Witch Hunter
Chapter 18
Home sick
...
Julie's eyes come onto focus. She's sitting in an SUV holding hands with Kelly. She looks out the window and sees the countryside roll by. She reads the Arabic road signs - Iraq? She looks down and sees rings on her fingers. She is wearing a traditional dark women's robe. Her hair is different, it's neatly braided into a traditional braid.
She looks down and sees a newspaper - June 16th. It's been three months. She looks into her purse and checks the documents. Dr. Juliana C. Burkhart, MD, PhD. She smiles. Now she senses herself. She can feel the Grimm blood - she must have needed another transfusion. The Grimm blood feels powerful and violent. Her body also feels different - more curvy. Her clothes fit perfectly but her curves are much more pronounced. She touches her hair, smirks, and squeezes his hand. Melissa has had Kelly to herself for a full three months and took full advantage of him. She's going to have to call Mom and tell her the news.
She pulls him in closer, gently kisses him on the neck, leans over on his shoulder and smiles.
He looks down at her and sees her eyes "How you feeling?"
She smirks "Fine. Iraq?"
He smiles "Melissa wanted to visit 'home' and see what it was like now."
She snickered "It's probably a lot different since she was here last."
He smiled "She said this part was all forests full of giant trees except for the farmland around the rivers. She's been hunting down traditional food trying to find stuff she remembers."
Julie smiles "Did she find some?"
He smirks "She finally found some in a couple small villages."
She's curious "What's it like?"
He smirks "Different."
She smiled "So, what was her story?"
He smiled "She said she was some sort of oracle who would prophesy for money. Her family had kept the girl living in some sort of drug induced trance since she was very young. Apparently the family did this so the girl's own consciousness never developed and it was just Melissa even after everything wore off. Her husband was some sort of priest at a temple that's now a gas station in Iran. Apparently she prophesied something about the wife of the Morsure brotherhood's chief and it made the woman mad. They killed her husband, everyone associated with the temple, everyone in the whole village, and then hunted her for six years before she finally escaped. The prophesy did come true, but that only made things worse. She said the Mauvais Dentes killed everybody in almost twenty villages while they were hunting her. "
Julie snickered and touched the scars on her left arm "So that's why she wanted to get marked when she found out you were one of them."
He smirked at her "I hear you may have taken advantage of that when Andrei was escorting you."
She smirked "It does have certain benefits." A hotel clerk in Yemen had been endlessly rude and demeaning to her since she was a woman. Andrei had dealt with it rather forcefully.
Kelly continued "She was living on the run making money witching people and giving prophesies. Apparently some witch hunters got word and started hunting her."
Julie smirked "Yikes. So that's how she knew about witch hunters."
He smiled continuing "They were apparently a thing back then. She said they hunted her for a couple years till they finally caught her. They were going to burn her but she somehow started witching all of them. She found out one of the men had just lost his wife. Somehow she witched them all and convinced the entire group that she was his wife. So then she was his 'wife' for over a year. She got pregnant but died in childbirth."
She smiled "Aw, thats sad. So I guess you are sort of like a three-for-one for her... Husband, Morsure brotherhood, and a Witch Hunter... So, what do you want to name the baby?"
He smiled "Depends on whether it's a boy or a girl."
She smiled "Feels like it's a Grimm, so probably a boy."
He smiles. "It could be a girl."
She smirks "Not in your family."
He smiles a goofy smile "Melissa wouldn't take no for an answer."
She kisses his neck and whispers "Neither will I. I always wanted a big family."
He gulps "Wait, how big?"
She smiles "You really didn't talk this over with Melissa did you? She's kind of old fashioned. She wants at least twenty, but I'm ok with ten or so."
He'a surprised "huh? Twenty kids? I'm already thirty years old."
She smirks, kisses his neck again, and rubs his leg "I know you're up to the challenge."
She was now smiling thinking about different things "Hmm, I wonder if Rosalee would sell us the spice shop."