Witch Fire

by Laura Powell

  At long last, the jeep jolted along a steep stony track into an Amerindian village on the outskirts of the forest. Earth paths wound round small houses of bark, mud and thatch. Most of the inhabitants were out tending to their crops, leaving behind a few elderly women chewing plantain in the sun, and toddlers scuffling among scrawny chickens. Nobody seemed particularly interested in their arrival.

  Perhaps the locals were used to strange visitors. There was a tiny airstrip just outside the village, and near to that, a very different kind of construction. It was a low white house, built on sleek modern lines, and approached by a rhododendron-lined drive. The sign above the porch said Rising Sun Health Spa & Holistic Retreat.

  The door was wide open. Jenna and Glory went in first, as they were the only ones who were armed. They found themselves in a reception as plush as any Harley Street clinic’s: high-end lifestyle magazines on the table, ornate – though wilting – flowers in a vase. There was nobody on guard, nobody on duty behind the gleaming glass desk. A chair overturned on the floor struck an oddly discordant note.

  As the foursome moved through the building, they saw more signs of a hasty but efficient exit. The office had been cleared of all paperwork, and there were no computers or telephones, just a few wrenched-out cables. They found a few curls of shredded paper on the floor in the corridor, which Jenna carefully scooped up and put in an evidence bag. There was a small guest house attached to the back. Its rooms didn’t look as if they’d ever been inhabited. The surgery and consulting room drew another blank.

  While the others continued to search the place, Raffi went to talk to the locals. He came back shaking his head. ‘The receptionist and the doctor – americano, the lady said – left last night in a little plane.’

  They had regrouped in the surgery. There was an operating table, an empty trolley full of empty trays, and some impressive-looking machinery.

  ‘They must have left in a hurry if they had to leave all this behind,’ Lucas said. ‘It looks top of the range stuff.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Raffi. ‘To put implant into brain. I see very good film about this. The bad scientist, he uses microchips to make army of robot-people to take over world.’

  ‘You don’t need science for that,’ said Jenna slowly. ‘Witchwork could do it just as well. Only with golems, not robots.’

  Lucas frowned. ‘Golems? They’re just a fae-tale version of a person who’s being controlled by a poppet. I thought we ruled that out.’

  ‘No, golems are different. I’ve been thinking about it. OK, the fae can get into a person’s mind through a poppet, but it doesn’t have as much control over the victim’s thoughts as it does over their actions. On one level, the person is aware of what’s happening to them.

  ‘With a golem, now, there’s no crafting dolls to stick pins in or tie into knots. It’s about possessing the heart and mind. Creating a body without a soul.’

  ‘So how d’you build one of these bad boys?’ Glory asked in her most sceptical tone. She was usually only too eager to believe in the wonders of witchwork. Jenna, however, was bringing out her prickly side.

  ‘In the stories, a golem is created from dust and fae,’ Jenna said. ‘The witch gives it life by inscribing sacred words on its body, or sealing them inside its mouth.’

  Glory scowled. ‘Rose was a real person. As real as you and me.’

  ‘Well, this isn’t a fae-tale. But maybe Rose did have something sealed inside her. Maybe Cambion used modern surgical techniques to plant something in her head, something crafted with fae. Something that would suppress her own powers and bind her to those of another witch.’

  ‘Aha!’ Raffi exclaimed. ‘Is that why Rosa’s banes set off no bells and why she could wear the bridles?’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Jenna, with a brief return of her cheerleader twinkle. ‘Iron doesn’t react to the act of witchwork, but to the source of its fae, right? So whoever was hexing the banes was doing it at a distance, too far off for the iron to sense them. Endor is creating witches who can’t be detected.’

  ‘And who don’t even know they’re still witches,’ Lucas said. ‘Let alone that they’re being used as some kind of . . . weapon.’

  ‘Rose knew she were being manipulated,’ Glory insisted. ‘That’s why she used to get so weird and twitchy. And she managed to get free of it to help me. She must’ve used her own fae then.’

  Jenna shrugged. ‘Rose told you she got some kinda virus after the surgery. Then there’s the way she died, which sounds like a brain haemorrhage. So maybe something went wrong during the operation that wasn’t ever put right.’ She gestured to the machines around them. ‘I bet half this kit is just for show, anyways.’

  ‘You know others that have had this procedure?’ Raffi asked.

  ‘Section Seven has some ideas.’ She looked at Lucas guardedly, and he guessed she didn’t want him mentioning her initial lead: Chase Randolph Parker III, the Supreme Court judge’s son. ‘Wildings was the main recruiting ground. At the moment, we believe Dr Caron was working alone there, and that the school governors hired her in good faith. The next stage is to get a warrant to shake the place down.’

  ‘Why use kids?’ said Raffi. ‘Why not the grown-up peoples?’

  ‘Because kids are much less likely to arouse suspicion,’ Lucas answered.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Glory. ‘And we’re s’posed to be easier to push around and all. The perfect recruits. Endor, WICA and the Inquisition – great minds think alike.’

  Lucas heard the edge of bitterness in her voice. ‘The thing about Wildings,’ he said quickly, ‘is that everyone’s so well connected. Take Rose. Stepdaughter to Godfrey Merle, one of the world’s most powerful media tycoons. Look at Mei-fen, and her family connections to China’s ruling party. Or you, Raffi – son of a Police Chief. In the normal course of things, most of us would have ended up in powerful positions ourselves, or at least moved in those circles.’

  Like me, he thought. Son of a High Inquisitor. For Endor, I’d be the perfect catch.

  ‘D’you know if the procedure can be reversed?’ Glory asked Jenna grudgingly.

  ‘Could be, if it’s just a matter of digging out the mystery implant. But it’s not like we’re going to get any answers here. Those bastards obviously knew we were on to them. They’ve even wiped the place clean of prints.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Lucas’s eye had been caught by a pearly glint under the operating table. It was a small button, possibly from a shirt cuff. ‘Maybe we could try scrying on this.’

  Jenna wrinkled her nose. ‘It coulda been lost days ago. And a button isn’t exactly a personal item. Do you even know who you’d be scrying for?’

  ‘Dr Claude, at a guess. He’s the americano the locals told Raffi about, and who checked Rose out of the clinic back home. I know he’s probably miles away by now, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’

  Lucas said he would go back to the jeep to fetch the glass bowl Raffi had used to keep an eye on him in the hacienda. It gave him an excuse to get some air, for being in the surgery was making him increasingly claustrophobic. He kept returning to the idea that, in different circumstances, it could have been him. A Stearne in the service of Endor.

  Jenna had parked downhill from the building. Lucas was getting ready to open the boot, when his ears picked up a faint mechanical hum. An unmarked stealth helicopter suddenly whirred into view, hovering in the air like a vast shiny black beetle. Another division of the Red Knights? Or – worse – Endor? There was no time to give a warning. Before his appalled eyes, a squad of black-clad men was already dropping from the craft; spreading out to surround the clinic.

  The next thing he knew, a hand was clamped on his mouth, his arms were pinned behind his back, and he was dragged into the shadow of the forest.

  ‘Sssh,’ said his captor, as he thrashed about. ‘You are safe.’ This man wasn’t in black. He was wearing a camouflage suit, with a white feather pinned to his chest. ‘La Bruja Blanca wants to see you.’

&nb
sp; As Lucas was taken deeper into the rainforest, two more men in camouflage emerged from the trees, silent as smoke.

  ‘Take me back,’ he said, still struggling furiously. ‘My friends – they need help –’

  ‘Your friends will not be harmed,’ said his original captor, pulling a hood over Lucas’s head. ‘That helicopter is of the UCI, military division. They seek the same people you do.’

  The United Council of Inquisitors . . . Lucas did not find this news hugely reassuring. They were the governing body of the world’s inquisitions, and had their own witch-hunting task force. Who had called them into Cordoba? He was in no hurry to meet the mysterious ‘White Witch’ either. From what Raffi had said, she was an elderly female version of the witch-outlaw Robin Hood.

  At least he hadn’t been hit on the head again. He was on a forced march of incredible speed, a man holding him up on either side, so that in many places he skimmed the ground. His ears buzzed with the sound of the rainforest: the roars and keening of the howler monkeys mingling with a cacophony of bird calls, cricket whines and the screeching of numerous mammals. The air smelled green and mossy; its humidity meant his clothes clung damply to his skin.

  Finally, they came to a halt and the hood was removed. The forest had begun to thin, for they had reached the foothills of the mountain range. Sunlight filtered in sequins through the trees and into a small clearing. There was a group of efficient-looking tents, but the encampment had a temporary air. Wherever the guerrillas had their base, this wasn’t it.

  Lucas’s hands were untied. More people emerged from the tents. Then the flap to the largest tent was untied from the inside, and an elderly woman emerged. ‘La Bruja Blanca,’ she announced.

  Chapter 31

  ‘You look just like your father,’ said the woman who stood before him. Her voice was British, accent-less, and she had a pale, fine-featured face. ‘But I suppose everyone says that to you.’

  Lucas didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He was face to face with Edie Starling, in the middle of a South American jungle.

  And when he finally found his voice, he blurted out, ‘I thought you were old.’

  The guerrillas laughed softly.

  ‘A young beauty one day, an ancient crone the next – that’s the story, isn’t it? Neither true, I’m afraid. The first La Blanca was old when I met her, and had been in the mountains with her revolutionaries for many years. But with one blonde witch-woman succeeded by another . . . well, people are easily confused. And then there’s Ana here.’ She indicated the elderly woman who had introduced her. ‘Ana stands in for me on occasions. No witchwork; just sleight of hand.’

  Although Edie’s platinum hair was threaded with silver and the skin around her eyes was lined, her figure was girlish and slight. Lucas couldn’t see Glory in her face. Her daughter’s sallow colouring, her strong jaw and dark brows, came from elsewhere. But there was a jaunty red scarf tied around Edie’s neck, at odds with her utilitarian clothes, and he thought, well, Glory would like that.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘We’ve been watching you since you first arrived in San Jerico. And my daughter, of course.’

  Lucas shifted uneasily. He wondered how much she knew about his and Glory’s history. Perhaps this meeting was about to turn into an ambush, as part of some complex revenge plot against his father. Edie Starling’s manner seemed almost too casual to be true.

  ‘You see, I have a number of informants,’ she told him. ‘One of them works at the Carabosse Club, another for Senator Vargas. They, and many others, are troubled by the idea of the Inquisition returning to Cordoba. But a society where witchwork runs riot can be a kind of tyranny too.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Which is what Endor’s after.’

  ‘Yes. Endor wants this country to slip even further into anarchy. It’s the ideal base for the crime that funds them, and the terror they export. They’re hoping to establish a stronger presence here, which is why they were determined to sabotage Vargas’s campaign. My friend in the Senator’s household had his suspicions about Rose Merle from the start. The hexing of Vargas’s child proved him right.

  ‘I have something to show you. Come.’

  She beckoned Lucas out of the clearing, and he felt another prickle of nerves. Before she left, she stopped and spoke softly in Spanish to the old woman, Ana, and then to one of the men of her own age. He was grizzled but handsome, and as she moved on, caught her hand and smiled.

  Ah, thought Lucas. Poor Patrick. His thoughts flashed back to London, to his and Glory’s old lives, and the subsequent lurch of incredulity made him stumble. He suddenly couldn’t think what he was doing here or how it had happened. Yet he had no choice but to keep going.

  Edie Starling led him through the trees to a small but steep ravine. There was a woman’s body lying in the creek at the bottom of it. Her head had been cracked open on the rocks. It was the fallen glasses Lucas recognised first; large and unfashionable. Then the missing finger-joint.

  ‘You knew this woman?’

  ‘Um. She was a . . . therapist. At this school I went to. With Glory. We think she was working for Endor.’

  Edie’s face was impassive. ‘I used to know her too. Many years ago, by a different name. We had reason to believe she was Rose Merle’s handler. So when I heard of Glory’s arrest, it was time to bring your so-called therapist in.’ Lucas barely had time to register how Edie skimmed lightly over her daughter’s name. ‘My men intercepted her the day before yesterday. She died last night, in the course of trying to escape. By then, fortunately, she had already given us most of what we needed.’

  She sat down on a stone outcrop and invited him to sit too, producing a small plastic bag from her pocket. It contained two small curved pieces of metal, and a sprinkling of dirt.

  ‘This was her ring. It turned out to be hollow inside, and filled with sand.’

  Lucas remembered it. Large and plain, like everything Dr Caron wore. ‘She used sand in her therapy sessions. For us to, er, play with.’

  Edie smiled thinly. ‘Sand-play is a recognised therapeutic technique. Dr Caron’s use of it was not.’

  Dr Caron might not have been a real therapist, but the feelings she had drawn out of him in their sessions had been real enough. Lucas thought back to those long hours in the tower room, fingers trailing in the sand, forming it into shapes, crushing it into nothingness . . . burying his conflicted feelings in its depths.

  ‘When my men found her,’ Edie continued, ‘she was on her way to the southern border, to meet with another Endor operative. As you know, Endor has no command centre. Once an integrated network, it has fragmented over the years into a loose association of regional groups. Dr Caron and her associates feared their base here was no longer secure. Perhaps they were aware that my people had begun to watch the place. Either way, they were already preparing to evacuate. The aim was to establish a new clinic elsewhere, with a new source of patients. And so Dr Caron was in talks with another Endor cell. She needed their support for the enterprise.’

  ‘You know about Cambion, then? And Wildings?’

  ‘I do now. Dr Caron was not going to her meeting empty-handed. She intended to demonstrate the success of the Cambion project.’

  Edie drew out a slim laptop from within her shoulder bag. ‘Encrypted, of course. Luckily, this jungle is home to an expert hacker or two.’ She gave another thin smile. ‘Some of the data was lost or corrupted during the decryption process, and it’s not the full story by any means. Still, there are a number of things of interest.’

  She switched on the machine and clicked on a picture file. It was an X-ray of a human skull, face on. There was a little white splinter above the right eye.

  ‘There – one of the so-called “implants”, though it hasn’t been planted particularly deeply. Only the outer layer of the membranes around the brain has been breached.’

  ‘What . . . what is it?’

  ‘A fragment of bone,’ Edie answered coolly.
‘Any kind would do, but it’s a finger bone in this instance. Not exactly high-tech.’

  Lucas felt queasy. ‘I thought Dr Caron damaged her hand in a car crash.’

  ‘No. The removal of the fingertip was self-inflicted. But the crash was real enough. It’s what induced Rose’s own collapse.’

  ‘So last year, when Rose came home after the surgery, and it seemed she’d literally lost her mind – when she was without memory and sensations and emotions –’

  He was thinking of Jenna’s description of a golem: a body without a soul.

  ‘Dr Caron was in a comatose state; Rose was feeling the effects. The witchwork she had undergone was not as straightforward as its pioneers believed. When they bound the heart and mind of one witch to the bone of another, they failed to anticipate there would be a strong physical connection as well as the mental one.

  ‘Dr Caron recovered and so – to a certain extent – did Rose. However, the connection between them must have been weakened. Rose began trying to mentally resist, to fight back, using her own fae. Her struggle intensified last night. As a result, Dr Caron grew confused and distracted, and therefore much easier for us to manage.’

  ‘But then the doctor made her own bid for freedom.’

  Edie frowned. ‘I admit we let our guard down. She might have been confused, but she was still Endor-trained. Unfortunately for her, it was dark and raining and she didn’t see the drop.’

  From where he was sitting, Lucas couldn’t see it either, or the broken body in the creek. He was glad of it. ‘Rose heard a voice in her head. She told Glory it was her fae. She’d even given it a name, Alice. But it was Dr Caron, right? Using some kind of telepathy?’

  ‘Yes. There are recordings of the process stored on this computer, and I will show them to you. I’ve already downloaded all the uncorrupted data on to a USB stick. By now, it should have been delivered to the inquisitorial squad at the clinic. Once I am sure of their intentions, I will give them this laptop and the ring. Their forensic team will want to take a look.’