She’s officially crazy. Not the harmless, witchy crazy that I’ve seen in everyone when I’d arrived, but the scary, murderous kind of crazy that made your skin crawl. She’s going to kill me and sacrifice my blood to a horde of ‘shades’. She killed Cray and she’s not even sorry, I can tell just looking at her that she doesn’t feel anything.
“Why would you do this, all this for a spirit that doesn’t even want sacrifices? Campion said-”
“Campion says there are no good and evil Gods or Goddesses, just energy and good or bad witches,” Sophia says, rolling her eyes, “in new-age, hippy terms, yeah, that’s true. But further than that? All those devils and demons and monsters were based on actual beings. Beings that came from the astral into our world, darker things than manmade Gods.”
She kneels beside me and leans very close to me. With her face only an inch from mine I can see beneath the layer of make-up plastered onto her skin. Her face is old somehow, like badly preserved leather or rawhide. She smells like copper and burning hair.
“Where do you think I came from?” she whispers, “where did you think the magic came from? I mean, if it was this easy, don’t you think everyone would be doing it? No...there has to be a spark to get the fire going and all those Gods and demons and sprites, all those stories of human men and women cavorting with powerful beings, bearing half-blood children that married mortals and had quarter immortals...on and on. You might be 99% boring, useless, human...but there’s a tiny bit of something useful in you, ‘Stone’.”
My body shudders, there’s something so not right about her. Aside from the murderous rant she’s spewing, there’s something...inhuman, about her eyes. “Sophia?”
She, it, shakes her head slowly from side to side. “Sophia hasn’t been around for quite a while I’m afraid,” she sits up and taps the knife against my chest, making me jump. “Where would I be without bored, stupid teenagers messing around on the astral? No, Sophia’s parents ignored her and she decided to experiment with some magic to get their attention, just like all those before her who helped my family cross over – she didn’t know what she was doing.”
I should scream, I should try and remember a spell, anything to get away from this...thing, that’s in front of me, but I know it’s useless. She would stop me, kill me and Cray is dead. Still, there’s a tiny part of me that wants to know – what’s the part of me that she wants? Is she telling the truth, that I’m a distant descendant of a creature like her, a God from another plane?
“Family?”
“The forty – the others like me that have come to this place, thanks to the unwary and the foolish. Satan, Culsu, Dzoavits, Ravan – they all came before me, in some parts of the world they ruled. They were feared and worshipped, before they were tricked or forced back or trapped, leaving illegitimate spawn behind.”
“And you’re going to bring them back?” I can’t believe I’m talking to a shade, some kind of...God. My only hope is to keep it talking, maybe distract it, even though Cray is gone, even though there’s no hope, I know I still have to fight. I have to try.
Sophia’s mouth pulls into an ugly sneer. “They were stupid, foolish, and they paid the price. No, I’m not bringing them back. I have the life forces of forty of my own witches, enough power to last forty human lifetimes; lifetimes of being worshipped, growing stronger. My brothers and sisters will rot on our plane and I will rule this one with the power of their descendents.” She clamps a hand around my neck, cutting off my air and placing the knife against my pulse. “Story time’s over Stone.”
My eyes prickle with panicked tears. I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learnt about magic, about defending myself. I just ball up all the energy in my body into one big, bright red punch and launch it at Sophia.
She staggers backwards and as she does so, the knife skitters away. I’ve just scrabbled to my feet when Sophia dives at me. We crash to the floor and she knocks my head against the boards once, twice, my vision swimming. I’m surprised that she isn’t stronger, but then again, whatever’s possessing her is using her muscles, her body to attack me.
Her grasping hand finds my throat again, she raises her other hand to catch the knife as it flies back to her. The blade comes swinging down towards my heart. I act on instinct, grabbing her hand and turning the knife towards her, away from me. There’s a horrible, thick, wet feeling that goes up my arm. Blood, hot and wet on my hand. Then she falls off of me, onto the floor. I let go of the knife, which goes with her, stuck straight into her stomach. Sophia gurgles, blood falls from her mouth onto the dusty floor.
I scramble up and look down at her helplessly. What the fuck have I done? There’s blood all over my hands, dripping from my fingers. It’s flooding out onto the floor, faster than I would have thought possible. I take a shaky step away from the body.
Sophia’s eyes open and she lunges for my foot, grabbing me and sending me sprawling, screaming, into the pool of blood.
“Bitch,” she spits blood, her eyes lifeless, her face moving like a puppet’s. Her hands are like claws as she pulls herself up my struggling body, pausing only to wrench the knife out of her belly. I scream and struggle but the knife sinks into my chest, sending pain through every nerve.
Sophia, or the thing that’s wearing her corpse, crows in triumph, grabbing the jar from the dusty floor. She twists the lid off and holds it up.
“Try and hold on, you should at least live to see this,” she says.
My body is shaking, my fingers going cold. I wonder if this is me going into shock. The knife moves every time I breathe and hurts all over again, I can hardly think. Sophia is moving the jar to my side, to gather my blood. I swipe out with my cold hand. The jar spills, Sophia roars and I grab the slick glass, my bloody fingers dripping as I do the only thing I can do to save my life: my only choices are death, or finishing the ritual that Sophia’s demon has killed for.
Pinned to the floor I bring the jar of blood to my lips and take a drink; the congealed blood floods my mouth, pouring across my cheek and into my hair, goes up my nose and makes me choke.
I gag and cough, Sophia’s hand closes around my throat and I hear her screaming. The knife is wrenched from my flesh and I feel it slice into me again, again. The ceiling above dissolves into shadow, Sophia’s white, furious face is screaming over mine, its huge dark mouth open, ready to swallow me whole.
Then it’s gone.
I sit up and see Sophia in a huddle on the floor, her body thrown there like a ragdoll. I can’t get up, even sitting is agonising. Sophia, blood smeared over her face, gapes at me.
“No,” she says faintly, and I swear I can see another set of jaws behind her teeth. Another mouth in the darkness, open in dismay. “No!”
I raise my blood covered hand, sagging to one side without its support. There’s something scorching in my chest, like a ball of coals all burning white hot. The heat is too much, it shoots down my arm and into my hand, like I’m burning up and frying in my own skin. Only, it’s Sophia that turns to ash.
Her hair curls like worms on a hotplate; the smell of singeing fills the room. Her skin flutters in white ashy flakes, the muscle underneath charring and turning to powder, her bones crumbling like burning twigs. I see claws, tendrils of thick, black matter, rivulets of oil trying to escape from her mouth, her eyes. As her body falls to the floor in embers and ash the blackness bursts free, spilling over the floor and running straight for me.
I don’t think, just hold my arm up and when the living oil leaps for me, it stops in midair, held there by a wall of crackling white energy, so bright it hurts for me to look at it. The blankness, the shade that lived inside Sophia, cracks apart as the light forces its way though, evaporating into the air and leaving behind the smell of rotting meat and fresh blood.
I fall back as the light diminishes. The heat is gone, my body exhausted. I can’t feel my wounds, my mouth and nose are full of old blood. I roll weakly onto my stomach and cough until I vomit over the floor
Chapter Twenty-Two
I wake up on the floor, my face sticky with blood and saliva. It takes me a while to get my arms and legs to co-operate, but eventually I get myself upright and wipe my mouth with my sleeve. It’s truly dark now and I realise it must be night outside; there’s no light showing around the edges of the window grating.
My mouth is caked in blood and my throat is raw from screaming and coughing. Water. I need a drink of water right now. I get to my feet and take a step towards the door, stumbling over nothing because my legs are shaking. It’s only at the door that I remember Cray, my head’s so messed up that I can’t think straight. Cray. I stumble across the landing and into the room where the fetches are lying on the floor, or, where they were lying on the floor.
There’s nothing that shows what they used to be, only bits of cloth and clothes and scatterings of sawdust. I can hardly see, but I kneel down where Cray’s fetch was lying and feel around for the pieces of his clothes. It’s no good, I can’t see a thing. My eyes fill with tears. He’s gone, he’s really gone. I remember that his head is in the other room, where Sophia died right in front of me. The whole coven is gone.
“I need you,” I say to the pale flakes of sawdust, the shadows of cloth. “Come back ... please come back.”
Crawling around in the dark, what kind of witch are you?
I freeze, though I know it’s not a voice from inside the house. It’s a voice in my head, a woman’s voice, one I’ve heard before.
“Ceridwen?”
There’s no answer, but I sit back on my heels and try to pull myself together. Whether the voice is real or just my own messed up brain playing tricks on me, it’s right; I’m not going to accomplish anything crawling around in the dark. The last thing I want to do right now is use magic, but there’s no other option. I have to find the pieces of Cray, have to find a way to bring him back.
I summon my energy, only, when I let my eyes fall closed I don’t see the seven rainbow coloured chakras I’ve become accustomed to, I see loads of white lights glowing under my skin, shifting about like sunrays bouncing off the sea. Circling around by my belly is a slightly larger red orb, twisting and turning like a shark.
I know without counting that there are thirty-nine white lights, for the lives of the witches that I absorbed from the blood Sophia was hoarding. The red energy must be that of the thing that was possessing her and it makes me sick to look at it. When I try to draw up energy all the lights grow brighter and I can feel them burning inside me, the same heat I felt when I lifted my hand to incinerate Sophia. It feels wrong, but it’s all I have. I focus and raise my hand to direct the energy into a glamour, maybe I can get the light to work that way.
The candle I dropped the last time I was in the room rolls across the floor and bumps my leg. Well, that’s better than nothing. As I look at it, the candle rights itself and the wick ignites. Candles all around the room, candles that weren’t there moments ago, light themselves, filling the room with light.
I’ve never done anything like that before, or seen anyone else at the coven do it. We’d always lit candles with matches and lighters, fire wasn’t something you could just snap into existence by thinking of it. At least, that’s what I’d thought. Maybe the power I have now is different, stronger, maybe it can help me put Cray back together. There are shreds of the fetches everywhere and I know that if there’s nothing left of the flesh and blood Cray that the others must be gone too, without a trace.
Sirens blare outside and I jump. They’re not right outside but close enough to remind me that I’m trespassing in a building with blood all over the floor of one of its rooms, not to mention all over me and my clothes. I need to leave as soon as I can.
There’s no hope of gathering up all the pieces, there are too many and I’ve got no way of carrying them all. My hands shake as I look through them for the crystals that Sophia used for their eyes; they have to be important. I find all but one of them, including the ones still sewn to the head of Cray’s double in the other room. With the stones in one pocket and the fabric face folded in to another I pick up the blue exercise book. There’s blood on the cover, it’s seeped onto the pages, but I can still read the writing. I put it inside my coat and go downstairs, the candles snuff themselves out behind me.
Glamour.
I pause at the bottom of the stairs and swallow down a startled shout. It’s Ceridwen, I’m sure of it, but she doesn’t seem in the mood to answer me when I call her name again. I reluctantly pull up more that burning energy and glamour myself, getting rid of the blood on my clothes and face. It’s only as I alter the look of my bloody t-shirt that I remember my wounds; there’s nothing under the blood, no stab wounds, not even any scabs or scars.
I climb up on a box and crawl out of the basement window into the freezing night air. I have to get away from here, back to the house, to Waywood. I need to read the Grimoire all the way through and find a way to put Cray and the others back together.
The streets are mostly deserted until I get to the main road, where people are still hustling along loaded with bags of shopping. I get the time from the big clock in Cabot shopping centre, almost ten. While lying on the bloody floor I’d lost almost seven hours. Still shaky on my feet I try to avoid the loud music from the Christmas market and the bright lights of the main street. Every time someone comes within a meter of me I want to shove them away. The Christmas lights swim and blur in front of me.
At the bus station I go to the toilets and wash my face in the grubby sink. Even though my skin looks clean the water is red when it runs down the plughole. I stoop and wash my mouth out with tepid, metallic water.
On the bus back to Bath I rest my head against the window and close my eyes. I don’t want to be on a juddering bus with the few shoppers trying to get home, or the drunk guy smacking his lips while he leans against the handrail. I just want to be curled up in bed with Cray, safe from the dark and the cold. My stomach twists, if I can’t find the right spell I’ll never see him again.
It’s getting light by the time I arrive at Bath bus station. There’s a sleeping bag wrapped shaped shape huddled in the doorway beside the all night café across the street. On a bench in the station a girl in a tiny black dress is leaning heavily against her friend, whose head is hanging over the back of the seat; their legs are blotchy with cold. There’s a half-hour wait for the next bus to the campus. I’m exhausted but I can’t face sitting down and being alone with my thoughts. There’s nothing open apart from the café where I met Cray, and I know that going in there will only make me feel worse.
I pace around the station instead, avoiding the scattered remains of a take-away burger and shards of broken bottle. Pigeons skitter around on their clubbed feet. I take the Grimoire out and flip through, keeping it out of sight, though I doubt either of the girls will notice. I already know from a quick look on the bus that there’s no spell in there to give a fetch human form, let alone the memories and feelings that Cray had before Sophia disposed of him. My only hope is the Grimoire back at the house, in Sophia’s room. I stuff the book back into my coat and go to the front of the station to check the time on the digital clock.
A newspaper’s been left on the floor, torn at by wind. It takes me a moment to recognise my own school picture on the front page. It’s the one from last year, and I know that I was stoned at the time, I look it. The headline is in huge block capitals, ‘Michaela Come Home!’ I realise that the article underneath must be what Mum was working on then I astral projected myself home. It’s a letter, to me.
Dear Michaela,
I hope that you see this letter, and that when you do you see how much your Dad and I love you and want you to come home. I know we were angry with you and we said things that must have hurt you a lot, but we only reacted that way because we were worried about you.
I’m asking you, if you can, please come home, or phone us today. I promise you we’ll understand whatever it is you need to tell us. We love you and we just want you home
with us.
Love Mum and Dad.
The paper explodes in my hands, tiny flaming pieces of blackened type fluttering to the ground. I drop it with a tiny shriek. I hadn’t even been trying to do that. I watch the fire consume my picture. The two girls on the bench remain oblivious. They want me home? Now, after everything? The unfairness of it makes my skin prickle all over and the palms of my hands turn hot.
The bus chooses that moment to enter its bay and I get on. I’m so angry that I cast my blinding hex too strongly, only instead of throwing the driver backwards it makes the entire bus shudder. I hunch myself up in a seat and wrap my arms around myself, waiting for the drunk girls to stagger on and tumble into seats.
The words my Mum wrote for the paper won’t leave me alone, it’s like they’ve bored into my eyes and are chewing their way into my brain. They love me, they want me home and for the first time since they kicked me out, I can’t go back. If I get off the bus now and go home I’ll be taking the power I took from the forty shades right into my parent’s lives. I don’t even know how much power I have, only that it keeps jumping out of me. They might be able to understand a few months of homelessness, or even losing my virginity to a runaway – but telling them about magic? About demons and fetches and the fact that I have blood on my hands? No, I’d have to hide it from them and right now I can’t see any way of doing that, not if I can’t stop magic from leeching out of me.
I’m not even allowing myself to think about what the shade within Sophia said about the witches it had sacrificed; that they were descendants of other shades from the astral plane, worshipped as ancient Gods and Goddesses. I can’t handle thinking about that right now.
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