Witch Hunt. (Excerpt #3) With a grunt of exertion, she hauled herself up and through the motel's broken window. Complete darkness awaited her there. No sight at all was better than some of the sights she could have been met with. The sound of a master pianist at work flowed to her ears from across the room. Such a long time had gone by and still she remembered which room to enter, odd how some things stuck like that. And for her memory, she was rewarded with instrumental music, a luxury so sweet that she could only let herself be lulled by it. Only when the pianist finished his piece did Leah wake from her trance. "If you're here to find out whether the stories are true, I suggest you leave the way you came," said a voice from the piano's direction. The room was too pitch dark to distinguish anything at all by sight, but Leah knew that voice, she hadn't heard it since the Eclipse itself. "It's-" She hesitated, glancing over at Basilisk, who was all but petrified with fear. "It's Leah," she breathed. The unseen speaker whistled softly. "Well," he sputtered. "Well cut me up, my Moonlight. Cut me up and burn the pieces, I thought you'd be eaten alive out there." Something touched her shoulder in the darkness, it felt raw and stringy, like dry, loose cloth made of dead flesh. Leah tried to remember the sound of the piano, but she didn't dare shudder at the touch of his hand. "Tell me of your travels and of the other you travel with," he spoke directly into her right ear, but no breath accompanied his speech; the air stood still as his voice permeated the dark. He was a product of modern concept artist culture, a freak-show that should have been race-horsed in the cradle. Leah hated the man and his ability to break her usual state of calm. She'd heard of barbaric places in the outside where they broke down and rebuilt people like him, like her, even- stripped away any touch of the Eclipse and called them "Functioning Members of Society"™. Those places hardly ever sent trappers into the Shadow, but Leah would have sold out the pianist in a heartbeat, had she ever come across any. "I fell into the company of the Moonlit Witch," said Leah. "She sewed wings to my back and declared me beautiful. I travel not with a friend, but with another who shares my desire." She spoke boldly, not shouting, but she did not let her voice falter. A thoughtful hum or two was the initial reply to all she'd said, but then she felt a raw finger trace her left wing. Leah steeled herself as it slowly went around her other wing as well. "And pray tell," he mused, "what that desire is." The room began to lighten, it became a single shade above total darkness. Leah could just barely make out little signs of movement in the swirling pool of blindness. As she watched all of those tiny twitches at all edges of her vision, her mind harkened back to the episodes of sleep paralysis she'd once experienced. Few things made her skin crawl, but those nights were things she preferred to leave in the past. "We seek to kill the Witch," she said. "I know my companion only as Basilisk, for we adhere to the formalities of half-breed theology." The pianist's form became visible in the receding blackness; he was tall and frail, skinny as ever. "Not good enough, my Moonlight, you know I do not abide by the new ways. Speak your name, Basilisk," said he. Unlike Leah, Basilisk was unable to keep herself from shuddering as he reached out and lay his hand on her neck. Leah would never forget watching him play in the bar on the night of the Eclipse as everyone else was contorted by the powers that be. She hadn't been able to look at him the same way since. Ironically enough, he'd never be able to look at her again, and the strip of cloth tied over his eyes was proof enough of that. "Priscilla," breathed Basilisk, terrified. "That. . . That's my name." The pianist hummed thoughtfully, and Leah felt the sound reverberate through her body. As with all others who'd been in his presence, Priscilla was unable to muster any show of strength. That was what differentiated Leah from the race of vagabonds she'd found the half-breeds to be. She knew this place, Eclipse's Shadow, and it had known her both before and after its fall. "Enough, Morren! You owe me more than you can pay, if I remember rightly," growled Leah. "So tell me how to track the Witch." Mystic mumbo-jumbo followed Morren like a cloud, which was half the reason Leah wanted nothing more than to rip his throat out with her blade. She restrained herself only because the sicko was useful at times like these. "The Witch loves rumors," he said, sitting down on his piano bench once more. "Follow the rumors and find your mark." She hated that he always knew when a conversation was winding down; he never gave up information unless she was ready to leave. It didn't matter anyways, the room was continuing to brighten, and the last thing she wanted was to see him without the wall of darkness between them. What a repulsive creature he was, through and through. "Take care, Priscilla," he said, raising his voice to speak her name. "You too, Leah. And don't forget your end of the bargain, either." She had no end of the bargain anymore, he'd broken every code of conduct she respected, her trust in him was gone. "Yeah, wait for me here," she said, then took a hold of Basilisk's shoulder and pushed her towards the window. The two of them vaulted out the way they came and bolted into the woods as quickly as their legs would carry them. Leah's heart hammered so loudly in her chest that worried about it rupturing. That'd be just her luck; leave the abode of the most twisted thing in the Shadow only to drop dead in the woods because she was a coward. She dropped to her knees some distance after leaving eyeshot of the Scar, her wings fell limp over her shoulders. Basilisk all but collapsed nearby, coughing like an asthmatic with broken ribs. She hauled herself to her knees and continued to hack up a lung even as she vomited into the dry leaves beside her. Leah collected herself and let her body vent out all the pent up shaking and heart-hammering it had inside. 'I won't throw up,' she inwardly commanded herself. Her stomach turned in response. 'I refuse.' The sound of Basilisk spitting and hurling her guts out onto the ground wasn't much help either. She thought back to pile of dead, deboned Wringers, slit ten times from head to toe. They were a new phenomenon in the Shadow, and yet they hadn't disturbed her nearly as much as old Morren had. He was like an infection, a rot. The longer he lived, the more corrosive and unhinged he became. Leah dreamt of bulldozing the Scar sometimes. Burning it would've left too much room for things to escape. No, she would surround it with gunmen and rip apart anything that tried to run. Only when the final building had been ripped apart by the metal maws of industrial machines would she set it all ablaze. It would be a beautiful funeral pyre deserved by the town that she'd known before Eclipse. The Witch came first though, the Witch's blood was her heart's desire, and so she forced herself to stand up again. Horrible as he was, Morren had given away something important. If she played her cards right, Leah would have her prey by the end of the night. "You good?" asked Basilisk, her face a sickly pale. "Yeah," said Leah. "We're headed for the caravan."