by Clare Kauter
The stone in my pocket and the Key to the Damnation pressed against my chest grew hot – burning hot – the second the blood splattered on the wood. I wondered if the key would fit into the lock on the chest. No, I decided. My key was too big. That box didn't contain 'the Damnation' – whatever that was. Good. I may not have had any idea what it was, but I was pretty sure it wasn't something I wanted to unleash upon the world.
The box started to jump, a violent banging noise coming from inside of it. While the wolves simply stood by looking at it, Gladys walked to a nearby grave and picked up a shovel. She left the circle, so I guessed she wasn't too worried about unleashing whatever magic she'd conjured up upon the world. She used the shovel to break the lock on the chest and the lid flew open without anyone even touching it. The purple light emanating from within was so bright it was blinding and we weren't able to see what the source of the light was.
The crowd stood dumbfounded for a moment, fascinated by the strange contents of the chest, whatever they were. A howl from the ghost wolves brought everyone out of their stupor.
"Kill the witch," hissed the ghost wolves as one. "Kill the witch. Bring us back. Kill the witch."
I didn't really hear what they were saying, though – I was slightly preoccupied by the waves of purple energy making their way to me, filling my veins with magic, so full I felt like I would burst.
Something was about to give.
CHAPTER 26
WE WERE STANDING NEAR ENOUGH the chest that the others didn't seem to realise the energy was flying directly at me. They were bound to notice eventually, though. Probably around about the time I killed them all.
"Henry," I hissed, panicking as the energy filled me up. The stone in my pocket and the key around my neck were humming, burning with energy. There was something in that chest – something they wanted me to take. And they were giving me the necessary power to get it.
"What?" Henry asked. Then his eyes widened as he stared into my face. In a strangled voice he said, "Your eyes have turned purple."
"They're trying to summon me with this ritual."
Henry frowned, still seeming kind of disconcerted about the purple eyes thing. "And?"
"They've called up all the ghosts, and now they're trying to summon me with sacrifices. I don't know how to get out of here without it turning into a blood bath."
"Have you tried, uh, not killing people?"
I glared at him. "Really, Henry? Was that supposed to be helpful?"
"Sorry," he said quickly. "I just meant that maybe you need to practise controlling your magic."
"Thanks. I hadn't thought of that."
"Kill the witch," chanted the ghost wolves.
"Alpha?" said Gladys, turning to the alpha wolf. "Would you like to do the honours?"
He grinned, showing off his fangs. "I'd be delighted."
"Whatever you do, you'd better do it quickly," said Henry under his breath.
"Great, no pressure."
"Perhaps you could try to focus on just stunning them rather than killing them," he suggested.
"I don't have enough control over my powers for that," I said. "They control me, not vice versa."
"Try."
"Henry," I whined.
"Don't whine. If you can't control yourself, you're going to have a mass murder on your hands every time someone tries to summon you. Just try."
"I don't know how." By now I was in full-blown panic mode.
"Deep breaths," he said. "You can do it. With a little practice, not murdering people will become second nature to you."
"Now's not the time for jokes, Henry."
"Who says I was joking?"
"Henry!"
"Just focus. Think about the amount of energy it would take to stun, say, an ant. Then just let out that much. Preferably send it out in front of us so it gets the evil people and not us."
"What are we going to do to the wolves up here with us who don't get hit?"
"After they see how strong you are, I'm sure they'll just roll over."
I rolled my eyes. "A dog pun, Henry? Really?"
"Fine, fine. They'll sit down and beg."
"Stop," I grunted. "Making me angry is going to do the opposite of helping me keep control over my powers."
"Kill the witch," chanted the ghost wolves.
Alora's magic was barely working (she'd taken the Dora a few days ago, after all, and hadn't had a chance to heal properly yet), and Daisy's wasn't much better. Even if Hecate had been on her game, she was injured and only semi-conscious. Ed The Coward was nowhere to be seen. (Had he really just ditched us here? Was I really surprised? Next time I saw him, I was going to make him pay.) No one else was going to help. I had to act.
"Do something!" Henry growled. "She's about to die!"
The alpha threw back his head to howl at the moon once more. Some wolves joined him and other members of the audience called out to him.
"Stop playing with your food!"
"Rip her throat out!"
"Come on, I'm getting hungry."
The wolf bared his teeth and opened his jaw, ready to go for the jugular. Just as his teeth were about to make contact with Hecate's neck, I blasted him backwards with a jet of purple magic. The spell passed over Hecate without so much as ruffling her hair, but sent the wolves who had been pinning her to the stone dissection table tumbling. Two of them yelped as they hit the wall of the stone tomb and another two kept flying so far that I didn't see them land. I heard them cry out as they hit the ground though, so I knew they weren't dead.
Oh my goodness. I hadn't killed them! That was cause for celebration!
Later, though, because right now not killing them seemed more like a burden than a gift. The minion wolves I'd hit were still recovering, but the alpha was back on his feet and thundering towards me, ready for blood. Gladys looked similarly furious as she waved her hands in the air, gathering power ready to cast at me.
I shot at the alpha with a lasso of energy, wrapping it around his neck and using it to fling him in the air as high as I could manage. Even in the dim moonlight I could see him fly across the sky and over the top of the castle. He fell out of sight for a few moments before we heard a loud splash and it became apparent that the alpha had taken an involuntary swim.
As you can imagine, the other wolves were not particularly happy about that. They rushed me en masse, which would have been a lot scarier had Henry not transformed into a gorilla in that moment and drawn the fire away from me. Wolves were not the most intelligent of creatures (all that inbreeding) and it didn't take a whole heap to distract them. Finding a shifter in their midst was more than enough to take their minds off murdering the witch who'd thrown their leader so far through the air that he'd disappeared from sight.
Now that Henry had caught the wolves' attention and was punching and casting at every one who came his way, I could focus on Gladys. Her pleasant facade had disappeared completely by now and before me stood a half-goat demon lady who looked more like the devil than Satan did. She'd balled up an orb of poison green energy in front of her, and as we made eye contact, she pulled back her arm and flung it at me. As the orb moved through the air towards me, bits of magic fell off, charring the grass when they hit the ground. The ball moved with impossible speed and I didn't even have time to flinch, much less set up a counter spell.
Luckily the Doomstone and his gang of buddies seemed to have my back, because a translucent mauve shield sprang up in front of me and deflected the ball of energy. In fact, not only was the energy deflected, but as it moved back towards Gladys, it changed, seemed to darken and solidify and – it turned purple. When it smacked her square in the face, she flew back and hit the ground hard, jolting as she lay on her back, jerking about as if she'd been electrocuted.
The ball didn't stop there. It flew around the graveyard like a missile, taking out all enemies in its path and knocking down wolves like bowling pins. With the ball off on its mission, I turned to help Henry with the wolves and foun
d him covered in bites in scratches. The sight filled me with rage, partly because I now knew that those scratches hurt like a bitch. I cast a stunning spell at the wolves (meaning a spell that stupefied them, not just, like, a really good spell) and sent them flying backwards.
Behind the wolves, I noticed that a number of the other dark magicals who'd shown up here for the human flesh barbecue were attempting to make their way to the boats to flee the island.
"Oh no you don't," I muttered and sprinted after them, passing Alora who had picked up the shovel and was batting wolves away from Daisy and Hecate.
"Nessa!" called Daisy, who was kneeling next to Hecate and trying to stem the bleeding from her wrists and hand. I ignored her and kept running.
When the would-be escapees took the stairs next to the castle leading down to the boats, I simply used my magic to push the guy at the back, who happened to be Fach, running off and leaving Gladys behind. And they say romance is dead. I pushed him a little harder than was strictly necessary and sent him flying forward, banging the vampire in front of him with such force that the entire group of escapees went down like dominoes, landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. While they were subdued, limbs tangled, I bound them together with a rope of energy and hurried back to the graveyard.
When I arrived, I saw that not only had a good number of the wolves recovered, but they now had Henry, Hecate, Daisy and Alora circled. Say what you will about murder, at least it puts an end to the fight. I drew my palms together and focused my energy, making sure to concentrate on stunning the creatures of the night in the vicinity and not murdering them. When I was one hundred percent sure I had control over myself (well, eighty percent – OK, OK, sixty), I pulled my hands apart, stretching out the energy between them before turning my palms outwards and pushing them forward in a kind of 'stop' motion. I'll tell you this, it certainly did stop them.
The energy that shot out of my palms was unlike anything I'd cast before. It was wibbly-wobbly and crackly and electric, and it moved through the graveyard like a tidal wave. It took down each and every wolf in its path, dropping them to the ground and causing them to jerk around like they'd been shocked by dodgy wiring or something. Gladys, who had just stopped twitching from her last impact, got hit with another few volts and went back to writhing around. They were all still breathing and a couple were groaning with pain, so I knew I hadn't killed any.
My friends, in the centre of all these incapacitated wolves, were completely untouched. They looked mildly shocked at what had just transpired, but gradually a kind of calm fell over their faces. Well, the witches' faces. Not Henry's.
I was momentarily confused until I saw Ed standing some distance behind them, cone in hand. So he hadn't left us after all. He pressed a finger to his lips in a 'shush' motion, pointed to the chest to remind me that I still had business here and then waved goodbye before popping out of existence. If he hadn't left, then what exactly had he been doing a moment before when the rest of us had been fighting for our lives?
My answer to that question came almost instantly when a portal opened up to my right and Death himself, flanked by twenty local cops, stepped out. Seeing as I hadn't killed anyone, I was guessing that Ed had called for backup. Unnecessary, as it turned out, but good for the cleanup. That would be mildly problematic for getting my hands on the companion item, however.
I looked over at the altar and found that Daisy and Hecate had beat me to the chest, which was no longer moving or illuminated from within. They were sifting through its contents, clearly trying to figure out what exactly in there was the companion item. Henry and I walked over to join them. We arrived just as Daisy took a blue stone from the box. It looked almost identical to the Doomstone, or at least how the Doomstone looked when other people touched it and it hadn't activated.
"It's beautiful," breathed Alora, who was watching over Daisy's shoulder. "I can see why the dragon was so sad to lose it. I'm sure he'll be much happier now."
"Now that it's in good hands, yes," said Hecate.
Alora frowned. "What? What do you mean?"
"The police will have to seize this box, of course."
Alora was not impressed. "You can't be serious!"
Daisy stood to comfort Alora, explaining that the police needed to seize it or it might fall into the wrong hands again. Henry helped Hecate to her feet, suggesting that they ask Death to conjure them up a portal back home. While the others were distracted, I took the opportunity to search the dragon's chest for myself. You see, while the stone Daisy had found looked the part, I knew it wasn't the right object. The companion was still in the chest.
The companion item Daisy and Hecate had in their possession must have pulled them towards the object in the chest, but unlike me the witches didn't have the ability to tell which was the right object by touch. They'd seen the rock and thought it looked right, so they'd just assumed. Something in this chest was still calling to me, which meant that stone was a decoy.
I rifled around in the chest as quickly and quietly as I could, not wanting to risk drawing any attention to myself. The chest was filled with junk – old coins, bits of bone, rocks, smoothed shards of glass. Eventually my fingers brushed an object right in the bottom of the chest and a warmth ran through me. I'd found it. I moved my hand back to the object and closed my fingers around it. It was small and cold, and when I pulled it from the chest it took me a moment to recognised what it was. I turned it over a couple of times and concluded it was a rusty old arrowhead.
The moonlight caught an engraving on its side, so I spat and polished it with my shirt to see if I could read what it said.
Property of His Majesty, King of the Damned.
Finally I had a name.
Realising the police were coming my way, I stuffed the arrowhead in my pocket and stood, walking away calmly. As I did so, I caught sight of Hecate and Death deep in conversation across the cemetery, while Henry stood by them, watching me. He'd seen me take the arrowhead, and not for the first time I hoped I'd placed my trust in the right person.
CHAPTER 27
THE WHOLE 'MAKING me a cop' ceremony was, frankly, a bit of a letdown. It took place at the church during the daily meeting of the coven and although everyone was very supportive and nice about it, after all the build-up to me getting my licence, it felt like it should be more dramatic. After all, just joining the coven had involved a blood pact. It seemed like climbing the ranks deserved more than a handshake.
Henry was in the crowd, watching. He'd decided that life as an ambassador didn't suit him. He made up something about the climate, but he and I both knew that he was back here to keep an eye on me. I didn't mind. It was good to have someone on my side. Whatever side that was. Thanks to the secrecy spell, he still couldn't tell me what I was, but that didn't matter too much anymore. Now that I had a name, my research was going to be a lot easier. The second I had a spare moment (without Hecate breathing down my neck), I was going to head back to Hell and do some research in the restricted section of the library.
When Daisy handed me the small laminated card that I'd spent the last few months traipsing around this world and the next to obtain, I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment. What I did feel was annoyance at the picture they'd chosen to put on it. Daisy had taken it when I'd just woken up from a nap after returning from Scotland. My eye was half-closed and judging from the glimmering patch on my chin, I'd been drooling. You'd think after all of this, she could have waited an hour or two until I'd woken up properly.
Alora was at the meeting too, standing quietly up the back. Everyone welcomed her and talked to her, and while she was polite enough, it was obvious that she was annoyed Hecate had confiscated the box the werewolves had stolen rather than return it to the dragon. She believed that the dragon was the rightful owner of the box. I suspected that wasn't entirely true, however. After all, it wasn't the dragon's name carved on the arrowhead, was it?
After I was given my licence and we'd performed a few spel
ls as a coven, it was time to mingle. I headed straight to the snacks table and grabbed a cucumber sandwich in one hand and a choc-chip cookie in the other. As I was standing there by the doorway stuffing my face, I caught sight of something shimmering outside. When I stepped forward to investigate, I saw a ghostly figure slip back into the forest and I followed.
It didn't take long for me to catch up to Ed. He was sitting on a log, arms crossed, grin on his face.
"So," he said.
"So," I replied.
"You're a cop now?"
I shrugged. "I guess."
"A dirty one, obviously, seeing as you kill people and consort with known criminals. Oh, and you take banned substances."
I rolled my eyes. "Taking the Dora wasn't my idea." I couldn't exactly refute his other two claims, though.
"And I guess I'm your informant now?"
"You were already my informant."
He smiled. "I should go," he said. "And you should get back to your party."
"Why did you come here?" I asked. "A little dangerous, don't you think?"
"I had to see it for myself," he said. "You getting your licence – and becoming a cop."
"I didn't have much choice."
"It's probably a good thing," he said. "Much easier to cover up your crimes when you can be your own man on the inside."
"Go to hell, Ed."
"You're welcome to visit me there any time," he said. Then he popped out of existence. I frowned, wondering why he'd bother using so much energy to get to Hell when there was a portal nearby, and then I realised he'd probably just popped across the forest to the portal to make his exit more dramatic.
A breeze hit my face and I shivered, realising that I probably shouldn't be out here with Pierre still on the prowl. He had a habit of tracking me down and while I'd managed to defeat him plenty of times before, that didn't seem to deter him. Well, to be fair, I hadn't actually managed to defeat him that many times – mostly it had been his girlfriend, Honey. Picking my way through the forest, heading back to the church, I frowned as I thought of her. It had been a while since I'd seen her – weeks, in fact – and something about that didn't sit right with me.
