“Enough,” it cried out in rage, and tapped out a strange rhythm on its torso with its hands. Though the sound it made was soft, little more than the gentle slap of skin on cloth, the rhythm pulled at the space around it, folding and cleaving it. Giant fragmented prisms radiated out from him to envelop the witches. Gosha and Mrs. Dearing found themselves encased in a cut crystal prison of their own.
“Bugger the bastard.” Mrs. Dearing rummaged in her handbag.
Above them, the shade appeared with them in their prison.
“Time for you witches to die.”
He pressed the meat of his thumb against his teeth and sliced the flesh, drawing blood.
“There it is.” Mrs. Dearing sighed with relief and took from her bag a wooden crochet hook, no longer than her hand.
“Not so fast, you blighter.”
She swatted at the shade with the hook before he could do anything with the blood that trickled from his thumb and the corner of his mouth. A thousand pine needles flew from the crochet hook’s tip. Some embedded themselves in the witch hunter’s flesh. The rest shattered the prism.
“Ooh,” said Mrs. Dearing with the verve of someone who had just quaffed a shot of aged bourbon. “How delightful.”
The shade vanished and reappeared between them all, the other witches also freed from its traps. Its body was covered with lacerations, great gashes torn across its limbs and back, the accumulated damage from the combined attack of the witches.
“Everyone together, ladies,” said Gosha’s mother.
Each of the women muttered and fidgeted with their talismans as they cast their next attack. The shade pulled a gun from his leather jacket, an ancient luger pistol from the Second World War, and shot at Mei. The bullet crashed into her shoulder, spinning her around as she fell to the floor.
“Mei,” Shreya shouted.
The shade turned its gun on Eleanor, but she was ready and launched herself at him like a jungle cat. She twisted her body in mid-air as he shot off round after round, none of which connected, and landed on him sideways, knocking him down like a bowling pin.
“I’m okay,” said Mei from where she fell. “Fucking hurts, but I’m okay.”
“Coming, coming,” trilled Mrs. Dearing as she grabbed her handbag and darted across the floor to Mei’s side.
The shade reached for the luger, which had tumbled to the ground on impact, but Eleanor, lithe in a pair of jodhpurs and riding boots, spun on her hands like a gymnast and knocked it across the floor with one graceful kick.
“Agnieszka,” said Shreya, “Remember that bother on the canals? The water sprite that kept pulling the barges under?”
At first, her mother looked confused, but the memory of whatever they had done dawned on her.
“Yes, yes.” She nodded with a grin.
Both women stepped back as if to take a running jump at the shade. Meanwhile, Eleanor administered it a strong kicking, keeping it unbalanced and unable to focus long enough to do anything catastrophic. Instead of taking flight, they raised their arms and spoke, each in their own secret tongue. Instead of isolated words, these were long phrases, poetic lines from what little she could make out in her mother’s language. The surrounding Influence whipped up into a whirlwind around the shade.
“Eleanor, look out,” called Mrs. Dearing from the sidelines where she nursed Mei’s wound.
Eleanor gave the shade one last kick and rolled out of the whirlwind toward Gosha. The shade pulled itself up to its feet and ran its fingers through its hair. Its yellow eyes glistened.
“Stupid women. You can’t stop me. Your deaths are inevitable.”
It folded its palms together as if to pray and pressed its thumbs to its brow, summoning up its own twinned whirlwinds that spun out toward Eleanor and Gosha’s mother. The walls and floor vibrated, shaking the mangled foundations of the house and shuddering into Gosha’s skull.
“What’s happening?” she shouted to Eleanor above the whooshing din.
“He’s too strong,” Eleanor shouted back, striking the same pose as Shreya and Gosha’s mother. “This broken hell you’ve summoned is giving him more power than we can handle.”
She muttered to herself and the maelstrom around the shade grew in intensity, but she, too, became enveloped in a vortex of the shade’s making. She screamed with pain, a hideous shriek of agony, but she didn’t yield. Across the way Mrs. Dearing and Mei joined the casting, but the shade gave all of them as much as he was getting and more. Gosha had never seen her mother under so much stress or in so much pain, her face wrung into a frightening grimace, every muscle in her body tense as veins bulged in her neck.
Her mother’s spells might be failing, but Gosha knew one weapon that would work against a shade.
The lug wrench was only a yard from where she lay, embedded in the bottom step of the wide staircase to the house’s upper floors. Mrs. Dearing’s healing had done its job. Her insides no longer ached, and her throat was clear, but she was still wobbly when she got to her feet. Deep rumblings shook the house in an earthquake that refused to end, turning her knees to liquid.
She threaded her hand through the hilt of the wrench and pulled, but it was wedged in fast and refused to budge. Wrapping both hands around the hilt, she straddled it and yanked with all her might, but still it wouldn’t give. She placed a hand on the stair and spoke the breaking spell. Its keyhole opening within her ripped through her guts and made her gasp with the shock, but the wood splintered, and the wrench came free.
“Goga, no,” shouted her mother as Gosha stepped into the maelstrom surrounding the shade.
Influence whipped up around her as the shade folded her into its attack. Every nerve lit up in her body, her brain searing as if a dagger had cleaved it in two, but she pushed on. The only thing that filled her consciousness was the witch hunter, the handsome stranger who had stolen her from the comfort of her home, the terrifying monster who had imprisoned her in the dark and haunted her dreams ever since.
Standing behind it, she lifted the wrench over her head with both hands and aimed its blunt point down at its back. With all her might, she thrust down, the wrench bursting through the shade’s flesh and grinding against bone.
* * *
He stands before the saint in an office in the local Communist Party headquarters. These bureaucratic strongholds are all the same, he thinks, whether you be in Poland or Russia: the same nondescript office furniture, the same filing cabinets, the same pictures of Stalin and Lenin and Khrushchev on the walls.
“Witches,” says the saint, although it’s not his saint. The Soviet Union is a vast country that encompasses several realms of Influence. Each sphere has many saints, each working together for the betterment of the state and its people.
“Five of them that we know of,” the saint goes on as he spreads a map of Poland across the table in front of him. “The protesters they came to free all live in this general region.”
He circles an area on the map only a day’s journey from here.
“I will hunt them down and bring them to you,” says the witch hunter
“No,” says the saint. “We have decided on a new policy. Witches are agents of chaos that can no longer be tolerated. They must be eradicated absolutely. You are sanctioned to use whatever methods you wish to ensure their deaths, short of tainting yourself. Don’t even worry about providing concrete proof of their identities. I will back you up with the council if you make a mistake.”
“I never make mistakes when it comes to witches.”
“Yes, I know. This is why I’m sending you.”
* * *
She heaved the wrench from its back, her arms screaming in defiance at the effort, and struck the shade across the head.
* * *
He perches on a stool in the cellar. The girl whimpers in the corner, the smell of her feces and urine assaulting his nostrils. She looks suitably unkempt and distressed, he thinks. All the better to distract her mother when she eventually arrives.
/> * * *
The shade was on the floor, his neck twisted at a sickening angle. She raised the wrench above her and stabbed down at his heart.
* * *
He lies on his back at the base of a tree, roots tangled about his ankles. The witch lies on top of him, her features deformed with hatred. The blade of the hunting knife twists in his gut as she leans into him, piercing his lung.
She whispers softly in his ear as she might a lover.
“You will not hurt my daughter.”
She withdraws the knife and stabs again, up through his diaphragm. The tip of the knife pierces his heart.
46
Gosha returned to herself as the body of the shade dissipated around the lug wrench embedded in the floor where, a moment ago, the head of the shade had been. The witches gathered around her, Mei nursing her wounded arm against her body.
“What is that thing?” Her mother reached for the lug wrench. Gosha slapped her hand away.
“Don’t touch it. There’s a curse bound into it.”
The witches exchanged glances, wide-eyed.
“A curse?” asked her mother.
The house lurched around them. The shifting pull of gravity yanked them to the side as if they stood on the deck of a ship in choppy water. A deep groan echoed through the front door from the grounds beyond.
“Tell me,” said her mother, “but not now. This calamity must cycle through. We have to leave.”
“We can’t,” said Gosha. “There are more victims. I could only set a fraction of them free.”
“We must work quickly, then. It’s not safe to remain here while the chaos is still active. We need to get beyond its borders and do what we can to dampen it as soon as possible. Lady forbid the saints find out what we’ve done.”
“Are you all right?” Eleanor asked Mei.
“Yes, yes. Elsie worked her usual wonders.” Mei held out her arm to show Eleanor and flexed her fingers. “I’ll be all better by bedtime. And I have you to thank for it,” she said to Gosha. “This soft place you have created is a boon to a well-crafted healing.”
“In chaos, a little order goes far,” said Shreya.
They divided up into pairs to cover the grounds: Mrs. Dearing accompanied Mei, and Shreya went with Eleanor. Gosha and her mother trudged through the woods after one of her mother’s finding spells, a winking sparkle that led them on a meandering path. The further they went from the house, the more the blue tinge of daylight diminished, and the phantom haze dissipated.
“Mamusha!” Gosha remembered in a panic she had left the boys with her mother. “Where are the boys?”
“Don’t worry, Goga. They’re at home with someone I trust. You’ll soon see how many friends a witch has when she needs them.”
The first victim they found bound up in a cage of brambles attached to a tree. Bark grew out of the trunk and wrapped itself around the poor wretch’s body. He hung unconscious, his face pressing into thorns that pierced his skin.
“This will be a challenge,” said her mother. “Stand back.”
Gosha watched as her mother set about freeing the poor soul. She worked slowly and methodically, from the man’s feet to his head, whispering to the bark and brambles as if having a reasonable conversation on the street with a casual acquaintance, moving on to the next part of him as brambles and bark receded. She took only a few minutes to free and revive him. He looked around, dazed. Her mother dusted him off, pointed him toward the front drive and told him to run as fast as he could without looking back. She didn’t have to tell him twice.
“Odd, all these branches and brambles,” said her mother as they followed the wisp to the next poor soul. “I thought the saints of Desire were only interested in getting their sticks wet.”
Discussing sex with her mother would normally make Gosha cringe, but she was too exhausted to care.
“Margrave was different. All he desired was power.”
They found and released six more of Margrave’s victims in their trek around the grounds before crossing paths with Shreya and Eleanor.
“Mei and Elsie are behind us,” said Shreya as they headed toward the road.
At the gate, her mother took out a large piece of chalk and scratched a long line of symbols on the tarmac. She stepped back when she was done, mouthed a word and the symbols vanished.
“That should take care of it.”
“A job well done,” said Mei, the others nodding.
“What was that writing?” asked Gosha.
“Witch marks,” said her mother. “Useful for many things. I have a lot to teach you.”
“You’ve done great work here today,” said Eleanor.
“Yes,” said Gosha’s mother, “but it’s not finished. What about your husband? What will you do?”
“Oh god.” Gosha buried her face in her hands. “We have to run away again, don’t we?”
She thought about her life in the house on Canterbury Gardens. It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers.
Her mother shook her head and grunted.
“This is a different time and a different place. In Poland we had the entire country against us. He,” she pointed back toward the house, “is just one saint, and now a feeble one at that. And your idiot husband? Pfft. If you could have what you wanted, without compromise, what would it be?”
“I want to be free of George,” Gosha answered without hesitation. “I want to go back to my home and raise my children to be strong and kind and decent, and nothing like their father. I never want to see him again.”
“I can’t give you all that, but perhaps I can get you halfway there. Ladies.” Gosha’s mother turned to the others. “I’m thinking wards. There are five of us. How much ground can we cover?”
“All of Cheyne Heath,” said Shreya.
The others nodded their agreement.
“Then let’s get to work.” Gosha’s mother clapped her hands. “Use anything you can. Speed is of the essence. I take it the idiot cockroach found his way out of the dung heap?” she asked Gosha.
“You mean George? Margrave was going to kill him. I set him free.”
Her mother tutted.
“You’re too soft. You need to toughen up. Come, we must be quick. We can shore the wards up once we’ve routed him out. I’ll go with you, Gosha. You can drop me off at High Coxcomb after we’ve stopped at a Boots to get what we need. Chop-chop, ladies.”
Her mother turned to Mei in a pantomime of concern.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is that offensive?”
“Why don’t you deep throat a kielbasa and tell me, you old goat?”
47
“The ladies and I will each make a warding bundle,” her mother explained as they drove through Notting Hill on their way back to Cheyne Heath in Gosha’s Mini Cooper, “which we will place at key junctions around the border of the borough. When we’ve set them, you will create the mother fetish which will animate them. There!” She gesticulated at a run-down cinema on Notting Hill Gate, making Gosha jump in fright. “There’s a parking space. Quick, or that bastard will get it.”
Her mother held up two fingers, spat between them and murmured a word. The car in front of them sped up and lurched past the empty parking space.
“There you are.” She sat back in the passenger seat and crossed her arms over her handbag. “You must be swift. These Sloane Rangers with their rovers won’t be kind.”
“You can’t just go around hexing random people in the street.”
Her mother looked at her, shocked.
“Of course I can. I’m a witch. Trust me, Gosha, it won’t be long before you realize the convenience of a well-placed hex. I was just like you after I took my Betrayal, full of ideas. But people are thoughtless and foolish. Half the time they wander around like sheep in a daze, and the other half they’re scheming like wolves. If you don’t step in, they’ll never learn, and you’ll get nothing done.”
Gosha yanked the steering wheel in aggravation with more force than was necessary
to angle into the parking space and almost drove them onto the curb. She was used to being so irritated by her mother that her teeth ached, but when her mother stepped in and saved Gosha from the shade of the witch hunter, she had never been so happy to see her. And now, her mother was the only thing keeping her from curling up in the back seat and clenching her eyes shut until George went away, which she feared he never would. This combination of feelings was new. She didn’t know how to stop them fighting within her.
“Go into W. H. Smiths.” Her mother counted off a list on her fingers as they waited for the traffic light to change so they could cross the road. “Buy pencils, a pad of paper, plasticine, twine, a book of poems. Something wordy with lots of nature in it, like Robert Frost. Nothing too romantic. No Byron. A pair of scissors, one of those sticks of glue, and some party glitter if they have any. If not, confetti will do. You’ve got all that?”
Gosha nodded.
“I’ll go into the chemist’s and get the rest. We’ll meet back at the car. Then we go to Morel Market.”
At the market, her mother found a stall that Gosha had never seen before. After six years of walking the market from end to end at least twice a week, she thought she knew them all. Glass jars filled with a vast assortment of items covered the barrow in neat ranks: sewing notions and knitting needles, lengths of ribbon, dried insects, tiny unmarked phials of liquid, dried flowers, soap, nuts and bolts, screwdrivers and other tools. It was as if the stallholder had walked through a department store and shoplifted items from every section.
Her mother and the stallholder chatted like old friends about mundane subjects like the weather and their various aches and pains. They discussed recipes and exchanged gossip, talking about everything and nothing as the wizened woman dressed in sturdy tweeds with her white hair tied back by a barrette assembled her mother’s shopping list, folding each item in its own brown paper bag. At the end of the transaction, no money exchanged hands.
Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1) Page 31
