Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4)

by Christopher Coleman

  Prisha closed her eyes and shook her head.

  Tanja smiled. “If you were to never tell me, how hard do you think it would be to find out? ‘I’m looking for the station of Prisha and Jiya’s family,’” she said, mimicking the cadence and crackle of an elderly woman. “‘Those two darling twins. Do you know which one it is?’” She erupted into laughter and then stopped abruptly. “Don’t make me use the Pear this soon.”

  Jiya frowned. “It’s 12A. The third station on Block 1.”

  Tanja nodded. “Excellent. Now for what I really need.”

  “I gave you the number.”

  Tanja waved the girl off. “My vendor has been slow and unreliable in procuring some of the...materials I need. I’ve been patient in the past, but my time here in this village is about to come to an end. If you can find it in your heart to help an old lady like me, this may be very good news for you and your family.”

  “Yes,” the girl nodded quickly. “Of course.”

  “It’s to do with bungaru venom. Is your family capable of procuring it?”

  “It is illegal. No respectable vendor would sell it.”

  “That was not my question.”

  The girl’s eyes opened wide now, searching her mind for possibilities, and then she nodded. “My brother would know.”

  “A bad boy, your brother? And he is now in charge of your family’s station?”

  “Not that brother. A different one. And he’s not bad. Not anymore. But there was a time when he was. Now he oversees the station only during the final daylight hours on the weekends.”

  Tanja thought a moment, calculating where they were on the calendar. “So he will be there tonight then?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the day. And I don’t even know if the station is running any longer since I’ve gone missing. I assume they’re looking for me and have spent what resources they still have to find me.”

  Tanja suspected money had been spent to find Prisha, and the visit by the police and the sister certainly suggested they were still hopeful and active in the search. But Tanja also knew from experience that time marched on. Life continued. The ability to compartmentalize grief was a skill humans had developed over time in an effort to sustain themselves after tragedy struck. Besides, any family that was still holding out hope for their loved one’s survival would need a way to finance a sustained search, and that often depended on keeping a thriving business alive.

  “Tell me what I would need to get the venom from your brother. I need it tonight, and then all of this will be over.”

  The source inhaled and sighed. “You’ll need money mostly, but on top of that, you’ll need to tell the truth.”

  “What does that mean? The truth?”

  “About what you’re doing. About why you need it?”

  “What are you saying, girl?”

  “For the potion.”

  “What?” Tanja felt a pain in her stomach that she vaguely recalled from another lifetime. She was truly stunned, perhaps for the first time in decades.

  The girl smiled and wrinkled her brow line. “I know what this is. I know why I’m here. Did you not know that I knew?”

  Tanja was speechless.

  “I’ve had a lot of time laying here to figure it out. It’s Orphism. The potion.”

  “How could you—?”

  “Most of the old people don’t know of the stories yet, or if they do they don’t believe in them. But I always knew they were true. You’re one of them. You’re one of the witches who seeks eternity.”

  Tanja was speechless.

  “I know I probably don’t survive this, and I’m slowly accepting that as the truth.”

  “No one does.” To her own ears, Tanja sounded forlorn, apologetic.

  “If you want the venom, if you must have it today, you will need to promise Garal that you will allow him into the story. You must promise to tell him of Orphism and, more importantly, a taste of the potion.”

  “I could never.”

  Prisha nodded. “You will or you won’t, that will be up to you. But you must make him the promise. I have heard of the men who couldn’t resist. Heinrich and Marcel. Officer Stenson.”

  Tanja remembered the Stenson name, and she assumed the others were from Marlene’s story as well.

  “Tell him. Promise him immortality. He will get it for you. Just don’t harm him. He is good now. His wicked days are behind him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “If I’m not to survive this, then I want your word that no one else in this village will be subject to what I’ve gone through.”

  Tanja had quietly terrorized the poor, bustling city for years, but it was all coming to an end after she finished with Prisha. The well was dry in this land, and thus she had nothing to lose giving her promise. “You have my word.”

  Prisha looked away and closed her eyes. “And no torture. Allow me the dignity of dying without screams of agony.”

  “That promise is still dependent.”

  Tanja lifted the Branks from the shelf and placed it on Prisha’s head. The girl shook spastically, trying to keep her mouth away from the bit. But there was nowhere for her head to escape, and within seconds the witch had the bit in place and was tightening the frame of the bridle. The sounds coming from the girl were as deadened as Tanja had hoped and expected, and by the time she left the chamber and reached the front door of the house, she couldn’t hear the girl at all.

  If Prisha’s search party showed up again, even if they entered with a search warrant, they would never know the girl was there.

  Chapter 17

  GRETEL LOCKED HER ARM in Petr’s and put her head on his shoulder, grinning widely as she nestled into his neck, sighing contentedly as the two lovers sat in silence on the back slope of the Morgan property only yards from the lakeshore. She closed her eyes and scooted her hip into Petr’s, moving in as closely as his body would allow.

  It was late afternoon, summer, and as the night approached, the whistling of the crickets began to replace the chirping of the birds. There was no more perfect moment than this that Petr could have imagined.

  A frog leapt fearlessly from the bank, awkwardly splaying its feet wide as it belly-flopped onto the surface of the water. The wavelet from the frog’s impact rippled out toward the center of the lake, dying just a few feet from where the amphibian had submerged. Petr focused on that last moving spot on the water, and from there he saw a small carp leap toward the sky and flutter back. But, just before it touched the water on re-entry, something reached from beneath the surface and caught it.

  The fish gaped in agony, at first in a struggle for oxygen, and then from the long, stringy fingers squeezing the life from it, shattering its fragile skeleton as the carp’s eyes burst from its head.

  Petr released Gretel’s arm and stood.

  “Come back, Petr,” Gretel pouted. “Where are you going?”

  Petr took two steps toward the water. Then a third. “Anika?” he said.

  The murderous hand was back beneath the surface and the water was now calm, the ripples barely detectable. Petr took three more steps until his bare toes were touching the edge of the lake. “Did you see that?”

  Petr turned back to Gretel, but she was gone from the hill.

  “Gretel?”

  Petr felt his heart rate swell and his face flush to red. Suddenly another splash erupted behind him and he turned back toward the water where two hands were now breaching the otherwise serene lake, this time in a panicked display of splashing and grasping.

  Petr tried to scream for help, but he could manage to part his lips only fractionally, and soon a second set of hands appeared on the water, mimicking the first, as they too reached for the sky, begging for someone or something to grab them and pull them to freedom.

  Petr attempted to move forward into the full lap of the lake, but his feet were stuck to the ground, encased in the mud beneath him.

  “I’m trying,” he cried. “I’m tr
ying.”

  He reached his hands forward toward the drowning figures, able only to bend at his hips while his legs remained rigid, stretching his arms in desperation as far as they would go.

  “Petr?” a voice called from behind him.

  Petr stood tall again, turning to the voice, and there was Gretel again, this time standing only a few feet away from him on the shore. The right side of her face had been ripped from her skull, revealing the gruesome, smiling underskin of blood, muscle, and skeleton.

  “Petr,” she said calmly, girlishly, as if they were still cuddled on the hill together. “I need you.”

  Petr’s feet were suddenly unfrozen from the bottom of the lake, and he took a step towards Gretel. But as he lifted his foot to take another, he was grabbed from behind at the shoulder.

  Petr tried to run, but both sets of dying hands and arms were now wrapped around his neck and head and torso, effortlessly pulling him down to the water.

  Petr didn’t try to scream this time, and instead listened curiously to the sounds of the woodpeckers in the distance, becoming rapt by the birds as they pounded away at the bark of the maples. He felt peace as the arms folded in around him, and only the increasing noise of the woodpeckers was keeping Petr from fully enjoying his certain death.

  The pecking got louder with each repetition, and soon it was a deep, thunderous banging, like the beat of a large, snareless drum.

  Petr opened his eyes and seized on the inhale of a giant breath, holding it until he recognized the nightmare was over and he was back in his room.

  But the thunder continued.

  The door.

  Petr was still fully dressed from the previous night, and he leaped from the bed, ran to the threshold of his room, and listened for the next wave of banging, trying to gauge the exact source and meaning of it. But there was no further wave. Instead, the aggressive pounding on his front door reached a crescendo, finally detonating in an explosion of jamb and frame and hardware, spraying the foyer with splinters and wooden shrapnel.

  Instinctively, Petr stepped behind the open bedroom door, his back against the wall now as he hid from view of the intruder. They came in quickly, and based on the initial sounds of footsteps and voices, he gauged that there were three officers now in his home, forming a perimeter.

  “System officers present! Any and all occupants of this house, come out slowly with your hands shown and empty!”

  Petr considered his options, which were few and fleeting. The officers would be in his bedroom in a matter of seconds, and depending on the moods of Officer Zanger and his friends, a second or two after that he would be face down, zip ties binding his wrists, sniffing up the dust of his bedroom floor. They had tracked Anika here, that was obvious, and once they had the proof that she had come to find him, he would be arrested.

  He made another calculation that was also now obvious: it was Jana. She had called The System and told them of her encounter. It was the only way they’d have acquired a warrant so quickly.

  The window at the far side of the room was open wide, but for him to reach it, he would have to cross the path of the open doorway. He would be seen, but an attempt to escape was still a reasonable play. He figured he had nothing to lose, since he didn’t suppose the officers would fire at him, and even if he was caught, he could explain that he thought he was in the midst of a burglary and was fleeing for his life.

  With his decision made, Petr sprinted for the open window.

  “Hey!”

  Petr reached the opening and hopped up, planting his palms firmly on the sill, careful to avoid hitting his head as he leaned forward out the window.

  His chest was already fully outside, and soon his hips and right knee were as well. Impossibly, he was almost free.

  As Petr swung his remaining leg out, he felt a hand graze his foot, and then a solid grip formed around his ankle.

  “Freeze, Petr!” a voice said from the doorway, signaling it wasn’t the same officer currently holding his leg. “There’s an officer right below you.”

  Petr looked down to the outside lawn and saw a female officer standing just off to his left; her legs were wide and her gun was drawn on him.

  “Dammit.”

  “Easy, Petr. We just have some questions. Bring it back in.”

  Petr sighed and, defeated, began to push himself back to the bedroom. But before even his freed leg was back inside, the grip on his ankle released, and he heard an ear-splitting scream explode behind him, followed by, “Oh God! Oh no, oh God!”

  “What the...?” Petr was still halfway out the window, and the frame was preventing him from turning to see what was occurring behind him.

  But the screams of agony continued, and he suddenly felt ill

  “What’s going on in there?” the female officer asked, focusing on Petr, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “I don’t know.”

  She stood in limbo for a moment longer, wavering in her decision about whether or not to leave her post. She swallowed nervously and then dashed bravely toward the front of the house.

  Petr thought of taking advantage of this new opening, of continuing through the window and running to freedom in the darkness of The Ferns, perhaps escaping for good, reuniting with Anika at the docks and then off to the Eastern Lands.

  But his instincts held him in place, and, reluctantly, he pushed himself back into the bedroom. He was now standing back on the wooden floor, looking out through the window ruefully, keeping his back to the room. He sighed once, trying to slow his breathing to keep from hyperventilating, dreading what he would see once he finally turned around in the direction of the screams of suffering.

  Petr pivoted slowly, and on the floor, only steps away, he saw two male officers, one of whom was writhing in pain as he pressed his left hand against the empty socket where his right arm had been ripped away, the gory mass of the stump spewing blood in every direction like a rogue fire hose. His eyes were broad, disbelieving, his face had already turned the ashen color of death.

  Petr moved his gaze to the second officer who wasn’t stirring at all, and Petr could see instantly that his neck was at an angle unnatural to a human, his head twisted in a three-quarter turn like a barn owl’s.

  Petr was paralyzed by the grisly scene, and he suddenly felt as if he’d been thrust into another horrible dream, one more terrifying than the nightmare from which he’d just awakened.

  Petr looked for Anika—he knew instantly this was her doing—but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Help, Petr.” The one-armed officer’s voice was barely audible, his plea as meek as that of a hungry orphan, though relatively calm given his condition. Petr assumed this was Zanger.

  “I’ll get you help. But first try to stop the bleeding.”

  Petr unhinged the fitted sheet from his mattress and balled it as tightly as possible, trying not to look as he pressed the fabric against the man’s stump.

  “Help her, Petr.” Zanger took hold of the sheet and then made a drowsy motion with his head toward the living room. “The woman who did this, she’s going after Dian.”

  “Who’s Dian?”

  “The other officer outside.”

  Petr moved hastily into the living room to see the profile of Anika kneeling on top of the female officer, her teeth bared and her bloody hand held high above the officer’s head with the tips of her fingernails pointing downward like medieval iron spikes.

  “Anika, no!”

  Petr rushed Anika, preparing to tackle her off the officer, but when he was at just the precise distance, Anika swung her right arm out like a wrecking ball, almost effortlessly it seemed, thudding Petr against the couch and over the arm to the ground.

  Petr was up instantly, breathing heavily. “You can’t, Anika! You can’t kill anyone else!”

  Anika kept her eyes locked on the officer. “I’ll kill as many of them as necessary.”

  “This isn’t necessary!” Petr caught his breath and tried to steady his voice. “You do
n’t have to kill her. Let me help you. Isn’t that why you came to find me? To help you through this. To help keep you on the path to save Gretel and Hansel?”

  Anika stared back at Petr, and he could see the rage slowly seeping from her eyes, just as it had done with Jana earlier.

  “Killing her won’t help with that.” He paused, ensuring the fury was over. “I’ll come with you. To the Eastern Lands, or wherever your quest takes you. We can be at the docks before anyone knows we’re gone. But you have to let her go. She doesn’t deserve to die.”

  Anika stood slowly, keeping her eyes on the officer. “Don’t move,” she said, and then walked past Petr to the bedroom threshold. She stood for a moment and studied the scene on the floor dispassionately. “I saved you,” she said, not looking back at Petr. “I saved you from them.”

  Petr had moved to check on the felled officer—Dian—who was unconscious but appeared to be alive and unharmed. “They weren’t going to kill me,” he said.

  Anika looked back at Petr and frowned. “How could you know?”

  Petr met Anika’s gaze. “I know. I do.”

  “Yes? You do? Could you have been so confident about your father? And his intentions toward me?”

  Petr dropped his eyes, silenced by a mix of defeat and embarrassment.

  Anika let the jab settle and then said, “What do you want to do then, Petr?”

  Petr thought a moment and said, “We’ll go, of course. Tonight. You have no other choices now.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I haven’t done anything. Nothing that will warrant charges. Not until I help you. And I owe you and Gretel at least that. But I want to return here one day, and if we do this right, no one will know that I was your accomplice. At least they won’t be able prove it. As far as anyone will suspect, you will have abducted me.”

  Anika thought for a beat and then nodded.

  “But that means you can’t ever come back, Anika. You know that, right? You won’t be hanged. You’ll be burned for what you’ve done. Tied tightly to a stake and burned alive, just like they did four hundred years ago. The Witch Punishments are back, you know? Ever since Marlene.”