The house was dead quiet. Everyone was busy performing tasks to help with what we had planned. My Uncle Chris and Aunt Raven had already arrived; they had three near-identical daughters, Raine, River, and Rose, all with them. The girls and Raven were from the Wicklow bloodline, powerful in their honed attuned power. Couple that with training under their father's watchful hand, and they were all powerhouses beyond comparison. Raven and her daughters all looked very similar, the Wicklow genes taking dominance in the Chasse Wicklow union. All of them had jet black hair and green eyes, Raven just looking like an older version of the three sisters.

  A memory of sparring with Raine when we were all younger surfaced. I almost felt the ribs that she broke when she perfectly dodged and countered a punch with a swift kick to the side. She could see and fight in ways I couldn’t. They all could, and that’s what made them deadly.

  However, they weren’t here to help fight a monster; they were here to fight a curse. Raven and all her daughters gathered with Eleanor and Shelta down in the basement. Uncle Chris and I sat upstairs, waiting in silence.

  We had spoken already at great length about everything. I caught him up on the happenings that led up to this point we were at now. He knew about Patrick and Peter’s meetings, about the brush, and the murder it took to seal the deal. We spoke about the details we fed our police contact, Detective Ames, to give some context about what could have happened, so he could handle the more civilian world on his end.

  Chris nodded through everything, silent on his opinions, but I could see something in his eyes. It wasn't disappointment or anything like that, just a tired sadness that he wore all too frequently. He held a similar look when we met at the Lake of the Ozarks not too long ago… back when we told him more about what happened to Eleanor, and the return of Allen. His familiar salt-and-pepper hair framed his square, imposing features that still made me feel like a kid dealing with an adult.

  Naturally, all this brought up our mysterious friend, Sam. We were still keeping certain details of his secrets to ourselves, like we promised.

  “Where is he now?” Uncle Chris asked about Sam.

  I shook my head, “He’s down… underneath the city. He was trying to get into the pits… to kill something…” I kept it loose, but that was easy since I didn’t know all the details about why he was going. However, I had to make sure I did keep it loose and not allude to the fact that Sam had told me the truth. He had told me about… Death… and the Primeval stuff. It was too much for me.

  Chris looked at me closely for a minute and then said, “You don’t think that… he had anything to do with this curse that’s on her… do you?”

  I snapped my head up… “NO!” I cut him off before he could even go down that path. Then I cooled, “No, Sam was the one warning me about it. I should have listened and made a move sooner. Sam is… very connected with Autumn; as much as that pains me to acknowledge.”

  “Oh…” my uncle raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was the first time I openly spoke about Sam in a way that wasn't as accepting as we always were of him.

  I just shook my head, feeling conflicted about it. “He’s… we don’t know what he is.” I made sure to start with that. “And that’s dangerous. Even after all the things he’s done for us, healing Eleanor somehow, bringing Allen back from France, killing Mercy and Phineas… I know he is something beyond what we are prepared for. He’s part of something none of us can fight. And that thing inside of him… the thing he turns into is… terrifying…” I trailed off at the memories of his dark, murderous form, all the while still lying to my uncle. Sam hadn’t healed Eleanor; he had traded his life for hers.

  “That sounds just like what I’ve heard from everyone else… even Annabelle,” Uncle Chris stated.

  “You spoke with Annabelle about him?” I asked, not knowing this yet.

  “It was after the lake trip. After you all spoke about him and the things he had done for the family, I called her,” he admitted. “Even she said that what she felt, not only when she saw him that night, but when she looked for him with her power, and felt nothing where he should have been… She said it was all very unsettling. And that was coming from the fourteenth generation of an old gypsy family. They’ve seen shit we can’t even comprehend.” My uncle truly started to open up. “Annabelle wasn't scared of him directly, only what would rise because of his presence here. Raven feels the same. She can’t see him, and when she looks forward into this situation with Autumn… she can’t see shit. Sam’s tied in so much with all this that we can’t make moves like normal.”

  I nodded in understanding. “This feels familiar…” remembering the same tone around the appearance of the immortals that came for Sam back when we first met him.

  “Still… Shelta and Raven have a plan. For now, we follow that plan… we can’t plan for anything else we can’t control or predict,” he broke it down simply.

  I nodded, trying to convince myself it would be that easy.

  “I need to know that you're focused, Carter,” he demanded.

  I looked up to him sharply, partially annoyed. “Why the hell would I not be focused?”

  Uncle Chris stared into me for a moment before saying, “I can sense your uncertainty… your distraction with everything else going on. With Frank,” he added that detail that we hadn’t talked about yet.

  I was wondering when that would come up.

  “I’m focused… this is my daughter we’re talking about here,” I barely got out through gritted teeth. “Don’t treat me like some fucking child!”

  We were both tense as the women worked, preparing the upcoming ritual. Chris stared into me with that same look he got from time to time, when he felt the need to dip his hands into the control of my family.

  He sighed in surrender.

  “I’m sorry, Carter. I don’t mean to be so demanding… controlling… whatever. I just feel like I have to be sometimes. When I see you all making similar mistakes that we made. It’s hard to just sit back and watch without helping you see what we couldn’t see so long ago.”

  I felt the shift in his stance and demeanor. I shifted mine as well, listening to what he had to say.

  “I’ve lost both my brothers, my entire family that came before me. I’m the last of my generation… and I have to protect your generation as long as I can… because one day it will be you protecting the next. I know you all hate it when I step in to give my opinion… but I have to. I can't just sit back and allow you guys to do the same kind of stupid shit we did when we were younger. Learn from our mistakes. Don’t fall into the same traps that we did. If my butting in keeps you and the rest of the family alive even just one day longer… than it was worth it.” Uncle Chris was completely open and brutally honest in that moment of transparency.

  Just then, Aunt Raven and Eleanor appeared at the edge of the living room and beckoned us to go down into the basement. It was time, and the ritual was ready.

  In mere moments, I stood behind a semicircle of women who looked on at the silver cell that housed my daughter. Autumn’s feral eyes bored into each of us before shifting to the next person. Raven and her three black-haired daughters stood around the cell, all eight of their green eyes staring at one another as they prepared the strange spell, effect, or whatever they called it. I didn’t care about those kinds of details… just if this was going to work against the curse that held my daughter.

  Gather yourselves,” Aunt Raven spoke to Shelta and her three daughters. “Everyone else, stay back. Don’t interrupt the binding.” Raven cut her eyes back over her shoulder without fully looking at the rest of us. “Sarah… bring him in,” Raven commanded at no one in the room, but was speaking somewhere else using her powers.

  Eleanor, Uncle Chris, and I stayed pressed to the back wall of the basement, close enough to witness but deliberately apart from the circle forming around the silver cell. The women of the Wicklow bloodline stood together, their formation sharp with intent, their presence heavy with something that felt older than the room itself.

  The creak of the stairwell broke the stillness. Sarah emerged, mascara streaking down her cheeks in black, uneven lines, her eyes raw from tears yet unflinching with a determination I recognized all too well, the same kind you only find when you’ve already lost too much. Patrick followed her, shoulders caved inward, hands twisting against each other as though he were trying to wring something invisible from his skin. His head hung low, but I could feel it… he wasn’t afraid of what we were about to do. He was afraid of what he might lose if we succeeded. The curse clung to him like a drowning man clutching at air, refusing to be let go.

  Sarah brought him forward, guiding him toward Shelta. She didn’t hesitate. With one hand, Shelta seized Patrick’s wrist and pulled him into the circle; with the other, she reached for the brush.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The reaction was immediate. Autumn launched herself at the bars, body slamming into the silver, arms jutting through the gaps like broken spears. Her face pressed tight against the cold metal, lips pulled back over teeth as she reached for Patrick with a hunger so feral it made my chest seize. Her hands clawed the air, nails splintered and blackened from days of tearing at the walls and floor. She wasn’t my daughter in that moment; she was a vessel filled with something that wanted him more than it wanted air.

  And I… I felt sick with the realization that she was imprisoned twice: once in the cell, once inside herself. A knot rose sharp in my throat, tightening until it almost stole my breath.

  That’s when the sound began.

  A vibration tremored through the basement, not in the walls, but in the air itself. It was low at first, like the thrum of a struck wire, but it grew steadily, burrowing into the bone, a resonant hum that gathered in the formation of Wicklow women. Their breathing synchronized, rising and falling in one rhythm that didn’t belong to them alone.

  Shelta lifted the brush and brought Patrick’s trembling hand toward it. The air thickened, as if the house itself strained to contain the force gathering here. The vibrations swelled into a pulse, pressing down on us like invisible waves.

  That’s when it appeared, thin strands of green, weaving into the air. At first faint, like smoke caught in a shaft of light, but growing thicker, sharper, until they etched themselves into the space between Patrick, the brush, and the cell. Each line burned a sickly shade of emerald, too vivid to be natural, too wrong to belong here. Our basement… the place of training, weapons, and workout equipment was being rewritten into something else entirely. It was the home to a terrible curse… a hungry… obsessive curse.

  “Give it up, Patrick,” Shelta said, her voice calm but edged with steel. “Listen to me. Let it go.”

  It wasn’t persuasion. It wasn’t a plea. It was a command aimed at something deeper, clawing through to the boy beneath the curse, and in that moment, it became painfully clear… this ritual wasn’t theirs alone. Patrick had to fight from the inside, just as Autumn would. They couldn’t drag them out… they had to call them back… and they had to answer.

  The brush slipped from Shelta’s hand and hung suspended in midair, turning lazily as though the unseen lines themselves held it aloft. She pressed her palms onto Patrick’s shoulders, grounding him. “Let it go, Patrick…”

  A tremor coursed through his body, sudden and violent. His jaw wrenched open, and a wet, guttural sound tore free. Green fluid spilled from him in rivulets; eyes, nose, and mouth splattering his shirt, dripping down his chest, pooling at his feet. The stench of rot and metal filled the basement as the substance poured out, and with it, ribbons of that same green energy coiled into the floating brush.

  It drank it in greedily. The brush pulsed, vibrating with a malignant hunger, growing heavier in the air with every drop it swallowed.

  Patrick collapsed to the floor, limp as a discarded doll. Sarah screamed and surged forward, shoving her way into the circle, heedless of boundaries. She dropped to her knees, cradling him, rocking as she sobbed. For one choking second, I thought he was gone.

  “He’s alright, Sarah,” Raven’s voice cut through the grief, steady and low. “It drained him, but he’s free.”

  I wanted to believe her. But my gaze was locked on Autumn.

  She hadn’t stopped. She was still clawing, still reaching for Patrick, shrieking through gritted teeth, her face contorting with desperation that wasn’t hers. It was the curse. It had been ripped from Patrick, and now it screamed inside her with doubled rage.

  I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached. This was only the beginning.

  Shelta turned to her, the brush still glowing, green light bleeding from it in unnatural waves. “Your turn, Autumn,” she called, her voice swelling with power, filling the basement. “Let it go. Come back to us. Come back to your mom and dad. Don’t let it keep you.” Her words echoed against the walls, vibrating in my chest as the aura from the brush thickened, spreading like a storm about to break.

  I knew what we had talked about before, when Shelta and Raven first got the plan together. Patrick was the easy part. The curse didn’t have such a latch on him like it did with Autumn. That’s because the curse was about Patrick, but it wasn't made for him. It was made for my daughter… and it had a much tighter grip on her. What came next would be much… much worse.

  The basement felt tighter now, like the walls themselves were inching closer with every pulse from the floating brush. Its green light bled into everything, swallowing the dim bulbs overhead until the basement no longer looked like a basement at all… it looked like the inside of some otherworldly place. The air was thick with it, humming like a swarm in our ears, vibrating through our teeth, pressing down on our lungs. The curse had come alive, fighting what Shelta, Raven, and her daughters were doing. It was resisting them.

  Shelta’s voice carried above the hum somehow, calling out to Autumn again, “Autumn… listen to me. Let it go. You are stronger than this. You are in control… not this thing. Remember your family… your friends...”

  For a moment, unbelievably, it seemed to work.

  Autumn’s clawing halted between the bars. Her chest heaved in quick, shallow bursts, and then her face softened. Those wild dark eyes flickered, and for the first time in days, something familiar broke through. Her eyes found mine across the cell. They weren’t hungry or alien, but hers.

  “Dad…”

  The whisper came like a memory, fragile, almost lost in the static filling the room, but it cut straight through me. Eleanor gasped beside me, her hand clutching mine so hard I thought she might break my fingers. Our daughter turned toward her mother, and her lip trembled, her expression crumbling into something childlike, desperate. For that flicker of a heartbeat, she was back, and her eyes told me everything. She was helpless… begging us to do something.

  And then it ripped her away.

  Her body convulsed violently, head thrown back, her mouth opening wide as a guttural, inhuman scream tore out of her throat. Her eyes burned with that green ethereal energy that reminded me all too much of Peter Grimwood. The veins in her neck and arms lit up with the same eerie light, writhing under her skin like serpents of Peter’s taint. She slammed herself against the bars with such force that the entire cell shook, the clang echoing like a death toll through the basement.

  Eleanor cried out, stumbling forward, reaching for her, only to be pulled back by my arm. She still fought against me, sobbing openly, calling Autumn’s name.

  “Stay with us, sweetheart! Don’t let it take you!”

  Autumn’s head snapped toward her, snarling, her bloodied fingers tearing through the air at her.

  It happened again… and again. She was shifting back and forth so quickly it was jarring; one breath, her true self surfaced, eyes pleading, face twisted with terror; the next, the curse wrenched her away, twisting her features into hunger, rage, and violence. She was drowning in front of us, dragged beneath by hands we couldn’t see.

  And then the room changed again. The vibration surged into a thunderous pitch, shaking the floor under our feet. The silver bars rattled, shrieking as though the whole cell was about to tear apart. Autumn’s body lifted from the floor, arms and legs hanging limp at first, then jerking upward in spasms as the curse pulled her higher.

  “God help us…” Chris muttered, his voice hollow with dread.

  Her hair lashed across her face, though no air moved in the room. The green light wrapped around her like shackles, chaining her wrists, her ankles, her throat, holding her suspended like a grotesque puppet. Her back arched unnaturally, her chest heaving as if something inside her was trying to rip its way out.

  The brush, still suspended in the center of the formation, pulsed harder in time with her convulsions. Each beat sent another wave of that wrong green light into her, feeding it, binding it deeper. It wasn’t just holding on… it was fighting back, digging its claws in deeper with every second.

  Her scream rose higher, shaking the walls, shaking me. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it wasn’t enough; the sound wasn’t only in the air, it was inside my head, clawing at the edges of my thoughts.

  Eleanor dropped to her knees, both hands clutched over her mouth as she sobbed, “Please… please. We have to stop before it kills her!”

  But we were powerless. All we could do was watch as the curse paraded its triumph, levitating her within the silver bars, showing us that Autumn wasn’t being freed… not yet. The thing inside her wasn’t going to surrender.

  And in that moment, dread settled over me like a weight. It wasn’t just a curse to break. It was a will to defeat… Peter Grimwood’s will, the will of someone who hated our families beyond any sane comprehension.

  Eleanor’s cries broke through the suffocating hum of power. She lurched forward, voice ragged and torn from the throat.

  “Stop! Please!”

  Her hands slammed against the silver bars, heedless of the burn of the aura still thrumming against them. Tears streamed freely down her face as she tried to force herself into the circle. I grabbed her, pulling her back, but she fought me with a strength born of pure terror. “You’re killing her! You’ll tear her apart!” She begged the women to listen to her pleas.

  Shelta’s eyes flicked toward Raven. Both women’s faces were pale, drenched with sweat, their breathing shallow and erratic from holding the power together. For the first time, doubt cracked their resolve. Raven gave a sharp, silent nod.

  “Release it,” she ordered.

  In an instant, the connection shattered. The women broke their circle, stepping back from the cell as though pulled by unseen strings. The brush fell from the air, clattering onto the concrete floor with a sound that echoed far louder than it should have. The lines of green light twisted violently in the air, then faded like cigarette smoke in the wind.

  The curse’s energy bled away from the basement, its oppressive weight easing, though the taste of it still lingered on my tongue like metal. The vibration subsided, the basement returning to silence so sudden and unnatural it made the hair rise on my arms.

  Autumn fell, her body drifted downward slowly, as if the curse released her reluctantly, lowering her into a heap on the cold ground of the silver cell. Her chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, but she lay otherwise still, limbs limp, her face pale and slick with sweat. For one harrowing second, I thought she wasn’t breathing at all.

  Eleanor broke from my grip and pressed herself against the bars, reaching in as far as she could, sobbing uncontrollably. “Baby, I’m here… please, please breathe…”

  The women of the Wicklow line stood in uneasy silence, the power they had carried gone, leaving only exhaustion and defeat etched on their faces. Shelta bent down, scooping up the brush. The thing no longer glowed, but even dormant, it carried a heaviness, a wrongness that seemed to seep into the room. She clutched it tight, jaw clenched, but her eyes told the truth; they hadn’t freed Autumn.

  Chris spoke first, his voice low, trembling as if afraid the words might be heard by something else. “It still has her.”

  No one argued, because we knew. We had failed.

  I pressed a hand against the cool bars, staring at my daughter’s prone form. For all the effort, for all the risk, nothing had changed for her. The curse still coiled inside her, dug into her marrow, mocking us. Patrick may have been wrenched free, but I didn’t care about him… not in that moment.

  In that silence, as Eleanor’s sobs filled the basement, I felt the true weight of it: the ritual hadn’t failed because they’d faltered. It had failed because the curse was stronger than all of us. Stronger than Autumn was in that moment, and I didn’t know what that meant for her future. For now, Autumn was still its prisoner.