The engine of a fast-approaching motorcycle bashed the night, indicating that Archer was here. He was looking forward to seeing a familiar face and hearing a friendly voice. He marveled at his emotional neediness. This was out of character for him. And the feeling that pieces of his day had gone missing grew stronger with each passing moment. Hopefully talking with Archer would clear the cobwebs.
The ding of the lift sounded like music to his ears, and he quickly poured two cups of steaming coffee. He took a deep gulp as he waited for Archer. The first sip burned down his throat but failed to calm him the way it usually did.
He took another sip as the elevator doors split open. Archer stepped out and flashed him a big, warm smile. Seeing her made Skulick realize how much he appreciated her presence in his life nowadays. Losing Raven had left a gaping hole, but fortunately, Archer had stepped in and now filled the void somewhat. Without his partner, he felt useless. His knowledge might be vast, but what good did it do without a soldier in the field to carry out the mission? He was a man of action whose injuries had turned him into a prisoner of his own body. Raven had been his man on the street, his way to continue this war against the forces of darkness.
He’d always liked and respected Archer. In fact, he thought she was the perfect match for Raven. The young fool had done his darnedest to blow the relationship despite his advice. Like Skulick himself, Archer had become a vampire for a short time, but unlike him, she had taken a life. She carried that darkness inside of her, her guilt echoing the shame he felt when his mind turned to Raven’s parents. He blamed himself for not being there for his old partner when he needed him the most. Goddamnit, he’d failed Raven’s father, but he wouldn’t fail his son. One way or another, they would find a way to exorcise this demon.
He would save Raven.
“What’s happening out there?” he asked. “The news has been reporting stories about the fog.”
Archer grinned, cocking a leather-clad hip. “We stopped it. The danger is over.”
“What about Raven?”
“We have a bigger problem than your old partner.”
Archer’s words gave him pause. What could be more pressing than Raven’s possession? Once again, Skulick experienced a sense that something wasn’t right even though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“I had a little run-in with a witch on the way over here. It looks like the incident back in the park was the beginning.”
At the mention of witches, Skulick’s mind filled with the image of bodies writhing at the stake. He vividly recalled the Ice Witch he’d defeated with his friends all those years ago. But her cruelly beautiful features morphed into the faces of the people who had helped him track her down, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. His hands gripped the arms of the wheelchair until the white of his bones stood out. It felt like a freezing gust of air was blowing through the loft and turning his blood to ice.
What is wrong with me?
He was losing his grip. Even during his darkest moment, he’d never experienced such highs and lows.
Skulick bit his lip, forcing himself to regain control of his raging emotions. He focused on what Archer was telling him. Witches were targeting the Cursed City. Spell-slingers were not to be trifled with, but they were no worse than the other creatures of the night he faced on a near daily basis. He would deal with this problem, and then he would save Raven.
“I managed to have a little chat with the witch before I put an end to her,” Archer said. “Unfortunately, we might be up against a whole coven. They’re looking for a relic of some kind, the witch’s heart. That’s all I was able to get out of her. You know what she was talking about?”
Skulick frowned. Archer’s words reminded him of the recent murder of his three former colleagues, who had been burned at the stake like witches. He had feared the worst when he first heard about their deaths. Archer’s encounter with the witch confirmed that his concerns had been more than justified.
“They’re after the Ice Witch’s heart,” he said.
Archer’s eyes narrowed. “So you do know what the witches are looking for?”
Skulick nodded, his face tightening into a determined expression. “We can’t allow the heart to fall into the coven’s hands.”
Archer shook her head and raised her hands. “Time out, Skulick. The Ice Witch’s heart? I’m going to need a little more information than that.”
“There’s no time to explain. We must act before it’s too late.”
“What do you want me to do?” Archer asked.
“You must head to the Convent of the Daughters of Saint Paul and get in touch with Elizabeth Dubois, the Mother Superior. I need you to…”
His words broke off as Archer’s expression changed. Her look of concern gave way to a wide, sinister smile. Something was horribly wrong here. Nausea churned in the pit of his stomach, his hands clenched and unclenched.
Archer’s hands slid over his shoulders and began to knead his tired muscles. The contact only made him more anxious. Her mere touch sent shivers of ice up his back.
“Why so tense, monster hunter? There is nothing to be afraid of,” she purred.
And with these words, Archer leaned closer and kissed him on his lips. A putrid stench of decay wafted toward him. Skulick pulled away as much as he could, but Archer had backed his chair against his desk.
“Thank you, my dear Skulick. I knew you’d tell me where I could find my poor mother’s heart,” Archer said in a voice dripping with menace.
What have I done? Skulick thought, panic coursing through him.
The figure that had been masquerading as Archer stepped back with a grin, her lovely features now transformed into a failed anatomy experiment. Skulick recoiled in shock. The wheels of his chair screeched against the hardwood floor as the skinned witch unleashed a peal of cackling laughter
Skulick’s throat tightened with terror as reality warped, and the witch disappeared into thin air. It would have been easy to think he’d imagined the whole thing, but Skulick knew better. Seeing the faceless witch up close had shattered the magical memory block. He now remembered the attack on the loft, how all the windows had exploded during the assault.
He turned toward the windows. The glass showed no sign of the earlier destruction. Malcasta must’ve magically repaired the damage and erased his memory, all in the hope that she could lull him into a false sense of security. She’d taken on the appearance of his protégée and said all the right things. And, like a fool, he had told her exactly what she wanted to know.
Skulick cursed inwardly. I need to alert Raven or Archer.
Panic surging, he snatched his cell phone, dialed her number, and reached a dead line. He checked his email server and internet connection only to find that there was no signal. On the large television monitors, the same news stories that had dominated the airwaves when the witches first attacked continued to play. Almost as if the stations were frozen in time.
No, as if he was frozen.
Why had Malcasta spared him? After all, he had put an end to her mother’s evil.
Perhaps he hadn’t been spared at all.
Determined, he spun his wheelchair in the direction of the windows. Snow filled the night, obscuring the city beyond. He eyed the skyline. It was too quiet. The steady pulse of the urban behemoth had ceased, the world outside drained of all sound as if someone had turned off the volume. He opened one of the windows, and his terrible suspicion was confirmed. An eerie stillness greeted him as an arctic wind slapped his face.
His once familiar surroundings now alien to him, Skulick advanced toward the shelves sagging with books. He reached for the nearest tome on demonology, a text he had consulted many times before. As he flipped the well-worn pages, terror detonated inside his chest. The book’s pages were all… blank.
He snatched another book. And another. Each time the results remained the same.
A terrible realization settled in. His surroundings might look and feel like his loft
, but it was a facsimile, a carefully crafted copy designed to fool him. Malcasta’s magic had nailed the broad strokes but failed to get all the details right. Like some elaborate stage set, it had provided just enough detail to trick him into spilling his secret.
That raised an interesting question. Where the hell was he?
“Malcasta, show yourself! What have you done to me?”
In a fit of rage, he slammed his fist on the bookshelf. Once, twice, his anger growing with each punch. And then he paused, having noticed something else. His knuckles should be raw and throbbing with pain, but he felt absolutely nothing. He stared at his surroundings. Was any of it real? If the loft was an illusion, what else might be fake around here?
Following another hunch, he pushed himself out of his wheelchair. On a normal day, such a foolish move would end with him collapsing on the floor as his now useless legs gave out. No such thing happened this time. Not only did he remain erect, but he was also able to let go of the chair and take a solid step forward. He walked across the length of the loft until he reached his desk. All signs of his paralysis had vanished.
His miraculous recovery gave him no joy. Malcasta hadn’t magically restored the use of his legs out of the goodness of her heart. There was only one explanation. Neither the loft nor his body were real. He was trapped in a mindscape conjured by the witch.
He pressed his face against the nearest window and gasped. Jumbled, unfamiliar structures reached out to greet the night sky. The harder he stared, the more alien the buildings seemed to him. It was almost as if he was looking at the Cursed City through a fishbowl lens. The glowing skyline wavered, and the skyscrapers became monolithic medieval towers, electrical lights transforming into burning torches. And then the city vanished, replaced by a massive black cloud. The darkness engulfed the loft like a shroud.
It’s not a cloud, Skulick realized with growing terror. A gargantuan face stripped of all its skin appeared across the night sky and leered down at him like demented god. It took Skulick his last shred of self-control to not scream in terror. The loft went dark at the edges, and a noise like the muffled hum of insects rose all around him.
“Wake up,” he told himself. But there would be no waking from this nightmare.
He stared at his reflection in the window and gasped. Cuts formed around his ears and forehead, and the skin began to peel from his terrified features in bloody strips. Yet there was no pain. Shocked, he touched his cheeks and chin but thankfully they remained uninjured while the face in the mirror turned into a mauled mask.
Malcasta controlled the rules of this godforsaken place, and she would do everything in her power to prolong his suffering, both mentally and physically. Outside, the witch’s laughter rang out, a harbinger of the horrors to come.
A ball of pure energy hovered in midair, white-hot sparks of liquid electricity dancing inside the globe. Most people would have thought they were looking at a plasma globe and not the imprisoned soul of the world’s greatest monster hunter.
Malcasta’s gnarled fingers closed around the shimmering orb that contained Skulick’s soul. In the hours since she had magically extracted his spirit from his body, the light had started to dim, growing fainter with each passing minute. Ultimately the orb would shatter, scattering Skulick’s essence.
She peered into the magical prison, taking pleasure from the terror of the man trapped inside. She could make out a replica of Skulick’s loft and the horrified, antlike figure imprisoned in the globe. Good. She wanted him to suffer. She had created the perfect soul trap, a world beyond space and time, where the laws of nature didn’t apply.
A world where magic reigned supreme.
Science had brought light into the darkness, had turned witches and monsters into fairy tales. It had allowed mankind to scoff at the nightmares of the past. A new dark age was needed to restore the power that rightfully belonged to her kind. Humanity would once again bow at the altar of witches and warlocks, and shiver in terror at the sounds of the night and the mention of her master’s name.
The spell had begun, and the city was already beginning to shift into a new reality of her own design. And Skulick had been kind enough to provide her with the last piece of the puzzle—the location of the Ice Witch’s heart. Armed with the power of her mother’s heart, she would be unstoppable. This city would become hers to do with as she pleased. She would create a realm beyond the physical world of man, a place where even the Lords of Darkness wouldn’t dare venture. Witches would rule over human cattle, and the city’s citizens would worship her kind like gods.
According to the Lords of Darkness, it was better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. Talk about a lesson Malcasta had learned well.
A new world awaited the followers of the Flayed Prince. A world they could finally call their own. If Malcasta got her hands on the witch’s heart, not even the devil himself would be able to stop her.
8
I tore down streets slick with ice in the stolen Hummer. Snowflakes bombarded my windshield, severely impacting visibility. Malcasta’s spell was growing stronger even without the heart. I shuddered at the thought of what would happen if the witch got her hands on the magic-amplifying relic.
Wherever I looked, the city was turning white, yet I saw no beauty in the winter landscape. Most people love snow, but I’m not one of them.
It hadn’t always been that way.
When I was a kid, I adored winters and everything the season stood for—Christmas, snowball fights with my friends, all that good stuff. That all changed on the fateful winter night when demons murdered my parents.
The demon Morgal had sent an army of ice creatures to my childhood home. As the Cursed City transformed into a winter land, all I could think of was my mother’s lifeless features as she lay dead under a twinkling Christmas tree.
I never again celebrated the holidays after that horrible night. In the years that followed the tragic murder of my parents, Skulick had forced me to learn how to ski because our mission to protect the world from monsters might take us into snowy, mountainous terrain from time to time. I had hated every minute of it even though his instincts had turned out to be sound. Only a few years after I’d mastered the skill, we’d hunted down the winter warlock’s ice beast in the Swiss Alps. It was one of those cases I tried to no think about too often. And I was now up against another enemy who was trying to cover the world in ice.
At least I had a theory where Skulick might’ve hidden the witch’s heart. The idea had first come to me back in the precinct’s drunk tank. My subconscious mind must’ve been mulling over the problem ever since Damona had told me about Malcasta’s quest. The witch believed the heart to be in the Cursed City. But why would my partner have brought the relic to this city of all places, decades before we set up shop here?
There was only one possible answer: Skulick must’ve entrusted the heart to someone who wouldn’t be tempted by its terrible power and would prevent the heart from falling into the wrong hands.
The first place that came to mind was the Convent of St. Paul. The sisters of St. Paul had dealt with cases of witchcraft for more than a century. There was a perfect logic to it all. Witches were the brides of the devil, but nuns were the brides of God. Who better than a group of dedicated nuns to safeguard the witch’s heart?
I had almost shared my suspicions with Damona earlier but was proud of myself for holding back. Even though I wasn’t completely immune to the her charms, I’d managed to keep my mouth shut and my hormones under control.
I lost all sense of time as I fought my way uptown. The ice made driving treacherous, and it took me about an hour to reach the convent. The city had expanded into a sprawling metropolis during the hundred years since the building was constructed. Blocks of subsidized housing crowded in on all sides. There weren’t many places in the world where prostitutes and dealers could walk the streets right across from a gothic cloister, but that was the Cursed City for you.
While crime raged in this upto
wn neighborhood and gunshots were a nightly occurrence, the sisters of St. Paul kept to themselves in their sprawling convent, devoted to a life of spiritual service. They prayed for the people in this city, prayed for peace, prayed for humanity.
“What a colossal waste of time. Prayers are a poor substitute for action. Wouldn’t you agree, Raven?”
I hadn’t asked for the demon’s opinion, but I didn’t completely disagree with him either. The rundown conditions of this neighborhood told their own sordid story. Prayers hadn’t saved the lost souls of the city. Nevertheless, many of the street people drew comfort from the knowledge that the nuns were putting in a good word for them with the man upstairs.
“Prayers can’t save this world from the monsters. Prayers won’t stop Malcasta or defeat Mor—”
“That’s enough, Cyon.”
The demon grew silent. Perhaps Cyon was right. Perhaps no one was listening, but I was glad that at least some folks cared enough to keep praying for us.
I parked the Hummer and made my way across a stretch of snow-covered grass. The blizzard had turned the cloister into a winter palace, transforming the ugly urban sprawl into something beautiful. The upturned collar of my trench coat and my beard protected me somewhat from the icy downfall, but it failed to stop my teeth from chattering.
A statue of St. Paul greeted me near the building’s front entrance. The saint looked forlorn and abandoned as snow lashed his stony face. A lone sentinel in the wintry night. I experienced a strange kinship with that image.
Witch Wars (Shadow Detective Book 7) Page 6