by M. V. Stott
The boy turned and disappeared into the house. I paused for a second, aware that I was almost certainly walking into a trap. Maybe I could attempt to pull the front of the house off in one go to see what was happening inside without having to enter. Had all of the fairies I’d slaughtered and fed from given me enough energy to do something like that?
A noise.
A tap at a window.
I looked up to see a desperate figure waving down at me—
‘David!’
A hand grabbed him by the throat and pulled him out of view. All thoughts of caution evaporated, and before I even knew what I was doing, I was sprinting over the threshold into the dark innards of the boy’s house.
24
I stopped in the entrance corridor, the temperature inside a good ten degrees colder than the street outside. I turned and looked back to where I’d come from, to see the front door swing shut of its own accord, cutting off the view. Cutting off the exit.
And then the door disappeared.
I ran to it, very aware that I might have just made a mistake. I felt around, but couldn’t find any sign of the exit, just rough brick, solid, like it had been that way for years. Had always been that way.
‘Stella…’
I whirled round, glowing fists up, to see the boy skipping out of view at the other end of the corridor.
‘I’m coming for you!’ I screamed, hurling a ball of energy in front of me to show I meant business, practically crisping my own hair as I sprinted through it. I rounded the corner to find the corridor ahead empty, a staircase to my right.
‘Pssst, Familiar—’
The boy was crouched at the top of the stairs, looking down at me through the banister.
‘Enough with the messing around, Mr. Trick, are you actually going to stand and fight?’
I felt it before I heard or saw anything. That prickle on the back of my neck that told me I had to get moving. I turned to my right, just in time to see a large knife glinting as the blade embedded into the banister, where my head had been moments earlier. Still holding the knife’s handle was a woman in her late thirties.
‘Oh, I don’t think mother likes you at all, Familiar,’ said the boy, as mother yanked the blade free and swung it in an arc, only just missing my neck as I threw myself backwards, landing with a crash onto the floor.
‘Mother knows best, Familiar,’ she said, and stamped on my knee. I cried out in pain and reflexively tossed up a ball of flame that engulfed the woman. Her hair caught fire, in fact her whole head seemed to catch, but the woman didn’t flail, or fall to the floor, even yell out in agony as her flesh broiled. Instead, she giggled.
‘What are you?’ I asked, as the boy appeared at her side, holding her hand.
‘We’re bad and bad and bad all over, Familiar,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right mother?’
‘Right as rain, son,’ she replied.
They stepped towards me, the flames dying and revealing the woman’s now blackened face, flesh scorched, eyeballs molten in their sockets.
I pushed back across the floor and attempted to scramble to my feet, my knee sharp with pain and almost dropping me as I staggered.
‘Already hurt?’
‘Already?’
‘You’re even less sport than your bitch, whore witches.’
I snarled: ‘You made a mistake coming into my city. Into my coven. If you think you’re going to walk away from this alive, you’re wrong.’
‘Stella? Stella, where are you!’
David.
I didn’t stop to think; I found the right words leap into my mind and unleashed a concussive wave of energy, sweeping the pair aside and depositing them in the kitchen. I ran for the stairs, taking them three at a time, any pain in my knee forgotten.
I moved from room to room until there was only one door left. I turned the handle and shook the door, but it refused to open.
‘Stella? Is that you?’
‘David, it’s me, are you okay?’
‘Just great, apart from being kidnapped by creepy mum and her even creepier son.’
‘Step back!’
I placed my hand over the lock, placing the correct phrase together in my mind. The lock clicked as it opened, the door swinging back. David was stood in the room.
‘David!’
‘Well, you took your bloody time!’
‘You’re welcome. Now come on, I’m getting you out of here and then I’m coming back to finish this thing.’
He followed me as I made my way back to the stairs, trying to ignore that tickle that was telling me this had all been far too easy. This couldn’t be the end of it. They weren’t going to let me just run out of here with him, right?
I soon got my answer.
There was a thump behind me and a yelp. I turned to find David on the floor, trying to get back up.
‘Sorry, tripped, classic damsel move.’
‘Stop messing around, we’ve got to get out of here!’
‘Okay, I’m sorry, I’ll—’
I took one step forward before I saw the look in his eyes as he stood. He was looking past me.
I didn’t have time to react.
A flash of something whistled past my head, then the knife found its target, entering David’s throat up to the hilt.
He looked at me with confusion, not able to understand what had just happened. I think he tried to speak, but all that came out was blood, coughed up in a violent spray.
‘No—’ I put my hands to my mouth as he stepped back, then stumbled, then fell to his knees. He looked at me one last time, then fell to his side, the handle of the knife clattering loudly as it hit the floor. I watched as a pool of blood began to form around his head, like a scarlet pillow.
I walked towards him in a daze, for a moment unconcerned about any threat to myself.
I fell to my knees.
A corpse before me.
I’d failed.
First my masters, now this.
What good was I?
What was I for if I couldn’t keep those around me safe?
The boy and his mother were holding hands at the other end of the corridor.
‘Mr. Trick has been a bad boy, hasn’t he?’
‘Hasn’t he?’
‘Hasn’t he?’
Words escaped me, I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t fight. Instead I felt all the anger, the fear, the despair and the shame boil up inside me like a storm. It met the still untapped reservoir of magic I’d drank down from my trip underground, and without thinking, without putting any magical form together, I stood and threw my head back, my arms out, and screamed. Power exploded from me, rampaging down the corridor, around the house, like I was a volcano erupting, determined to destroy everything in my path. The walls cracked, the windows shattered, everything around me was turned to ash.
I don’t know how long it lasted. Perhaps a second. Perhaps an hour. Then, like a switch had been flicked, it was over and I fell to the blackened floor.
25
I’m not sure how long it took me to get back to the coven, or how I got there even. Maybe I walked, maybe I took the Tube. The world was a daze, a dream, an awful lie. I found myself back in my room, curled up on the bed I hadn’t slept on since this whole thing had started. I felt weak, drained of energy. Whatever I had unleashed back in that house in Ealing had completely sapped me.
I’d thought that I was walking into the big, final confrontation. That whatever happened, one or both of us wasn’t walking away. Either way, I was going to save David. That’s the one thing I was going to do no matter what. Didn’t matter what happened to me, I just had to stop Mr. Trick from taking that one life.
And I’d failed.
Mr. Trick had no intention of that being the grand finale. He’d just lured me in to make me suffer once again. To take something that had become dear to me and not even give me the relief of death afterward. No, he had more in store for me yet.
I couldn’t remember seeing him,
seeing the boy and his mother, or anyone else—not after I’d unleashed all of my pent-up magic. Their bodies had been completely destroyed by my outburst, David’s too, but no part of me thought it was over. Those things weren’t Mr. Trick, they were just playing pieces being pushed around the board. Testing me, seeing what I had.
I could picture that look in David’s eyes as I tried to close my own. The incomprehension. Had he even known what had happened? That there was a kitchen knife embedded up to the handle in his throat?
I should never have involved him in this whole thing.
He was a just a normal. No, that’s wrong, he wasn’t “just” anything. He was a brave man, full of light, and I’d been too wrapped up in my own thirst for revenge to do the right thing. To know that involving him in a suicide mission against the most powerful Uncanny I’d ever known was only going to end one way. If I’d assumed facing down Mr. Trick might well put an end to my life as a Familiar once and for all, what had I thought might happen to him?
My body felt heavy. This was different to what had happened to my masters. They could handle themselves. They didn’t need my help to keep them safe. They were always safe. Well, always had been before Mr. Trick came to town.
Mr. Trick, will come to town, and all of the Uncanny, shall fall and frown.
Uncanny and normal alike. He wasn’t fussy.
-A noise from the corridor.
-A floorboard creaking, like someone had just shifted their weight.
I sat up and stared at the gap between the door and the floor.
A shadow passed, something moving quickly away.
I didn’t bother asking who it was, I already knew.
Mr. Trick had come to town.
It was time for this Uncanny to fall and frown.
But not without a fight.
I wouldn’t fall without throwing everything I had left in me at the thing, no matter how ineffective it might be. I wouldn’t give the monster the satisfaction of a meek shuffle towards death’s door.
I drew the magic in the room towards me as I padded toward the door and opened it quietly, peering out into the gloom of the corridor beyond. No sign of anyone.
I opened the door just wide enough and slipped out of my room, my right hand fierce with magic. A raging lantern, leading the way.
I could hear the murmur of hushed voices drifting from the main coven room. I moved forward. As I got closer, a chill crept across my skin, the gooseflesh breaking out.
I shivered.
The voices became clearer:
‘I told you.’
‘Me too.’
‘She was not ready.’
‘How could she be, a thing such as her?’
‘Spit and force of will.’
‘Dirt and rags.’
No…
This was…
I knew those voices.
The power in my right hand grew weaker, then spluttered out altogether as I pushed the door open and stepped inside the main coven room.
In the centre of the room stood three figures. Three women more powerful than any other Uncanny of London, even though to look at them you would assume they were nothing more than three middle-aged women at their weekly knitting circle.
Kala, Trin, & Feal
The witches of the London Coven.
My masters.
My creators.
‘Look how she gawps,’ said Kala.
‘This isn’t possible… ’
‘You think anything exists that could take us out? In our own coven? Our own seat of power?’
‘You really are pathetic.’
‘This was a test.’
‘A test?’
‘I told you she’d fail.’
‘Yes, but I never thought she would fail so completely.’
I fell to my knees as confusion overtook me.
‘Well, fail she did, and now you know what comes next.’
My masters nodded as one: ‘We have to destroy her.’
26
The world had become a nightmare.
Ever since I first walked into the blind alley in Hammersmith that housed my coven, I’d felt things spinning further and further out of control. Further into unreality, insanity, and now…
I looked up again through tear-blurred eyes to see my masters stood before me, smiling. Mocking.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.
‘Why would we care about a thing like that? Like what you think? What is that to us? What is your opinion’s worth?’
‘It is nothing.’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘You’re just a thing.’
‘A tool we created to take care of the drudge and the filth.’
‘You’re not a person.’
‘Not a person.’
‘Not even nearly.’
I stood and staggered back, angrily wiping away tears with the sleeve of my jacket. I reached out with my senses, searching for signs of the trick I was seeing. Because that’s all this could be, no matter how real it seemed, no matter how much my emotions boiled and told me it was true. This was Mr. Trick’s doing, it had to be.
‘Oh, that is cute.’
‘You feel it too?’
‘Of course. Her puny little magical tendrils eagerly snuffling around us like a retarded pup, searching for signs of falsehood.’
My senses recoiled as I failed to find any lies. They were alive, really alive. They didn’t seem like some pretence. As far as I could tell, the three women in front of me were the trio of witches that had created me. The ones I had served without question for decades.
‘She sees the truth of it.’
‘Why? Why did you do this to me?’ I looked at their smirking faces, and for the first time in my many years of life, I felt like I wanted to tear them to pieces. Wanted to draw in every scrap of magic and throw it at them. Wanted to knock them down and stamp them out like they were on fire.
‘Your face flushes, Familiar.’
‘Ooh, Trin, I believe she wishes us harm.’
‘Us!’
‘Her own creators.’
‘You think something as worthless as you could harm a hair upon our heads?’
They laughed, but there was no humour in it, only malice.
I sank to my knees. My fists were hot with energy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. Not just because they were right, me going against them would be like a fly taking on a T-Rex, but because, despite it all, they were my masters. My creators. For want of a better word, they were my Gods. And what right did I have to attack God?
I wasn’t a person.
I was a thing.
A thing they owned.
‘Just do it. Do it if you’re going to!’
My head sank, eyes closed, as I waited for them to put an end to my long life. If this was who they really were, I didn’t want to exist anymore. I thought about David again. About how I’d let him down. This was right. My own stupidity had got him killed. My failure to pass their stinking ‘test’. Well fuck it all. Fuck everything. Time to die.
And maybe I would have done. Maybe that would have been the end to my time, to this story. But it was then that I noticed something. Or should I say, I realised for the first time that I didn’t notice something. I opened my eyes and a smile spread across my face.
‘Why are you smiling, Familiar?’
‘She has gone mad. Accepting the truth.’
‘Accepting the end.’
‘The end at our hand! Because we created her—’
‘—And so we will also end her!’
I began to laugh, loud and crazy. Crazy with relief.
‘What is it?’
‘What?’
‘Answer us!’
I was a step ahead for once. I knew something he didn’t.
‘This was really good. You almost had me. But you made a mistake.’
‘Do not talk to you masters like—’
‘Oh shut up. You’re a lie. Just another trick.
You know how I know that?’
The three witches looked at me, dumbfounded. I savoured the looks for several seconds.
‘Tell us!’
I inhaled once, deeply, through the nose, then breathed out. ‘You got the smell wrong. This place always smells the same. It’s my first memory, that smell. Cinnamon, cut grass, and Lavender. The scent of the London Coven. And you overlooked it. Even I almost did.’
It was time for this trick to end.
I pulled the magic towards me and unleashed it in a torrent towards them. Towards the lie. They stood dumbly as my magic swirled around them; great silver, blue and gold arcs of molten fire. Then the screaming began. They wailed and thrashed as the magic penetrated their bodies.
‘Well played, Stella,’ said Mr. Trick, many voices as one. ‘You actually won a round, but I’m afraid the game isn’t over yet.’
I picked up a chair: ‘It soon will be,’ I snarled, and launched the chair at the squirming, screaming pretend witches. It turned them to ash on impact, and carried on through, breaking through the far wall. No, tearing through, it wasn’t brick, it was paper. How had I missed that? The entire room now began to sag and collapse. I ran for the tear I’d created and leapt through as the pretend coven fell.
27
I was in the street in Ealing again. Mr. Trick’s street. I’d never left; never stumbled back to Hammersmith, back to the London Coven, after unleashing all of the raging magic I’d devoured from the fairies and burning everything around me.
It had just been another trick.
He’d even filled the fake coven with enough magic for me to accept it. Now the illusion had wilted and I’d stepped out of it, I again felt the emptiness of his street. A street impossibly drained of all magic. It gnawed at my stomach like I was starving hungry, but I’d drawn in enough magic from the fake coven to feel some power inside me. To stave off the sweats and the shakes. But it wouldn’t be enough. Not to face this creature. I was walking towards who knows what without the safety of all the fairy magic coursing through me.
Who was I kidding? Even with that power inside of me, I hadn’t stood a chance. There was no difference between then and now. I was still walking naked into a pit full of hungry lions. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was seeing this through, finally, to the end. To face the thing responsible for all of this and not back down. For the witches of the London Coven.
