Witch's Secret

by Emma L. Adams

  “Hey! You can’t die now,” Aiden said from behind me. “Otherwise I’ll be bound to your dead body, and let me tell you, that is not how I wanted to spend the rest of my existence.”

  “See that?” I indicated the nearest crack in the spirit realm. “What is it?”

  “Uh.” He floated beside me and stuck his hand through the gap. “Damn. That’s… I don’t know what that is.”

  I floated up to join him, reaching out a hand. Like him, my hand passed through the air, feeling… nothing.

  “Those shadowy furies,” Aiden said. “I think they might be eating holes in the spirit realm. It isn’t the shades, that’s for damn sure.”

  I turned on the spot, towards the spot where the guild lay, and gasped. Around the guild, the tears in the spirit realm were even worse, overlapping where the furies circled overhead. Wherever they were appearing from, the effect was damaging the spirit lines.

  I blinked back into my body.

  “There you are,” Ivy said, shaking blood from her sword. “Where’d you go, Jas?”

  “Had to banish one of those vampires. Where the bloody hell are Edinburgh’s Mage Lords? Aren’t they going to take control of their own vampire shade army?”

  “Of course not,” said Ivy. “Last I heard, they barricaded themselves in their own headquarters.”

  “Behind a spirit barrier, I’ll bet.” I’d missed one crucial part of my prediction of the enemy’s plan. Lord Sutherland didn’t want to participate directly in the war. Terrorising the public from behind a barrier was more his style.

  “Does he have my body?” Aiden asked. “Because the spell binding us has a limit.”

  “I hope he doesn’t,” I said. “Right—I’m off to Clancy’s. Vance, can you teleport me over the bridge?”

  Ivy waved him over, and Vance walked to my side, his suit barely rumpled from the fight with the furies.

  “Where should I drop you off?” he asked.

  I gave the spirit realm a brief scan. “Princes Street will do.”

  Vance gave a nod. An instant later, we appeared in front of the abandoned train station.

  On the other side of the road, humans cowered inside shops and cafes as a line of zombies ambled down the middle of the road in a steady line, not breaking formation even to attack.

  I wouldn’t call them a swarm, more a procession. They were too well organised to be moving at random, all of them shuffling in the same direction. A breeze from behind told me Vance had gone to re-join Ivy, leaving me alone with the zombies. They can’t be moving of their own accord.

  “My body isn’t there,” said Aiden.

  “Don’t complain. It might mean you’ve been spared.” I dragged my gaze away from the undead and found a zombie-free spot to cross the road near the Scott Monument. Then I took off for Clancy’s shop at a run, skidding to a halt in front.

  A dismembered zombie lay in the entryway, and Clancy gave a threatening growl as I approached, his hands sheathed in claws.

  “Oh, it’s you, Jas.” He lowered his hands. Claws aside, he was a big man who put me in mind of a bear—both cuddly and deadly depending on whether or not he liked you.

  “Keir’s not here?” I peered into the shop. “I found Aiden, and I know how to get him back to his body.”

  “Ah, shit,” said Clancy. “Aiden’s body—it got up by itself and walked outside. Knocked me out cold. Next thing I know there are zombies beating down the doors. Keir… soon as he found out, he went to follow. I told him not to.”

  “Shit.” Might some of those zombies still be alive? If they were missing their original souls, it was impossible to tell. Either way, they were all controlled by hungry, murderous vampires… which made their precise formation even creepier. They could only be going to one location: the mages’ headquarters.

  “I guess I’ll have to haunt you for a bit,” Aiden said from beside my ear.

  “I’ll take you with me. Stay safe, Clancy.” I headed down the road, eyes following the long line of zombies. They must have swarmed out of the lab the instant they’d realised they had a way out, and surged straight through the mirror. I’d bet there’d been a backup army of undead waiting on this side. Apparently, Vance and his council weren’t the only ones with secret bolt holes.

  Evelyn. Where are you?

  A sudden tug gripped my spirit, pulling me out of my body.

  “What the—?”

  A loud, clear voice echoed through the spirit realm. “I summon you, Jacinda Hemlock.”

  Lord Sutherland.

  Aiden shouted in alarm, but the tug grew in intensity, yanking me through the grey fog, past screaming spirits and tortured souls—then down, into a circle of spinning lights.

  I halted, suspended between twelve candles in a darkened room. A spirit circle held me captive in mid-air.

  “There you are,” Lord Sutherland said. “I confess, I rather hoped you’d died. It shouldn’t take this much effort to get rid of a single junior necromancer.”

  A cloaked feminine figure at his side nodded in agreement.

  “Now I have you,” said Lord Sutherland. “It’s time for you to die, Jas.”

  20

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Do you find this situation amusing, Jas Lyons?” he enquired. “Or is it Jacinda Hemlock? When I probed into the lists of those who died in the invasion, imagine my surprise when I found the name Jacinda Hemlock was listed among the dead. Yet records show that Jas Lyons moved to this city and joined the guild seven years ago.”

  “I’m well-travelled.” I peered at the woman at his side, trying to make out the face underneath the hood. Not a witch this time. From the glow around her eyes under the hooded cloak, I’d guess a vampire. “And I have this annoying habit of coming back from the dead.”

  “A vampire would fix that problem,” he said. “As for your other soul… where exactly is Evelyn Hemlock? I should summon her to join you, but it seems a waste of effort since she’ll perish when you do.”

  Evelyn. She must still be out there somewhere. So was my body, and the rune on my arm, but it hadn’t reacted yet. Shit on a stick. Was there a limit on the number of times I could use its magic to return to my body? Or might the summoning circle have cut me off entirely?

  Until I knew for sure, stalling was my only option. “You can’t hide anymore, Lord Sutherland. The entire necromancer guild knows that you were ripping vampires’ souls out of their bodies in the Orion League’s old lab, and so does the Council of Twelve. You’re going on a one-way trip to jail whether I live to see it or not.”

  “Oh, am I?” He gave an unconvincing smile. Only then did I notice that he seemed to have deactivated his anti-ageing spells, and wrinkles marked his once flawless skin. Despite his position of superiority, he made no move to get any closer to the circle.

  He’s scared. From the lack of decor around me, I’d guess I was in a chamber somewhere in the dungeons. This must be where the mages had holed up while their army ran amok around the city. He was too frightened even to watch his own victory.

  “I’m told the spirit realm is falling to pieces, Jas,” he said. “Reports tell me a group of monstrosities is circling the guild, almost as though they sense something inside, calling out to them.”

  A chill raced down my back. “Who imprisoned that monster in the lab? You, or the Orion League? You’re both as bad as each other—and by the sound of things, equally stupid.”

  He shrugged off my insult. “Is the necromancer guild equipped to go up against forces that existed before humans ever learned to channel the forces of nature? Perhaps you should have left it alone, Jas.”

  “You’re talking like you’re not screwing with those same forces of nature yourself,” I said. “Don’t kid yourself into thinking you have the slightest idea what you unleashed. The League sure as hell didn’t know, and they paid for it with their lives.”

  “The League died out because they were never supernaturals,” said Lord Suthe
rland. “They were never like us, and they feared us for good reason. We control the world now. That includes those who were once regarded as gods.”

  “Nobody is controlling that thing,” I said. “And you can’t claim the moral high ground when you imprisoned vampires in cages and ripped the souls out of their bodies.”

  “You truly believe those vampires are people?” He shook his head. “I suppose, being a hybrid abomination that you are, the definition is somewhat murky.”

  I gave a humourless laugh. “I’m an abomination?”

  “You’re certainly not human.” He walked closer to the circle, scrutinising me. “You don’t think I’m going to kill you without finding out what you are, do you? I want to know how you survived falling into the rift between realms. Are you an Ancient? You’re more than a shade.”

  If I’d been in my body, my heart would have begun to beat faster at his words. “I’m a Hemlock witch. You’re just pissed because I have a type of magic you don’t. Same reason you want to shut the guild down and use vampires as guinea pigs. You can’t stand not being in control, and you don’t want to face up to the fact that you’re no more special than anyone else is. You’re nothing, Lord Sutherland, and you’re going to be forgotten when you die.”

  “All of us start off as nothing,” he said dismissively. “What matters is what we become, and those of us who are more willing to adapt are the ones who survive.”

  “You’re deluded if you think we all start out on the same level,” I said. “You’ve probably never had to struggle for anything in your life.”

  “You know nothing about me,” he said. “If you blame me for your woes, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. The mages are the reason those Ancient abominations haven’t driven humanity to extinction.”

  “I know enough,” I said. “I don’t hate you because you’re a mage. Half my adopted family are mages. I hate you because you’re a raging dickhead.”

  His jaw tightened. “You know, I did wonder if the guild and I might be able to work alongside one another, for a time. I even went to the trouble of funding their research, particularly on the nature of shades and suchlike. Humans who can survive death. With the right application, every human might become the same. Yet they refused to take me up on my offer. Imagine that: an end to death. Why would Lady Montgomery deny that?”

  “Because everything has a catch,” I said. “Shades are the result of death going wrong. They aren’t meant to exist.”

  “I might say the same of vampires, Jas,” he said. “Do you know where they originally came from? Breeding humans with the decaying remnant of an ancient spirit. The taint spread like a virus among them, eating away at their souls until the only way they could survive was to feed on others. Tragic, really.”

  Nausea swept over me. Aiden was right. “Who did that—the League?”

  “Oh, this was long before the League,” he said. “The League just revived the practice. But they were looking in the wrong place.”

  “Let me guess, that’s why you took Aiden,” I said. “Because he figured it out. He was researching the Ancients, and you didn’t want word to get out. So you stole his body and left it on the other side of the mirror so he’d be doomed to die in that lab. Where is it now?”

  “The vampire survived?” His mouth twisted. “His body will be with the others, at least until I no longer have a use for them.”

  Raw hate pulsed through me. “You’re planning to betray them?”

  “I owe them nothing,” he said coldly. “It reflects badly on our society if we let such creatures roam around the city. Until now we’ve had trouble rooting them out, but with a reset of the spirit world, I’ll be rid of all of them at once, and the shades along with them.”

  “You’re the one who held them hostage!” Indignation burned within me. He’d captured and tortured them, ripped them out of their bodies and turned them into shades. And now he was waiving all responsibility by casting them into the afterlife. “Besides, you can’t reset the spirit world. It’s not possible.”

  “They were never supposed to escape,” he said. “They weren’t the end goal, but their inability to perish proved… taxing. No matter. It’s certainly possible to cleanse the spirit realm, however. All I require is a sacrifice.”

  The cloaked woman stepped into the summoning circle alongside me, and I gasped as her hood slipped. “Lady Anders?”

  “She served her purpose,” Lord Sutherland said. “All of us must make sacrifices, Jas. I made plenty of my own.”

  The candle lights brightened, revealing bloody marks on the ground around the edges. Runes… for a blood summoning.

  “Sacrifices?” I raised my head. “What the hell have you ever sacrificed?”

  Lord Sutherland stepped forwards. Another spasm of nausea shook me as he raised his hands, exposing his wrists. Instead of witch spells, he wore blood magic symbols etched into his skin. Bindings… and one symbol that blurred when I looked at it as though I viewed it through tinted glass.

  An Invocation.

  He’d bound a god directly to himself. “You became a vessel yourself? What was worth that price?”

  “A single life is little to give, in exchange for a simple name,” he said. “That god you found in the lab has the unique ability to feed on souls, and when he’s done, this city will be free of the likes of you, forever.”

  “You want to summon that Ancient back here?” My voice rose, echoing off the dungeon walls. “He already destroyed the labs. It’ll be a massacre.”

  “He doesn’t eat living souls,” said Lord Sutherland. “Only the dead. Banishing him will be as simple as summoning him.”

  “Look, getting rid of a bunch of monsters by summoning an even bigger monster is not going to work out the way you think it is,” I said. “People will die.”

  “People die at the hands of these monsters every day,” he said. “I’ll just make sure their deaths mean something.”

  The vampire piloting Lady Anders’s body raised a bloody knife, pointed directly at me. Lights flared at my feet, igniting the blood magic symbols. A chill wind swept up, and the candle flames blew to the side.

  No. I can’t die here.

  “Evelyn,” I whispered. “Help.” Get here and stop him, otherwise that monster might eat us alive.

  My Hemlock magic snapped on, but the circle caught my power and pushed it back at me. The candles’ glow was too bright to be anything other than the product of another blood sacrifice.

  “Banish her, you fool!” Lord Sutherland yelled.

  “Jas?” The voice was faint. Then a tug gripped me, pulling me into Death’s embrace.

  Lord Sutherland’s furious shout pursued me as I drifted through the fractured greyness. Then a familiar, blessed pain shot up my arm from the witch mark. I landed on the pavement, back in my body.

  “Nice of you to join us again,” said Evelyn.

  “You too,” I said shakily. “Believe it or not.”

  I’d stopped Lord Sutherland’s ritual, but he still had the god’s name, which meant he was likely to try the summoning again with another innocent life.

  “Don’t thank her,” Aiden’s voice said. “She took control, and well…”

  I straightened upright, eyeing the mess Evelyn had left behind. Bits of dead fury littered the pavement, surrounded by bloody puddles. She must have run all the way back to the necromancer guild and taken out her anger on the remaining beasts. Lloyd watched wide-eyed from in front of the guild’s entrance along with several other necromancers. Relief crossed his face when he spotted me, realising Jas was in control, not Evelyn.

  “I couldn’t reach you,” Evelyn said. “I found your body standing in the middle of the street, totally spaced out. I figured you’d gone to fight the vampires.”

  “Not quite. The Mage Lord summoned me as a sacrifice,” I said. “Did you see where his army was going?”

  Aiden’s body is with them. I’d been so close, but the Mage Lord had been one step a
head. I hardly believed he’d gone to the trouble of creating an army only to kill them off. And if the smaller furies had left holes all over the spirit realm, I shuddered to imagine what the super-sized version would be capable of.

  “The army of furies?” Drake walked towards me, kicking a piece of fury out of the way. “Your weird cousin took care of them.”

  “Not that army,” I said. “Lord Sutherland is about to summon an oversized version of one of those furies which can eat souls, because he thinks it’ll get rid of all the vampires in the city. He’s lost his wits.”

  “He’s what?” Wanda picked her way through the maze of fury guts, grimacing. “Where is Lord Sutherland?”

  “Hiding in the mages’ dungeon,” Aiden said.

  “Uh… Jas?” said Drake. “Who’s that guy?”

  “Hi,” said Aiden. “You haven’t seen my brother anywhere, have you?”

  “You have two spirits hitching a ride in your body now?” said Wanda.

  “Until we find his body,” I said. “I don’t suppose either of you saw where all those zombies wandered off to?”

  “Watch out!” shouted a voice from behind me. I spun around, narrowly avoiding a shadow fury’s claws.

  A knife flew over my head, and Lloyd followed. “You okay, Jas? Found your vampire?”

  “Nope.” I called on my Hemlock magic, hooking the whip around the fury’s neck. “Did this thing get into the headquarters?”

  “Not for long,” said Morgan, throwing a knife wildly and missing. “Try to kill Mackie, will you?”

  The shadow fury vanished, slipping free of my whip. It reappeared behind Lloyd, and Morgan threw another knife, this time sinking it into the monster’s leg. I snagged it around the neck, pulling it away before it landed on top of Lloyd. Morgan nodded thanks to me, and the fury strained against the magic holding it still.

  And then another rush of magic joined mine. Evelyn. Two lots of Hemlock magic were better than one. Together, Evelyn and I pulled it down, our magic slicing through the beast’s shadowy form.