Along with her familiar lips and warm breath, something passed to Hunter. He staggered away, his limbs suddenly leaden and shaking. He looked up to Sophie, her face swimming.
“For your own good, Astley.” She said quietly.
And then he blacked out.
Chapter Twenty-two
When Hunter came to, he was lying on a hard, wooden floor. He felt very odd, the aching pain from his last injuries felt distant, like they didn’t belong to him. He groaned slightly from a pounding headache - he could feel that.
“Hunter? You awake?”
Hunter opened his eyes a fraction to see the blurry image of James hovering over him.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Thank god. When they brought you in, I thought - but it doesn’t matter now.”
Hunter fully opened his eyes and his gaze returned to its usual sharpness. Daylight poured in through the one sealed window. “How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.” James replied, helping him to sit up.
Hunter recoiled. “Jesus, what happened?”
James winced. His eyes were dark and puffy, promising some stunning bruises, dry blood spotted beneath a newly broken nose, and from the way he held himself it looked like a cracked rib or two.
“The witches. They’ve been forbidden from using any magic on us, so they delighted in practising more mortal forms of violence. Don’t worry, it looks worse than it is.” James tried to take a deep breath, but grunted with pain. “Actually, scratch that.”
He stood, collecting himself for a few minutes. Hunter could only imagine how the witches had taken it all out on poor James while he was away being breakfasted by their boss.
“Come on then, tell us everything. It’ll help distract from the pain,” James said, half hopeful.
Hunter repeated everything Sophie had revealed, interrupted frequently by James’ questions which he did his best to answer.
James gave a low whistle after he’d finished. “You know, if we get out of this alive, we’ll never live this down. The Shadow Witch living under our noses the whole time.”
Hunter could only give a twisted smile in agreement, he was feeling guilty over the whole affair.
“Did Sophie say why we’re here? I mean, they haven’t killed us yet.”
Oh dear. Hunter didn’t want to mention this to anyone, if it was true, the MMC would have to treat him as a witch; or he’d have to do the decent thing and end his own life - neither were appealing. But telling James was different, surely. He could trust years of friendship.
“Have you heard of the Benandanti?”
“Sure, an Italian pagan group of anti-witches that developed powers of their own and were ultimately prosecuted for it. Why?” James reeled off, making Hunter just a little jealous of his infinite knowledge.
“Sophie thinks I might be one. Or something similar.” Hunter confessed.
That silenced James. Hunter didn’t underestimate James’ intelligence he’d probably figured out everything Hunter hadn’t said.
*****
The witches brought food and drink for them that evening, and although wary, they were too hungry and thirsty to care about poison.
That night they took shifts again keeping watch. The first few hours passed by without incidence, and Hunter nudged James awake, stifling a yawn as he did so. He waited for his friend to be entirely conscious before allowing himself to drift off. Before he had a chance to sleep though, James grabbed his arm painfully tight.
Reopening his eyes, Hunter saw across the room the light from the bulb was fading, darkness and shadow forming.
“Sophie?” Hunter tried to call, but his voice came out a whisper.
A figure stepped out of the shadows, tall and gracefully slender with long brown hair and a beautiful but older face than they were expecting.
“Bev?”
The two guys sat stunned, and more than a tad confused.
She motioned for them to be quiet, while pulling a large bag off her back.
“I’ve come to get you out of here,” she whispered.
“But… how? Sophie sealed this place, only she can undo it.” Hunter whispered back.
Bev frowned in a familiar way. “I am her mother and I know a few tricks. I’ve borrowed her powers, Sophie is drugged and none the wiser.”
So a loving, caring mother, Hunter thought, but had the wisdom to say none of it aloud.
“But how?” He repeated. “And why should we trust you?”
“Why should you trust me? How many other witches are here offering to help you escape?” Bev asked hurriedly. “As for how, Sara Murray was my grandmother. I could have been the next Shadow Witch, but I didn’t want it. Yet I can siphon off a little of my daughter’s powers now. I may only be able to do this once, though.”
Sara Murray, the previous Shadow Witch that Old George had killed in the 1940s.
“Sara Murray didn’t have kids,” James whispered.
“She did,” Bev replied. “But when she became the Shadow Witch she knew her daughter, my mother, wouldn’t be safe. So she bound her powers, and had her adopted, then destroyed all evidence of her existence. Please understand Sara was a good woman who didn’t deserve to be a tool of evil. Who knows what good could have come from her. But Astley killed her and planted a seed of hatred and revenge in the heart of every witch. I tried to protect Sophie from it all, but she took it to heart, carried the promise of revenge as her own burden.”
“Why are you telling us all this now?” Hunter asked.
Bev looked away from them and sighed. “I want you to understand why Sophie seems - she has her reasons. But we must be quick.”
“We’re unarmed and locked up,” James hissed.
Bev knelt down and opened the bag. She pulled out two hunting shotguns and two kitchen knives. “The best I could do, I’m sorry. Now, I think I can manage to get you into the grounds.”
With an intense look of concentration, the thick shadow rippled along the wall to head height. Without notice, she grabbed them both by the arm and stepped into the darkness.
Again, Hunter felt surrounded by warm nothingness. But it didn’t last long. The cold night air hit him hard, he couldn’t help but shiver. The night sky was cloudy, and it was hard to see anything. He turned around and only a couple of hundred yards behind him was the shadow of a huge house, with light pouring out of windows.
“I have done what I can,” Bev suddenly said. “I have to go back.”
“Wait, come with us.” Hunter argued, surprising himself with the offer. “There’s so much more you could tell us. And to be honest we could do with the help.”
Bev didn’t reply immediately, but stared back at the house with shining eyes. “Sophie is my daughter. Whatever happens, I have to stand by her. She needs me, or at least she soon will.”
If either of the men understood this, they didn’t say anything.
“Well, thank you.” James finally said awkwardly. “We owe you our lives.”
“You owe me nothing.” Bev replied. “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for Sophie.”
Bev turned to a frowning Hunter. “If you were killed, it would destroy her. And she could never kill you herself, for two reasons. Mainly because - as much as she denies it - she loves you, irrevocably. Ah, I must go before they miss me.”
“Wait,” Hunter said, reaching out. “You said two reasons. What’s the second?”
Bev’s eyes met his in the dark. “She is pregnant with your child.”
And she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-three
The two men ran into the night, Hunter leading with his sharper sight. They had no idea where they were or where they were heading, only running to get away from that house of witches.
Ahead of them lay only darkness. It was eerie to see the English countryside without the punctuation of lights from roads or villages. But they just kept going, hoping to stumble on some form of civilisation.
Eventually they hit tarmac
and followed the road to a sleeping town. The houses sat in absolute shadow, and as they walked past, a couple of dogs stirred and barked, but no one came out to see two men armed with guns and knives walking down the night-time street.
Hunter looked at the cars parked along the roadside. “Can you get one of these running?”
James got closer so his weaker eyes could see the shiny new BMW. “No. But… trust me on this. Come on.”
Without explaining himself, James set off down the street, stopping to look at each car. Then, as though making his mind up, he raised his gun and used is to bash in the driver’s window. There was a loud shatter of glass.
Hunter frowned at James’ choice. An M-reg rustbucket of a Fiesta. A worrying option, because it was essential for them to make it all the way home, however far that might be. “Do you think this one ever worked?”
James used his sleeve to get the worst of the glass off the driver’s seat. “Look, I had a lot of time to think when they treated me as a punchbag, at least, thinking helped distract me. I have a theory about their little power cut.”
He broke off, pulling out his knife and busying himself under the steering wheel. He suddenly swore and pulled back, sucking his freshly bleeding hand.
“Not the best tool for the job,” he admitted. “Anyway, as I was sayin’. The lights and the phone went dead. But not all technology was knocked out - our torches worked, your mobile phone battery still worked, you just didn’t have any signal. Hey - you still got your phone?”
Hunter frowned, but rather than try to make sense of James he reached into his pocket. Miraculously his phone was still there.
“Cool, flick up the screen so I can get some light an’ see what I’m doing.”
Hunter did as directed and held his glowing phone near the dangling wires. James tinkered for a minute and was rewarded by guttural choking, followed by the small engine rumbling to life.
“Well done, now shift over.” Hunter said, pushing James over to the passenger seat. He frowned at the wheel, never having driven such a wreck. “But James, you didn’t give your theory.”
James clipped on his seat belt as Hunter pulled away, the old engine roaring and lights showing up an empty country road.
“Theory? Oh yeah, well they knocked out all the big and complex stuff - even down to your watch. So anything that requires power or radio signal. But very simple technology with its own power source wasn’t affected.”
“Which is why you wanted the old car?” Hunter said slowly, catching on.
“Yes, less electronics that could go wrong.” James replied with a yawn.
*****
As they rattled along empty roads the wind whipped in through the broken window, freezing Hunter to his seat, but keeping him bloody awake. Next to him, James snored lightly. Hunter felt so guilty about what he’d gone through, that he barely felt jealous of him getting some sleep.
He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway. His body clock told him it was around five or six o’clock in the morning, the world was still dark and silent.
In his mind he lived and relived everything from the moment he’d met Sophie, seeing it all in a new light. She’d played them all perfectly, made Hunter believe that he…
He didn’t know when he fell in love with her, it had happened so quickly, yet the realisation had taken weeks to crawl up to him. He remembered her mother, Bev, warning him off - he had assumed she was being an overly protective mum, not trying to save him from - from this. But she had already been too late, he had already been falling under Sophie’s spell.
He grimaced at his private thought’s choice of word.
Had Sophie cast a spell he hadn’t felt? Or slipped a love potion in the many coffees she had brought him? All to blind him from what she was really up to.
‘As much as she denies it - she loves you irrevocably.’ Bev’s words rang again in his ears. He could only hope it was true, that she would never kill him because she loved him.
But… what about her, would he be able to kill her?
Of course, the voice of reason screamed, she was the Shadow Witch and needed to be destroyed. But when Hunter imagined himself standing in front of Sophie and pulling the trigger-
He leant forward, trying to let the road drive out the image. It was only an enchantment, it would wear off. He’d be able to stop thinking about her, get back to normal.
It wasn’t long before his spinning thoughts came inevitably to the very disturbing idea that he could be a witch. Here, alone in the dark (a snoring James didn’t count), it seemed scarily possible. Each generation of witch-hunter took them further away from their human roots. Why shouldn’t the next step be magic.
Hunter sighed, he hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it. But if he was entirely honest with himself, if it turned out that he was strong enough to oppose the Shadow Witch it could only help. Like the anti-witch Benandanti. Only one problem, really, he’d never intentionally used magic and he’d seen how skilled Sophie was.
Hunter leant closer to the windscreen, concentrating on keeping up a decent speed in the old Fiesta as he navigated amongst the cars that had been abandoned by their owners. They must have been travelling at the time of the hit, there were signs of collisions as drivers lost control as their trusty vehicles gave up. Hunter wondered how many had been hurt, and his fears were raised as something caught his eye. He squinted into the dark, not sure what he was seeing. The car's headlights picked up increasingly large chunks of debris across the abandoned motorway.
Hunter pulled up on the side of the road and nudged James awake, before climbing out of the car. In front of them the tarmac was ripped up and the grass bank was a churned mess of mud and metal. Hunter clambered up the short bank with James stumbling behind him. The remnants of an aeroplane crash landed.
"Hunter..." James caught up with him. "Hunter come on, there's nothing we can do."
Hunter ignored him and ran over to the fallen craft, he paused at one of the gaping holes, then ducked inside. He called out, but there was no response. As his eyes adapted to the near-pitch darkness inside, Hunter saw that the plane was empty.
"Is there anyone there?" James asked, standing in the broken gap.
Hunter made his way back out of the plane, taking a deep breath. "No. Whether they survived or not, they've already been moved. But then it has been 34 hours since the hit."
Hunter shuddered and walked slowly back to the car, the little old Fiesta was still running with lights on and doors thrown wide at the bottom of the small slope.
The two friends got back in and set off once more, both silenced by what they'd seen. Both of them could only guess at the extent of the damage done.
*****
There was the thin grey light of a late winter’s dawn as they finally turned out of the village of Little Hanting and onto the Astley estate. Right on cue, James groaned and woke up.
“Home?” He muttered.
“Yes, two minutes,” Hunter replied shortly, starting to feel tired again as the familiar ground flicked by.
They were driving straight up towards the Manor when a man stepped into their headlights, blocking the way. He waved at them to stop. More commanding was the gun he aimed at the windscreen.
“Who goes there?” The man shouted as the car stopped.
Hunter leaned out, “Hunter Astley, 7th gen; and James Bennett, 1st gen.”
The witch-hunter didn’t move or lower his weapon. “Do you have proof of identity?”
“Proof?” Hunter gasped, not in the mood for this. “Look, this is my bloody house, so if you don’t mind shifting.”
The witch-hunter looked uncertain, but a second armed figure moved in the darkness to their right. He began to walk warily towards them, then stopped. “Mr Astley? You’re back. Let him pass, Dan.”
The first man moved aside and Hunter got the rattling vehicle down the remaining short length of drive to the front of the Manor. The Fiesta stuttered to a rolling stop as the engine packed in w
ith perfect timing.
Hunter and James went into the wonderfully familiar Manor, and were immediately surrounded by witch-hunters.
“Mr Astley, thank god. We feared the worst when we lost contact.” Anthony Marks, the 5th gen that had been in charge in their absence now stepped forward.
The worst? Yes, the worst had happened, Hunter thought sleepily. His bed was upstairs, warm and comfortable.
“Communications have been down for two days, we’ve been struggling to track down other witch-hunters, trying to re-establish links with police and army forces.”
“Yes, the Shadow Witch knocked out everything technological. James’ll explain later,” Hunter said, struggling to pay attention. “Right now, we have to prepare for an attack. The Shadow Witch is coming. As soon as she finds out that we’ve escaped she’ll know where to find us. She could be here at any moment, so we don’t have time to lose.”
“But the Manor is safe against her.”
Hunter nodded. “Even if it is, it won’t stop her coming as close as possible and forcing us to fight - I think we may have managed to piss her off. Little Hanting. The village, it needs evacuating. Get the villagers as far away as possible, or get them in here if there’s room, I don’t care.”
The surrounding witch-hunters stood there looking far too gormless for Hunter’s liking. “Well, go!”
Hunter turned to James who, although still looking a bruised mess, was keen and wide-awake. “I’m going to lie down. Wake me when - when it’s time.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Hunter felt like he’d only closed his eyes for ten minutes when he was suddenly shaken awake. His eyes snapped open and he bolted upright. Sitting on his bed was a familiar figure.
“James?” How long have I slept?”
“Um, dunno, ‘bout ten minutes.” He replied distractedly.
Hunter groaned, but pulled back his covers and started looking for his shoes. “Sophie’s here already? I had hoped we’d have more time to prepare.”
“What? No, she’s not here yet.” James replied.
“Then what…?” Hunter frowned at his friend, tempted to push him off the bed, roll over and go back to sleep. “James, you are a pain in the arse. What is this about then?”
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