Witch Hunt

by Ruth Warburton

  ‘Luke—’

  ‘Where is she?’ he interrupted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where is she? Sebastian’s mother?’

  ‘Luke, no, you don’t understand. She’s burning the house. If you go after her—’

  ‘Which way?’ he roared, but she stood her ground, her breath coming fast and panicked, trying to work out what to say, how to persuade him of the stupidity of what he wanted to do. For a long moment they stood at loggerheads, like two bulls facing each other down. I have magic, she thought, a fleeting, unworthy realization. And he does not. I could compel him.

  But even as the thought flickered through her mind, he took a deep shuddering breath and took her hand in his, the injured hand. As he held it in both his hands, her heart missed a painful beat.

  ‘I turned back,’ he said very quietly. ‘In the factory. I turned back for you. I gave up my chance at revenge for you. I came back here, for you, and you wouldn’t come away with me. You went back for Cassie. You did what you had to do, even though you knew it was dangerous, maybe even might cost you your life to try to find her. And I didn’t try to stop you. Please.’ His hands around hers were warm, and he shut his eyes, his expression wringing her heart. ‘Don’t try to stop me, Rose.’

  She said nothing. The roar of the fire was in her ears, louder and closer now.

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘Back the way we came,’ she said at last. The words stuck in her craw, and she had to force them out. She wanted so badly to find Cassie and get out. The thought of Luke plunging into that inferno – to what? To his death? To pursue some long-dead vengeance? To put hate above love, as the Malleus did? ‘Past the green baize door at the end of that long corridor. But, Luke—’

  But he had already turned, striding back along the corridor they had already taken, back to the stairwell and the passage that led to the green baize door.

  For a minute she stood, watching his back disappear into the wreathing smoke, and she thought of turning and leaving, finding Cassie, letting him pursue his obsession to the death. It was his choice, after all.

  But as his shape retreated into shadow and her heart seemed to pull from her very body, trying to follow, she realized she could not.

  ‘Luke, wait!’ She began to run, feeling the heat on her face and the smell of smoke grow stronger as she followed him. ‘Wait!’

  Luke was almost at the green baize door before he heard the footsteps behind him and, above the roar of the fire, a voice calling desperately.

  ‘Wait!’

  He turned – and his heart leapt and clenched with joy and fear at the same time. Rosa.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he called, coughing against the smoke. ‘Go back!’

  ‘No.’ She ran up next to him. Her face was flushed and her eyes were red and watering. ‘No, I will not.’

  For a minute Luke wavered, and then a crash of a falling beam decided him. They could not stand here arguing; every moment that they did the danger grew.

  ‘Come on then.’ He put his hand towards the door, but even before he touched it he could feel the heat coming off it, and as he looked properly he saw it was smouldering, the baize blackening and smoking before their eyes, far too hot to touch.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Rosa said shortly. She shut her eyes and whispered the words of a spell under her breath. Luke saw her magic shimmer and flare and it seemed to wrap around them both, with a sensation like a cool breeze in his face. Suddenly the heat of the fire was less, and then she bent her head and he saw the struggle in her face, her lips moving in a silent exhortation.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he whispered, but he did not expect her to answer. Her lips kept moving in that silent prayer, those strange foreign words, like a half-remembered tongue, whispering in her magic.

  And then the door sprang open.

  The wall of flame beyond was like hell. The blaze curled up the walls, arching overhead like a cathedral of fire, blazing into glory as the air from the open door fed the inferno.

  ‘Where can they be?’ he shouted over the roar of the fire. ‘No one could survive in that!’

  Rosa made no answer – she just pointed down the corridor of flames to where a door stood open at the end. For a moment Luke couldn’t understand – they were on the second floor. The door could not lead anywhere but to open air. Then he remembered: a fire escape ran along the two end walls of Southing, a metal zigzagging ladder that scaled the east and west end, leading down from the servants’ rooms in the attics to the grounds below.

  ‘They must have gone that way!’ Rosa shouted. ‘Come on!’

  She took his hand and he felt her magic gather and build, wreathing him in its cool embrace.

  ‘We must run!’ she cried above the roar of the flames. ‘I can’t hold this for long, the fire is too strong for me to protect us for more than a few moments. Are you ready?’

  He nodded.

  And then they ran.

  Luke felt the burning floorboards shift and crackle beneath his feet, and the flames fanned by their passage leaping and licking after them, snatching at their clothes and hair with greedy fingers and tongues. There was a roar in his ears like a waterfall, and despite Rosa’s magic the heat was so great that he screwed up his eyes as they ran, trying to keep them from scorching in his skull.

  And then Rosa was gasping beside him and the coolness in his face was real. There was snow speckling his scalded cheeks, hissing as it blew through the open door into the burning corridor that was now behind him.

  ‘You’re incredible,’ he croaked above the crackling roar. ‘How?’ He looked back at the burning inferno, unable to believe that it was Rosa who had brought them safely through that hell.

  ‘You walked through fire for me once,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

  Luke touched her cheek, his heart so full he could not speak. Then he turned away to wipe the snow from his eyes, coughing roughly to clear his throat.

  ‘The ladder beneath,’ he managed, pointing at the fire escape. ‘It’s still pulled up.’

  ‘In which case . . .’ Rosa looked up, at the ladder stretching up above their heads, to the servants’ wing and beyond. ‘They must have gone up.’

  The ladder rungs were slippery and icy with snow, and when Luke reached the edge of the roof he stopped and flexed his fingers, trying to get the feeling back into them before he hauled himself over the parapet and on to the slates, keeping his body low and inconspicuous.

  For a minute he lay panting, waiting for the grinding pain in his rib to subside. Then as his eyes got used to the swirling snow he looked around, his heart thumping, half with the pain and half with fear. Were they there? Was Sebastian hiding around the corner of a gable, waiting to strike?

  Suddenly, out of the dimness, he saw a figure crouched further along the roof with its back to the parapet. Sebastian? But as Luke peered closer he realized it was too small, with pale hair straggling across its shoulders.

  Cassie.

  He was about to call out to her when he saw another shape on her other side. Knyvet.

  Luke crouched back into the shadows of the gable, but there was no danger of Knyvet seeing him. Sebastian’s attention was fixed on something – or someone – far up on the topmost ridge. A woman, with wild black hair streaming out in the wind-blown snow, her face turned to the scudding clouds and the stars.

  ‘Mama!’ Cassie’s voice was thin and snatched by the wind, but Luke could hear the sob in it. ‘Mama, please. Please come down, it’s not safe.’

  ‘Safe!’ It was a wild, eldritch scream, blown on the night air. ‘Safe? For ten years I’ve been caged to keep me safe. I am done with safety, do you hear me? Come!’ She spread out her arms, her face turned exultantly to the sky. ‘Come, Asag! Come, Shedu! Come, Išum and Belial and Lilu and Pazuzu! Take me, possess me! Let me ride you to the land beyond!’

  Her magic was a huge billowing cloud of ink spreading across the sky, like a polluting oil slick shadowing the moonlit clou
ds. Luke had never seen so vast and terrible a power – the wild black power he had seen that day in the drawing room, when she had revived Rosa, was nothing to this enormous spreading blackness. It was as if some dam had broken and all the power pent up in the years of miserable captivity had flooded out.

  ‘Mama!’ Cassie sobbed. ‘Please!’ She turned to Knyvet, who was crouched by her side. His hands seemed to be bound in front of him with something that gleamed in the dim light. ‘Sebastian, say something, do something!’

  ‘Do?’ There was a snarl in his voice and Luke could smell the brandy coming off him, even at this distance. ‘What can I do? That little bitch has chained me like a dog. I can’t cast a damn witchlight. Get these things off me and then I’ll do whatever you want.’

  But he stood and shouted.

  ‘Mama! Get down off that roof. D’you want to kill yourself?’

  ‘Kill myself?’ She laughed delightedly and began to walk the ridgepole, her scorched gown trailing out behind her like a macabre wedding train. ‘Why not? I have little left to fear, now your father is gone.’ A huge buffet of wind suddenly caught her and she staggered, but did not fall. She had something in her hand that she was using to balance herself. His heart caught in his mouth as he realized what it was – the snake’s-head cane, clutched between her hands like a tightrope walker.

  ‘The house is burning, Mama!’ Cassie cried. ‘Please, we must get down. Please!’

  Behind him, Luke heard Rosa’s feet on the ladder and he turned, putting his finger to his lips as she clambered over, her skirts dragging in the slush-filled gutter. They crouched, side by side, watching the figure on the roof.

  ‘I am free,’ she called, her voice floating on the night wind, swirling with the snowflakes. Below they could hear the crackle and roar of the fire as it raged higher. ‘Free at last!’

  Luke felt for Rosa’s fingers and squeezed them tight. Then he stood up.

  He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. First Sebastian’s and then his mother’s gaze turned to him. Sebastian swore and began to stumble along the edge of the roof towards Luke, but behind him Rosa stood, her hand outstretched.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ she shouted, her magic blazing out across the tiles, and Sebastian seemed to freeze, statue-like, balanced at the edge of the slates.

  ‘Who is this?’ his mother called, her voice ripped and torn by the wind. ‘Who are you, outwith? What are you doing here?’ She took a step forward along the roof. ‘Don’t you know, I eat young men like you?’ She raised her hands to the sky and great bolts of lightning shot from her finger tips, arcing into the heavens where they crashed and rumbled and lit up the snowy landscape.

  ‘NO!’ Rosa screamed. She scrambled across the tiles to stand in front of Luke, her arms outstretched. ‘If you touch him, I will – I will die first!’

  The woman on the roof gave a long, low cackling laugh and then she opened her mouth and roared. A wall of flame shot out across the frozen slates and Rosa ducked, grabbing Luke in her arms as she did, her magic flooding out to encompass them both. Luke heard the crackle of the flame as it passed over, and smelt singeing hair and clothes, but they were both unharmed, though Rosa was panting and her face was white, the freckles standing out like breadcrumbs on snow.

  ‘Luke, we should not have come!’ she whispered desperately. ‘She is far, far stronger than me. I can’t hold her off – that was just play-acting on her part. If she attacks us in earnest, we’re both dead.’

  ‘Mama,’ Cassie called from far along the roof. ‘Mama, come down. Don’t do this – you know what will happen if you kill another outwith. The Ealdwitan will have to act. Without Father to protect you—’

  ‘Protect me! Cage me, you mean,’ the woman snarled. She paced back along the ridge, away from where they were standing, and Sebastian’s voice hissed above the wind.

  ‘Rosa. Rosa!’

  ‘Shut up!’ Rosa snapped. ‘If you open your mouth I’ll—’

  ‘Listen to me!’ he spat back furiously. ‘You can’t hold her – you said so yourself. Take off this spell, take off the cuffs. I’m the only person here with a chance of getting her down. I give you my word, I won’t harm you, or your outwith.’

  Luke saw Rosa’s indecision in her face. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and dark, and full of questions and fear. He bit his lip.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘Can you trust him?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered back, despair in her voice. Then she turned to Sebastian. ‘Do you swear. Do you swear on – on your honour?’

  ‘I’ll swear on my honour, your honour, my dead father’s honour – anything you damn well choose, just get me free before we all die! If my mother lets loose we are all dead, not just your outwith.’

  ‘Very well.’ Rosa seemed suddenly to make up her mind. She edged along the roof to where Sebastian stood and put her hands to the golden necklace wrapped around his wrists. There was a moment’s struggle, and then Luke heard the snap of breaking metal and the necklace was in two halves in Rosa’s hands.

  Sebastian stood for a moment, massaging his wrists. Then he looked up and smiled, his thin, curving, mocking smile.

  ‘Oh, my darling. My beautiful, foolish, incurably optimistic darling. Don’t you know yet, I have no honour?’

  Rosa’s face went pale.

  But then Sebastian turned and began to climb towards the roof.

  Like a cat, he climbed using his fingers and toes, and his magic billowed and shimmered in the snowy wind.

  At the apex of the roof, his mother stood, her hair streaming, laughing into the night.

  ‘Mama!’ Sebastian called as he climbed, shouting against the howling gusts. ‘Mama, stay there, don’t move.’

  At last he was at the top.

  Very slowly, he got to his feet and then stood, swaying on the ridge. Luke held his breath. It was impossibly dangerous – even for a sober man, and Sebastian was not sober. And then he started to edge along the tiled precipice, his hand held out.

  ‘Sebastian!’ His mother began to laugh and sob, all in the same word. ‘Sebastian, my darling, you have come to dance!’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’ He held out his arms. ‘I’ve come to dance.’

  She put her hand on his shoulder and round his waist, and for a moment they stood, tottering, in a macabre, precarious mime of a waltz.

  ‘Da da, da da, da da, da daaah,’ she sang in a trembling voice, snatched by the winds, and Luke shuddered.

  ‘Come down now, Mama,’ Sebastian said, and there was a smile on his lips, though Luke could hear the strain in his voice. ‘You’ve had your dance. It is time to go home.’

  ‘One waltz!’ she laughed. ‘One dance does not make a ball. I was always the belle of the ball, you know, my darling. All the men danced with me. Dance with me, outwith!’ she called down to Luke. ‘Dance with me and then we will go home!’

  ‘No!’ Rosa’s fingers closed on Luke’s sleeve. ‘Don’t!’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Take Cassie down.’

  ‘No! What are you going to do?’

  ‘Dance with her, if that’s what it takes to get her down.’

  ‘Luke, are you mad? She killed your parents! Will you let her kill you too?’

  ‘If she stays up there throwing thunderbolts, we’ll all die.’

  ‘Dance with me!’ the witch screamed.

  ‘I’m going to get her down. Get Cassie away.’

  ‘No!’ Rosa cried, but Luke pulled his arm gently out of her fingers and kissed her cheek.

  ‘One dance, Rosa. That’s all.’

  And then he began to climb.

  Rosa watched as he climbed in Sebastian’s footsteps, fitting his fingers into the cracks in the slate, holding on to the ornamental curlicues of lead that decorated the ridges and turrets of the roof. Her heart beat in her throat like a trapped thing and she felt sick. Luke was sober, and he climbed more surely and carefully than Sebastian. But he was tired and injured. She could see the
pain in his face as he climbed. And he had no magic to shield him if he fell.

  Well, she would have to be his shield.

  She drew a breath, readying herself.

  When Luke reached the top he straightened, just as Sebastian had done, and then began to edge along the ridge to where their little group was standing.

  Rosa was holding her breath, her fingers clenched.

  Be safe, she begged Luke in her head. Come back to me.

  Up on the ridge, Sebastian’s mother turned her beautiful ravaged face to Luke and she smiled.

  ‘I know you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She heard Luke’s voice, tugged and frayed by the gusts. ‘Yes, we met once before. In the drawing room, here. You saved Rosa’s life. And I’ve come to say thank you – and ask you to come down. Won’t you come with me now?’

  ‘No . . .’ the woman said. She put her fingers to his cheek, staring deep into his eyes, her wind-whipped hair flapping against his face. ‘No, I know you. From before that. From Spitalfields. I – I killed you. How did you come back?’

  Up on the ridge Luke froze, and then he seemed to find his voice.

  ‘You – you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. I killed you – and your wife. Oh! She had the sweetest blood . . .’

  Rosa put her hand over her mouth to stifle the cry that almost broke free. The woman was standing on the ridge, her hand on Luke’s cheek. All it would take would be one push from Luke, one push – and could she blame him, really?

  ‘And now you have come back for me.’ Her thin, white face broke into a smile, as sweet as a young girl’s. ‘Have you come to take me away?’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said. His voice was a croak, and Rosa wondered if he was fighting off tears. ‘Yes, I’ve come to take you home. Come down with me. Please.’

  ‘I knew death would come for me one day,’ she whispered, her huge dark eyes fixed on Luke’s face. ‘But I did not think he would be so young and lovely. I will come with you, gladly. Come, let us go together. Sebastian, my darling, take my hand. It is time. It is time.’