Urban Witch (Urban Witch Series - Book 1)

by R. L. Giddings

  I’d thought that she’d been dangerous before when she was still searching for the Iron of Fortitude but now, with it in her possession, there was no telling what she might do.

  What was it that Cusack had said? After the Church had attempted to exorcise the Iron they had been unable to complete the ceremony thereby opening a door which they’d then been unable to close. Meddling with such things would be extremely dangerous. Cusack had said that the way to reverse the process with the Iron was to repeat it, only in reverse. But I couldn’t envisage how that was going to work.

  I tried to shake Silas awake. There was no guaranteeing that, once we had landed, we wouldn’t be separated. We needed to formulate a plan of action. I shook his arm.

  “Silas. You need to wake up, c’mon.”

  He pulled his arm away from me and rolled over.

  I was unimpressed. I tried to pull back his eyelid but all I could see was the white of his eye, his cornea having rolled up inside the socket.

  “No luck?”

  I spun around, startled by the interruption.

  Terence.

  He had entered the little cabin unannounced and stood a short distance away wearing a green gilet.

  “What have you done to him?”

  Terence looked stern. “I can’t win with you, can I, Bronte? One minute you’re begging me to look after him, the next you’re berating me for having done so.”

  “You removed the bullet?”

  “Not me personally,” he indicated his own ribs. “But the same team that worked on me.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Actually, we didn’t have much choice. If we hadn’t removed it when we did he’d have lost his leg.”

  That was a sobering thought. Still, it felt strange thanking Terence. After all, hadn’t he been the one who’d shot Silas in the first place?

  “I take it that you’ve drugged him for a reason.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “Aren’t you worried what he might do to you once he regains consciousness?”

  I was one of the few people who had witnessed both men in their transformed states and, as big as Terence was in his snow leopard guise, I didn’t think he would stand much of a chance up against Silas. In fact, I was counting on it.

  Terence stooped to look out of the window. We were a lot closer to the shore than we had been even just a few minutes ago.

  “I’m afraid your friend, Silas, is going to disappoint you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You clearly don’t know as much about shape-shifters and their physiology as you might think,” a wrinkle creased his brow. “No surprises there: we’re not exactly an easy group to study. Folklore has it that a silver bullet is the only thing that can kill a shape-shifter and that’s true up to a point. But even when you’ve removed the bullet there are still some filaments left in the wound. Takes a major operation to get them all out.”

  That was something I hadn’t considered. “But that’s hardly enough to kill you.”

  “No, but it’s enough to seriously affect our ability to change.”

  I thought about the implications of that whilst also noticing that we were close enough to the bank for me to be able to make out our wake washing against the shore.

  “But I shot you, didn’t I?”

  “And that’s the problem. I haven’t dared change since.”

  “You mean that you can’t?”

  “The silver severely compromises our control of the process. Even if I could endure the pain of transforming with silver in my system…”

  “You’re not sure you’d be able to change back?”

  He nodded.

  I could understand now why he was taking it so seriously.

  “Does Stahl know?”

  He couldn’t look at me.

  Chapter 23

  No wonder my jibe about Stahl getting rid of him had struck home. If Terence had lost his ability to transform then he had little to offer her and she didn’t strike me as the type to harbour a lame dog.

  At that moment, the doors behind him opened and the man who had met us outside Lindqvist’s house was framed in the doorway.

  He wasn’t the largest member of the team but I’d noticed how the others acquiesced to him whenever he gave an order. He brushed his hands down the front of his jacket and looked first at me and then at Terence.

  “What is it, Pavel?”

  “You’re wanted.” He had a Slavic accent. My guess was the Balkans.

  He stepped back to indicate for Terence to leave but Terence stood his ground.

  When he realised that Terence wasn’t coming, Pavel shouted out of the door, “He’s not coming. You want I should bring him?”

  For a moment we all just stood there. Then Melissa Stahl appeared, pushing past Pavel and launching herself into the cabin.

  She ignored me and looked straight at Terence.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Melissa, what’s wrong?”

  She pointed an accusatory finger at Silas. “Is it true?”

  “What? Is what true?”

  “Did you authorise the removal of that bullet?”

  “He would have lost his leg otherwise.”

  And that was when Stahl hit him, backhanded, across the mouth.

  Pavel tensed, anticipating Terence’s response but he needn’t have worried. Terence just stood there looking shocked, his hands vibrating at his sides.

  “What were you thinking?” she raged. “You know what a threat he poses. And today of all days.”

  Terence glanced back at me. What could he say? If he revealed to Stahl what he’d just told me then he’d just be compromising himself.

  In the end he just said, “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry.”

  Stahl grabbed his gilet and spun him around. “Don’t ever suppose that you can get the better of me. Do you think that I put all this together so that you could endanger it? I know exactly where you came from and I can put you back there just as quickly.

  “Is it her?” she jerked a thumb in my direction. “Has she got inside your head? Trying to appeal to your better nature?”

  Terence was breathing heavily. “I didn’t think that you’d want him dead. It wouldn’t be wise to antagonise his pack.”

  “I don’t care about his pack! I don’t care about anybody. He’s dangerous, wounded or not, and you of all people should know that.”

  Terence raised both hands, “I get it.”

  Pavel was squaring up to Terence now.

  “No you don’t because you’re not thinking clearly. If you were then you’d have realised what you should have done with him in the first place.”

  Terence’s left eye was starting to water. “And that is?”

  “The same thing I did to your father. Oh, don’t look so shocked. And don’t pretend that he was the perfect parent.”

  Pavel was standing directly in front of Terence now.

  “He was abusing you,” Stahl continued, a little more levelly. “It was clear to me the first moment I saw you. He was only good to you while you continued do what he wanted.”

  “What are you saying,” Terence made to step towards her but Pavel stopped him. “I thought the authorities took him.”

  “I approached him about getting you out of the country but he wanted money.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then you should grow up. We agreed a price and then something happened. Someone got to him. When I turned up to collect you he said that he’d changed his mind. Suddenly, he wanted double.”

  “But the army took him.”

  Pavel had Terence by both arms but he didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Anathema!” Stahl called out onto the deck. “I need you now.”

  She turned back towards Terence. “A few discarded uniforms and a stolen truck. It wasn’t difficult. You know that mountain lake: the one where your father kept promising to take
you fishing but never did?”

  “I told you about that lake.”

  “I know. Well, he finally did make the trip - alone. Anathema!”

  Stahl must have had everything planned from the start. It all happened so quickly. Pavel had hold of Terence though that seemed superfluous. All the fight had gone out of him.

  Then Stahl’s friend from the house-party, Anathema, appeared wearing a black leather jacket and a skirt which failed to cover the livid tattoo on her thigh.

  And she’d come prepared.

  She had the heavy iron necklace over my head before I knew what was happening. The effect was instantaneous; it was as if someone had sat on my chest, pinning me down.

  Stahl stepped back, blowing the hair from her face.

  “That should do,” she turned to Anathema. “Get them in here while we still have time. They know what to do.”

  I could hardly bear to lift my arms. Whatever it was that Anathema had cooked up it was effective. The iron from the necklace felt as if it were burning my neck and, hanging from the end of it, was some kind of scroll.

  “The strange thing is that your sensitivity makes all this stuff twice as effective with you,” Stahl said.

  “What the hell is it?”

  “The chain’s old but the scroll’s older. Probably Roman. A curse for witches composed by witches. You won’t be throwing any spells around while you’re wearing that.”

  I had to sit down. It was a struggle not just to lie down.

  At that moment three of Pavel’s men pushed into the cabin. Pavel pushed Terence to one side and proceeded to take charge. He dragged the sheets off Silas and started pulling him upright.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What Terence failed to do,” Stahl was enjoying herself.

  The four men made swift work of lifting Silas, their biggest problem came in negotiating him through the narrow doorway.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I pleaded. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You’ve already done that,” Stahl said as she followed them out.

  I tried to stand but found that I couldn’t. My legs still worked but the whole of my upper body felt enormously heavy.

  Anathema hung in the doorway, enjoying my discomfort.

  “You’ll have to try harder than that,” she smiled.

  It was the first time I’d noticed that her teeth had been filed into points.

  I threw my legs into the air trying to build up some momentum but all I managed to do was fall off the settee onto my knees.

  I had a good view of events from there. They’d laid Silas on the upper deck, his head lolling to one side. They stood by while one of their number brought out a thick length of chain, so heavy that he struggled to drag it up the steps. No one helped him and he dropped the full weight of it on Silas’ chest.

  “You have to stop them!” I said to Anathema.

  She turned to survey their actions, twin pony-tails swinging. “Oh, I think it’s a bit too late for that.”

  The other men had lifted Silas under the shoulders and knees whilst the chain was wrapped around his body. Still he hadn’t stirred. The last indignity came when they were left with just the end of the chain. One of them laughed and fed it through the gap beneath his crotch. Once they’d finished they dropped him back onto the deck.

  “No!” I tried to summon a spell. Any spell. But the words died on my lips.

  With my last shred of energy I attempted to stand. My body swayed forward, my legs overwhelmed, and I slammed face first onto the floor. Pain sang in my head but I was beyond caring.

  The next time the men bent to lift Silas they were much more careful with him, placing their feet like Olympic lifters while they found their grip. When Pavel nodded they lifted as one, keeping their backs flat and straightening carefully before driving themselves upright.

  I wanted to cry out. Wanted to command them to stop. But I knew it was useless.

  Anathema squinted down at me. “Don’t miss this, lover. This is the best bit.”

  The men crab-walked across to the hand-rail illuminated by the lights on the bridge we were fast approaching. Then, for a moment, I thought they might have relented because they suddenly stopped what they were doing. In reality, the two men nearest the rail were squirming to clear a space.

  There was no signal. Just a shrug of their shoulders and Silas was gone.

  *

  I could hear people moving about the boat but I didn’t care anymore.

  Didn’t care what they did.

  Didn’t care what happened.

  Silas was dead and that was all that mattered.

  Terence had managed to sit me upright. But he could have left me like that - face down- for all I cared

  The engine shifted into neutral as we slid alongside the dock. A crew member went past the window trailing a coil of rope. A slight jolt as we came into contact with the jetty and an exchange of voices as the ropes were secured.

  “Looks like we’re here,” Terence said.

  “And where might that be, exactly?”

  “End of the line.”

  *

  We were all being marched up a wooden ramp which was bobbing up and down quite markedly. Everyone was in a rush to get off and Anathema had been despatched to take care of me.

  The ability to syphon off another witch’s powers or even negate them completely was a peculiar skill. Inert magic is the official title. Everyone else just calls them Spoilers. I’d met a few of them at Newton but they’d never really fitted in. Doomed to always exist on the periphery, like referees at a football tournament. Never quite accepted yet still possessing a certain notoriety.

  Standing might have been a possibility but walking was another matter and Anathema had to walk backwards coaxing me across each new threshold, her lips working over-time. It wasn’t a role she took to naturally. The press of people from behind kept me moving but I was constantly looking where I was putting my feet. If I went into the water there was no way I was coming out again.

  We’d moored up alongside a commercial jetty which must have serviced the pleasure cruises on the river during the day even though now it was the middle of the night. There were one or two people on the embankment but they all looked as if they were keen to be getting home. No one was lingering about. We must have looked like a private party coming back from a late night cruise. Not suspicious looking in the slightest.

  As we weaved our way through the last of the switchback lanes leading off the jetty it was only then that I had a chance to look up and see where we were. Across the river, over to my right was a long grey Second World War frigate I’d once visited: HMS Belfast. Along the river and to our left City Hall glittered in the early morning sunlight: a Faberge egg re-imagined as a logic puzzle.

  The big question was: what were we doing in the centre of London?

  It all felt so unreal, as though we were part of some whistle-stop tour for busy foreign executives. We were fast approaching the Tower of London, its outer bailey wall as grim and foreboding as it must have been for the last thousand years.

  The motor launch we had come in on had left the jetty and was ascribing a careful half circle as it turned back the way it had come, its engines churning up a draught of muddy water. What would they do when they passed the spot where they had dumped Silas’ body? Would they slow down to look for any signs of him? Would they even remember where they’d left him?

  There were perhaps twenty people in our party, all hurrying along the embankment, most of them I recognised from the previous evening’s cocktail party but spread amongst us were the men who had murdered Silas, characterised now by their build and their footwear as much as their propensity for scanning the area looking for possible threats. They had probably forgotten about him by now, moving on to the next of their evening’s objectives.

  I took every opportunity to study their faces. It was up to me now to ensure that they just didn’t slip away. I had to remember each one of them becaus
e I intended to do everything in my power to see that they were brought to justice.

  Stahl herself was making the pace at the front of the group. She had moved on from the events on the boat and was accompanied by a young woman with tortoise shell glasses and a short bob: her PA. I’d first seen the pair of them together that Friday morning at The Bear Garden. It looked like she was giving Stahl her briefing on the move.

  I wondered what her diary entry for that day would look like.

  And that was the most frightening aspect of this whole situation: all these seemingly intelligent people going along with Stahl and her mad plans. What did they think was going to come out of all this? Surely, nothing good.

  Stahl must have used all of her tricks of persuasion to get them to go along with this – whatever it was. And that was why I had to stay. She had to be stopped. And it wasn’t because of any high minded ideals I might have about witches policing other witches. I wasn’t my mother. Stahl was the one responsible for having Silas killed and I could never forgive her for that. I would do whatever it took to ensure that any plans she might have concerning the Iron of Fortitude would all end in bitter disappointment. It was the least I could do.

  I had risked too much just to get this far. I couldn’t give up now despite the odds stacked against me.

  I recalled what Ma Birch had said to me once:

  “The worst kind of opponent is one who never gives up.”

  And it was only then, when Stahl turned left into the entrance to the Tower, that I realised just how much I’d under-estimated her. She wasn’t going to make any compromises. There was no safety net here, no quick getaway plan if things went awry. In wanting to overthrow the existing world order there were only two options open to her: total victory or total failure. No one had tried anything quite so ground-breaking since the Gunpowder Plot and that, if I remembered correctly, had only been foiled by chance.

  And hadn’t Guy Fawkes ended up in the Tower for his pains? Now there was a coincidence.

  How could I even think of standing up to her? Stahl was everything that her background had prepared her to be: eminently assured, unwavering in her resolve and born to command . Whereas I was completely untested, prone to self-doubt and irrational fears. Fine, I might not be able to stop her but I still might be able to confound her.