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Meng Yao rushed inside the house, closing the door behind him and locking it quickly. He leaned against it and tried to catch his breath, heart hammering in his chest.
What the ever-loving fuck was going on ?
Was he suddenly losing his mind ? Was he hallucinating ? Had he been drugged against his will ?
Or had Xuanyu’s newfound flight of fancy somehow got into his head ?
Why was his goddamn boyfriend suddenly calling him a witch. And trying to kill him ?!! With some weird-looking dagger ?!!
It sounded insane, his boyfriend sounded insane, and he sounded insane.
Meng Yao must be having some kind of nightmare, this could not be real. He had always known their inheritance came with a catch, he had been waiting for it to turn up, and apparently there it was, but this was way way worse than anything he had anticipated. He had mentioned his growing worries about their inheritance and the strings that may be attached to it to Zixuan previously, but his brother, ever so optimistic, had brushed it off, saying they shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. But Meng Yao had known from experience that if things looked too good to be true, the penny would drop sooner than later.
Well, the penny had dropped. On Meng Yao. Typical.
Now let’s rewind back to the beginning to get a clearer look at the picture…
***
Meng Yao, the unlucky result of a failed affair, was barely out of his teenage years when he lost his mother to the illness that had plagued her for the last few years. Now without any family to call his own, he decided to look for potential siblings. His mother had never hidden from him his parentage nor had she built his father as a paragon of virtue, and though he had had opportunities to met his father, the CEO of a powerful company, on more than once occasion, the public antics of his sperm donor had made it clear to Meng Yao that he would only be a major blemish in Jin Guangshan’s seemingly perfect life. He never met the man and his father stayed none the wiser concerning the existence of that one bastard.
(Or all of his bastards, as it turned out.)
It took him a few years to gather enough information about his father’s proclivities and the women he may have gotten pregnant. Surprisingly, he actually couldn’t find that many bastards and only one, named Mo Xuanyu, could incontrovertibly be linked to Jin Guangshan. Either his father was being exceptionally cautious when he slept with women or he wasn’t as virile as people gossiped. The other possible brothers or sisters were only tenuously linked to his father, by some conjecture or circumstance, and Meng Yao didn’t see himself going up to people and ruining families based on such weak evidence. As much as he wanted a family, he wasn’t that kind of person.
Meng Yao also hesitated a long time before trying to find his older brother, Jin Zixuan, the only legitimate heir to the Jin Family. Jin Guangshan and his only son had had a fall out after the death of Madam Jin, and soon after their father’s death, Jin Zixuan had vanished from the public eye.
Half a decade after he started his search, Meng Yao was finally reunited with his two brothers, Jin Zixuan and Mo Xuanyu. Jin Zixuan had also been searching for his brothers after his dying mother had revealed to him the extent of his father’s depravity, and Mo Xuanyu was just happy he had brothers who would take him away from a family who was abusing him.
It came to pass however that a short time after they were reunited they received a most unexpected inheritance. A paternal grandmother, the one who was unfortunate enough to have spawned Jin Guangshan, had died but she had left them a house in San Francisco. The brothers had been stunned to learn they had another paternal grandmother, Zixuan never having even known about her, and they wondered why she had never made herself known to her grandchildren before and why she never tried to help. She had obviously known about both Meng Yao and Mo Xuanyu as the will had precisely linked the inheritance to the three of them meeting each other. And yet, when the two illegitimate grandchildren had needed help the most, she did nothing.
Meng Yao, of course, was extremely suspicious of an unknown parent suddenly giving them a house, especially with such conditions attached. To be fair, he hadn’t been as shocked as his brothers to learn of her existence. During his search for his siblings, he had read up on his father, discovering that the previous Madam Jin who had married Jin Guangshan’s father had not been his biological mother, but Meng Yao had never been able to find anything on his real mother. And Jin Guangshan never mentioned her to anyone ? Now she was popping out of the woodwork to play the doting grandmother ? In a manner of speaking, since she was dead but still giving them a house ?
Meng Yao was extremely suspicious, and if the inheritance had been anything else but a house, he could have convinced his brothers not to take it. As it stood, a house was a rather well-timed gift. Zixuan had relinquished all link with his father and wasn’t well-off anymore, Meng Yao could earn his keep pretty well but wasn’t swimming in money, and Mo Xuanyu was a young student in college with the standard financial trappings. All in all, a house they could own outright without a mortgage was something even Meng Yao would feel daft refusing, fishy situation or not.
In the end, Zixuan and Meng Yao moved to San Francisco first, finding the house in a relatively good state, needing only some basic repairs and they were able to move in almost immediately. They had been living there for a few months now and it had been only yesterday that Xuanyu had joined them.
The brothers being reunited again in the house seemingly started something. Or, if you asked Meng Yao for his opinion, ramped up the frequent of bizarre incidents cropping up since they had moved in; strange noises, lights flicking or plainly not working, a black cat sneaking into the house too many times, and the door of the attic which mysteriously wouldn’t open. Meng Yao was somewhat paranoid about it while Zixuan simply wrote them off as the oddities of an old creaking house.
Xuanyu, as he was wont to do, thought the whole thing fascinating when he was told, and on the very night of his arrival, decided that playing a prank on them with their old spirit board was a smart idea. As if the planchette could move on his own to spell the word ‘attic’. No fucking way. Did Xuanyu thought Meng Yao was that gullible ?
(The fact that, during the blackout that followed the prank, Xuanyu went to the attic, whose door magically opened for him, found some book of supposed witchcraft that he read out loud (!!!) and now thought they were witches like one of their ancestors, was something that Meng Yao was more than willing to ignore. For the sake of his own sanity.)
***
And now the penny had finally dropped.
Meng Yao had been on what he would have called a nice romantic dinner with his boyfriend until said boyfriend jumped the shark and tried to kill him. Not how he would have imagined the night to go.
This couldn’t be happening to him.
This wasn’t his life.
His life may be boring at times but at least it didn’t usually feature psychotic boyfriends with homicidal tendencies.
His life didn’t have witches and warlocks.
There had to be a sensible explanation for this.
Let him think for a second.
Wen Xu was most likely having some kind of a breakdown, a psychotic episode. He always had a tendency for violence that Meng Yao had stupidly overlooked when he thought he was in love. He finally snapped.
(Meng Yao knew better now and had been trying to find a way to break up with Wen Xu without it turning into a domestic; this could the perfect opportunity for him to just end things. ‘Sorry, darling, I don’t think we’re going to work out because, you know, you tried to kill me ???’)
(There was also the possibility that Meng Yao was the one having a mental episode and hallucinated the whole thing but he didn’t like to dwell on that.)
Meng Yao pushed way from the door, slowly breathing in and out, trying to calm himself. He would call the police, make up some story that wouldn’t involve the word ‘witch’ and everything would be fine. As he was reaching for the phone, his two brothers entered the hall.
“A-Yao, what happened to you ? You look scared to death ?” Zixuan asked, hurrying to his brother to grasp his shoulder, checking him over.
“I-” Meng Yao hesitated, not wanting to either sound insane or fuel Xuanyu’s imagination.
“We have powers now, Yao-ge !” Xuanyu cut in, oblivious to his brother’s distress. “I can see the future and Gege can move stuff with his mind. We are witches just like I told you this morning !”
Meng Yao cringed at his words. He did not need to hear that at the moment.
“That’s nice and all, A-Yu, but we have more pressing matters. My boyfriend, well soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, has gone all serial killer on me, tried to kill me and I had to kick the shit out of him to escape. He thinks we’re witches-”
“We are!” Xuanyu exclaimed.
“And he wants to kill us for our powers.” Meng Yao continued, ignoring his younger brother. “Like he did in the criminal cases we’ve been seeing on the news.”
“What?”
“My boyfriend is a nutter who thinks he is a warlock and he is killing people because he thinks they are witches. Oh, and he was only dating me to get to the three of us. I have wasted six months of my life.”
“Would it be poor of me to say I’ve never liked him ?” Zixuan stated. “I never thought him to be right for you.”
“I don’t disagree with you there but really ? That’s the only thing you’re going to comment on ? Not the witch and warlock thing ? Am I the only one here who thinks this is insane ?”
“Yao-ge, did anything else happen to you today ?”
“You mean apart from the suddenly murderous boyfriend ?” Meng Yao snarked. “No, nothing out of the usual. I had my interview at the restaurant, it went perfectly, I went to dinner with my boyfriend, and then everything went cuckoo.”
“I don’t understand.” Xuanyu seemed bewildered at that. “If it worked for me and Gege it should have worked for you. You should be able to freeze time.”
“Well, it could have been useful against Wen Xu earlier but turns out I can’t freeze time so we’re stuck with non-magical solutions.”
“Actually I’ve been reading the Book of Shadows and there might be something in there that can help you. You did say he was a warlock right ? I’m going to check it out.” Xuanyu turned away and rushed to the attic, leaving Meng Yao to glare in disbelief at his older brother.
“Don’t tell me you agree with this,” Meng Yao pleaded. “This is insane. We should go to the police and they’ll arrest him and he’ll go to prison and we’ll be safe.”
“If he is actually a warlock, do you really think the police will be able to help ?” Zixuan retorted. “Besides, does it hurt to try ? Xuanyu and I do have powers, even if you don’t want to believe it, and who knows, maybe it’ll work ?”
“Zixuan, please. I can’t be the only sensible person in this house.”
A voice yelled from upstairs, interrupting them.
“I found the right spell !”
Dammit.
***
Meng Yao couldn’t believe he was actually going along with this. Casting a spell to get rid of a boyfriend-turned-warlock ? How had his life turned into such a circus ? Why was he humouring his brother when he should be going to the police ? Why was Zixuan ?
(Meng Yao loved Xuanyu very much but his brother had a penchant for the dramatic. Power or no power, Xuanyu could easily convince himself he was a witch.)
He looked sceptically at his two brothers who had set the table for the spell. Sitting down, he looked at the doll which was supposed to be a proxy for Wen Xu. He felt like he was repeating himself again but this was utterly insane. It was never going to work and he was going to die and he would get to say ‘I fucking told you so’ in the afterlife.
(Maybe Xuanyu wasn’t the only one in the family with a penchant for the dramatic.)
“Place nine candles anointed with oil and spices in a circle,” Xuanyu recited, handing a rose and a piece of paper to Meng Yao. “Now, you take the doll and the rose, and you say those words.”
Meng Yao threw a last hopeful glance at Zixuan, who smiled back at him encouragingly. No help from this quarter then. He looked down at the paper and cringed at the words. Whoever wrote this had no talent with words whatsoever, he had seen better poems from lovesick teenagers, hell he had written better poems as a lovesick teenager.
“Your love will wither and depart from my life. Let me be Wen Xu and go away forever,” he said before sticking the rose’s thorns in the doll and throwing it in the bowl placed in the center of the table. “There we go, I said it, it sounded extremely silly, and now nothing is going to happen and we will have wasted precious time getting away from here.”
As he was saying this, smoke started pouring out of the bowl, even though they hadn’t put anything flammable in there ? Holy Peony, was it actually working ? Did it mean they were witches ? Or was he finally having a mental breakdown after the events of the day and hallucinating things ?
(Some part of him cynically wondered if this was a very ill-timed prank by his brothers and his boyfriend. He immediately brushed it off guiltily, because while Wen Xu could be the kind of dick that would do this, his brothers weren’t.)
Suddenly there was an explosion.
What the hell.
The rose and the doll were gone.
What the hell redux.
When Meng Yao said there almost certainly was a catch to their inheritance, he didn’t imagine anything like that. He needed a bloody drink, or two, or a whole bottle. He got up, determined to drink himself into a stupor, Zixuan following him, a grin on his face.
“Wait !” Xuanyu shouted from behind them. “It didn’t work !”
“How do you know ?” Zixuan asked in a worried tone.
“I touched the bowl and I had a vision.” Xuanyu answered, shaking. “It didn’t work. Well, it sort of did ? Wen Xu is now covered in giant rose thorns, which is like, extra creepy, but it did not kill him.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit. He’s probably coming here.” Meng Yao may have been panicking just a tad. “This is absurd, I knew we should have called the cops. What are we going to do now ? We can’t fight against him !”
Zixuan, in a burst of what Meng Yao liked to call the dumbest courage ever, turned away and rushed downstairs to the front door, followed by his two brothers, only to witness Wen Xu literally burst through it. So much for locks. Or doors.
“Hello, little witches. Time to die.” Wen Xu snarled as he advanced towards them, dagger in hand.
Zixuan tried to protect his brothers by throwing objects at him with his power, but he had only discovered them and his control over them was imperfect. He could only partially succeed in hitting the warlock and earned himself some pointed taunts. Meng Yao could scarcely believe what he was seeing. His brothers truly had powers; he hadn’t really thought they were lying of course but it was one thing to hear of it and another to actually see it. He idly wondered why he didn’t seem to have any ability ? Was his scepticism preventing him from being to do anything magical ?
They were trying to retreat to the attic, which, in Meng Yao’s mind, was a foolish plan. Xuanyu had already gone ahead there in hopes of finding some other spell to fight the warlock. Wen Xu suddenly rushed Meng Yao, who was still partially lost in his puzzling thoughts and didn’t promptly react, reducing the distance between them to almost nothing. He raised his knife, intent on striking Meng Yao. Caught in a rush of sheer terror and foregoing his usual fighting response, the young man instinctively threw his hands in a protective stance, up in the air.
Wen Xu froze.
Literally froze like a TV show that had been paused.
It was particularly uncanny but life-saving at the moment, and Meng Yao let out a shaky breath, okay, so he had powers, he wasn’t the odd one out, he was a witch. Cue applause and glitter. His power seemed to be the ability to freeze time which, considering the number of times he would have loved to be able to freeze time before in his life, was spitefully ironic. He looked at Wen Xu, fascinated by the way he was frozen in time, poking at him once before he came back to himself and realised this was the perfect chance to escape.
Or it would have been if Wen Xu hadn’t unfrozen the very next second.
Damn, damn, damn.
In a leap of faith, Meng Yao threw his hands up again and manage to freeze him a second time. His power couldn’t freeze people for a long period of time then, there wasn’t a moment to lose. He took one step towards the front entrance before Zixuan grabbed his hand and started dragging him towards the stairs.
“Zixuan, what the fuck are you doing ? We should leave right now while we can ! We can go to the poli-”
“Remember what I said earlier ?” Zixuan explained. “The police won’t be able to help, they would only get killed.”
“So what ?” Meng Yao snapped. “We should be the only ones to die ? Zixuan, please think this through. Going to the attic is just making it easier for him to get to us when he unfreeze.”
Zixuan ignored him. When they reached the attic, Xuanyu was once again holding the Book of Shadows and perusing it.
“I can’t find anything else. I don’t know what we’re going to do. This is absurd, we just got our powers and now we could die ?!!”
They heard a roar from below. Someone had got unfrozen and was doubtless coming for them. Meng Yao, in his opinion the only sane brother left, closed the door and tried to bar it with any piece of furniture he could find, a dresser here, a chest there, even a goddamn hat stand. He knew it probably wouldn’t hold him for long but at least he would be able to say he tried something.
“I’m going to get you, witches, I’m going to get you and you’re going to suffer.” The voice was getting closer and closer.
Whatever type of warlock Wen Xu was couldn’t be stopped by a mere physical barrier and he just bulldozed through with little effort, entering the attic with a truly terrifying snarl on his face.
“I’m one of millions, in place you can’t imagine, in forms you would never believe. We are hell on earth ! You will never be safe and you will never be-”
“Could you ever stop monologuing ?” Meng Yao interjected. “You sound like some corny villain in a b movie.”
“Did you think you witches could do anything against me ? I’m more powerful than you could ever be ! You’re nothing and soon you will be dead !”
Not planning on stopping the monologuing then. Fuck, they were trapped with a certifiable warlock with delusions of being quick-witted (spoiler : he wasn’t) with no way out, save a dive from the attic window, which, honestly, looked more and more tempting. A few broken bones he would definitely take over death.
“Remember the words written behind the spirit board ?” Xuanyu whispered, out of the blue. “About the power of three ? I think we should try that. I think maybe that’s what grandma wished ? That’s why she waited for us to get together ?”
“‘Grandma’ ?” Meng Yao spluttered. “Xuanyu, we didn’t even know the woman ! It could have been a trap this whole time, now that I think of it, maybe she was allied with him,” Meng Yao pointed at a laughing and still ranting Wen Xu. “He did mention her. Also this is wildly illogical, why would repeating one sentence over and over be protection against a warlock ? What kind of incantation is that ? Some form of self-suggestion ?”
“We have to try,” Xuanyu insisted.
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
“A-Yao, just say it, we don’t have a lot of time,” Zixuan said, using his ‘I’m the oldest here and you will listen to me’ voice.
Meng Yao groaned out loud but ultimately joined his brothers in saying the words.
“The power of three will set us free, the power of three will set us free, the power of three will set us free…”
They kept repeating it over and over again, Wen Xu still making threats in the background. If he ever planned on attacking instead of just standing there throwing taunts at them, Meng Yao had no clue. To his amazement however, the incantation seemed to have an effect, creating some sort of wind to shield them for Wen Xu’s attacks.
(Too bad it couldn’t actually shield them for the raving and ranting, it was getting mind-numbing. He didn’t even think Wen Xu was paying attention to what happening, more interested in listening to the sound of his own voice. Which, when Meng Yao really thought about it, wasn’t much of a revelation.)
It killed him in the end, although Meng Yao wasn’t sure killing was the right word ? Disintegrated him ? Send him to hell ? Making him vanish into the ether ? Whichever way, Wen Xu had disappeared and that was all that mattered at the moment. They were safe. Meng Yao collapsed to the floor, out of breath.
“I definitely need a drink now.”
***
“Did you see that ?” Xuanyu was almost bouncing, pacing in the kitchen. “The power of three saved us ! Our family bonds saved us ! This is soooo cool !”
“A-Yu, I love you but please, we almost just got killed, could you wait before having nerdgasm about family being a cool superpower ?” Meng Yao was nursing his second drink, the first one having gone down rather quickly.
“At least I guess our lives won’t be boring now.” Zixuan said, coffee cup in hand.
“Zixuan !”