Alright, chapter nineteen is now finished and ready for you to read. I hope you enjoy reading a new chapter every week because it have taken me a lot of preparation in order to do so. Have a good reading.

Disclaimer: I don't own W.I.T.C.H.

"Sorry little fairy, I can't allow you kill the creature," he said.

Will looked astonished at the mysterious man and knew her parents did the same. "Who are you?" Will said and sprang up to face whoever this was. Her mom was also so surprised that she pointed the flashlight away from the creature and over to the mysterious man. And when she did so, Will immediate recognized the old man they briefly had met outside the inn not long ago.

"It's you! The old man from the village, but how did you…" Will began recognizing him, "Why are you helping that monster?"

"Oh you see, I have an agreement with that monster," he said and looked into the dark where the creature had begun pulling itself up. "I help the creature by giving it something it needs and in return it will give me something I want from it."

"And what would that be?" Will spat, "What in the world do you have that it could want from you?"

"You see, everybody have something that other want for themselves. Want or need... What it truly wish for is something small and seemingly insignificant, something that for most people are nothing more than rubbish and discarded objects."

Suddenly Will understood who this man truly was, "Henderson!" she practically yelled. "You are Doctor Henderson. The crazy man who went looking for the creature, you found the artifacts and brought them together to revive it."

The already dense atmosphere in the basement became almost suffocating while the named person twisted his face and made an angry grimace before he started so speak slowly. "Crazy you call me, cruel say others, unfeeling and ruthless," he said, almost tasting the words "That is what people call me. People who are jealous, people who fear, don't understand or have any ambitions of doing something brilliant on their own. I have pursued the unknown through all my life. The thrills of discovering the hidden courses that drive the human mind and make us what we are, and making me famous for my work. Then one day, I unexpectedly I found this strange creature, unknown for the science and possibly coming from an unknown world. I know about its gruesome past, but the creature promised me that if I could gather all the artifacts that binds it to this world, it would give me proof of existing worlds beyond our own. Forget about the discovery of the new world, the source of the Nile or the moon landing, soon everyone will know my name and what I have done."

"You are mad," shouted Will, "People will only see you as a ruthless murderer who sacrificed people for your own ambitions. Who will like to learn that creatures of their nightmares actually exist and how are you going to accomplish this? Do you seriously believe the creature will help you when you have set it free?"

"There are unfortunately a few things you don't understand my fair creature," Doctor Henderson said, emphasizing the last words so heavily that Will could see he was referring to her own enchanted guardian form. "I do not seek fame simply to only be admired, I do it because I want to. And if the creature ever want to leave this dungeon, it better stick with me because it is I who have most of the artifacts. True enough, I do not completely trust it, so the creature will have to help me before I do anything that set it free. And speaking of creatures, it also makes me wonder what you are, you looked convincingly like a human first time we met, but now I can clearly see you are something more…"

"You stay away from my daughter!" Susan suddenly screamed and took up a defensive stance beside Will and looked between the new threat and her daughter.

"Mom" said Will pleadingly, slightly caught off guard by her outburst, "Please, you have to keep an eye on the creature, it may disappear again. I will take care of this." But as she said that, she caught glimpse of a sudden movement in the corner of her eye and understood it was too late. The creature had gotten away to hide in the darkness around them. Will made a move to get ready to follow after it when she was stopped by Henderson's hoarse voice.

"Oh no, you don't," the old doctor said and pulled forth a gun from a pocket, pointing it towards Will. Both Susan and Dean became startled by this unexpected turn of events, but Will held her composure. "I have seen the fairy lights you made a little while ago, I do not now how you did it but I am sure I know why they disappeared. You see, the creature is a being of the night and it has its own magic that can suffocate all lights. It lives in all dark places and can hide in every shadow no matter how small. As long there is a dark place it will thrive and grow strong and in this room with all it's content there will always be a shadow for it to hide, because no light can extinguish all shadows. At least not here, but I will not take any chances with you. I do not know the source of you powers or what you are able to do with them but I warn you, I will fire if you make any hasty movement."

"What do you plan to do?" Will said, not intimidated the slightest.

"I want the last object from you."

"But we don't have any of those, that was why we came down here in the first place, to look for them." Dean said from behind his wife, having gotten himself up from the floor. He was still bleeding and clutched his upper arms.

"I strongly suspect you do. Throughout the years, I have managed to get hold of eleven of the sealing objects that bind the creature, but no matter how much I have searched, I have never been able to find the last one. That noisy woman must have found it and hidden it away, preventing me from obtaining my greatest goal."

"My aunt" Dean said.

"Betty" he snarled and looked with contempt at Dean, "Your aunt suspected I was hiding something, she was too observant for her own good. She was always looking after the patients and when some of them died, she began asking questions and secretly tried to follow me around. I told her if she wanted to keep her job, she had to stop poke her nose in things she had no business in. For a while I thought she had stopped but she didn't, she must already had learned enough to put two and two together and sought answers on her own when I wasn't around to monitor her. I don't know how she did it, but she managed to find the last artifact before I did and hide it from me. Without that I couldn't keep my part of the bargain and release the creature, but I knew she couldn't destroyed it because that would set it free. So I took my time and waited. As several patients had already disappeared and nobody been found no matter how hard people were looking, I knew they wouldn't look too closely into it if I disappeared too, so I faked my own death can you say. I thought that if I also suddenly vanished, she would think it was the creature's doing and let down her guard. I even made sure she could get hold on the institute when it closed, as I knew she would try to prevent people from getting in and accidently awaken the creature. But I could never find it, even after she died I searched everywhere without finding anything. What I found instead was a letter that would be sent after she was gone. I read it and learned she had a relative living far away that would inherit her; she said she would send an object that surely would interest him as he was interested in history."

"So I would take care of it without knowing what it truly was," concluded Dean and unconsciously let his right hand slide down to his jacket pocket and clutch around its content.

"So I took the letter and rewrote it, telling you to come over here and take with you your "lucky charm" and look at the institute, quite opposite of what she had written in her original letter."

"Why do you think I would ever…" Dean began but never finished when a black shadow suddenly flew out of the dark and attacked him, hitting him down to the floor again before he felt himself being dragged violently away. Will and Susan spun around to see what happened behind them, but a "Stop!" followed by a click from the gun, made them hold back.

"I have seen the creature becoming even more solid since you came her, and I suspect it can sense the presence of the last object."

"You monster," screamed Susan, sounding both furious and scared at the same time, "Just take the artifact but let my husband go!"

"I would have done so," he said and smiled sinisterly, "That's why I brought the gun, but it seems the creature so badly want to take it. No harm for me to let the creature get it, for some reason the creature cannot destroy the objects, it need some others to do that and I already possess the rest of the artifacts, therefore I am in full control. Nobody here are going to do anything without I say so."

"Aargh, HELP!"

They heard Dean scream in pain and Will raced fast through her options in her head. If she didn't rescue her stepfather, he would be done for sure, and if she tried to do so, Henderson might try to shoot her or her mother in the process. But he had threatened if she did any suspicious movements… Will grinned darkly to herself; the old man truly did have no idea of the full extent of her powers. If he expected some sort of magic formula and hand gestures from her side, he was sorely wrong. She closed her eyes for a brief second, and before anyone had any idea of what was going on, Will had created a pinkish glimmering force field between Henderson and themselves, shielding them from any attack. Her magical shield surprised both Susan and Henderson who jumped when the barrier suddenly appeared and Will took this moment of confusion to grab her mothers' arm and shouted;

"Run!"

With a strong grip, Will dragged Susan with her in the direction the creature had disappeared with Dean.

"Stop," yelled Henderson as he lowered his gun and fired. A load pang echoed through the basement, but the bullet ricocheted off the force field and back to the surprised man, who barely avoiding being hit by it.

It was almost pitch dark. The only thing that prevented them from blindly running into everything was the little light provided by the flashlight her mother still was clutching and the dim pink light from her barrier illuminating the background. Will and Susan ran through the labyrinth-like basement and tried to locate Dean, the creature was obviously trying to take him away from them. They could hear the noise from all the crates that fell down while the creature dragged Dean along. That and the constant screaming and shouting from Dean who was dragged over them in the process, further and further into the dark. Will didn't know whether or not the old doctor was following after them, the only thought in her mind was to find Dean before something more gruesome happened to him.

I hope you like my story so far because it isn't long before it is finished now I think. However, I am not finished yet... I have made a little mini-series of one shots I will put out after this one have ended so you better stay tuned. But more on that later and until next time, read and leave a comment. I'd really like to hear what you think : )