The Witch and the Huntsman

by Rod Kierkegaard Jr J. R. Rain

  I nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do, Millicent. Thank you for bringing me back to that place. But we need to stop off in the cloakroom before we go out after them, okay?”

  “Why?”

  This time, it was me dragging her into a dead run down the corridor. “Because I also believe in the power of my crossbow. You know, just in case the other thing doesn’t work out...”

  Chapter Twenty

  From some frozen somewhere—in the middle of the hottest summer the Pacific West had ever seen—Regina Jaeger had summoned a blizzard. Yeah, she had mad skills.

  Snow swirled around our heads, stinging our cheeks and eyes as we stumbled after the bobbing torches and thunderous hooves of the Wild Hunt. Schreich had already proven himself useful, producing boots and cloaks for both of us to wear, so at least we were halfway warm. Even if we looked exactly like the pathetic little orphans in the book illustrations.

  “Is that her special power?” I asked Millicent. “To control the weather?”

  “There is nothing special in that—we can do that with practice.” This was news to me; exciting news actually. “No, Regina has a unique talent for controlling the minds of others. This is what I could not tell you before and why I warned you against coming here. Because she had already tainted your thoughts and memories.”

  “You mean she’s been controlling me all this time?” I was so shocked that I forgot to speak the words aloud, although we were communicating directly, mind to mind.

  “Not entirely, dear. But she had already been altering your memories. Marisa was your client, not Bernice’s—that was how I knew Regina had gotten to you, when you forgot your relationship with Marisa and believed in another reality. I knew that if I told you too much, Regina would use you to destroy our triad. I had to rely on your inner strength of will and purpose. It was when she realized that you were too strong for her to control that she decided to kill you tonight. Now we must save Ivy—can you feel her fear?”

  For the first time since last night in my room, I allowed my mind to touch Ivy’s. I’d been too mad at her to try to do it before—honestly, I’d been too afraid that my furious jealousy might mash her brains into Jell-O. Now I felt so sorry about that. I’d been a total dumbass.

  But the Ivy whose thoughts I found now in the darkness was too terrified, too frantic for escape, to hear or acknowledge my apology. Almost against my will, I found my consciousness leaving my own body and slipping into hers as she ran for her life from the Wild Hunt. Her feet pounded on the snowy ground; her breath came in ragged gasps. Like all young actresses, she kept in tip-top shape, but my physical trainer’s instincts told me she couldn’t keep this pace up for long.

  “I must go to her...” Millicent’s words rang in my mind, and I realized that Millicent had disappeared from my side and was now running beside Ivy, effortlessly keeping pace with her. Well, it was easy for Millicent, wasn’t it? She was a ghost. I think.

  I noticed that she had changed her appearance, too; instead of wearing her Rose Red costume, she was now dressed to match Ivy in a black catsuit, her flaming hair hidden by the cap. To the howling hunters behind, it must have seemed like they were suddenly seeing double.

  “I’ll try to divert them—you must save Ivy, Allison,” came Millicent’s whisper. “Once you are united with her, then the three of us will be whole. It will take our combined force to defeat Regina.”

  The two Ivys split apart in the night, one continuing to run up the Inner West Run toward the Palmer Glacier, the other racing toward the timberline. Confused, the Wild Hunt came to a stop, and their half-horse, half-monstrous mounts tossed their long necks from side to side, snorting and stamping the ground.

  This gave me a chance to catch up to them. “Ivy?”

  “I’m here, Allison!” She was the Ivy headed into the fir trees; I saw that she intended to loop back downhill again toward the hunting blinds.

  Where Marisa had gone to ground.

  “Right behind you, hon. About a hundred yards. Don’t give up!” Now I was out of breath and lagging. Suddenly the weight of the Tenpoint crossbow was like lead. “I’ve got your back.”

  I could see most of the riders turn to follow black cat #2, Millicent. I grinned at the sight; with her ability to wink in and out of material form and reappear anywhere she wanted, like a will o’ the wisp, they’d never catch her. But I saw that several continued to chase the real Ivy, guiding their beasts into the trees and ducking to avoid the branches.

  Still peering through the swirling flakes at the sight, I suddenly tripped and fell on my face, sliding and skidding in the snow. When I came to a stop, I felt my stupid, fluffy, yellow silk Snow White skirt bunched up around my hips. I’d tripped over something—a wire—and now it felt like I had a broken ankle.

  One of the hunters galloped up behind me, and I turned over quickly and groped around for my crossbow. A dark shape dismounted and walked toward me, looming larger and larger over me against the night sky. Moonlight glinted on the tip of a broadhead crossbow bolt. The figure was totally cloaked, and wore a horned slouch hat. There was something horribly familiar about it.

  Was it Eric? I couldn’t tell.

  The huntsman stopped. “Let’s see what we’ve caught in our little snare,” said a man’s voice, filled with amusement. He leaned down to look at me, then gave a gasp of surprise. “Allison? What are you doing here? And why are you dressed as Snow White? You’re supposed to be the quarry!”

  It wasn’t Eric—it was Sergeant Doberman...

  In the fairytale, the Huntsman is sent into the forest by the queen to kill Snow White. But naturally, he falls in love with her instead, so he goes back to the queen with the liver and heart of a possum or badger or something. You know, to prove he’d killed her.

  The problem was, tonight Sergeant Doberman wasn’t following the script.

  I could see his face all distorted by bloodlust—in fact, he was actually drooling at the sight of my exposed thighs. I guess in the absence of any kind of sex life, he’d developed a taste for Langenschweinefleisch. It hadn’t been a broadhead I’d seen under his cloak; it was a big wicked-looking hunting knife. And now he leaned closer to carve me up with it. His aura crawled with murderous evil.

  So I screamed and shot him. Actually, I didn’t entirely mean to—it was pretty much reflex. I just jerked the crossbow up from the ground one-handed and pulled the trigger. At that range, even I couldn’t miss. The bolt buried itself in his forehead with a sickening smack. He crossed his eyes and just swayed over me for a few seconds before he fell on top of me, pinning me down and thrashing and convulsing in his death throes. Then he was just dead weight.

  “Ewwww...” I said, and pushed him off of me. Which was when I realized that I’d become a cop killer. I’d never be able to visit the state of Oregon again.

  Okay, I was good with that. Eric would just have to move to Beverly Hills. If it was still even possible to patch things up between us, I mean. But it wasn’t his fault he’d fallen under Regina’s spell—I had been too, according to Millicent. Maybe if we could somehow defeat the evil witch and drive her from this plane of existence, he’d be freed. And maybe he’d...

  I couldn’t believe myself. Daydreaming about Eric while Ivy was still in mortal danger! I hopped to my feet and reloaded the Tenpoint, then limped down the hill toward the trees. My ankle didn’t seem to be broken, so much as severely sprained; either way, I could barely put any weight on it.

  “Ivy? Ivy?”

  After the longest thirty seconds of my life, I felt her answering thought coming back at me.

  “Still here...”

  “Where are you?” I looked through her eyes and saw she, too, was limping toward the little shed where Marisa had made her last stand. We had been so tightly connected that when I’d hurt my ankle, Ivy had felt my pain—and continued to be crippled by it!

  “I fell and hurt myself, Allison. Now I’m really scared!”

  “I know, hon. I’m almost there.”

>   I’ll never know how I managed to hobble through the pine forest into the clearing where Ivy had been run to ground. There seemed to be two sets of hoof-tracks; one led in front of the shed, the other had slipped away to circle behind it. Holding my crossbow cocked in front of me, I took the straightest path possible to the shed, and pushed my way through the snow piled up outside it and into the darkness of its interior.

  “Ivy?”

  She was cowering against the near wall, peering out through a slat into the night, just as Marisa had done before her—and Ivanka, too, most likely. I ran to crouch beside her in the shadows and flung an arm around her.

  “I’m here!”

  But her wide-eyed stare never left the distance. I turned to see another monstrous steed coming out of the gray mist; a huge black creature with glowing red eyes and nostrils and antlers shaped like butcher’s hooks. On its back rode an elegant figure of regal beauty. And infinite menace.

  Regina Jaeger...

  I really had no idea how scary magic could be until that moment. Sure, the demon who’d possessed that poor English guy, Bill, and his daughter had been nasty and spooky, but I guess I hadn’t really had time to feel real fear during his attack—Ivy and I had just done what we had to do and gotten the shakes over it afterwards.

  But Regina Jaeger was the real deal. She would have sent any common everyday household demon whimpering back to the pits of hell with his shriveled little, um, tail between his legs. The woman radiated power, like an evil goddess, and she and her steed seemed to slowly swim toward us rather than cover the ground, surrounded on every side by crackling tendrils of raw golden energy. Snow and dust roared around these like a tornado reaching up to the clouds. Her eyes were so blinding that I couldn’t even look into them for more than half a second at a time, for fear of being sucked into their vortex and losing my will to hers forever. I felt Ivy slip her hand into mine, and we clutched each other tightly.

  And this terrifying...thing...was just a witch like me? Yes, that was the crazy thought that raced through my mind at that moment. It seemed impossible that my feeble powers alone could ever stand up against hers. I could feel the wood planks around us warming with the raw force of her presence, as if they might explode into flames at any instant.

  “But you are not alone, child.” Millicent suddenly appeared behind us in the dark, laying a hand on each of our shoulders. “We three are reunited at last. Let us all join hands and chant the Canto of Exile from the Book of Wicca.”

  Trembling with panic, Ivy and I stood and formed a circle of hands with Millicent. Our voices shook as we chanted together:

  “Quiaignis et fornace et radices et arborum,

  Quiamartelloetforcipibus, noseiciantvos ad infernum!

  In nomenmatrisinserendum, in nomine trium...”

  “By flame and forge and root and tree,

  By hammer and tongs, we banish thee!

  In the name of the Mother and the power of three...”

  “Again!” said Ivy urgently.

  “It’s not working!” That was Ivy. And she was right; Regina’s laughter rose over the roar of the whirlwind around her, vicious and mocking. She advanced upon us, glowing with hate and malevolence, and I could feel the walls around us trembling like I was, and turning white-hot. It seemed like nothing could save us.

  But someone tried to. A dark silhouette appeared in front of her—a huntsman.

  The real Huntsman. Eric. My Eric!

  “No!” he bellowed, blocking her path. He raised his crossbow and aimed it at her. “You won’t take her, you old bitch!”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  For a moment, Regina just stared at her stepson in shock, and I could feel her glow dimming. Then she raised her hand and sent a shaft of pure energy through the darkness that struck him like a lightning-bolt. But in that moment that he bought us, we were able to recharge our own batteries — and when I saw Eric falling away from the blast, I was filled with a surge of fury so great that I felt like I could incinerate Mount Hood.

  “NOOOOO!” I screamed, and felt the power rising up from my innermost depths like a volcano. It erupted outward, blasting the walls of the little shed and catching Regina and her hell-born steed up in a blazing inferno of energy. The ball of fire containing the two of them spun, and filaments writhed and pulsated on its surface like the fiery scales of salamanders. I felt her will straining outward; straining, pushing against mine—but mine was implacable. Then the glowing globe imploded...and she vanished in a billion spinning flakes of cinder-ash and snowflakes...

  It was over. I ran weeping out into the snow and fell to my knees, cradling Eric’s head in my arms. He looked totally unmarred, almost like a newborn baby; he was even smiling. But he was gone. I could tell that at a glance—he had no aura at all. I brushed the ash from his face and closed both his eyes, then kissed their lids. Tears streamed down my face and dripped onto his as I rocked back and forth.

  I felt Millicent’s touch, then Ivy’s.

  “He died saving us!” I said to them, weeping. “Somehow, he did what I never quite managed to do; he threw off her yoke just long enough to give us a fighting chance...”

  “He hated her a lot more than you did,” said Millicent.

  “Not anymore,” I told her between sobs. Great wracking sobs; the kind you’re never sure you’ll catch your breath from ever again. Regina had robbed me of the love of my life. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I’ll never have feelings like this for anybody else again. Never. Not this sweet and...pure-hearted. He gave his life for mine.

  “I know, dear,” came Millicent’s words, picking up my own. “I know. Just as you have more latent power than we two, you also have more passion in you. It can feel like a curse sometimes, more than a blessing. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too,” said Ivy, stroking my hair. And what she said next was actually pretty touching. “I wish I had it in me to love somebody like that, Allie. I know you don’t realize it now, but honestly, you were lucky to have Eric at all. Nothing can ever take that from you. Someday, maybe you’ll see it that way, and it might even be a little bit comforting to you.”

  Which was when I really lost it. So what if it was probably just some lines from a movie she’d been in? I held his beautiful head, even as my sisters held me...

  ***

  We flew back to Bob Hope Airport north of L.A. the next morning in Ivy’s studio’s chartered Learjet. It had a little galley, and Mr. Schreich insisted on acting as air steward for our Irish wake.

  “I haff requisitioned some of the dead, evil Erzherzogin’s favorite snacking foods for your flight, mistresses,” he announced as he clicked and clattered down the aisle carrying two silver trays. “The finest of champagne and Beluga caviar. Ach, what joy it is never to fear the wrath of that Vettel again...”

  “I sure hope he’s right,” I said, when he’d returned to the galley. “Because we didn’t really get rid of her, did we? I mean, for good. I thought I could feel her sort of escaping at the end.”

  “I, too, suspect this world has not seen the last of her,” said Millicent.

  “Are you really taking him home with you?” asked Ivy, meaning Mr. Schreich.

  “He’s my familiar. According to all the books, I kind of have to.” I blew my nose for like the hundredth time that morning.

  “But where are you going to put him? I’ve been in your apartment—it’s tiny!”

  I shrugged. Where was I going to put Millicent, for that matter? As far as I could tell, she seemed to be planning on at least haunting my bathroom forever.

  “You like having Millicent around, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Then that’s the price we have to pay. She and I are like Regina now in at least one way—and kind of like Sam Moon, too, come to think of it. We’ve both become ‘energy vampires.’ Millicent feeds off me to sustain her bodily form, and I in turn feed off Mr. Schreich. It has to be with everybody’s consent, though; that’s how it works.�
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  “Just like with you and Sam? How will you feed both of them?” She made it sound like I’d just had twins.

  “I think that chapter in my life may be over. Lately, I’ve been getting the vibe that Sam’s withdrawing from me, anyway, pulling back emotionally. And I’m not sure I can be a source for both her and Millicent.” I glanced at my ghostly, red-haired sister-witch. “If it comes to a choice, I guess I’ve already made it.”

  Millicent picked up the ball and ran with it. “Succubus, banshee, veshtitsa...we have been called many things in many places down through the centuries. Unlike true vampires, lamiae, or werewolves, who are possessed by darker forces in order to obtain their powers, magical beings like us who wish to keep their souls, need to draw our energy from somewhere. You do, too, Ivy.”

  “Huh? WTF are you talking about?”

  “Before you met us, you unconsciously drew your energies from your audience—your fans. You see, without even knowing it, you’ve always been an energy vampire, too, Ivy, just as we are; the source of your occult powers lies in the devotion of others. We cannot rely solely on each other for everything.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes again, and I could feel another round of grief hitting me in the gut. I’d known Eric for such a short time—and yet, it seemed like I’d known him all my life. That was the cruelest thing of all; that we’d both been so cheated of a life together.

  Ivy leaned across the narrow little aisle and flung her arms around me. “Bring it in, girl,” she said. Then to Millicent: “I still don’t get it—how can Allie cry her eyes out like this and still be a witch? I thought you lost your powers the minute you fell in love for real.”

  “I don’t understand it, either, dear. It’s a gift from Mother Gaia.”

  “Have you ever cried?”

  “Never,” said Millicent. “Not even for my children. That will also be your fate, dear Ivy.”