by Holly Evans
I held up my hand. “I have to cut off a dead witch’s finger?”
She waved off my concerns and carried on. “She was the strongest witch in all of Europe; I have everything else I need for the amulet. Go tonight, bring me back the finger, and I will give you everything you need.”
She pulled out a crisp sheet of white paper and wrote down some details in an elegant script-style hand. I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but she held up her hand to silence me.
“Please, Evelyn, go now. For Quin’s sake.”
I glared at her for bringing Quin into things, but what choice did I have? The paper gave me all the details I needed, the witch’s name and a guide to her location within the huge cemetery. She stood and looked pointedly at the front door; I knew when I was being dismissed.
15.
Concern gnawed at me and formed a pit in my stomach; my twin was out there somewhere. The longer he was gone, the more I worried that I wouldn’t get him back. I couldn’t lose him. My mind wandered to the last guy I’d lost as the tram paused at a red light during rush hour. Unlike Quin, who’d dated multiple girls at once and charmed every woman within reach, I only had eyes for one guy. I’d fallen head over heels for him when I was just fifteen. He was my world. I thought he was ‘the one’. Until I caught him in bed with a pixie when we were twenty. He barely even said he was sorry. The pixie had taken him off to the fairy world seven days later, and a big part of me was glad.
Quin had been good to me through all of it, we’d gotten drunk and laughed. He’d been calm and supportive when I needed a little quiet time. He kept pointing out cute men when we were out in the city, but I had no interest. I hadn’t been with anyone other than Christian. I knew I needed to move on. I desperately wanted what Quin had, the ease to fall into bed with beautiful people and live life. I squeezed my eyes shut and reminded myself that I was going to get him back, and I was going to try and live more. For him.
A quick look down the busy road told me that I was clear to duck between the red and white railing to cross. Everyone just ducked through the railing. It seemed like a waste of materials. I had to assume that it made people feel better to put them there and try to encourage safe road crossing habits. The little shed-like shops were full of brightly coloured flowers; they stood in contrast to the old wall just behind them and the large shopping mall not far to their left. I shoved my hands in my pockets, lowered my head, and slipped past the flower shop down the narrow alley towards the cemetery.
The sun had set, and the stars were starting to emerge between the white fluffy clouds that were coming in at an alarming speed. I hoped another storm wasn’t coming. I didn’t want to be trudging around the cemetery in a damn storm. The note had said to go to the northwestern corner where the oldest graves were. It had been a few years since I’d stepped foot in the large cemetery; it was the biggest in Prague and easy to get lost among the myriad of tombs, gravestones, and chapels.
Shadows stretched around the neatly arranged gravestones. I ran my fingers down over my blades, reminding myself that there was nothing to be scared of; I was the scariest thing in the night. Pushing my shoulders back, I picked up my pace. I had an ancient witch’s middle finger to procure. The ivy crawled up the old trees and slowly choked them; I’d left the nicely kept area of the cemetery and was firmly into the overgrown chaotic area. Headstones sat at awkward angles and were crammed together; stone angels wielded great swords, but still lost the war against the creeping undergrowth.[ Expand description] I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a normal life where my biggest concern was a pissy boss. There would be no more wandering around cemeteries at night, no more redcaps or lycans. I pushed the thoughts aside; they were foolish at the best of times and potentially dangerous at that moment.
The note told me to keep going for another hundred feet or so, I was looking for a small mausoleum with runes engraved on the outside. I was surprised people had allowed them to be quite so blatant; it was supposed to be Christian holy ground after all. A rustling noise came from my left. I paused and fingered the hilt of my knife. It was probably only a fox, but I was on edge; something seemed very wrong about the entire situation. It would have taken an incredible witch to displace Serena, let alone drive out her entire coven.
The rustling came again; it was closer. I slowed my pace and listened. A second rustling came from behind it before a twig snapped. It was approaching. I began to draw the blade from its sheath. A man appeared from the darkness wearing all black save for a neon green tie around his throat. His pale skin practically shone under the faint starlight, ice-blue eyes glaring at me while a greyish cracked tongue flicked over thin lips. I tried to hold back my revulsion. He didn’t look much fresher than the corpses he played with. His skin hung a little too loosely around his neck, bringing it to almost pool around the lurid green silk of the tie. I hadn’t thought there were any necromancers left in the city.
He lips spread into a wide smile, revealing yellowed teeth; his voice was rasping and hoarse. “I know you.”
A shiver ran down my spine. His voice held the whisper of death. He had no control over me, or my body, but the instinctual understanding that he was wrong was very present. I pulled my blades and listened for any of his puppets. Rustling came from behind me. I thought I heard a faint groan somewhere in the darkness. He pursed his lips and took a shuffling step closer to me. The black fabric of his trousers was pitch, it almost swallowed the light around it. The bottoms were scuffed and frayed, a little long and sitting over mismatched black shoes. His movements were slow, his feet barely left the ground. I wasn’t fooled. I remembered the stories about necromancers; their power comes from death. The cemetery had enough death energy in it to allow him to move just as well as I could.
“You’re one of the Hawke twins. I knew your parents. I know what they did.”
He added emphasis on the final word. His eye glinted with malice much the same way a cat’s did as it toyed with a trapped mouse. My parents had been hunters; I assumed that he meant they’d killed some of his family or something equally good for the world. Yet there was a flicker of doubt in my chest.
He looked over his shoulder at the mausoleum. “Are you here for my bride?”
“Your bride?” I asked.
His grin widened much like a snake, his face split in two giving him an even eerier appearance. The skin folded and shifted, creasing around his eyes. “Yes, I’ve been trying to reach Beatrix for some time. She’s my love; I will raise her and have her at my side for the rest of time.”
His hand moved to his chest and his eyes flickered shut for a brief moment. If I thought necromancers were capable of emotion, I’d have thought he genuinely loved whomever Beatrix was. The idea sickened me. A trickle of fear slid down my spine; if he succeeded in raising and controlling a witch of that power, then he’d be close on unstoppable.
“Serena sent you, didn’t she? I know all about the amulet and her situation.”
His eyes hardened once more. He stood taller and set his shoulders back. In one fluid movement, he changed from a decrepit old corpse to that strong man that was staring me down. The necromancer’s creatures shuffled into view. Haggard corpses with flesh that hung off their bones.[ describe] I looked between him and the zombies that were starting to surround me; they were between me and my goal. I couldn’t allow that.
16.
The necromancer shook his head lightly before he began moving his hands much like a conductor.
“We could have been great together.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant me and him or him and Beatrix. Both options triggered my gag reflex. His hands started with slow, languid movements. His bony fingers soon began to twitch, the tips worn down revealing the sharp points of the bone beneath the thin skin. I was almost entranced for a moment. His pale, verging on translucent skin took on a soft grey-green glow as the magic built within him. The zombies were old and slow; the necromancer clearly hadn’t made any new ones for a while. I was m
ore than a little glad of that. I wouldn’t have had much of a chance otherwise. I lunged at the necromancer and suddenly had two zombies between me and him. They had moved with incredible speed out of nowhere. The fight wasn’t going to be quite as simple as I’d hoped.
I kicked the woman on the left; my foot went clean through her sternum and broke her spine on the other side.[ Expand her reaction] It took me too long. The other zombie drove his elbow into my thigh;[ Expand his body position] the sharp joint sent pain radiating through my leg and knocked my balance. I stepped back and moved to my right, not taking my eyes off him as his female friend crumbled to the ground. The necromancer had made a break into the shadows. There was no time for caution. I put my blades back in their sheathes before I drove forwards and landed a right hook to the zombie’s jaw, twisting his head to a sickening angle. I continued with a knee into his hip joint. It was enough to make him pause; I took advantage and grabbed his head between my hands, twisting with as much force as I could muster. The sound of his brittle spine snapping was incredibly satisfying.
The other zombies shuffled around me, blocking my path to the mausoleum. I ducked and danced between them. My blades wouldn’t have been much good, as I needed to break their necks and decapitate them. My blades were good for slicing flesh, not breaking bones. I hated zombies. I shattered one’s knee while ducking under another’s clumsy punch. The small man crumpled to the ground and reached out, trying to claw at my legs. I stomped down on his skull before I kicked the legs out from under the broad man next to him. The distinctive sound of stone scraping on stone cut through the air. The runes should have kept the necromancer out; he must have spent decades trying to break them.
I held back the scream when teeth sank into my shoulder. I refused to give it the satisfaction. I slammed the heel of my hand into its forehead before I mule kicked back and shattered its fragile pelvis. Warm blood trickled to my collarbone and between my shoulders. I cursed and kicked the offending zombie’s head as hard as I could, causing the skull to crack and crumble on impact. That left me with the big man that could have been an American football player when he was alive.
He grinned at me; half of his teeth were missing along with one of his cheeks. I knew I was going to have nightmares about that for weeks to come. He lowered his shoulders and charged at me with his arms wide, hoping to tackle me to the ground. I couldn’t go down. I’d be screwed. He was easily twice my size; I couldn’t match his tackle. I crouched at the last second, putting me under his torso. I grabbed his legs and stood up, throwing him over the top of me. He landed with a crunching groan. I took the opportunity to stamp down on his ribs. His sharp bony fingers sank into my calf. I ignored the agonising pain and put all my weight down through his ribs and brought my other foot down to stamp on his throat.[ expand] He clawed at me frantically, but I freed a leg and kicked his jaw as hard as I could. His hands fell limp. I ignored the pain and blood and ran to the mausoleum. I was not going to allow that necromancer to get his hands on my prize.
The necromancer was casually leaning against the door to the mausoleum. His joints sagged beneath him, his skin looking more ashen than it had before. A smile slowly spread across his face as his glassy eyes watched me approach. He was trying to dig his fingers into the gap that had formed around the stone door while maintaining a calm and composed appearance. His chest heaved and his ribs rattled with each breath. Yet, the gap was widening. I couldn’t allow him entrance, he was not going to steal Beatrix from me. My twin’s life was hanging in the balance.
The runes were wavering; the faint light that radiated from them was barely perceptible. The smile on his face widened and he pushed himself to stand a little taller.
“Kill me and you’ll never get answers about your parents. You want to know what happened to them, don’t you?”
I stopped dead in my tracks; we had tried to find out what had happened to our parents for years. The idea that the filth before me had answers was tantilising. I kept the blades raised and waited for him to speak again. My heart was pounding in my chest. The pain from my injuries was growing. I was ready for the night to be over. His harsh, rasping laugh filled my ears. My patience vanished. I lunged and sank my left blade into his soft stomach. I twisted it and dragged it out.
He continued to laugh, before he said, “You’ll never know who they really were.”
I hacked at his neck. Black blood oozed out of his injuries as he slumped to the ground, a lifeless sack of bones in a pitch-black suit. I wiped my blades on his awful green tie. It was better than getting his filthy blood on me. His taunting rang around my head; I pushed it aside and got down to the job at hand. Serena owed me for saving her witch from becoming a necromancer’s bride.
The small stone that Serena had given me with her note practically hummed as I pulled it out of my pocket. The runes all faded into nothingness before I stepped into the mausoleum. Finally, something was going to plan.
17.
Things didn’t keep going my way for very long. I’d barely stepped into the small stone room before a collection of large cat-beasts appeared from the shadows. Their deep green eyes bored into me, waiting for me to make my move. I cursed under my breath and decided to get things rolling. They had the advantage in the darkness, and their long limbs and sharp claws certainly didn’t help my cause. They looked like average house cats, if house cats had been given steroids and grown to the size of jaguars. [ describe]
They all growled, an eerie deep rumbling noise that ended in a high-pitched yowl. That was my warning before they closed in around me, which wasn’t hard given the small space. A silver tabby leapt up onto the stone sarcophagus; its face was level with mine as its muscles coiled and it prepared to take me apart. I slashed its face, causing it to yowl in pain. A great ginger thing pounced on me from somewhere near the entrance, knocking me to the floor and pushing all the air from my lungs as I landed on the cold stone. I tucked my knees up as much as I could and kicked it off, sending it flying into the far wall. I barely had a chance to get into a crouching position before another tabby was swiping at my upper arm.
I hit it in the side of the head with the hilt of one blade before I slashed its throat with my left hand. The hissing and screeching noises were deafening. Everything became a blur of pain, fur, and more unbearable noise. [ Write out instead of glossing]The cats worked as a team; when I had one almost pinned down, another sank its teeth into my leg. I had to keep twisting and slashing at them until finally no more came for me. I was panting for breath when I finally dispatched the last of the witch’s guardians; I cursed Serena for not bothering to warn me about them. My leather jacket was ruined, but it had protected me from of the more vicious attacks.
My breathing returned to normal relatively quickly, but the pain only increased as I leaned over the stone sarcophagus. The moon had already risen by the time I pressed my shoulder against the lid and braced my foot against the far wall to give me some extra leverage. It moved with startling ease, causing me to almost fall on top of the skeleton that inhabited the space. I tried to hold back my revulsion at the task and made quick work of cutting off the middle finger. It was still covered in thin leather; my gag reflex was difficult to contro[ describe]l. Once my prize was safely tucked away in the inside pocket of my jacket, I tried to pull the lid back in place.
A gurgling groaning sound came from the entrance. Fabric brushing over concrete caught my attention. I continued tugging on the lid as hard as I could. The scent of honey and lilies began to fill the air. I knew that necromancers were hard to kill; I wasn’t even sure if they could technically be killed, as they weren’t entirely alive. Shaking my head, I stopped the line of thought before it could go any further.
When the lid was halfway back in place, I turned and saw the necromancer leaning against the doorway. His skin had turned the colour of old ash and his eyes were almost white. His cracked tongue slithered across his thin lips as his eyes roved over the skeleton next to me. I ground my teeth and push
ed past the increasing levels of pain; whatever patience I had started with had vanished into the ether. I moved as quickly as I could and shoved him back into the wall with a soft crunching thud. His hand began moving, no doubt to summon some undead monstrosity; a quick blow to his wrist soon put a stop to it. Magic users need their hands to weave the magic, that was one of the first things Serena had taught me. Hedgewitches and alchemists use physical objects, they produce powders and such, but pure magic requires hand gestures. Cut off the hands, and remove their ability to work magic. I held his gaze as I pinned him to the wall by his throat with one hand and hacked off his dominant hand with the other. His eyes bulged as he squirmed against me; I thanked the gods for his being frail and old.
His skin moved more than it should have done under my hands; it slipped over his muscles and made me want to drop him and shower in bleach for a few hours. I thrust my blade deep into his stomach and dragged it up until I hit his sternum, but I didn’t stop there. I wasn’t risking him returning for round three. I was in agony, my twin was still missing, and I was tired of being screwed around. Every minute that passed, every distraction, was a potential nail in Quin’s coffin. I pushed the blade up through his diaphragm and dug around until it pierced his heart. He went limp almost immediately.
I threw his body into the nearby bushes and assumed someone, or something, would dispose of it by sunrise. When I returned to finish locking the mausoleum back up, I found the door closed and the runes back to their full strength. Pain was blocking my thought process. I double-checked the finger was still safely in my inner pocket before I trudged through the cemetery back to Serena’s. She owed me far more than a bit of information on a new witch.
18.
Serena fussed over me when I showed up back on her doorstep, coated in bruises, my leather jacket and jeans in tatters. I kept a hold of the finger for a little while, just in case.
