by Bill Bennett
‘Just listen,’ said Lily, and as an afterthought, ‘please.’
‘Lils, I won’t allow it. It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s too dangerous staying here,’ Lily said, now pacing, agitated. ‘The cops could lock us up for God knows how long. Till after Unholy. What I’m thinking is we get to the mine, I hook back into my mom’s energy field like I did before, let her know that help’s coming, keep her alive. You meanwhile blow off the cops, which I’m sure you can do, being the charmer that you are.’ She smiled. ‘Then as soon as you’re free of them you come join us and we figure out a way to rescue her.’
Freddie hesitated. He could hear a vehicle approaching.
‘They’re going to want to take you away, Lils, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s for your own protection. And we do need you to help get Angela out of that stinking hole, I’ll grant you that. You’re all we have.’
‘I’ll look after her, doc, don’t worry,’ Skyhawk said quietly.
‘I know you will, son; thank you.’ He paused, quickly considering all the options. ‘Okay, I’ll deal with the cops, buy you some time. You two get going. I’ll meet you at the mine.’
He grabbed his car keys, threw them over to Skyhawk, who caught them deftly.
‘But,’ Freddie said, ‘don’t, whatever you do, go into the mine itself. Wait for me outside. I’ll find you. That mine is one of the most evil places on earth. You don’t have the power or the skills yet to deal with what’s down there, you hear me, Lils?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll wait for you outside. I promise.’
‘Just keep that connection with your mom alive – that’s what you’ve got to do, okay? She needs to know you’re nearby, that you’re looking for her and that you love her. It might be the only thing that keeps her going.’
Lily nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. She stepped forward, reached up on her tippy-toes and gave her uncle a kiss on the cheek, as if it might be the last time they ever saw each other. Then she turned and, with Skyhawk at her side, walked swiftly to the door and rushed out into the night without looking back.
As they waited in shadows near the track leading down, waiting for the cops to come up, Lily felt a presence behind her – a nauseating presence. Her fingers began to tingle. The stinging bees. She searched the night skies, found nothing. Then she glanced over at the wizened tree in the square. Sitting high in the leafless branches was a vulture. It looked down on her with gleaming yellow eyes. And then it crunched its beak hard, making a dead brittle sound, before flapping its dry leathered wings and flying off into a darkness that suddenly felt much darker.
CHAPTER 12
The Hag tied the last of the dried shrew’s bones to the wooden frame that Belt had made, then hung it from the pole. The bones clattered in the wind. Like the others. Belt took the pole from her and placed it in the hole she’d dug, put a few rocks around its base to hold it firm, then filled it in with dirt and stamped it down tight. That was the last one. The perimeter was now complete.
They stood back to survey their work. It had taken nearly a week, but now the Hag had the foundation for the protection she needed. Fifty poles encircling the trapper’s shack, each pole holding a frame from which hung several bones – fox bones, raccoons, martens, weasels, even some wolverine bones. Outside the front door, in prominent position, was a bear’s skull that they’d found in a cave on a mountainside nearby. Beside it on the other side of the path leading to the door was a moose’s jawbone.
The bones clacked in the wind – a deathly wind chime that made the Hag feel comfortable. She loved the sound. It had unsettled Belt though. Belt hadn’t been happy from the moment she arrived. The Hag knew it, but she didn’t care. Belt’s home comforts were of no interest to her.
The next stage in building the protection ring was to find the ingredients for the elixir that would anoint the bones. According to the Hag’s own private Book of Shadows, it had to be a mixture of lichen from a hundred-year-old tree, peeling fur from a moose’s antlers, several teeth from a woodchuck ground down into a fine dust, two handfuls of beetle husks, all combined with urine from a mountain goat and a weasel, then boiled up into a brew that she would wipe onto the bones. The last step would be to cast an ancient spell that would trigger the commencement of the protection shield. But she couldn’t do that until she’d made the brew and anointed the bones, and for that she needed those ingredients.
It would be Belt’s job to find them. The Hag smiled at the prospect of Belt collecting the urine. She would like to be on hand to see that. But until those ingredients were found and the shield triggered, she would be vulnerable to attack. And that made her jumpy, and on edge.
They’d been there nearly a week now and were still settling in. Building her defences was a priority, because the Hag knew that the Golden Order would not let her go unpunished. And punishment for her crime – of not completing her task of bringing in the girl then fleeing before The Twins came, those two elite Golden Order assassins – well, there was only one punishment they would mete out, and that would be execution in the most ferocious and operatic way possible. They would want to make a show of it, make an example of her, as a deterrent to anyone else in Baphomet who might consider that it was acceptable to break their age-old inviolate rules.
Before leaving Florida, before travelling, the Hag had seen this trapper’s shack in her mind’s eye, and she knew immediately that it was perfect. It was remote, bordering a state park, with a small river within easy walking distance and a tiny town nearby – a former gold mining town called Hawkton – where she and Belt could provision up when needed. But what made it perfect were the mountains that ringed them in from three sides; she doubted anyone from Baphomet would come across those snow-covered peaks, which meant she only had one direction to guard against – the valley right in front of them. Cleared of trees and consisting mainly of grassland and rocks, it would be easy to spot anyone approaching.
But then again, the highly skilled witches from the Golden Order wouldn’t come blithely driving up the rutted track to her front door and politely knock. They wouldn’t even necessarily take human form. The Twins had been able to transmogrify into any living creature they so chose. Where were the Twins now? she wondered. Had they captured or killed the girl? And what about Dr Skinless? If the Golden Order sent him, then she would need her protection shield to be operating at one hundred per cent potency, and even then she doubted it would stop him. She shivered at the thought.
The shack was basic – timber slabs, shingle roof, wood floor, two separate bedrooms, small and musty, and a living area combined with a kitchen with shelves stacked with tinned beans and spaghetti and meatballs, all several years past their use-by date.
The Hag had found the owner of the shack in Hawkton. His name was Buck. Years of drinking 120-proof backwoods moonshine had turned his gaze glassy and his speech even glassier, but he had enough wits about him to be suspicious. He seemed curious about why a shrivelled-up old lady from not-round-these-parts would want to pay a lot of money for such a remote cabin – and his suspicion only seemed to deepen when he saw the beautiful young Belt in tow. Regardless, it seemed to the Hag that he wasn’t so witless as to refuse her cash, and after she paid up front, in full, for a twelve-month lease, along with an outrageous security deposit, he readily handed over the keys.
The Hag also bought a beat-up Chevy Silverado off Buck, again for cash, which caused a ripple of muttering around the bar where Buck seemed to have permanent residence. He was a timber cutter in his thirties. His regular uniform was a dirty down vest over a plaid shirt, over a protruding belly, with loose-fitting ripped jeans belted below his overhang. He had rough hands and bad teeth, and he told them that he was in town for a bit while his company renegotiated their leases – adding that he had plenty of spare time on his hands and knew every inch of the backwoods like he knew every inch of his pecker. That drew a laugh from the bar – and prompted Belt to turn and leave. Which drew even more laughter
. Outside the bar, the Hag could detect Belt intoning a small spell, and she waited for the outburst that came a minute or so later, when Buck experienced a sudden and embarrassing release of his urinary tract sphincter – he pissed his pants in front of everyone. The roar of laughter from inside the hotel nearly lifted the roof as the Hag left the bar.
Belt walked off too, smiling.
The Hag didn’t know how they would handle the winter here – it would be brutal, but perhaps by then Belt would be sufficiently trained to act as her bodyguard, and then she could look at returning and redeeming herself – although how, she didn’t yet know. She was still a powerful and canny witch – not what she once was, she conceded that, but she still had plenty to offer the Golden Order. That is, if they wanted her. But perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps they saw her as a liability. A negative asset they had to strip from their books.
In the meantime she had to develop Belt into an adept. It would take time and intense training. The girl had natural skills – there was no doubt she was an innate witch with potentially remarkable powers – but aptitude was one thing, acquiring the knowledge and learning to unleash those powers and put them to full use was something else. That required work. Hard work. But the Hag knew that she was up to it. She wanted to learn. She wanted to advance her skill-base as a witch. It wasn’t ambition, like that cretinous little rat-thing Kritta. She wasn’t interested in the purity of witchcraft, in the dignity of being a witch. Belt was.
The Hag sensed that to Belt, being a witch was a true calling, that it was her destiny. That she’d been born to follow this path and it was inevitable that she would become a grand witch, someone who would be written about and mythologised, songs sung about, ceremonies created and conducted in her glory and remembrance. That is what the Hag had wanted for herself, in her younger days. She had wanted to create a legend, a myth that would be written up in the great works in the Library of Shadows, in the Golden Order’s castle outside of Budapest, to be read and remembered hundreds of years from now.
But she had fallen short.
Her only real legacy was an epic battle with the Chalk Witch that lasted two days and two nights, high on top of a rocky mesa in the New Mexico desert. That battle had gone down into Baphomet folklore and was even studied at the Academy of Darken Angels. But it had damn near killed her and had left her a bitter wrinkled creature living in the past. Pathetic.
Belt had her glory years ahead of her. With Belt as a protégé and fully trained as an adept, the Hag would once again gain respect. Together they would be fearsome. And those above her, the higher ups in the Golden Order, would no longer be able to ignore the Hag. She would return.
‘I hate it here. How long do we have to stay?’
Belt ate her bean stew sullenly. They’d been in this horrible place not even a week, and already she wanted to go back home. But she’d come with a plan. And she had to allow time for that plan to play out. In the meantime she had to tough it out with this disgusting old woman. In the putrid shack. With the only available men a bunch of dumb-ass rednecks who didn’t seem to shift off their barstools day or night. The whole set-up didn’t appeal, not by a long shot. She had to keep the big picture in mind, otherwise she’d explode and blow everything.
‘We go when I say we go,’ the Hag hissed. ‘Now shut up and eat. And don’t bother me with your boohoo whining, you baby.’
The Hag never made any attempt to have Belt like her. On the contrary, it was like she regarded her rudeness as an essential part of her tutoring. Like a marine drill sergeant with a rookie recruit. But Belt suspected there was another reason she was constantly so snarly. She was scared. Because even though they’d chosen one of the most remote places on earth to hide and were taking all possible precautions, there was still a chance the Golden Order would discover where they were and send someone out to kill them. That was their policy. They would see her as what she was – the Hag’s protégé and hence an accomplice, and they would kill them both. Mercy wasn’t a part of their lexicon.
So right now she had to take every opportunity to develop her latent powers and skill herself in the most advanced combat techniques she could handle, which meant suffering the Hag’s insults and her vomitous body odour and breath stench.
She needed something to keep her sane.
In a town full of retards and inbreds one person had stood out – the bartender at the Hawkton Inn. His name was Harry. He was in his early twenties maybe, a good-looking boy, tall and fit. Strong arms. Blonde curly hair. Acted like he wasn’t a local, like he’d blown in from somewhere else. Like he had a story. And that story had brought him here. She’d noticed that he hadn’t joined in the laughter when Buck made lewd comments at her. In fact, he’d smacked Buck across the head as she was leaving. Harry looked cool. Next time she had to go into town she would brave the bar again, catch his eye.
She quickly finished her dinner, then collected the plates and washed up. Even coming into summer the water from the taps was freezing. Her room was cold too. She hated it here. No internet, no phone range. Complete isolation. Only the Hag to talk to. And that was hardly fun. The only thing the place had going for it was mountains. Mountains to climb. When she wasn’t training with the Hag she would find the meanest toughest mountain and hang like an itsy-bitsy spider. That’s how she saw herself – a spider that could spin a web, entrap the unwary, devour them at her leisure. She thought of Harry, and smiled.
CHAPTER 13
His name was a misnomer.
He wasn’t skinless. He had skin. It’s just that it was transparent. Like glass. Like plastic wrap. Naked, you could see everything inside. Everything. Every organ, every muscle and tendon and ligament, every blood vessel, you could see his intestines, his pulsating heart, his stomach and liver, even his brain. You could see everything. And you could see it functioning, which seemed to distress those that saw him this way even more.
For Dr Wolfgang Schmitt, it made life difficult and it had done so from birth. His parents, former Nazis, wanted to kill him as soon as they saw him in the clinic in hospital. Everyone acknowledged that the baby was a horrific freak of nature – and that it probably wouldn’t survive more than a week. So his parents waited. They took him home and waited. But he didn’t die, he thrived. Kept out of the sunlight, swathed in blankets and hidden from view, he grew. And grew. Wolfgang Schmitt would grow to be six foot eight inches, weighing sixty-five kilograms. With arms and legs as thin as leafless spindly branches in winter.
His father, an agricultural scientist, wanted him exterminated. He hated the boy. To him he was a blight on the family name and on the world. He could not reconcile that his pure untainted genetic make-up had brought this vile abomination into existence. And so he blamed his wife. And they fought, bitterly. Sometimes violently. He would take the horse whip to her, flaying her in his fury. His shouts, her screams, would wake the child in his sleep. But his mother kept him alive, nurtured him and in her own way she loved him.
He never went to school. His mother tutored him. And in the absence of many of the other distractions a young child might have, he excelled academically. He was particularly good in mathematics and in his senior year he topped the Free State of Bavaria. That garnered him a scholarship at the prestigious Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, at the time considered the best university in all of Germany. Which meant he had to leave home and attend classes.
His mother got a tailor to make him a wardrobe of clothes that would not only fit his tall gangly form, but would also keep him safe from the harmful effects of sunlight and keep his body hidden. It was no problem to make several suits and pairs of gloves that would keep his see-through flesh and its contents from view – but his head and face were more difficult. And so she went to one of Germany’s best and most expensive cosmetic surgeons, and he created a synthetic skin-like head-mask that Wolfgang Schmitt could peel on and off when required. It kept his head covered, but it looked odd. The surgeon had not been able to get the eye sockets ri
ght, nor the mouth. It looked creepy, like one of those scary masks you’d buy at a party shop. But it was the best the surgeon could do.
Wolfgang Schmitt went to LMU armed with a story that he had been horribly burnt and disfigured as a child in a house fire, and his skin was now highly sensitive to ultraviolet light, hence the mask. And while this was largely accepted around campus, the other students still avoided him. He looked like something out of a horror movie. Many were scared of him, particularly the girls. Others were merely repulsed and often made it obvious. He was the butt of regular jokes, and many openly humiliated and made fun of him. He had no friends, he was assiduously avoided and so he threw himself into his studies.
On entry into the university he had taken up accountancy because he loved numbers and accountancy seemed to be a profession where one could work in isolation, yet still make a handsome living. He was soon winning end-of-year prizes for his outstanding grades and decided to further his studies with a PhD. When he wasn’t studying he listened to opera and classical music – Wagner was his favourite – and he regularly attended concerts at the gilded halls of Munich. As he grew older and more confident, he took to wearing a cape. He knew he looked strange, like a ghoul, and instead of retreating and hiding from the public gaze, he decided to flaunt it. He instructed his tailor to make his suits jet black and line his cape with red silk. To complete the finsterer Blick – sinister look – he took to using a cane, topped with a silver knob – the head of a snarling demon. It was an eccentric look for an esteemed accountant, but not really. Because Dr Wolfgang Schmitt had another side to him.
He loved killing things and skinning them.
From an early age, on the farm where they lived near the Black Forest, he’d snuck out at night and hunted. At first, small rodents and hares and even birds. He liked killing cuckoos, because their cheery song irritated him. Later, he graduated to foxes and bear cubs and even wild boar. Perhaps because he had never been exposed to sunlight he could see acutely in the dark. He gradually became a highly skilled tracker and, with a patience and logic born from being a mathematician, he was lethal. He could track anything, even the most skittish of patriarchal deer. It only took time and focus. And he had plenty of both.
