Murkh was cleaning the empty cylinder that had been cleaned in decades when Damien asked Penny,
“Are you sure about the burnt body? No regrets?”
“I don’t think so…you said the councilmen weren’t able to solve the case and it was why he was here. Even if we were able to open the case on request instead of meeting the end, the route would turn long and tedious. I feel somewhat worried.”
“Unsettling feeling?” asked Damien to see her nod. He took both her hands and pulled to have her stand in front of him, “Tell me what worries you.”
“The first time when I had stepped in here and had later found out from Bathsheba that my father was dead and was no more alive, somewhere deep down I had hoped that he was here,” Penny meant the man who had been burnt a few moments ago, “But I have seen my father and now that I know how he looks…I know he isn’t here and I don’t know if he was burnt. Do you think this man was somehow related to me or Alexander?” she asked him.
“There is a possibility there. We all know that not everyone has the ability to read but at the same time, we can’t believe everything that is written,” Penny wondered what Damien meant by that, “Aunt Isabell wrote what she knew and she passed on her knowledge through the book but sometimes, a few things can be bent.”
“Do you mean there is someone in the black witches who can read?” That was worrisome, thought Penny to herself.
“Maybe or may not be. What we have are all theories and until we don’t solve it, we don’t know how things will end or what the truth is,” Damien squeezed her hands together to say, “One step at a time, mouse. Let’s tackle the problem without worrying else you will go old before you even know it,” his lips pulled up into a smile.
Hearing the clank of sounds, the couple turned to look at Murkh putting another body that had been ready to take its place in the cylinder.
Damien noticed that it was none other than the witch whom he had killed this early in the morning.
“Why are you preserving her?” asked Damien who stood afar from the vampire doctor.
“Come here, let me show you something,” the man said and both Penny and Damien walked towards the man. Murkh raised the black witch’s hands that had little growth near her hands that appeared to look like roots that were sprouting out.
Damien’s eyes narrowed down looking at this newly developed body that he had not seen while leaving her dead body on the ground, “Something is not right. What time did Kreme arrive here?” he asked.
“Probably two hours before you returned back. This is how the body looked when it was brought to me,” Murkh informed Damien, not finding anything new and believing this was how the witch was.
“Well, this was definitely not how I left the body back in the lair. You wouldn’t mind if I borrowed your tools, do you?” Damien said as he walked to another room, bringing out a tray that held many steel made knives of different shapes and sizes.
Penny stood there watching the headless black witch who was on the cadaver bed. Her the sleeves of her dress were missing as if her arms had been previously chopped off. She remembered Damien mentioning black witches being able to regrow certain parts of their bodies.
Damien picked the sharpest knife and at first nudged it on the roots that had formed which looked like extended extra fingers making the black witch’s hands look even stranger than usual. When Penny thought that Damien was only looking at the extended fingers, he quickly changed the position of the knife that he held and cut the black witch’s wrist.
Penny didn’t know what he was doing when suddenly they saw the black witch’s body that was resting dead on the cadaver bed had started to move and shake. Before anything could be done, the black witch had suddenly grown her head back from being a headless witch.
“She was supposed to be dead,” Murkh whispered as he had gone through all the tests before taking her down to the Morgueatory room.
“And here you were trying to keep an alive witch,” commented Damien looking at the witch and then Murkh whose eyes had gone wide. For a man who loved collecting different kinds of dead bodies who belonged to different unsolved cases, he looked rather scared and had moved a couple of steps back.
The black witch jumped far away from them and started to laugh, the sound of her cackling filled the closed room as her hands and her body took the form of a black witch.
“Such fools. Did you think you could kill me that easily?” the black witch asked them, her eyes blazing in fury, “It isn’t the first time a vampire has tried to cheat his way out.”
“It is the first time I have seen someone to be excited to be in a place she can be killed by many,” Damien countered the woman back.
The black witch smiled at him, her smile not looking one bit appealing. She tsked while raising her fingers, “Still making jokes-”
“I was born with many talents,” Damien interrupted the woman.
“You thought so high about yourself that you-”
Damien interrupted the woman again, “What can I say, I was born with a spoon made of diamond. It is in my blood to behave and look down on people like you.”
“The nerve of you to-”
“Hmm?” Damien asked as if he were bored after speaking a few lines with her.
Penny could tell that the black witch looked extremely annoyed by his constant interruption, not letting her speak. She wondered why the woman had come so far to enter the premise of the council.
If Kreme was here in this room, the young human would have sure counted his lucky stars as the woman had not killed him on his way to the council.
“Did you say she was a witch and to keep it hush,” the black witch’s eyes turned to look at Penny, a wicked smile forming on her face.
Oh no…She had been listening to every single word they had spoken about in here.
