“No child, he is not,” affirmed Lunabelle.
“But you were inside his Circle, weren’t you?”
I knew I was asking too many questions, and that here in the woods was perhaps not the best place to ask those questions.
“I was, but I have learned the folly of blind loyalty. Now I have saved your life twice. I ask nothing of you, except to trust me, until we get to a place of safety. I have something to return to you, but first, we must remove that which is destroying your life.”
“If you mean the demon, then use your powers to save Be- I mean, my friend.”
“That may not be possible, child. This is usually a one time thing.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because once I force the demon out of you, it will have the power to kill me.”
Demon One:
Chapter 17
Beth had not spoken for what seemed like hours, but was more likely just over an hour. Toril had been flipping back and forth through her book, huffing and puffing when she couldn’t find a spell that she thought could work. Every now and then she would say “Oh maybe that’ll work,” and when Beth’s eyes brightened and was about to say something, Toril would sit back in her chair, looking all flustered.
“No. That won’t work. I need…I need something else.”
Beth had been drumming her fingernails into the table. She stopped when Toril looked at her, as if she was planning to pop both her eyeballs with her wand.
“Sorry,” said Beth. “I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
Fully expecting Toril to come back with a line intended to make her look superior, she didn’t. “You’re supposed to hold onto that healing power, your good thoughts, and keep that demon in check.”
“Right…”
“Right,” said Toril. “You see, I really do have a plan.”
Beth raised her palms and shrugged her shoulders. “I take it I am involved, so at some point you’re going to tell me what the plan is.”
“That’s right, Beth.”
Beth smiled. Maybe Toril was just winging it. Maybe the little witch didn’t have a clue about what to do next. Just before the book had closed itself, it lay open on one page. A hooded figure was holding the Mirror. Her hands were not in direct contact with it, that’s why Toril had retained her own markings.
“Beth, one of the members of the Circle, one who has been on our side for years and we didn’t even know it, is helping us. It’s Lunabelle, she’s a witch who took the Mirror from me. Now she is going to return to Romilly.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Look!” Toril exclaimed. “The book shows me what happens – I mean, what will happen.”
Beth looked at the book, but could only see red on its pages.
“It looks like blood. There’s no happy message here.”
“No, Beth. That’s what will happen if we don’t succeed. Romilly and Lunabelle will face a great test in the forest, but if they come through it, Lunabelle will….Lunabelle will….”
“Will what? What does it say?”
“It says the demon has to be removed before Romilly can be reunited with the Mirror once more.”
“Okay,” replied Beth. “That sounds great. Why do you look like that? What’s wrong, Toril?”
“It says that the demonic expulsion has to be done at the same time. To the second demon. The one that is within you, Beth.”
At that, Beth felt like she had been punched in the stomach, with blood forcing itself up through her digestive system, powering through her throat, and splattering the table with puddles of red. Some of the blood seeped into Toril’s book.
Toril stood up, produced a hand tissue and cleaned Beth’s face up.
“I know now why every page I see is red,” said Beth weakly. “I am so tired, Toril.”
Toril did not give Beth any further information, but she now understood what she needed to do.
Using her wand, she conjured up an array of items.
The first was a purple cloth, large enough in size to cover the table completely. The second item was two long pieces of rope. The third was a gunmetal coloured blade, about twelve inches long.
“Then let’s get this over with, Beth,” replied Toril. She was tired too. We all were. “I need you to lie down on the table, once I have covered it with the purple cloth. Will you do that for me?”
Toril could see that Beth had been looking at the long knife.
“Don’t worry, that’s not for you.”
“Toril, what ever you are planning, I really don’t like the look of it. It doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
“It’s not supposed to,” replied Toril with a shrug of her shoulders. “We have to perform the last rites on a long dead demon. If you don’t like it, that’s okay. Sometimes, things just have to be done. We may not like doing it, but we’ll do it nonetheless. Just as we’re going to do it.”
Beth didn’t like anything of what Toril was saying, but at least she had been present when Toril had been going through her book. Clearly Beth’s demon didn’t like it either, and that gave Toril all the information that she needed to proceed.
“I’ve consulted with the book, and what it reveals to me now, I need your complete trust on. But, before we do that, I want you to do something for me.”
“Of course,” said Beth, “anything you want.”
“I want you to talk to me about your mother. How you coped when your parents died.”
Beth shook her head. “I’d really rather not, Toril. Sometimes we are hurt so bad that our wounds never truly heal. We might look alright to the outside world, but it’s just a front, an act that allows us to cope. To function. It’s too hurtful to talk about.”
“That’s exactly why you must do it, Beth.”
“I don’t understand,” stammered Beth. “I was with your mother and we were winning. Before she sent me in your direction anyway. We were winning.”
“My mother has always known what she’s doing, Beth. But I want to hear it from you. I want to hear what she did while you were with her.”
Toril wanted to protect Beth from the truth about Tori-Suzanne’s last known location. She wanted to say Hey look Beth, it’s okay. Diabhal and his minions attacked my mum, and she came out on top. Just as we all knew she would.
The truth, that Tori-Suzanne had been pressed to death, bit at Toril hard. But she could not tell Beth, not after what they had been through. Beth would believe all their efforts had been for nothing.
“The truth is, Toril, that your mother, apart from you, is probably the bravest person I have ever known.”
“I am surprised to hear you say that. I really thought Romilly was the bravest in your view.”
“In some ways, she is,” said Beth. “But with you, and your mother, we can never truly know what you’re thinking. With Romilly, I always knew where I stood. And I am so scared for her right now, I tell you.”
“Don’t be,” said Toril, squeezing Beth’s hand. “It’ll be alright. We have followed the book this far and it hasn’t let us down.”
“Why don’t you skip to the last page and tell me that everything turns out okay?”
“Because I don’t think it’s that kind of book, Beth. Now you were saying.”
“Well,” continued Beth, “if we encountered ghosts in the woods, your mum would hurry me on. Even when Curie turned up, she was so cool. Even when he seemed to have bested us, she looked out for me, to save me. When you turned up, and did what you did, to pull us out of those graves, it was like it was all predetermined. Like it was meant to happen, you know?”
“The book,” stated Toril. “What happened next? Just tell me it from your point of view.”
“We went into the house of Diabhal Takh, with one sole mission – to destroy the body of Dana Cullen.”
“My mum knew it was there. Good old mum.”
“Tori-Suzanne was not the kind of person to lead us on a fool’s errand, Toril. Your mother cared
greatly about this town and everyone in it. Destroying Dana could only be a good thing. We had a dual mission, to destroy her spirit and her body. We succeeded in the latter, but the former…..”
“…had nowhere to go, except into a new host. And it wasn’t going to be Mum because she would have killed herself rather than co-exist with a demon.”
“Especially one she had been convinced had been dead for seventy years, Toril.” Beth paused before adding, “Perhaps you will never truly know how much she sacrificed for us all, and just how much she loved you. Loves you.”
“You’ve been to the other side, Beth. The other side of death. What do you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“The whole afterlife thing. You Christians believe in that, don’t you?”
Beth could not understand why Toril was raising this now. “You believe in witchcraft, Toril. You and I believe in different things.”
Toril noted that Beth was not answering the question.
“Did you see anything? Feel anything? See anyone you knew? Specifically, your parents, Beth.”
“Why do you keep asking me about that?” asked Beth. “All the time I’ve known you, it was just a case of the Toril Project running, and we had all better fall into place with that.”
Toril looked exacerbated at Beth. There was some truth in what she was saying. That’s why her words hurt so much. Beth deserved a small victory over Toril. After all, she had stabbed her because the Book had told her to do so. And now she was probing Beth about the afterlife. The sad fact for Beth was that while I saw my Nan, Beth did not see her parents. Even now, I believed it was all engineered for my Nan to meet me on the other side, and for Toril to bring us back via the Mirror.
Five lives for five souls indeed. We had done enough trading.
“I just wanted to know if there was something on the other side, that’s all.”
“I wasn’t over there long enough to tell you,” Beth replied honestly. “I really do wish I had more to tell you, Toril. As for how things ended in that hell house, I can tell you that your mother made me do things I thought I would never do. She’s an incredible woman.”
“She is,” agreed Toril. “Thank you Beth.”
“You still want me to go through with what ever you’re planning?”
“Of course I do. And unless there’s a whole chunk of detail that you’ve left out, I want you to lie down on that table.”
“You’ll forgive me Toril, but it doesn’t look good for me if I do that. I lie down on the table, you secure me with all that rope, then you stab me through the heart? Is that it?”
“Not exactly,” replied Toril. “The knife is for you, Beth.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do we trust one another? Do we?”
“I have to trust you, don’t I?” answered Beth. She believed she had given her most honest answer. The problem with believing in yourself meant that you spent far too much time convincing others. “You’re really going to tie me down on the table?”
“Yes,” confirmed Toril. “But you won’t be restrained for long.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I cast that demon out of your body, she is not going to want to go quietly. Dana told me so herself that if we ever crossed wands again that I, along with everyone I care about would be just gone. That knife gives us a chance.”
“What do you mean Toril?”
“You know that thing you did? Pulled her heart out of her body? I ask you to show the same strength with me that you did with my mum. When Dana is forced to leave your body, she will enter mine. That’s when you use the knife, Beth. It can penetrate the skin of one who has the oil of the dillfern in it. Don’t second-guess yourself on this. Remember – you’ve been here before.”
“I can’t do this, Toril. I don’t have the strength.”
“You can, and you will. Lie down now.”
“How can you be so fecking cool about this?” screamed Beth. “You’re asking me to kill you.”
“I’m asking you to be a friend, one last time.”
Toril believed her mother was dead, otherwise she would look for another way. A logical way out of this. But I wasn’t there, so the demon only had one way to go. I did not envy Beth’s task, though I would face my own soon enough.
Beth surprised Toril by giving her a hug, followed by a kiss on the cheek.
“There’s another way, Toril. Part of the forest has the Suicide Swing, that’s what they call it.”
“I have heard of it,” said Toril. “You know, I even talked someone out of using it one time. The place is littered with the bones of people who felt they could go on no longer.”
“If I went on my own, threatened to throw myself down, Dana would have to leave. Don’t you see Toril? That’s a much better plan. We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, we do,” Toril stated, slapping a hand on the book.
“You and that damn book. I hate it. Hate it!!”
“You follow the Bible,” Toril replied.
“Not as slavishly as you do that,” Beth said. “Please!”
“Beth, honestly, the same thing is going on where Romilly is. Two still have to die. We haven’t paid what we owe.”
“I don’t want to be around if everyone I care about is dying!”
“That’s your curse, Bethany, your cross. You will find a way to cope.”
“No!” screamed Beth. “We will find another way-”
“-there isn’t time!” Toril shouted back.
“You will make the time. I mean it, Toril.”
Toril would not have easily backed down in the past. She still intended for Beth to be complicit in her plan. The delay would not be that long. After all, what Beth liked was party tricks. So Toril decided to give her one.
“Alright. Alright Beth, you win.”
“I thought you were going to turn me into a rat or something.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, Bon-Bon.”
“You’re not trying to cutesy your way out of this, Toril. I’m not stabbing you.”
“You wanted to earlier.”
Beth could not deny that, but sometimes she wondered if it was Dana pushing her to act so aggressively, or if she actually felt that way. It was so hard to tell, and she knew Toril was right. But Beth was right too. There had to be another way, despite what Toril said.
“Alright, grab me a flower from the window box.”
Beth turned around, reached a long slender arm towards the window, grabbing a tulip that had been growing despite the cold conditions. She was about to hand it to Toril when she produced her wand and told Beth to put the flower on the table.
With one command, a yellow bolt blasted from Toril’s wand, and the flower faded to a black, pulpy mess.
“Alright,” said Toril. “You said you wanted another way. Here it is.”
“You’ll have to remind me,” said Beth, looking confused. “When did I say that destroying flowers was my other way?”
“Because I’ve done my bit, you have to do yours. Heal it, Beth. Make the flower good again.”
“How?”
“Bless the Deity, Beth! You have a healing power. Do what you’ve been born to do. Heal this thing. Fix it good!”
“You’ve been trained in Wicca-”
“I worked on my own for years, Beth. Now I know you don’t know exactly how your healing power works, but I’d say time is running out for your tulip there. What we do, they are feelings, understand? We do something because we feel we should. There’s an emotional connection and definitely a spiritual one. Now put that all together, along with your good thoughts.”
Beth sat up with a start. “That’s it! A good thought! You see, I don’t have many of those any more. The demon is winning, and has been winning for a long time.”
Toril calmed down, but still had the mission in mind.
“I may not be experiencing what you are, Beth, but um, if it helps, I can try to understand.”
Toril sat down and waited for Beth to act. She scooped up the remains of the flower, cupped her hands, and looked like she was saying a prayer. She breathed into the small gaps between her fingers, and when she opened her hands, the flower had been returned to normal once more.
“I just gave it a good thought, that’s all.”
Beth was full of those, good thoughts I mean. What a different place the world would be, if we put all our good thoughts together.
Dark Winter: Trilogy Page 86