The trees held the bodies as well as the heads on the branches of them. Helen had screamed loud enough to gather everyone around in the forest, enough for everyone to be able to hear her.
Penny stepped closer to the tree, coming to stand next to Helen who took a couple of steps back to distance herself from the tree. She took a closer look to notice that their necks didn’t appear to be cut using any weapon but it looked as if it had been torn out of their bodies that left the bottom part of the neck uneven. It was obviously a black witch’s work but who could it be?
If she were to turn around to look at everyone’s hands she would have known but wouldn’t it rebuke doubts and enmity? At the same time, Penny said to herself that this was a competition where everyone was trying to outwit people but who would have thought that someone would pull a stunt like this. Their end goal was to be in the council.
One of the human, male candidates spoke out loud, “Who did this?”
Penny turned around to see the man look at every one. What she didn’t do, this man was doing and she could already see the people around giving him looks for pointing his finger at them.
One of the vampires spoke, “Who cares who did it,” this raised some eyebrows but a lot didn’t mind, and Penny noticed the way people didn’t care about the others, “A forest is never a safe place and one needs to be careful unless you want to turn dead. The forest contains many unseen things.”
Sister Jera who should have stayed quiet stepped up in anger as the people on the tree were the people who she knew and had worked for years since she had appeared in the church under the wing of Father Antonio, “Just because you don’t care doesn’t remove the fact that there is a killer or killers amongst us. To kill so many people…” her voice trailed.
“You are accusing people of no reason, human,” the vampiress crossed her hands who stood near her, “The killer might be someone who is not part of us. Why would anyone go killing people when the task has nothing to do with it? We are here to find dead bodies which must be decaying and rotting somewhere.”
There was a reason to kill them, thought Penny to herself. It was because they had lost the white witches who had come from the church and the only white witches they knew was Penelope and Jera. They were in a lair of black witches with a little amount of vampire, vampiress with some humans with them.
Penny turned her head back as the people continued to bicker about who did it, she looked at the tree again. The death was mixed, it was made to look like not a certain number of people were targeted. Whoever had killed them, knew that Penny and Jera were searching for the black witches, and to make it look like a random kill they had killed more than the white witches.
Her hand clutched to her side at the thought of their death. She had hoped for the exam to continue smoothly without anyone needed to die but this was only the beginning.
Out of twenty-four hours, they had lost around six hours leaving them with eighteen hours more to survive and complete the task which was given out by the council. And out of forty examinees, it appeared that only twenty-five were left to take part in finding the dead bodies.
“Why don’t we all bring our hands up and see how clean our hands are?” spoke another man but this wasn’t going to help one bit, thought Penny to herself. Everyone started to raise their hands to find it to be clean.
“Look at his hands!” one of them pointed out the hands of the other to find the hands not so clean.
The woman rolled her eyes to say, “I slipped and fell down. What do you expect from this dirty, murky ground?” she turned around to show her dress that had caught mud which had dried.
“Maybe we should fight each other to know who is who?” Jera spoke out and Penny wished the young witch wouldn’t have spoken it.
“Why should we fight each other?” asked Helen, her expression turning confused and the rest of them shifted their gaze from the other female to Jera.
Penny not knowing how to make a quick save said, “By the looks of how the body has been displayed, I think she means there might be a witch amongst us.”
“What witch?”
“Witches are not supposed to take part in the exam.”
“That is true, they are not allowed to work in the council.”
“I don’t think there are any witches, it looks more like a vampire as humans have no strength to tear all of them.”
Murmurs and talk went around the people as they put up their opinion of what and how they felt.
“If there is a witch or a witcher, we need to burn them right away!”
“Aye! Burn them before they kill us!”
This went slightly in a different direction than she had expected, thought Penny to herself.
“If there is a witch, how do we find out?” asked one of them.
The vampire who had appeared to be uncaring about the people’s deaths laughed, “Isn’t that easy? You segregated the witches from the humans and then you tested the humans out. Obviously, vampires cannot be witches,” as much as Penny would have loved to agree to it in the past, it didn’t hold for the present.
“That’s right. Let’s assort the people and test before we know who the next person is going to be killed,” came another voice.
The humans were unhappy hearing this as if they were being accused of something they had no hand in. They didn’t bother to move but stood their ground and friction of tension started to form between the people around her.
The first voice as expected was Helen’s who appeared to be miffed with the idea of sorting, “What do you mean you need to keep an eye on humans? I come from a respectable house, you dare point your fingers at me,” she glared down at the man even though in reality she was shorter than the vampire who had suggested segregation.
