Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1)

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  “He had better not be dead, boy,” said Margrave. “If you take lives, your Emperor will have no choice but to deprive you of your own. All the time I invested in you will have been for naught.”

  George swept both arms to one side and Miranda’s entire living room set slid and piled up against the shattered front windows. With a speed impossible for a human being, he stepped between Margrave and his felled minion.

  “How many lies have you told me, old man?”

  “I am the saint of Desire, boy. Don’t get between me and what I want. Do you know who my Lord is?”

  His eyes turned a sickly shade of yellow, his pupils elongating vertically into jagged dark slits that cleaved his eyeballs in two.

  “The Horned God, the Bringer of Light, and the Fertile Bough.”

  As he spoke, his skin thinned across his bones. His face turned waxy and ashen as horns of bone and wood sprouted from his head. His teeth grew ragged and gnarled.

  “I am saint of the Devil, boy,” he said, advancing on George. “I don’t have to kill you to absorb your power. Consent and you could become champion of my new sphere. Just imagine what we might achieve together under the reign of a crowned devil, Desire and Authority merged into a single faction so extraordinary the other spheres would tremble. Surrender now, and you may yet survive this transition.”

  “I will never surrender to you.” George recoiled, disgust and horror playing across his face.

  He pulled his arms into a boxer’s stance and lashed out. Gosha had never seen him move with such speed and power. As his fist flew at Margrave, a golden sheen glistened around his arm, but whatever new trick he had discovered was nothing to Margrave. The old man caught George’s fist in his palm without effort.

  “You may be the quintessence of worldly power, boy, but I control what drives you.”

  George struggled to break free of Margrave’s grasp, but the old man held him fast.

  “Desire is born in many parts of a man’s psyche. It can drive you toward satisfaction, but also away from pain. What painful secrets are you running away from, I wonder?”

  A dark fluid seeped from Margrave’s pores and up George’s arm, the oily discharge wrapping itself around the golden glow of medieval armor that now encased George’s entire body. As the darkness spread across him, George screamed.

  “I need you alive, boy,” said Margrave. “I don’t need you healthy. Or sane.”

  As the men struggled, Gosha pushed herself off the stairs and edged across the wall to the fallen thug. If she could retrieve the bangle and somehow make off with it, she might avert this whole mess. Across the room, Miranda slumped against the wall, unharmed, her skin still glowing as her eyes stared in rapt wonder at nothing at all.

  The torc lay on the floor, inches from the fallen thug’s hand. Squatting, she leaned back against the wall and tried to reach across him to retrieve it without falling and rousing him. Her hand was inches away when Margrave’s third henchman, a small, compact bruiser of a man, coalesced from a haze of murky color. He seized her wrist before she could reach the torc and yanked her off balance. She fell across his unconscious partner, and he wrenched her arm up. A sharp jolt of pain tore through her shoulder. In the shock, she nearly dropped the lipstick in her free hand.

  “Kattak!”

  The keyhole of the breaking word opened within her. As she slashed the fingernails of her free hand across his legs, she pushed through it the small charge of Influence that remained in the wode sump. His denim jeans shredded, and deep gashes appeared across his shins and ankles. He dropped her with a grunt and staggered back.

  He threw Influence at her as he crouched and huddled over his legs to check the damage, but the wode sump absorbed it, heating up only the smallest amount. The power of Margrave’s henchmen was a fraction of what poured off Margrave and George. The thug threw Influence at her again, but realized she was unaffected and kicked a bloody foot at her head.

  “Barzhed!”

  She flinched and threw up an arm to protect herself as she yelped the binding word. Influence driven by self-preservation powered through the spell’s keyhole within her and spread out before her, hardening the air into a protective wall that absorbed the force of his blow before disintegrating in a puff of ether. She grabbed his boot, pressed it down, spoke the binding spell, and let it work as intended. His boot and the hardwood floor fused together. He yanked at his leg, trying in vain to get it free.

  On the other side of Miranda’s tiny living room, George was still screaming as Margrave’s seeping ooze enveloped him. The golden shimmer around his body intensified and became more distinct, his aura of medieval armor becoming so distinct and realistic she could see symbols etched in its plates as it boiled away Margrave’s slime into nothing.

  Emerson dropped George’s hand as if burned, but he only allowed it to distract him for a second. He reached a hand out toward the amulet where it lay on the floor by Gosha’s side. As it lifted and flew toward him, she slapped it down and spoke the binding spell, fusing it to the floor next to the boot of the still-struggling thug.

  “Enough,” shouted Margrave and swept his arms wide. Influence thrust outwards from him, knocking George, the only one still standing, to the floor.

  Gosha’s skin prickled as thorns and brambles burst from the hardwood floor. They grew fast, snaking around her limbs and holding her down with the strength of iron filigree. Across the room, the brambles encased George and Miranda as well until they were all pinned where they fell, unable to move even an inch.

  Beside her, the thug wrenched his leg, and his ankle snapped with a sickening crack. He pulled a ragged, bloodless stump from the fused boot. Bark-like tissue flowed out from the stump in ropes that coiled around each other to create an approximation of a foot.

  Gosha watched, helpless, from her thorny prison, sharp points pricking through her jeans and t-shirt into her flesh. George lashed out with a flurry of golden blades that scythed out from his body and sliced the brambles to shreds.

  A thread of panic snaked around her lungs and tightened. She tried the breaking word, piercing her fingers and palm with thorns as she pressed at the brambles, but without the extra juice from the wode sump, all she could do was prune the thorns around her hands. Searching for another way to set herself free, she remembered what Mrs. Dearing said about her mother’s teapot. The binding and breaking spells used together had been catastrophic to the china pot.

  “Barzhed.”

  She spoke the binding spell which had no effect—

  “Kattak!”

  —but with the breaking spell, the entire structure around her shattered into dust.

  Margrave’s thug scrabbled at the torc fused to the floor, trying to pry it free with a combination of brute force and a mixture of words and gestures to shape his Influence into a sharp rain that pocked the surface of the wooden boards around the fusion, but nothing he did separated the bangle from the floor. If she could have, she would have studied him to learn from his attempts at overcoming the binding spell, but she didn’t have the luxury of time. Instead, she jumped to her feet and aimed a swift, hard kick with the tip of her winklepicker boot at his temple. Her first kick didn’t slow him, but the second, third, and fourth had him reaching his arms up in defense. She had never been so violent before. It felt great.

  Across the room, George launched himself at Margrave, slicing his arms in front of him. Scythes of golden light cut through the air, forcing Margrave to stagger back.

  Margrave’s root-footed thug rolled around dazed on the floor, separating Gosha from Miranda. She stooped to try the shattering trick on the torc, but stopped herself. Both Rosamund and Mrs. Dearing had told her the wode sump would explode if it absorbed too much. The death snare was loaded with Cressida’s life force. What if shattering it triggered an explosion? She couldn’t risk it.

  The thug recovered his senses enough to get up from the floor on his mismatched feet. He rolled out his neck and shoulders, readying himself t
o go at her. To one side, Margrave cringed from George’s attack, parrying his blows with inky smears of Influence that coalesced out of the egg of his aura, both men oblivious to everything else around them. If she could get past the thug, she might be able to get Miranda out. They could drive to her mother’s house and figure out their next move from there.

  Though Gosha was tall, the other two thugs had towered over her. This one was more her size, but she’d never been in a fight before in her entire life.

  Each of the spells her mother had given her was a recipe, a preprogrammed event that, left to itself, would respond the same every time. She had already discovered how she could change this with instinct and brute force, overloading the parceled outflow of Influence summoned up by the spell word. What if she applied the same gentle coaxing her mother had tried to show her in her garden? She had already levitated Miranda’s vase. Perhaps she could shape the effect of her spells. Without the wattage that George and Margrave could command, and without the boost of the wode sump, she wouldn’t be able to project the effects far. She’d have to put her manicure to good use.

  She needed contact with the lipstick for it to work, but she didn’t trust it in her hand, so she tucked it into her bra, next to her breast. The connection with Influence on the village green had been vast and terrifying. It left her feeling helpless, a person lost at sea in a storm with nothing to hold on to and no hope of reaching dry land. The connection through the lipstick was smaller, intimate, a gentle power thrumming against her ribs that gave her confidence. She arranged herself into her best approximation of a fighting stance, half-crouched, arms up and hands open as if ready to karate chop the thug.

  “Stupid boy.” Margrave stepped lithely away from George’s assault with the grace of a Musketeer. “Shows of force will only get you so far, especially now I’ve tasted your fears.”

  His body flickered with the same smear of colors that his thugs had used. He fragmented into duplicates of himself that shimmered around George like images in a funhouse maze. Each time a different fragment materialized, it laid a hand on George in a soft and affectionate gesture. Each time George cringed and jumped away from him, flailing about with abject terror, an inversion of Miranda’s peaceful trance of joy.

  The thug lashed out at her with a fist. She raised her arms and crossed them before her, speaking the binding spell.

  “Barzhed!”

  He was much stronger than she. On her own, she’d have no chance of deflecting his blow, but, at her command, the binding spell solidified the air in front of her into a shield that absorbed it.

  She lunged forward, her hands tapered into spearheads, and sliced at the thug as she whispered the breaking spell with each strike, coaxing the spell’s Influence out through the tips of her fingernails, making them sharp as knives. Her nail-blades cut into the man’s flesh and shredded his clothes, seeping blood matting the fabric against his skin.

  It taxed her, mind and body, to coordinate the timing of word and strike, word and parry, exertion only made worse by having to speak while she fought. Though she was running out of breath, she beat the thug back. As a fighter he might have strength on his side, but she was more agile. Their combat became a dance of parry and thrust. Every fourth or fifth strike, he would throw Influence at her, but the wode sump enabled her to direct it right back at him. She beat him back toward the marble-topped kitchen island. He stumbled over an upturned bar stool and knocked his head on the countertop to fall to the floor, unconscious. Gosha crouched by the trapped form of Miranda to deliver her one-two combo of binding and breaking to free her friend.

  One of Margrave’s fragmented duplicates materialized behind her over the embedded torc and stooped to pick it up.

  “Damn all witches!” he cried when it refused to budge.

  He held one hand up in front of him and watched with his yellow, cloven eyes as it shriveled and turned dark, metamorphosing into the same ossified wood as his ragged horns. Satisfied with the transformation, he dug his jagged stick-fingers into the floor, piercing the wood, and pulled the bangle up, floorboards and all. He tapped it three times, whispered something, and kissed it.

  His other fragments, still at work tormenting George, vanished, dissolving into smears of color. The remaining Margrave shimmered, flickering like film running too slowly in an old projector, random frames replaced by a phantom apparition of Cressida. Even though the girl had been a cuckoo in her nest, the sight of Margrave abusing and perverting Cressida’s essence to further his ends wrenched at Gosha’s gut. She’d failed to save the girl’s life, but there was nothing to do about it now. Her priority had to be Miranda.

  And myself, she thought as she stooped over the hard-as-metal brambles that encased Miranda and placed her hands against them, thorns piercing her flesh. The combination of binding and breaking spells did their job once more. The twisted cage shattered into dust.

  George regained enough of his wits to lash out against the vicious old man with his golden scythe-blades, but the flickering Margrave and Cressida brushed him aside. Cressida’s ghost-image took the blows, great gashes spreading across her body that oozed black oil in place of blood. As much as George struggled to keep him at bay, Margrave drew closer and closer until he was able to reach out and press a thumb into George’s brow. George at once grew still. His arms fell limp at his sides, his expression blank.

  All the while, Gosha struggled to get Miranda to her feet, but Miranda wouldn’t budge, her body a dead weight.

  “She won’t follow you, Mrs. Armitage,” said Margrave as he flickered between his own shape and Cressida’s, the girl’s lips moving and the old man’s voice emerging from her mouth. “She is utterly mine.”

  36

  “Get up! Get up! Get up!” Angry blue sparks crackled from Margrave’s hands over his fallen henchmen. They jerked awake and scrambled to their feet.

  With the lipstick concealed in her bra and pressed against her bare flesh, Gosha could both feel and see the shifting flow of Influence in the room. The mirage shimmer was as real to her as the wan sodium light of the streetlamp shining in through Miranda’s shattered windows. The faint blue-glowing egg of Influence cocooning Margrave mutated as he flickered between his own form and Cressida’s into jagged shards that folded dark shadows into the surrounding air, shards that stabbed out to embed themselves in the hard-edged armor of George’s aura.

  Margrave’s third goon rematerialized from whatever he had done to keep the commotion concealed from the neighbors. Colors shifted and streaked across the doorway and coalesced into the man’s tall, athletic frame.

  “And you, Mrs. Armitage, have done enough damage this evening.”

  Another jagged shard stabbed out at her, but the wode sump held, the sudden heat a welcome pain against her chest.

  “Dammit!” shouted Margrave as his attempt to restrain her failed. “Hold her.”

  The two thugs grabbed her by the arms. As much as she wanted to struggle, to lash out with the power Margrave had inadvertently given her, she doubted she could overcome four people who knew what they were doing. Better to wait and bide her time.

  “Norman!”

  “Yes, Master,” said the thug in his perfect suit recently returned from outside.

  “Did you take care of the street for me? I don’t need a legion of busybodies from other spheres making things difficult.”

  “Yes, Master. All contained.”

  Margrave patted Norman on the shoulder, his hand going down as Margrave and coming back as Cressida.

  “You always were my most reliable follower. Norman, I’ve never needed you more than I do now. There are witches involved.” He gestured at Gosha. “I don’t know if she was sent here by someone, or if she means to cause her own malice, but it doesn’t matter. The old saying is true. Where there be witches, disaster will follow. This one has two accomplices. Take care of them for me. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Master. I’ll find them.”

  “No, dear boy.
Let me be plain. This is your special time. I give you, at last, your heart’s desire. I let you loose. I set you free. Give your everything and hold nothing back. Pursue them until they are no more.”

  Norman shifted uneasily and the other thugs exchanged worried looks. Mrs. Dearing said if an oath-bearer killed someone, it would poison the flow of Influence. The Lord or Lady would have no choice but to wipe them out. Margrave was asking Norman to give his life. Gosha couldn’t believe anyone would willingly make such a sacrifice.

  “But, Master, the Lord of the Quiet Dark—”

  “Our Lord is a demanding taskmaster who doesn’t understand the burden he places upon us. For so many years I have worked to be worthy of his gifts, as have you. I near the end of my journey, and I still have so much to achieve. You know we are under threat from all sides. You know the treachery of the Convocation of Saints. They would wipe us all from the face of the earth and steal what Influence we have for themselves.”

  The hideous protrusions of bark and bone receded into his head. His eyes returned to normal, and he was once again the image of a kind and tired old man. He shifted to become Cressida.

  “I am much older than you can imagine, my boy.”

  The Cressida image placed both hands on Norman’s shoulders and shifted back to Margrave once more. His jagged aura seeped out and enveloped his follower. Apparently, words were not enough to convince Norman to give up his life.

  “I have searched for decades for an answer to our troubles, and finally I have been given a solution. This young and inexperienced saint can join our Spheres into a force to be reckoned with in the land. We have the opportunity to become so powerful the very Lords and Ladies will tremble before us. I have worked so hard, and you with me at my side, but now it could all fall apart because of the meddling of witches. If this fails, I am at an end. I may last for a year, maybe five, but I will soon be gone. And when I am, there’ll be no one to protect you. All of you will be in danger. I know I’m asking you to pay the ultimate price, but you are the only one I trust to do this. You are the only one who stands a chance to end this witch and find the other two before the Lord of the Quiet Dark finds you.”