by Bill Bennett
By the time Kritta pulled up outside the cave, Grigor had turned back into his human self and was kneeling beside his twin brother, silently weeping, and gently stroking the shell of the dead scorpion.
‘What’s this?’ Kritta said, as she got out of the four-wheel drive and walked up, staring at the huge dead insect, a pool of green blood darkening the sand around its cracked shell. Bess, in her pit-bull form, bounded out of the car. Andi ambled across too, and looked at the scorpion with distaste.
‘It is my brother,’ Grigor said bitterly between sobs. ‘My twin brother. They killed him.’
‘Where is she now? The girl?’ Kritta asked, looking towards the cave.
‘She is gone,’ he said. ‘She left with a boy.’
‘She’s gone? She is gone?’ Kritta screamed, spit flying from her mouth in her rage. ‘You’re meant to be the best, the elite, and you let her get away?’
Grigor leapt up and lunged at Kritta, grabbing her by the throat and jamming his fingers into her windpipe. She gagged. She fought for breath.
‘You never told us there were two of them,’ Grigor said, through clenched teeth as he jammed his fingers in harder. ‘It’s your fault my brother is dead!’
Bess snarled, about to pounce on Grigor, but Andi put her hand on the dog’s shoulder. ‘Let her do this herself,’ she said quietly.
Grigor lifted Kritta off the ground and began to shake her like a rag doll. Her legs kicked the air. Her face was turning purple. Her tongue protruded from grey lips. Andi watched, unperturbed. And in a movement so swift it was barely visible, Kritta pulled out a knife from a pouch and plunged it deep into Grigor’s gut.
He gasped. His eyes widened in stunned disbelief. He blinked. And suddenly he turned himself into a Gila monster – a gigantic orange and black lizard with a deadly bite. It lunged forward with jaws open to grab at her face.
Kritta squealed, jumped back. The lizard dropped to the ground. Pit-bull Bess pounced, grabbed it between her teeth and shook it furiously from side to side, like shaking a hapless rat. The Gila monster went limp. And suddenly Bess wasn’t shaking a lizard, but a massive porcupine. The dog yelped and spat it out, and pawed at where the creature’s poisonous spines had pierced her mouth.
The porcupine scuttled back along the ground and immediately turned into an enormous boa constrictor. It swivelled around, zeroing in on Kritta, and slithered towards her at lightning speed. Kritta reached for a knife but before she could pull it from its pouch, the massive snake raised up and wrapped itself around her, pinning her arms to her sides, only her feet and head visible through its writhing coils as thick as a man’s thigh.
Kritta gasped for breath, feeling her ribs begin to crack, the snake all crush and muscle. Its huge head arched back and looked straight into Kritta’s eyes, its tongue flicking out, flicking out, flicking out – tasting her fear, its eyes glinting with delight. It was enjoying this.
Kritta realised the Twin was going to take its time with her – it would squeeze the life out of her slowly, to extract as much pleasure from it as possible. Then she saw Andi step forward, about to attack the snake with a roundhouse kick. Kritta knew she would be no match for the boa, so she found a second of stillness amid her panic and pain to turn her familiar into her golden eagle form.
The majestic bird screeched and took to the air, quickly climbing high before arcing back and plummeting, talons raised. It struck the snake with force. Its talons dug deep into the reptile’s flesh, and began to wrench it free of Kritta. The snake unravelled to attack the bird, but with two powerful whip-cracks of her wings Andi was airborne again, carrying the writhing reptile up high into the pale heat of the sky, higher and higher, angling out over a deep ravine where it released its enraged cargo.
The boa dropped, hundreds and hundreds of feet, coiling and uncoiling as it fell.
And then it turned into a vulture.
With a couple of flaps of its ugly bony wings, the vulture stopped its fall and then craned its leathery neck to look back up at the golden eagle. The vulture screeched, its yellow eyes cruel with fury – then it flew off, its wings a rhythmic beat as it headed east, soon becoming a tiny speck against the vastness of the desert sky, before disappearing.
Andi watched it go, then wheeled around and flew back to the cave’s entrance and landed in a flurry of dust beside Kritta and Bess, both sitting in the shade of some trees, recovering from their ordeal. The pit bull was already suckling at the hidden teat between Kritta’s toes, and as the golden eagle approached, Kritta pulled up her t-shirt to reveal the nipple in her navel. Andi settled in for her succour too. It was a moment of thanks, of gratitude; and for the three of them it was a time to reconnect on a deep energetic level.
Kritta hurt. She hurt all over. But she would recover.
She looked to the cave. Was the Chalk Witch inside, dead? She assumed so, because she hadn’t come out. But perhaps she was hiding.
She switched Andi back into her human form, but kept Bess as a pit bull because she might need her for her tracking skills, and together they all walked into the cave.
They groped in the darkness, their eyes slow to adjust, then made their way to the phosphorescent spring. They stood there, peering around, trying to find any sign of Luna. Bess sniffed the ground.
‘What is it?’ Kritta asked.
The dog barked sharply then pranced off, quickly finding the hidden crevice and the secret passage. Kritta walked over and looked at the narrow opening. ‘Andi, you’re too large to fit, my beauty. Stay here, keep guard. Come on, Bess.’
The pit bull trotted off, looking back over her shoulder at Andi, gloating. Kritta followed, winding her way through the twisting tunnel until it opened out into the large domed chamber. She looked around, at the sunlight shafting down from the crevice in the roof, at the waterfall dropping lazily into the clear pool, and at Luna’s body lying spread-eagled in the sand, punctured with dozens of massive scorpion stings.
Kritta laughed. Then her gaze shifted to the centre of the vast cavern, to the opened suitcase, and beside it, a book. A very large, old book. She walked over, curious.
She stared down at Cygnet’s fabled Book of Light, taking a few moments to fully appreciate the magnitude of what she’d discovered. And then she smiled.
It took Kritta several hours to get the book into the suitcase, and then out through the narrow passageway. What made it so difficult was the weight of the thing. It was as heavy as lead. Also, it pulsated a white-light energy that was nauseating, and every now and then Kritta had to walk away and throw up.
The sun was dipping low over dusky mountains by the time she dragged the old Samsonite out of the mouth of the cave. Andi and Bess, now both in their human form, were helping her – but they all stopped and stared as they came out of the cave. Because waiting for them, lounging by the side of his Mustang, was Kevin Johnstone.
He unwound himself to his full height, squared his broad shoulders, and Kritta felt a thrill of excitement run through her.
She smiled. ‘What are you doing here, sweet pea?’
‘I want you to introduce me to the dark, like you said.’ He grinned. ‘The deep dark . . .’
The little inquisitor had done well, Chappy Waterstone thought as he hung up the call. He sat back in his green leather chair, and swivelled around to stare out the floor-to-ceiling bay windows. His study looked out over a wide and neatly clipped lawn, a huge oak in the front yard. Passers-by on the street outside often stopped and took photos of his restored nineteenth-century mansion.
Finding their Book of Light was a coup of incalculable proportions. With that they could destroy Cygnet once and for all. He told her – what was her name again? Kredlich. Yes. He’d told her to take the book to the Deep Sink, and wait there. Help guard the Maguire woman. It seemed the girl had already tried to make contact with her mother, and she would probably try to do so again. And when she did, they would be ready.
There was a gentle knock on his door and Mary, his wife
of thirty-two years came in, pale with distress. After all this time together, she was still blissfully unaware that her husband was anything other than what he purported to be – the leading lawman in the state.
‘What’s wrong, dear?’ he asked, looking at his watch and knowing why.
‘My God, Chappy – have you heard?’
He’d heard.
‘Heard what?’
She leaned forward, grabbed his remote, and turned on the TV on a side wall. As she flipped through to CNN, Chappy stood up, walked over to his liquor cabinet, pulled the silver stopper off a cut-crystal decanter, and poured himself a shot of Laphroaig whisky.
His wife turned up the volume. A tourist on the East River bikeway had been taking a video of the bridge on his smartphone just before the collapse, and had recorded the whole thing.
The report then cut to a helicopter shot that looked down on the East River, the entire area now closed off to the public. Rescue vessels crisscrossed the water, cutting through debris. The network was estimating loss of life at close to one thousand, although no one yet knew exactly how many cars had been on the bridge at the time of the bombings. What was known though was that the secretary of state’s vehicle had gone down, along with his entire motorcade, and so police were now calling the attack a political assassination.
Waterstone smiled. Soon the news services would get word that an extremist group from the Middle East was claiming responsibility for the attack, and then all hell would break loose. Baphomet was hoping the government would respond like it did after 9/11 – with a full-scale military intervention that the country could ill afford at the moment. Crippling America financially was part of Baphomet’s grand plan. And any US attack on an Arab kingdom in the Middle East might just provoke a counterattack. The possibilities were delicious to behold, he thought, eyeing the silken whisky before taking a sip. ‘It’s so shocking, isn’t it, Chappy?’ Mary said, and stood behind him staring at the coverage, her hand resting lovingly on his shoulder. ‘What kind of monsters would do such a thing?’
Waterstone shook his head, as if he didn’t know what the world was coming to, and gently put his hand on hers.
With a quick and focused spell, Kritta turned her familiar into a savage pit bull, and then watched as the dog tore off like a torpedo released, bounding over rocks and hurtling through desert brush, honing in on a huge column of rock way off in the distance, rising out of plains made copper and gold by a setting sun. Somewhere out on those plains or on top of that rock was her target, her prey – a young girl that had to be killed. And swiftly. Because Kritta Kredlich was disobeying orders, and for a young woman afraid of nothing, this for the first time terrified her.
She was a priestess in the Golden Order of Baphomet – an ancient and clandestine organisation of black witches that had zero tolerance for any of its operatives not following instructions. And those that transgressed were dealt with in ways that were brutal and horrific.
For years the Golden Order had been searching for Angela Maguire, the young girl’s mother. Kritta had found the two of them at a farmers’ market in Northern California. She later abducted the mother, but the girl had proven to be more difficult to catch. Baphomet wanted them both, preferably alive so they could extract their souls on the night of Unholy, acquitting a three-hundred-year-old debt to Satan and ending the family bloodline once and for all. But if the girl couldn’t be brought to the mine alive, then dead was okay too.
Kritta’s instructions though, from the Grand Master himself, were to get the Book of Light to the Deep Sink Mine as fast as possible. It was a massive asset for the Golden Order, getting hold of this book, and its safe and quick passage to the mine was a greater priority at the moment than the girl. They would get the girl later.
Kritta saw it differently. The girl was so close. And she was weak from poison. It would be easy, and quick. With the help of her two familiars, it was feasible she could do the kill and get the Book of Light to the mine without the Grand Master even realising she’d disobeyed his order.
And then she would be feted and honoured for having killed the Maguire girl. And perhaps even elevated to the status of adept within the ranks of Baphomet, skipping the intermediary level of high priestess. Kritta wanted to climb the ladder fast. She wanted more status, more power, which would allow her to do bigger fun things, more than just beheadings and amputations. Only then would she have a chance to really contribute to the Golden Order’s stated aim, which was to bring America, and the whole western world, to its knees in quivering fear, so that they could then shift mass consciousness over to the dark, and ultimately take control.
Standing on a high rock looking out over the desert plains towards the finger of rock, Kritta took out her binoculars and searched for telltale signs of Bess’s progress. Every now and then she glimpsed a fleeting muscled hindquarter, or the shimmer of the dog’s coat as it barrelled through the undergrowth, dodging cacti. She put the glasses down. The dog would be at the rock in no time.
She thought back on her earlier phone call with her big boss, the Grand Master. She hadn’t told him the full truth. She hadn’t told him she’d picked up a newbie. His name was Kevin Johnstone, KJ for short, and even for Kritta whose predilections veered more to the opposite side of the spectrum, this boy was magnetic. She’d met him at the Mill Valley Market that Saturday morning they’d gone searching for the woman and her daughter. He’d brazenly started talking to her, and later he’d called to offer his help in tracking down the girl.
As it turned out Kritta hadn’t needed his help. But then surprisingly he’d shown up at the cave on top of the Chalk Mountains just as they were hauling out the Book of Light – and he’d looked so damn sexy leaning insolently against his Mustang convertible oozing testosterone from every pore of his muscle-framed body. And then when he smiled, well that’s when Kritta nearly buckled. That smile could kill. With a bit of training, she could teach him how, and have a hell of a good time in the process.
He could be useful with the girl, too. If for whatever reason she survived Bess, or escaped, then Kritta could use him to help hunt her down or flush her out. The girl knew him, trusted him, they’d been friends at school. She most probably didn’t know that he’d aligned himself with the Golden Order, so he could win her trust, then nail her. He was definitely an asset to Kritta’s arsenal of weaponry.
Kevin stepped up onto the rock beside her. She felt his male energy immediately, his hormones, his sex. It was like she could taste it. She wanted to taste it. Swallow it. And swallow him, too. Whole.
‘What’s up, babe?’ he said coolly.
‘We’re going to follow,’ she said curtly, and turned and jumped off the rock and walked swiftly back to the stolen four-wheel drive. She didn’t want to lose power, lose control. She had to keep him at a distance, keep him away from her, because up close, she wasn’t sure what she was capable of doing to him.
Perhaps if Bess didn’t kill the girl, then she might get KJ to do it for her. Blood him. If he wanted to join Baphomet, what better induction than to kill the Maguire girl. She would still take credit, he’d just do the deed. And he’d be forever in her debt. She smiled at the thought.
About the Author
Bill Bennett is a former award-winning journalist and one of Australia’s most experienced and respected feature filmmakers. His more than fifteen movies have won awards at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals and The Age describes him as ‘one of the best film realists in the world’. He’s an adjunct professor of creative industries at one of Australia’s leading universities, and lives in Mudgee, New South Wales, with his wife, Jennifer. Palace of Fires: Initiate is his first novel.
billbennett.com.au
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2018.
Text copyright © Bill Bennett 2018.
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ISBN: 978-1-76014-664-1
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