Waking the Witch, page 28
“Come on.” Gosha took hold of Miranda’s elbows and pulled her up. “We have to leave now. He’s in the house somewhere. There may be more of his men wandering around.”
As she got to her feet, Miranda spotted one of the mangled bodies on the floor.
“My god.”
“Don’t look at them.” Gosha dragged her to the door, angling past others already on their feet.
“Damien.” Miranda pulled away from Gosha’s grasp to wrap her arms around a slender man Gosha recognized as Miranda’s admirer in the bar at the Cheyne Arts Club.
“I can’t believe it.” Damien hugged her back. “I thought we were going to die.”
“Come on,” said Gosha, pulling at Miranda’s arm. “We can’t stay here.”
“Gosha saved us.” Miranda refused to let Gosha tear her from Damien’s grasp. “Gosha, we can’t just run off. We have to take everyone with us.”
By now, all fifty or sixty people were on their feet, commiserating and letting their feelings be known to each other in a rising din of anguish. Margrave might investigate at any moment. Gosha had no way to stop him from enrapturing everyone once more.
She stamped her foot down hard on the floor several times to get everyone’s attention.
“Listen everyone! Run! Before Margrave comes! How did you get here?”
“By car,” said Damien. “We all parked in a field down the road.”
“Then head there.”
Sixty faces all stared at her with blank expressions.
“Now!” She clapped her hands. The crowd pressed forward toward the door in a mad rush.
She held Miranda back as the flow of bodies swept her along.
“Wait. Stay close.” Gosha wasn’t letting Miranda out of her sight until they were safe in Cheyne Heath.
Gosha and Miranda emerged at the back of the crowd as it rushed through the foyer to find Margrave standing between them and the front door, blocking their escape.
“Dear friends,” he said as if he wasn’t trying to murder each one of them.
“You betrayed us,” said a young man near the front of the crowd. “You used us.”
“Yes.” Margrave spread his hands as a priest might to encompass his flock. “It is a great tragedy. You are all wonderful, intelligent, creative people with so much Influence, but my need for it is greater than yours. With the generous gift of your lives, I will achieve power greater than anyone has ever attained in recorded history.”
“Maniac,” exclaimed a woman as the crowd pressed forward toward him.
Margrave’s skin darkened to the gray of tree bark. He grew larger and larger until he towered a full head above the tallest of his victims, his clothing ripping at the seams. Branching horns protruded from his scalp and through the rips in his clothing, the tattered fabric tenting and stretching, turning his silhouette into a stooped perversion of human form. His eyes yellowed, his pupils lengthening to demonic clefts. Several of the crowd screamed as the surge of bodies fell back on themselves to get away from him.
“I regret what I must do,” he said. “Truly.”
He laid his gnarled hands on the two closest of the circle. They froze in place. Brambles and thorns sprung up around them to hold them fast.
The crowd broke, running wherever they could, but Margrave pursued, herding them into corners and trapping each of them with a touch.
“There’s no sense in running. I will find you anywhere you flee.”
Gosha and Miranda watched from the doorway in horror.
“Is there another way out?” asked Gosha.
“Yes, through the conservatory and the kitchen.”
“Show me.”
Another scream rang out through the house.
“Damien,” said Miranda.
“We have to get out.” Gosha took her hand. “I can’t do anything if he catches us.”
Miranda nodded, pursing her lips against tears, and struck off toward the back of the house with Gosha in tow.
The interior of the house was a labyrinth. Gosha could never have negotiated it on her own. She lost all sense of direction as she followed Miranda through corridors and around corners until they passed an open door that made them both stop.
In Margrave’s study, standing in a corner and calmly staring into space as if waiting for a bus, was George.
Miranda called his name, but he didn’t respond. Cressida’s torc was fastened around his arm.
All the furniture in the study had been moved out, and every surface covered with lines and symbols. Even the ceiling was scrawled with geometric patterns and mathematical formulae. Some were painted in thick, rough strokes, and some were etched on the walls and floor with chalk. Everything pointed toward George in his corner.
“George,” said Miranda again, moving closer, but Gosha pulled her back.
“Careful.”
“Why doesn’t he answer?”
“He’s part of Margrave’s plan. Margrave intends to use you and your friends’ lives to steal George’s power.”
“George has that kind of power? Gosha, we have to save him.”
Gosha rebelled at the thought of lifting a finger to help George, her feelings still raw from the discovery that she had never really known him. But he was still a human being, still father of her children. It didn’t take much to convince herself he was just another pawn in Margrave’s scheme, as much a victim as Miranda, Mick, or Cressida.
She hovered in the doorway. The screams from the front of the house grew quieter and less frequent as Margrave recaptured his victims.
The decision was instinctive, her flesh telling her what she must do, overriding the litany of objections her mind spewed at her.
“Promise me you’ll get away from here.” She gripped Miranda by the arms. “Run as fast as you can. Don’t look back. Follow the road out front till you get to the rest stop by the motorway. Call someone you trust to come and get you.”
“But you’re the only one I trust.”
Tears welled up from Gosha’s gut and strangled in her throat. She gripped Miranda in a bear hug.
“Call your parents if you need to. They do love you, despite their craziness. If they give you trouble, I’ll come and get you again.”
When she pulled away, Miranda was crying, too.
“Run.”
Miranda turned and vanished around a corner as Gosha wiped her eyes.
The Influence in Margrave’s study flowed in orderly drifts that followed the directions of the lines and symbols on the floor. She took a step deeper in, careful not to tread on anything for fear of the damage it might do to her or George. The flow ignored her, wafting around her on its path toward him, where it spun into a lazy vortex.
She reached across the circle drawn at his feet and yanked the torc from his arm. George awoke, his eyes focusing first on the surrounding room, then on her.
“Gosha, oh my god.” He wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed him away.
“You’re free,” she said. “You’d better run if you want to keep it that way.”
He rubbed his face and staggered back to lean against the wall.
“You can’t imagine what it was like,” he said. “I had no control of my body. I couldn’t move or speak. I thought I was going to die.”
His aura of Influence was weak, the crown and armor gone, replaced by a hazy miasma.
“But you saved me.”
“It was sheer luck. If Margrave finds us, I won’t be able to do it a second time. Leave.”
“I was so angry at you for many, many years. I thought you kept your secrets from me out of spite. I can see how you were trying to protect me.”
“We don’t have time for this.” She went to the door. Random screams from the grounds punctuated the silence. “Margrave is outside rounding up those poor people. Once he has them, he can start his ritual all over again.”
George looked at the markings on the walls and floor, seeing them for the first time. He put his hand into the vortex around him as if dipping his fingers into a river to test its warmth.
“This was meant to be,” he said. “We were always meant to be here like this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see? Together we can turn the tables on the old man. We can put him in the circle and use all the Influence he’s accumulated to merge Authority with Desire as he intended, but we’ll take the spoils. He has it all set up. I can see exactly how he means to do it.”
Gosha stared at him, mouth agape, appalled at herself that she had let sentimentality confuse her. She kicked at the nearest chalk mark on the floor, smudging the symbol. The orderly flow of Influence responded at once, a burr of disruption eddying in the space around the destroyed mark.
“Don’t,” he said.
She stalked over to one wall and placed her hand on it.
“Kattak.”
A crack spread from floor to ceiling, severing a handful of painted lines and breaking an elaborate diagram of concentric circles in two. The surrounding Influence broke into a chaotic spray.
“Stop it.” He rushed toward her.
She spoke the breaking word again, three times in rapid succession before the first opening within her could close. The entire wall broke into a craze of cracks. Influence blew outward, bucking out of control and tearing at the remaining symbols. The chalk blew into dust as the paint bubbled and cracked.
“Damn you!”
He lashed out at her with one of his thin beams of control.
The wode sump held, drawing the power into it, but it grew warmer by a scant degree. George was still weak from his imprisonment.
“There’s nothing for you here,” she said. “Get out before I turn a spell on you.”
She drew the lug wrench out of her jeans, like a sword from its scabbard, and held it before her. The curse within in it shuddered, biting at her hands. George flinched and raised his hands to protect himself.
“Just like a woman,” he sneered. “Treacherous and selfish to the last.”
“You—”
She swung the lug wrench through the air between them, venting her anger with the stroke.
“Unbelievable—”
She swung again, and he stumbled back to avoid its touch.
“Ass.”
Slipping on the floor in his desperation to back away, fear in his eyes, he scrambled out of the study and was gone.
43
Her heart raced with the exhilaration of facing George and sending him packing, even if the victory was a sham. Once his Influence returned to full strength and he had more experience under his belt, no amount of spells in her mother’s secret tongue could stop him. If he developed even a fraction of Margrave’s skill, he would be an impossible threat. If only she had been canny enough to aim George at Margrave. She might have been able to derail Margrave’s plans long enough for Miranda to get to safety.
The sight of Margrave transforming into that hideous demon was almost enough to force her to turn her back on Miranda’s friends, grab Miranda, and flee. But now that Miranda was gone, she couldn’t desert them. If she didn’t go back, she’d be no better than George. The idea of returning tightened her chest and made her heart beat faster, made her muscles refuse to propel her forward. A mere effort of will wouldn’t be enough to overcome her terror.
The scrawled marks on the walls of the study were all destroyed. The organized flow of Influence was gone, and yet the widow’s weeds were still there, curling around the periphery of her vision, edging close to their end. Freeing George wasn’t enough to save the others. She had no time to think or feel fear. If she was to be any use, she had to act now.
She stuck her head into the corridor, checking the coast was clear, and slipped out. The house and grounds had become quiet, no more screams of fear and pain to guide her way. The house’s identical featureless corridors confused her, losing her precious seconds. She rounded a corner as Margrave’s monstrous back disappeared into the meeting room dragging behind him a whimpering victim encased in brambles and thorns. Gosha heard the thud as Margrave dropped his cargo and pulled back into the seclusion of her dark corner. He emerged again, his yellowed eyes glowing, and headed toward the front entrance.
When she was sure he was gone, she ran in and shut the door behind her. The strange device was working again, Influence flowing slow and torpid around the room, though much less of it this time with only half of Miranda’s friends lying about the room in their cages like mummies in discarded sarcophagi.
She used the feeble charge in the wode sump to bind the door and the entire wall into a single barrier. Perhaps getting through it would delay Margrave long enough to give her time to free everyone. The bramble cages crumbled to dust under her spells, but the agonizing effects of the device left Miranda’s friends traumatized, incapable of responding when she tried to shake them back to their senses.
She picked up the strange device and flipped it over to look at the dials, but had no idea what she’d done the last time to deactivate it. Turning the dials and flicking the switches at random did nothing.
The final spell her mother had given her crept into her mind like a cheap and insistent pop song refusing to be dislodged. This device was a product of order, of control. If she were to cast the final spell all that would be gone and the device would be useless, but at what price? She wasn’t prepared to find out.
There was only one option she was prepared to take, the breaking spell, but who knew what damage it might do if she used it on the device? These spells her mother had given her were like sledgehammers. Slicing the device in two might create no end of trouble. What if it exploded? She needed something with more finesse, like a lock pick.
Or the second finding spell.
The experience of casting the spell was like unfocusing her mind to allow her intuition the room it needed to solve a puzzle. All she needed was the right image to aim the spell. She had a clear memory of accidentally turning off the device and releasing the flow of Influence. She cleared her mind and summoned the memory, living in the moment that the device had stopped its clicking and whirring in as much detail as she could muster.
“Pelletethaneras.”
A hush descended on the room and the shadows grew darker. The Influence flowing through the spell pooled around the control panel of the device, dancing and swirling, but she couldn’t make out what it was trying to tell her. What had Mrs. Dearing said? The spell needed a tether to anchor it, but she had no candle.
She looked around the room for something she might use, but all she saw was the gray dust of Margrave’s shattered bramble cages. She scooped up a handful and let it fall between her fingers over the display. Almost insubstantial, it was light enough to be caught by the swirling Influence which painted it across the buttons and dials in delicate traces. A clockwise circle around one dial, a pool over three buttons, a counterclockwise circle around another dial. The dust drew out a complicated sequence that looped around itself, pausing before repeating. She watched it once, twice, three times, until she had it committed to memory.
She got the sequence on the first try. The glow of the gem faded, and the oppressive flow of Influence in the room broke. All the sufferers on the floor moaned and wailed as the device released them from their torment.
Something large struck the other side of the spell-bound wall with a heavy thud that reverberated in her bowels.
“Is that you, Mrs. Armitage?” said Margrave from beyond the door. “Do I detect the stench of witchcraft? You’ve destroyed my study and done unspeakable things to my acolytes. If I had known your husband wasn’t the most capable murderer in the family, I would have sunk my claws into you first.”
An unsettling scraping on the other side of the wall cut through Gosha’s skull from brow to base.
“In just a week you’ve undone years’ worth of preparation. Of course, it won’t take me long to gather up my resources. Your husband's escape will be nothing more than an inconvenience. Such an unsophisticated soul.”
Another loud thud hammered against the door. The others around her jumped and whimpered.
“Get up.” Gosha ran to the window and pulled it open. “Climb out and escape across the fields. I’ll keep him busy.”
She didn’t have to cajole them to get them to move. Margrave kept up his assault on the door, each reverberating slam making them jerk with terror as she helped them out the window and watched them run off into the woods.
“Enough,” shouted Margrave from the far side of the wall as the last of Miranda’s friends ran across the lawn and disappeared into the trees. “You’re wasting time I don’t have.”
Silence fell beyond the wall. Gosha took the lipstick out of her bra and held it before her in one hand, the cursed lug wrench in the other, ready for whatever Margrave might do. Her heart pounded inside her chest. Her ears rang in the sudden quiet.
The wall began to rumble. The quake grew in intensity from a delicate shudder to a force so powerful it shook her joints and rattled her teeth like the amplified boom of bass guitars always did at a rock show. All the right angles of the house warped and buckled as the room twisted around her, the foundations of the house creaking in protest. The floor tilted, and plaster cracked and crumbled. The bound door held, but every surface adjoining the wall split until the entire thing ripped from the side of the room, taking with it segments of ceiling and floor. It shattered, the segments tumbling about the hallway like discarded theatrical flats waiting to be hoisted into place. Beyond the destruction in the settling dust stood Margrave in his half-human, half-tree-demon form, that much more terrifying framed in the dark halo of her widow’s weeds.
What if the death they predicted was her own?
Margrave raised a hand, and brambles grew up around her, binding her arms in place. It took only a second for her to shatter them into dust, but by the time she was free, he had covered the distance between them. As he stepped into range, she lashed out with the lug wrench and struck his head.
The black bag is pulled away to reveal a featureless bunker. The scuffing of his captors’ boots on the concrete floor echoes off into the vast distance. A single, utilitarian light fixture above them, just a bulb inside a cage, shines a harsh, unflattering glow on the people gathered before him. Men in paramilitary uniforms armed with batons stand between him and a cluster of well-dressed men and women. Two of them he’s met before: The Lord Chief Justice, Alexander Griffiths, and Euphemia Graham, the Queen of Secrets, saints of Law and Mystery. The others he recognizes only from their marks of sanctity, the pale blue icons of power that hover around their heads. A crown of flowers above the head of the woman to his left tells him she is the saint of Abundance. To her left, the desiccated old man in magenta Anglican robes with a radiant halo about his head must be Bishop Worsley, the saint of Faith. Next to him, a queer couple holds hands: an unremarkable young man barely old enough to grow a beard, his upper lip and chin darkened with a dusting of stubble, and a handsome woman in her sixties. The flickering glow of the sunlight glimmering through clear water emanating from their eyes marks them as the Lovers, the paired saints of Devotion.
