“Look out!” Madame Aishe said, and she pushed me to the ground just as a spider launched itself at us from across the street.
I turned onto my back in time to see Madame Aishe struggling with a spider the size of a large dog. It was trying to clamp its talons around her body! Frank raced toward her and grabbed two of its legs, pulling them apart, but the thing was strong. Too strong for him. But before I could decide what to do, another spider came into view.
This one was massive—bigger, even, than the one that attacked me by the RV—and it was coming down on a thread of silk that looked more like a thick metal chain than a spider’s web; and its mouth was dripping with glowing green goo.
“Amber!” said a voice.
I looked back and saw Collette and Damien leaving the post office building behind. Collette stretched her hands across from her, clenched her fists and pulled, and the shadow spider attacking Madame Aishe pulled itself apart in a flash of smoke and shadow. My mouth flew wide open at the sight of that kind of power, but I couldn’t spend any time admiring it. I had to get up. I had to get moving.
If the spiders were after me, and it seemed likely that they were, I had to take them out of the little village of the dead. Missington’s inhabitants were innocent, and I would not let them suffer at the hands of these beasts; not if I was the reason why they were here.
“How far to the river?” I asked Madame Aishe.
“Not far—this way.”
Madame Aishe led us through a tangle of houses which got smaller and older the deeper we went. The clicking followed, sometimes coming from above, other times coming from behind. Gaining. Always gaining. I was sure that, if I looked back, I would see the shadow spiders coming.
“Go!” I said.
Damien and Frank moved past me, and when they were clear I raised my hands to the sky, dug deep into the depths of my own power, and willed fire into the world of the dead. And from my fingertips fire did leap in arches to create a line which gave even the shadow spiders pause. Hisssssss! I could see the mantle of darkness around them recede as the light from the fire stripped away their shadows. Their power.
The spiders retreated into the darkness, and as the flames rose into a blazing inferno the spiders began to climb higher and higher, away from the fire. Away from the light. Until they were gone, back into the shadows from where they had come.
Damien ran back to me and grabbed my arm. “Amber, we have to go,” he said.
But I was watching the spiders disappear into the black. I wanted to make sure they were gone, but the dance of light against the thick, spindly figures in the dark was… mesmerizing. I was drawn to it. In a game of tug-of-war between the spiders and Damien, I was the rope.
“Now, Amber!” Damien tugged hard and I let myself be taken away down the path Madame Aishe was leading us through. We entered a man-made tunnel at the far end of Missington, emerging a few moments later tired and out of breath—but alive. Or, well, intact. Damien and Frank sat down while I rested my back against a rocky wall and allowed myself a moment to breathe and relax.
My body was still pulsing with power, racing with adrenaline, but I needed to come back down and think. Think, Amber. Come back.
“Is everyone alright?” Collette asked.
She got a round of nods.
Madame Aishe turned to Collette and said “You.”
“Yes,” Collette said.
“You are the one. The other half of the fractured soul. The Necromancer.”
“I am.”
“I have met others like you.”
“I am sure you have.”
“They all fall to the darkness they wield.”
I held my still unsteady breaths. Frank and Damien were watching the conversation, but they weren’t getting involved.
“We have to go,” I said, steadying myself against the rock wall. “Madame Aishe said that we have to cross the river and trek along the path presented to us if we want to find the shadow and end this; and we’re running out of time.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Frank said.
Damien nodded. “You used a lot of magick back there. If those things come back…”
He didn’t need to finish what he was going to say. I knew I would get tired as time went on, that the over use of magick would burn me out. I understood this now, or at least I thought I understood. One thing, however, was certain: I didn’t want to have to face those things again. We got lucky, that was all.
I also sensed that Collette agreed with what Damien had just said, even if she didn’t nod or say anything. Collette was, perhaps, the most experienced witch here next to Frank.
“Then we must go now,” Madame Aishe said, “The river is far from here, but we will get there.”
“Wait,” said Frank, “I need some water or something right now, or else I’m gonna pass out. I’m not used to running like that.”
Damien pulled the bag from off his back and unzipped it. He grabbed a bottle of water and passed it to Frank, then he passed one to me and to Collette. He was about to pass one to Madame Aishe, but then realized what he was doing and stopped. I didn’t blame him. She looked completely real to us. Was completely real to us. Standing side by side with Collette as she was, you wouldn’t be able to tell she was dead were it not for the pallor of her face and the blue of her lips.
“Amber,” Collette said. She had come up beside me. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For doing zis. You… are saving my life. Zis journey has already been perilous and there iz more to come.”
“Now isn’t the time to be thanking me. You can thank me when you aren’t dying.”
Collette nodded. “I apologise if my thanks are premature, but after seeing what you can do, I have no doubt. You are ze red witch from my dreams, and our fates are entwined.”
“You never explained the how to me.”
“What if I told you zat I knew how to track down ze person responsible for everything zat has happened to you until now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ze deaths, ze cult, ze demon. Acheris.”
Hearing the name spoken out of the lips of a stranger left me stunned. I hadn’t told anyone but Frank and Damien, and I knew they sure as hell hadn’t told Collette. I stopped moving for a second, but then got going again. “How did you know that name?” I asked.
“Amber, you are more special than you realize. The rarest of breeds. Someone like you comes only one in one hundred million.”
“That’s a big statistic.”
“But it is true. You are a sorceress. Your power comes from within and transcends that of an ordinary witch in leaps and bounds. Zat is why you are able to use your magick in here so fully.”
“That’s what the Madame just said. Does that mean you’re a sorceress too? I saw you use your magick a moment ago.”
She shook her head. “Shadow magick. Ze magick of ze Underworld. I was fighting fire with fire.”
That explained why Damien and Frank were having trouble with their magick. It also explained what Madame Aishe had told me about a witch’s magick coming from without. Wiccans get their power from nature, from the watchtowers—from the planet’s collective energy. If even half of the Wiccan religion translated to the truth about True Witches, then it meant that Damien and Frank were cut off from the watchtowers, from the Guardians, and from their magick so long as they remained in the Underworld.
More and more I was starting to believe what I was hearing and a picture was starting to form inside my head. The Sheriff was killing all the witches in Raven’s Glen because he didn’t know which was the one he needed. The demon cult had targetted me because the Sheriff had identified me as the Sorceress. And the person who had started it all was a someone called Acheris. An ethereal figure, as unknown and unknowable to me as the cosmos themselves.
It all seemed too unreal. First, a madman kills a couple of witches only so that he can kill me and make it lo
ok like another suicide, or an accident. He fails, so then a cult—a fucking cult—moves into my town and sets up a ritual space designed specifically for me. To marry me to some filthy demon because I’m part of a prophecy they wanted to prevent… or was it fulfil?
The wolf, the witch and the demon.
If Aaron hadn’t turned into a werewolf, if he wasn’t in the picture at all, I would have believed they had the wrong girl. But Aaron was here, and he was the wolf in the story. I was the witch. And the demon—the creature which would ruin my life—had come and gone. Or, at least, that was my hope. And now that Madame Aishe had pulled the Ten of Swords and The Devil from out of the tarot deck in the same reading, I wondered if the thing was still with me like a parasite clinging to my soul.
I shuddered.
“But you must heed my words, Amber,” Collette said, “The rarest of diamonds are sought out by greedy people; and you are no exception.”
“Do you mean to say that I’m being hunted?”
“Oui. And without my help you will not survive, and ze entire world will plunge into darkness. Zis is why we need each other.”
I guess, now, I understood.
Chapter Eighteen
We left the mine-shaft tunnels leading into and out of Missington behind as we made our way toward what the gypsy woman had called the Bleak Shore. That the underworld was a cavern wasn’t in question; that a shore, however, could exist within the cavern had me thinking. But I wasn’t quite as startled by this thought as the thought of a river of Bone.
That’s what the gypsy had called the waters beyond the Bleak Shore.
The River of Bone. A river of bones. Where was the line between physical place and metaphor? Would the river be made up of water, in the same way that the Dead Sea is devoid of any actual dead bodies? Or would little pieces of bone caress the shoreline as the solid “water” clicked and rattled along? Would there be blood on the bones? Meat? Who did they even belong to?
Or what did they belong to?
The thought was enough to send my mind running off into the dark wilds of the Underworld, until Frank reeled me back in with a firm tap on the shoulder.
“You okay there?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You didn’t get hurt or anything?”
“No. You?”
“Barely, but that’s only because I fell on my ass when I saw the spider for the first time.” Frank rubbed the sore spot on his right butt cheek. “I can’t remember the last time I was left without the ability to walk straight.”
“Oh I bet you do.”
“Careful, witch.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you enough times how happy I am that you’re here.”
“Guys,” Damien said. He was slightly ahead with Collette and Madame Aishe. “We’re here.”
They were standing on a ledge. Even in the dark of the Underworld I could make out the slight dip in the ground, that little incline that happens when land meets water. And it was water, not bones, only there was so much water. The shimmering darkness was vast, almost endless. And it was flowing! But how could a body of water this big be called a river?
“This is it?” I asked.
The gypsy nodded. “This is the Bleak Shore. The water you see is the River of Bone.”
My heart was starting to pound against my chest. “How are we supposed to cross this?”
“The ferryman,” Collette offered. “Zere has to be a ferryman.”
Madame Aishe gave Collette a soft nod. “You are right. He is not here, but he will be. He knows we are here. We must, now, simply wait.”
“Did I step on a call button and not know about it?” Frank asked, checking the area immediately around his feet.
I nudged him with my elbow again and he shut up. If nothing else, the wait gave us all time to take in a breath of strangely fresh air. The water brought with it an oddly refreshing sensation which I likened to standing at the edge of a pier on a sunny spring day. My eyes searched for Frank—he hadn’t finished telling me what he was about to tell me—but my gaze found Damien standing by the shore on his own. He, like me and, I guessed everyone else, was also lost in thought. His right hand was limp by his side, and the torch clutched between his fingers was throwing light onto the gently moving ocean at his feet.
I swallowed and approached. “Damien?” I said.
Damien took a deep breath, as if he had come up for air, and turned his head slightly toward me.
I remembered then how we had met—I mean really met—on the slope of a riverbank, and suddenly I knew what he was thinking about. Or, rather, who he was thinking about. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “You?”
“I’m fine. I just thought… I wanted to thank you. For what you did for me back there.”
He shrugged. “You would have done the same.”
“I know, but… I don’t want you to think that I took it for granted.”
“I didn’t think that. We’re friends, and I care about you.”
I believed him, too. Damien made me want to pull my hair out when I found out about him and Natalie, but after I calmed down about the whole thing I realized that we hadn’t been that close for that long to begin with. We had what most people would consider to have been a good run and that was it. Natalie was the one who had really been wronged, and that was hardly any of my business.
Looking at Damien now—as a friend—felt natural. We shared a memory about his sister. Not just a memory, either. We had both been through an ordeal together. We had a ghost story that we could tell our kids and that they could tell their kids. We had a story. No. We were the beginning of a story. The first chapter in the tale of my life as a True Witch. That’s what we shared. And that’s why I linked my arm around his and rested my head on his shoulder.
Damien’s breathing was hard. I could feel his heart beating heavily in his veins. But it wasn’t for me. It was for Lily. I wondered if he could see her face in the black water before us. I wondered if he was recalling happy memories, or reliving sad ones. I had done both, and I was starting to realize that it wasn’t a coincidence either. I was starting to think that, maybe, it was the water.
Bonk.
The sound startled me. It was so close! That’s when I saw it. A wooden boat, maybe ten or twelve feet long, had sailed into the rock and used it to stop. The current was moving across, but the featureless boat was as stiff as a board; as was its pilot.
“Hello?” I asked, approaching. My heart was racing now too, but I kept myself calm and showed no fear. No surprise.
In a voice like a puff of dust, he said, “Need a ride?”
I noticed movement from the rest of the group. They were starting to get up, but it was the gypsy woman who came up beside me first. “We do,” she said, “We seek to cross your river.”
“A ghost and four breathers; this I have not seen in some time.”
“Will you let us cross?”
“If you pay the price.”
“Name it,” I said.
The figure extended a thin, bony hand wrapped in loose, pale flesh and clutching a chalice. It gleamed even in the darkness. Silver, maybe? “You must pay the blood toll, but it will cost you.” he said.
Damien stepped up and took the cup before I could speak. “Fine,” he said, and he flicked a pocket-knife open and went to cut his palm, but Frank stopped him.
“No,” Frank said, “Not you.” He looked at me. “Amber.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sailing at the front of the ferryman’s boat across an endless dark sea was like something out of a Lovecraft book. The water lapped at the boat’s hull, gently licking the wood—kissing it—as the boat cut a path through the river of Bone. I still didn’t understand why it was called such. Maybe there was no meaning behind the name, but how could that be? To my logical mind, this inconsistency didn’t make any sense.
All I knew about the river of bone was that it appeared as an ocean and that Damien and I had ref
lected on the past; on something that hurt, and something that made us happy. I wondered if the others had, too. None of them were speaking. They, like me, were fixed with the strange stillness of the water. Mesmerized by the way its surface rippled and sparkled despite the lack of ambient light.
At the front of the boat Damien scanned the water with his torch. Meanwhile I was sitting across from Frank, Collette and Madame Aishe. They all seemed pensive, all except for Madame Aishe. I got the impression that she was nervous. Scared, even. If I hadn’t learned from her that the dead can die again, I wouldn’t have understood.
But I did.
I flexed my cut palm, felt the throb of pain, and looked over at Frank. “Why me?” I asked.
Frank tilted his tall neck down and met my eyes. “Why what?”
“Why me and not Damien?”
“His blood wouldn’t have cut it. No offence.”
Damien wasn’t listening, and if he was he hadn’t acknowledge what Frank had said.
“How did you know, though?” I asked, “How were you so sure?”
“Because of what you are.”
“Seriously? Because I’m a sorceress?”
Frank nodded. “Don’t you understand just how rare and powerful your magick is? I mean, it isn’t just your magick. It’s your blood too.”
Collette nodded in agreement. “A true sorceress does not come but once in a hundred years. The last sorceress I knew of was a German witch. She was a hunter of evil, a champion of light. Her magick was a beacon for European witches to live by.”
“She sounds awesome,” I said.
“She was, but she was soon overcome by enemies. Sorcerers make many of those.”
I pressed my lips together. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“It iz fine, I did not know her. Only of her.”
“Have there been any American sorcerers?”
Frank shook his head. “Not that I’ve read about. But if any sorcerer came to the States it would have been to escape whatever enemies he made across the pond.”
“Ah, but one sorcerer did come to the Americas,” Collette said. “A sorcerer’s magick is passed through the blood.”
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