The Shadow Rises
Page 24
*****
As they rattled along empty roads the wind whipped in through the broken window, freezing Hunter to his seat, but keeping him bloody awake. Next to him, James snored lightly. Hunter felt so guilty about what he’d gone through, that he barely felt jealous of him getting some sleep.
He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. His body clock told him it was around five or six o’clock in the morning, the world was still dark and silent.
In his mind he lived and relived everything from the moment he’d met Sophie, seeing it all in a new light. She’d played them all perfectly, made Hunter believe that he…
He didn’t know when he fell in love with her, it had happened so quickly, yet the realisation had taken weeks to crawl up to him. He remembered her mother, Bev, warning him off - he had assumed she was being an overly protective mum, not trying to save him from - from this. But she had already been too late, he had already been falling under Sophie’s spell.
He grimaced at his private thought’s choice of word.
Had Sophie cast a spell he hadn’t felt? Or slipped a love potion in the many coffees she had brought him? All to blind him from what she was really up to.
‘As much as she denies it - she loves you irrevocably.’ Bev’s words rang again in his ears. He could only hope it was true, that she would never kill him because she loved him.
But… what about her, would he be able to kill her?
Of course, the voice of reason screamed, she was the Shadow Witch and needed to be destroyed. But when Hunter imagined himself standing in front of Sophie and pulling the trigger-
He leant forward, trying to let the road drive out the image. It was only an enchantment, it would wear off. He’d be able to stop thinking about her, get back to normal.
It wasn’t long before his spinning thoughts came inevitably to the very disturbing idea that he could be a witch. Here, alone in the dark (a snoring James didn’t count), it seemed scarily possible. Each generation of witch-hunter took them further away from their human roots. Why shouldn’t the next step be magic.
Hunter sighed, he hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it. But if he was entirely honest with himself, if it turned out that he was strong enough to oppose the Shadow Witch it could only help. Like the anti-witch Benandanti. Only one problem, really, he’d never intentionally used magic and he’d seen how skilled Sophie was.
Hunter leant closer to the windscreen, concentrating on keeping up a decent speed in the old Fiesta as he navigated amongst the cars that had been abandoned by their owners. They must have been travelling at the time of the hit, there were signs of collisions as drivers lost control as their trusty vehicles gave up. Hunter wondered how many had been hurt, and his fears were raised as something caught his eye. He squinted into the dark, not sure what he was seeing. The car's headlights picked up increasingly large chunks of debris across the abandoned motorway.
Hunter pulled up on the side of the road and nudged James awake, before climbing out of the car. In front of them the tarmac was ripped up and the grass bank was a churned mess of mud and metal. Hunter clambered up the short bank with James stumbling behind him. The remnants of an aeroplane crash landed.
"Hunter..." James caught up with him. "Hunter come on, there's nothing we can do."
Hunter ignored him and ran over to the fallen craft, he paused at one of the gaping holes, then ducked inside. He called out, but there was no response. As his eyes adapted to the near-pitch darkness inside, Hunter saw that the plane was empty.
"Is there anyone there?" James asked, standing in the broken gap.
Hunter made his way back out of the plane, taking a deep breath. "No. Whether they survived or not, they've already been moved. But then it has been 34 hours since the hit."
Hunter shuddered and walked slowly back to the car, the little old Fiesta was still running with lights on and doors thrown wide at the bottom of the small slope.
The two friends got back in and set off once more, both silenced by what they'd seen. Both of them could only guess at the extent of the damage done.