Watch of the Wicked (Devil's Witch Book 3)

Beltane is all about the celebration of growth and fertility. Particularly, in nature, since it marks the beginning of summer. However, it is more known for a much more darker reason than for what we celebrate it for today. That being, forcing relationships upon witches to ensure the future of the coven population -- conjoinments.

Covens normally are small in size and scattered across states. The tradition has been abandoned, but most couples use it as an excuse to take off work and stay at home with their loved ones.

So that pretty much is why I’ve been booted from the house today. Unfortunately, the holiday this year fell on a Friday so Tom offered to let me crash at his place with the babies. Stella and Colin are inviting his family over for this weekend too. He had proposed to her this week. Since most of his family is in Texas they’re coming out this weekend to meet her for the first time.

I think Stella must have somehow known what Colin was planning. I don’t think it was a coincidence we talked about me not just moving on from my past relationships, but her house too. It’s not that I don’t mind staying with Tommy, I just don’t feel it’s the right time to. He still is living in his parents’ old stone farmhouse. They have a couple acres, but it sits pretty far back from the road. The trees around here are a lot older than the ones around Wixton and seem to cut out the light of day because they are clustered right around the house. I don’t mind being in the house alone, but Tommy is gone and the house feels kind of creepy without him here.

The decor and design are outdated. They have a lot of taxidermy on the walls, mostly big game animals like bear and gators. All of their furniture is leather made from their own cows. It’s not a big house by any means, but I don’t like going upstairs. I just get this bad feeling up there. The babies didn’t like it either. They started crying the moment we entered the house. However, when we went upstairs they became completely quiet and made this weird grating noise with their teeth as little tears fell from their eyes. I went back downstairs right away.

Then I set up their crib in the living room, but it’s still so early and light out. It will be a few hours yet until I feed them their dinner.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I tell them.

I push their stroller out onto the slate rock path leading out onto the small square dirt parking lot. Behind the house are fields beyond the eye can see. The ground is pretty flat too so it won’t be hard to push their stroller over. I think Tom must have just mowed it too. It looks pretty short.

There’s a long line of the fence separating the yard of the house from the pasture fields. I follow the fence enjoying Beltane in my own discreet way. I do like summer on days when it isn’t so humid and blistering out. There’s just enough of a breeze out here now to keep us cool. Tom didn’t really tell me much about the farm on our drive here. He also didn’t tell me anyone was going to show up and be out here working on the fence.

I clutch the handle of the black stroller uneasily. A big silver pick-up truck rolls around the side of the house I just walked around to get back here. The windows are tinted and I pull out my phone to see if Tommy left me any messages about someone coming out to the farm. Are they some kind of farmhand or something? Why isn’t Tommy answering me? I quit trying to call him and put my phone in the basket beneath the stroller.

The truck slows down, passing by me. It keeps going, ahead of me and around the bend in the fenced area of field way beyond. I can see it drive off into the field, entering at an opened gate where much of the pasture is overgrown and not mowed. The truck parks near an abandoned, faded blue tractor where the weeds have almost completely covered the old vehicle from existence.

A man gets out of the silver truck and walks around it. At first, I think it’s Tommy because of the black cowboy hat. It can’t be Tommy though, that’s not even his car. I can’t really see anything else though besides the color of their clothes from this distance. I admit, I kind of do miss being able to read auras. It would make me feel a little better knowing they weren’t from the coven, but I have yet to see anyone from the coven ride around in a car that isn’t a black SUV besides Will, but his truck his black so that kind of counts.

The man starts undoing the harnesses strapping the big old tractor to the fence. I don’t why Tom bothered with the straps, it’d take a tornado to tear that piece of metal junk from the ground. I watch as they start pulling the weeds away from the old machine. I can make out the shape of a seat now and the tractor’s cylinder pipe sticking up in the air.

Then the man gets to work, tying a rope to the tailgate of the truck. The other end of it gets tied to the tractor I assume as he kneels down disappearing in the high grass. Then he stands back up and gets in the truck. When he drives forward, the rusty machine jerks in the same direction bringing up a huge rain of dirt with it.

A couple of minutes later, they’ve got the tractor up and running. It’s so slow, but I guess it can’t go that fast since it’s so big. I imagine it will take days for all the fields to be mowed over for the cattle. Dim orange and yellow lights blink to life overhead of the noisy big tractor as it sluggishly makes its way in my direction across the overgrown field. The beams of light guide its path as evening sets in. I don’t know who would be crazy enough to drive that ancient thing at night. All it would take is for it run over a groundhog hole for it to tip over.

Suddenly, the tractor makes a complete turnaround and begins scaling the steep incline of the hill in the center of the field. How can it even go up that high? It can’t...

Yet, it continues inching its way up the huge steep hill of the field without stopping. Okay, well, whoever is driving that thing is insane. I turn around heading back in the house with the kids. Tom must be paying them a lot of money to mow the fields especially for all the time it’s going to take on a machine that old. I don’t even know if I’m going to able to sleep tonight that tractor is loud.

After I feed Jax and Willow their blood bottles, I put them in their crib. Getting a bad feeling, I look at the glass sliding door no longer hearing or seeing the tractor move out in the shadow of pasture fields.

It’s still cracked open. I open it all the way just in time to catch the tractor guy driving by the house. The window’s down now and I roll my eyes in agitation finding it to be Tommy. All this time, I freaked out over nothing.

“What’s the matter?” he hollers while parking in the yard.

He steps down from the truck wiping a rag to clean his face of sweat and grease from riding the tractor.

“I called you! Why didn’t you answer?” I ask with frustration.

“There ain’t any signal out there, I figured you would have known it was me. Sorry, Valerie,” he apologizes with a quick peck on my cheek.

Then he walks around me heading inside. I hug my arms, not used to his quick dismissal of my anxiety.

“Whose truck is that?”

“Mine,” he answers.

How many more cars does he have that I don’t know about? He could have sold one to help pay off the mortgage if he really wanted to save his family home.

He tosses the dirty rag in the sink and has a look around the kitchen. I know I didn’t get around to putting the things away on the table, but I hope he’s not mad. He walks back over into the living room and picks up a clean jacket without saying a word.

“Where are you going?” I ask him quietly.

“I’m going out to the bar,” Tommy replies in a serious voice. “Need to cool off from working out there.”

Why can’t he just stay here? Was it something I said? My ears ring, but I walk by him to the crib to hide my emotional downturn. I don’t know why he’s going out tonight, but he doesn’t seem to be in a good mood so I don’t press him further.

Why didn’t he ever tell me about the truck? I just thought it was strange he drive right by me without saying anything or even giving a wave. I don’t know what I did to make him upset. He hasn’t been acting like himself lately. For a long time, I sit on the couch watching TV thinking about what it was I could have done to make him unhappy with me.

The doorbell rings, but I don’t move from the couch. Tom can let himself in, I left it unlocked. It’s not like anyone else is going to be driving all the way back here in the dead of night. I hear it ring again and turn the TV off feeling peeved. Why can’t he just open the door himself?

“Hello?” I call out when I open the door and see no one there.

Nothing, but trees and the old long dirt road that disappears in the darkness ahead of the house. The rickety porch swing sways back and forth in the nightly breeze with a loud creak. I look over in its direction just in time to see the tall silhouette of someone in a cowboy hat go around the house. Tom must think I locked him out. Did he even try the door?

I depart from the doorway chasing after Tom and following him further into the yard away from the house. He didn’t bother putting the tractor away where he pulled it out from. He climbs up on top it rather gracefully in one step. Then he turns it on, faced away from me while he sits down on the high-up seat above my head. The tractor’s lights flicker to life again facing toward the pasture field. The machine vibrates, clunking at first when it starts up. Then its engine hums steadily.

I tap the giant wheel nearest to me smelling the strong scent of gasoline and burning rubber come off on my hand. Tom hoists me up without warning and I land on his scratchy jeans as the machine jolts forward.

“Where are we going?” I laugh with new thrill.

The tractor moves along the fence-side. Tom pulls a lever and it picks up speed.

When he doesn’t answer, I turn around and really look at him. He removes his sunglasses and hat. He’s got tattoos all over his face. I’m sure Will would call him a skinhead cause he really does fit the bill I can see since his cowboy hat is off now. He’s wearing a trucker vest, but the sleeves are torn off allowing for more air flow to his inked-up arms. To complete the ensemble, he has on baggy, ratty jeans that are stained in dark-colored smears just like his tan work boots are.

Nick looks like he just stepped out of jail not his grave.

“You’re alive?” I whisper. “W-where’s Tommy?” I can see his face better now that it’s angled down at me.

It’s not tattoos on his skin. It’s the veins of his blood vessels. He turns the tractor away from the pasture and enters the woods instead.

“Dead,” he says while maneuvering the tractor around the trees.

Dead? Nick seems at ease as he follows the beaten path through the woods. I don’t know where or going or what he’s talking about. Tommy can’t be dead.

Suddenly, the tractor comes to a jerky stop. I would have went sailing over the tractor had Nick’s arm not been latched around me the entire ride. He turns off the engine and leaves the lights on. Then he lifts me down to the ground first. I hear him step down behind me.

We walk around the tractor. In front of it is a tool shed. Nick opens the door and I scream seeing two very dead looking bodies inside. A bunch of flies are coated over the corpses. I squeeze myself closer to Nick clutching his arm at the gruesome sight.

“I think this discovery will get me hired back at the station,” he says while letting the door swing shut. He leads me over to the tractor. “I missed you. Just wait a little bit longer. Then I’ll be walking in the flesh, soon as I dig up my coffin and run a few errands.”

He’s talking like he’s just going to go run out to the grocery store! How is he in my mind if he’s still dead? He can’t be. This is just a silly dream. Tom isn’t a murderer. Nick is.

I flinch feeling him nuzzle his head into the crook of my neck right where he bit me before.

“I’ll be back real soon. Then everything will be as it should. I’ll make sure of it,” he says after placing a freezing cold kiss right on the bite mark and not pulling away. “Can I have a drink before I go?”

“No!” I shout while waking up on the couch with a racing heart.

My hand flies to my neck and thankfully it doesn’t come away with blood on it. I twist around on the couch looking around the room. Tommy stands in the kitchen with a half empty bottle of beer sitting by his laptop.

Morning rays of sunshine stream in through the windows and sliding glassdoor as he types away on the keyboard. Of course, Tom isn’t dead. It was just a stupid dream. Suddenly, I feel the bite mark throbbing intensely. The babies are asleep though and not crying. What if he somehow really is asleep in his grave?