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

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  “George,” said Miranda again, moving closer, but Gosha pulled her back.

  “Careful.”

  “Why doesn’t he answer?”

  “He’s part of Margrave’s plan. Margrave intends to use you and your friends’ lives to steal George’s power.”

  “George has that kind of power? Gosha, we have to save him.”

  Gosha rebelled at the thought of lifting a finger to help George, her feelings still raw from the discovery that she had never really known him. But he was still a human being, still father of her children. It didn’t take much to convince herself he was just another pawn in Margrave’s scheme, as much a victim as Miranda, Mick, or Cressida.

  She hovered in the doorway. The screams from the front of the house grew quieter and less frequent as Margrave recaptured his victims.

  The decision was instinctive, her flesh telling her what she must do, overriding the litany of objections her mind spewed at her.

  “Promise me you’ll get away from here.” She gripped Miranda by the arms. “Run as fast as you can. Don’t look back. Follow the road out front till you get to the rest stop by the motorway. Call someone you trust to come and get you.”

  “But you’re the only one I trust.”

  Tears welled up from Gosha’s gut and strangled in her throat. She gripped Miranda in a bear hug.

  “Call your parents if you need to. They do love you, despite their craziness. If they give you trouble, I’ll come and get you again.”

  When she pulled away, Miranda was crying, too.

  “Run.”

  Miranda turned and vanished around a corner as Gosha wiped her eyes.

  The Influence in Margrave’s study flowed in orderly drifts that followed the directions of the lines and symbols on the floor. She took a step deeper in, careful not to tread on anything for fear of the damage it might do to her or George. The flow ignored her, wafting around her on its path toward him, where it spun into a lazy vortex.

  She reached across the circle drawn at his feet and yanked the torc from his arm. George awoke, his eyes focusing first on the surrounding room, then on her.

  “Gosha, oh my god.” He wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed him away.

  “You’re free,” she said. “You’d better run if you want to keep it that way.”

  He rubbed his face and staggered back to lean against the wall.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like,” he said. “I had no control of my body. I couldn’t move or speak. I thought I was going to die.”

  His aura of Influence was weak, the crown and armor gone, replaced by a hazy miasma.

  “But you saved me.”

  “It was sheer luck. If Margrave finds us, I won’t be able to do it a second time. Leave.”

  “I was so angry at you for many, many years. I thought you kept your secrets from me out of spite. I can see how you were trying to protect me.”

  “We don’t have time for this.” She went to the door. Random screams from the grounds punctuated the silence. “Margrave is outside rounding up those poor people. Once he has them, he can start his ritual all over again.”

  George looked at the markings on the walls and floor, seeing them for the first time. He put his hand into the vortex around him as if dipping his fingers into a river to test its warmth.

  “This was meant to be,” he said. “We were always meant to be here like this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see? Together we can turn the tables on the old man. We can put him in the circle and use all the Influence he’s accumulated to merge Authority with Desire as he intended, but we’ll take the spoils. He has it all set up. I can see exactly how he means to do it.”

  Gosha stared at him, mouth agape, appalled at herself that she had let sentimentality confuse her. She kicked at the nearest chalk mark on the floor, smudging the symbol. The orderly flow of Influence responded at once, a burr of disruption eddying in the space around the destroyed mark.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  She stalked over to one wall and placed her hand on it.

  “Kattak.”

  A crack spread from floor to ceiling, severing a handful of painted lines and breaking an elaborate diagram of concentric circles in two. The surrounding Influence broke into a chaotic spray.

  “Stop it.” He rushed toward her.

  She spoke the breaking word again, three times in rapid succession before the first opening within her could close. The entire wall broke into a craze of cracks. Influence blew outward, bucking out of control and tearing at the remaining symbols. The chalk blew into dust as the paint bubbled and cracked.

  “Damn you!”

  He lashed out at her with one of his thin beams of control.

  The wode sump held, drawing the power into it, but it grew warmer by a scant degree. George was still weak from his imprisonment.

  “There’s nothing for you here,” she said. “Get out before I turn a spell on you.”

  She drew the lug wrench out of her jeans, like a sword from its scabbard, and held it before her. The curse within in it shuddered, biting at her hands. George flinched and raised his hands to protect himself.

  “Just like a woman,” he sneered. “Treacherous and selfish to the last.”

  “You—”

  She swung the lug wrench through the air between them, venting her anger with the stroke.

  “Unbelievable—”

  She swung again, and he stumbled back to avoid its touch.

  “Ass.”

  Slipping on the floor in his desperation to back away, fear in his eyes, he scrambled out of the study and was gone.

  43

  Her heart raced with the exhilaration of facing George and sending him packing, even if the victory was a sham. Once his Influence returned to full strength and he had more experience under his belt, no amount of spells in her mother’s secret tongue could stop him. If he developed even a fraction of Margrave’s skill, he would be an impossible threat. If only she had been canny enough to aim George at Margrave. She might have been able to derail Margrave’s plans long enough for Miranda to get to safety.

  The sight of Margrave transforming into that hideous demon was almost enough to force her to turn her back on Miranda’s friends, grab Miranda, and flee. But now that Miranda was gone, she couldn’t desert them. If she didn’t go back, she’d be no better than George. The idea of returning tightened her chest and made her heart beat faster, made her muscles refuse to propel her forward. A mere effort of will wouldn’t be enough to overcome her terror.

  The scrawled marks on the walls of the study were all destroyed. The organized flow of Influence was gone, and yet the widow’s weeds were still there, curling around the periphery of her vision, edging close to their end. Freeing George wasn’t enough to save the others. She had no time to think or feel fear. If she was to be any use, she had to act now.

  She stuck her head into the corridor, checking the coast was clear, and slipped out. The house and grounds had become quiet, no more screams of fear and pain to guide her way. The house’s identical featureless corridors confused her, losing her precious seconds. She rounded a corner as Margrave’s monstrous back disappeared into the meeting room dragging behind him a whimpering victim encased in brambles and thorns. Gosha heard the thud as Margrave dropped his cargo and pulled back into the seclusion of her dark corner. He emerged again, his yellowed eyes glowing, and headed toward the front entrance.

  When she was sure he was gone, she ran in and shut the door behind her. The strange device was working again, Influence flowing slow and torpid around the room, though much less of it this time with only half of Miranda’s friends lying about the room in their cages like mummies in discarded sarcophagi.

  She used the feeble charge in the wode sump to bind the door and the entire wall into a single barrier. Perhaps getting through it would delay Margrave long enough to give her time to free everyone. The bramble cages crumbled to dust un
der her spells, but the agonizing effects of the device left Miranda’s friends traumatized, incapable of responding when she tried to shake them back to their senses.

  She picked up the strange device and flipped it over to look at the dials, but had no idea what she’d done the last time to deactivate it. Turning the dials and flicking the switches at random did nothing.

  The final spell her mother had given her crept into her mind like a cheap and insistent pop song refusing to be dislodged. This device was a product of order, of control. If she were to cast the final spell all that would be gone and the device would be useless, but at what price? She wasn’t prepared to find out.

  There was only one option she was prepared to take, the breaking spell, but who knew what damage it might do if she used it on the device? These spells her mother had given her were like sledgehammers. Slicing the device in two might create no end of trouble. What if it exploded? She needed something with more finesse, like a lock pick.

  Or the second finding spell.

  The experience of casting the spell was like unfocusing her mind to allow her intuition the room it needed to solve a puzzle. All she needed was the right image to aim the spell. She had a clear memory of accidentally turning off the device and releasing the flow of Influence. She cleared her mind and summoned the memory, living in the moment that the device had stopped its clicking and whirring in as much detail as she could muster.

  “Pelletethaneras.”

  A hush descended on the room and the shadows grew darker. The Influence flowing through the spell pooled around the control panel of the device, dancing and swirling, but she couldn’t make out what it was trying to tell her. What had Mrs. Dearing said? The spell needed a tether to anchor it, but she had no candle.

  She looked around the room for something she might use, but all she saw was the gray dust of Margrave’s shattered bramble cages. She scooped up a handful and let it fall between her fingers over the display. Almost insubstantial, it was light enough to be caught by the swirling Influence which painted it across the buttons and dials in delicate traces. A clockwise circle around one dial, a pool over three buttons, a counterclockwise circle around another dial. The dust drew out a complicated sequence that looped around itself, pausing before repeating. She watched it once, twice, three times, until she had it committed to memory.

  She got the sequence on the first try. The glow of the gem faded, and the oppressive flow of Influence in the room broke. All the sufferers on the floor moaned and wailed as the device released them from their torment.

  Something large struck the other side of the spell-bound wall with a heavy thud that reverberated in her bowels.

  “Is that you, Mrs. Armitage?” said Margrave from beyond the door. “Do I detect the stench of witchcraft? You’ve destroyed my study and done unspeakable things to my acolytes. If I had known your husband wasn’t the most capable murderer in the family, I would have sunk my claws into you first.”

  An unsettling scraping on the other side of the wall cut through Gosha’s skull from brow to base.

  “In just a week you’ve undone years’ worth of preparation. Of course, it won’t take me long to gather up my resources. Your husband's escape will be nothing more than an inconvenience. Such an unsophisticated soul.”

  Another loud thud hammered against the door. The others around her jumped and whimpered.

  “Get up.” Gosha ran to the window and pulled it open. “Climb out and escape across the fields. I’ll keep him busy.”

  She didn’t have to cajole them to get them to move. Margrave kept up his assault on the door, each reverberating slam making them jerk with terror as she helped them out the window and watched them run off into the woods.

  “Enough,” shouted Margrave from the far side of the wall as the last of Miranda’s friends ran across the lawn and disappeared into the trees. “You’re wasting time I don’t have.”

  Silence fell beyond the wall. Gosha took the lipstick out of her bra and held it before her in one hand, the cursed lug wrench in the other, ready for whatever Margrave might do. Her heart pounded inside her chest. Her ears rang in the sudden quiet.

  The wall began to rumble. The quake grew in intensity from a delicate shudder to a force so powerful it shook her joints and rattled her teeth like the amplified boom of bass guitars always did at a rock show. All the right angles of the house warped and buckled as the room twisted around her, the foundations of the house creaking in protest. The floor tilted, and plaster cracked and crumbled. The bound door held, but every surface adjoining the wall split until the entire thing ripped from the side of the room, taking with it segments of ceiling and floor. It shattered, the segments tumbling about the hallway like discarded theatrical flats waiting to be hoisted into place. Beyond the destruction in the settling dust stood Margrave in his half-human, half-tree-demon form, that much more terrifying framed in the dark halo of her widow’s weeds.

  What if the death they predicted was her own?

  Margrave raised a hand, and brambles grew up around her, binding her arms in place. It took only a second for her to shatter them into dust, but by the time she was free, he had covered the distance between them. As he stepped into range, she lashed out with the lug wrench and struck his head.

  * * *

  The black bag is pulled away to reveal a featureless bunker. The scuffing of his captors’ boots on the concrete floor echoes off into the vast distance. A single, utilitarian light fixture above them, just a bulb inside a cage, shines a harsh, unflattering glow on the people gathered before him. Men in paramilitary uniforms armed with batons stand between him and a cluster of well-dressed men and women. Two of them he’s met before: The Lord Chief Justice, Alexander Griffiths, and Euphemia Graham, the Queen of Secrets, saints of Law and Mystery. The others he recognizes only from their marks of sanctity, the pale blue icons of power that hover around their heads. A crown of flowers above the head of the woman to his left tells him she is the saint of Abundance. To her left, the desiccated old man in magenta Anglican robes with a radiant halo about his head must be Bishop Worsley, the saint of Faith. Next to him, a queer couple holds hands: an unremarkable young man barely old enough to grow a beard, his upper lip and chin darkened with a dusting of stubble, and a handsome woman in her sixties. The flickering glow of the sunlight glimmering through clear water emanating from their eyes marks them as the Lovers, the paired saints of Devotion.

  “We’ve had quite enough of this nonsense,” says the judge, thin and patrician with a long nose and bone-white hair. “We’ve been willing to allow you your peccadillos and indiscretions up till now, but this spate of murders is the last straw. You and your followers are tainting the pool.”

  “Nothing I’ve done is any different from what you get up to every day.” Margrave holds his chin high with defiance.

  “Yes, but we don’t allow our followers to go around inciting violence and encouraging the death of innocents.”

  “The murders are regrettable,” says Margrave, “but the perpetrators were brought to justice. They had no connection to any oath-bearer. There was no taint to Influence. Not one of my acolytes was rendered to the Lord of the Quiet Dark.”

  “This is always the problem with Desire,” says the bishop in an effete whine. “I’ve seen it happen many times throughout the centuries. Its saints become so very literal in their interpretation of the codes of governance in the pursuit of their appetites that they miss the larger implications. They get sloppy.”

  “You’ve been brought here,” says the judge, “not just because of the deaths, but because of the accumulation of all your actions.”

  “Immortality is a noble goal,” says the bishop. “I’ve been alive for a thousand years. I recommend it wholeheartedly. But you have to be careful. Consuming the life-force of your followers is not the way to achieve it, believe me. We all felt the results of your last cull, did we not?”

  The others murmur their assent.

  “Bring them forw
ard,” says the judge.

  More guards emerge from the darkness, each bringing with them a hooded prisoner, ten in total. Margrave knows who they are.

  “This is how serious we find your offense.”

  Ten others walk into the light, eight men, two women, each carrying a knife.

  “We are prepared to sacrifice our own to make you understand.” He turns to the knife-wielders. “Now, please.”

  The guards remove the hoods of the prisoners. Without ceremony, each knife-wielder steps behind one of Margrave’s acolytes, slices across their throats from ear to ear. His acolytes, men and women he has guided like a father for decades, fall to the floor where they die in their own blood. The killers walk away from the blood and bodies to the edge of the ring of light.

  The rendering happens quickly. The taint of murder poisoning the flow of Influence reaches the Lords and Ladies in whatever otherworldly realm they inhabit in a matter of seconds. Space warps and darkens around the executioners in expanding petals. The calm expressions on each of their faces turns to shock and fear as their feet lift from the floor and their bodies bend and break. Darkness wraps around them, inky smoke pouring from their skins until the petals of darkness close, taking the acolytes with them into nothingness.

  “These are the lengths to which we are willing to go,” says the judge, breaking the long silence that follows. “Your actions are a personal offense against each of us. They are a threat to the realm. We will not permit you to continue. It is the ruling of the Convocation that you will no longer be allowed to administer your oath or to feed on your lesser followers. If we find you have infringed upon our ruling, we will act against you accordingly. It won’t be your acolytes who suffer. Remember the rebellion of John Gray and the excising of Will. The Convocation will not hesitate to wipe your sphere from the firmament.”

  * * *

  Margrave clutched the side of his head, one eye turned milky by the blow of the cursed lug wrench. He groaned and struck out at her with a knobbled arm and knocked her across the room. She crashed into a wall, the impact pounding the breath from her body.