Great teachers and great influences, huh? Do you think we'd have been better off if we'd never met at this school?

—FROM THE ANONYMOUS COLUMN, MORBID MAGAZINE (APPRENTICE EDITION).

"I smell blood," Vincent Wolfsbane muttered as the two men reached the Burnswitch manor, his voice grave. "Lots of blood."

His partner, Diego Martinez-Wolfspawn, found it morbid how blood was the word that crossed the older man's lips most often. But perhaps that's what got them a whiff of this mess before anyone else did, Vincent's obsession with the stuff of death.

"I-I don't know about this, Mr. Wolfsbane," Diego said, swallowing hard as he looked back from where they came. "W-what if the castle's w-wards are still in effect? And those t-t-things down there could still be after us."

A silver crest looming on the peak of the scorched black gates caught Diego's eye under the full moon. It was of a woman burning at a stake on a mountain of skulls. He'd seen his share of disturbing sights in their line of work, but this one symbol haunted Diego because it wasn't a warning. His guts churned as he looked away.

"You'd have died at the hill's foot if it were so," Vincent grunted, sniffing the air.

"S-so, they're really dead," Diego said, suddenly feeling a chill. "The B-Burnswitches are?"

Vincent brought a hand to the scorched gate. The vertical bars were mangled, having lost their symmetry as though the metal had been exposed to a furnace. He took a sharp breath as he felt the still warm metal in his hand. Vincent stood perfectly still, only his eyes darting in all directions as his nose sniffed the air some more. A wide grin spread across Vincent's face, pronouncing his crow's feet.

"Dead as can be," Vincent said. The man licked his lips.

He pushed the gates open, and they creaked, spooking dozens of bats in the giant yellowdwarf trees that lined the path leading to the castle. The bats screeched in flight. Vincent took one step, then another, and was soon walking steadily toward the black castle in the distance. But then he stopped, sighing. Vincent raised an arm, gestured for Diego to follow.

A thin, ethereal chain shackle appeared around Vincent's scarred wrist, reflecting the moonlight. The other end disappeared into a similar runed shackle on Diego's left wrist. Vincent's gaze lingered on the chain for a moment. What thoughts had almost surfaced drowned in the depths of those ocean eyes.

"Your mother might grow impatient if we take too long," Vincent said, tugging on the chain.

The younger man, in his late teens, detested dilemmas with a fury. Where to go? The castle that lay ahead, promising unknown perils without a doubt, or down the hill, toward unspeakable horrors both men survived to get this far?

Diego hesitated for a moment, sliding his cracked thick-rimmed glasses up the ridge of his nose. But few things frightened the young man more than his mother casting spells in Spanish, in between curses, with a slipper for a wand. He shivered at the thought, his mouth going dry. Diego then ran towards Vincent as fast as his long legs could carry him.

"W-who do you reckon d-did it?" Diego asked.

"Hell if I know. Even your mother has fewer enemies than the Burnswitches did."

***

The castle's imposing door wouldn't budge. But the thick musk of iron in the air told both men of the gory sight that lay on the other end. Vincent kicked at it, but the door only shimmered brightly in strange symbols. Not a creak resounded.

"S-see that? Their w-wards are still in effect!" Diego said.

"Yeah... this's Madders Burnswitch's style," Vincent said, under his breath. His fingers trailing the strange symbols, eyes closed. "The hex's program isn't a simple take-hits-keep-em-out... it learns, adapts."

"S-so we can't b-brute-force it?"

"No. He's taunting us in death," Vincent said, smiling. His mind thinking dangerous thoughts. "It's not just the encoding runes, this hexing language... I've seen nothing like it, could be Avant-Garde."

"M-Madders B-Burnswitch? W-who was he?"

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"Who was he? Oh, poor Dieguito. You've spent too much time suckling at mama-wolf's tit. All that milk's rotting your brain—it's time she weaned you."

"Y-y-you know precisely when I was weaned, Mr. W-W-Wolfsbane," Diego said, adjusting his glasses with a middle finger. "We've read all the tomes on what little is unclassified about the infamous dioses de la muerte of spell craft. All that talk of family members beyond Maddock being mere speculation... you fed me red herrings, didn't you? Why? You know how badly I wanted to write this story!"

"Oh, isn't it lovely how you lose the stutter when you're pissed and speaking Spanish at the same time? Just think of ripping off mi hermosa cabeza whenever you talk. It'll do you a lot of good," Vincent said. His gaze lingering on the porch leading to the backyard.

"We sat through three-hours of professor W-Wonderhoff's greatest shame, that ill-conceived m-m-mockumentary at his own apprentice's expense, and you never let on that you knew more, Señor," Diego said. "I intentionally lowered my o-o-opinion of p-p-possibly the greatest teacher of spell craft... for n-n-nothing!"

Vincent lowered his gaze to meet the slits of the younger man's dilated brown eyes through cracked glasses—brows furrowed, lips pouting, nostrils flaring. His dark hair matted with sweat, breath erratic. The older man could hear the violent rhythm of Diego's racing heart, smell the adrenaline pump through his veins. For an instant, Vincent felt a leader's mystia flux around Diego in a rage as the air almost crackled.

He's holding it in well, but what the hell, the kid's really pissed this time. He thought. Vincent had outed himself. No point in keeping it from him any longer.

"Madders was a sorcerer who loved having his cock sucked and maybe a hell of a talented Black Hat, too. Pity the old man was his father. Drove him mad."

"¡¿Ahora me dices esto?!" Diego screamed. He took a notebook and pencil from his coat, scribbling something down with haste as he breathed in a practiced rhythm to calm himself. "Well, not that it matters anymore, really, since they're all dead now according to that w-w-witch."

"Oh, they're dead, alright. It's our kind of party in there," the older man said, turning his back to the door as the shimmers of the runes dimmed. "Let's head 'round back."

***

"It s-s-stings a little," Diego said as the two men passed an odd fountain that shot out salty, black sea water. The young man raised his forearm, shielding himself, with little success, from the ubiquitous drizzle.

"Tears o' Nessie? Bessy? Some shit like that," Vincent said, taking some of the liquid in hand. "Supposed to cure a hospital ward's worth of curses... was the old man superstitious?"

"Aren't y-y-y-you going t-to t-t-t-taste it?" Diego squinted as his tongue convulsed on the almost stillborn words his mind had conceived perfectly. But the wicked grin on his face said it all.

"Do I look like I need curing? Time's wasting. Come on," Vincent scorned on seeing the little gap in the young man's teeth.

Both men continued further back and soon arrived at a garage. The Burnswitches had filled it with vintage cars and some retro levitating models—all black. Further back, a white, posh convertible caught Vincent and Diego's eyes.

On the convertible's windshield, caved in, with its shattered glass digging into flesh, a bloodied young woman sprawled, lifeless.

"S-s-Sophie Ravenspawn!" Diego said.

Vincent brought a finger to his lips as he held Diego back. His gaze lingering on a small window of a room that might have been an attic, right above the garage. He could've sworn he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, a shadow, a wisp, but that couldn't be. Nothing living was up there. He sniffed the air.

Dead as can be. Vincent thought.

He walked closer to the young woman. Sniffing her up close, but careful not to touch anything. Vincent's ocean eyes scoured the scene for any detail that could help him piece together what had happened.

Sophie's face remained contorted in a silent scream. She was frozen with her mouth and eyes wide open, pupils dilated. The harrowing lines of her forehead like still waves. Sophie's head turned at an unnatural angle, her broken jaw slacked. There were sunken blotches of red and purple on her neck in the shape of fingers.

"Looks like her neck snapped on impact, killing her instantly after she fell from somewhere up there," Vincent said, looking up at the garage's high ebony ceiling. White light peeked from the room above through a crevice where the wall met the ceiling—blood streaking down through it. "Though she was halfway dead already. Wasn't she the twin who could--"

"Yeah, Sophie was jinxed," Diego said. "Maddie, and I kept racking our heads on how best we'd use her ability to slip through small spaces for the B-B-Bureau's Service Exam."

"Looks like she was trying to get away when the bad luck caught up to her," Vincent said, pulling out an old camera from the deep pockets of his loose-fitting coat. "Well, we have our front page. What's our headline?"

Diego hesitated, his eyes brimming with tears. This wasn't a stranger. Her death wasn't just another story to fill the tabloids for eager subscribers and enthusiasts who would forget about her as soon as they flipped the page. He knew Sophie all too well. Diego wouldn't forget her, his friends wouldn't either. How would he break the news to them, to her brother, to Maddie? God, Maddie—was she home already? The young man cursed his twisted mind as he thought of the perfect line.

Ella realmente es mi musa, he thought.

"No Tricks Here: Graduation C-C-omes Early As R-Ravenspawn Jinx S-s-slips and Falls," Diego said as tears rolled down his face. But he couldn't help grinning—his mother would like that one.

"Shame. Another old noble line of sorcerers down to a single heir," Vincent said, his camera flashing. "But what was the young scion doing in a house of grim reapers?"

***

To be continued.