The Midnight Witch

by Paula Brackston

  If Stricklend thought to attempt anything to help Perry, he is prevented from doing so by a cacophonous rumbling that heralds the opening up of a fissure between himself and the pulsating young man in front of him. The unrestrained power of the corrupted spell has reached the creatures of the Darkness and affected their release. As Perry at last falls still, nothing more than an empty corpse once more, the raw hole in the ground next to him belches forth foul-smelling smoke, and the roars of beings who were never intended to tread the earth. A clawlike hand reaches up from the depths and takes hold of Perry’s ankle. In one unnaturally quick movement it pulls his body into the pit. Stricklend starts to walk backward, slowly, keeping his eyes on the entrance to the abyss. He sees a demon, crouched low, scramble up the far side of the crater and bound away among the tombstones. Another, slightly larger, with a bulbous head and small, piggy eyes, hauls itself up onto the grass. It cocks its head on one side as if considering Stricklend very carefully.

  “What a foul little beast you are,” he tells it. “So very unattractive and so very unwelcome.” He speaks to gain precious time, all the while casting a Suffering Spell in the demon’s direction. When it strikes home the creature squeals, thrashing wildly at its invisible assailant. Stricklend seizes the advantage and begins to use the incantations he has learned from his study of the necromancer’s art. Incantations against just such an event. Spells and chants which, he sincerely hopes, will send the escaping monsters back where they belong, and seal the wound in the earth that is allowing them out. All around him spirits whisper or cry out. He observes several specters wandering among the graves. The power of the Lazarus Coven is only now revealed to him, and he finds himself in awe of it. It takes all his concentration, all his considerable skill, to slowly drive back the emerging demons. As he battles on, he begins to feel his own strength waning.

  “Willoughby!” He summons the spirit. “Help me. You are a creature of the Darkness, help me send these wretches back where they belong, unless you want to dwell there for all eternity. Fulfill your pledge and serve the Sentinels as you swore to do.”

  Beside him a looming figure strides forward into the fray.

  * * *

  I open my eyes.

  At first I cannot be sure where I am or whether it is night or day. My vision is blurred, the focus skewed, so that for a short while I lie still, waiting for things to become clearer. I have the curious sensation that I am dreaming, and yet at the same time I am quite certain that I am not. I am aware of voices, but they seem distant. Slowly I come to realize that some are the familiar, insistent whisperings of the spirits. Others are spoken by people who still tread the earth. I know those voices so well. Why does it take me so long to recognize them?

  “Lilith? Lilith, can you hear me?”

  Yes, yes. Oh! I make no sound. I want to speak, but my voice is still sleeping.

  “Lily, my love…”

  Bram?

  “Bram?” At last I can form his name properly. “My eyes … where are we?”

  “Shh, lie still. All will be well. We are in the observatory. It is still night. The stars are shining just for you, do you see?”

  I rub my eyes and blink away the strange heaviness in them. And, gradually, I can make out the cloudless indigo of the sky and its celestial diamonds. I blink some more and my sight is properly restored. It is a relief to see Bram’s dear face gazing down at me. But he looks so terribly anxious.

  “Have I been … unwell?” I ask, and then I see that Louis stands behind him. “Oh, Louis. Why do you both look so concerned?”

  “Do you not remember, Lily?” he asks me. “Do you not recall what happened?”

  I shake my head and become conscious of the fact that my limbs feel restless. Restless and weightless. Now that the heaviness of my sleepy state has melted away, it has been replaced by a wonderful feeling of well-being. I sit up, the movement momentarily causing a little dizziness.

  “Do you feel … quite well?” Bram asks me.

  “I should feel a great deal better if you would both stop looking at me as if I were an invalid.”

  Bram moves away a little. Louis asks again, “Do you recall nothing?”

  And then, in that moment, in one mind-shaking instant, I do remember. I remember everything. I remember Bram being suspended over the edge of the building. I remember Stricklend. I remember the Dark Spirit. I remember being wounded.

  I remember dying.

  I remember dying!

  Suddenly I cannot breathe. The shock of the recollection has knocked the air from my lungs. I leap to my feet, gasping. Bram tries to hold me. I know he means to help, but I cannot bear him to touch me now, not now. I fight for breath and gulp it down. My sudden movement has brought on a lurching dizziness, so that I have to clutch the back of the chaise to steady myself. I am aware of the loudness of my own heartbeats as they thud in my ear. I can feel the blood whooshing through my veins. I would almost swear I can feel my body regenerating, replenishing, rebuilding itself, stronger and better than it has ever been. I have the impression I have woken from a month of sleep, and feel utterly rested. All my senses are heightened. I can hear small, nighttime birds far below in the trees of the embankment singing sweetly. I can smell the coffee being brewed in the kitchen of the little bakery two streets away. And I can feel magic. My own magic. Oh, how it fills my body! My whole being fizzes and crackles with it. As the giddiness and panic pass I take a few tentative steps. Around me I can feel my guardian spirits. And I can see them! Not just as I ordinarily can whenever I have called or summoned them, but all those dear to me, here, beside me, as real and bright and full of life as the days when they trod the earth.

  Welcome, mistress!

  My handsome Cavaliers! My brave soldiers.

  Will you walk in the gardens with me, Lilith? Will you pick flowers with me?

  Amelia. Dear little Amelia.

  So many spirit friends.

  “Lilith.” Bram’s voice snags my attention and the spirits recede. “Do you understand what has happened to you?”

  Thinking back, stamping down the panic that revisits me when I allow the thought to form in my mind, I know I must make myself face the truth of what has happened.

  “I am alive because I have taken the Elixir. You, Louis, you must have worked the spell. And you, Bram, my darling, you must have brought him here.”

  Louis shakes his head in wonder. “Oh, Lilith, I have never in my life been so terrified of doing anything.”

  I manage a small smile. “It appears you are a fair necromancer, Lord Harcourt.”

  “Do you feel well?” Bram asks.

  “I feel magnificent!” I assure him. And the three of us laugh at the lunacy of it all. I hold Bram’s gaze then. Can he truly love me now? What am I, after all, if not a living corpse? I would be revolted, repulsed, repelled by my own body, if I were not experiencing such glorious strength, such invigorating, blissful magic. But Bram cannot know how I feel. To him I might have become some terrible ghoulish creature. I hold out my hand to him, wrist uppermost. “I am truly alive, my love. Touch me. I am warm. My heart beats. My blood flows. Feel my pulse. Won’t you take my hand?” For a moment I am afraid he will recoil from me now, that he will not be able to love the unearthly revenant being I am become. But he smiles, his beautiful face relaxing.

  “If you want me to hold your hand, you’ll have to come down first.”

  “Come down?”

  “Look at your feet.”

  I look and find that I am floating, drifting some distance above the floor. Giggling, I force my feet to find their way back to the ground. I reach out for Bram, happy for him to hold me now. When he touches my skin, he flinches as the heat of the magic within me stings his own flesh. Disconcerted, he tries again, cautiously. I do my best to control this new, elemental force that I have been reborn with. This time I am aware of a tingling sensation in my palm and fingers as he takes my hand.

  Relieved, Bram smiles. “I shall have to be
careful,” he says.

  “I … think I have much to learn about my new … status. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

  “It was nothing. It doesn’t matter. I thought I had lost you forever,” he murmurs into my hair, his eyes still wet with tears. “I could not bear to live on without you. I begged Louis to do it. I fetched the Elixir and the necklace from the convent, I told him the Great Secret, and I pleaded with him to bring you back.”

  “Louis, you took such a dangerous step. Oh!” I see through the window Terence’s body, a small dark shape on the roof terrace. I hurry outside to him, but I know already that his spirit has gone. I kneel beside him and hold his cold hand.

  “Stricklend,” Bram says. “Terence tried to help you. Stricklend didn’t hesitate for a second. Murdering an old man meant nothing to him.”

  I cannot help but feel responsible. “I should have protected him,” I say.

  “You cannot help everyone, Lily,” Louis tells me.

  “Stricklend will crush anyone to get what he wants,” I say. “Terence is not his first victim, and he certainly will not be his last.” A terrible thought comes to me. “Louis, when you used the Elixir to raise me, was Willoughby here?”

  “Willoughby? Edmund Willoughby, d’you mean?”

  “There is not time to explain. Did you feel the presence of a Dark Spirit?”

  He shakes his head. “No. There was a great deal of activity. I … I expected that, I suppose. You know I’ve never practiced Infernal Necromancy before, Lily. There was a lot going on, a commotion, spirits stirring…”

  “But not a Dark Spirit, Louis. You would know the difference.”

  “No. No, I’m certain of it. No Dark Spirit.”

  I find I am able to breathe again properly, but my relief is short-lived when Bram says, “But, Lilith, Willoughby was here. After Stricklend left, you said you saw him, that he overheard … Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, yes! How could I have been so foolish? It is coming to me now. Bram, Stricklend never intended to kill you. He knew I wouldn’t reveal the Great Secret to him. He knew I would only tell it if I knew I was dying, to pass it on. Ordinarily, that would have been to the heir to my title, or at the very least to a senior witch. But there was none. Only you, my darling. Stricklend knew I would tell you, and he left Willoughby here to eavesdrop.”

  “Lilith, you could not have known.” Bram does his best to comfort me. “It isn’t your fault…”

  “It is my responsibility. The Great Secret is in the hands of the most wicked of men, a man who will use it for his own gain, his own power, not caring how many people he harms. Stricklend has what he needs to wreak havoc, and I gave it to him.” I shake my head slowly. “Which means, I must be the one to take it from him again.”

  “Lily…?” Louis shakes his head.

  “What do you mean?” Bram is anxious. “What do you plan to do?”

  I hold up my hand and close my eyes. I call to my spirit guardians.

  Where has he gone, my captains? Where is Stricklend now?

  Two of us stayed with you, mistress. The third followed the sorcerer. He tells us the villain is in a graveyard. He stands close by a giant cedar tree.

  “My father’s grave,” I tell Bram and Louis. “He has gone to Papa’s grave.”

  Bram is puzzled. “Why? Why would he go there? Why now?”

  Louis knows. “What better place is there than a cemetery if one wishes to raise the dead?”

  “I must stop him.” I stride toward the stairs. “He must not be allowed to use the Elixir!”

  “Lily, you can’t go alone,” says Louis.

  “He’s right. We will come with you.”

  “No! It’s too dangerous.”

  Louis overtakes me on the staircase calling back over his shoulder, “We can take my motorcar. I am a witch, Lily, do you really think I would allow you to do this unsupported? I can be of use.”

  I hesitate and put my hand on Bram’s arm. “He’s right, Bram. He is a witch—I may have need of his skills. And he will have some protection of his own. But you, my darling, I cannot let you come with us. You would be so vulnerable…”

  “I’ve let that bastard kill you once, Lilith, I’m not going to let it happen a second time. Stricklend may ooze all the vile magic he wants, but he’s still flesh and blood, isn’t he? Fortunately the army taught me how to shoot straight. Harcourt, have you a gun?”

  “I keep my shotguns in the country, but I do have one rifle and a pistol in my house here in London.”

  “Then we will fetch them on our way. Come on.”

  He takes my hand and we run down the stairs. Louis has brought no driver but gets behind the wheel himself, and soon the engine of the motorcar is running. It is pointless my resisting the plan, as I can see the men have made up their minds to help me. If Bram is to stand beside me, I must at least allow him to arm himself. In truth, I know I may very well have need of their help. I have scarcely had time to adjust to my new … condition. Druscilla told me there is no magic more powerful than that of a risen witch, but how do I know what I am capable of? How long might it take me to master my new gifts or talents? One way or another, Stricklend must be stopped.

  28.

  We tear along the embankment of the Thames and then head north, halting as briefly as possible at Clifton Villas to collect the weapons. As Louis drives on I watch Bram load bullets into the guns and test the sights of the rifle, and I marvel at how our lives have shaped us and brought us together for this moment. I am acutely aware that I am altered in so many ways. While my mind struggles to come to terms with the truth of what I now am, my body seems quicker to make the necessary adjustments. My senses continue to heighten, so that I am all but overwhelmed by the myriad sounds I can hear, the smells I can detect—not least the sourness of the nighttime river—as well as minuscule reactions to the air upon my skin, or Bram’s touch as he holds my hand. And my other sense, my witch’s sensitivity to magic, has increased to become the greater part of me. Magic sings through my veins and electrifies my fingertips. Will I be able to govern it? To wield it as I need to? This night we will all three of us be tested to the very limits of our various abilities.

  Within minutes we arrive at the cemetery. We leave the car outside the high iron gates. Bram carries the rifle, Louis the pistol. The instant I set foot within the boundary of the graveyard I am assailed by disturbed and agitated spirits. They clamor and call out, some angry, some frightened, all stirred by the activities that have taken place here. I notice spectral shapes flitting between the headstones, and clearly spy at least two demons.

  “We are too late!” I tell the others. “Stricklend has opened a way into the Darkness.”

  “And a way out,” says Louis, pointing to a low, growling creature behind a mausoleum.

  Bram raises his rifle.

  “No!” I tell him. “Let it be. I will try to send it back, to send them all back. But first we must find Stricklend and Willoughby.”

  “It’s so dark,” says Bram. “And this place is vast. They could be anywhere. We should split up and search.”

  “There is no need.” I lead the way as I speak. “I know precisely where he will be.” Without hesitation I head for my father’s grave. That is where my Cavalier saw him. That is where he will remain until his task is complete. Or until I stop him. I must not be distracted by the foul beasts and tortured souls who dash hither and thither. The closer we get to the fissure in the Rubicon, the nearer to the source of the bitter magic that is being so ruthlessly used, the louder the spirits cry out to me, begging me to help them, to rescue them from the Darkness, to send them to the Land of Night, or even to make them live again and tread the earth once more in the Land of Day.

  They know. They all of them know what I am become.

  At last we reach the mighty cedar tree. Beneath it I see a swirling mass of spirit forms and phantoms and shape-shifting sorcerers attempting to escape their purgatory. In the midst of it all stands Stricklend, and
at his side, as perfectly human to look at as if he had not lived several hundred years ago, Edmund Willoughby. This Dark Spirit is working hard to hold back the hordes that would escape and to rid his master of the troublesome demons. Stricklend whirls about as I approach, and it is satisfying to see the surprise on his face at finding me here.

  “You!” he hisses. “Even now, you seek to thwart my plans. Even though you are…”

  “Dead? Oh, come now, you surely did not believe I would be so easily disposed of.”

  Bram and Louis stand on either side of me. Stricklend sneers at their guns.

  “I see you have your own little army, Morningstar. How quaint. Clearly you feel the lack of your own corporeal presence, now that you are required to walk only in spirit.”

  “You are quite wrong about that,” I tell him, letting my magic lift me up, slowly raising me to stand several feet off the dusty graveyard floor. My hair ruffles as I rise, and my nightgown flutters at the gentle movement. I use a spell of disturbance to snap a slim branch from the tree, grasp it in my hands, and crush it into woodchips, which I let go so that they blow away on the unearthly wind around us. “You see, I do have a body. One that is working really rather well just now.”

  Stricklend gapes. “You … you are risen?”

  “I am.”

  “But how? I don’t understand. I used the Elixir myself. I worked the spell, the incantations. I followed the ritual to the letter. Every utterance, every ingredient…”

  “Including that of the Great Secret that you had your pet sorcerer’s spirit snatch from my dying words!”

  “It didn’t work!” Stricklend insists. “The magic was flawed. It went wrong.”