Damien stared at Penny, his eyebrows slightly furrowed as if trying to catch what was going on. Penny stared back at him, her green eyes looking at him unblinkingly for what she did to him. She offered him a smile.
"Mr. Quinn. I don't think any of us knew you would be so easy. To not take notice of what was going on. Is it because of my lovely face?" asked Penny, "Are you wondering what happened? Where you went wrong?" she asked, both her hands going back to hold behind her back.
The black witch let out a heartily laugh, one that was womanly which didn't sync with who she really was. Her red hair which was frizzled and open, she pushed Damien's shoulder with her hand making him stagger. Seeing his face contoured in pain, she smiled.
"Penny," he uttered her names but Penny didn't take a step forward towards him. She stood still holding the tube with the needle that she had used on him.
"Really, Bellium. I am going to keep this one with him. Beautiful isn't it. I hope you die quickly," said Penny and he continued to look shocked as if not expecting that the girl would speak to him like this, "It is truly a pity for you to think I was on your side," she said before walking away and towards the table where the lantern burned brightly to fill up the light in the entire room.
"Why?" he asked her, searching for an answer. Penny turned around, her expression from being sweet had turned one to be of hate.
"Why don't you try to find out the answer to it yourself," one of her eyebrow raised and fell before she went back to working on something like Damien didn't matter anymore, "I lured you so that we could make use of you. What an opportune day it is today."
"And I couldn't agree more," the red hair black witch responded. Damien's knees suddenly gave out as if suddenly they had lost energy. His knees and hands on the dusty ground which hadn't been in a long while, "Damien Quinn, I must say you are blind in love and look what it has done to you now. To trust someone blindly," she clicked her teeth, her snake-like tongue slithered out as she spoke, "You will soon turn to darkness with nowhere else to go."
Damien looked at Penny who didn't bother to look at him. His eyes continuing to look at her before he started to cough.
"What are you trying to do here?" asked Damien, coughing, his red eyes had started to fluctuate between black and red color. The witch and Penny looked pleased with his current condition.
"Curious even when near to death?" asked the black witch. Walking around the room, she pulled the broomstick that was placed in the corner of the room, "What are you going to do learning about it? You are as good as dead. The corruption of your heart started to begin and it won't stop until it has engulfed you completely in it."
Damien who was in all his fours on the ground, coughing up until he spat the blood out on the floor looked up to look at the witch, "Take it to be the last wish of a dying man then," he said with bloody lips. He could feel his chest starting to contract as if it were trying to squeeze the heart and core inside it.
The witch came around to squat in front of him, "Councilmen and the others are foolish if they think that we will be setting up our marks only in certain places-"
"Bellium," warned Penny as if to not give any more details to Damien.
"Don't worry. Letting a dead man know a secret won't do any harm to any of us. It is the law of nature that once dead the secret dies within themselves with not a whisper heard by the living," the red witch then continued to say, "We need to pull out the source of energy to resurrect the power which was previously sealed by the white witches. It was the power for the black witches that we have to walk crippled in these lands with no help being provided to us. For years we have stayed hidden but no more. We shall take what is ours," Damien listened to what she had to say.
"By the mass murders?"
The black witch nodded her head, "That's right. We have tried with slaughtering people. Vampires, humans but nothing has come close to what we have been trying to achieve. So I decided to take a lead and see if we can gather the power by making use of the dead people instead of the living."
"Any luck there?" asked Damien, coughing more blood on the ground.
"We are working on it. With you here now, we will have more dead people before we start the ritual," Damien could tell by the tone of the woman's voice that she wasn't sure about the ritual's success, "Unfortunately, we have some things missing for the ritual which we have been trying to find."
"I could help you out with it if you spare my life," Damien offered for the black witch to look at him as if she was considering it, "I am very good in bringing in supplies."
"He is very good at manipulating. Do not heed to his words," Penny said from the back, warning the black witch.
But the red hair black witch didn't listen to Penny who stood behind. She looked at Damien intrigued, his handsome face was etched in pain but his red eyes that continued to fluctuate between red and black made her curious. She had heard about him, rumors that often spread between her sisters and the travelers who spoke about him.
She then said, "The things we need aren't something you can offer to supply easily. It isn't an item sold freely in the market. There are scrolls that have been lost for decades or even centuries. Scroll that once belonged to the white witch who sealed the powers of the black witches. Also, we are looking for a cousin on ours."
"Cousin?" asked Damien curiously.