41
This time, when she returned to herself, the shade was gone.
The lug wrench bucked in her hand as she slipped it through her belt, the metal icy against her skin. She set off toward the house, eyes and ears alert to any further obstacle, but she reached the edge of the clearing without further incident.
Margrave’s retreat was a large Victorian manor house: a tall, boxy building with ivy growing up to the first floor and a large conservatory built off the back. From her vantage point within the tree line thirty yards from the side of the building, the place looked deserted but for a single car parked in the front drive.
Gravel crunched under her feet as she slunk up to the house and circled the outside, peering through windows. She located Miranda and the rest of the circle in a large room toward the back. Twenty or more people stood around in awkward positions, as if frozen in a game of statues, eyes closed in intense concentration. Miranda was among them, in the back, as oblivious to the world around her as everyone else, with no way to attract her attention. Gosha would have to retrieve her.
Although the windows were unlocked, she struggled with the warped old wooden frames to get them to open, trying several before she found one that would budge enough for her to get through. As her feet touched the bare, worn floorboards, the dark stain of widow’s weeds spread across her field of vision. Her heart raced as the blot spread almost to its fullest. She didn’t have much time.
With so many bodies packed in close, the air was dank and stale. The Influence in the room was a swirling mess, a dense stew in which the members of Margrave’s inner circle steeped, the power flowing through each of them, feeding back on itself to generate a reservoir of potential. Margrave had built himself a great battery of human cells that would get more powerful as each of these people approached death.
She found Miranda standing with three others in a cluster by the wall. The ecstatic brightness Gosha had seen in Miranda’s face at the mews house was gone. Margrave didn’t need them docile and accepting anymore. Their bodies hunched, twisted, and contracted, tension gripping their limbs, their faces frozen in soundless cries of misery.
“Miranda,” Gosha rasped for fear of alerting anyone in the house. She had no idea how many more of Margrave’s distorted creatures roamed the property.
“Miranda! Wake up!”
She tried snapping her fingers in front of her face, but Miranda didn’t respond. Even shaking her did nothing. Miranda was lost in her inner world of pain.
Gosha paced up and down, fists clenched, struggling to think of what she could do to awaken them from their trance. She thought of all the times she had come to Miranda’s aide since they had first met. Drugs, money, bad business deals, controlling parents, and now this madness. Their relationship was a trail of worsening disasters from which she needed rescuing. The woman had a knack of always falling on her head instead of her feet. No one else in Gosha’s life required so much care, not even her children. She slapped her, venting her frustrations as much as trying to awaken her, and felt guilty at once, but Miranda was in so much agony the slap failed to register.
Gosha cast about the room in search of a solution. With nothing that could help, she closed her eyes to better sense the flow of Influence. There was a pattern to the flow. The heavy drift circled the room in a great, anticlockwise circle, dragging through each person and harvesting their life force. It turned her stomach to witness it: mass murder committed in slow motion.
The Influence churned around a still point among Margrave’s victims. She opened her eyes. A faint blue light flickered from a source obscured by the bodies of the circle. She pushed through and found a strange device on the bare floorboards, a brass and wood contraption with broad petals circling a central gem the size of a pineapple. Each petal was lined with copper wire welded into the surface in the shape of strange symbols. Arranged in concentric rings, the petals turned around the gem. The blue light emanated from within, shimmering in the cut surfaces. Her heart lightened at the sight of something concrete to deal with.
The lug wrench bucked as she pulled it from her belt, the curse writhing in the metal. There were people clustered all around her. She dreaded to think what would happen if she let it touch someone.
She tried to push the nearest person away, a bald man with a thick gray beard and glasses in a tweed jacket and argyle sweater-vest. He resisted at first, but once she got him off balance, he followed her mindlessly away from the device. An encouraging turn of events. If it came to it, she could drag Miranda away from here. She took a few minutes to clear the area around the device and make room to get a good swing. The stain of the widow’s weeds spread further with each passing second.
Her first blow rang off the brass with an almighty clang, but the device remained undamaged. As she raised the lug wrench for a second, the door opened. Three of Margrave’s men entered, one of them the squat, burly thug whose foot she had bound to Miranda’s floor.
“It’s the fucking witch.” He lashed an open palm toward her. The lug wrench flew from her hand across the room and embedded itself in the plaster wall without touching any of Margrave’s victims.
“Watch out, she’s tricky.”
He pushed his way through Margrave’s victims toward her while the other two fanned out to flank her. She wove her way through the forest of people to the lug wrench. Although it was embedded deep into the wall, she pulled it out with ease and ducked low to hide herself from the three thugs. The clustered victims became a hedge maze. The room was large enough, the assembled people packed in enough that it restricted the thugs’ progress through the room toward her and made it easy for her to slip out of their way. She moved away from the damaged wall, heading back toward the door where the thugs had come in, without giving away her position.
“Watch the door, Dickie,” said a thug with a posh accent.
She had no intention of leaving without Miranda. Tucked in a corner of the room behind a cluster of five poor souls that clutched at each other in agony, she paused to figure out a strategy. One of the thugs loomed out at her from the right. She whipped the wrench up at him and clipped his jaw before he could say a word.
* * *
He and his four friends perch on the leather couches in the sitting room off the college library, grinning at each other with excitement. Margrave stands before them smiling, a wall of leather-bound books as his backdrop.
“This is a great moment,” says the old man. “I’m so proud of you all. You’ve worked hard and risen to all the challenges I’ve set you in ways I could never have imagined. Kneel before me and prepare yourselves to take the oath.”
* * *
The scene changes. The young man is older, stooped over a bed in a hospital ward. His father lies there, ragged and unshaven, cheeks sunken, lips dry and cracked. Somewhere in the room an electronic beep counts out the seconds—once, twice, a third time, and a fourth—before turning into a long, unending whine as his father stops breathing.
* * *
The visions faded, returning Gosha to Margrave’s thug as he dropped to his knees clutching his abdomen. Dark blood gushed from his mouth. His skin grew flushed and bulged, great tumors erupting from his neck and head. He fell forward, his body limp.
Gosha stumbled back, appalled at what the wrench had done, and almost knocked it into one of Margrave’s victims. She wanted to drop the damned thing, but it was her only weapon.
“I think she got Rob,” said the squat thug as he and his mate headed toward her. She ducked again and headed off at a tangent away from their approach.
She clutched the wrench to her chest so as not to graze anyone and huddled among a large cluster of victims and stooped to mirror their posture. The other thug, Dickie, walked past her close enough that she could have reached out to touch him, but he didn’t see her in the late morning gloom.
He was almost out of range before she realized she didn’t need to strike him to take him down. Holding onto the short end of the
iron, she reached out a wobbly arm, almost grazing an unsuspecting victim, and touched Dickie on the shoulder with its tip.
* * *
The room is the same, tall bookshelves and leather couches of the college library around them as they kneel before Margrave.
“When you arise, you will be transformed. The first hours will be powerful and frightening. Be brave. Rely on each other and have faith in me. I will see you all through to the wonders on the other side. Now, repeat after me.”
* * *
A rugby field. Dickie catches the ball and runs as fast as he can. His heart pounds with exertion and joy.
* * *
He gripped his chest, coughed and collapsed on the floor.
“Dickie?” The final thug pushed through the throng toward the dead body. “Fuuuuck!”
Gosha stepped back and put more bodies between them.
“Fucking cow,” he shouted and clapped his hands three times in a staccato rhythm. All at once everyone in the room except for he and Gosha collapsed to the floor, puppets with their strings cut. The crowded maze became an open field, Gosha a vole without cover in the face of an oncoming fox.
The device in its tiny open glade of floorboards lay to her left. As the thug rushed at her, he tripped on the fallen victims and stumbled to his knees. She leaped across the room and snatched up the device, holding the lug wrench to it like a gun to a hostage’s head.
“Don’t come any closer,” she shouted as the thug clambered up off his knees. “This thing is cursed. You’ve seen what it did your friends. Imagine what it’ll do to this.”
She hoped he had a good imagination. She’d whacked this thing hard with the lug wrench, and it hadn’t damaged it one whit. The thug bent into a half-squat, ready to jump in whatever direction she might throw it.
She twisted toward the windows and lobbed the device at them with all the strength she could muster. Her shoulder screamed with pain at the effort.
The thug jumped with the strength of a tiger. Legs like pistons propelled him through the air toward the device as it crashed against the wall and fell to the floor five feet away from the nearest victim. The moment his feet touched down, she threw the lug wrench at him. The l-shaped bar spun like a boomerang across the room and struck his back.
* * *
Margrave stands above him as he kneels on the wet grass beside the river. Moonlight shines on the old man’s face.
“I will give you the oath,” says the old man. “I don’t think you’re ready for it, but I made a promise to your father.”
“Thank you, Master.”
“Don’t thank me until you’ve survived the ordeal. Now, repeat after me.”
* * *
A body strikes the speeding car, cracking the windshield and tumbling over the roof to land on the tarmac behind him. He stamps his foot down on the brake, and the car screeches to a halt.
His heart pounds in his chest as he opens the door and sticks his head out to see what happened. A woman’s body lies there, unmoving.
He slides back into the driver’s seat, closes the door and grips the steering wheel as if the car might throw him. He inhales great gulps of breath to stop his limbs from shaking. It takes but a moment for him to decide what to do next.
He presses his foot down on the accelerator.
* * *
The lug wrench hit him with no more than a thud, but his bones cracked, and his back snapped into an unnatural angle. He grunted a breathless scream as both his legs broke, an extra joint appearing above both knees. His spine cracked again and again, his arms breaking at every segment. His neck broke, his head snapping back and hanging limp as he collapsed on the ground, dead.
Stepping across the fallen victims, taking care not to tread on anyone, she winced as she looked down at the thug’s broken body. His shattered arm lay across the device, the lug wrench sticking out from under his torso. If she believed in god, she would have said a prayer. Instead, she pried the device out from underneath him, and slid the wrench back into her belt.
Under the base of the still-ticking device she found a series of small switches and a dial. The switches were arranged in three columns of four, and the dial had a brass ring with a pointer to spin around a ring of strange symbols.
Oh, for a clearly labeled off button.
She flicked the switches and turned the dial at random until the device made an unhealthy grinding sound and the glow from within the enormous gem went out.
42
Margrave’s victims began to stir, moaning and whimpering as they came to their senses. They picked themselves up off the floor and clutched each other for comfort. Miranda sat up, tears streaming down her face.
“Miranda.” Gosha navigated toward her through the slowly rising sea of bodies.
“Gosha?”
The lug wrench would be even more of a problem once everyone rose to flee. She pulled it out of her belt and slid it down the leg of her jeans, tucking her t-shirt over the handle. With it there, moving was a challenge, and running impossible, but she couldn’t risk any of these people being grazed by it. She had to stoop over Miranda, unable to get down on the floor as they hugged.
“What are you doing here?” asked her friend.
“Getting you out. Do you believe me now about Margrave?”
“Yes.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Yes, he’s a monster.”
“Come on.” Gosha took hold of Miranda’s elbows and pulled her up. “We have to leave now. He’s in the house somewhere. There may be more of his men wandering around.”
As she got to her feet, Miranda spotted one of the mangled bodies on the floor.
“My god.”
“Don’t look at them.” Gosha dragged her to the door, angling past others already on their feet.
“Damien.” Miranda pulled away from Gosha’s grasp to wrap her arms around a slender man Gosha recognized as Miranda’s admirer in the bar at the Cheyne Arts Club.
“I can’t believe it.” Damien hugged her back. “I thought we were going to die.”
“Come on,” said Gosha, pulling at Miranda’s arm. “We can’t stay here.”
“Gosha saved us.” Miranda refused to let Gosha tear her from Damien’s grasp. “Gosha, we can’t just run off. We have to take everyone with us.”
By now, all fifty or sixty people were on their feet, commiserating and letting their feelings be known to each other in a rising din of anguish. Margrave might investigate at any moment. Gosha had no way to stop him from enrapturing everyone once more.
She stamped her foot down hard on the floor several times to get everyone’s attention.
“Listen everyone! Run! Before Margrave comes! How did you get here?”
“By car,” said Damien. “We all parked in a field down the road.”
“Then head there.”
Sixty faces all stared at her with blank expressions.
“Now!” She clapped her hands. The crowd pressed forward toward the door in a mad rush.
She held Miranda back as the flow of bodies swept her along.
“Wait. Stay close.” Gosha wasn’t letting Miranda out of her sight until they were safe in Cheyne Heath.
Gosha and Miranda emerged at the back of the crowd as it rushed through the foyer to find Margrave standing between them and the front door, blocking their escape.
“Dear friends,” he said as if he wasn’t trying to murder each one of them.
“You betrayed us,” said a young man near the front of the crowd. “You used us.”
“Yes.” Margrave spread his hands as a priest might to encompass his flock. “It is a great tragedy. You are all wonderful, intelligent, creative people with so much Influence, but my need for it is greater than yours. With the generous gift of your lives, I will achieve power greater than anyone has ever attained in recorded history.”
“Maniac,” exclaimed a woman as the crowd pressed forward toward him.
Margrave’s skin darkened to the gray of tree bark. He gr
ew larger and larger until he towered a full head above the tallest of his victims, his clothing ripping at the seams. Branching horns protruded from his scalp and through the rips in his clothing, the tattered fabric tenting and stretching, turning his silhouette into a stooped perversion of human form. His eyes yellowed, his pupils lengthening to demonic clefts. Several of the crowd screamed as the surge of bodies fell back on themselves to get away from him.
“I regret what I must do,” he said. “Truly.”
He laid his gnarled hands on the two closest of the circle. They froze in place. Brambles and thorns sprung up around them to hold them fast.
The crowd broke, running wherever they could, but Margrave pursued, herding them into corners and trapping each of them with a touch.
“There’s no sense in running. I will find you anywhere you flee.”
Gosha and Miranda watched from the doorway in horror.
“Is there another way out?” asked Gosha.
“Yes, through the conservatory and the kitchen.”
“Show me.”
Another scream rang out through the house.
“Damien,” said Miranda.
“We have to get out.” Gosha took her hand. “I can’t do anything if he catches us.”
Miranda nodded, pursing her lips against tears, and struck off toward the back of the house with Gosha in tow.
The interior of the house was a labyrinth. Gosha could never have negotiated it on her own. She lost all sense of direction as she followed Miranda through corridors and around corners until they passed an open door that made them both stop.
In Margrave’s study, standing in a corner and calmly staring into space as if waiting for a bus, was George.
Miranda called his name, but he didn’t respond. Cressida’s torc was fastened around his arm.
All the furniture in the study had been moved out, and every surface covered with lines and symbols. Even the ceiling was scrawled with geometric patterns and mathematical formulae. Some were painted in thick, rough strokes, and some were etched on the walls and floor with chalk. Everything pointed toward George in his corner.
Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1) Page 28
