A Game of Witches (The Order of Shadows Book 3)

by Kit Hallows

  He’d said seventeen W, so I knocked lightly on the door. Moments later it opened and Haskins appeared. He looked as tired as I felt but his trademark scowl was missing and I noted a look of resignation in his eyes. It seemed his day had been just as relentless as mine. “Over here,” he nodded as he closed the door softly behind me.

  The place was huge, with high ceilings and windows that took up almost an entire wall. The view must have been spectacular behind the long line of drawn, tastefully chosen blinds.

  An unsettled looking girl sat on a leather sofa nursing a steaming cup of jasmine tea. Her tan was pronounced and the faint scent of coconut hung in the air around her. She gripped the cup tight as she glanced at me. Fear and bewilderment temporarily marred her pretty face but she looked to me like she had to be in her early twenties. “Is he the doctor?” she asked Haskins.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m the doctor. And you are?”

  She took a moment to answer, as if she’d forgotten who she was. “Phoebe.”

  “Well, Phoebe,” I gave her a disarming smile, to no avail. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I…” she took a deep breath followed by a sip from the teacup. “I just got home from vacation and…and Grace’s light was on, so I went to say hi and to give her the gift I’d gotten for her.” She glanced to the large bottle of rum on the table before her. “I opened her door and… right away I could see.… it’s bad. She’s done something to herself, something way worse than usual.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “I’ll go check on Grace in a minute,” I said. “Have you’ve spoken to anyone since you found her?”

  Phoebe looked me up and down, scrutinizing my ruffled clothes. “Just him,” she nodded to Haskins. “and the police. Why?” She bit her lip and whispered words I couldn’t hear.

  I glanced away from her skittish eyes as a low buzzing filled the room. It took a moment to realize it was Haskins’s phone. He glanced at the screen. “I need to take this,” he said, his face grim as he headed for the front door.

  “Who are you?” Phoebe asked. “You’re not a doctor, or a policeman. Are you.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I’m here to help your friend, and I’m going to help you too.”

  “How?” Her voice trembled, and she began to edge away.

  I grabbed a crystal from my pocket and absorbed its energy before leaning in toward her. She jerked back, sloshing tea over the sofa in her panic.

  “No!” Her voice grew hoarse as I reached out.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to help!” I said. As well as stop you from getting on your goddamned phone and spreading this gossip all over town.

  She whispered to herself again, her words too low to hear. I placed my hand against her forehead. She tried to shrink away, but the magic overrode her will to struggle and within moments it seemed to take the edge off her anxiety. I took the vial of Mesmersand from my pocket and blew it softly into her eyes. She blinked slowly before yawning.

  “Go get some rest,” I said, softly. “I’ll take care of Grace.”

  Phoebe nodded as she rose, set her cup down, and walked down the hall, closing a door behind her. I went to look for Haskins and found him in the corridor outside. He hung up as I approached. “I gotta go,” he said. “You can handle this, right?”

  “Yes, but not on my own, I need someone to watch my back.” While the apartment seemed perfectly secure, there was something about the place that was causing my hackles to rise. Something was off. And I hadn’t even seen Grace yet.

  “You must have someone you can call,” Haskins said. “That was my mother’s place on the phone. She’s pitching a fit. They said she’s really out of control and I need to go calm her down.”

  I sympathized, but it was late and we needed to get this situation sorted fast. “I'll need an hour at best. Can you do that for me?”

  Haskins looked like he was about to shake his head, but then he sighed heavily. “Okay. One hour. God knows I’m paying those bozos more than enough to deal with one little old lady. But in sixty one minutes, I’m walking.”

  “I understand. Thanks.”

  “Right.” Haskins walked back into the apartment and led me to a door at the end of the hall.

  Grace’s bedroom was huge, yet eerily claustrophobic. Heavy blackout curtains blocked out the windows and the walls were covered in a collage of posters. Most were for Asian horror movies, and indie bands with a penchant for black clothes and pale, melancholy faces.

  Grace sat in a catatonic state at her desk. The surface was littered with piles of Manga comics and occult paraphernalia from almost every blinkered culture I could think of. A quick look told me none of it had been used, at least not for anything outside of her own gothy display.

  She was a pretty girl with a wild spray of silver and rose pink hair and a face filled with gleaming piercings. One of her hands was suspended by a length of string tied to the handle of a dagger that had been thrust into the ceiling above her head. An oval mirror was duct taped to her hand, just like Miles, and positioned before her impossibly green eyes. Contacts.

  “This is going to be fun,” I muttered, hoping the lenses wouldn’t interfere with my travels. I glanced around for any signs of a black door like the one that had flickered in the motes of dust above Miles’s studio, but there was nothing.

  “What’s the plan?” Haskins folded his arms tight across his chest and gave me a deeply cynical glance. I ignored him as I pulled the pinch-nose glasses from my pocket and placed them carefully over my eyes, turning Grace’s room a shade of icy blue.

  “What the fuck are they?” Haskins laughed.

  “I need you to stop talking. Just sit quietly and watch over me.” I grabbed a chair that Grace had been using as a clothes stand, flipped the contents onto the floor, and pulled it up behind her. Then I took a pinch from the bag of spice on her desk and placed it on my tongue.

  “Watch for what?” Haskins asked with an exaggerated shrug.

  “I don’t know.” I fought to contain my irritation. “Just keep an eye on things. Okay?”

  The spice hit me hard. The rush started in my head, then shot through the rest of my body. I gripped the edges of the chair and took long, deep breaths to stop myself from pacing.

  Haskins shot me a look of disapproval, then his face melted away. Slowly it reassembled itself until he looked half human, half gargoyle. I closed my eyes and grabbed two crystals, using their magic to focus on the task at hand.

  “Jesus!” Haskins muttered. I glanced back at him, the gargoyle was gone, and in its place a sad, broken man. And then he unraveled and formed a mini black hole, a force of emptiness, swirling stars gleaming around him like jewels as they were pulled into his vacuum and…

  “Focus!”

  Was it me, did I say it? Or had it been my other’s voice?

  Or Haskins?

  Or maybe it had been a hidden force manipulating time and…

  “Focus!”

  I closed my eyes, willing my inner self to drift out and away.

  When I opened them again, I found clouds of consciousness spiraling and billowing around me. I looked into Grace’s eyes through the blue-tinted astral glasses and they drew me in like a vivid green vortex. Slowly, the tug of her consciousness swept me away. I let myself fall toward her mind and a new darkness washed away the world, a darkness that seemed low, heavy and endless.

  I was in.

  37

  I found myself in a cityscape, of sorts, its walls and buildings taller than any I’d ever seen. They had an old-fashioned air, although I couldn’t pin the style to any specific era. The sky was washed through in shades of red, orange and violet and the setting sun was mottled with one part gold, two parts black.

  People milled past me, hurrying to unknown destinations. I soon caught sight of their faces. None had eyes, or noses, just thin mean lips and the sound that tumbled from their mouths was like the bleating of sheep.

  “Sheeple
?” I said. Of course. Grace had conjured them, this was her inner world, a solid mass of sightless, judgmental automatons. The air around me buzzed with this information, with her thoughts. This was how she saw life.

  Her sheeple hurried past me in a constant stream of movement, their clothes tight, severe, and grey. I found Grace’s mindset both strange and unearthly, which was not unexpected. But I didn’t anticipate the strong sense of apprehension and vulnerability that I felt. It was visceral and struck me at the core of my borrowed form. Something was rotten here. Something I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but still sensed undeniably.

  I had to find Grace, and get out. That was all. I hurried through the street until I reached the end of the block. I turned down another road which looked almost identical to the one I’d just left. Shadows oozed across the sidewalk, yet the sky seemed to be frozen in a permanent state of twilight. I hurried along street after street but there was no sign of Grace, just a perpetual throng of sightless, bleating people.

  And then I saw someone else; a woman in black watching from the end of the road. She had eyes, a human face, and silver light glowed near the base of her hand.

  A witch.

  She turned and vanished round a corner.

  I ran to the end of the block.

  She was gone.

  Boom!

  I looked up as an explosion broke across the sky, leaving burning trails of silver light glittering in the air. Slowly, the embers converged to form an immense spiral that hung over the city like a sparkling web frozen in time.

  Cawing filled the air as I turned toward a narrow, dead-end passage. I looked up to find scores of ravens perched on the rooftops above. They glared down from the guttering. I walked toward them and called for the sword of intention but it didn’t come.

  Something was off, something more than the appearance of the witch. I felt like I’d been duped. Like I was being played. The knowing tingled across my astral skin and formed goose flesh upon my forearms.

  “Give me the sword,” I whispered.

  Concentrate, my other replied.

  I closed my eyes, focused on the sword and gave him free rein to join me. We had a shared goal in this place. Survival. I felt my coat form around me, enclosing my borrowed flesh, and then the weighty tug of the sword materialized at my side.

  There.

  I opened my eyes and glanced to the end of the passage. Grace was huddled on the ground with her back against a wall, her face buried in her knees.

  Caution.

  I didn’t need my other to tell me. Everything felt wrong. Stage managed. I glanced up to the ravens.

  They were watching, waiting for carrion.

  Sobs filled the air and Grace’s whole body shook and trembled.

  But it wasn’t her.

  “Grace?” I called out, deciding to play along with whoever was conducting this game.

  As I neared her, the din of beating wings filled the air. Countless shadows scrambled over the ground as the ravens blotted out the dusk-lit sky with their wide black wings.

  And then I heard a soft rasp amid the shadows as they slid over the stones.

  No, not slid, slithered.

  I looked up to see a dozen or so pale creatures curling over the edge of the rooftops. They were small and humanoid yet axolotl-like, with long fetal heads and gills that fanned out like ferns. They blinked, their eyes wide and black as they descended on their tiny sticky, stumpy arms and feet.

  “What the hell is this?” I pulled my sword as the creatures slithered down the walls. Their mouths yawned open and cries issued from one, then another, until the whole swarm was calling out, the sound high and frenzied.

  Two more appeared on the roof above and stood up on their hind legs. They held a heavy net stretched between them, and then they leaped down to ensnare me.

  38

  The creatures clamped their net over me. I hacked at it with my sword but the strands were slick and formed from an algae-like substance that seemed to be far stronger than rope.

  We’re trapped, let me out.

  The voice of my other echoed around me as the smirking creatures began to gibber, cackle and shriek in their primitive calls. They charged down the walls in a frenzy, the slapping scrape of their vestigial limbs growing louder and louder.

  Grace lifted her head and glanced at me through the net, and in an instant she transformed into an old woman with a cruel, soot-smeared face. She grinned as she climbed to her feet and rubbed her thumb on the spiral at her wrist.

  Fight! my other demanded as the creatures closed in, their eyes wide and their grim little lips pursed with concentration. I hacked and slashed at the net but the severed strands rippled like sea anemones and knitted themselves back together.

  “How?” I demanded.

  Give me control. Now!

  I couldn’t. He was strong, and I felt weaker than ever. If he took over I had a feeling I might never recover.

  A powerful wave of energy washed over me as the witch thrust out a hand and tendrils of silvery light spilled from her fingers. Her hex was sapping the latent magic buried within me. Soon there’d be nothing left.

  She’s destroying us. Move aside!

  There was no choice. I slipped away from my thoughts, my grip on my consciousness tenuous. My other bristled with triumph as he reached down and placed our hands against the ground, and tapped the energy thrumming through Grace’s inner world.

  A terrible scream echoed down from the sky. It was Grace, her pain no doubt a result of my other stripping energy from the core of her being.

  The witch’s smug grin faltered and her creatures slowed their advance.

  “Now,” my other said, “Let’s even out the odds.”

  The sword of intention blazed brighter than I’d ever seen it. I watched through our eyes as he began to hack and slash, the netting falling to pieces like rain-soaked paper.

  “Now you!” he cried. I could only watch as he strode toward the creatures, wheeling the sword in his hand as he went. They cried, screamed and leaped at us as a pack. He swung through them, lacerating their translucent throats. Hands and limbs flew through the air as he pressed on, spattering the ground with their blood, their long curdling screams drawn out like a nightmare.

  The remains of the horde limped and swarmed together in a last ditch attempt to take us down. “Come!” he called. “Come to me!” He lifted a hand and whispered dark words of eldritch power and slowly, an orb of black fire curled and crackled in the palm of his hand.

  He threw it.

  It shot through the throng, in a burning wave. Heads, chests and limbs sizzled and burned as it flew like a dark comet toward its target. The witch.

  She threw up her hands and conjured a silvery shield, but the ball of fire burst through and struck her, dead on. Flames slithered up her dress. She screamed, her eyes fixed on him, on us, and then she turned toward her howling minions as they writhed on the ground at our feet.

  No! I fought to hold him back but his ire was fully focused. He stepped across the bodies, grinding the creatures into the pavement as he stormed toward the witch.

  39

  “No!” I cried again.

  I needed answers, not a quick hit of vengeance. I clawed at my consciousness, gripping tight as my other fought to push me down into the very depths of my being.

  It was a battle, my will against his wild, insane fury. Slowly I prized my way into my mind and forced him back.

  You’re a fool, he growled as I shoved him aside, condemning him to whatever dark deeps he’d intended on banishing me to. I glanced up as the screaming witch flailed on the ground. The black fire had engulfed her clothes, her flesh and the very hair upon her head.

  I used the last of the energy coursing through my veins to conjure a simple spell and a soft ethereal rain fell, extinguishing the flames. I’d never tampered with weather before, especially not within someone else’s mental landscape, but it seemed anything went in this place. I coughed as the stench of her
burnt hair and flesh filled the air, and placed the tip of the sword of intention at her throat. She flinched, but I could not relent. “Where’s Wyght?”

  “Go to hell!” she screamed, her red raw eyes fixed on mine.

  “I expect that’s already on the cards,” I shrugged, “but ladies first.” I raised the sword as she backed away, her blackened fingers held out in a pathetic attempt to ward me off.

  “Please stop!” Her defiance faded and a spasm rattled her limbs.

  “If you have a spell to stave off your pain I’ll allow it, but if you try anything else, I’ll plant this sword in your skull. Understand?”

  She nodded and clasped a finger to her tattoo. It shone silver and bright, untouched by the flames. “Ahhh.” The witch sighed as waves of silvery light spread from her wrist to her torso and then her whole body. Her magic would only suppress the agony, she didn’t have long, and we both knew it.

  “Enough.” I laid the edge of the blade to her throat. “Tell me where Wyght is. Now.”

  “You’re a cruel man, Morgan Rook.”

  “Maybe that’s got something to do with how your demented mistress killed the woman I loved. But you know what? My thirst for vengeance has nothing on the cruelty my shadow has at his disposal. You’ve seen what he can do. Shall I unleash him again?

  She cowered and shook her head.

  “Good. Now where is she?”

  “Preparing for the ceremony.”

  “What ceremony?”

  Her lips twisted and cracked as she gasped. “Trick or Treat. It’s almost time.” She glanced up at the false sun above us. “Must be past midnight by now, so it’s All Hallow’s Eve. The die will be cast by this time tomorrow”

  “What’s she trying to do?”

  “Open a door. One that can never be closed.”