The Hunt of the Grimalkin (Erresuma Book 1) by Dani Swanson (books to read romance TXT) 📗

“How about you and Agatha head to the west, and I will go with these two towards the east? Then we will cover both sets of tracks. Go two hours out, and then return to the fountain.” Dean was watching the upper windows as he spoke and saw the faces of the town’s people peeking out from behind their curtains. Their eyes were full of fear when Dean met their gaze. He nodded at a few of them. “These people will feel better once we track her down.” Charles nodded and shook his brother’s hand.

Dean, Robin, and Thea walked towards the east, following the set of tracks that went into the thicket of trees. The group was pretty quiet for the most part as they went on their way. The large raven squawked every few steps with annoyance for the bumpy ride on Thea’s walking stick, but didn’t fly away.

The tracks continued to head east for a while but then, circled back to the west, where they had begun. They backtracked the ground they had already covered, and passed the village.

“We still have a half hour before we are to meet at the village, I think we should keep going since we’re headed towards them anyway,” Thea said as she knelt down to look at the tracks on the ground. Fig stopped and sniffed the massive footprint and hissed.

“Let’s keep moving then,” Dean said as he offered Thea a hand up.

They walked to the top of a grassy hill. There was an open valley between the trees that looked to be a dried lake bed. There were about a hundred creatures and humans walking in circles down in the valley. None of them made a noise. They would sometimes walk into each other, bouncing off, then changing directions. Robin raised her eyebrows and looked back at the others with a befuddled look on her face.

“What is going on there?” Dean questioned the witches.

“I’m not sure...” Thea said slowly as her voice trailed off.

What’s going on? Why are there fairies and elves walking about with the humans?

What happened to all of them? Where is the Grimalkin?

“They don’t look to be well,” Robin said, as she cautiously followed Thea over the hill. The three of them, and the little orange cat, headed down the path to the wandering bodies. Each one had a blank stare on their face as they aimlessly walked amongst the crowd. Dean, Thea, and Robin, walked alongside them trying to get their attention, but there was no recognition from the blank faced people. They would get bumped into and then, the person would just walk away.

“Hello?” Thea said as she waved her arms in front of the face of a woman walking towards her. “Can you see me?” The woman kept walking forward and bumped into Thea. The woman took a step back, and started to walk in a different direction. Thea looked over her shoulder at Dean with confusion.

“They’ve all been….stupefied,” Dean said, as he tried to shake a slender man by his shoulders. The man stood still while being held, but when Dean stopped shaking the man, he just changed directions.

“Do you see their eyes?” Robin asked as she was studying a portly woman walking next to her. “The iris’ are all purple. How many people do you know with purple eyes?”

Thea looked into the eyes of many of the creatures and people walking by. Sure enough, each of them had purple eyes that were staring off in the distance as they walked aimlessly.

“Hey! Come on! We got to go! What is wrong with you?!” they suddenly heard Agatha’s voice shrieking on the other end of the valley.

“Is that your sister?” Thea said in a hushed tone of annoyance not knowing if that was friend or foe yelling across the way.

“It sounded like her,” Robin said, as she stood on her tiptoes trying to see over the sea of people.

“I see her red hair over there,” Dean said as he pointed across the way.

The group made their way over to where they heard the yelling, bouncing off the stupefied people and tripping over little gnomes and trolls along the way.

“Agatha? Where are you?” Robin yelled out, still trying to see over the people.

“Robin? I’m over here!” Agatha’s small frame started bouncing up and down to be seen by the group.

Agatha ran to the group in hysterics. Charles was being dragged by his arm behind Agatha as she made her way over to them. “We found the Grimalkin!” she cried falling into her sister’s arms. “Charles attempted to fight it, but it did this to him!” Agatha tugged on his arm and whipped him around to face the others. His eyes were the same violet hue that all the other creatures had. “The Grimalkin took his soul! It wrapped its arms around Charles and there was all of this smelly smoke and then he was like this!” Agatha was now sobbing uncontrollably.

Dean grasped Charles by his upper arms and stared into his eyes, he was too upset to speak.

“Smelly?” Robin asked as she pushed her sister away from their embrace to look at her face.

“It smelled like sulfur,” Agatha said with a sniffle, wiping her face with her sleeve.

“Sulfur?” Thea repeated in a confused tone. “That sounds more like a spell than anything else.” She jogged back to the cart and started to dig through the books there. Agatha nervously looked around the stupefied group. Thea thumbed through her book and found the page she was looking for. “Here!” she yelled out to the others as they made their way to her.

“What did you find?” Dean was pushing his way through the herd of people to where Thea was standing; he now had his brother over his shoulder, which was made difficult due to Charles’ continuously moving legs.

“It is a spell!