Read Banshee Hunt for Free Online

mistake as it was coated with some sort of neurotoxin. He could smell it.
     
    They were only simple traps. They might have been good for catching the unwary, but he was never that foolish. And in a way he actually welcomed finding the traps. They were the first concrete proof he had that he was dealing with a witch. But as the door to the dungeon swung open and his heart raced a little he knew that the real danger still lay ahead. He spotted the witch before the door had completely opened.
     
    In a heartbeat he recognised her just as he realised what she was doing. The girl had been tied down to a bed like a sacrifice and he could see that one arm was dripping blood from a cut wrist. The witch was using the girl’s blood to undertake some extremely dark magic. Blood magic. She was draining her.
     
    As for the witch she looked much like any middle aged housewife from an upmarket background. There was no pointed hat, no broomstick and probably no black cat. Not that many witches matched that anachronism. But the image she presented of a middle aged suburban housewife was a lie. She was nobody's wife because she would never have let another share her life. And she was probably far older than she appeared, using her crimes to keep her young. But really, all he saw when he looked at her was the monster she truly was. She was a woman without any understanding of human compassion. But then considering her crimes, how could she know such a thing? She would categorise other people as being either nuisances, servants or “human resources”. She was a sociopath, pure and simple.
     
    Unfortunately as he saw her the witch saw him.
     
    “Who are you?”
     
    The witch hurled the question at him the moment she saw him standing there in the doorway, obviously both surprised and angry to see him. Clearly she'd thought that her precautions were enough to protect her. They weren't. All her wards designed to twist thoughts and make people think everything was normal were useless against him. They had been even before the Illuminati had placed their protections on him. He was immune. His thoughts could not be bent. And while she undoubtedly had greater vitality, speed and strength than a woman her age should, he was sure he could handle her in a fight.
     
    But James was less concerned with her and what she could do and more concerned with her captive. A girl who couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen lay cruelly stretched out on what looked like a leather covered massage table. It looked like the sort of thing a physio would use when he treated strained muscles. But the witch was no healer, and the girl wasn't being treated for any injury. Instead she was stretched out on her back on the table, cruelly bound by her wrists and ankles, and with her wrist draped over a stainless steel bucket. It was there to catch the blood as it dripped from a ragged gash in her wrist.
     
    In time he knew, when the last of her blood had been lost and the girl was dead, the witch would take that blood, condense it and turn it into potions of her vital essence. Then she would use those potions to return her youth and vitality to her as well as to boost her own magic. It was a shocking crime, the magical equivalent of cannibalism. But unfortunately he had seen it before in his five years as a hunter for the Illuminati. He had seen even worse. And he knew the girl wasn't the witch's first victim. Nor, unless he stopped her, would she be the last.
     
    There was a lot of blood in the bucket. Far too much. The girl looked pale – too pale – and James realised he had only arrived just in time. Because she was close to fainting. And after that he was sure death would not be far away.
     
    “The Illuminati sent me. You're under arrest.”
     
    He told the witch the bad news as he stepped fully into the dungeon and watched the woman turn pale in turn. She knew who the Illuminati were and what they would do to her. All those with magic did. Though