Witch Hunter: dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 1)

by Steffanie Holmes

  And I kissed her, deep and hard, my hands still tight about her throat. This kiss felt different than the others – dark, dangerous. It caused a stirring deep inside me that I'd never felt before.

  I pulled away, dropping the girl to her knees, and wrenching my body away. She sobbed behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I grabbed my cloak and fled the grove, rubbing my lips, my hands, my face, to try to rid myself of the lingering sensation of her touch and a longing for her that had permeated deep.

  I jogged through the forest, desperate to put as much distance between me and that grove as possible. I had to forget the mystery woman with the soft skin and remarkable curves. I had to focus on the task ahead.

  I found Willow waiting for me on the ridge. Her snout buried in a patch of wild flowers - the last of the autumn treasures about to be stifled by the winter chill. She was a good horse. I had left Willow on the ridge after seeing the girl swimming in the pool, and she had waited for me all this time. I wonder what the girl would think of Willow. Did she like horses? Would she like to ride with me through the forest, with her hair whipping around her beautiful body …

  Stop thinking of her!

  I came around beside Willow and grabbed her reins, pulling her head up and scratching the white diamond that was the only part of her not the colour of midnight. She glared at me with her brown eyes, snorted, and pulled her head back down into the wildflowers again.

  “So that’s the way it’s going to be,” I said. “We both have allowed our weaknesses to pull us from our true path.”

  While Willow ate, I pulled a second water-skin from the pouch strung to the saddle, and tipped some of the liquid into my mouth. This skin wasn’t filled with water, but mead - a thick, hearty brew that went down smooth as silk and stung the back of my throat. I drank deeply, then replaced the skin, wiping the sweet liquid from my mouth with the back of my hand. Let it wash away the scent of her. Let it cleanse me of distractions.

  When Willow had nibbled off all the juicy leaves and petals, I climbed on her back, and clicked my heels, steering her around and following the stream in the direction I thought the road was. Why hadn’t I paid more attention?

  Because you were too busy chasing after that siren, that’s why. You haven’t changed. You’re still always thinking with your cock.

  Shut up, Father. I looked back over my shoulder. Even though I could hear the water quickening, now I could not even see the grove or the waterfall. It was as if the whole encounter had been a dream.

  Perhaps it was. Perhaps the woman in the water had been a mirage, a trick of my mind. That would explain why she was so perfect, her soft body undulating beneath my touch, her curvaceous limbs folding around me, her sweet voice calling to me …

  I never felt like this with other women. I’d slept with many girls over the years, done things in the dungeon that Father never would have approved of. I walked as close to the side of darkness as I dared. And yet, there was something about this girl, about the way she made my chest ache even as my cock sprang free, that brought Father’s voice out once more.

  Don’t get involved. She will ruin you.

  And for once, my father and my own reason echoed each other. You are so close to being free from this life. Don’t let a woman - no matter how she makes you feel - tempt you from your plan.

  “Soon, Willow.” I stroked her mane, bringing her to a stop beside the stream so she could take a drink. “Soon I won’t have to deal with women ever again.”

  Willow snorted, sending a spray of water out through her nose. Another horse snorted in return.

  What was that? I strained to listen to the woods. I heard voices nearby. A woman cackling. A man scolding her. Another horse stomped its food. I glanced around, but couldn’t see anything … no, there! There they are, on the other bank. A man and woman sat on a fallen log, their heads bent in conversation as they passed a waterskin between them. Beside them, I could see Sycamore, our other horse, tethered to a tree, and my cart resting on its limbers.

  “Get over here!” I called to the pair sitting on a fallen log.

  The woman looked up, and her whole face broke into a smile when she saw me. She elbowed the other man, who turned toward me, his crooked face twisting into a close approximation of a grin.

  “Hey, if it isn’t the greatest witch hunter in all the land, who can’t even find his way back to his campsite!” Tjard called across to me.

  “I’m fine, thank you for inquiring.” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “There you are,” Clarissa scolded me, her voice playful. “We thought you might’ve been captured by some woodland sprite.”

  “I had to relieve myself,” I snapped back. Well, it was partly true … I held up the water skin. “I’ve filled this for us.”

  Clarissa gestured to the stream in between us. “You didn’t exactly have to go far. Tell us where you’ve really been.”

  “Doubt my word at your peril,” I growled. I was in no mood for joking. “I don’t know what you two are sitting down for. You still have a stream to ford.”

  “You were away so long we decided to just make camp. Tjard’s already made a fire,” said Clarissa. “Come Ulrich, it’s about to get dark. Why don’t you come back over here?”

  “Because I don’t go backward, especially not for the likes of you two. And Willow doesn’t want to get her feet wet again.” As if hearing my words, Willow saw her friend Sycamore on the other side, and trotted out into the stream, easily picking her way across to the other side.

  “I guess we’re stopping here, then.” I said, sighing. Willow was clever enough to know she could usually get her own way with me. I jumped down off Willow’s back and tied her up to the tree next to Sycamore. I marched up the bank toward the fire, and slumped down beside Tjard. He gestured for me to hand over my belt, which I did, feeling a flash of warmth as I remembered my reason for removing it once already today. Tjard unsheathed my blade, and began to scrape the edge across the whetstone that hung from his belt. Tjard was my löwe. The word meant “lion”, and the man who bore it had the responsibility of assisting the scharfrichter in his duties. It was Tjard’s duty to ensure that my armour was polished to a high sheen, my instruments of torture were freshly oiled and in good repair, and my blade was sharp. We never knew when I might be called upon to perform judicial proceedings.

  I watched Tjard turning the blade in his hands, expertly twisting it at just the right angle to make the perfect edge. Tjard was a master with blades - he’d been a blacksmith in my village before he’d been sentenced to death upon the wheel for killing the magistrate’s son in a drunken brawl. I’d saved him from an excruciating death by offering him the position as my löwe, and he’d gladly accepted it, even though it made him a social outcast, a recluse tainted by the grisly work we do. A little social stigma was preferable to having all your bones mashed to pieces and threaded through the spokes of a giant wheel.

  While Tjard worked, Clarissa removed the cooking pot from the embers, and dished up a small bowl of broth for each of us.

  “I’m pleased we’ll be in the village tomorrow,” she said, slurping down her broth. “We’ll be able to get actual food.”

  As I sipped the hot water, flavoured with the bones of a deer we’d managed to trap three days ago, I couldn’t help but agree.

  When Tjard was finished, he replaced the sword in its scabbard, and handed it back to me. I settled it across my lap, and guzzled my broth, the other hand wrapped protectively around the hilt. The sword had belonged to my father, and even though I hated the man with a passion that was almost Biblical, there was something about holding it that calmed me, gave me strength when one of my moods overtook me.

  “So, what’s the news on this village?” I asked, in between gulps. I hadn’t even noticed how famished I was. Vigorous fucking really did give a man an appetite. “What’s their story? Do they have a mythical siren haunting their river, calling men to their doom? Or is there a demonic fox loose in the wood
, stealing children and preying on the Godly?”

  Tjard shrugged. “According to the bishop, it’s the same old story. Black Death has come. The magistrate lost his only son to the pestilence, and now he’s begging for someone to burn. There are some women who live outside the village, in a cabin in the forest, and some of the villagers report they offered herbal poultices and remedies to the victims.”

  I gulped down the last of my broth, and held my cup out for more. Clarissa shook her head, holding up the empty put. Without hesitation, Tjard leaned over and tipped the rest of his into my bowl.

  “The same old story, indeed.” I nodded gratefully to my löwe. “Of course the villagers would call witchcraft on the only women who were actually trying to help the afflicted. If you ask me, if anyone is likely to be a witch, it’s the wife of the magistrate.”

  “No one asks you, Scharfrichter,” said Tjard. “They don’t want to hear your answer. They just want to purge their towns of un-Christian characters.”

  “They just get some sick pleasure from seeing innocent women burn.” I muttered.

  “You know, you’re far too cynical for this job,” Tjard said. “Who ever heard of a witch hunter who didn’t believe in witches? Or a scharfrichter who secretly ushered his victims to safety and helps them escape?”

  I shrugged. “Why not? There are plenty of people in the church who don’t believe in God. Evidence of God’s work is all around us, but witches? I’ve never seen it.”

  “Your father believed in witches.”

  “I’m not my father,” I growled.

  I’d taken up my father’s profession five years ago, or, at least, that was what I’d led the church to believe. My father, Damon of Donau-Ries, was one of the most celebrated witch hunters of our time. He’d tortured and burned over 200 woman at the stake, including my own mother. As a child I’d been forced to accompany him on his travels, sitting in the corner of the dungeon while he elicited confessions from his victims with red-hot pokers and thumbscrews. Once, I saw him rip a woman’s breast from her body with sharpened pincers. He never even flinched.

  His dungeon walls extended to our home. My mother, my sister Krea, and I were his prisoners. I was not allowed to go anywhere, except to church and school, and the dungeon to watch him work. At the slightest transgression, he would beat Krea and I with a birch stick, his belt, or even his bare hands. My mother had it even worse. He would beat her so badly, throwing her head against the wall, that she constantly bled from her ears. Once, after she accidentally tripped over and spilt a cup of mead on him, he stabbed out one of her eyes with a poker.

  As soon as I learned to read, my father made me help compile evidence for his trials, and I copied down the statements of witnesses and experts, as well as the confessions of witches. For these, I would sit in a filthy jail cell, facing a bleeding, battered woman whose eyes betrayed more pain then I could ever imagine. It was while writing out the false words of these broken women that I realised witches weren’t real. They couldn’t be, for no real witch would have allowed herself to be trapped by a man like my father.

  Every shred of evidence against these women was invented by jealous neighbours and jilted lovers. These women had no crimes other than that they were beautiful, or they were outspoken, or gifted with herbs, or rich with fertile lands, or they were sick in the head, as my mother was. They made no pact with the devil. They didn’t change form under the full moon, nor copulate with demons on the steps of the church. They were innocent, and I was helping my father to torture and burn them.

  I vowed that I would not be like my father - a murderer, a torturer of women, a man fuelled by rage and hatred. But I had no choice. The son of a witch hunter could never be employed anywhere else, for I was untouchable, tainted by my father’s evil work. I thought often of running away, but it was fruitless. My father would have simply found me again, dragged me back, and punished me worse than ever. I was bound to the church and my father’s grisly will as long as I lived. But I wasn’t going to be tied by anyone’s rules. I wasn’t going to have the church turn me into a killer. I decided that for each life my father forced me to help him take, I would save a condemned life in return.

  Luckily, a scharfrichter can choose his own assistant, and I’d found a friend in Tjard, who had also lost his mother to a witch hunt. When I told him my blasphemous plan, he was enthusiastic to try it. Tjard was, among other things, a notorious letch, and my plan appealed to him much more than torturing and killing beautiful women.

  Clarissa was the third and final piece of our puzzle. Before she joined us, we had struggled to find a way of helping the accused witches escape from their villages. The people, of course, wanted to see a witch burn - they wanted the spectacle. I had to tell angry villagers that the women had died in my torture chamber. This wasn’t ideal as, in the church’s mind, this meant the witch hadn’t gone through the most important rite - the cleansing of her soul through fire. The fact that she’d “died” while in my torture chamber reflected badly on my skills. We needed another solution.

  We happened on Clarissa entirely by accident. We were riding between villagers when we saw a gypsy caravan overturned on the road. A man lay in the dirt, slain, his body run through with a sword. Four soldiers surrounded a gypsy girl, barely older than fifteen. She held a knife in her hand and faced the sneering men with a look of utter determination, stepping carefully over the uneven earth as she’d watched their circle closing in on her.

  “Now, now, you pretty little wretch,” said one of the soldiers, holding up his hands. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want to have our fun, and then we’ll be on our way. We promise.”

  I met Clarissa’s gaze across the clearing, her eyes wild with defiance and hatred, my mind sprung immediately to a solution to our woes. She followed me everywhere with her eyes, not begging me, but daring me to save her. I admired her because she was a fighter, just like I was. Quietly, for none of the men had noticed my presence, I slid off my horse and crept to the edge of the clearing. She did not acknowledge my presence, but instead lunged at the soldier, screaming like a banshee as she aimed her knife at his face.

  The soldier dodged her easily and grabbed her arm, twisting the knife out of her hand and pinning her against him. That was the last thing he did, for my great executioner’s sword sliced through his neck. As soon as his friends laid eyes on me, they turned on their heels and ran into the forest.

  Clarissa collapsed at my feet. “I am in your debt,” she said.

  “Yes, you are.” I outlined my plan to her, how she would become the hidden secret in our operation. How she would work her debt to me off in my service, and take care of some of the women’s duties, such as cooking, while we travelled.

  Clarissa readily agreed, and she rode off with Tjard and I to the next town, hidden under a blanket in our cart. She had been a travelling entertainer in the courts at Prague and Lyon, and had great skill with contortion and acting. We executed our first switch in the next town, and it went flawlessly.

  Unfortunately, Clarissa seemed to think that her oath to me meant she was to be my wife, but I would never have a wife. I wanted nothing more than to be alone, forever, to clear my head once and for all of the screams and criticisms and gossip and moans of women.

  I tried not to give Clarissa false hope, but over the years we three had travelled together, I had been weak. She was still a beautiful woman, and the nights are often cold, and it does a man’s soul good to lie beside a warm body, especially if I had gone days without a witch in the dungeon. Like all performers, Clarissa was skilled in the erotic arts, and she enjoyed my particular perversions. More often than I liked, I became a victim of her charms.

  But though she pleaded with me, I would not make her my wife, not even in secret. And, as the day of my freedom drew nearer, I pushed Clarissa away completely, refusing to touch her again. There was no sense in giving her false hope. When I left, she would not be coming with me.

  Even now, Clarissa tried t
o change my mind, sliding up next to me by the fire like a snake ready to strike, batting her long eyelashes and running her fingers through her wild red mane. I grunted, and pushed her away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Oh, Ulrich, you can be so cruel,” she pouted, as she always did, expecting this to win me over, as it no doubt did every other man.

  “I am what the world has made me.”

  “Is this really the last one?” she asked, snatching the mead from my hands and pressing the skin to her lips. “Is this really the last time you’ll tie me to that infernal stake?”

  I nodded. “Think about it. We’re about as far from the bishop’s stronghold as we can hope to get. We’re in the middle of a plague-infested shithole. Even my father isn’t going to come looking for me out here, not with the risk of plague in these lands.”

  “I’m scared, Ulrich. I’ve never been without you before. Are you sure you won’t take me with you?”

  “You’re not scared, Clarissa. You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “I’m afraid of the plague.”

  The rain that I had seen earlier came now in earnest. Great, thick blobs of water splashed against my cloak. I touched the amulet Clarissa wore around her neck. “You’re protected.”

  She pushed my arm away, her eyes studded with tears. “You don’t even believe in magic.”

  “No, but you do. That’s how magic works, isn’t it?” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Just keep that amulet on, wash yourself with urine, and don’t lie with anyone, and you’ll be fine. And I know you’ll like living with the Sisters. Many of them are from your lands. They work together to hunt and grow food and they will look after you.”

  “I don’t want to go to some ghastly commune of old crones. They won’t have singing or dancing or anything fun. I want to stay with you.” Clarissa leaned forward to touch my arm.

  I yanked my hand away as if her touch burned me. I don’t want you. I didn’t have to say it out loud. She still hadn’t got the message.