A Price Paid in Blood

The air in the clearing, once thick with the charged anticipation of a desperate act, now hung heavy with the suffocating weight of failure. John, his knuckles white on the worn pages of Felix’s grimoire, stared at the smoldering remnants of their hastily constructed altar. The acrid scent of burnt herbs mingled with something else, something metallic and sickeningly sweet that clung to the back of his throat. Beside him, Jack retched into the damp earth, his face a mask of grim disbelief. Felix, his usual scholarly composure shattered, sat hunched, his spectacles askew, murmuring incantations that sounded more like laments. Alex, ever the pragmatist even in the face of utter devastation, was already scanning the perimeter, his instincts screaming danger even though the immediate threat seemed to have receded.

“What…what happened?” Jack choked out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His voice, usually steady, trembled.

John shook his head, the movement slow, heavy. “It was supposed to be a binding. A severing. Not…this.” He gestured vaguely at the night, at the town that lay just beyond the treeline, a town that now felt like a festering wound.