Bump (A Witchlight Novel)

by Jaime Munn

  We reached the iron gate and paused. F.C. was fully alert. I could feel his taunt body through his fur. His tail had slowed to an erratic swish-thump against my side, like an ominous drum beat. I scanned the gate first for any lingering spells and finding none expanded my search to the path that led up to the house. Cleo arched a questioning brow at me and I shook my head.

  “It’s clear up to the stairs,” I told her.

  She swung the gate open without waiting to hear more. I half expected her to dart into the shadows like a spy infiltrating enemy territory, but she waltzed up the pathway like she owned it. I followed her. We left the gate open for the next pair of werewolves. F.C. wanted out of my arms. Though I hated the idea of losing contact with his furry warmth, I set him down. Instantly he grew larger. His eyes were like eclipsed moons, the outer rims iridescent like midnight rainbows or oil slicks throwing back a shimmer as they were struck by headlights.

  I checked the stairs and the front door and was surprised that no spells or curses lay on them. I had expected some twisted magic laying about the territory of the black witch, but it seemed that Grace kept her home clean of the dark stuff. Though the house looked gloomy and foreboding, it didn’t reek of black magic, blood and curses. I was almost disappointed.

  “Nothing,” I told Cleo with a note of surprise in my voice.

  She headed up the stairs and proceeded to pick the lock to the door in all of thirty seconds. It made me feel very unsafe about the lock between me and the dark streets of Whisper Falls. At least, I consoled myself, I wasn’t living in the big bad city. Only I was in the city tonight.

  Fortunately I would be sleeping safe in the heart of a werewolf den where few would dare tread uninvited, but right now I was going to enter the lair of a witch who’d rather see me sleeping six feet under.

  I shuddered as Cleo swung the door open and waited for me to give her the all clear. I peered into the gloom nervously, expecting every kind of fairytale bogeyman to leap out at me, but there was nothing. It was eerily quiet within the shadows. I shook my head and Cleo pulled a flashlight from a pocket. It was small and slim, but when she turned it on it banished the shadows swiftly as it swept over the threshold.

  She stepped inside and I held my breath. Cleo glanced back at me, waiting for me to join her. F.C. sniffed at the air inside the house before hesitantly entering. With my heart racing I joined them. Who’s afraid of an empty house, I scolded myself, but myself quickly answered, anyone with half a brain when the empty house belongs to a wicked witch. Seriously, that’s kid stuff.

  Cleo’s flashlight wasn’t going to be enough to explore the house I decided. Not if I didn’t want to be jumping out of my skin at every shadow. I still had my wolf eyes spell, but even wolves couldn’t see in utter darkness. The narrow slit windows of Grace’s house let almost no light through to begin with, but they were all covered by thick drapes. It made it possible for the housebreakers to turn on all the lights, I realised, without giving themselves away, but first we had to wait in that darkness for our companions to join us.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Sofia and Bella were first to join us. Bella warily fixing her eyes on F.C. and Sofia looking somewhat relieved to find Cleo and I still in one piece. I wished we were just a gang of silly school kids, exploring the local haunted house. We waited in the entrance hall ten minutes in total before the last of our group, Evan and Boytjie, joined us. I wondered why they hadn’t posted a sentry to keep watch outside, but didn’t feel like questioning Cleo in front of her people was very good for my health.

  Evan closed the door and Cleo flicked on a light. I noticed that she’d pulled on a pair of green gloves, long and elegant like ballroom dancing gear rather than something selected for criminal activities. Embarrassed I noted that everyone had gloves and only Sofia and myself had our naked hands on display. It seemed obvious in retrospect.

  The entrance hall was bland, even though the walls were heavily hung with photographs. The images themselves were faded. I imagined they had hung on the walls since the house itself had been constructed. It wasn’t sunlight that had quickly stripped the colours from the images, it was time. I peered at one more closely and wondered if colour had ever been part of it. The photograph looked brittle, like it was a gathering of ash and soot and fine milled bone powder collected together in the semblance of a woman. She had some aspect to her features that made me think she was related to Grace St John. Maybe it was the eyes that seemed to peer back at you from the deep past, coal black and malignant, or the strong will that seemed evident in the sharpness of the jaw and the thin smile almost curving the lips. I didn’t like the look of her and as we moved on into the house, I realised that all the pictures on the wall were of this woman.

  I wondered then if the St John house truly was the neighbourhood’s haunted house.

  In silence the werewolves and I moved deeper into Grace’s home. Even though Cleo turned on every light, I still felt that we were moving into darkness. No spells appeared to warn us back. I wondered if we were being lulled into a false sense of security. At least Grace was in Whisper Falls, doing who knew what, but safe from the jaws and the teeth of the werewolves I’d brought into her home.

  It made me wonder again why Abelia had forbidden me from killing Grace. That made me sound all bloodthirsty, but the question was more about why Abelia cared so much. Beings of the veiled world usually had little concern for humanity, even if they were dealing with people touched by their own world in some small way. It struck me that perhaps there were clues even in that first encounter with the powerful woman that I had missed.

  I forced myself to concentrate on the important things first. We were in a witch’s house. While it had not been built of gingerbread and candy, I was sure that there was a furnace here. Even Hansel and Gretel might have had a point if their story had been about an encounter with Grace St John. I needed to keep my guard up or else. I reminded myself that there were things that ate werewolves too and they had sharper teeth and longer claws.

  We entered a large room that although furnished as a dining room appeared not to have been used for any gathering in a long, long time. It felt empty, like light hearted conversations and laughter had last been experienced here so long ago that the room could hardly recall it. Sometimes the feeling is so strong that it doesn’t take a witch to read the silence laid thick across a room. The werewolves clearly sensed it. They didn’t like it any more than I did. It didn’t feel any less abandoned when someone turned the lights on.

  Cleo turned to me like she was expecting me to take the lead. I didn’t know where to start. F.C. however seemed to have a better sense of direction. He moved through the room towards one of two openings leading into darkened passage ways. I followed him and the werewolves followed me.

  Not wanting to enter any darkened rooms and wait for someone to locate the light switch, I cast a spell for a little ambient light that seemed to seep from the air around us. It was honey hued like the sunlight of the veiled world. It dappled over Grace’s home like it was falling through a canopy of leaves. I hadn’t crafted it that way. It revealed just how much shadow had been infused into the building.

  I had been wrong in deciding that little magic lingered in the house. It was infused with it, although of a kind that few would be familiar with. I shuddered at the thought of the sending and the deep veiled darkness from which it came. I was almost entirely certain Grace’s magic called on this aspect of the veiled world, which was a terrifying thought. If spells brought a place into the cusp and closer to the veiled world had Grace brought her own home so close to the realm of the sendings that they could almost reach out and touch it?

  There had been a long association with the darkest part of the veiled world in this house, I thought. How long did it take for a place to fall out of our world and into that older realm where the ancients dwelled? It depended not on time but on the potency of the magic one practiced in it. I knew suddenly and completely that the spell room of Grace
St John was so completely under the shadows that she moved among the demons of that darkest netherworld. I wondered what she was that she could dare do that and not be harmed by them.

  I wanted to call F.C. back. There was no way I could venture into Grace’s spell room and survive, but my throat was thick with raw fear and something pressed me on as though my familiar had become a pied piper for witch and werewolves. Sofia was close against my side, holding onto me as though she felt the shadows around us, felt the watchful eyes of unseen beings.

  I was glad of the broach that Abelia had given me, slipping my fingers into a pocket to touch it and feel the raw power of the warm jewels and their magic charged glittering depths. I didn’t fool myself into believing that it was enough to hold back the denizens of the pitch black landscape of the veiled world. If there were demons out there and a hell, it lay within the blackness of the realm held imprisoned within the heart of the deadly, sunny and fair veiled world.

  Their only weakness was the light, but I didn’t know if I could summon it in the heart of their domain where light was something that never dawned, never sparked, never burned. Still I followed F.C. through rooms that barely registered, down a stairwell that inevitably lead us into the cellar of Grace’s home where there were no windows, not even heavily draped slits. The dappled sunlight I had conjured faded to a pale twilight, barely enough to keep the shadows from reaching out towards us.

  “I don’t like this,” Cleo growled, but we still marched on.

  I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any electric lights here and that the walls seemed ancient. This place had been lost to the world for eons. It’s age incalculable. There was a siren’s call in the air around us and the knowledge slowly seeped into my mind that we were under a dark spell. That Grace’s home was most certainly not empty.

  I spun more magic into the light spell. It brightened, though less perceptibly than I would have liked. The walls were spattered with moss and the masonry seemed like that found in an ancient Stone Age passage tomb. I reached out to F.C. mentally and reigned him in, trying to find the spell that called us inexorably onwards. He resisted. I wondered if there was still enough of Grace’s homunculus in him to make him her pawn.

  “Stop,” I said and charged the word with a simple, but potent energy. The werewolves and I came to an instant standstill. F.C. pressed against my will a moment longer then submitted. He collapsed onto the stone floor and began cleaning himself like stopping had all along been his own intention.

  “What is it?” Sofia asked, her voice hushed and laced with fear.

  In the real world even werewolves aren’t all gung-ho into action and death and chaos we go. Of course, some of them were. I could feel Cleo’s muscle squad tensing up behind us.

  “We’re being lured in,” I told her.

  Cleo grunted. A sound that sufficed for a sarcastic ‘of course we are’ from the leader of the pack.

  “Do we turn back?” Sofia clung to me hard. I wondered if she thought my spells were more potent than her teeth and her claws. Perhaps against the shadows she had a point.

  “We can’t,” Cleo said.

  We all turned to look behind us and the shadows there were boiling, like the darkness was alive.

  Demons of the veiled world, I realised. I went cold with terror. F.C. was suddenly winding himself between my legs and brushing against me. He took the terror away but I still wondered exactly whose side he was on. Everything I knew about familiars though made it impossible for them to work against their maker. That F.C. was one part Grace’s creature didn’t make that thought as comforting as it had once been.

  I tried directing a finger of light into the living shadows where the demons blocked our retreat, but they simply tore the spell apart before it had a chance to be more than a glimmering of colour in the darkness. I could pull energy from Asbelia’s broach but we had come a long way already and who knew how many demons waited along that path or how much light I would need against the flesh and darkness between us and escape. It seemed we had been outmatched.

  “She’s here,” I said suddenly certain of it. “Grace St John is very much here.”

  “She can’t be,” Cleo said.

  “She is,” I replied simply. “She fooled us with a doppelganger,” I guessed, almost entirely certain that I was right.

  To fool a werewolf who would smell through an illusion she had to have created something very convincing. I could think of nothing short of something as complex as a doppelganger to fool her watchers. It was good news in a way. A doppelganger took a lot of power and concentration to craft. Grace would be magically nearly tapped, but she would be relying on her pet demons to deal with us.

  We were certainly still doomed, but a whisper inside of me reminded me that Asbelia wanted something. She had come to me and lured me unsuspecting into this battle with Grace St John. She had forbid me from killing her when such a thing had seemed possible. She had equipped me with power, a boon that was worth more than any coin of payment. I couldn’t say what a woman of the veiled world would want with a bad witch, but it was impossible to come to any other conclusion. Or perhaps I wanted to think that because it also seemed our only hope.

  “You can’t kill her,” I said suddenly, turning to face Cleo.

  “We’re not turning back?” Sofia asked incredulously as Cleo and I sparred silently with hard glares.

  I ignored her hoping that she wouldn’t hold it against me if we got out of this situation alive. F.C. continued to brush against me and even Cleo’s hardness couldn’t rebuff my determination. The werewolf had to submit to me in this. I wasn’t going to be challenged on it.

  My spells were still thick on me. Both were a hindrance. I could see the demons of the veiled world in the dark more clearly than a sane mind would ever want to. The spell that kept Cleo from reading my future actions and future words fuelled her will to defy me. It was only F.C.’s stalwart support of my own determination that kept my eyes firmly locked on the enchanted wolf.

  I felt the muscle squad’s tension as they viewed the engagement between their leader and myself for what it truly was; a battle. A battle of wills in which neither of us were about to allow the other to win, but if we were to survive, I had to win it.

  “This is crazy,” Sofia muttered.

  I knew she sensed as much as her companions did. She didn’t like it any more than they did, but she still hung onto me. It was a show of allegiance that could come back to bite her. I worried about it for less than a second, something that would trouble me later when I had the time for it. I was cold and hard and ungiving now. I needed to be. I didn’t think about what that said about my true nature.

  Magic crept into the battle between Cleo and I subtly. There was a stirring of air in the passage that snaked through my hair, a chilling breeze that felt like it came direct from the North Pole. It quickly stole the warmth from the air. It was my magic. It reduced the wolves to shivering, but it only served to stiffen my resolve. Cleo sensed this. I could almost see the knowledge spilling out of her eyes as they widened and her jaws clenched.

  “You must agree,” I said. My voice was stronger than I had ever heard it. Firm like the stone on which we stood, commanding like the voice of a goddess who could not be denied. Despite the cold in the air, my skin was warm, almost burning hot. Sofia was snuggling into me and Boyjie and Evan and Reggie and Aziah were leaning towards me, drawn to that heat. Only Cleo and Bella resisted completely. Bella pressed against Cleo much as F.C. pressed against me.

  He was purring loud and rumbling, like a stormy sea crashing against the rocks. I realised that I was behaving more than a little like a bloody stereotyped action heroine. Later I would cringe at the thought of challenging Cleo before her pack. Later I would hope she didn’t try and eat me in my sleep. But now I remained hard as diamond and inflexible in my will. “You will agree.”

  “We’ll play it your way, witch,” Cleo didn’t bend to my will, I realised, but tactically put the ball once m
ore in my court. “But if you fall we’re taking the warlock down hard.”

  She narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth at Boytjie, Evan, Aziah, and Reggie. They looked down at the ground and had they had any tails they would have been between their legs. She ignored Sofia.

  I wondered if Cleo was one of the pack who put werewolf mates in a lofty space. Given her Juliette and Juliette with Bella I didn’t think I was far out on my guess, but Cleo would never admit it. And IOU or no IOU I thought she might tear out my throat if I suggested it.

  I didn’t tell Cleo that killing Grace wouldn’t help them against the demons. It was more than likely that the only thing holding them back right now was the warlock they so wanted to sink their teeth into. It was a futile gambit. The labyrinthine passageway under the house was completely within that part of the veiled world where these demons dwelled. In the deep, deep dark where unhallowed things hid from the light. Escape was all but impossible. I was relying on a thin hope that a woman of the veiled world had something in mind when she’d set me on a path down into the black heart of Grace St John’s lair.

  I nodded at Cleo instead of saying all these things to her. I didn’t mention that I wasn’t so certain that I could stand against Grace, even if she was drained by the effort of crafting her doppelganger either. I was stereotyping on purpose; the strong, silent type. Masculine archetype be damned. I realised I was emulating Cleo. Maybe she realised it too because she scowled at me and showed me her teeth. I shivered on the inside.

  Cleo waited for me and all eyes were on me. I realised that Cleo had turned the mission over to me. Everyone was waiting for my orders. I didn’t like being responsible for sending them to their horrible, horrible deaths, but at least I knew there was an ever after. It didn’t really satisfy my guilt. I felt a sudden stab of deep pity for religious fanatics who threw their lives away so casually. If it wasn’t a necessary part of the cycle, we’d all have simply been born in the ever after.