The Seelie Blade had more than lived up to its reputation.
Stahl was standing transfixed, looking at the Seelie Blade which now lay abandoned on the gravel.
As she bent to pick it up, Terence came forward and stepped on it.
There was the crunch of gravel but the glass blade remained intact.
Stahl grabbed at his shirt in an attempt to push him back. She was desperate to get at the knife but Terence resisted.
“You can’t go to war with the Coven and the Fae, Melissa.”
We stood frozen like that for several seconds Stahl uncertain as to how to continue. But she wanted that knife and would do whatever it took to get it.
My attention shifted to the two men standing behind the brazier. One in his twenties, the other in his fifties with a strange indentation in his forehead. Both wore leather gauntlets. They had been more than happy for Pavel to handle the situation thus far but now, with his sudden disappearance, they looked at one another with a mixture of puzzlement and dejection.
With Stahl distracted, I decided to act. I covered the distance across to the two men in a matter of seconds so that they were still standing like that when, with a hop, a skip and a kick I launched myself at the brazier. A rain of sparks engulfed my foot but the brazier went over: ash and coals flying everywhere. The older man, in his eagerness to get away, stumbled and fell. He lay on the ground holding his knee, pain etched across his face.
“That’s enough!” a voice commanded.
I was too busy beating out the sparks to look up immediately but when I did my heart sank.
The man who had been restraining Cusack now had his gun out and was levelling it at her chest.
“Step back!” he shouted.
I kicked a few of the spilled coals aside as they threatened to set fire to the grass. The Iron hadn’t fallen far from the up-turned brazier. It was within my grasp.
“Step over towards me,” the man was saying.
I complied though I stepped as slowly and purposefully as someone approaching a mine-field. He might have thought that I was just trying to annoy him but really I was just trying to stop him from looking at Terence.
I had to control an instinctive shudder when I’d first realised what was happening. His hands, which had once been clenched into fists, were now slowly uncurling, his fingers extending into shapely claws. His limbs were re-arranging themselves under his clothing: elongating, thickening.
Where previously his features had been handsome he had now developed a sad demeanour, his eyes down-cast, the sides of his mouth pulled downwards, knitting into his neck where fresh hair was sprouting to form a rudimentary pelt.
If what he’d told me earlier was true he was taking a terrible risk.
What if he couldn’t change back again?
For her part, Stahl said nothing: eyeing Terence with amazement and not a little awe. Witchcraft was one thing but this was something else.
The gunman had seen none of this, focussed as he was on me.
“What did you bitches do to Pavel?” he shouted, angling the gun downward into the centre of Cusack’s chest as though this would make the bullet somehow more effective.
“You’d better put that down,” Cusack said coolly.
“Why? You think you’re bullet proof.”
The change in Terence’s physical appearance was almost unbearable. His features seemed to be subjected to some terrible internal pressure which was slowly propelling him out of shape, the bones in his chest and shoulders sliding out of position thrusting out through the front of his shirt.
Other people had noticed but the gunman must have thought that he was the one they were afraid of.
“Get over here now,” he spoke directly to me. “I’ll give you a count of five. Five!”
Terence was now more animal than human, the brightness of the flood-lights irradiating his fur. His eyes were a beautiful agate green but they lacked the softness I had found in them previously. They seemed merciless now as they searched the assembled gathering.
The instincts take over sometimes.
How do you forget to be human? I thought perhaps now, I knew.
But, terrible as his appearance was, nothing prepared anyone for his roar. It sounded like it was echoing out of a shadowy, subterranean cavern. It inspired a primordial sense of terror in everyone who heard it. The women in white staggered back from it, as well they might. He had the scent of them now.
Even Stahl had moved away, her eyes still fixed on the knife which had been pushed aside by the paw that split Terence’s shoe.
At the sound, the man with the gun had tensed up and looked as if he was expecting the floor to drop away at any moment. He regarded Terence with a look of total incomprehension. Cusack stepped away from him, immediately forgotten because the Snow Leopard – Terence no longer – was now turning on the man, drawn, I’m almost certain, by the sound of the gun being cocked. Terence let out a low, rumbling growl which we felt as much as heard.
Two shots were fired in quick succession.
Only one struck home.
And then the snow leopard was on him pinning him to the floor with his hind legs whilst he painted the man’s head and torso red with his claws.
The man’s screams galvanised everyone. The younger of the two men at the brazier, cast off his gauntlets and ran, as did most of the novitiates.
Stahl was steely calm throughout. As soon as she sensed her opportunity she bobbed down and re-claimed the knife. Then she started striding across in my direction.
“Step away from it,” she said, pointing with the blade. “Step back from the Iron.”
There was every reason for me to obey. She only posed a threat to me if I were to stay where I was. By any logic I should be running away. But the Iron lay at my feet, its head half covered by the spilled embers. I sensed that there was something in Stahl’s nature which feared me laying my hands on it.
So I picked it up.
The handle should have been too hot for me to hold but it felt beautifully cool when I gripped it. It resonated in my hands. Seemed to speak to me.
“That’s a pity,” Stahl was advancing towards me. “I thought perhaps I’d tamed you but you’re as bad as ever.”
I backed away between the upturned brazier and the security guard lying on the ground holding his knee. He gave me a sidelong glance and shrank back.
Was he frightened of me or what I was holding?
And then, from nowhere, the sound of distant shouting. Voices, raised in distress and anger but still a long way off. I wasn’t totally sure what that meant -whether good or bad - but I was calmed by the weight in my hands and stood, luxuriating in the heat from the fire.
“I won’t ask again,” Stahl kicked a spray of gravel in my direction, spattering my legs.
My strength and energy, previously sapped by the necklace, had returned to me and I adjusted my hold on the Iron, pointing it in Stahl’s direction.
In a voice stronger than I felt I said, “Put the knife down and you can leave.”
In the background, the snow leopard was relishing his meal.
Stahl’s fear and confusion were suddenly evident. She looked around at her now hesitant security team; the voices in the distance growing louder.
“I don’t know what it is that you think you’ve won,” she said bitterly.
Then she started to back away holding the Seelie Blade high adapting a defensive posture. I couldn’t make sense of it. I’d expected her to attack not retreat but then, with her Innocents gone, her plan had just come apart in her hands.
The gravel pathway ended just behind her and she felt for the raised edge of the lawn with her foot, her eyes never leaving me. She didn’t want to risk stumbling. She stepped up onto the grass and then started moving more confidently still keeping me fixed in her sights. There was a bush directly behind her which she successfully manoeuvred around and then nothing before the wall of the White Tower except for the ring of torches. There were perh
aps thirty in all.
I took my lead from her, the Iron giving me confidence. I ran across the gravel but then slowed my pace when I reached the grass. It was wet under-foot and I couldn’t afford to slip now. Nonetheless, the distance between us quickly diminished.
I would have caught her as well if Cusack hadn’t gotten in the way.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You’ve won.”
“Have I,” I said. “She still has the blade. I’ve had it twice now and lost it both times. I won’t lose it again.”
Cusack looked down as a ribbon of smoke rose off the tip of the Iron. She pointed at Stahl who had just passed the torch nearest to us.
“She wants you to follow her. That’s not a circle of torches. That’s a pentagram within a circle. Very powerful.”
“I’m not frightened of her.”
“Then perhaps you should be,” her mouth softened. “Why do you want the knife so badly?”
“I don’t want it for myself, I just want to make sure she doesn’t have it.”
Cusack put a hand on my arm. “Are you sure?”
The mark on my back was starting to itch.
I was worried that Cusack might try and stop me but she didn’t. I could see Stahl standing next to the torch at the centre of the circle and I hurried to join her.
Chapter 25
It was only when I passed the perimeter torch that I realised that Cusack might have been right. Looking back, I saw that some kind of veil had been lowered enclosing the circle, effectively blocking out the outside world.
Something had changed on a metaphysical level too – colours had shifted, seemingly losing their vigour, giving way to a thin blue light which encompassed everything. When I stepped back towards the veil, in an attempt to pick out Cusack, the Iron thrummed between my fingers. There was a very real sense of forces gathering.
By the time I had turned back around to confront Stahl all my fears and uncertainties had re-asserted themselves.
*
“Give me the knife.”
“I had no idea you wanted it so badly,” she held the Seelie Blade towards me, tempting me to take it.
“Was it Lindqvist who told you about it?” I moved around her staying just out of range.
The temptation to attempt a spell was enormous but then I remembered who I was up against. Stahl was trying to put me at ease before she attacked but, having seen what the knife was capable of, I was hardly likely to drop my guard.
“Lindqvist had put in all the research,” she continued. “He knew that the Ptolemy had it in their possession and so was very eager to get his hands on it.”
“Eager enough to kill?”
Stahl let out a delicious laugh. “Brodsky, you mean? No, you can’t blame him for that. He was an academic, he wasn’t capable of killing anyone.”
I was starting to edge closer to Stahl taking my time in case she decided to go on the offensive and I had to retreat.
“So, you had Charmed him, even then?”
“It wasn’t difficult. I’d always suspected that Lindqvist might be a virgin. Imagine my delight when I found out I was right.”
She drove forward slicing first at my legs then my face. She came nowhere near to striking me but my heart rate went through the roof regardless.
“Lindqvist proved to be very useful in the end,” she said. “It was a pity you had to go and kill him.”
She’d said that in the hope of angering me and she hadn’t missed her mark. I thrust the Iron at her, hoping that she might drop the knife but she was much too clever for that. She stepped around to my side, feinted a wild arcing attack to my head before charging straight at me.
She’d hoped to panic me into another retreat and she was partially successful in that. As I stepped back my ankle twisted under me and I dropped down onto one knee, thrusting the Iron out in defence. But Stahl had over-committed herself this time and the head of the Iron caught her at waist height searing straight through the fabric of her dress. Stahl collapsed onto me and would have fallen if her weight hadn’t driven the Iron’s handle down into the grass, skewering herself in place like a dying butterfly.
Stahl dropped the knife in her desperate attempts to free herself. She couldn’t regain her footing and eventually keeled over onto her side. The smell of burning flesh was pungent and she beat at her dress as it threatened to catch fire. All the while she was shrieking and bucking on the ground.
I just stood and watched her aware that things had changed. I was suddenly very scared indeed and it wasn’t because I was scared of dying. I was scared of something far worse.
Things were moving out beyond the perimeter of the veil. Dark things anxious to be admitted. They seemed to flicker, swimming out of my field of vision, shadows which coalesced only in the corner of my eye, anxious to go unnoticed. It was also impossible to ignore them, half formed though they were. They were growing in confidence and, I guessed, it was only a matter of time before they started to break through.
At one point I strode towards the luminescent walls of my cage possessed of a determination to see the phantoms off before a sudden and quite terrible sense of loss threatened to overwhelm me. The hair rose on my arms and neck and I became certain that the figures that I was so keen to investigate were now massing behind me.
That was when I noticed that the torches were slowly starting to go out: one by one. I could count five that had already been extinguished and the light was growing dimmer by the moment. Soon it would be totally dark and what would happen then?
Keeping my eyes down, I stepped purposefully towards the veil waiting as long as I dared before looking up. When I did, I caught a glimpse of a dark, malign face which shrank away leaving me with an impression of lustreless, staring eyes. Whatever it was, it skittered back into the dark void from which it had come.
“They’re here, then?” Stahl spoke through the pain.
She struggled to sit up but the hurt was too much and she fell back again, her left leg stiffening in agony. I had felt that same pain but only for the briefest of moments. I struggled to imagine how she was still conscious. It’s the mind’s role to protect us at times like these: when reality threatens to crush us our brain takes refuge in oblivion.
More of the torches were blinking out now, making it very dark within and, although the air was dead-still I could hear the wind outside our enclosure making a dismal wailing sound. I tried to focus on Stahl and not look at the threatening shadows as they sought to find substance. But the veil must have been growing thinner, weaker because the shapes were becoming clearer, struggling to adopt some semblance of form.
But what would happen when all the lights were extinguished? A voice in my head kept asking. What then?
“What do they mean to do?” I demanded.
“They mean to open our minds to the truth.”
“I don’t understand. Are they drawn to me?”
“You hold the Iron still,” Stahl spoke through gritted teeth.
She was right, I still held it tightly in both hands.
“What do they want with it?”
“They want to destroy it.”
“I could just put it down.”
Stahl laughed. It was a dark laugh, inky black. “That would not be a good idea.”
“And what about you?”
“You mean this?” she pulled the material away to reveal a perfectly scored pentagram on her skin. “They’re drawn to this too. The new flesh.”
“What will you do?”
“Do? There’s nothing I can do: you’ve seen to that.”
The figures beyond the veil were growing now in confidence and resolution. A beautiful, black woman her head shorn of hair, strode past, strumming the fluttering face of the veil like a harp. Further on, an old crone stood implacably by, pouring water into a jug at her feet. A woman in grey came forward, her arms slathered in blood and roped with her own heavy entrails. A young girl, her face hidden, sat on a stool holding a chicken by its feet,
a blade to its neck. Another, naked from the waist up, had had both arms freshly amputated. The last one I saw, knelt at the veil, her head bowed but, even though I couldn’t see her face, there was something familiar about her.
I turned back into the circle to see that the torch at the centre had gone, replaced by a simple cherry tree.
That’s my tree. The one that stood in the garden of Ma Birch’s house. Every witch has a named tree; it’s the source of their power yet it’s also a point of vulnerability. Each one is guarded with a protective ward for just that reason.
“Help me up,” Stahl grimaced. “I don’t want to face them like this.”
I was wary of her even then but held the Iron in one hand while I helped her with the other.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Have you seen something?”
“I don’t know,” clearly, she couldn’t see it in my face but I didn’t want to reveal too much.
Her head dropped then, as if perceiving some terrible truth. Her whole body was rent with a long, terrible, wracking sob.
“What is it?” I said. “ What’s wrong?”
“This thing. Does it mean something to you? Do you recognise it?”
I was on the verge of saying no, reticent to share something with her which she might use against me, but instead I said, “It’s my named tree, I’m sure of it.”
Stahl clutched at my arm, stunned by a sudden wave of pain.
At last, she said, “You’re quite sure it’s not a trick? You’re sure it’s the same one?”
I nodded. I’d never been more certain, the sight of it made my heart ache with longing. For a time before university, before The Bear Garden, before all of this.
“Then you must go to it,” she said. “It offers you refuge. Go. Go now!”
She pushed me away, her face white with the pain.
I stumbled backwards. The light was thinning. Only ten torches remained. It was difficult to make out what was happening in the areas the torch-light failed to reach but I could feel things stirring, dragging themselves across the grass.
The veil that had protected us was gone, had blinked out moments before. Some of the ghosts seemed unaware of the fact, trapped now only by their memories of imprisonment rather than by any real obstacle.
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