"You are a witch," the man looked at her slightly surprised. Penny smiled, pulling out her needles and he laughed looking at it, "Is that the best you have? You must be a baby chick of a witch for carrying a bunch of needles along with you. Mommy didn't teach you anything?" he asked her. 

"She taught me well," Penny said before the man suddenly jumped to attack her. Penny slid away from him, ending up on the other side which made it easier for her to maintain distance with the black witch.

The man didn't know she would escape so easily and tried to use his knives on her again but she dodged again with ease that made him wonder if she was a vampire and not a witch. What the man didn't know was that this girl had been training with a pureblooded vampire since she had arrived in Valeria. 

Penny kept moving away and running towards the door which was open when she felt something creep up from the ground and her ankle being pulled, making her fall down on the ground. Before the plant could pull her further towards the man, she pulled out the needle and stab it to see the plant let her ankle go. 

She quickly moved away, the man giving her time as if he were trying to prolong her death. Drawing the needle again would take time, thought Penny to herself. Her eyes darted to look at the door which was in front of her and the man who stood almost at the same distance as her away from the door. 

In a split second both of them ran towards the door. Penny went to get inside and the black witch who went to stop her from entering the house. She made it to the door and tried to close the door when the man loudly yelled in pain as his fingers were stuck in between the door. 

His yelling alerted the ones who were capable of being awake in the large house. 

Penny put all her might when it came to closing the door shut, hoping the black witch would move his hand away but it didn't seem to be the case right now. He was stubborn in wanting to kill her and the more she pulled the k.n.o.b of the door towards her, pressing his fingers between the wall and the door, the man's expression turned that much vile as if he couldn't wait to get his hands on her. 

She didn't know how long she would be able to hold on to it as her fingers were slipping away from the handle of the door. 

Letting of her hand before they would slip from the handle, the man staggered back in the force of the door being pulled. The next moment he leaped back into the house, raising his knife up ready to stab Penny when Penny pushed the two needles against his chest.

He stopped moving and instead fell flat against her. His body spasming. Pus.h.i.+ng him away from her, she took a couple of steps behind to see his body move as it fell on the ground. And then it stopped. 

She furrowed her brows. Normal witches were meant to burn until they were down to ashes once the needle would pierce them but the man still had a body that had not disintegrated by itself. 

With no one around them, Penny turned her head before going back to where the dead man laid motionless on the floor. The first time they had met, Penny had caught the st.i.tch behind his neck when he had bowed his head. 

Going closer, she checked his neck to see it wasn't just one stick but if one looked closely, there was a series of st.i.tches that went up to his neck and towards his head and down his shoulders. She didn't know what to make of it. 

With him yelling, Mr. and Mrs. Artemis must have got the signal that their henchman wasn't in good shape. 

Damien and the others were already inside here and she was the last one to get in. She pushed the body out of the house and locked the door. G.o.d knew if the man would wake up and hunt her down again. Penny had no time to play games with him but at the same time she realized, she had a gun. 

Taking the gun in one hand and the needle in another, she started to walk on the ground floor of the house of Artemis. She could feel the chill air sinking into her bones right now. It was past one in the night and here they were camping in the house which belonged to the white witches who had gone corrupt from the mind. 

This place was similar to the villages. Quiet and deserted with no housemaid in the picture, if she wasn't wrong she had interacted with the maids before. The first time when she had visited with Sylvia. The maids were fine but had they turned to mummified bodies with trapped souls? Because with the sound of bullets and the man screaming, at least one should have woken up to check but there was no one here. 

She could feel her heart beating with every step she took further inside the house. 

Earlier the house looked as if the ground floor had some lights but right now, she was surrounded by shadows and darkness. 

She saw a shadow move closely in front of her that almost made her heart slip down from her ribcage. The shadow appeared to move away and Penny didn't know if it was alright to follow something she was unsure of.