‘Maddie. Maddie c’mon wake up.’

‘Wait… wha…’

I woke to see my Aunt standing over me, shaking me awake with some force. I had fallen asleep on the settee in the living room earlier for what seemed like ages. It was still light outside though so it couldn’t have been that long.

Then as if on cue, I had a vision in my head that almost made me wince. My little crow friend had finally saw what I had asked him to look out for; that horrible murderer Bruce, dragging an unconscious woman behind him as he made his way to that odd little building surrounded by the high wire fence.

I bolted upright and quite literally threw myself off the settee. Nothing had made me come round from a nap as quick as that image did. Auntie M was already shoving my big coat at me and had been got my boots in the time it took me to realise what was happening. She knew what was up several seconds before I got my vision and was way more prepared than I. The vampires had all gathered in the living room and were ready to move out as soon as Auntie M gave the order. Duncan grabbed hold of me as soon as I finished getting my gear on and I teleported us to the woods, a little distance but not too far; away from Bruce’s little murder den. Nearly everyone was there; most of the members of my coven, Mr Evans and a few of his coven, a handful of the werewolves including Eden but one or two of them actually in wolf form; I didn’t know who they were before. Arne’s clan made up the rest of our group.

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‘Okay everyone. I want a barrier perimeter around this building, as strong as you can manage. Baal has access to and can command over sixty-six legions of demons, we DO NOT want any of them getting out, never mind Baal himself.’

My Aunt was giving us all orders telepathically, which was weird to watch. Everyone was concentrating on her without anyone opening their mouths or even moving to no in reply. They just listened.

‘My coven, I need you to form your barriers in the corners. Same with the warlocks, encircle this Goddess awful building. As for the vampires and weres, I need your senses and abilities to keep everyone safe out here from anything that may escape. And also keep people away from this area. Arne, Maddie, Duncan, Daniel, Mai and Marcus, you’re all with me inside. Molly and Macy, do what you do best and run interference out her… teach Liam some tricks.’

Everyone now had their orders, but my Aunt instructed everyone to join hands in a huge circle before we did anything. As if it was the most natural thing ever, we all joined hands and closed our eyes as Mai took lead from my Aunt. She was her second in command after all, but Mai had some pretty interesting magic of her own. She spoke a few sentences in her native tongue, I’m pretty sure it was Cantonese from the sound of it. Whatever it was, it was causing a really odd sensation to crawl up my legs and over my body. It felt like I had warm fingers tickling me all over my skin and opening one eye to glance at everyone else, it looked like they were having some weird sensations too. It was actually quite nice and comforting. This was one of Mai’s protection spells and I knew from my studying; that having everyone join hands in a circle meant that Mai had to use very little energy, if any at all to cast this spell on this many people. She was drawing protective energy from the Earth and distributing it amongst everyone in the circle. Auntie M was the first to speak out loud.

‘Blessed be everyone. Let’s go stop a demon and his murderous shithead minion.’