Chapter 336: Mutilated Bodies
Her life was not easy. It would have been much better if she had just stayed put in her little boutique and designed clothes, but no, she had to end up getting caught in a fray that had nothing to do with her. The stupid urge to keep Inez alive had pushed her to do things that she would have normally ignored. Things she didn’t care about.
They were annoying, and for someone around her age, annoying things should either be ignored or eradicated. Usually, she ignored these things, as Tracy couldn’t be bothered by them, but for Inez, she had to make sure that these things would be cleaned up before they could become a hurdle in her path of staying alive.
And you could have done all of this silently, don’t you think so? One of her spirits spoke to her as they watched the carnage that Tracy had wrought in the warehouse. Splinters were burning down, flames had claimed walls, and the glass windows were now melting like they were made of thin wax or paper.
Talk about dramatic entrances, said the black owl as he stared at the mess in front of him. He turned and looked at Tracy before saying, "Continue like this, and you will be dragged to the front of the council of the Gods."
"Like I care." Tracy snapped her fingers as a bolt of electricity passed through the space, lighting the entire warehouse with purple lightning. The door that had been stopping her from entering crumbled under her rage, if it could understand that there was no point in standing against her. Pathetic. Where was the fight? The crash of the door sent another tremor down the ground and through the underground chambers within the warehouse that had been built on top of it to mask the illegal and dirty dealings that happened inside the underground area—Several shifters rushed in.
"Who are you?"
"How did you get here?"
"Someone come! There is an intruder here."
"Kill her! She has found the warehouse!"
They repeated the same boring scripts that she had gotten used to hearing since the eighties. Not a single thing had changed. Other than the warehouse or the hiding spot. She watched as the fools who had sold their wolves to the witch in exchange for immortality. The same fools, the same strategy and the same greed. There was nothing new.
She didn’t even bother to wipe the bored expression on her face as she snapped her fingers just as the four to five young shifters came rushing at her, but then again, who knows? Maybe they were around the age of her great-great-great grandpa? Selling their soul and whatnot.
The husks turned into ashes, and only one of them remained intact. Interesting.
She turned to look at the shifter, who was now eyeing her with eyes that were wide in terror.
"It seems like you didn’t get a chance to sell your wolf to the witch in exchange for immortality?" Tracy remarked as she glanced at the young wolf, who seemed to be looking around the space, wanting to run away but couldn’t.
Seeing the look in the eyes of the young man, Tracy smiled at him. "Don’t worry. I have no intention of causing any trouble for you, at least until you are willing to act like a good boy. You will stay as one, right?" She asked, but when the young man didn’t nod as she expected him to, Tracy narrowed her eyes and flicked her wrist. A thin, purple whip appeared out of nowhere.
"You—"
"Shut up." Tracy hurled the whip at the man, causing him to close his eyes in fear. However, the pain that he had been expecting never came. Instead, he felt a stifling sensation as if his limbs were tied together, along with his mouth getting closed shut. Startled, he opened his eyes only to realise that he had been tied up and thrown in the corner of the warehouse.
His eyes widened, and he let out a muffled protest. Shifters always forgot that they could never go against witches, but they would still end up getting entangled with them. Tracy wondered why they always did that. She glanced at the man and stated coldly, "You are lucky that I am not in the mood to kill sinners like you tonight or else you would have died a sorry death. So you better not piss me off."
The young shifter’s eyes widened. He looked affronted and angered, but nonetheless, he quietened down. Smart.
The corridor ahead stretched into darkness, lit only by intermittent torches of flames and little yellow bulbs. They flickered with each second that passed by.
It smells so bad.
Yup. It smelled truly bad. But it was something that they had expected. They already knew that the entire space would smell of nothing but mottled flesh and rotting blood, along with the cocktail of fear and grudge. It was terrifying. A place no one would even bother stepping, but Tracy was not just someone. She ignored the congealing puddles of blood and old flesh and continued moving forward. She grimaced only when she noticed a pile of humans and their uncleaned waste collected in one space.
"She could have at least used a cleaning spell or something of the sort," Tracy muttered to her owl spirits, who were following her. "Decent plumbing and cleaning could have helped this situation, you know."
The corridor opened into a wider chamber, and Tracy’s stomach tightened the second she stepped inside the space. There were glass cases, like the ones one would find in those research centres of those mad scientists, filled with what Tracy knew was a potion—a failed potion. Inside the glass cases were more than three to four bodies crammed. No, it was better to say that there was just one body inside the case, with three to four heads jutting out from odd places.
The girl or the boy, whoever it was, opened their eyes and stared at her.
Help me. It mouthed.