The Witch Hunter

by Virginia Boecker

  I’m so disgusted I don’t think, I just launch myself at Linus. He pushes Fifer away and jumps me. We hit the ground, both of us punching and kicking and screaming horrible things at each other. He pulls out his dagger and stabs me repeatedly with it, aiming for my neck, my heart, my stomach. He’s hitting something, but I can’t tell what. The second I feel pain it disappears, followed by pain somewhere else. My whole body is so caught up in the loop of pain and healing, I can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.

  “Enough.” Blackwell’s voice thunders across the clearing. Linus leaps away from me like a trained dog, still in the habit of obedience. I get to my feet, but slowly. I’m not healing as fast as I should be; I’m still weak from the poison and from the wound in my stomach.

  “What do you want me to do?” I whisper. “Whatever it is, tell me and I’ll do it. Just don’t hurt them.” I lock eyes with him. “Just tell me what you need.”

  “I needed the king dead, and I needed Nicholas dead,” he says. “You were meant to do both, and you failed. At both.” He steps toward me. “Fortunately, I have these two now.” He glances at George and Fifer. “They will tell me where Nicholas is; they will lead me to him. They will”—he repeats, louder, over John’s protests—“if they do not wish to suffer—unduly—before I dispose of them.”

  Fifer lets out a moan.

  “As for the king, he will be taken care of. It may already be done.” He glances at Caleb, who nods. “So, as you can see, I don’t need you to do anything.” He steps up to me, his black eyes glittering with madness, boring into mine. “I don’t need you at all.”

  The storm of his fury breaks. He throws up his arms and it begins to rain again, the way it was when I stepped out of the tomb. It comes down like an assault: I can’t see beyond it, can’t hear beyond the sound of it drumming into the ground. It’s just Blackwell and me now; everything and everyone else has disappeared. I back away from him; I would look for somewhere to run, but I’m afraid to take my eyes from his face. Besides, I know there’s nowhere to go.

  “I would throw you into the maze,” he says, not shouting—but I can hear him perfectly over the rain—“if I thought it meant I’d be rid of you. But I did that before and you came out. I’d send more of my hybrids after you, but I know what would happen with that, too.”

  He stops, his expression turning into something almost… curious.

  “How did you do it? You weren’t strong, not like Marcus. You weren’t ambitious like Caleb. Not vicious like Linus.” He looks me over, shakes his head, as if the very sight of me baffles him. “How did you survive?”

  He’s asking me the question I’ve always asked myself. How an unremarkable girl like me could live through unimaginable danger like that. I didn’t know then, not really, and I’m not sure now. I offer up my best guess anyway.

  “Because I was afraid to do anything except live.”

  Blackwell nods, as if this were an interesting viewpoint he’d never considered before. “And now? Are you afraid now?”

  I consider telling him I am. I consider that confessing weakness might buy me time, or clemency, or a chance to escape. But even as I think it, I know there’s no chance. Of any of it.

  “I’m not afraid.” I say this because it’s the last act of defiance I have against him and I say it because—and I’m shocked to realize it—it’s true. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Blackwell smiles. “Good. I might be worried if you were.” He steps toward me, arm outstretched, the Azoth raised high. And, before I can register what he’s doing, he swings.

  I pull back, as he knew I would. He misses by an inch, as I knew he would. He draws back, then advances on me again, and again. I avoid blow after blow. Dodging, twisting, turning. He’s not hitting me, but he’s not trying. Not really. He’s playing with me, as a cat might play with a mouse. To tire me, to weaken me. Then, when I start to stumble, begin to wear out, he will strike. And he will kill me.

  I’ve got to end this. Now.

  I step back, stagger away, as if I’m trying to run from him. Blackwell seems to expect this, too, and advances. At the last second, I turn to face him and I charge. He doesn’t expect this; he hesitates—a split second—before raising the blade. It’s enough. I lunge forward, slam my foot into his leg. He stumbles. I rise up, clasp my hands together, and bring my entwined fists onto his forearm, hard. Once, twice. The Azoth loosens, then falls from his grip. It lands with a thud on the rain-soaked ground. I drive my toe into the hilt, send it sliding through the mud, out of his reach.

  Blackwell stops. Hesitates. Me or the Azoth? He can have only one of us.

  He chooses me.

  Fast—faster than I imagined he could be—he lunges at me. Fastens his hands around my throat. And with a growl of disgust, hate, and rage, he begins to squeeze.

  I slap at his hands, tug at his wrists. Scratch and beat on his arms, his face. But I’m weak. I’m more tired than I need to be, and he doesn’t stop. He just squeezes harder, looking me straight in the eye, his gaze merciless and unremorseful. I try to shout, to scream. But I can’t. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be heard above the pounding rain.

  My legs go weak and collapse beneath me; I’m on my knees now, then my back. The rain pours down on both of us, and I thrash around in the mud, but Blackwell keeps squeezing. I can feel my eyes roll to the back of my head, and I’m blinking in and out of consciousness, almost in time with the lightning that flashes in the sky. My body starts jerking uncontrollably as it fights off the inevitable.

  There’s no one to save me this time.

  Then I remember: Schuyler. He’s here; he’s somewhere. I shout his name inside my head. I scream it. Over and over. Schuyler. The Azoth. It’s here. Come get it, and come save them.

  There’s a shouting noise then, a screaming. It breaks through the rain and the dullness in my head—and Blackwell’s concentration. He lets go of my throat. I take a ripping, searing breath and I still can’t move. But the screaming continues.

  Abruptly, Blackwell leans back and gets to his feet, swearing under his breath. He waves his arms and the rain around us stops. I turn my head to the side to see what’s happening and feel my eyes go round.

  It’s carnage.

  Schuyler stands in the clearing, the Azoth held in front of him. Marcus and Linus lie on the ground, the two of them flayed open, blood and innards pouring from their wounds. That was the screaming I heard. Schuyler’s got the blade turned on Caleb now. Caleb holds Fifer in front of him, a dagger held to her throat. Across the clearing, George is huddled over John, who is still lying on the ground, still unmoving, still bleeding.

  Blackwell storms toward Schuyler. “You,” he growls.

  “Tell him to let her go,” Schuyler says, not taking his eyes off Caleb. “Tell him to do it now.”

  Blackwell advances on him. Throws his arms in the air and, at once, the rain starts up again, accompanied by a crackle of lightning and ear-splitting thunder. I lose sight of them all now, and I can’t hear what’s happening. But I know I need to move.

  Slowly, I roll onto my side. I hurt in a thousand places at once and I’m bleeding from a hundred. I’ve got so many wounds my stigma can’t heal them all. I get to my hands and knees but stumble to the ground again, face-first into the mud. I get up again, but it’s so hard, so painful; even breathing is painful. Finally, I stagger to my feet and start toward them. I don’t know what I think I can do. I can barely move. I don’t even have a weapon.

  I stumble over something then. I look down. It’s the knife. The one I stabbed myself in the leg with, the one John flung to the ground. I reach down, pry it loose, and keep moving. Blackwell is directly in front of me now, his back to me. Schuyler twitches the blade between Blackwell and Caleb. Caleb digs his blade into Fifer’s neck so hard I can see the blood rising. But his focus is slipping. His eyes dart around wildly, from Schuyler to the sky, then back again, blinking furiously against the downpour. Only I know how much Caleb hates the rain;
I can almost hear him pleading for it to stop.

  There’s another crack of thunder and Caleb winces, closing his eyes for a moment against the sound. I don’t think. I pull back my arm, take aim, and let my dagger fly, right at Caleb. It lands with a sickening thump in his neck and he jerks away from Fifer, a look of surprise on his face. The delay is enough. Schuyler lunges forward and snatches her from his grip. Caleb wrenches the blade from his neck, the wound instantly healing. Blackwell whirls around, as surprised as Caleb to see me standing there. He hesitates, just for a second, unsure of what to do. But that’s enough, too.

  The Azoth.

  The second I think it, Schuyler throws it to me. I snatch it out of the air, and as Blackwell rounds on me, I swing. The blade slices down his face and across his shoulder. He pitches forward, stumbling to one knee, his hands pressed against his face, his shouts of agony piercing the air. I swing again. As the sword comes down, Caleb dives between us. Before I can pull back, the full force of the blow lands on his chest.

  I step back, almost drop the blade. Caleb falls to his knees, clutching his wound, blood pouring between his hands.

  “Caleb,” I whisper. I look at him and he looks at me; and if I expected to see sorrow or regret in his eyes, I would be mistaken. I see nothing but determination.

  “We owe him our lives,” he says, his voice hoarse. He looks at his chest, at the blood, and he knows he’s dying.

  “No, we don’t,” I say, and I’m crying now. Dimly, I realize that the rain has stopped, but it’s growing darker. Everything around me is fading into black, as if the world were dying instead of Caleb. Then there’s no light at all and no noise, just the sound of me crying.

  “Elizabeth!” The sound of Fifer’s voice breaks through my sobs. “Elizabeth!”

  I open my eyes. Look around. Caleb is gone; Blackwell is gone. In the spot where they stood lies a stone, faintly smoking on the ground. A lodestone. He disappeared, along with Caleb, along with the storm, along with his magic. It’s clear again, the sky bright enough for me to see the others across the clearing, huddled over John.

  I stumble to him, my legs weak with grief and injury and then, when I see him, terror.

  “Oh my God.” My knees give way and I collapse next to him. He’s ghostly pale, his skin slick with sweat and blood. “We have to get him out of here.” I reach for him, try to lift him. But the moment I do, John groans in pain and blood blooms brighter across his shirt.

  “You can’t move him; we already tried,” George says. “He’s lost too much blood. Every time he moves, he loses more.”

  No, I think. This can’t be happening. I can’t let this happen. I can’t let him die.

  Then I get an idea.

  “Fifer.” I look up at her. “Your witch’s ladder. Where is it?”

  “What?”

  “Your ladder. Where is it?”

  Fifer reaches into her boot and pulls out the black cord. Only one knot left.

  “You said you can transfer things using Nicholas’s power.” My words come out in a rush. “Can you use it to transfer my ability to heal over to John? As you did with the grass and the invitations?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammers. “I’ve never tried anything like that before. What if it doesn’t work? It doesn’t seem to be working on you.”

  She’s right. I have so many injuries that it’s taking much longer for them to heal. Stab wounds, broken ribs, punctured lung. Poison circulating through my veins.

  “What if it doesn’t heal him? Or worse, what if it hurts him more?”

  John starts coughing then, his body shaking. He’s lost too much blood. If we don’t do something soon, he’ll die. He told me he loved me. Do I love him back? I don’t know. But all I know is that I cannot let him die.

  Fifer and I exchange a glance.

  “Lie down next to him,” she whispers. “Get as close as you can. This spell needs close contact to work.”

  I lie on the ground, carefully sliding one hand under his shoulder, wrapping the other around his waist. I can feel how cold he is, how fragile. The air between us doesn’t smell like lemons anymore. It smells like blood.

  Fifer begins to untie the knot, her pale fingers trembling. The cord begins to glow and she places it over our entwined bodies. She takes a deep breath.

  “Transfer.”

  The pain is instantaneous. I’m being stabbed all over again in a hundred different places at once. Only there’s no fluttery healing sensation that follows. Only more pain. There’s a drawing sensation, as if something is being pulled out of me. I realize it’s probably my life. I feel myself stiffen, then jerk around uncontrollably.

  Just hold on, a voice whispers.

  I try to. I do.

  But then it’s too much, and everything just slips away.

  I THINK—I CAN’T BE SURE—BUT I think I might be dead.

  It’s not as bad as I feared it would be. It’s warm, and I’m lying on something soft. I’m not hungry and I’m not thirsty. I’m not in pain. The air smells good: fresh, like spring. I even have a pillow.

  Dying was another matter entirely. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of jostling, a lot of pain. I heard my name being called over and over. I wanted to answer, but whoever it was seemed too far away. There was also a lot of rocking. Back and forth, back and forth. Some lurching, too, like on a ship. Then silence.

  I wonder how long I’ve been dead. Weeks? Months? It seems like a long time. I wonder what they did with my body. I forgot to tell someone I didn’t want to be buried, but I guess it didn’t matter anyway.

  I think about Fifer and George and John. How they came back for me at Blackwell’s. Somehow they found a way to forgive me, but I don’t know how. Sometimes I can hear their voices, hushed and whispered around me. Saying my name, holding my hand, willing me to come back to them. It’s just a dream, I know. But I want so much for it to be true.

  There was one moment when I thought I really wasn’t dead. It only happened once. My eyes fluttered open and I saw John. He was sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed, his elbow propped up on the mattress, reading a book. I looked at him for a while. He looked clean and healthy, not at all like the bleeding, half-dead boy I saw last. He seemed to realize he was being watched, because after a moment he looked up and smiled.

  I stared at him, something tugging at the back of my mind. There was something I wanted to say to him, something I wanted to ask but never had the chance. Finally, I remembered it.

  “The bird.” The voice, it didn’t sound like my own. It was weak and gritty and raw. “In the tree. Why?”

  He doesn’t hesitate in his reply, as if he knew the answer long before I asked the question.

  “Because I love you. And because being with you makes me feel free.”

  I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t. I felt the darkness wrapping itself around me again, but not before I felt a smile drift across my lips. Then everything went black.

  “Elizabeth, open your eyes,” the voice commands. Whose voice is that? Don’t they know I’m dead? I can’t open my eyes. I don’t even know if I have eyes anymore.

  “She did it before, two days ago,” says another voice. My brain struggles to make the connection. I know that voice.

  John.

  I want to speak. I try to speak, but nothing happens. I hear a moaning noise. Is that me? If it is, I should stop immediately. It sounds awful.

  “I’ll make her something to try to bring her around,” John says. Is that really him? Is he really here? “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Is this real? It can’t be. But what if it is? I don’t want him to leave. I’m afraid if he does, he won’t come back. I can feel something building up inside me, boiling like water left in a kettle too long. I’m going to scream. Instead, the only thing that comes out is a whisper.

  “Wait.”

  Then I open my eyes.

  There’s a soft rustling noise, then Nicholas’s face appears.

&n
bsp; “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  “You,” I whisper. “Are you alive? Or are you dead like me?” Only, he doesn’t look dead. He looks healthier than I’ve ever seen him. His face flushed with color, eyes bright with life. He’s still and calm, and even as he sits in his chair, doing nothing but watching me, he radiates strength and presence.

  “I’m alive,” he says. “So are you, though you had us wondering. How are you feeling?”

  I feel slow. I feel weak. I ache not in one place but all over, and it takes every bit of strength I’ve got to keep my eyes open, to speak. But I’m alive, and that’s more than I ever expected.

  I can only nod in reply.

  Nicholas smiles, as if he can read my thoughts. “John really does have a gift.”

  “He’s okay, then?” I croak. “The last time I saw him, he…” was dying, I think. But I don’t want to say it.

  “Yes, he’s fine.”

  “What about Fifer? George? Peter and Schuyler…”

  “They’re all fine, too.”

  I close my eyes. It takes a minute before I can speak again.

  “Where am I?” I look around, not recognizing my surroundings. I’m in an all-white room: white walls, white bed, white stone fireplace. Thick white curtains are drawn across the window, and no light at all shines through. It must be night.

  “This is John and Peter’s home, in Harrow,” he says. “They brought you straight here from Blackwell’s.”

  “What happened?” I say. “The last thing I remember is Fifer’s spell. Then nothing.”

  Nicholas nods. “The spell worked. All the healing power you had in your stigma was carried over to John. He was made whole again almost immediately. You, on the other hand, had grave injuries. Most of them were not fully healed when the spell was performed. You should have died. You would have, were it not for that.” He gestures at Humbert’s sapphire ring, still on my finger.

  “That’s a unique ring,” Nicholas continues. “The sapphire itself has healing and protective properties, and coupled with the rune on the back it becomes extremely powerful. The magic works a little as your stigma does—or did, rather—though not nearly as strong. It protected you just enough to keep you from dying.”