“About… What’s going on?”
“That thing that attacked us at the flat, there’s more of them.”
“Where are you?”
“They’re waiting for me. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t matter. Where…”
“You gotta help me,”
“Neve, calm down, I’ll fix it, just tell me…”
“Shit, he’s coming.” And the line went dead. Dan and Gabe stared at me. No one spoke or moved for what felt like an absurdly long time. I made a decision.
“I’ve got to go,” I leapt up from the chair and headed for the door.
“Go where?” Dan was panicked, he’d heard Neve’s panicked voice too. Saw the concern on my face. Everyone trailed after me as I bolted down the stairs in a mad rush and into the lounge, looking for something. “Tell us what’s happenin’.”
“Talk to us, Cait,” joined Gabe, as I ransacked the room.
“Where is it?” I couldn’t see it.
“What?”
“The piece of horn.” Neither of them understood, but Brimm did. He let out a long hiss. “The horn I pulled out of my leg?”
“Kitchen. Why?” Asked Dan. It was on the counter, folded into a piece of kitchen towel.
“Brimsssstone,” Brimm hissed, jumping off Dan’s shoulder and onto the work top. I acknowledged his perceptiveness with a nod, pulling a small kitchen knife from the cutlery drawer.
“What you plannin’ on doin’?” Dan was worried. I felt bad I didn’t have time to sit down and explain everything. Gabe would have to fill him in, if he had any semblance of what I was doing, that is. I used the blade to scrape the edge of the horn into the paper making a powder before pocketing the larger piece, thinking I may need it later.
“I go too,” Brimm blinked as I held the knife to the tip of my thumb, drawing blood.
“Go where? Cait, is this how you?”
“Yeah,” I grabbed Brimm and plonked him onto my shoulder. I looked Dan straight in the face and said, “I’ll be back,” in a total deadpan voice that Arnold would’ve been proud of. I gave Dan a cheesy wink to add to the action-hero sarcasm and then ground my bleeding thumb deep into the horn residue.
*****
Searing pain tore through my body and when I opened my eyes I was back in hell, but no longer in Simon’s kitchen; instead, I was in a field that seemed to be miles from anywhere, and it was smoldering; thick smoke billowed into the gray sky.
A rustle from behind alerted me to Brimm. He slinked around me, keeping low; he was back to his magnificent Hell form, that of a big, cat-sized wingless dragon, still with that distinguished horn on his snout. He hissed. I swear it looked like he had a huge grin on his face. Maybe he was glad to be home. I’d transformed too. My demon form was beginning to feel comfortable, like it was part of me. I checked everything worked, feeling my fangs inside my mouth with my tongue, gripping my talons into a tight fist, and swishing my thick tail behind me. My clothes were back to being ripped at the seams, which was totally annoying. They were the only good set of threads I had left. Everything was in working order, except the overwhelming depression and I felt ill. Every jump took its toll, chipping away at the health of my body and soul “This is the last time: kill Mary and get out of here. I’m never going through that again.”
“Cait needs plan,” Brimm reminded me.
“Yeah, about that,” I hadn’t gone there completely empty-handed. I did have an idea. “Fire. That seemed to hurt the Hunters last time. I need to learn how to control this fire thing I can do.”
“Brimm show Cait,” he hissed.
“Great. I hoped you’d say that.”
The field might’ve been smoldering, but it didn’t feel like we were in any danger. We were in a wide expanse of grassland, maybe old farmland, but there was no one else around. I could see the city in the distance; decaying tower blocks and the menacing claw-like cranes at the docks. It was going to be a fair walk until we reached the center.
“Can you teach me on the way?”
“Yesssss,” Brimm was galloping by my side as I jogged, “Cait must focusss emotion.” I clenched my hands into fists and then hit out at an imaginary foe. Nothing happened of course, other than me looking like a tool. We stopped at a burnt-out car slap bang in the middle of nowhere. Brimm might not’ve been affected by the thin air, but it was defeating me. I could hardly breath. “Anger, hate, hurt,” Brimm reiterated.
“Frustration? Will that do?” I punched the air and was surprised when a small puff of flame shot out.
“Yessss,” Brimm was pleased. “More.”
Hoping it wasn’t a fluke, I used the burnt-out car as target practice, and if this were a movie, now is when you’d be watching the training montage being played over a Bonnie Tyler track. Brimm got me to pull focus, not on creating the fire, but on manifesting emotion. It didn’t take much. I’d been through a lot lately. Sleep deprivation, hunger, constant worry, dealing with attack upon attack, I was already a pent-up ball of angst.
“We’re going on holiday after this Brimm,” I joked, blasting a wing mirror off the car. He just blinked at me. Probably never heard of a holiday; I was beginning to feel the same. I was going to take him somewhere after all of this was over. Maybe to the highlands, everyone loves the highlands, there are castles and hills and… other stuff. It felt like I didn’t have time to hang about. For all I knew, Neve was somewhere under attack. I had to get to Mary as fast as possible. I think I got the gist of the fire magic. “I’ll practice more on the way,” I hoped there were more banged-up cars; it had been fun seeing them burn. By the time we’d passed through residential areas and were on the edge of town, I’d learned how to conjure fire, hold it, and throw it. But it was short bursts of flame. I didn’t yet feel there was much power behind it. Brimm assured me that I’d improve. I only hoped I’d learned enough to take out some of the Hunters.
“I’m going in alone,” I told Brimm when we were close.
“Bad idea,” Brimm hissed.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But there’s something I need you to do.” He paced around me and then let out snort and shook his head, which I took to mean ‘ok.’
Chapter Seven
I reached the towering red sandstone building on the corner of Renfield Street: Mary’s HQ. By all accounts, it looked deserted. Not a single person in sight. I stood right in the middle of the road, looking straight up at it, and shouted at the top of my lungs, “What do you call an Irish woman with one leg shorter than the other?” It was dead silent. I mean Hell wasn’t exactly a hubbub of noise at the best of times, heck, I half-expected tumbleweed to roll past. No one replied to the joke, so I shouted out the punch line, “Eileen!”
Shadows appeared at a couple of the windows, more shapes appeared in my peripheral vision. Hunters. A net curtain twitched far above. Mary had heard me. I hoped she’d liked the crack. I mean, with her using a walking stick and all. The curtain quickly dropped back into place and the shadows revealed themselves. Several Hunters appeared from around the corner of buildings; all armed with heavy wire nets and killer tridents. I didn’t have time to wonder where they got their weapons from as the whooshing noise of nets being cast filled the air. I took a couple of steps back. It was four on one, and those were just the ones outside. There were likely more inside coming for me, too. I heard a faint rumble behind me. There was no backing out now. It was time to put Brimm’s training into practice.
Leaving a trail of destruction behind me, I burst through the last door at the end of the hall. It was Mary’s office all right. The walls were lined with shelves housing the soul jars. Some full; some empty. She was standing behind a large desk over by the window, walking stick in hand, flanked by two massive Hunters. The tooth necklace hung around her scrawny, wrinkled neck. A large, empty jar was sitting on the desk. My talons flicked open, igniting a ball of fire in each hand. I was pretty impressed with myself, I can tell you. Mary twitched.
“
Don’t move a muscle,” I seethed. The sight of her made my blood boil and the ball of flames each extended into a three-foot blast of fire. I literally had like a flamethrower emanating from each of my hands! But Mad Mary wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t have to move either. She must’ve ordered her beasts telepathically, as both of them sprang into action, attacking me on two different fronts. The attempt was futile. They practically melted on impact with the blazing infernos I was producing. I reduced them into smoking piles of ash.
“Time o’ the month is it lass?” Mary smirked, seemingly not too bothered about the demise of her bodyguards. “This fuss you’re creating’s not goin’ to get ye anywhere. There’s nothing you can do to stop me from collecting my due, you know that, don’t you.”
“You think I’d be here if I really thought that?” and I blasted a shot of flame in her direction.
“You don’t scare me. There’s nothing you can do to harm me. That’s part of the enduring curse that’s been laid upon me.”
She eyed the jar in front of her, revealing her intentions. Before she had a chance to do anything, I knocked it clean to the floor with one fell swoop. It smashed, rendering it useless. Mary staggered back, slightly unnerved. I looked around at all the other empty jars lined up on the shelves. They were all potential weapons she could use against me.
“I’ve been doing a little research on you Mary,” I said, walking along the line of jars, keeping one eye on the sly bitch. “Seems you were right, you did make quite the name for yourself,” I tipped one of the jars over the edge of a shelf. It smashed on to the rotten wooden floor.
“If it’s a revoke on the contract ye want, it can’t be done. A deal’s a deal,” she bleated like a broken record.
“You’ve surely moved up in the world,” I purposely looked the place over. “This place is so much nicer than that dump in Barnhill.” Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that I knew stuff about her. I tipped another jar over. It shattered loudly at my feet. “That was no place to be bringing up a young lad now, was it?” I walked along the shelf, tipping one jar after the other, and as each one broke, so did something inside Mary. She started to look more and more like a feeble old woman. “Those cramped conditions, barely a scrap to eat, working his poor fingers to the bone.”
“You leave my boy out of this,”
“You mean Connor?”
“Don’t you dare mention his name,” she screamed. That riled her.
“You’ve got to feel sorry for him. No father, psycho mother like you, too busy putting pillows over the faces of defenseless invalids to pay the bills.”
“Think yer all dat with yer fancy fire hands? You’ve got no idea how to do a hard day’s work, day after day, and to get nothin’ back.”
“What was it you owed all that money for anyway? Drink? Gambling?”
“How’d you know all of this?” She recovered her demeanor.
“Met a relative of yours.”
“That’s impossible. I have no family.”
“Not true. You see Connor didn’t die.” Her eyes widened. “He wasn’t taken or stolen from you, he was placed in a hospital ward to help him recover from dysentery. You were just too busy topping people off or just plain nuts to realize it.”
“You’re lying! You’re a dirty, lying slut. Making up lies to hurt me, well it won’t work. Nothing can hurt me here.”
“Not even this?” I pulled out the St. Christopher that belonged to Connor. The one she’d scribbled an inscription on the back off. The silver pendant spun in the air, hitting the light. She was transfixed.
“Give it to me,” She tried to grab it, but I whipped it just out of reach. She was trying to get a better look. I held the pendant steady, so she could see that it was his and not one I’d just picked up at a souvenir shop on route. “Where’d you get it?”
“Like I said. A relative.”
“You’re lyin’.”
“I’m not,” I looked her in the eye. It was passed down the family line. A cherished heirloom,” I softened my tact. “Turns out you leaving was the best thing that could’ve happened to him.” She looked at me, her bloodshot eyes were glassy with tears.
“Really?” She’d softened. I was talking to a mother now, not a soul-collecting mad woman.
“Yeah. Adopted by a really nice middle-class family. Was well educated. Did really well in business. Textiles I think.”
“Oh, my boy, my Connor. Was he happy?”
“Yes. He had a great life, a loving family, and many children.” The tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Please?” she held her hand out for the pendant.
“An eye for an eye, Mary. I want yours in exchange,” I nodded towards her string of crooked teeth. She sighed, tightly closing her eyes for a moment, surrendering.
“I thought I’d killed him,” she confessed, untying the necklace from the back of her neck. “I thought I was being punished for being a bad mother, for not doing enough to protect him,” she let the necklace slide into her hand, and it looked like the weight of the world had lifted from her shoulders. She held it out to me and I snatched it quickly, in case this was an act, and just a trick to trap me. It wasn’t. I placed the pendant into the palm of her open hands and she clasped it to her heart. Hands trembling, she turned it over in her grubby hands, fingering the primitive heart and letter ‘M’ she’d scratched into it all those years ago.
Cait Murphy’s story continues with Awaken - coming soon.
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Acknowlegements
A big thank you to our friend Rosalyne Cowie, who proofread this short, and for her encouragement and feedback. Thanks also to our cover designer Ravenborn, who can be found on Facebook.
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