up them, intending to knock on the door hidden behind the plants that smelled faintly of jasmine.

Only, there was no door to knock on.

The heavy, metal door lay flat on the floor. The bolts from its hinges lay scattered on the balcony around her--iron, no doubt. Superstition went a long way back, and for this house to still be built of wood, it must have been old indeed. The door, the hinges, they would have been new additions... not that they seemed to have helped the inhabitants all that much.

She stepped inside, wondering if she'd flown all this way only to be disappointed. She'd at least expected something interesting, but, well, perhaps she'd find something inside.

The house was a disaster.

She hadn't been inside a human's dwelling in a while--she preferred to keep the myth alive that she couldn't enter without permission for entertainment's sake when she ripped the roof off a building where the humans had packed themselves in like sardines--but she had a rough idea of what it was supposed to look like from the memories of her various snacks.

Glass from the windows lay scattered on the floor, broken from the outside.The large, wooden table in the centre of the room had been turned on its side. One of the legs had been torn off and somehow ended up impaling the wall on the other side of the room. Shelves had been ripped down. Trinkets, photos, and other items that humans often considered precious were scattered across the floor. Most of the furniture was upended or otherwise broken.

"Hello?" she called, putting on her most delicate voice. She picked up the edges of her cloak, wrinkling her nose as she stepped across the minefield of objects. There was a distasteful scent lingering within the walls, a scent that grew stronger the further in she went. "Is anyone here? Are you okay?"

No one answered. She moved down the hall, noting the blood on the walls. Curious, she swiped her finger across it and touched it to the tip of her tongue. Hmm. A woman's blood--tinged with fear, but not the kind of fear that left one running blind. This fear was aged, something the woman had lived with for many years, that she'd always known was coming. It was tinged with the kind of determination that she had come to expect from those who had a plan.

Sure enough, as she came across the doorway on her left, she found what she'd been expecting--a man's body with a knife buried deep between his shoulder blades.

She crouched beside the body, wrinkling her nose. The scent was definitely coming from him. She reached out, intending to taste his blood to get an idea of how he'd died, then pulled back her hand and stood up. His blood was dead, ruining the lovely rug he'd unwittingly chosen as his final resting place. She may not always follow etiquette, but she did have limits.

Which meant she had to find another way to figure out where the lovely young woman--Emily--had wandered off to.

The man's body was garbed almost entirely in black, a rather hilarious fashion choice that humans believed made them blend in better with the eternal darkness they now lived under. It made him unlikely to be a suitor, but rather, an attacker.

She turned around, tapping her finger against her lip.

So, an attacker had entered... no, with the door off its hinges and the window broken, there'd been more than one. A quick investigation into the rest of the house revealed a back door, one that wouldn't have been blocked had attackers entered through the front, so if Emily had instead taken her chances defending herself... there'd been at least three. No attempt had been made to remove this body, which means they had no use for the location, taking Emily with them.

With a small sigh, she went back to the room with the man.

She really, really didn't want to do this. There was no real importance as to why she was here. Emily wasn't a key piece in a plan, she wasn't a convenient hostage. She was the daughter of a man who was now dead because he'd been stupid enough to join a mob.

Really, she should walk away right now, go back to her cathedral and figure out of her advisors had started hatching a new plan yet.

Yet she kept standing there, staring at this man's body--the one way she had to potentially track down Emily's location for no reason except that something in Abel's memory, the look in Emily's gaze, had her curious.

Well. She'd done worse things before, for less important reasons than simple curiosity.

Perhaps it'd lead to something interesting.

She bent down and pulled the knife out of the man's back, finding the reeking blood right at the very tip still somewhat liquid.

"Well, Emily," she murmured, swiping two, pinched fingers over the edge of the knife. "I do hope you've got yourself into some interesting trouble, or you're really going to have to make it up to me later."

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