‘A long time.’
‘Not quite as specific an answer as I was angling for there, Stella.’
‘This was my masters’ home and seat of power for over three hundred years. But the London Coven itself has stood for longer, they just took it over from someone who looked after London before them. My witches should have continued here, continued to serve London, for several hundred more years. Now they’re gone, and this place doesn’t have a suitable successor to take their place.’
‘What does that mean for London?’
‘Nothing good, David.’
‘You know, you really have a way with an unnerving answer, Stella. It’s a gift, I mean that.’
I trailed one hand along the brick of the alley wall as we walked, feeling the history, the residual power that throbbed from stone that has stood for so long. I tried to draw in that power to bolster myself, to make me stronger than I felt. I needed it. Because as the coven grew closer with each step, a storm of emotions were fighting over me. A childish fear, as though I was cowering under my blanket from the bogeyman. Something terrible, something that I had never come across in my many decades of service, had walked into my home and done the unimaginable, and I was scared to face it, no matter how much I knew I had to. Knew I wanted to. A sense of unease, a sense that I was way out of my depth. Anger at what had happened, that I hadn’t been able to stop it, that I still hadn’t been able to do anything about it. A terror at the fact I was about to see their dead, ripped-apart bodies again. The bodies of my family. Would they have started to smell? Would their rotting odour infiltrate my nose, my very being? Would I taste it on my tongue? I feared I’d carry that smell with me for the rest of my life once I caught their scent. A phantom that would cling to me forever more. A reminder of the horror that had fallen upon our house.
‘Hey, are you okay?’
I turned to David, realising I’d stopped walking.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You can do this.’
I nodded, but I couldn’t reply. I worried if I tried to that only a childish whimper would come out. A stutter of fear.
‘Hey, hey; listen to me, Stella. Don’t let them do this to you. Don’t let the bastards who tore your world apart win. You owe it to your witches, and you owe it to yourself.’
‘I-I let them down, David. I let them—’
‘Stop. Something worse than terrible has dropped onto your life and exploded. But you’re alive, and as long as you’re alive you’ve got to stay strong and stay determined. You don’t get to break down until whoever did this to you and yours is brought to justice, okay?’
I somehow managed a smile as I straightened up and shook off the worst of it. ‘Okay.’
‘There we go. Let’s get in there and do our job. Show them they messed with the wrong Familiar.’
‘Let’s do it,’ I replied, trying to force all the authority I could into my voice. Somehow I managed to make my feet move again, and the two of us walked towards the coven, boots crunching over the broken glass that littered the cobbles from my desperate escape.
‘David?’
‘Yes, Stella?’
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s okay. Feel free to cheer me up when you get a moment, because I am seriously shitting it right now.’
17
The bodies were gone.
All of the ripped up pieces of my witches had been taken, leaving only dark, dried blood splattered around the room. Part of me was outraged that they had been taken, that they weren’t here waiting for me to give them a decent final resting place. A larger part of me was glad I didn’t have to relive the carnage that had become of them. Did that make me a coward?
‘What’s that smell?’ asked David.
I breathed it in and the corners of my mouth twitched up momentarily: ‘Cinnamon, freshly cut grass, and lavender. The smell of home.’ Not just of home, of life. For me, it was my first real memory. Before I had even opened my eyes for this first time after being created, I’d inhaled once deeply, through my nose, and the smell of this place had become part of me. Now it just reminded me of what I’d lost.
‘So, whoever was behind this must have come back for the bodies?’ said David, walking the room gingerly, studying every square inch for anything resembling a clue.
‘There was a creature here waiting for me when I got back. A clean-up service in the form of a giant, devil dog, left to mop me up when I walked in. It’s what I jumped away from when I found myself at your place.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘What is?’
‘Whoever is behind this can be sloppy. Or too sure of themselves. Probably both. That means they have weaknesses, and weaknesses can be exploited. Sooner or later, we’ll find something that leads us right to their door.’
I found a little fresh hope sprouting inside of me. Was David right? Because it was true, leaving a mindless beast behind to finish me off rather than seeing to the job personally, rather than making sure, had been an error. Sure, whoever had done this was strong beyond measure, but all that’s needed is that one weak spot to exploit. And everyone, and everything, has that weak spot. It was just a case of finding it.
‘So when you came back, the place was drained of magic, right?’
‘Completely. That shouldn’t be possible. Especially not here. Every street, every building, every blade of grass emits some trace of background magic, somehow they’d just sucked the whole place dry.’
‘Tell me more about the security measures of the coven.’
‘I told you, the witches had layer upon layer upon layer of protective spells. No one but those three and myself were able to walk in or out unscathed. And only us four would be able to remove or even temporarily stop any of them.’
‘Could those be ‘sucked dry’? The magic of the protection spells, just like what happened to the background magic of the place?’
‘No, that’s different. The spells, they were fixed. It would be like trying to suck a bowling ball through a drinking straw. The only way to remove them fully is if you know what they are, the name they’ve been given, and how to mute them. It’s only then that it would be possible for them to be stripped away.’
David stood from where he had been crouched, studying the blood splatter pattern across the hardwood floor.
‘So! You know what that means?’
‘What?’
‘That someone must have told them.’
I bristled and marched towards him quickly, my head hot. ‘What are you trying to say? I’d be careful what you say next, normal.’
‘Whoa, chill your boots, Stella, I’m just following the evidence to piece together the most likely scenario. If what you say’s true, then whoever stripped away the magical security of this place must have found out how they could do that somehow. Which means either someone told them, an inside job, or they, I don’t know, overheard one of you regaling someone in detail about the hows and the whys.’
I snarled and turned away, marching across to the other side of the room to try and shake my impulse to grab David by the neck and squeeze. An inside job. There are only four people who could have told them, and three of them are dead. That just leaves me.
‘I didn’t say anything to anyone.’
‘Hey, did I say that, Miss Hair-Trigger? They found out somehow; if you can think why or how that might be then we have a thread to pull at. This is police work, Stella. This is how you do this. You don’t ignore the uncomfortable because it makes you uncomfortable. You look, you gather, you make connections, and you follow those connections all the way down the line until you find out who did it. And then you win.’
I sighed and turned back to him, the anger fading. ‘So what now?’
‘Now you die.’
That voice; no, voices. Every word like it was spoken by someone else.
‘Um, please tell me that throwing your voice is another one of your talents?’
‘Where have you taken their bodies?’ I s
aid, turning in a circle, searching for some sign of the monster speaking to us.
‘Oh, I fed all of the meat and bones to my dogs. My ‘devil dogs’, that’s what you called them. They chewed them right up.’
I unleashed a blast of energy in anger, not even realising that I was doing it. David ducked and scrambled to the side as the room shook.
‘Face me! If you’re so powerful then stop these stupid games and just face me! Look me in the eyes and see if you can take my life!’
‘Not the best idea to encourage a psychotic murderer, Stella.’
‘Listen to the normal, Stella. Maybe you’ll live a little longer.’
A movement in the corner of my eye—
I turned in time to see a shadow step out of view in the open doorway—
‘Over there!’ I ran for the door, my only thought to catch, to confront, to kill.
‘Stella, wait!’
His words sounded dulled, my ears boom-booming with my heartbeat as I put the words together and felt the power grow in my hands, ready to be unleashed. Begging to be.
‘I’m coming for you!’
I burst out of the coven, ready to go down fighting at last.
18
I ran into the blind alley, both fists boiling with energy, desperate to be unleashed. To fly from my hands and attack the man of many voices who thought he could play games with me. Mock me. Mock my masters. Kill my masters.
‘Where are you!’
I heard a million different laughs in a million different voices, jabbing me from every angle. I couldn’t think straight, the desire to tear this piece of shit to pieces was too strong, and I began to unleash volley after volley of magic into the alley. Bricks exploded, rubbish caught fire, but all the time that laugh kept going. That mocking, sharp laugh, watching me throw a useless temper tantrum.
‘If you’ve quite finished, Stella...’
‘Come and get me, you bastard, you coward.’
‘But we’re having so much fun. Why spoil things now?’
‘Stella—’ David was at my shoulder, breathing quickly, terrified. ‘Stella, I think we should get away, now.’
‘No! No. The creature that tore up the witches is here, and I’m going to finish it. I owe it to them.’
‘Here? Who’s here? It’s just a trick. It’s probably got, I don’t know, speakers set up or something, because look around, there is no one here. No man, no monsters, just us. Just me and you.’
I felt the air ripple around me. I recognised the feeling. What was happening. Something was forcing its way into being. Forcing its way into existence. Something was being conjured.
‘Do you feel that?’ asked David, stretching his jaw as though his ears were about to pop.
Before I had a chance to reply, a concussive blast of air hit us, throwing us back against one wall of the alley and to the ground.
‘What the…?’
‘David, don’t move—’
I heard them before I saw them. For a second they were shrouded by the grey smoke that had accompanied the blast, but I heard their growls. Then light began to pierce the smoke. Twin balls of fire. One set, then two, then three.
‘What is that?’
I knew what it was. As the first paw of the three giant devil dogs stepped out of the smoke, I stood and flexed my shoulders. The last time I had only faced one of them and it had almost killed me. I had been weak, staggering through a world empty of magic, terrified as the impossible reality of my masters’ murders gripped my heart in its icy fingers. This time was different. This time I was swollen with power, with magic, with fury. This time I was going to rip them to pieces.
As one, the three devil dogs lifted their heads and roared to the heavens, ready to do what their master had created them for: to kill.
I drew the magic towards me, felt it eagerly fill me as David tried to pull me back—
‘Stella, come on, let’s get back inside, we can barricade the door!’
‘No. I’m not running. Not from anything.’
‘Stella, come on, this is crazy, look at those things!’
I didn’t have time to argue; a flick of my head and David—his eyes wide with surprise—was lifted from his feet and thrown through the air back into the coven. I heard him land with a thump and a grumble as I shut the door on him and willed it to remain so.
‘Well,’ I asked the air, asked the hidden puppet master, asked the devil dogs, ‘Are you going to do anything, or should I just get on with it and start killing?’
The first dog bolted towards me and, with a smile, or a snarl, or a scream, magic erupted from me in a great, gushing surge, ripping into the beast. It screamed like a puppy as it flew to the side, the crunch of its bones cracking against brick making me laugh.
‘You think I’m so easy to take out? I’m the Familiar of the London Coven, shit-head.’ A scream as I threw out my right arm and a torrent of fire surged from my palm and turned the broken devil dog to ash. I didn’t wait for the next attack; I turned on my heels, both fists cocked and ready, and sprinted towards the two remaining dogs. As if given the order to begin, they moved towards me as one.
One froze mid-step as I held out my left hand, the other only had time to yelp in confusion as the force firing from my right hand cleaved it neatly down the middle. It blinked once, then the two halves of the dog fell apart, its organs slipping with a heavy, wet, slap onto the cobbles.
‘Very impressive, Familiar,’ came the many voices.
I ignored them, instead turning my attention to the final, still-frozen dog. As I stopped before it and stared into the twin fires of its eyes, the simple thing suddenly understood what was about to happen, what it was about to lose. I could taste its fear.
It tasted good.
I screamed and thrust my burning hands straight into the thing’s chest and tore out its giant heart, throwing it away like the rubbish it was. The dog huffed once, then toppled to the ground.
‘That’s it. They’re done. If that’s all you’ve got for me, then you’re in big fucking trouble.’ I felt the devil dog’s blood on my hands, warm and sticky; I almost felt like licking my fingers with satisfaction. ‘Well? Why won’t you speak now? Are you done already? Did you run away?’
The devil dog’s body, whose heart I’d just ripped out, twitched on the ground before me. I stepped back into a boxer’s stance, hands up, power pulsing, ready.
And then an arm thrust out of the corpse. And another. Something was pulling itself out of the dead dog and into the blind alley. Something with long black hair, coated in the dog’s gore. Then the same happened with the devil dog I’d split in two. Viscera-painted women crawled towards me, leaving a bloody slug trail behind them. I should have dispatched them immediately. Should have already unleashed the power swelling in my hands to get rid of this latest horrifying attack, but I was frozen to the spot. I recognised the women. They were my masters.
‘Your fault.’
‘Your fault, Familiar.’
I staggered back as their dead, empty eyes fixed on me. All the power I’d built drained from me.
‘Please, I didn’t know, I couldn’t help, I didn’t…’
My witches screamed in unison as they crawled jaggedly towards me, their mouths opening wider and wider still until it seemed their entire heads were one large black hole, ready to swallow me down into the darkness. The damp cold of the wall soaked into my back and snapped me out of the fear that was washing over me. This was just a trick. A deception to make me scared. That’s all it was. All it could be.
They were almost upon me as I pulled in the magic around me and, with my eyes prickling with tears, I screamed and unleashed all the power I could onto the witches. My masters. The blood coated lies created to break my spirit
And then the screaming stopped. The only sound was the wind and my own heartbeat pulsing in my ears. Nothing was left of the witches, the lies, not even a patch of black ash. I drew what magic I could back inside of me as I stepped forward,
knees like jelly, but I knew without speaking that I was alone now. Whoever it was that was behind all of this had already gone. It had done what it set out to do. It had poked and prodded at me, made me shake and scream with fear, but it would be back. It was playing games. Relishing my discomfort. But it wasn’t ready to take me off the board just yet.
‘David—’ I waved my hand across the coven door, allowing it to be opened again. ‘David, come out, it’s safe.’
Silence.
‘David, come on!’
The door didn’t open.
My eyes widened.
No…
I was running before I really even understood why. I threw open the coven door, hoping, dreading, knowing. David wasn’t waiting for me. The only thing greeting me was a pool of fresh blood on the floor.
David’s blood.
19
The door to The Beehive swung inward at speed, smashing back against the wall under the force of my boot.
‘Where is he?’
I stepped inside, feeling the pub’s magic-dampening bubble part as I entered. It meant I couldn’t make anyone’s head explode with a few well-chosen words, but that was okay. I wasn’t looking for anything that fast. My fists would do all the damage I was longing for.
I’d reached out for David, trying to sense him. I’d been with him long enough now that I should have been able to recognise his, for want of a better word, ‘scent’. The impression he left behind in the magic that surrounds everything. He’d only been taken perhaps seconds before I found the pool of blood, so I should have been able to get some sort of weak connection to follow; but there was nothing. I’d run around the coven, along the blind alley, and then wildly around the streets of Hammersmith. I must have looked like a crazy person as I’d sprinted around, wide-eyed, taking random turn after random turn, hoping to see or sense something. Anything!
But there was nothing.
And that’s when I realised I’d been played all along. Whoever was behind all of this, whoever was hiding behind the hundreds of voices it spoke in, wasn’t trying to kill me, or even trying to play with me in that alley. It was distracting me. Prodding at me; throwing obstacles with giant teeth in my way, until my anger took over and I pushed David out of the way. Then, with my back turned and fists throwing fury, it had been free to take him. First it murdered my masters, the only people I was close to. Now, the first person that came into my orbit, the first person I had taken under my wing and allowed to get close to me, it had snatched away, leaving nothing but a scarlet reminder on the floor.
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