Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 33: Adrian Thorne
Thorne’s first kill was Althea, Mistress of the Sabina Coven.
She was sitting in the rocking chair that the Keeper’s Boy had built especially for her those oh so many years ago, when she felt the assassin cross the wards set into the doorway of her house. They should have stopped him. but he passed through them as if they were made of crepe-paper.
Althea had known he was on his way. She still had friends among the Red Queens. All it had taken was a discreet call from one of them to tell they had decided she must go. The assassin had been dispatched: the fabled warlock the Queens had bound centuries ago to punish those who dared to break the covenant. She had immedialty sent the apprentices away. There was no need to put them in harm’s way.
So, it was no surprise when he walked out onto her back porch.
She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“It is good to see you,” he said simply.
His eyes said more.
“Hello, my love. It’s good to see you too after all these years. Sweet mother, you haven’t changed a bit. Still a rogue. Still too handsome for your own good”
This man had been her first and only lover sixty years ago. They’d had a romantic, illicit affair the summer she was in Boston studying for her 13th circle testing. The memory of those nine months was the most precious thing she owned.
He nodded with a sad smile. His eyes had a faraway look. She could see he remembered their time as well.
“Who else have you come for?”
“They want your Keeper gone, as well as Anna, Temperance, and the Van Horn’s hexer girl. Did she really manage a deirfiúracha m’fhuil binding?”
Althea nodded. “The girl has talents and strengths none of us expected. She has Katherine by her side as well. I fear she is far too much for you.”
“I expect she is,” she could hear the satisfaction in his voice. He was as tired of it all as she was, maybe more so.
He knelt, caressed her hair with a trembling hand and kissed her. “Goodbye, my love.”
And death gently gathered Althea, Mistress of the Sabina Coven, into a final, warm embrace.
Adrian Thorne pulled off the secondary road onto the driveway that led up to Keeper House. He snatched a tiny shard of black flint out of his pocket. The geas that the Red Queens laid on him so many decades ago determined his path and pace. He smiled a serene smile, got out of the car, and faced his fate.
Two little girls came out from behind the house.
“Hey, Mister, have you seen our dog. Her name is Molly and she’s yellow and very friendly. She left last night for an adventure and she hasn’t come back.”
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