Spellshock, page 22
She dropped into a sideways roll as the gray muting wrapped around her, hiding her from the guards.
She scrambled to her hands and knees to scuttle across the floor and nearly fell flat on her face as nausea gripped her and her brain twisted inside her skull. Only the lip of the seating platform saved her from the beam. She rolled in tight next to it, stretched out across the floor.
“Rajequist.”
The healing spell fizzed through her and perked her up better than a shot of espresso.
“Pezhvatek,” she said and hid herself again, rolling out from her bolt hole and scuttling to wedge herself into a corner the beam had just swept past.
The healing spell may be a refreshing tonic, she thought as the concealing spell jolted through her, but she was still casting too many spells. Push it too far and she would find herself passed out on the floor at the mercy of Griffiths’ men. She hoped one or two more would be okay.
She locked onto the remaining cannon and pointed her open hand at it.
“Tatlet.”
The concealment spell broke, taking with it any calm the healing spell had brought her as the knife handle flew into her grip.
“Pakkat.”
The knife hurled itself at the remaining cannon which shattered and sparked, taking out its operator.
“Pezhvatek,” she said and took two steps to the left, narrowly missing Perkins as he lunged at where she had just stood in a rugby tackle that would have been devastating had it connected.
She took a deep breath to steady her nausea and staggered to the door.
Just one more spell.
The pushback spell could knock down the guards covering the door and allow her to get out of the chamber where Elsie, she hoped, could take over the heavy lifting.
She ran toward the doors, stopping far enough away that the projected cone of the spell would catch the two sentries and the guard manning the cables.
“Puthut.”
The three men were yanked off their feet and thrust out of the chamber into the hall, the two doors ripping off their hinges and blasting out with them.
The floor lurched hard to the right as her brain protested, sloshing around inside her skull. She didn’t dare cast the spell of concealment again lest she faceplant before she even reached the threshold. Hopping over the tangle of cables, she darted for the opening and freedom, only to be knocked off her feet, hurled against a wall and winded by the unstoppable blast of a cannon. The first cannon, she thought, realizing she had assumed that its operator had gone down for the count.
The beam blasted into her, pressing against her chest, making it hard to breathe. When it finally stopped, she had barely enough breath to summon the switchblade to her.
“Tatlet,” she whispered, and it leaped into her hand, though she hadn’t the strength to do more than clutch it.
“Got you,” sneered Perkins as he stooped over her, grabbed her by the collar and pulled her to her feet.
She wrapped her hands around his wrists. There was one last spell she could cast, though she had no idea if it would do what she needed.
“Actalet,” she said. “Help me.”
The spell ripped through her and, for a moment, she lost consciousness. When she came to a fraction of a second later, Perkins held her still, the sneer wiped from his face, replaced by confusion as he looked around him as if waking from a dream. He released his grip on her collar, slipping a hand around her wrist.
“Stay behind me,” he said, pulling her with him toward the ravaged open doorway.
“Sarge?” said the one remaining cannoneer, the only other guard left standing, as he stepped between them and the door. “Sarge, move away from the witch.”
Perkins let go of Gosha’s hand and rushed the guard, yanking the cannon from his grasp and smashing it on the floor.
“Sarge?” said the guard, still not getting what was going on, though it all became clear when Perkins punched him squarely on the jaw.
Gosha tottered back as the men fought, picking her way over cables and unconscious bodies to edge around them toward the door. She stuck her head through the opening, saw no one except the three guards she had blown out of the chamber, and stepped through.
A woman came out of nowhere. Tall with long legs in high heels and a skirt slit up the side, she smiled broadly at Gosha and beckoned her forward.
“Quickly,” said the woman. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Gosha hesitated, but at this point she was quite prepared to consider anyone not attempting to kill her on sight to be a friend.
“Give me your hand,” said the woman as she took Gosha gently by the elbow and led her toward the stairs.
“Elsie, is that you.”
“Of course, dear.” The woman smiled and winked. “I told you I’d be outside waiting for you.”
She stopped them at the top of the stairs and wrapped a length of copper wire around Gosha’s wrist, twisting off the ends.
“There. Now no one will recognize you.”
Elsie waved a hand in front of her face and her long, straight hair suddenly became wildly disheveled, her white shirt ripped and smudged.
A dozen guards in their black uniforms, pistols at the ready, rounded a corner and rushed up the stairs toward them.
“Okay,” whispered Elsie. “We need to sell this if we’re going to make it outside.”
She shrieked in terror and clutched at Gosha, cowering from the guns.
“Oh my god,” she said, gesticulating up at the gallery. “It’s terrible. She would have killed us. You have to help them!”
Most of the guards rushed past them up to the chamber, but two remained behind to see them down the stairs.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Elsie, clutching hold of one of the guards as if her life depended on it. “She threatened to turn us into frogs.”
“You’re safe now,” said the guard, peeling her off him. “Wait outside until you get the all-clear.”
Their escorts turned and ran back up to join the rest of their squad.
“Not bad, eh?” said Elsie with a grin. “You know I trod the boards a little bit in my youth!”
They stepped out of the main doors to the street unchallenged.
—Are you out? said Agnieszka across the Devil’s Star.
“Can’t talk now,” said Elsie through clenched teeth as they crossed the road.
Some forty or fifty men and women stood on the other side of the street huddled together in clusters, staring up at the building. Twenty yards away, the saints stood arguing among themselves, George apart from then, scanning the crowd.
—We’re waiting for you at the end of the street, said Shreya.
“Let’s walk very slowly in that direction,” said Elsie under her breath, leading them past the circle of saints. “We’re both a little shaky. It’s all been a bit much, but we’re holding it together. We’re just walking off our nerves and getting a breath of fresh air.”
George stared hard at them as they walked past him, but he didn’t recognize them. They wobbled slowly down the street unchallenged and turned a corner to find Shreya’s Volkswagen van idling in wait just out of sight. Gosha realized she had barely taken a breath since they set foot outside the building.
31
She stumbled as she stepped up into the van, her legs watery beneath her, but Eleanor slid forward with open arms to catch her.
“I’m so happy you’re safe,” she said, hugging Gosha tight. A hint of floral perfume wafted off her skin.
“Come on, girls,” said Elsie, standing in the street, still wearing her statuesque glamor. “Spit-spot. The hounds are at our heels.”
“We were so worried,” said Eleanor as she helped Gosha onto the green and white vinyl bench. Elsie slid in behind her and pulled the doors shut.
“Everyone in?” asked Shreya, looking back from the driver’s seat.
—You’ve got her? said Agnieszka across the link.
“She’s safe and sound,” said Shreya, looking back. “Strap in, please.”
—Lady be praised, said Agnieszka.
Shreya floored the gas pedal, pushing Gosha back into her seat as the van accelerated with more kick than it would have had fresh off the assembly line.
Gosha began to shiver, a ripple of goosebumps across her skin deepening into spasms that wracked her body.
“Oh, dearest,” said Eleanor.
She muttered something that sounded vaguely Italian and a wash of heat warmed Gosha’s bones, but it did little to lift her spirits, the relief she felt at being free and among loved ones quickly crushed by the weight of knowing she’d barely escaped. She had struggled against great and mysterious forces before. In the past, her ignorance had given her license to be bold and reckless, had pushed her from one trial to the next as she discovered the extent of her newly awakened potential. Now she’d been at this business of Craft long enough to know her limitations. She had just pushed herself as far as she knew how and it had barely been sufficient, a hideous death averted only because of the intercession of her friends.
Shreya raced them through the crowded streets of London, throwing spells left and right to clear their path.
“Wait,” said Gosha, pulling herself up on the bench in front of her to look out the windows. “Where are we going?”
—Your fancy man and fairy doll have proven not to be completely useless, said Agnieszka. They’ve found a car big enough for all of us. I daren’t go back home in case the rats are still swarming, so I sent them for provisions.
“Provisions?”
—I traded with Iron Jenny for the name of a witch in Bristol who will shelter us until we can find a boat. I think we should go to Spain or Portugal. I hear it’s lovely there. Lots of witches and only a handful of oath-bearers. And good wine. Sounds like heaven to me.
“For god’s sake, Mamusha. Why is your first response to trouble always running away? Shreya, stop the van.”
—Ignore her, Shreya! The little idiot will have you up to your nethers in vermin before you can twitch your elbows.
Shreya turned onto the embankment to the Thames, slowed her breakneck pace, and pulled to a stop on the curb.
“She has a point, dear,” said Elsie as her glamor of a disheveled office-worker shimmered and dissipated, revealing her familiar plump and indefatigable cheerful face. “They put you on trial, and I saw the state you left them in. They’re going to be out for blood. It’s hard enough being a witch without every saint in the realm screaming for your head.”
“I remember the last spate of trials,” said Eleanor. “I watched too many of my sisters fall. If the saints have regained the taste of witch blood, we’ll all suffer. Think about your little dears. Do you want them to grow up in fear for their mother’s life? Or worse, do you want them to grow up without you?”
—Yes, said Agnieszka. If you won’t listen to me, listen to her. She’s seen it all a hundred times over. I can hear your foolish mind ticking away with plans that will only bring you misery.
Her mother was right. For a moment she’d toyed with the idea of being free of George completely, of starting again somewhere warm, just her and the boys. With Agnieszka, of course. And Alfie and Johnny. And Elsie and Mei and Eleanor and Shreya. But before she knew it, her thoughts had returned to Dougie Barber and Joseph Hobbs, to the scene on the platform at Paddington and the poor, unsuspecting commuters ripped to nothing on their way to work. The Convocation had sent people to investigate, but could she trust them to get the job done? If she ran away now without the certainty that whatever strange force working through the men to create such artifacts of destruction had been stopped, she’d never be able to rest.
Five men had been kidnapped. Adair and his firm had two of the artifacts, hopefully properly neutralized. Did Hobbs have his on him when he went to the station? There could be two more out there unaccounted for. And where were Sir Wilfred and the other men?
“Mei, are you there?” said Gosha. “What’s going on?”
—See, said Agnieszka. You see! I was right. You’re going to get yourself killed.
“Mei.” Gosha did her best to ignore her mother. “Do you have the acolyte?”
—Shit, said Mei. I’m so sorry. She drove off in a fancy car. I couldn’t follow her. I tossed a finding charm at her, but I lost it once she got to Cheyne Heath. If I can get to a kitchen, I’m sure I can find her again.
Gosha looked at the others watching her silently, waiting for her decision.
“We need to go to Paddington,” she said.
Across the link, her mother bellowed with exasperation.
—Idiot girl! If you won’t leave, I’ll take the children. I won’t see them harmed.
“I’ll leave, Mamusha, but Sir Wilfred’s kidnapping has turned into a complete bugger’s muddle and I don’t trust that lot back there to get the job done-"
The van and the ladies twisted sharply around her and, although the padded bench was a firm support beneath her, she felt herself falling.
“Gosha!” screeched Eleanor. “Elsie, help!”
Gosha’s body shook violently, her head knocking against the back of the bench, her limbs sliding on the slick vinyl covering.
—What’s going on? Agnieszka shouted. What’s happening?
Blood rushed in Gosha’s ears, a gush of white noise that blotted out even the echoes of her mother shouting in her head. The world grew blurry, Shreya’s pink and mango van reduced to shifting blobs of color obscured by darker shapes as the witches clustered over her. The spasms increased in violence until she thought her arms and legs would break. Her ribs froze so she couldn’t breathe. The rushing in her ears grew and grew, blood pressing into her skull as if it might explode.
And then there was quiet, her body suddenly light and cool as if her fall had finally been broken by a cloud. The misty blur of the van resolved itself so she could see again. She found herself looking down from a great height on a huddle of women, fussing over a figure she didn’t recognize.
Is she hurt? she thought, wondering if there was anything she could do as the women made frantic signs with their hands over the figure, muttering to themselves as they placed insignificant objects on her body: buttons and lengths of thread, a playing card and a square of cloth.
A siren blared somewhere behind her and she found herself standing on a street, by a river. Police cars and ambulances rushed past in the fading light of dusk. Smoke filled the air, blowing into her eyes and leaving a bitter taste on her lips. Stunned and dust-covered people drifted past her in groups of two and three, many of them with ripped and tattered clothes, many of them bloody and bruised. She turned toward the direction from whence they came. Thick black clouds billowed up from the end of the embankment where it met the bridge. The road was familiar to her, though something was different. Something was different that shouldn’t be, something gone from where it had always been. She set off against the stream of people and vehicles to investigate.
Where the bridge met the street, a barricade had formed: low, interlocking metal fences bolstered by vehicles and uniformed officers who ignored her as she approached and stood at the barrier to see the source of the smoke. A field of rubble stretched out before her. Hills and cliffs of shattered limestone masonry covered the ground. The fractured remains of a tower jutted up from the debris like a broken tooth. At its foot lay the warped and shattered remains of a giant clock face.
She stood amid the chaotic throng, trying to remember what had stood there before, until a keening voice crested in her awareness, a sound she knew well.
That baby’s hungry, she thought. Someone needs to see to the poor little thing.
It took her a moment in the commotion to locate the direction of the cry which showed no sign of stopping. She wove through the crowd, back the way she came along the embankment, past buildings made of stone and wood until the cry led her to an alley and a cellar door open in the dirt.
As she stood at the top of the steps and peered into the darkness, some vague memory niggled at her consciousness as if to warn her against tunnels that spread into the dark, but the baby’s cries grew more and more desperate. She had no choice but to go down.
The cellar was crude, with stone walls, a dirt floor, and a low wood-beamed ceiling. At the center grew a ten-foot ring of toadstools. Thick and dark glistening caps overlapped, turning the ring into a low wall. The dark matter within the ring rustled and shifted, the baby’s cries coming from somewhere beneath.
Hello, little one, she said, though no sound came out of her mouth. Everything’s going to be fine. Where’s your mother? Did she leave you here?
Twin pinpricks of red light blinked open beneath the mound of dead leaves and branches within the circle and the crying stopped. She froze under their gaze, her breath coming in short gasps as fear overtook her. Whatever was beneath writhed and thrashed, kicking up a mound of leaves and twigs. As the stench of rot assaulted her, she tried to turn and run, but her legs refused to obey. A figure rose up out of the mulch, towering over her as it spread massive insect wings that filled the cellar, giant mottled sails emblazoned with terrifying amorphous shapes that suggested the denizens of nightmare.
The creature reached out a pair of leathery limbs and wrapped her in its claws, lifting her off her feet. Its head and body obscured by darkness, a lavender tongue snaked toward her, lapping at her face and neck, tasting for something it didn’t find. Disappointed, it dropped her into the mulch.
She fell and fell, into the rot and darkness, falling and falling as if she might never come to ground.
She awoke to a hard slap across her face.
“She’s awake,” screeched Eleanor. “Thank the Lady, she’s awake!”
The other witches moved back so Gosha could sit up, though her muscles protested.
“What happened?” she croaked, her throat dry.
“You’re spellshocked, my dear,” said Elsie from the back bench. “Too many spells in too short a time. We thought we’d lost you.”
Her head had begun to clear, and her joints loosened, the passing of her seizure leaving her with little more than a crick in her neck. But something was different. Her second sight was gone. She had no sense of Influence around her. The world was nothing more than metal, vinyl, earth, and air. Placing a hand on her chest, she realized her lipstick was no longer digging into her ribs.
She scrambled to her hands and knees to scuttle across the floor and nearly fell flat on her face as nausea gripped her and her brain twisted inside her skull. Only the lip of the seating platform saved her from the beam. She rolled in tight next to it, stretched out across the floor.
“Rajequist.”
The healing spell fizzed through her and perked her up better than a shot of espresso.
“Pezhvatek,” she said and hid herself again, rolling out from her bolt hole and scuttling to wedge herself into a corner the beam had just swept past.
The healing spell may be a refreshing tonic, she thought as the concealing spell jolted through her, but she was still casting too many spells. Push it too far and she would find herself passed out on the floor at the mercy of Griffiths’ men. She hoped one or two more would be okay.
She locked onto the remaining cannon and pointed her open hand at it.
“Tatlet.”
The concealment spell broke, taking with it any calm the healing spell had brought her as the knife handle flew into her grip.
“Pakkat.”
The knife hurled itself at the remaining cannon which shattered and sparked, taking out its operator.
“Pezhvatek,” she said and took two steps to the left, narrowly missing Perkins as he lunged at where she had just stood in a rugby tackle that would have been devastating had it connected.
She took a deep breath to steady her nausea and staggered to the door.
Just one more spell.
The pushback spell could knock down the guards covering the door and allow her to get out of the chamber where Elsie, she hoped, could take over the heavy lifting.
She ran toward the doors, stopping far enough away that the projected cone of the spell would catch the two sentries and the guard manning the cables.
“Puthut.”
The three men were yanked off their feet and thrust out of the chamber into the hall, the two doors ripping off their hinges and blasting out with them.
The floor lurched hard to the right as her brain protested, sloshing around inside her skull. She didn’t dare cast the spell of concealment again lest she faceplant before she even reached the threshold. Hopping over the tangle of cables, she darted for the opening and freedom, only to be knocked off her feet, hurled against a wall and winded by the unstoppable blast of a cannon. The first cannon, she thought, realizing she had assumed that its operator had gone down for the count.
The beam blasted into her, pressing against her chest, making it hard to breathe. When it finally stopped, she had barely enough breath to summon the switchblade to her.
“Tatlet,” she whispered, and it leaped into her hand, though she hadn’t the strength to do more than clutch it.
“Got you,” sneered Perkins as he stooped over her, grabbed her by the collar and pulled her to her feet.
She wrapped her hands around his wrists. There was one last spell she could cast, though she had no idea if it would do what she needed.
“Actalet,” she said. “Help me.”
The spell ripped through her and, for a moment, she lost consciousness. When she came to a fraction of a second later, Perkins held her still, the sneer wiped from his face, replaced by confusion as he looked around him as if waking from a dream. He released his grip on her collar, slipping a hand around her wrist.
“Stay behind me,” he said, pulling her with him toward the ravaged open doorway.
“Sarge?” said the one remaining cannoneer, the only other guard left standing, as he stepped between them and the door. “Sarge, move away from the witch.”
Perkins let go of Gosha’s hand and rushed the guard, yanking the cannon from his grasp and smashing it on the floor.
“Sarge?” said the guard, still not getting what was going on, though it all became clear when Perkins punched him squarely on the jaw.
Gosha tottered back as the men fought, picking her way over cables and unconscious bodies to edge around them toward the door. She stuck her head through the opening, saw no one except the three guards she had blown out of the chamber, and stepped through.
A woman came out of nowhere. Tall with long legs in high heels and a skirt slit up the side, she smiled broadly at Gosha and beckoned her forward.
“Quickly,” said the woman. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Gosha hesitated, but at this point she was quite prepared to consider anyone not attempting to kill her on sight to be a friend.
“Give me your hand,” said the woman as she took Gosha gently by the elbow and led her toward the stairs.
“Elsie, is that you.”
“Of course, dear.” The woman smiled and winked. “I told you I’d be outside waiting for you.”
She stopped them at the top of the stairs and wrapped a length of copper wire around Gosha’s wrist, twisting off the ends.
“There. Now no one will recognize you.”
Elsie waved a hand in front of her face and her long, straight hair suddenly became wildly disheveled, her white shirt ripped and smudged.
A dozen guards in their black uniforms, pistols at the ready, rounded a corner and rushed up the stairs toward them.
“Okay,” whispered Elsie. “We need to sell this if we’re going to make it outside.”
She shrieked in terror and clutched at Gosha, cowering from the guns.
“Oh my god,” she said, gesticulating up at the gallery. “It’s terrible. She would have killed us. You have to help them!”
Most of the guards rushed past them up to the chamber, but two remained behind to see them down the stairs.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Elsie, clutching hold of one of the guards as if her life depended on it. “She threatened to turn us into frogs.”
“You’re safe now,” said the guard, peeling her off him. “Wait outside until you get the all-clear.”
Their escorts turned and ran back up to join the rest of their squad.
“Not bad, eh?” said Elsie with a grin. “You know I trod the boards a little bit in my youth!”
They stepped out of the main doors to the street unchallenged.
—Are you out? said Agnieszka across the Devil’s Star.
“Can’t talk now,” said Elsie through clenched teeth as they crossed the road.
Some forty or fifty men and women stood on the other side of the street huddled together in clusters, staring up at the building. Twenty yards away, the saints stood arguing among themselves, George apart from then, scanning the crowd.
—We’re waiting for you at the end of the street, said Shreya.
“Let’s walk very slowly in that direction,” said Elsie under her breath, leading them past the circle of saints. “We’re both a little shaky. It’s all been a bit much, but we’re holding it together. We’re just walking off our nerves and getting a breath of fresh air.”
George stared hard at them as they walked past him, but he didn’t recognize them. They wobbled slowly down the street unchallenged and turned a corner to find Shreya’s Volkswagen van idling in wait just out of sight. Gosha realized she had barely taken a breath since they set foot outside the building.
31
She stumbled as she stepped up into the van, her legs watery beneath her, but Eleanor slid forward with open arms to catch her.
“I’m so happy you’re safe,” she said, hugging Gosha tight. A hint of floral perfume wafted off her skin.
“Come on, girls,” said Elsie, standing in the street, still wearing her statuesque glamor. “Spit-spot. The hounds are at our heels.”
“We were so worried,” said Eleanor as she helped Gosha onto the green and white vinyl bench. Elsie slid in behind her and pulled the doors shut.
“Everyone in?” asked Shreya, looking back from the driver’s seat.
—You’ve got her? said Agnieszka across the link.
“She’s safe and sound,” said Shreya, looking back. “Strap in, please.”
—Lady be praised, said Agnieszka.
Shreya floored the gas pedal, pushing Gosha back into her seat as the van accelerated with more kick than it would have had fresh off the assembly line.
Gosha began to shiver, a ripple of goosebumps across her skin deepening into spasms that wracked her body.
“Oh, dearest,” said Eleanor.
She muttered something that sounded vaguely Italian and a wash of heat warmed Gosha’s bones, but it did little to lift her spirits, the relief she felt at being free and among loved ones quickly crushed by the weight of knowing she’d barely escaped. She had struggled against great and mysterious forces before. In the past, her ignorance had given her license to be bold and reckless, had pushed her from one trial to the next as she discovered the extent of her newly awakened potential. Now she’d been at this business of Craft long enough to know her limitations. She had just pushed herself as far as she knew how and it had barely been sufficient, a hideous death averted only because of the intercession of her friends.
Shreya raced them through the crowded streets of London, throwing spells left and right to clear their path.
“Wait,” said Gosha, pulling herself up on the bench in front of her to look out the windows. “Where are we going?”
—Your fancy man and fairy doll have proven not to be completely useless, said Agnieszka. They’ve found a car big enough for all of us. I daren’t go back home in case the rats are still swarming, so I sent them for provisions.
“Provisions?”
—I traded with Iron Jenny for the name of a witch in Bristol who will shelter us until we can find a boat. I think we should go to Spain or Portugal. I hear it’s lovely there. Lots of witches and only a handful of oath-bearers. And good wine. Sounds like heaven to me.
“For god’s sake, Mamusha. Why is your first response to trouble always running away? Shreya, stop the van.”
—Ignore her, Shreya! The little idiot will have you up to your nethers in vermin before you can twitch your elbows.
Shreya turned onto the embankment to the Thames, slowed her breakneck pace, and pulled to a stop on the curb.
“She has a point, dear,” said Elsie as her glamor of a disheveled office-worker shimmered and dissipated, revealing her familiar plump and indefatigable cheerful face. “They put you on trial, and I saw the state you left them in. They’re going to be out for blood. It’s hard enough being a witch without every saint in the realm screaming for your head.”
“I remember the last spate of trials,” said Eleanor. “I watched too many of my sisters fall. If the saints have regained the taste of witch blood, we’ll all suffer. Think about your little dears. Do you want them to grow up in fear for their mother’s life? Or worse, do you want them to grow up without you?”
—Yes, said Agnieszka. If you won’t listen to me, listen to her. She’s seen it all a hundred times over. I can hear your foolish mind ticking away with plans that will only bring you misery.
Her mother was right. For a moment she’d toyed with the idea of being free of George completely, of starting again somewhere warm, just her and the boys. With Agnieszka, of course. And Alfie and Johnny. And Elsie and Mei and Eleanor and Shreya. But before she knew it, her thoughts had returned to Dougie Barber and Joseph Hobbs, to the scene on the platform at Paddington and the poor, unsuspecting commuters ripped to nothing on their way to work. The Convocation had sent people to investigate, but could she trust them to get the job done? If she ran away now without the certainty that whatever strange force working through the men to create such artifacts of destruction had been stopped, she’d never be able to rest.
Five men had been kidnapped. Adair and his firm had two of the artifacts, hopefully properly neutralized. Did Hobbs have his on him when he went to the station? There could be two more out there unaccounted for. And where were Sir Wilfred and the other men?
“Mei, are you there?” said Gosha. “What’s going on?”
—See, said Agnieszka. You see! I was right. You’re going to get yourself killed.
“Mei.” Gosha did her best to ignore her mother. “Do you have the acolyte?”
—Shit, said Mei. I’m so sorry. She drove off in a fancy car. I couldn’t follow her. I tossed a finding charm at her, but I lost it once she got to Cheyne Heath. If I can get to a kitchen, I’m sure I can find her again.
Gosha looked at the others watching her silently, waiting for her decision.
“We need to go to Paddington,” she said.
Across the link, her mother bellowed with exasperation.
—Idiot girl! If you won’t leave, I’ll take the children. I won’t see them harmed.
“I’ll leave, Mamusha, but Sir Wilfred’s kidnapping has turned into a complete bugger’s muddle and I don’t trust that lot back there to get the job done-"
The van and the ladies twisted sharply around her and, although the padded bench was a firm support beneath her, she felt herself falling.
“Gosha!” screeched Eleanor. “Elsie, help!”
Gosha’s body shook violently, her head knocking against the back of the bench, her limbs sliding on the slick vinyl covering.
—What’s going on? Agnieszka shouted. What’s happening?
Blood rushed in Gosha’s ears, a gush of white noise that blotted out even the echoes of her mother shouting in her head. The world grew blurry, Shreya’s pink and mango van reduced to shifting blobs of color obscured by darker shapes as the witches clustered over her. The spasms increased in violence until she thought her arms and legs would break. Her ribs froze so she couldn’t breathe. The rushing in her ears grew and grew, blood pressing into her skull as if it might explode.
And then there was quiet, her body suddenly light and cool as if her fall had finally been broken by a cloud. The misty blur of the van resolved itself so she could see again. She found herself looking down from a great height on a huddle of women, fussing over a figure she didn’t recognize.
Is she hurt? she thought, wondering if there was anything she could do as the women made frantic signs with their hands over the figure, muttering to themselves as they placed insignificant objects on her body: buttons and lengths of thread, a playing card and a square of cloth.
A siren blared somewhere behind her and she found herself standing on a street, by a river. Police cars and ambulances rushed past in the fading light of dusk. Smoke filled the air, blowing into her eyes and leaving a bitter taste on her lips. Stunned and dust-covered people drifted past her in groups of two and three, many of them with ripped and tattered clothes, many of them bloody and bruised. She turned toward the direction from whence they came. Thick black clouds billowed up from the end of the embankment where it met the bridge. The road was familiar to her, though something was different. Something was different that shouldn’t be, something gone from where it had always been. She set off against the stream of people and vehicles to investigate.
Where the bridge met the street, a barricade had formed: low, interlocking metal fences bolstered by vehicles and uniformed officers who ignored her as she approached and stood at the barrier to see the source of the smoke. A field of rubble stretched out before her. Hills and cliffs of shattered limestone masonry covered the ground. The fractured remains of a tower jutted up from the debris like a broken tooth. At its foot lay the warped and shattered remains of a giant clock face.
She stood amid the chaotic throng, trying to remember what had stood there before, until a keening voice crested in her awareness, a sound she knew well.
That baby’s hungry, she thought. Someone needs to see to the poor little thing.
It took her a moment in the commotion to locate the direction of the cry which showed no sign of stopping. She wove through the crowd, back the way she came along the embankment, past buildings made of stone and wood until the cry led her to an alley and a cellar door open in the dirt.
As she stood at the top of the steps and peered into the darkness, some vague memory niggled at her consciousness as if to warn her against tunnels that spread into the dark, but the baby’s cries grew more and more desperate. She had no choice but to go down.
The cellar was crude, with stone walls, a dirt floor, and a low wood-beamed ceiling. At the center grew a ten-foot ring of toadstools. Thick and dark glistening caps overlapped, turning the ring into a low wall. The dark matter within the ring rustled and shifted, the baby’s cries coming from somewhere beneath.
Hello, little one, she said, though no sound came out of her mouth. Everything’s going to be fine. Where’s your mother? Did she leave you here?
Twin pinpricks of red light blinked open beneath the mound of dead leaves and branches within the circle and the crying stopped. She froze under their gaze, her breath coming in short gasps as fear overtook her. Whatever was beneath writhed and thrashed, kicking up a mound of leaves and twigs. As the stench of rot assaulted her, she tried to turn and run, but her legs refused to obey. A figure rose up out of the mulch, towering over her as it spread massive insect wings that filled the cellar, giant mottled sails emblazoned with terrifying amorphous shapes that suggested the denizens of nightmare.
The creature reached out a pair of leathery limbs and wrapped her in its claws, lifting her off her feet. Its head and body obscured by darkness, a lavender tongue snaked toward her, lapping at her face and neck, tasting for something it didn’t find. Disappointed, it dropped her into the mulch.
She fell and fell, into the rot and darkness, falling and falling as if she might never come to ground.
She awoke to a hard slap across her face.
“She’s awake,” screeched Eleanor. “Thank the Lady, she’s awake!”
The other witches moved back so Gosha could sit up, though her muscles protested.
“What happened?” she croaked, her throat dry.
“You’re spellshocked, my dear,” said Elsie from the back bench. “Too many spells in too short a time. We thought we’d lost you.”
Her head had begun to clear, and her joints loosened, the passing of her seizure leaving her with little more than a crick in her neck. But something was different. Her second sight was gone. She had no sense of Influence around her. The world was nothing more than metal, vinyl, earth, and air. Placing a hand on her chest, she realized her lipstick was no longer digging into her ribs.
