The Red Witch

by Katerina Martinez

  It had been the mundaneness of the situation that made Damien go cold and avert his eyes, and it was the mundaneness of Frank’s nose-bleed that made him want to hurl upon having seen it. Anyone can have a tube stuck in their neck and anyone can get a nose-bleed, after all.

  Two aspirins, a cigarette, and a blood-soaked tea-towel later, Frank seemed to have returned to his usual self.

  “You alright?” Damien asked.

  “Fine and fucking dandy,” Frank said, “How the fuck are you?”

  “Hey,” Aaron said, “Ease up, Frank.”

  “Fine, but only because you asked so nicely.”

  Frank took a sip of water from the cup Damien had left at the table next to him. The cup had bloody fingerprints on it now, and Damien tried not to look at it.

  “What happened?” Damien finally asked. “We heard noises—thumps, bumps—things got crazy down here.”

  “Crazy?” Aaron asked, “It sounded like a whole damn football team was running practice up there.”

  “I told you it would get weird,” Frank said.

  Aaron squatted, grabbed Frank’s collar—where the neck meets the shoulder—, and stared at him. Damien stood, frozen for a moment, his eyes going from Aaron, to Frank’s neck, to the cup with the bloody print on it.

  “What did you do?” Aaron asked.

  “What I did,” Frank said, unfazed by Aaron’s size or the intensity of his gaze, “Isn’t Scooby’s concern.”

  “Listen to me and listen carefully. The last time I felt this way, the last time I… sensed what I just sensed was during the time when that thing was trying to possess Amber.”

  Frank fell silent. His eyes went to Damien. Maybe he was looking for a nod of reassurance, but Damien didn’t have any for him. Hell, he needed reassurances himself. He had known Frank’s magick came from a dark place, but he had never looked into that dark place before. He wanted to know too.

  A long sigh escaped Frank’s lips. “Grab me a beer,” he said. When Aaron and Damien looked at him like he was crazy, he said, “I need to be relaxed if I’m going to relay the information I’ve got floating around inside my head.”

  Damien nodded, headed for the fridge, and grabbed a cold bud. He popped the cap with the bottle opener magnet tagged to the fridge and brought the beer to Frank. When he handed it over their fingers met, and Damien felt a jolt when they did. The sudden snap of electricity made him recoil and put his fingers in his mouth like a child might have done.

  Frank didn’t seem to have been hit with the jolt, but he looked up at Damien from over his bottle of beer with surprise in his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Damien took his fingers out of his mouth and looked at them. His fingertips were red and they stung like he’d just touched a hotplate, but the redness was fading fast. He nodded. “Yeah, just a jolt,” he said.

  Frank nodded too. “Alright,” he said, “While I was under, I saw some stuff.”

  “While you were under?” Aaron asked. He had been quiet for some time, but he was standing now and seemed less tense; like a guard dog, sitting on its haunches with its tail curled around its legs. Still dangerous and ready to strike at a moment’s notice, but docile enough.

  “I… went to see a friend who lives inside me.”

  “Don’t make us play the question game,” Aaron said—the dog snarled, teeth bared, and went back to being docile.

  “Last year,” Frank said, “I had a conversation with Amber about demons. She was worried I would get hurt, that the thing would come and get me like it almost got her. I told her I would be fine, that I had methods of protecting myself against them, but I wasn’t specific. I also lied to her.”

  “Lied?” Damien asked, brow furrowing.

  “I told her no one could keep a demon as a pet… that anyone who makes deals with them is looking for trouble, but that wasn’t strictly true.”

  “No.” Damien shook his head. “No, you can’t expect me to believe—”

  Frank tilted his gaze toward Damien, cocked his head, and grinned. “Surprised?”

  “Are you telling me you… you have a demon as a… a pet?” Aaron asked.

  “Not exactly. I like to think of it more as a work colleague; someone I don’t necessarily want to see every day but is there nonetheless.”

  The skin on Damien’s arms began to prickle and break out into goose-flesh. He didn’t like what he was hearing, but a part of him had known Frank was capable of something like this. Frank’s Magick was cruel and unforgiving. He remembered, now, the first time he saw Frank use it; they were in the woods, fighting the hooded men. All Frank had to do was touch one of them and they went down, screaming and bawling like frightened children.

  “Why?” Damien asked. “Why are you close to a creature that almost possessed one of our friends?”

  “In his defense, he had nothing to do with her possession. In fact, I have him under control most of the time… right here.”

  Frank fished a necklace from out of his shirt and displayed it. A simple brass pentacle hanging from a black leather throng. Frank had had it for as long as Damien could remember. He never took it off. Not even to sleep. A word suddenly came to Damien’s lips; one he had read in a book once. Probably one of Amber’s.

  “Reliquary,” he said.

  Frank nodded. “Good work, Freddy. Now how about we stop grilling me for how’s and we start talking about what’s?”

  “What’s a reliquary?” Aaron asked.

  “A thing I keep bad shit locked away in until I need it,” Frank said.

  “And you have a… demon in there?”

  “I think somebody deserves a Rooby Rack,” Frank said in a mocking tone, and Aaron didn’t seem to like it. Damien put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder, gave him a hard look, and Aaron backed down.

  “C’mon, Frank. Quit messing around and just tell us what happened up there,” Damien said.

  Frank took another sip of beer. “I think I saw the future,” he said, calmly. Another swig. “See, that’s one thing demons can do that we can’t, and if you ask them nicely enough—or you beat it out of them with a stick—they are only happy to part with the information you need.”

  “The future,” Damien said, incredulous. Aaron had fallen in beside him now, and they were both looking at Frank with their arms folded.

  “I saw a church,” Frank said, “A big one. A river. I saw an unkindness of ravens… a girl in a red cloak. I saw a dark figure, too. And something else.” He looked at Damien now. “I saw the Dark Fire.”

  Dark Fire.

  His heart started to beat rapidly at the mere mention of the thing. He swallowed once. Twice. By the third time, he was pulling down air. He went for Frank’s beer, took a swig, and put the bottle down on the table, following the motion by quickly sitting down on one of the available chairs. The room was spinning; his heart pounding in his ears, his fists, and his neck. And the beat seemed to say dark-fire; dark-fire; dark-fire.

  “You… saw… it?” Damien asked. It was like he couldn’t catch his breath, but he had to. He had no choice but to rally and come back to the conversation. “And you say this was the future?”

  Frank nodded.

  “You guys are going to have to spell this out in terms I can understand,” Aaron said, “You forget I’m not a witch like you guys.”

  “No,” Frank said, “You’re much more than that. You’re a werewolf. In fact,” he added, standing, “You’re not just any werewolf either; you’re the Grey Wolf. The beast to our Belle; the Edward to our Bella; the Clyde to our Bonnie. You’re special, baby.”

  Aaron stiffened and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, “But… what does all of that mean? Dark Fire? The church? Can’t you put any of it together and give us something we can work with?”

  Frank shook his head. “No,” he said, “Something was blocking me.”

  “Blocking you?” Damien said, standing. He had regained himself, now; his heart settling into a quieter rhythm. He t
hought of Lily, then, and the dream he had just that very night. Then he thought of Natalie and remembered the smell of her hair; honey and cinnamon. They were random thoughts that seemed to have a pacifying effect on his nerves, and Damien welcomed them.

  “More than ever I believe Amber is under demonic oppression,” Frank said.

  “Again?” Aaron asked, his jaw clenching.

  Frank nodded. “I believe there’s another demon at play here, one more powerful than the imp I have locked away in my little chamber of secrets.”

  “How can you know for sure?”

  “Because it told me over a cocktail. No, witch, because it tried to kill me upstairs.”

  A great silence descended upon the room. In it, Damien could hear the steady tap of the empty clothes line against the supporting metal pole, he could hear birds crowing in the distance—an unkindness of ravens—, and the Stevenson baby crying next door. They had had the baby only a few months ago and were still very much in the initial stages of parenthood; the stage where no one gets any sleep besides the baby.

  “Should we be worried?” Aaron asked.

  “No,” Frank said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture, “I managed to fight it off. I think I may have even gotten a message to Amber, but whatever she got probably didn’t sound much like a message.”

  “So you couldn’t get through to her at all?” Damien asked.

  “Haven’t you been listening?”

  “And you’re sure a demon is blocking her from receiving communications?”

  “Again… have you not been listening?”

  Damien thought for a moment. His eyes went from Frank, to Aaron, to the cup with the bloody print, to that scene in the Exorcist that made his stomach churn, then to the back yard window. His heart was starting to beat quickly again, but it was excitement that had gotten him going now and not dread or fear. The kind of excitement one feels when they’ve just discovered their usefulness, their place in the grand design.

  “Damien?” Aaron asked.

  “I know how we can reach her,” he said.

  CHAPTER 22

  During the day, the Berlin Cathedral was a tourist attraction no different to any of the other museums on the island. It shared space with a Roman, Egyptian and a Greek exhibit, each housed in a dedicated, toweringly large building of archaic construction. But the Berlin Cathedral stood supreme and above all. You could see it for miles.

  In many ways, the island resembled a college campus. The grounds were green and littered with fountains, benches, shrubs and trees. On sunny days the grounds were filled with students and tourists sitting on the benches having lunch, reading books, or talking about the museums they had just visited. But on rainy days like these the grounds were deserted, and the only movement came from the dual lane streets cutting across the island between its shortest points.

  Figuring it best to leave the car where it was, parked at the foot of the Cathedral, we decided to head out and make a mad dash for the cover of the Cathedral’s gorgeous arches. The rain was hitting hard now, somehow harder than it had been a minute ago it seemed, and we had to run to avoid getting soaked, but we did anyway. My copper hair was plastered to my face, my black jeans were heavy with wet, and my Dr. Marten’s were squishy inside, but we had made it to the front of the building. And it was closed.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What now?” Luther asked while padding down his jacket and dusting heavy droplets of water off it.

  Collette brushed wet strands of black hair out of her face and slicked it over her forehead until it fell limp behind her back. “Ze museum is closed today. We use ze side door.”

  We had to circle around the building to get to the side door, but the walkway around was covered leaving the rain to claw at our feet without finding much purchase.

  When we arrived at the tall, brown, oaken door with the gold crucifix on it, Collette wasted no time in grabbing the handle, turning it, and pushing the door open. It gave way with a loud croak and a moment later we were inside, standing in what looked like a library. I kept looking back as the door closed behind me, wondering whether I had left something behind or forgotten something in the car. I wanted to go to it, but I didn’t. There was much to see in this library and curiosity called.

  The center of the room was clear save for two oaken tables and a number of chairs, but the walls were lined with tall bookshelves filled with dusty old hardbacks, most of them written in German, many of them in Latin; each of them curious.

  Just as soon as my fingers settled upon the spine of a book called the Einheitsübersetzung and I started to pull, Collette whispered harshly in my direction, drawing my eyes and ears.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Now is not ze time for books, Amber,” she said. Her frown-line line had appeared between her eyes. This meant she was serious.

  I let the book go and it slipped out from under my fingers and back into its place with a thud. It was a German translation of the Catholic Bible, and I didn’t want to read it—heck, I couldn’t even read German!—I only wanted to open it and feel the pages.

  “Why are we whispering, anyway?” I asked, whispering, “Aren’t we expected?”

  Collette’s frown-line disappeared. She arched an eyebrow, straightened her back, and said—in a normal voice, yet still low voice that bounced off the walls—“Yes, I suppose you are right.”

  “It feels like we should be quiet in here, though, doesn’t it,” Luther said, “A library and a church; double silence.”

  I nodded. “I haven’t been in a church like this one since my last trip to Europe.”

  I could still recall the Catedral de La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, with its bony, unfinished exterior and its magnificently large and foreboding interior, like I had been there yesterday. Remembering the way I felt when I walked through its main doors and into its vault-like insides—like a significantly insignificant thing—still gave me the tingles. I had asked Padre Perez about that feeling and he had said that we were all both utterly insignificant and also entirely significant in the grand scheme of things.

  He had told me that this was true for the pessimist; to him, a human being isn’t even a speck of dust against the grandeur of the cosmos. We’re the specks that live on the specks, and are thus insignificant. But from the point of view of someone with love in their hearts, we were entirely significant. Because in that ever expanding, incomprehensible black ocean we call the universe, we are unique. There is no other like us anywhere.

  “Ask the scientist or the theologian, and they will both tell you the same thing,” Padre Perez had said with his hands clasped by his lap. “Science tells us that our DNA will never be one hundred percent identical to any other; meaning that there is, never has been, and never will be, another you or me on this or any other planet. Religion teaches us the same of our immortal souls; each was made unique by the hand of a divine creator, and no two are entirely alike.”

  Only, what if there are?

  I gave Luther a sidelong glance, remembering what he and Collette had said about Linezka and how this had all happened before. Had there been another Red Witch before me? And if that was true, what did it mean for my soul? Was I truly unique or part of some kind of karmic defense system designed to prevent greedy witches from achieving too much power?

  Collette padded silently toward the door to the adjoining room or hall. She pulled it open slightly, peered down the crack, and then opened it further. The door hinges moaned in protest at the movement, and the sound made me wince, but when nothing happened for a while—when no monks armed with flails or German police came to drag us three witches out of such a Holy place—, we stepped through into the corridor.

  Dim, grey light was falling in from the rear window overlooking the river at the Cathedral’s back. It was enough to illuminate the listlessly hovering dust motes and highlight them with a shining aura, making each one seem like it was alive with purpose. That was the view to my immediate left. To the right
, the marble and stone corridor stretched on until it hit a wall and then forked into a T. There was a door at the end of the corridor, where the hall angled to the left, but it was locked.

  “Where do you suppose they’re waiting?” I asked.

  “I suspect zey know we are here,” Collette said, “Perhaps zey are trying to determine whether we are zeir guests or intruders.”

  “Intruders?” Luther asked, “Why would they think that?”

  “Zey are on high alert, monsieur. Ze beast is afoot, and he is a deceiver, remember?”

  “Ah, yes; that… quite.”

  So much British in such a short sentence, I thought, smiling.

  When we turned left at the T, we heard them. Footfalls. Maybe two pairs, though by the way the cathedral’s halls distorted sounds and threw them off walls, there could as well have been three hundred pairs of footsteps coming our way.

  We halted and waited until eventually someone turned a right-angled corner and headed our way; a woman. No older than thirty three, she was wearing a warm green coat, a cream turtle-neck sweater, and dark jeans tucked inside a pair of brown, knee-high boots. Her hair was a light, earthy brown, her eyes the blue-grey of an overcast sky, and if the dark, olive tone of her skin didn’t suggest her Spanish nationality, her accent did.

  Nothing about her appearance suggested she was a witch, but then I wasn’t exactly wearing a cloak and cowl either.

  “Collette,” she said, in English, “It has been too long.”

  Collette smiled, went in for a hug, and the pair embraced. It was the kind of hug one shares with a friend who they haven’t seen in a while, but there was an undertone of sadness to the joy of reconnecting. I got the impression they had both been through something difficult together, something that once caused them great pain. Their auras screamed the need to talk about it, but neither of them did.

  “Amber, Luther,” Collette said, “Zis is Helena; a good friend of mine.”