by Ross Turner
Alexander swallowed hard, though the lump in his throat and the pit in his stomach did not budge.
He knew what was coming and he doubted he would be able to stop it.
Nonetheless, he had sworn to Marcii that he would try.
For once in his miserable life, this would be a promise he would not break.
The crowds gathered around eagerly and more and more people joined to watch the spectacle.
That was perhaps the only saving grace, he thought to himself. As terrible as he knew this was going to be, the more people that came to watch it, the less people would be out looking for Marcii, and she would have at least a slightly better chance of escape.
“We have the witch’s family!” Tyran roared cruelly and his people cheered and hooted in response. “Do not fear!” He assured them. “Soon we will have her too! And we will be safe from her evil!”
His speech continued. Undoubtedly he wove a tale of how evil Marcii was, and how perfect and angelic he was.
Alexander wasn’t really listening.
He didn’t care.
Instead, he was desperately trying to think of a way to save Marcii’s family that didn’t involve confronting Tyran directly. So far though, he’d come up decidedly short. If he was honest with himself, he was simply trying to pluck up courage, just as much as he was trying to concoct an alternative.
He’d seen what had happened to Francis Gold and knew his fate would likely be similar.
Finally, after much deliberation, Alexander had still reached only the same conclusion, and his time was up.
“Take these torches and step forward!” Tyran instructed, gesturing with a flick of his fingers to three of his enforcers. In turn each of them lit a flaming torch and handed it to an onlooker in the crowd.
One was given to a lady who looked to be in her fifties. She had short grey hair, piercing eyes and a stern face.
Another was given to a much younger girl, who appeared to be only in her mid-twenties. She was very attractive with luscious blonde hair and very full, rosy red lips.
And then the final torch, burning bright and hot, was given to a young boy, who to Alexander seemed to only be about ten or eleven years old. The boy had thick, curly hair and wore an excited smile.
The three chosen ones stepped forward from the crowd eagerly, obeying Tyran’s commands to the letter.
What an honour.
Alexander couldn’t believe his eyes.
Tyran wasn’t just rallying the people any more. He wasn’t just uniting them against a common enemy, even if that enemy was fictitious.
He was using them, shaping them.
He was defining their very beliefs.
He was turning them into monsters.
It was now or never, and Alexander knew it.
Taking a deep breath and stepping forward from the crowd, he positioned himself in front of Tyran’s three chosen torchbearers and faced down the Mayor himself.
Tyran did not speak at first and his fierce gaze bore into Alexander’s slightly wavering eyes with the promise of challenge and cruel hatred.
There was no turning back for Alexander now.
He set his heart upon the momentous task that he now faced, preparing himself for almost certain defeat.
Chapter Nineteen
The alleys didn’t grow any warmer, or any drier, or any less disgusting. But, as Marcii fled, they did at least grow quieter. The patrols that sought her passed by less frequently, and near misses because thankfully rarer.
Soon enough, and with more than a hint of relief, Marcii found herself almost at the very edge of Newmarket, though she still had absolutely no idea where she was going.
Away.
That was as precise as her plan seemed to be.
Far away.
But as she rounded the next corner, slipping from shadow to shadow as best she could, the next street opened up unexpectedly wider than most of the others, and offered her a very clear view down onto the square.
It was a sight she wished she had not seen.
She could see three figures lay on the floor. They were alive, thankfully, but undoubtedly they were her family.
Behind them, though she struggled to make out exactly what was happening, for there were enforcers crowding all around, it looked to her as though they were hammering three tall poles into the ground.
That was all she had chance to glimpse however, for barely moments later she heard voices coming up the street and darted immediately back into the narrow alleyway.
However, it was not to be, for then she heard voices from down the other end of the alley too, and realised all at once she was trapped.
She cursed silently to herself and glanced around desperately for an escape route. But there was none.
That was it, she thought to herself.
She had nowhere to go.
How could she be so careless?
Stupid!
She panicked and continued to curse silently at herself, wishing with all her might that she could just melt into the shadows and vanish.
“Marcii!” A voice suddenly hissed through the shadows, seizing her attention and startling the life out of her.
The terrified Dougherty’s head whipped around to see, yet again, Vixen.
The young orphan was holding open a door that Marcii hadn’t even seen before.
She beckoned her inside.
Marcii complied without question and practically dove through the doorway and into the tiny room beyond.
Vixen closed the door silently, and only just in time, for mere seconds later a handful of figures slipped by. Each of their shadows cast darkness under the doorway as they passed, but they did not stop.
Marcii hardly dared to breathe whilst Vixen seemed as composed and emotionless as ever as she waited silently for the sound of footsteps to fade away.
“Are you okay?” The young orphan eventually asked.
Marcii just looked on at her, stunned.
Vixen waited patiently for a response, her eyes level and her expression unchanged.
“Yes, thank you…” Marcii finally managed. “How…?” She started to ask, but Vixen cut in.
“There isn’t time.” She stated, in a very matter of fact way. “You have to leave Newmarket. Now.”
“What…?” Marcii attempted. “How…? I…” But the words simply would not come to her, and besides, Vixen was already preparing to move.
The young orphan stole through the darkness of the tiny, gloom filled home and straight through to the other side, peeking through a dirty window to see if the coast was clear.
Marcii followed obediently.
The kitchen was tiny and smelled damp. Marcii could hear rats scurrying to and fro as they passed through. There was probably food somewhere that had been left out, for it smelled to her like something was rotting.
Or, perhaps more likely, something had just died in there.
The living room smelled damp too, but at least as they passed through there Marcii could not so keenly detect the stench of death.
“Whose house is this?” Marcii whispered.
Vixen shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter.” She replied simply. “You have to get away.”
“How do you…?” Marcii began again, but once more, Vixen cut her off.
“I know you’re innocent.” Vixen replied. “But that doesn’t matter. Tyran will kill you all the same.”
It was perhaps the most Vixen had ever spoken to her, and still Marcii didn’t understand even the slightest bit more about the young orphan.
Vixen opened the door beside the window slightly, holding it a few inches ajar.
“Wait.” She instructed quietly, pushing the door silently to again. “There are people coming.”
Marcii strained her ears as best she could, but she could not hear a thing. Nevertheless, sure enough, a few moments later, three more shadows passed hurriedly by the doorway. The three figures slipped past the light of the window and out of si
ght.
“Let’s go.” Vixen whispered, more assuredly now. She pulled the door fully open and stepped out boldly into the empty street.
“How did you…” Marcii began, but she was cut short yet again as Vixen took off at a dead run.
Marcii could do nothing but follow, her heart in her mouth as Vixen cut almost straight through the centre of town.
How in the world they managed to avoid being seen during that journey, Marcii had no idea.
Vixen tore seemingly without a care through what felt like every main street possible.
They crossed between houses and used a minimal number of alleyways, keeping to the shadows only when the young girl somehow miraculously sensed that somebody was approaching.
It was very effective though and after barely ten minutes they found themselves on virtually the opposite edge of Newmarket.
Marcii felt as though she’d been on the run all day, and as if to confirm her thoughts the sun began to slowly dip its weary head in the sky, though it was barely visible through the still fortified cloud.
They had done it.
Miraculously, she was clear of Newmarket.
Marcii turned to the young orphan to thank her, but Vixen’s expression remained unchanged even still.
“You must go.” Vixen told her, before Marcii had chance to even draw breath. “They will not stop. Tyran cannot stop. They will come looking for you.”
“Go where?” Marcii questioned.
Vixen glanced over her shoulder and raised her hand to point, indicating just below the setting sun.
“West.” She replied. “Go to Ravenhead.”
Marcii looked around, astonished, seemingly only just then gathering her bearings. Vixen had been leading her west the whole time. That’s why they’d cut through almost the very centre of Newmarket.
That had been Vixen’s plan all along.
But, how…?
Marcii turned back to the young orphan, adamant that she was going to demand answers. But, unsurprisingly, just when there were a dozen and more questions to be asked, Vixen was gone.
A sudden sound distracted Marcii from her confusion and her frustration as a vast cheer echoed out across the town. She turned to see the masses gathered in the square bobbing up and down as they shouted and screamed, applauding the massacre of her family.
The three poles were well and truly secured in the ground now and the three figures that were undoubtedly her parents and her sister looked to be bound to them, with dozens of bales of hay strewn at their feet.
Marcii already knew it was too late.
She couldn’t bear to watch.
But, for some strange reason, at the same time, she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Three more figures were handed what looked to be flaming torches by Tyran’s enforcers as they stepped forward from the crowd.
By now the crowds had fallen silent, or, at the very least, Marcii could not hear them.
Yet another figure stepped from the crowd and onto centre stage, passing by the three torchbearers like a ghost.
This figure wore a hooded priest’s robe and moved with stiff, reluctant fear, though also an unmistakeable determination.
It was Alexander.
He stepped forward to face Tyran, keeping the promise he had made to the young Dougherty.
Enforcers swarmed like vultures.
Marcii’s breath caught in her throat.
Chapter Twenty
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, for she was too far away, but Marcii could see Alexander’s hands weaving through the air as he spoke. His actions looked defensive and he moved slowly and purposefully. Though she could not hear his words, she didn’t need to; she knew they were pleading.
The blow came quickly, for the enforcer that struck the priest moved seemingly quicker than Marcii’s eyes could even follow.
He drove his enormous, plated fist square into Alexander’s face.
The poor, sinful priest didn’t even raise his hands to defend himself, for he had not seen the strike coming. He was sent reeling back to the floor, unconscious in an instant.
That didn’t matter though, for Tyran’s enforcers didn’t beat their captives solely because they screamed and struggled. As the brutal men punched and struck and booted Alexander’s body, over and over, beating him to a pulp, the crowds roared with delight and pleasure.
There was no fight to be had.
In a matter of moments, leaving a trail of thick blood in its wake, Alexander’s limp body was dragged away so that the spectacle could continue.
For indeed, the show must go on.
The display that followed sent the crowds into cheering, whooping hysterics, and in turn curdled Marcii’s stomach to the point where she heaved and retched and fell to her knees and vomited.
First of all, after demanding information from her family and receiving no answers, for of course they knew nothing about Reaper, Tyran quickly grew tired of waiting. He swiftly ordered his victims to be tortured, for he knew the crowds would love it, and this spectacle was certainly one he wanted to draw out.
Amanda and Marcus and Ellie Dougherty were scalded and marked and scarred repeatedly; burned with red hot pokers and singed and blistered with buckets of boiling hot water, their horrific screams of agony echoed for miles and miles around.
The sound filled Marcii’s mind and awful dread surged through her, knowing that this day would haunt her until the end of her existence.
They screamed for Tyran to stop.
They screamed that they didn’t know where Marcii was hiding, or where the demon Reaper was.
They screamed their innocence.
But, naturally, they were found guilty.
Tyran set his newly enlisted torchbearers, the elderly woman, the girl, and the child, to dreadful work.
The flames took to the dry hay like a duck to water, ironically, and what followed was gruesome on a level entirely anew.
If the clouds in the scorched sky hadn’t been black before, soon they became an endless abyss. Marcii looked on as the sky raged above her head, rumbling and cracking with thunder and lightning.
Somehow even still, as Marcii watched the flames engulf her helpless family, that wasn’t the worst part.
As their skin scalded and sagged and melted from their very bones, dripping down and onto the smouldering hay, there was something else altogether that set horror apart from the rest.
Still Marcii could not tear her eyes away, even as she watched them die. But eventually, with her vivid gaze brimming with defiant tears and her body shaking furiously, it was at last when the smell of her family’s burning human flesh reached her nostrils that Marcii could bear it no longer.
She collapsed to her knees and vomited violently, bringing up whatever she’d had left in her stomach and then some, and even still she hacked and gagged and choked on the smell of her own scorched flesh and blood.
As soon as she could stand, in fact, as soon as she could breathe, Marcii scrambled away and fled to the west, towards Ravenhead. She practically threw herself in the direction of the setting sun, hidden so permanently behind the black clouds.
She was so desperate to escape from all of this.
The rumbling thunder and the crackling lighting brought with it the driving rain of a storm and within minutes Marcii was soaked through to the skin.
But she pressed on, knowing she could not stop.
Not wanting to stop.
Nonetheless, even between the rumbles of the booming thunder echoing so relentlessly above, Marcii could still hear the fresh chants of the people of Newmarket.
They grew louder and louder by the second, as the screams from her family fell quieter and quieter.
“HUNT THE WITCH!! HUNT THE WITCH!!” They cried.
And so continued the first Dreadhunt, well underway, with a tyrant at its helm.
“KILL MARCII!! KILL MARCII!!”
Chapter Twenty-One
To find yourself without frien
ds or family, or even companions, in a storm such as the one that Marcii endured that night, is for certain a most lonesome place to be.
But it wasn’t simply that she was alone.
Marcii was outcast, hunted and on the run.
She felt the weight of those burdens all too heavily upon her as she fled from the certainty of torture and execution.
Her life would never be the same again.
And yet, even though she had fought so hard and somehow managed to escape with her life, she had not been able to save her family, or those poor women, or Alexander, or even Malorie.
And what of Vixen, she suddenly thought to herself.
What if Tyran found out Vixen had helped her escape?
He wouldn’t think twice about killing her just because she was an orphan, and Marcii knew it.
Dejection set in.
She wanted nothing more than to just lay down and give up.
But she could not stop.
By this point Marcii was stumbling blindly through the darkness, for the sun had well and truly set by now. She was simply hoping and praying that she was heading in a general westerly direction.
Sighing heavily, she found herself thinking all of a sudden of Kaylm.
She wished he was there with her.
He would have known which way to go for certain. He would have known what to do. He would have a plan.
If Marcii was honest with herself though, which by this point there seemed no reason for her not to be, she didn’t miss him for those reasons.
No.
She missed him simply because he was her Kaylm.
He always had been.
Not any more though, she suddenly realised.
That horrible truth struck the young Dougherty like a blow from a great hammer.
Shivering, both from the cold and from her looming depression, Marcii strove onwards through the wind and the rain.
She was far too tired and far too traumatised and the weather was far too bad for her to tell with any certainty if she actually heading even remotely the right way, but she knew she could not stop.