Aconite and Accusations

by Silver Nord

  “And you stay here,” I informed Artemis, nabbing him when he tried to follow Hemlock. The small, black kitten glared at me, reminding me of Hemlock when he’d been that age not a huge amount of time ago. “If you don’t want to end up being adopted by a child who pats you like a dog, don’t even think about it,” I warned him when the kitten looked like he might be considering unleashing some more of the whatever-it-was that made him troublesome. The element of surprise was key. Electrocution would probably reduce my chances of remaining unseen.

  “What was that?” one of the group of five in the clearing said, drawing my focus back to the unfolding events. Next to the tree, I thought Minerva’s eyes glinted. She turned her head a fraction in my direction, before reconsidering it. Good move, I thought, knowing she didn’t want to give us away.

  A bloodcurdling howl came from the opposite side of the clearing, accompanied by another further to the right.

  “Hellhounds,” one of the masked men said with disgust. “Can’t use magic on them, but I say we should give shooting a go.”

  “We can’t shoot them, you idiot! They’re invisible,” another countered.

  “It wouldn’t matter if you knew where they were. If a hound takes down one of us, we’ll know exactly where to shoot.”

  “Excuse me for not volunteering,” the realist responded.

  There was a sudden burst of crackling flames from the other end of the clearing.

  “Ooh, dramatic!” Jesse said in my ear, sounding like he was enjoying this far too much.

  “Is it a demon?” one of the men hissed, sounding terrified.

  “Shoot it!” another cried - the favoured solution to all problems according to this heinous bunch.

  There was another burst of fire, further round the clearing.

  And then another.

  Three fires flickered and licked at the base of the trees.

  “We’re surrounded!” someone shouted.

  I held my breath, but no bullets were fired, and no one ran to investigate.

  “Was this how you expected things to go?” Jesse said in his usual smart-aleck way.

  I was about to growl something cutting when one of the magical fires flared up much brighter before turning a violent red hue. A silhouette appeared. It was wearing a cape.

  Where was he hiding that? I wondered in vain as I watched Hemlock improvising and rebelling.

  “A tiny demon!” someone shouted, raising their gun. I saw their finger move on the trigger in slow motion, but Hemlock was faster. He disappeared leaving a cloud of smoke behind that spread out across the clearing in a choking, impenetrable fog.

  The hellhounds howled, but I’d told them to stay well clear, fearing that a stray bullet could harm them. This was supposed to be a bloodless rescue.

  “Like taking candy from a baby,” Jesse chuckled as we watched the men flailing through the smoke. “After you… let’s go get your aunt back.”

  I was still smiling smugly when I heard five words that chilled my blood.

  “It’s a trick. Kill her.”

  “No,” I breathed when I sensed the new steely resolve of the gang. I’d genuinely never believed they would act on their threat. I’d imagined that distracting them and giving them a scare would be enough to get them on the run, but now I saw I’d underestimated how far my enemy was willing to go. Or rather - the employer of my enemy.

  I was finally starting to see the side of the Witch Council that had forced the Grand Coven to turn them into slime.

  “Hazel!” Jesse said, repeating my name in an urgent manner as I stood frozen, watching dark figures move through the smoke towards where my aunt was. “You have to do something. There’s no time,” he added, sensing my feeling around in the in-between place for something to use.

  But there was no perfect weapon for this job. Only a choice.

  I heard the sound of many guns cocking. I realised I was just going to have to trust that Jesse would know what to do and protect my aunt. With a grunt of effort, I prised apart the fabric of reality and allowed the dark dimension in.

  Next to me, I sensed that Jesse had his arms outstretched. Blue, devilish magic left his fingertips.

  Then everything went wrong.

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I truly hadn’t expected anything more to happen besides the gang being sucked into the dark dimension. I certainly hadn’t imagined there was a monster waiting just behind the veil that separated our worlds.

  “Kraken!” someone screamed from the smoke. I was forced to throw myself on the ground when a huge tentacle swiped through the air, nearly breaking us both in two.

  “The smoke’s too dense. I can’t see,” I muttered, crawling closer to the carnage as the screaming began. What had I done? Had I killed my own aunt?

  I was seized by fear as I made my way across the grass, pausing only to draw my scythe in case I needed to defend myself from the flailing tentacles. As I got closer, things only got worse. The screams were lessening. I realised why when the smoke briefly moved and cleared. I was treated to a view of a large jellied creature with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. I saw one of the gang members dangling over the abyss, before being dropped into the thing’s mouth, never to be seen again.

  I desperately looked around for a way to tell where I was in the clearing. The smoke drifted again and I saw the outline of the oak tree and the shape of a body propped up against it.

  It wasn’t moving.

  “Aunt Minerva!” I shouted, neglecting to focus on the kraken monster for a second. A big globule of slime seemed to hover in front of my face. I raised my head slowly and realised that one of the arms of the beast was directly above my head. It was only then that I realised the screaming had stopped. There was no one left in the clearing but me, my aunt, and the monster I’d brought into this world.

  “Go back!” I ordered it, trying to sew up the tear with it half-in and half-out. Things started to knit, but the kraken roared its fury and tried to pull itself forwards, laying its claim to this land. “No,” I muttered, swiping the scythe upwards and neatly severing the tentacle that was diving towards me. The impact was still enough to throw me to the ground, but I rolled out of the way just in time to avoid the falling hunk of meat - enough to feed an entire sushi bar.

  “Don’t use normal magic!” Jesse called from somewhere to my left. “Devil magic only! Think selfish thoughts!”

  I shook my head and gritted my teeth. I’d already admitted to myself that I didn’t know how to separate the two. When my powers had materialised, I’d thought all I had was the magic given by the devil deal. It was only when Jesse had pointed it out that I’d realised it was mingled with what might have been my natural gift, had I been born without the help of a devil deal. The illusion casting, the bursts of magic that struck when I was furious, even the push I sometimes put behind the magical weapons I used… all of that came from the heart.

  All of that was normal magic.

  And normal magic was not going to save me now.

  With a gargled cry never heard before in this world, the monster drew its many uninjured arms up together, before bringing them down with enough velocity to flatten me into a pulp. I was still trying to knit the fabric of reality back together, but it was a lost cause. There was no time, and if I died, there was no one else who could do the job for me.

  “Not today,” I said, swinging the scythe whilst simultaneously reaching inside for the power that had been forced upon me. I looked for something devilish.

  And I found it.

  There at my core was the burning brand of magic that mixed with my natural gift. I had the strange sensation of feeling something that was alien and shouldn’t be there, before I realised that it was as much a part of me as my own magic. As soon as I thought that, it crept out, and then rushed at my finger tips in the purest blaze of gold I’d even seen.

  “Hurry, Hazel!” Jesse called, as if I needed any reminding that I was about to become a lot more two-dimensional than I
’d ever intended.

  With a strange sort of smile that I’d wager I’d seen on the lips of every devil I’d met, I pointed the scythe and blasted the overgrown-octopus back where it had come from. I thought I heard an otherworldly splash when it crashed down on the other side of a place that shouldn’t exist. With a casual flick of my hand, I finished sewing up the tear.

  Easy.

  “What happened?”

  It was the small voice from behind me that made the smile slip from my face. Suddenly, I wasn’t a devil anymore, I was just normal Hazel who had nearly caused the death of her own aunt.

  “Aunt Minerva!” I said, horrified to hear my aunt sounding so small and distressed. She’d always been the strong one of our makeshift family. Now she sounded shaken, and I knew my stupid, reckless actions were to blame.

  “I protected her from the worst of it. I’m getting pretty good at those shield spells!” Jesse explained, coming to stand next to me and giving the severed tentacle some serious side-eye. “Nice job back there. It was hard to see through all of the smoke, but I knew you were a devil at heart. Just like me,” He patted me on the back.

  I opened my mouth to say that I was nothing like him, but that wasn’t strictly true, was it?

  “I’m so sorry,” I told my aunt - who was not looking at me like I was her saviour, but rather another monster who’d come through a tear between dimensions.

  “You should have left me,” she told me. “I knew what I was signing up for when I made that agreement with your father. I was willing to be sacrificed for the cause of keeping your father’s creation out of the hands of those who would misuse it.”

  “But I’m not willing to let you go,” I told her.

  She just sighed and looked down at her bound hands.

  Even as Jesse strolled over to remove the bonds, I looked over at the tree, wondering if my father had witnessed all of this. “Is this really worth it?” I asked him. “Isn’t it better to stand up and take action instead of hiding in the shadows?”

  The tree stayed silent, withholding its judgement.

  But even without words, I heard it loud and clear, accusing me of being a hypocrite. I’d opened a tear between the worlds for my own purposes, no matter how noble I’d believed the cause to be. In my moment of desperation, I’d behaved in the exact same manner as the man I’d sworn to stop. I’d given in.

  “That thing was probably going to break through there anyway,” Jesse said quietly, so that only I could hear him. “Just think of it as giving a little push. You’re not the one who brought this to Wormwood. You’re just using what’s already gathered on the other side. There was no way you could predict any of that.”

  While his words were soothing, I still took no comfort from them. Much as I’d hated the ruthless gang - and even though they’d been about to murder my aunt in cold-blood - I’d allowed them to be wiped out. Even if it wasn’t by my own hand, it might as well have been.

  “You can’t saddle yourself with all the guilt in the world. Bad things happen to good people all the time. It’s a win for the good guys when bad things happen to bad people,” Jesse continued, like he was following my thoughts.

  Somewhere inside me, my devilish magic flared in agreement. But I was not a devil, and I knew this had been a step too far. “Never again,” I promised, still feeling sick to my stomach.

  “Let’s go home, Hazel. There are things we need to do,” Minerva said, sounding stronger, but not meeting my gaze. I knew I’d disappointed her.

  “Was the whole gang here?” I tentatively asked her, wondering who had fallen foul of the kraken. “Was Amber here?” I added, hoping I didn’t sound too hopeful.

  I told myself that by threatening to kill Minerva they’d had it coming, but I still couldn’t reconcile what had happened. Claiming I hadn’t meant for them to die didn’t cut it. After all, my plan had been to push them all into the dark dimension… and that was akin to a death sentence, wasn’t it? I could tell myself it was giving them a fair chance, but those were just words said to assuage my guilt.

  “Stop tearing yourself apart. We’ve all made mistakes and caused massacres. It’s no big deal,” Jesse said, sharing his pagan deity view of life.

  “She wasn’t there,” Minerva said, breaking her silence on the matter. “It was just the rest of the gang.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to ignore the tangled mess of conflicting feelings over that knowledge.

  Jesse smirked knowingly as my aunt turned and walked away in the direction of Wormwood without waiting for us to catch up. “I think I finally know why you didn’t involve the detective,” he said silkily. “You’re more of a devil than I thought. You know… if you did want to make Sean Admiral jealous, I would be happy to oblige.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  I made a sound of disgust and turned away from him.

  Today had been a complete disaster.

  I had no idea how I was going to explain the sudden disappearance of the Witchwood Scorpions to DCI Admiral when he inevitably asked. Worse still, I had no idea how the Witch Council was going to react.

  I was guessing the answer would be ‘not well’. On the bright side, they’ll have to investigate Wormwood now that witch law has been broken, I thought. It was too bad that I was the one who’d broken it.

  “I know today didn’t go to plan and there were unfortunate casualties, but that’s a tragic reality of war - there are victims. You didn’t start any of this. You’ve been moved around the board since before you were even born,” Jesse reminded me, sounding more sombre and serious than I’d ever heard before. “You didn’t start this. Everything you do is an attempt to right the balance. This isn’t on you.”

  “No, it’s on you,” I said, watching as my words made impact. It was then that I understood that this was what I’d been keeping inside. I’d tried to tolerate Jesse and work together with him to stop the mayor in his tracks, but deep down I couldn’t ignore it. I did blame him for this. And I didn’t know if I could forgive him.

  “I’m trying to make things right,” he said, hurt flashing across his face. “I know I can be an ass. I know I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes. I always think I’m winning, tricking my way to get what I want, but if I’ve learned anything these past thousand years or so, it’s that what comes around goes around. It’s just, sometimes it’s not just me that ends up losing.”

  He looked appealingly at me with his amber eyes. “I am sorry, Hazel. I’m trying to do the right thing here. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to be a saint - perfect in every way. It’s a bad time. We all need to do whatever it takes to get through it. You’ve gotta break a few eggs…”

  “Okay, stop trying to make me feel better… please,” I said, feeling like I would throw up if he said one more tired cliché. Even so, against all odds, I felt the start of a reluctant smile on my face. Jesse had actually apologised sincerely. It may not seem like a big thing, or even an important thing when you compared it to all that had happened and all that was destined to come, but to me, it did mean something. And I knew that just as Jesse was finally sorry, it was time for me to accept his apology and help him clean up the mess he’d been manipulated into making.

  It was true that there was always someone you could find to blame for the mistakes you made in life, but the real test was whether you could admit that you were wrong.

  “Huzzah for the victors of the skirmish!” Hemlock said, riding high on Erebus’ back, his cape fanning out in the breeze that had blown the smoke from the clearing. All that remained of the gang and the monster was the severed tentacle that already seemed to be decomposing, collapsing in on itself.

  “Look at that. Those things aren’t meant to be in this world,” Jesse commented thoughtfully before turning to the animal troops. “Back to Wormwood. We won the battle, but the war is yet to begin.” He gave me a single nod before leading them away after Minerva, leaving me alone in the clearing.

  I turned to look at the
tree, which had stayed silent through proceedings. I knocked on the trunk the required number of times and waited. No voice came. I hadn’t really expected it to. When the gang had chosen this tree as a meeting place, I knew it meant that they’d found the communication centre my father had placed here. Either they’d destroyed it, or he wasn’t answering for fear of being traced.

  “Did you see all of that?” I asked the silent tree, wondering if he was still watching. “This is the last time I’m going to clear up your mess. If you were listening just now, you’ll know we’ve all made bad mistakes. It’s what you do to fix them that makes all the difference. I’m not running and hiding from Wormwood. It’s time you made your own choice.”

  Even though there was a really good chance I’d just had a heart to heart with an inanimate piece of wood, I felt like some great weight had been lifted from my chest.

  Bad things happened. Things went wrong.

  But they didn’t have to dictate the rest of your life.

  I turned and walked away from the clearing, leaving my past mistakes behind me and taking the lessons I’d learned with me.

  It was a long walk home.

  Minerva strode ahead with a hidden purpose she didn’t put into words. Jesse followed, back to looking cheerful and carefree, and Hemlock sulked loudly about being forced to walk and remove his cape. The hellhounds had gone for a run in the forest together, expressing their half-wild natures. The only one who got a free ride was Artemis, who sat on my shoulder, and - according to Hemlock - was deliberately rubbing it in his face.

  I heard raised voices coming from the bushes as we reached the outskirts of town.

  “You’re lying… you do know something,” the male voice said, cold with rage. “Did you ever have any real feelings for me at all?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear. Just let me go, please…” a female voice replied.

  Delia stumbled out of the bushes with Harry close behind her. They looked startled when they saw our miserable little posse.

  “Hey!” I shouted when I looked beyond them into the graveyard. A ring of candles had been set up around a grave and the sound of chanting drifted over. Two teenagers turned around with shocked and guilty expressions on their face.