Seth sat at his desk, shirtless and covered in sweat. Andrew sat on his bed with his back to the wall. Both their phones sat on the nightstand, battery off and SIM cards removed.

“You know, if that hot chick hadn’t walked out of your closet, I don’t think I would have believed all that,” said Andrew. “That’s like some actual Harry Potter shit. But I guess wandless magic isn’t that big a deal in real life?”

“You’re a nerd and you know it.”

“I never.”

Seth opened his laptop. “There’s got to be something out there about all of this. If magic is real, and all the stuff that comes with it… Somebody out there should be saying something about it. All I found the other night was some conspiracy blog mentioning a bunch of kidnappings a while ago. The blogger seemed crazy, but like he was reporting real events, you know?”

“You look through the rest of his site?”

“Well, no. I just found that one because it happened here.”

“No shit! Let me see.” Andrew crossed the room as Seth opened his history and pulled the blog up.

Andrew’s eyes darted back and forth as he chewed through the post. “Dude, that’s wild. I remember hearing about those disappearances. They’re a cold case. Wait, what’s that?”

Seth finished scrolling to the bottom where the picture of the carving on the tree was. Andrew’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude, don’t you recognize that? Or have you not actually seen her since you got back?”

“Who?”

“Emma.”

Seth stared. “What?”

“Dude, she’s got like a new necklace. It’s that fucking symbol.” Andrew hovered his finger over the picture and Seth remembered her sitting next to him on the roof. Andrew was right. “I’m not saying you gotta call her or talk to her. I’m just saying maybe this is some kind of lead. Even if it’s not related to all your… problems, it might be your avenue in to the actual stuff out there about things like… Well, like you, I guess.”

Seth nodded and right clicked on the image, saving it to his downloads before opening up a reverse images search on Google. Several results of the same image popped up, all from different sites. It was a start. Seth clicked on the first one that wasn’t the previous blog and pulled up the site. This one was more professional looking and hosted by Wordpress. It was simply called The Forecast. The post was dated two years ago, and titled ‘Witching Symbol Occurrences on West Coast’.

The post was a series of entries, some dating earlier than the kidnapping, with pictures of the symbol carved into trees, drawn or graffitied on rocks. A lot of the earlier pictures were Polaroid quality, with the location and date mentioned overhead, and credit in the form of a name below them. But once they entered the 2010s, they started being attributed to Twitter handles and Facebook pages.

“You noticing what I’m noticing?” Asked Andrew.

Seth nodded. About two-thirds of the photos had a location in California. About half of those were in their part of the state, in the north. And the last three were adjacent to their town. Seth looked at Andrew. “Well, this is weird.”

At the bottom were two related articles: ‘The Witching Symbol Origins, Meaning, and Purpose’ and ‘California Known Covens(Not Wiccan)’. Seth clicked on the first one and the two of them read hungrily.

…derived from the symbol of the goddess Hecate. These runes, symbols, hieroglyphs… are used to mark territory. To claim a ritual ground for a coven. Traditionally, the number of spokes within the wheel denotes the number of elder witches in the coven. An orb in the center means the coven possesses a keep-source, or a powerful magic item that can be used to fuel their rituals and spells.

Seth clicked on to the other related article and scrolled until he found what he expected, a listing of a coven with their hometown next to its name.

Coven of Set’s Left Hand.

Connected with the 1999-2000 cult disappearances but dismissed by police due to arcane influences, the Coven of Set’s Left Hand is one of the most powerful and influential covens on the West Coast. The San Fransisco coven mentioned earlier was formed by one of their elder witches in 1932, and the LA Coven of Hecatian Will was founded by another elder witch of theirs in 1980. The bloodline passed through these witches is old, and powerful. The Forecast is currently investigating their heritage and tracing their line back to the original transmuting ceremonies in Scotland. They are believed to be a pure line from the Wyrd Sisters.

Seth scrolled through the rest of the article, his eye catching at the bottom.

If you are associated with any of these covens, please do enjoy the curse I’ve worked into the page. Bloodline-targeted hexes are a bitch, aren’t they? -Duncan

“What the hell is all this?” Asked Andrew. “This reads like something meant for Dungeons and Dragons.”

“I don’t know, but…” Seth clicked back to the first article and scrolled to the bottom. He pointed to the last photo, where the symbol was carved on the trunk of a pine tree. Through the forest, he could just barely see a lake in the background. “I recognize that place.”

Andrew stared for a moment. “Holy shit, is that the forest by the Olson’s lake house?”

“Yeah, dude.”

“We haven’t been in those woods since we were thirteen.”

Seth looked out through his window at the darkening sky. “Andrew, I have a really bad idea.”

Andrew grinned and stood up from leaning over the desk. “You know I’m game.”

“Let’s head up to the old forest.”

“Tonight?”

“It’s Friday.”

Andrew looked out at the darkening street as the lights began to turn on. “My car or yours?”

Seth had a strange feeling in his gut and his mind flashed back to the chase down the mountainside in Washington. “Yours is faster.”

“My man.” Andrew walked over to the nightstand and looked at the phones, then back to Seth with a questioning expression.

Seth hesitated.

“You really think these military guys are listening in?”

“Dude, I don’t know.”

“There’s no way.”

“Yeah, but I really have a feeling that ‘magical teen able to recover from gunshots and explosions’ somehow falls under the Patriot Act, you know?”

Andrew nodded reluctantly. “Okay, but you’re going to have to navigate unless we take your car. I’m hopeless without Maps and my car doesn’t have a GPS built in.”

“I know the way. Been there pretty recently.”

“Oh, right.” Andrew winced. “Sorry.”

Seth shrugged. “Is what it is.”

“Her loss.”

“Yeah. Let me just take a shower.”

Andrew fell back on the bed and closed his eyes as Seth crossed to the bathroom and started the ice-cold water. His thoughts became clear as he washed. Clear to focus on the void that thinking of Madeline recalled. He scrubbed at his skin as the thought of leaving her lake-house, filled with anger and remorse, flooded through his head, pouring down his spine into the void within. He’d wasted so much time with her, to be used and cheated on. Seth let the soap rinse off him, thinking of the drive back from her house, his spin-out on the country road. The figure he’d seen in the rain.

Had that been the same person in the warehouse? Nicole had told him no other auras were on that road, but Seth was fully aware she might have been lying to him like she had about so many other things. Seth shut off the water and began drying off, trying to concentrate on the hazy memory of that person standing in the rain. But, just like last night, there were no discernible features. He sighed and wrapped the towel around his waist before crossing the hallway to his room. Andrew was passed out.

Seth clothed himself in jeans and a dark hoodie again, then kicked the bed. Andrew came out of the sleep like the waking dead. Like Nicole, Seth supposed. The thought of whether or not Hunter-33 would hunt down her phylactery surfaced, but Seth pushed it back. She was gone for now, and they had business to attend to.

“Ready?” Asked Andrew.

“One second.” Seth opened the closet and willed the metal augment to hop out.

“Oh, come on, bro, not in front of- Oh, god, that’s fucking gross.” Andrew looked away as the flesh augment slipped out from the leg of Seth’s jeans, fleshy tendrils flailing in the air. The metal one took its place and the flesh augment hopped into the corner of the closet.

Seth shut the door. “You can look.”

Andrew turned back. “Dammit, you gotta warn me about that.”

“Hey, it’s not gross to me.”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s your leg,” Andrew stood up and walked to the door. “Has your dad seen that?”

Seth shook his head. “He knows I have a prosthetic I’m not allowed to talk about, but that’s it. The non-disclosures keep me from even telling him.”

“Lucky him.”

***

Seth sat in the passenger bucket seat as the countryside roads out to the lake-house and nearby forest streaked by. He looked at Andrew. “Dude, how do you do anything in these seats.”

“Oh, I didn’t build this car to get laid,” he said. “It’s just to go fast.”

“Whatever,” laughed Seth. He peered out into the rushing darkness. “Slow down, there.”

Andrew took the left-hand turn, his headlights illuminating a narrow back road. Trees began to crop up now, mostly pines, a few oaks, and some firs. Too far apart yet to be called a forest, that changed the further they went up the lane. The trees steadily congregated, like some mass of worshipers moving to a holy site, until at the fork in the road, they were truly in the woods. Andrew came to a stop. Seth stared down the right-hand fork. Past a few more twists lay Madeline’s lake-house.

He looked to Andrew, face tense. “Left.”

Andrew nodded and they drove down the other side of the fork, slowing even more as the back road turned to gravel, then dirt, then aimlessly emptied into a small field. Andrew could see the glint of the waxing moon on the lake to the right, just enough light there to reveal the sand of the beach. Ahead of them lay the forest they had played in as children when their families came out to to the lake together. Flashes of picnics on the beach and hours spent among the trees filled Seth’s head.

“Good-ass memories,” said Andrew.

Seth nodded, grabbing his flashlight and stepping out to the sound of crickets and the waves of the lake. He took a deep breath of the crisp nighttime air and moved across the field to where the trees started again. The forest giants were even denser here, more primeval. Seth thought about his dream a few nights ago and peered through the maze of trunks, trying to see something within, some movement in the night, but he saw nothing. He swallowed and looked back as Andrew locked the BMW. “Let’s do this,” he said as he came to a stop beside Seth.

Some instinct kept them both rooted there, something deep within the recess of their mind reminding them of the Kings' Hall and the sacred unseen roads of the ancient woods. Seth shrugged and stepped forward, Andrew on his heels as they moved into the forest. Seth raised his flashlight and turned it on. The bobbing of his movement scattered shadows every which way as the wind rushed and rustled through the branches of the pines. An owl hooted off to their right, closer to the lake.

Seth paused, trying to find where the trees parted and gave passage to the King’s Hall, but the ancients refused to yield their secrets, their ranks closed against the terrors of the night. Seth looked back at Andrew. “I think… I think I need to turn the light off.”

“You’re nuts,” said Andrew in a voice that very much said ‘full send’.

Andrew switched off the light, but kept the metal rod clenched in his hand. If light revealed, then the darkness was the light, as Seth’s instincts opened up to him again and he cut left, away from the lake. A few moments later, they found the unseen paths, the trees guiding them up more and more elevation, over gently rolling hills in the forest, their way ever clear in the dim light afforded by the half-moon.

The trees parted a little and they came to the crest of a hill notably steeper than all the others, the far right edge of it affording a view of the lake, the diffracted image of the moon upon it. Seth breathed in the scent of fresh water and pines as he looked up the hill. “You think the throne room is still there?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s no way those boulders moved.”

Seth felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and looked behind them into the woods they had already passed through. Andrew followed his gaze. “Hey. Hey, Seth, that’s kinda freaky. What are you looking at?”

It was the exact same feeling as he’d experienced before chasing that person through the warehouse. He hesitated. They hadn’t actually tried to hurt him, only stop him from getting too close. Maybe it was best to just let them observe. “Nothing. Just creeped out.”

“You feel someone watching again?”

Seth nodded. “I think it’s the same person from the warehouse.” He saw Andrew draw a foot back towards a stance. “I don’t think they’re trying to hurt us.”

“You said they paralyzed you with magic.”

“When I chased them.” Seth raised a middle finger to the woods behind them. “Fuck you,” he said. “I know you’re not trying to hurt us.”

The crickets continued to chirp.

“Come on, that article said the carving was near six boulders. That’s obviously the King’s Hall.”

“What are we even gonna do when we find it?”

“Honestly,” said Seth, “I’m just looking for anything, any kind of sign or clue at this point. Even just seeing that carving would give me more trust in the fact that I’m not crazy.” He started up the hill towards the new beginning of the woods and they lost themselves on the sacred unseen roads again. Just a few feet beyond the crest, Seth placed his hand back on Andrew’s chest and raised his other finger to his lips.

He couldn’t see Andrew’s expression here, but the two of them froze and Seth listened, straining to hear what he thought he’d picked up seconds ago. The unsilence of the forest stretched on for a good minute. Seth glanced back down the hill, half-expecting to see a figure dressed in black watching them. No such luck. His ears picked it up again. A low, low rumble, either too low for a human ear or almost too far. He looked to Andrew.

“You hear that?”

Andrew nodded.

Seth had a bad feeling in his gut, separate entirely from the void, but they continued on as the trees finally parted here to a full path that three or four could walk abreast on. It twisted back and forth like a drunk trying to walk in a straight line for a police officer, always finding its way back to its original direction, but always going too far off to pass the test. At the corner of yet another switchback, Andrew grabbed Seth’s shoulder. “Off the path, now.”

Seth didn’t question as they ducked into the trees, found a thicket of brambles and got on their bellies. Seth now saw what had prompted Andrew’s action. Lights bobbed through the woods, though not flashlights. They looked like candles, or maybe torches. Seth couldn’t see how far they were, but they were getting closer. Something crawled over and past his hand and he resisted the urge to smack it.

They were a solid five feet off the trail, and the foliage around them had grown for years and years to an impenetrable density. Yet still, Seth swallowed from nerves as the lights approached and he saw the full procession.

A line of six figures walked along the path, robed in black cloaks, hoods concealing all but the lowest parts of their faces. A single hand protruded out from each of their cloaks, feminine and slender, cupped. In the cup of their hand glowed a flickering flame with no source, and no heat to blister their skin. It cast just enough light to see the angles of their jaws and the fullness of their lips as they passed by, barely more than an arms reach from Seth and Andrew’s hiding spot. The women rounded the corner, and another, and another before the flames were obscured from sight.

“Yet again,” whispered Andrew. “I guess magic is real, now.”

Seth rose to a crouch and moved onto the path, scanning through the forest darkness, struggling now that his night vision had been degraded.

“We following them?” Asked Andrew.

Seth nodded.

“Look, I’m just as curious as you are, but if we die I’m killing you.”

“If you can.”

“Fine, Wolverine,” hissed Andrew, jesting despite the edge of fear in his voice, “just make sure you delete my browser history, okay?”

Seth blew air out of his nose to suppress a chuckle and they moved along the path, hugging the edge and staying low until they again saw light through the trees, this time appearing to be from a single source, and white in color rather than the orange flames of before.

They moved into the tree-line and began to crawl as slowly as they could, their childhood memories of playing soldier coming back as they barely made a sound among the brambles. As they got closer, they could hear voices, some low and baritone, others alto and feminine. A few more feet and they could see the six women standing beside three of the throne-boulders, and six tall, broad-shouldered men standing beside the other three.

Between them, hovering about four feet off the ground, was a tongue of blue-white fire, easily the size of Seth’s torso, maybe bigger. It licked the air, casting its luminescence all around like a more powerful form of moonlight. Seth could feel goosebumps over his entire body, and for some reason, that light was the cause of it.

One of the women spoke from beneath her hood, her voice clear and commanding. “Well, shamans? Your obtuse prophecies fail yet again.”

“Patience, girl,” growled the tallest and oldest of the men, a silver-haired, hulking brute with a well-groomed beard to match his mane. “A spirit guide never lies.”

Seth could see her lips twist into a smirk. “I’m cautious of anyone who claims magic of any kind to be a science.”

“A spirit guide cannot lie to the one it guides. At most, it can misdirect to the truth.”

“Your kind are so… Useless. Let us draw and divine the aura.”

“You know that won’t be work, we still don’t know the core of it. You’ll see the world light up with a million just like the one we search for.”

“You don’t know the core of it. We do.”

“How, girl?”

“As our Matrons before us, we have our ways. We can divine the location, if you allow us to draw.”

“Your own magics are not powerful enough?” Chuckled the man.

The woman’s lips pressed together, corners turned down. “Distance is the unknown part of the equation, old man.”

“Funny for you to sling old around like it’s an insult.”

“Our numbers grow this year, and yours dwindle. Do you really think it’s wise to tempt open war again?”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Said the silver-haired man. “To start an open war?”

She remained silent. “We will draw if your spirit guide does not prove to be right by the witching hour.”

The man snorted. “And you want to talk about obtuse. You-” He paused and drew in another breath, this time a sniff. His face slowly turned up into a broad grin, teeth pearly white. “The spirits never lie, girl.”

“It approaches?”

“It approaches.” All twelve people present, turned their heads towards the entrance from the path to the throne room.

The silence stretched, the crickets the only ones irreverent enough to break it. Even Seth and Andrew twisted their heads to their left to watch the path. A minute. Two. Nothing. The man sniffed again. “I can smell it, I swear upon my ancestors.”

“If there’s one thing I trust about you,” said the woman, “It’s that damn nose of yours.”

“Maybe there is some wisdom lodged between your ears.”

“Barbs aside, where is it?”

“It hasn’t moved,” he said, slowly crouching down to his haunches and sniffing again. He slowly began to reach his hands out forward to the ground.

“The laws of our harmony-”

“Don’t you agree this is a special occasion?”

She sighed.

His hands touched the ground in front of him and began to change, fingernails thickening, blackening, elongating. Hair returning to a youthful brown, growing as did his entire body, joint angles twisting and changing, belly expanding, shoulders broadening.

Andrew held a hand over his mouth.

The man’s nose and mouth began to merge, the point turning black and wet. A few more moments and he stood on all fours as tall as he had on two legs, but no mistake could be made about it. He had transformed into an enormous grizzly bear. He sniffed, and his head immediately whipped to Seth and Andrew’s hiding spot. An unheard voice thrummed in their skulls.

Found you.