The Cursed Blood, стр. 48
Countess Adalyn Montague adjusted her luxurious fur stole and hat and elegantly knelt, scooping up a handful of ashy effluence in a blue satin elbow gloved and jewel bedecked hand (it matched her evening gown perfectly, of course) and sniffed at it. She gagged and let the stuff sift through her fingers, dusting them off against one another and nodding.
“’There can be no doubt,” she announced unhappily as she stood and brushed off her gown and eyeing the state of her shoes irritably. “Fiendfire.”
“Damn,” Milly snapped as she stepped about a few chicken shaped mounds and stared into the disaster with obvious furry. “We knew the Von Clampetts were fools but none of them is a Warlock. Never once has that taint befouled their sewage-like bloodline, and that’s the one and only thing I can absolve this trash of in this life or the next. What have we missed?”
“Much,” The Doctor growled as he poked at a mound with his shiny silver pointy gentleman’s cane tip. The ash fell away revealing white hot embers and putrid purplish flames that disintegrated to more acrid dust almost the moment it was punctured.
“Too much,” Gramps snapped as he stomped forward. “How did this pack of loathsome inbred hillbillies get this past the Wizards?”
“I know not,” The Doctor admitted.
“We’ve been deceived,” The Countess hissed. “Something powerful has blinded Feydom to a Warlock. Something that hasn’t existed for decades… Something we should have known the pits of Hell had spewed forth into a womb the moment it took its first breath.”
“Worse troubles then that, I fear,” The Doctor added in his thick Cockney accent as I watched the odd, well dressed, and decidedly out of place looking pack of undeniably, terrifyingly dangerous folks with no small amount of tired confusion. Everyone gazed at the tall, dark skinned, dreadlocked man uneasily.
“You don’ see it, then?” he asked with a laugh as he eyed them mockingly and leaned on his cane, top hat tipped forward over his eyes. “’ow is it that you’re blind to this?”
“To what, exactly?” Milly prodded irritably as she blew out cigar smoke from her nose like a dragon about to blow fire as his patience rather obviously began to wane.
“A true blooded Darkling walks among us once more, while something hunts the folk of fortune (‘folk of fortune’ is a rather uncouth slang for Clairvoyants, prophets, and seers) and a Warlock is loosed on the world,” he shook his head and laughed. “This is obvious, is it not?”
“Enlighten us.” The Countess sighed.
“These are bad, bad omens. Soon the prophecy will be made flesh an the Dark Lord will rise.” He eyed his colleagues with deep unease despite his booming laugh, evil looking red flecked eyes burning.
“Oh, don’t be silly.” Milly giggled. “We will protect our kind as we always have. There won’t be a ‘Dark Lord’ nor will there soon be a Warlock on Earth…for long.”
“You couldn’t protect your own sister and now not even the human descendants of the Darklings be safe. This will not end well if you ignore it,” he cautioned as he spat into the ash and continued shaking his head as if he already knew things to be dismally hopeless.
Milly rounded on The Doctor and something dark, deadly, and powerful flashed over her face as she glared wide eyed at him through her huge designer glasses. Breathing what had to be foul smelling deep breaths of ashy air, her almost spent cigar stub held in a trembling, well-manicured shiny pink nailed hand. “Do. Not. Ever. Bring. That. Up. Again. Do. You. Understand?” she warned through very white clenched teeth, punctuating each work by poking the air with what was left of her fine, fat cigar.
The Doctor laughed and vanished, dissipating into dust and was gone, his blackness flitting away amidst the embers and dusty ruin of the Clampetts fallen homestead drifting lazily through the air.
“I do ever so much, hate that man.” Milly sighed as she watched him go, tossing the cigar stub into the snow like pile that may once have been a goat and rounding on me as if sensing my questions. Which as you have likely caught onto by now is more than possible for a powerful Fey Witch, to various degrees.
“My sister, your father’s mother, was the most powerful Clairvoyant Witch to walk the earth in centuries. I’m sorry, dear heart, this is the last way I wanted to announce my aunthood to you. I wanted to wait till the least painful, most opportune time but, as usual, life is cruel and ruined that for us.” Milly conjured up another cigar and popped it into her mouth, flicking her fingers together in her empty hand, and with a soft crack a flame appeared that she used to light it, puffing up a good head of smoke before shaking the flame out with a flick of her wrist.
“Aunt?” I blinked. This was getting a bit much, and my head was starting to hurt even more. Mother had made a point of quickly and masterfully changing the subject whenever family slipped into any discussion. My father had been even less open to the topic, ether tersely answering with single word grunts or just falling into an icy, grim silence.
I had eventually just learned to avoid the topic all together, so I wasn’t surprised there were things that could unexpectedly shake loose from our family tree. Still though, even knowing this, it was somehow a deeply shocking discovery nonetheless. And needless to say, one I was entirely unsure of how to take.
“We don’t have time for this,” Gramps snapped. “’Yes, the old hag is your aunt. She hates me almost as much as she hates that dusty old ‘Doctor’ and what in Hell’s name is going on? What ‘prophecy,’ was he going on about?”
“Old Hag? Really,”