The Witch's Wrath: Supernatural Suspense Thriller with Ghosts (Jigsaw of Souls Series Book 2)

by Ian Fortey

  A tangle of brambles snared the fur-covered flesh of the demon’s ankles, spinning and twisting up to its knees and thighs as the thorns bit into its legs in a hundred places to hold it fast.

  An undead fox leapt on Marchosias’ back while a bobcat ripped tendons from its arm. The demon’s howls shook the undead trees and made Vincent stumble back as he felt a wash of Chaos magic dance over him.

  Selena created a new mirror, walking out of darkness into the fullness of being at his side. Her movements matched his own, and their powers worked as one. They raised the entire forest, shifting rock and soil to bring down the full force of nature on the demon. Its black, oily magic gushed out of its wounds and lashed back at the animals and plants that attacked it. The wounds the Chaos magic inflicted were washed with Selena and Vincent’s combined powers and healed up so they could attack again.

  “It’s working,” Vincent said, surprised.

  The wolf became more frantic and desperate as it snapped and clawed at whatever came near. The numbers were beginning to overwhelm it. A pair of stags—their faces half covered by fur while the rest were still skeletal—rushed from the ground, burying their antlers deep in the wolf’s guts and side. A black bear roared and rose to its hind legs, its insides still visible as new stomach muscles slowly knit together to conceal them. The bear’s claw raked down the wolf’s face, scratching one of its eyes from its socket.

  “You can’t kill me, Necromancer,” the wolf howled, biting the head of a stag and pulling the antlers from another with its hands. “I have never truly lived. I have no Life for you to take. You will never stop me. This show means nothing!”

  “That can’t be true,” Vincent said, directing the massive weaves of Death and Life around the forest to attack the wolf.

  “There has to be something that can stop it,” Fix agreed.

  “He can’t die, man,” Dezzy yelled from behind him then. “But he can run out of power.”

  “How?” Vincent asked without looking back.

  “Make him waste it to keep himself whole.”

  Vincent nodded and glanced at Selena. She was concentrating on the wolf, directing endless blue energy into Vincent’s own threads of power. He dived deeper into the earth and pulled his weaves tighter.

  The bear bit into the back of the wolf’s neck just as a thick branch rose from the ground, piercing Marchosias’ stomach. Vincent released a burst of power and the branch expanded into a dozen more. The wolf’s pained howl was wet and short-lived as its insides were rearranged and its torso separated from its legs.

  Globs of black Chaos oozed from the broken body, trying to pull it back together again. Another branch exploded in its chest, tearing it apart again, pulling the head and arms in separate directions. Animals pulled the pieces further apart, ducking away when the Chaos magic bit into their flesh so that other animals could take their place. Marchosias’ dismemberment continued, further and further degrading its body. Creatures chewed the hands from the body, tore the fingers from the hands. In moments, the entrance to the cave was awash in viscous, black sludge and fur. There was no piece of the wolf left intact.

  The Chaos seeped into the earth, no longer writhing and fighting to hold together. Whatever power kept it battling against them faded away. Vincent watched it die out. He let the weaves of Death hold still then. Many of the animals he had resurrected were fully alive now, the ones that had finished the process. Their bodies whole and complete, they escaped into the woods. Others were half-formed in a place between life and death and their transformation continued, the forest breathing full and true Life into each of them, just as Vincent had once brought Dezzy back.

  “I think he’s gone,” Vincent said to Selena. He turned to her just as Maggie Huxley wrapped her arm around Selena, pressing herself against her back the way she had done to Abigail.

  “Give it to me,” Maggie whispered. “Give it all to me.”

  Blood magic flooded Selena’s spirit. The link between her power and Vincent’s broke. The forest seemed to wink out, the blinding light of the power he had just seen vanishing in an instant.

  Maggie’s spirit clung to Selena’s. Vincent could see the edges between them blending. It was like her body was melting into Selena’s. Neither had true flesh, but it looked as though a scab was forming where they touched, healing them together into one new entity. Selena fought with Maggie, trying to shake her off, but the older spirit held fast. Vincent reached for her, and his hands drifted through both of them. He could not even pull Maggie away. There was nothing to touch.

  Vincent tried to reach Maggie with necromancy, but he still felt nothing from the ghost. She was pure blood magic at this point, and he could not grip it with what he knew.

  “Wake her up,” Vincent said to the other witches, looking at Abigail. She was the only person there who could manipulate blood magic.

  “She will try to kill you,” Fix said.

  “They’re going to kill Selena,” he said.

  “Vincent,” Selena said, holding Maggie’s arm and trying to pull it free. She looked him in the eye. Maggie’s crooked head hung over her shoulder, looking at him as well.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  “Vincent, I’m already dead,” she said. He shook his head.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “They can’t kill me again,” she said.

  “But your power—”

  “Is mine. Always has been. So I choose what to do with it. I will take it with me.”

  “Wake her up!” Vincent insisted. Mary-Ann looked at him and then at Selena.

  “I am so sorry, sister,” Mary-Ann said. “I didn’t want to help her.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Selena said. “But you need to help Vincent. When I’m gone, you help, understand?”

  “What are you doing?” Vincent asked.

  Selena let go of Maggie’s arm. She held out her hand. Not to Vincent or her sisters, though. She held it out to Dezzy.

  “Send me back, please,” she said.

  “Oh,” Dezzy said. He looked at Vincent, and then at Selena. “I can try.”

  Dezzy stood and walked to her side. He took her by the hand.

  “Never tried it this way before. Say hi to Emmanuel for me,” he said.

  Selena smiled at him and then looked at Vincent.

  “I think you’re a good man, Vincent Donnelly. Whatever you were before we met, I can’t say. But I have seen your soul. Trust in who you are, not who you were. Or who you think you were.”

  Before Vincent could reply, she was simply gone. Maggie slumped forward, her arms closing in a hug around nothing. Dezzy dropped his hand, and he turned back to Vincent.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said.

  “What did you do? What did she do?”

  “She went beyond the Veil, man. She was free of you. Her spirit was out in the open. So she took her power where they couldn’t take it from her. She’s truly beyond the Veil now.”

  “No,” Maggie moaned, slumping to the ground on her knees. “NOOOO!”

  She slammed her fists into the ground and turned her crooked head up to glare at Vincent.

  “You will not deny me my vengeance!” she hissed. “You will all pay!”

  “I never wronged you, Maggie. No one here did. You died three hundred years ago. This isn’t right.”

  She laughed bitterly, scowling at him.

  “Nothing is right. Three hundred years and what has changed in the world? If you did not murder Selena, who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Vincent answered. He was sure Selena knew, and that she had seen it beyond the Veil. But she’d kept that to herself, and he did not know why.

  “No,” said Maggie. “No, you just know a woman died and no one will be held accountable. In three hundred years, what has changed? Her blood is on the hands of a phantom? Is her life just to be thrown away? An incidental in the business of others? Who cared so little for her
place in the world that they threw her away and forgot her like trash? Did she not deserve to live? What about Charlotte? What about one million others in one million other times and places? What about me?”

  Her voice was quivering, so full of anger and pain. Vincent had no answers for her. He could only stare in her eyes, in her face as it hung on her crooked, broken neck.

  “You have pity. I see it in your face. I can smell it on you like sewage. Do you know what your pity does? Nothing! The pity of a thousand men never saved one life. You disgust me. Your lazy incompetence disgusts me. Your fruitless stupidity disgusts me. Always asking what about you, what happened to you, what can you do. The center of your arrogant world. The star in your self-congratulatory pity play. Choke on it. Choke on your pity until the bile burns your throat.”

  “What do you want me to do then?” he asked. He was sincere. He did not know what he could, or should do for her. But she needed to stop, one way or another. She needed to follow Selena and return beyond the Veil.

  “What do I want? I want you to die. I want you all to suffer and die,” she hissed.

  She scrambled backwards across the forest floor to Abigail. She fell upon the witch, and Mary-Ann tried to pull her free. Her hands passed through the ghost’s body as she absorbed into Abigail.

  “How do we do this without Selena?” Fix asked. Vincent did not know.

  “Can you hold her?” Vincent asked. Sandra looked at him, her face a mask of sorrow and terror. She was out of her depth here. But Mary-Ann nodded her head.

  “We can try,” she said, gripping Sandra’s arm.

  “We can,” she said again. Sandra looked at her sister.

  “Right. Yes.”

  “It’s not the time to try to flex your muscles,” Abigail said, opening her eyes. Her face was still covered in blood. Her nose was broken and bent to one side. She sat up and spread her hands, causing both Mary-Ann and Sandra to fly backwards as though they had been thrown.

  Dezzy checked on Sandra, helping the girl to her feet. Vincent backed away as Abigail got to her feet. There was nothing left to fight her with that he could think of.

  “What did you do?” Abigail demanded, her face contorting as she stared at Vincent. “Where did Selena’s power go?”

  “She took it. Where you can’t have it anymore. She’s gone and so is her power,” Vincent said.

  “You stole my power from me? You think you can steal what’s mine?” she yelled.

  “Yell all you want but it’s gone,” Vincent said, backing towards the cave. Abigail wiped blood from her face.

  “I need it,” Abigail yelled at him. “I need more!”

  Vincent stumbled, almost falling, as he backed into the cave. He passed beneath the edge and out of the silver light of the moon.

  “Find Maggie’s body,” Fix said suddenly. Abigail stalked to the cave, blood and primal magic boiling up around her feet.

  “Her body?”

  “She died in the cave. Her body is still in here,” Fix said.

  Vincent’s eyes widened. He was right.

  He turned and ran into the darkness. Abigail screamed after him, not even forming words, just the combined rage of the spirit and her own frustrations. He pushed through the darkness, stumbling and bumping along the rocks as he went, following the path where they had first encountered Marchosias. Selena had said that Maggie had fallen in there somewhere ahead, landing in the dark and breaking her neck. Her spirit had been rooted to this place until the witches found her. Or at least, that’s what they thought.

  At some point, Maggie’s spirit had left, and she had gone beyond the Veil. She had found something in the Void and made a bargain. She came back for revenge, a creature of pure malevolence and anger. But her body was still as it had been. It was physically here.

  Vincent felt around in the cave, letting fingers of necromancy weave through the stone and darkness. He could feel Death more closely now than he did before. There was some remnant of what he and Selena had done still infused in him. Before, he could feel Death in humans, and some animals. But now he felt the whole cycle and Life and Death. Insects and plants and anything that was ever truly alive. Bogdan Dalca had never had such a clear picture of Death. He was not even aware of how rich and deep it truly was. Nor how it was so closely linked to Life. But Vincent could see and feel it all now.

  He could see Maggie’s body in the distance. In his mind, he could see it. Time had reduced her to little more than a scattering of broken bones and dust. In Alder Falls, he had used the power of the Font to raise dead that had been gone for thousands of years, forging their missing parts from the earth itself. Though he did not have the Font here, he did have a clearer understanding of how necromancy worked and how it balanced with the power of Life.

  Vincent plunged his power into the ground and wrapped it around the corpse of Maggie Huxley. The strands of Life and Death within her were almost non-existent. So long had she been dead that little remained to manipulate. But there was something there still.

  “Can you do this?” Fix asked. Vincent wanted to say no. He didn’t know what he could do to bring this body to life again. But he had brought Dezzy back without a body at all, and from beyond the Veil at that.

  “Let’s find out,” Vincent said.

  Abigail’s power swept through the cave behind him. If she caught him again, he would have little hope of escape this time. The other witches were not strong enough—he wasn't strong enough.

  The power surged through the scattered remains of Maggie’s body. Bones shifted and began to knit together. He could feel marrow filling them, and sinew and muscle growing out. Back near the cave’s entrance, Abigail screamed.

  “Stop!” Her voice was hers at first and then became a mixture of hers and Maggie’s. Blood seeped from the marrow in the bones. Veins and arteries formed and spread across the body. Patches of flesh rose into place, scabbing up and smoothing out.

  Maggie and Abigail yelled in separate voices now. Vincent felt a surge of blood magic and watched the rolling, bubbling burst of red energy race towards him in the darkness of the cave. He braced himself, expecting an attack, but the shape continued past him. It was not a spell or some new nightmare. It was Maggie Huxley. She clawed at the air as something pulled her back to the cave, towards her own body. The power of her own blood called her back to her body.

  The blood magic was stripped away, a veneer of energy peeling from the spirit as it was forced into her own body once more. The red energy fizzled and popped, before finally disappearing into the dark.

  Vincent stood alone in the blackness of the cave. He could not feel Death within Maggie’s body any longer. She seemed to have vanished entirely.

  There was no sound for a long moment. Vincent was pressed to the wall of the cave, holding his breath. He could neither see nor hear Maggie or Abigail.

  “You need to start carrying a flashlight,” Fix said. Vincent nodded in the dark. That might not be a terrible idea.

  “Erit lux,” he whispered quietly. He felt a tiny sputter of primal energy rise from the cave floor at his feet. A soft, dim light slowly came to life in the air next to him. It was not as bright as the one Selena had cast, but it was something.

  The light did not travel far in the cave, but he could see something to his right, deeper into the tunnel. He moved slowly, trying not to make a sound as he went.

  Maggie Huxley’s body lay on the ground. She was face down on the rock, pale and motionless in the dim light. Vincent stood before her, nervous and unsure of what to do.

  “Maggie?” he whispered. He leaned down tentatively and reached his hand out. He touched her shoulder. The skin was cold, but alive. She did not move.

  “Maggie, can you hear me?” Vincent asked. She made a sound, a soft moan, and her body shifted. He pulled his hand away.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked. Groggy and not fully awake, she grunted, then lifted her head. Her hair hung down over he
r face and she squinted in the light from the sphere.

  “Lord, forgive me,” she whispered. “What have I done?”

  She lifted her hand, shielding her eyes, and then quickly moved to cover herself. She was unclothed, her body essentially newborn.

  “Oh,” Vincent said, looking away. He unbuttoned his shirt and handed it to her. It was not particularly clean, but it was better than nothing.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Vincent said.

  She slipped into the shirt, sobbing and nodding her head.

  “All of it. I remember all of it. God, help me,” she said, weeping openly.

  Vincent glanced at her as she buried her face in her hands. There wasn’t even a trace of blood magic on her anymore.

  “Are you... better now?”

  “When I was there...when I was dead, I was so angry. Lord, forgive me, I was so angry. And they offered me a deal. A way to come back and make things right. I was blind. The rage was all I could feel. I wanted everyone to hurt as much as I hurt. I didn’t care who or why or when. I just wanted them all to hurt.”

  “You made a deal?” Vincent asked.

  “A blood bargain. Power for blood. They would get every soul I destroyed until I was finished. Only now, I do not want to go on. I see what I have done. So they took the power back.”

  She looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  “The things I did. The things I wanted to do. I am so sorry, Mr. Donnelly. For the pain I caused you. People are dead because of me. I do not deserve to live.”

  “You didn’t deserve to die. And something from the Void made you act the way you did. You have a second chance now. You’re not the things you did in the past. You need to focus on that,” he said.

  “Good advice,” Fix added.

  “You took everything I had,” Abigail said suddenly. Her voice was low, drained of emotion. She ambled into the light, her face smeared with blood and dirt. She was crying.

  “Abigail,” Maggie said, staring at her. Abigail looked at her in the dim light.