Witch's Shadow (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 1)

by Emma L. Adams

  I threw up a barrier spell in front of me. The spirit realm overlaid my vision, showing Keir next to me, Isabel on my right, and zombies, connected to their hosts by visible threads of blue energy. The bastards weren’t even directly involved in the fight. They must be hiding elsewhere inside the station. My spirit sight was still blurred, but I reached out ghostly hands and grabbed onto the nearest thread of blue light. Chanting the required words of control, I kept my grip strong, while Isabel threw spells left and right, creating a ruckus that kept the vampire’s attention in several places at once. He’d set most of the zombies on autopilot, but that made them vulnerable. Beside me, I sensed Keir attempting to override their control, too.

  I let go of the first zombie and grabbed for another, jumping to a third the instant the vampire noticed. With his attention split between the three of us, his army wouldn’t be nearly as effective. I reached out, threads of blue energy connecting my hands to the zombies, and yanked them out of his grip. The vampire’s frustrated howl ripped through my mind, though muted, and less painful than the psychic’s scream.

  I pulled, hard. You’re mine.

  “Go on,” I growled, ignoring the vampire’s furious presence attempting to tug the zombies free from my grip. “Attack the others.”

  Chaos erupted as the zombies turned on one another, offering me the chance to scan the spirit realm again. The barrier blocked me from sensing Lloyd, but a shadowy form that wasn’t Keir caught my eye. A vampire was hiding, close by. The person controlling the army.

  The barrier spell faded as it hit its limit, but the vampires were too busy fighting one another to notice Isabel close in and blast them to pieces.

  Keir, meanwhile, had grabbed hold of his own battalion from the group of zombies who hadn’t been taken to bits, and was directing them to turn on their fellow undead. Shooting him a nod, I moved to the side, searching for our hidden adversary.

  Figures moved within a coffee shop’s shattered ruins. Aha. I sprinted across the debris and ran inside, leaping over broken glass. The faint smell of coffee still permeated the air, even as the interior lay in ruins, and shadowy figures stirred at the back.

  “I can sense you, arsehole,” I said. “You should have picked on someone else.”

  A zombie lunged at me. I reached for the blue threads of the vampire’s control and pulled the undead under my spell. “Go on. Fight your master.”

  “You bitch,” snarled a voice through the zombie’s mouth.

  “You caught me on a bad day,” I said, and sent my new puppet staggering towards the vampire hiding at the back, behind two more zombies. “Come on, at least put some effort in. Did you really sign up to this of your own free will? What’re you getting out of helping a creepy cult kidnap my friend?”

  “To stay alive,” said the vampire. “Or else perish when they wake the spirit lines.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a choice.” I directed the zombie with a wave of my hand, and the vampire yelped as the zombie punched out his two companions. “I like this guy. Maybe I’ll keep him when we storm the place. But I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to stay here all night. Care to tell me where your master is?”

  “No.” He waved a hand, and his zombies recovered. Mine got there first, and a scuffle of clumsy punches broke out. Now I’ve got you.

  The vampire ducked around the zombies, running towards the door. I tackled him, and we crashed onto a table. Evelyn’s magic buzzed in my hands, threatening to break through, but I grabbed hold of his spirit with my fingertips. “Tell me where your master is hiding.”

  He yelled aloud, fighting to escape my grip, but I could tell that his spirit was depleted. Someone had already drained him, maybe a more powerful vampire.

  “Last chance,” I said. “Tell me. Now.”

  He shuddered. “Here, and everywhere, all at the same time. They’re… torturing her…” His voice stuttered to silence, and his spirit vanished.

  Damn. I hadn’t even needed to finish him. Someone on his own side had done that for me. He must have used whatever was left of his power to direct those zombies at me. But who was she, and who was doing the torturing?

  I grabbed control of the surviving zombies and directed them to leave the café and re-join the battle, while I headed in the direction the vampire had pointed. Ahead were the shattered screens which used to show the train times, some of them still intermittently flickering with orange light. Words chased each other across one of them—Come and find me, Jacinda Hemlock.

  “Seriously?” I said. “Is this a joke?”

  Come and find me, Jacinda Hemlock.

  It was no joke, more of a twisted game. The witches must be seriously pissed off that I’d used Evelyn’s power to undo their spells and make a mockery of them. What’d started as an attempt to get the Hemlocks out of the picture had turned into a challenge I couldn’t afford to lose.

  I sprinted back to the battle, where one of Keir’s zombies ripped into another. “Hey, those are mine,” I told him. “I think we got them all.”

  “Good.” He looked unhurt, his eyes glittering with blue light and his spirit glowing as it did when he’d just fed. “Did you find the vampire?”

  “One of them. I think another attacked him, and he died before he could give me a clear answer on where the enemy is. He said here, and everywhere, all at the same time. Did he mean the psychic, or…?”

  “The liminal space.”

  “A liminal space,” I corrected. “There might be a dozen here for all we know.”

  They weren’t in the Hemlocks’ forest. I’d know—Evelyn would know—if they were. Our magic would react. So where were they? Since we were on top of a key point, the spirit lines were tangled enough that an army of zombies could hide in plain sight, let alone a witch. She might be hiding anywhere.

  Keir indicated the zombie. “None of them will talk. The vampires. I think they were led here against their will.”

  “They still worked for the enemy. The one I just spoke to said that he picked their side because they’re going to wake the spirit lines. Any idea what he meant by that?”

  “No, but it can’t be good.”

  Isabel ran up to us, climbing over fallen zombies. “I’m the only one of the three of us without the spirit sight, Jas. Can either of you two pick up on anything?”

  “Well, they definitely know we’re here,” I said. “They’re messing with us. If we find the spirit barrier, that’ll be where the cowardly witches are hiding. Their vampires, they don’t seem to mind leaving around to be collateral damage.”

  “That’s because they can only control their zombies from within the same dimension,” Keir said. “The psychic, though… I’m assuming they aren’t behind the spirit barrier, unless they were taken there after attacking.”

  I swore. “Of course, why make it easy.” Crossing realms must be somewhere in the Hemlocks’ skillset, otherwise the forest wouldn’t be able to exist the way it did, but Evelyn hadn’t deigned to share that particular talent with me yet.

  “I can make her sing for you again, Jacinda,” whispered a female voice.

  I jumped, while Keir swore loudly. “Who are you?”

  A soft laugh tickled my ear. “I can make her sing …”

  Well, that answered the question about whether or not the psychic was a willing participant. “Kidnapping people isn’t nice,” I told the disembodied voice. “Neither is breaking every law in the supernatural rulebook. Also, even necromancers know not to mess with the spirit lines if you want to keep your soul attached to your body.”

  “That would require having a body, Jas,” whispered the voice.

  Huh. The person behind this was dead. Should have figured. Who else would be able to use necromancy skills to find vampires?

  “Have it your way,” I said. “You should know that being dead makes you even less of a threat to me than before. I banish ghosts in my sleep. Show me Lloyd, and I’ll talk.”

  “Jas!” yelled Keir.

&nb
sp; White noise exploded in my skull, and power roared to my fingertips. Keir and Isabel shouted my name, but I’d already floated out of my body into the greyness.

  Evelyn was at the wheel. Again.

  “Stop that!” I shouted, but it was too late. The world turned to black.

  21

  I floated in the blackness, unable to see anything. Not even the spirit realm.

  Had the witch drawn out Evelyn’s power on purpose? Where was I? Not the wreckage of the train station, but the spirit realm looked the same no matter where you were. Which meant I must still be in the waking world, even if I wasn’t on earth at all.

  Lights snapped on. Twelve lights. Candles.

  A body lay between the candles, inert on the floor of a room so dark I could barely make out the floor between the candles. Even from above, I knew the body was mine. Beside me floated a second spirit, both of us as transparent as ghosts, trapped in the spirit circle.

  The ghost turned on the spot to narrow her eyes at me. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Evelyn.

  She looked much the same as before. Long, flowing hair, full lips, eyes that would have been grey-blue in life but now looked more grey-black. Behind her was darkness. We must have fallen into a liminal space—or rather, been dragged into one, the instant she’d used her magic.

  “If your magic hurt my friends,” I said to her, “I’ll take my body back and leave you here to rot.”

  “Neither of us is getting out of this circle,” Evelyn said. “I didn’t hurt your friends, Jacinda. But this spirit circle is too powerful to break from the inside.”

  I thought so. As long as the candles burned, we’d remain trapped—which gave more than long enough for the witches and their army to go after the Hemlock Coven.

  Whether the witches could actually get through to them was a different story, but if the psychic kept attacking the spirit line, the whole country would feel the aftershocks, and worse than furies would escape onto earth. And the two of us would remain trapped here, helpless to stop it.

  Some Hemlock heir I’d turned out to be.

  “It was your magic that set her off,” I said. “Did you see that coming?”

  “No.” Evelyn scowled. “Aren’t you a necromancer? Can’t you switch the candles off?”

  “Not from here, no. I thought you knew all about magic.”

  Evelyn’s lips pursed. “I’ve spent twenty years barely existing, Jacinda. My memory isn’t what it used to be. But if the candles go out, the power holding us captive will dissipate, and we’ll be back in your body again.”

  Yeah, I’m not so sure I want that. But never mind the spirit and her weird Jekyll and Hyde act. Normally a spirit circle took so much power that a high-ranked necromancer would be in severe danger of losing their life if it kept running too long. But there were no necromancers here, and we weren’t on earth at all.

  “Gotta hand it to her,” I muttered. “There I was thinking she wanted to spill my blood to fuel her damned ritual, but I guess her plans are more sophisticated than ‘set a bunch of angry pterodactyl-like bird monsters loose in the city’.”

  “The furies were never more than a means to an end,” said Evelyn. “They might have answered the call when she tried contacting the dark dimensions, but her fixation is on more than that. She wants the power in the liminal spaces, where my magic lies buried.”

  “Your magic?” I asked. “You have plenty of power.”

  “Not that magic,” she said. “Most of it resides in the forest. I possess a mere echo.”

  “Uh, because the Hemlocks are kind of using their power to stop a giant monster from devouring the world. That’s the real reason they got stuck in the forest—right?”

  “That creature is called the devourer. The Hemlocks gave up their magic to keep it hidden long before the Sidhe came, but it won’t last. It’s not made to. The Hemlocks may have defeated the Ancients, but they knew all along that it was a temporary victory, nothing more.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “But if you think stopping that giant monster from devouring the world is a bad thing, we’re not on the same page.”

  “There’s still so much you don’t understand, Jacinda.”

  A shiver traced through my ghostly form, and I felt the echo of her magic, when her rage had overwhelmed me. Jekyll and Hyde indeed. Maybe leaving her here wouldn’t be such a bad idea—if I ever got out.

  “If I don’t understand,” I said, “it’s because nobody decided to explain this to me before they put your spirit in my body as a child.”

  “That’s not what they did,” she said. “Our souls are one. I’m not in your body, I’m you, as much as you are. We’re fused, Jas. I know you think we can be separated, like a spirit removed from a body it’s possessing, but I’m not possessing you, Jas. I’ve been you since my rebirth, and especially since I awakened upon your arrival here.”

  Ah. Shit. She’d guessed my plan. And I’d had my doubts a simple exorcism would work for a while. But there was absolutely no chance I’d let her take the reins again, not knowing she wanted more power.

  “Why did they do it?” I asked. “Why did they need to bind us? You were still alive.”

  “I was close to death,” she said. “The only way they could ensure an heir survived to adulthood was to bind us. The remaining Hemlocks were trapped in the forest, doomed to destruction. You were whole.”

  “I was a baby. I had no choice,” I said. “You volunteered to save your own neck, is that what you’re saying? Just because they decided that sticking around in their forest was more important than ensuring their own bloodline survived through any means other than trapping an innocent child?”

  “You’re heir because the others died,” said the spirit. “They killed us, before the faeries ever came here. And they want you dead because you’re the only one left.”

  Oh, shit. “They died. There were others.”

  Of course. The Hemlock witches would have wanted to ensure their magic passed on to someone after death. The ritual… it’d been a last resort after all. We’d both been used, but if the alternative was letting that monster loose—the Hemlocks had faced a difficult choice.

  I had limited sympathy for them, regardless. They had enough magic that they ought to have found another way than binding two souls permanently, especially one with a major screw loose. And if we both died today, it’d have all been for nothing.

  “There were others,” she said. “My brothers and sisters and cousins. All of them—dead.”

  “And now I’m going to join them.” I looked down at my inert body lying in the middle of the circle. Even in the best-case scenario, if the others managed to stop the enemy before she could break the spirit line, they could search for days and never find whichever liminal space I’d been taken into. My body would die of dehydration or starvation, or the spirit circle would implode and kill me. Maybe, if I managed to call on the little necromantic power I had in this place, I might get to choose my own method of death. A cheerful thought. They don’t teach you that at the guild.

  I gritted my teeth. Dammit. I do have some magic left. Blue light sparked to my hands. Necromancy.

  Evelyn’s eyes gleamed as she watched me, hunger stirring in her expression. “Interesting. Maybe there was another reason they picked you. I have the power of life. You have the power of death.”

  “And you have delusions of grandeur.” The light grew brighter. “I’m not that powerful a necromancer. Not even as much as a vampire…” Wait a moment.

  Blue light lit up my palms—like the light connecting me with an undead. Then I held out my hands over my own limp body. Evelyn watched me with an eager light burning in her eyes. I still felt her magic, distantly, the echo of its power. Considering part of her was in me, and vice versa, maybe there was no way to separate the two.

  “All right.” I flexed my fingers. “Now for a little bit of necromancy…”

  My body jumped to its feet, swaying wi
th the unsteadiness of the recently dead.

  “Aha.” I grinned. “That’s more like it.”

  “You do have power,” she said, hunger permeating her words. “Strong. I wonder… can I use that, too?”

  “Try it and you’re never leaving this place.”

  The circle’s edge shimmered as my body walked like a puppet on strings, towards the candles, and my hands pressed against the boundary. An invisible shield kept us caged, fuelled by the candles, but the source of power wasn’t limitless. It was weird watching my body move without feeling a thing. Zombies couldn’t use magic. But my body was alive, and my magic remained active. I gripped tighter, moving until I was right behind my reanimated body. As I moved my hand, so did she. I had witch spells in my pocket. Explosives.

  It took several attempts to make my clumsy zombie hands pull the band off my wrist and throw it into the air, but my aim was dead on. As the witch explosive went off, the nearest candle toppled, and I crashed back into my body so hard, my knees hit the floor. “Hell, yeah.”

  Problem: now I needed to find the way out. Pitch black darkness surrounded us, and when I tapped into the spirit realm, a familiar blurriness blocked my vision. Blurriness that ended, abruptly, at the back of the circle.

  A roaring noise came from behind, and a gust of wind swept into me. Oh, bloody hell. They must have booby-trapped the circle.

  The candles began to slide backwards into a yawning gulf, blackness so dark I couldn’t see the bottom. The blackness grew, swallowing the next two candles, and at the same moment, the psychic’s screaming began anew.

  I flew from my body, crashing into Evelyn as though she was a solid person and not a ghost. I hardly noticed I was clinging to her until she let go, having been doing the same to me. She spoke, her words lost beneath the screaming, but I heard her warning loud and clear. If I didn’t get my body out of that circle, asap, I’d be sucked into the void. The dimension was collapsing right behind us.

  With shaking hands, I gripped hold of the tenuous connection between me and my body and made her walk forwards—one step, two—until we were outside the circle. The screaming kicked up a notch, and Evelyn screamed, too, the racket throbbing in my skull. I floated in and out of my body, forcing myself to walk—another step, then another. Gods, it was so dark in here.