Witch Hunter Trilogy Box Set

by K. S. Marsden

  When I met Sara, there was a little awkwardness after twelve months apart; but that soon melted, and we were close friends once more. I could tell that something was upsetting her, and after many attempts to distract me, pleading that it was trivial, Sara finally confessed that she felt something was coming. And it was coming for her. When I pressed for more information, she shook her head, swearing that was all she knew.

  I only had a month’s leave and was due to re-join my squadron. When I went to the train station, Sara came to say goodbye, her daughter Beth walking confidently next to her now. I made a big fuss of Beth, as always, and promised to bring something back for her. And to Sara, I wanted so desperately to tell her that I loved her, that I would come back to her. But her eyes willed me silent, we both already knew. I had to suffice with a polite kiss to her hand, and then boarded the train and was away.

  I would be away longer this time. I spent a lot of time in Africa in 1942. Summer flew by without a break, as did autumn. Hallowe’en came around, not that the army celebrate such a random festival, but as a witch-hunter I always acknowledged it. I wondered if my father and other witch-hunters were kept busy back in Britain. The war had disrupted so much, even the witches were quiet this time last year. And of course, thinking of home always made me think of Sara, and little Beth. I had decided now that they would be my family, regardless of any scandal that might arise. The next time I was home I would ask Sara to be my wife.

  And then I heard her voice. At first, I thought it just a fragment of a memory as I thought of her, but then it came again.

  ‘George, help me.’ It was as clear as though she were standing beside me. I looked about the tent to see if anyone else had heard a female voice, but only I was alert, no one moved from their books or broke their low conversations.

  “I thought I must be going mad, but I heard her again, her voice worried and pleading, and somehow I knew it was real and that I had to get home immediately. Thankfully my superior is a member of the Malleus Maleficarum Council (senior in army rank, though from a lesser family of witch-hunters) and he readily accepted that urgent matters of witchcraft called me home – and oh how I would curse that my little lie would become true.

  The five days it took me to get home were the longest of my life. I took connecting cargo flights, followed by a bus to London, before finally a train that would take me within five miles of Little Hanting. I don’t think I spoke one more word than necessary on the whole trip, only fretted over what I might find.

  I arrived in early evening and went directly to Sara’s house. It seemed deserted and lacking all life, but a couple of minutes after I knocked, the door opened to reveal a very pale Sara. Her green eyes locked onto me, the panic in them clear. She led me into the lounge, where Beth sat by the fire, quietly reading a new picture book.

  As soon as we sat down, Sara’s emotions overcame her, and tears fell as she retold all that had happened of late. On Hallowe’en, she had been in the house alone with Beth, making up scary stories, and fashioning a witch’s cloak for her daughter from spare clothes, nothing unusual at all. And then she was suddenly speared by pain and ambushed by deafening voices chanting. Sara collapsed, and when she came to, she was aware of Beth sitting next to her, sobbing. Sara comforted her child, reassuring her daughter that she was fine, when she noticed that the fire and the lights had gone out. But even as she thought of relighting them, the fire in the grate burst into life.

  Sara was always so logical; I can well believe she tried to find other reasons and causes. But the truth made itself clear when she merely thought of changing the blown lightbulb, and she found herself in the kitchen. Beth’s scream at the mother’s disappearance drew Sara’s attention back to the living room, and with her attention her physical self followed. In a moment she was kneeling, cuddling and reassuring her daughter once more.

  And then she called for me, sent her fear across continents, and bade me return. Which I did dutifully.

  After telling her story, she began to shake, and I held her until the panic left her. We both knew what she had become – I could almost see the magic roll off her; and Sara had heard enough of my tales of witches to be beyond any doubt herself. The big question was how this had occurred, and more importantly what we were going to do about it.

  Thankfully my parents were in Scotland, making an annual visit to family there; with my father out of the way there was not another witch-hunter for miles around, so Sara was safe from the immediate threat of detection. Long-term solutions evaded me. I mentioned that we could bind her powers, like any other witch. Sara readily agreed, but when I placed the amulet on her skin it swelled with her energy and shattered. I had never seen such power before. And I had a feeling that we would not be able to contain it ‘til we knew how it had formed.

  I interrogated Sara over her history, her family. I broke down every tiny detail of what had happened lately and found nothing. There was nothing to explain what had happened to her. We spent hours trawling through my family’s library – set up by my grandfather, it is considered the vastest in the country. It was here that one term kept cropping up when we researched powerful witches - the Shadow Witch. Magic without limits. It had been over five hundred years since the last one, for all we knew Sara was her descendent. But we were no closer to knowing why it had suddenly awoken now.

  And then one day we had company. A small coven of three witches had felt Sara’s simmering power from across the county and had come to Astley Manor to seek it. They came right up to the door, and I could feel their magic railing against the protective amulets there. But no defence is impenetrable, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they broke through. I ordered Sara to stay hidden and went out to meet them.

  They did not back down when confronted with a witch-hunter, and swiftly one died at my hand. But the other two bore down on me fiercely, when suddenly they were blown back by a wave of power I was beginning to recognise. Shaking, I turned to see Sara standing at the open door, an unfamiliar and furious look on her face. But she snapped out of her trance and was nervous and worried once more; and guilt entered her green eyes as I checked the witches and found them dead. One had a broken neck from their fall, the other looked as though a heart attack had claimed them.

  Sara was highly distressed that she had brought danger to my home, and swore that no witch would ever set foot on my land again. I felt her power rise up and ripple out, although it would not be until much later that I would understand what she had done.

  Sara became very unsettled and insisted on leaving Little Hanting. I tried to talk her into staying, even moving into Astley Manor. I tried to persuade her that I could talk my father round to trusting her, but even as I said it, I knew I would struggle, my father was very much of the old code of witch-hunters. Perhaps it was wise she left, that we kept this secret between the two of us only. I found her a cottage in the unspoilt countryside to the North, out of range of any witch-hunter.

  While she settled into her new home, my research was going nowhere, and in the end, I had to approach the MMC and use their connections to dig further on what might have caused this change in Sara. It was more rumour than fact that the Nazis had been experimenting with the occult. It was so slight, but the only lead I had. Germany was probably the least safe place to be right now, but if I waited, I feared the trail would go cold, or be destroyed completely by this terrible war.

  I went to visit Sara before I left for the continent. She was less than happy about the danger I was putting myself in for her. While I was there, she begged to be able to do one small thing – she took my dog tags, and I could feel the familiar build of her magic. The dog tags glowed for a moment, before returning to their unimpressive state. She gave them back to me, explaining that they would protect me. I was not fully convinced, but I would accept anything from her.

  I returned to my post in North Africa. I started my journey from there, a journey that would take over a year. It was a frustratingly slow process, but
they were dangerous and difficult times. Eventually in the summer of 1944 I arrived in Berlin. We had been told that we had won the battle, but all I saw when I arrived was destruction. Berlin echoed London in the Blitz, the survivors moving around quietly, their faces drawn. Apart from the children, somehow children can find joy, however slight.

  I cautiously approached the German MMC under the guise of a German soldier that wished to join them as a 1st gen. The MMC is an establishment over five hundred years old and has withstood more wars and disasters than I’d care to mention but has always maintained a detachment and its own strict code. But I was not going to risk revealing who I really was – I might put my trust in the MMC, but I could not forget the years our countries had spent fighting.

  They accepted me with relative ease – I believe they were struggling to recruit young men with the cost of war to young lives. The British MMC had even started to accept women (as long as they were the daughter of a witch-hunter and naturally gifted) to swell their ranks, something previously rare and strongly dissuaded.

  The German MMC put me with a 3rd gen, Herr Magnus Becholsteim, who was ten years my senior. Magnus was a good enough man, and under other circumstances I believe we could have been friends. He was very proud of his skills and for the month I was with him I had to force myself to be slow and clumsy in everything I did, knowing as I did so that I could easily outmatch him and most of the witch-hunters Germany had to offer. By day we would ‘train’ and revise over old cases; by night we would relax and over a few drinks Magnus would regale me with stories of his great and daring deeds. I took them with a pinch of salt, but it was during these quiet evenings that I finally learnt a little more.

  Magnus was telling me about his time training when he was younger, at the feet of the Herr Ancles (who I will confirm was known worldwide as one of the best in our era), and Magnus spoke of a fellow apprentice Herr Hartmann, a 2nd gen that Magnus took great joy in teasing with his own, greater inborn skills. I asked out of politeness rather than true interest, if they still kept in touch, but Magnus’ reply intrigued me.

  He initially shrugged and said that Hartmann ended up transferring his loyalties from the MMC to the Nazi Party and fell in with a bad crowd. Sensing that he had my interest in this bit of scandal he smirked over his brandy glass and gave me the whole story. I shall not waste time and paper with his possibly exaggerated tale, but give a brief account:

  After joining the Nazi Party, Hartmann became convinced that the MMC could contribute more, their knowledge and their artefacts. The MMC was not going to be persuaded to take sides in a war, but Hartmann ended up being poached by a Herr Richter to join a faction that experimented with the occult. Magnus couldn’t confirm what Hartmann might have achieved, but there were strong rumours of mass sacrifices and the co-operation of a certain witch (later caught and executed – Herr Brawn).

  Magnus was vague about having any idea where Hartmann was at present, but I was convinced that the German MMC was as stringent as we were about keeping track of potential witch-hunters, regardless of whether they’d turned their back on the MMC, or not.

  It took two more weeks of snooping through the MMC’s files, while pretending I was doing the dull background and paperwork for my trainer, but I finally found the last known location of Hartmann. I told Magnus that my mother had fallen ill, and that I needed to return home, giving me a week at least before anyone became suspicious enough to track me.

  I set off to the North of Germany, to find Hartmann where he worked in a secure compound. I followed him one evening to his civilian home and I waited for morning, and when he left for work, I broke into his house. I spent that day meticulously going through everything.

  I found a few letters in his desk from Braun and Richter, pertaining to past and present experiments. I found a drawer marked ‘Failures’, which held several artefacts. But no clear answer. So, I waited for Hartmann to return home.

  As soon as he walked through the door, I grappled with him. I am not proud to say that the man had to be beat into submission. I questioned him over the mass sacrifices and his work around Hallowe’en 1942. He wasn’t very forthcoming with words, but his eyes moved to the drawer I had searched earlier. With a little more persuasion, he confessed about the dagger, which he had smuggled from the MMC in Berlin, that his colleague Braun swore held immeasurable power. They just had to find the right witch and the correct volume of sacrifices. He told me that at one Hallowe’en it changed. They broke the spell binding the dagger, and nothing happened. They were just left with an old, blunt dagger with no special qualities. He claimed that despite the disappointment, it was not unusual for their experiments to fail, and he always took his failures home as a memento and reminder.

  I took the dagger, and a handful of his letters. For a moment I thought that I should kill him, but he was an outcast of the MMC, and knew nothing of my identity; and I had seen enough death to last a lifetime. I knocked him unconscious and left immediately.

  My journey back to England was frustratingly slow, when I knew I had completed my goal and longed to see Sara again. I returned by Christmas 1944, and went straight to Sara’s cottage. With her uncanny foresight she knew that I was coming and had dinner almost done by the time I arrived.

  I slept for a day, exhausted and finally safe enough to relax for the first time in nearly two years. When I was conscious and finally refreshed, I took about a week to relay everything I had seen and done. There was a lot to tell, and my story had to wait for when Beth was at school or asleep. She had grown so much since I last saw her, but Beth was still excited to see me and seldom left my side.

  I stayed with them for Christmas and the New Year, then finally started to plan to head back to Astley Manor to further research the dagger. Sara came to my room to help me pack, and curiously picked the dagger up. I remember her face as she looked at it – confusion and contemplation written across her pretty features.

  “You realise there’s writing here.” She said, wondering why I had not mentioned it to her before, I looked over at the blade that I had carried for months, but saw the same dull, plain metal with no inscriptions. But Sara went on to insist there was ‘By Her Hand Only’ written there.

  I went home, this thought plaguing me. I ignored the fuss my parents made at my return and went right back to researching answers. The only thing I found was an old and questionable bit of information that I was not willing to share. But in the end, I didn’t have to. Sara sent me a message to see her immediately.

  I dutifully set off for her cottage once more and had scarcely entered the door when she revealed that she had been having vivid dreams ever since touching the dagger. She started to tell me about them, and my heart dropped, they echoed precisely what I had learnt. That the last Shadow Witch had been infatuated with a mortal man, who was killed by her fellow witches. She had grown so distressed over what she had created that she had killed herself rather than subject the world to her power any longer.

  Sara swore that she would do the same. That was the first and only time we ever argued, voices raised and Sara looking fiercely angry. She, trying to destroy her life, and I trying to save it. Sara tried to make me understand how tense and frightening her life was, trying to hide from witches and hunters alike. How even Beth was afraid of her when strange things happened. And I- I could not give up on the woman I loved when I had been to hell and back to save her.

  I stormed out that day, furious that she should take the easy way out. And how I regret that was the last time I saw her.

  A couple of days later, the dagger was missing from its drawer, and in its place a note.

  ‘Dear George,

  By the time you read this, it shall be too late to stop me, I know what has to be done.

  Please know that I have always loved you, and I don’t know how I would have gotten through these last few years without you. How I wish things were different and the curse had fallen on any but me. But it has, and I can’t let the temptation of the
power I could wield push this damaged world any closer to destruction.

  As for Beth, I hope she remembers that I love her, but my last use of magic will be that she and her children will be bound from powers themselves. I would not wish them to be persecuted by the MMC.

  I am sorry to rip her from your life also, but I think she is safer where none know her, or me. A distant cousin with whom I am friendly is to adopt her. There are so many parentless children after this war, it will not be suspicious.

  There is one thing I ask: something tells me that the Shadow will rise again, and I see it involving the Astley family once more. They will need to know the truth, when the time is right – will you write an honest account of all that has occurred?

  With all my heart,

  Sara

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Hunter held the original letter that had been folded and inserted in the pages of the small notebook. The writing was delicate and very different to the hand that had gone before it. He looked back at the book and flicked through the rest of the pages but found nothing.

  Old George must have considered his story told, either that or he didn’t have the will to go on. It put his life in a different perspective. Hunter had thought him relatively dull, except for his one shining achievement of killing a Shadow Witch. An achievement that was now overturned. No wonder he hadn’t liked talking about it; Hunter had thought he was just being modest.

  Hunter closed the book and turned it over in his hands, brushing off the last of the dust from the navy covers.

  “Hunter?”

  Hunter sighed as he heard his name in that cautious tone everyone seemed to adopt around him.

  “Hunter, we were worried where you got to.” Kristen said, walking up to him. “Well, we were all worried, but then Mel started teaching Adam Gaelic or something, so they’re happy.”