Her grip on Red’s throat loosened. He collapsed to the ground and gasped for air. No one, not even Glenda, had ever been able to use magic against him before. This Greesha was someone to be reckoned with—and she had control of Aggie’s body.
The vault door still hadn’t opened, as if it must have sensed what had happened to Aggie. Greesha solved this problem with a wave of her hand. The door rolled back to reveal Aggie’s sister; she looked ready to kill them both. Her anger turned to surprise as she looked at her sister. “What the hell happened to you? Why are your eyes green?”
“Silence, fool,” Greesha hissed.
“That’s all you can say? I’ve been waiting here for two fucking days.” Sylvia turned to Red. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything to her. A spell attacked her.”
“A spell attacked her? Damn it, Agnes, I’ve warned you—”
“Do not presume to lecture me, fool.”
Sylvia pointed her clawed hand at her sister. “Hold on there. You think I’m going to take that crap—” Sylvia’s voice cut off. She clawed at her throat. Her face turned red and then started to turn purple as she collapsed to her knees.
Greesha glared down at Sylvia. “You will do as you are told or else you will die.”
Sylvia nodded slightly. Greesha waved her hand. Sylvia gasped for air. She sprawled on the ground for a moment as she gathered her breath. Greesha didn’t wait that long; she swept past them, up the stairs to the first floor of the archives.
“What the hell happened to her?” Sylvia asked between gasps.
“She allowed an old witch to possess her to help her friends.” Red explained to her about their encounter with Greesha in the swamp and the deal she’d made with Aggie.
“Damn it, Agnes,” Sylvia growled. She looked back up the steps. “We better get up there and see what she wants.”
They trudged up the steps to find that Greesha waited for them. She pointed one finger at Sylvia; Red braced himself for Greesha to kill the witch. She only said, “You will find a pregnant cow and bring it to your house. We will perform the ritual there.”
“A pregnant cow? Where am I supposed to find one of those?”
“I will use you if you dare to question me again.”
“All right, I’ll find a damned cow.” Before Sylvia vanished, she whispered in Red’s ear, “You’d better find a way to fix this or I’m going to kill you.”
He gulped and then wondered if there was anything he could do to fix the problem. If Glenda were here she might know, but there was no time to find her; Greesha was already prepared to vanish them back to Rampart City.
They appeared in a flash in the basement of a house. Red looked around at the various weapons along the walls. If he could get one of those—no, he couldn’t kill Aggie, even if that old witch did have possession of her. He would find another way.
“This will suffice for the ritual. You will clean this cauldron to prepare it for use. Then you will find me the skull of an ox and the pelt of a wolf.”
“I’ll try.”
“You will do it or you will die.”
The way Greesha stared at him, Red knew she meant it. He couldn’t see a trace of Agnes in those eyes. He hoped they could find a way to save Aggie before things went too far.
***
To Red’s surprise, he found an ox skull and a wolf pelt in the attic of Aggie’s house. The ox skull rested at the bottom of a box with a dozen other skulls that ranged in size from that of a squirrel to that of a bear. What Aggie had ever needed these for Red had no idea. He did know that back in the old days, before the coven, witches had tended to rely more on such objects for power instead of spells and potions. The appearance of Merlin had helped to change all of that; the old magic faded away until only ghosts remained in the bowels of the archives, nothing more than memories.
He hoped the pelt was that of a wolf, although Aggie had numerous such pelts in another box. He had weeded out the brown ones and orange ones, which left him with a half-dozen gray ones. In the end he had to guess and hope for the best.
His guess turned out to be correct. “Well done, fool. Now I will be able to properly perform the ritual.” To Red’s amazement, she stripped off Aggie’s clothes. Though he knew he should look away, he couldn’t help but stare at her naked body. For the first time, Greesha smiled at him. “You love this young fool. Would you die for her?”
“Yes.”
“You may well have a chance to do so before the night is done.”
Red didn’t like the sound of this. Before Greesha could elaborate, Sylvia appeared in the basement—along with a black-and-white cow. “I found it grazing in a field outside the city,” Sylvia said. “The farmer is going to be pissed.”
“You will find me a stone knife. Not metal.”
“Stone, right. I got it.” Sylvia went into the metal vault to rummage around for the knife. Red followed her inside and pressed up next to her.
“Did you call for help?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Sylvia turned to glare at him. “What do you think she’s going to do to Agnes if we bring the whole coven in here?”
“What can she do to Aggie? If she kills her, she’ll die too.”
“A witch that powerful can kill Agnes as easy as sneezing. Then she’ll find another host. Just like that bitch Isis.” Sylvia brandished her hook hand with this last sentence. She turned back to her rack of weapons and found a dagger made of polished stone. “This should make the bitch happy. I wish I could jam it in her fucking heart.”
“You can’t.”
“Yeah? What’s it to you, anyway? What went on with you and Agnes down there?”
“After what happened to her, we became close.”
“Close? How close?”
“We kissed. We love each other.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Damn it, Agnes always was too soft.”
“Are you conspiring against me?” Greesha asked. She stood at the door to the vault. “Perhaps you require some incentive?”
“I got your damned knife,” Sylvia said. “It’s right here.”
“Good. Bring it to me.”
“I’m coming.” Sylvia shot Red a dirty look before she emerged from the vault. She handed the knife to Greesha, who promptly slashed the unsuspecting cow across the throat. She raised the cow into the air with one hand and directed it to float over the cauldron. Drops of blood flowed into the cauldron. With her other hand, Greesha directed the knife to slit the cow across its pregnant belly. A flood of blood spilled from the slain animal to fill the cauldron. As if that wasn’t enough of a mess, Greesha directed the knife to cut through the sac that contained the calf to add the amniotic fluid to the mix.
Red watched all of this in horror. Usually at least one of his two hundred twenty-six other lives had seen something worse, but not in this case. His knees buckled and without warning he threw up on the floor. A part of him wondered if Greesha would add this to the horrible stew she had concocted in the cauldron.
She didn’t pay any attention to Red’s discomfort. Instead, she lowered the slaughtered cow to the ground and then took the knife in her hand. She pointed it at Sylvia. “You may dispose of the cow,” she said.
“Yeah, great. I’m sure the farmer will be real happy about that.”
“His concerns mean nothing to me.”
Sylvia grumbled under her breath as she vanished the dead cow from the basement. Red could imagine the horror on the farmer’s face when he found the animal. He might even throw up as Red already had.
“Now, where are these friends of hers?”
As if on cue, they appeared at the steps, one dark-haired and very fat, the other red-haired and very thin. The dark-haired one screamed.
***
The last thing Emma expected to find in Ms. Chiostro’s basement was a cauldron full of blood and Ms. Chiostro clad only in a fur pelt with an animal skull in one hand. She couldn’t help bu
t scream at the sight until Becky put a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell is going on here?” Becky asked.
“You are the two whose souls are reversed,” Ms. Chiostro said. It was not a question. “You will come down here.”
“What is that?” Becky asked as she started down the stairs. “Is that a potion to change us back?”
“Fools, it is only the catalyst. You will bathe in the cauldron.”
“I think we’re a little big—” Becky’s words became a muffled gurgle. Emma lost sight of her; she’d been suddenly blinded. As she flailed around, she realized someone had thrown a blanket over her. She battled the cloth until she found an opening.
When she emerged from that opening, she looked up at Ms. Chiostro. She tried to ask what had happened, but only gibberish came from her throat. She looked down and saw how tiny her hands had become.
She found herself unable to stand, her tiny limbs too weak to support her weight. “Baa-baa?” she said.
“What did you do to them?” an enormous Sylvia asked.
“They will be born again in the cauldron,” Ms. Chiostro said.
Sylvia glared at her sister for a moment and then nodded. Meanwhile, Becky had finally made her way out of her clothes. Emma looked over at her to see herself as a chubby infant, her head covered in orange down. Her pudgy face turned red as she began to cry.
“Silence!” Ms. Chiostro roared. She bent down to snatch the naked Becky from the floor. Without preamble, she tossed Becky into the bloody cauldron.
“Naaa!” Emma wailed as Ms. Chiostro bent down to scoop her up.
“Fool, pray I don’t leave you this way.” Emma squirmed in the witch’s grip, but it made no difference. Ms. Chiostro tossed her into the cauldron along with Becky.
She flailed her tiny hands around, but it wasn’t enough to keep her afloat. She gradually sunk to the bottom of the cauldron. She found another tiny hand and took hold of it as her vision turned from red to black.
***
“They’re going to drown!” Sylvia said. She braced to run forward until Greesha held up a hand.
“They will be reborn,” the ancient witch said.
Red wondered about this. He took a step back to press himself against the vault. There was nothing he or Sylvia could do to stop the ritual. Even if they did, it would leave Aggie’s friends stuck as infants. They would have to hope for the best.
Greesha turned her back to him and looked up at the ceiling. She held up the ox skull and then began to dance around the cauldron. With each step she shook the skull and said something Red didn’t understand. He had seen witches cast spells during his time at the archives, but never anything like this. This was a much older kind of magic, from the days of sacrifices to gods no one believed in anymore, what Glenda called “wild magic.”
She went around the cauldron three times like this. Red couldn’t see Aggie’s friends inside; by this point he had to assume the babies were dead. As she finished her third circuit, Greesha tossed the ox skull into the blood. Then she reached into the blood—
—And pulled out a baby. There was too much blood for Red to know which one it was; from the chubbiness of it he assumed it was the dark-haired one. The baby lay motionless on the ground. Greesha reached into the cauldron to pull the other baby out. It too didn’t move. Finally she took the ox skull from the blood.
Greesha picked up one of the babies and held the tiny girl up to her face. She touched the infant with the ox skull. Immediately the little girl’s face puckered and then she began to wail like a newborn, which in a way she was. Greesha set down the girl before she repeated this on Aggie’s other friend.
Next to him, Sylvia stared at the ritual, her good hand locked in a fist. Greesha turned to face them. “Now you see my power.”
“Change them back to adults,” Sylvia said.
“What will you give me in exchange for that?”
“What do you want?”
“This body is mine for as long as I require it. You will swear that you and your coven will not interfere with me.”
“What? You can’t have Agnes’s body!”
“Who is going to stop me? You? With a flick of my wrist you could be a baby like your friends. You?” She looked to Red.
He steeled himself and then took a step forward. “That’s right. I’ll stop you.”
“You are not immune to my magic.”
“I don’t care. Aggie is still inside you and I know she won’t kill me. She loves me and I love her.”
“Fool! I can crush you as easily as a bug.” Greesha started to raise her hand. Sylvia knelt down to collect the two babies to her chest. He took a step forward; his eyes met Greesha’s. In them he could still see a glimpse of Aggie. She was still alive. He knew it.
Greesha continued to raise her hand. But then something stopped her. The hand went back to her side. “No! You little fool—”
Red took another step forward. “That’s right, Aggie. Fight against her.” Emboldened, Red took another step forward. He held out his hand to her. “Take my hand.”
Aggie’s hand began to rise again. Red took another step. He reached out to her. She took his hand; her palm felt deathly cold. His eyes remained locked on hers. “You know what you have to do Aggie. It’s all right. Just remember that I love you.”
Her head nodded stiffly. She leaned forward, her lips touching his. A shock ran through him. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel it. He felt Greesha’s evil spirit flow from Aggie’s body to his. Without any magical ability, it wouldn’t take long for her to overwhelm him, so that he would become Greesha, who would surely destroy all of them, if not the whole world.
Still unable to see, he felt the knife plunge into his heart. He could imagine Aggie with the stone blade in her hands, her eyes filled with tears. As he collapsed to the floor, he heard her whisper, “I love you.”
***
The last place Red expected to wind up was a beach. He could feel the warm sand beneath his hands and neck. He saw a blue sky overhead with puffy white clouds that floated through the sky. This must be Heaven, he thought.
“It’s not Heaven,” a little girl’s voice said.
Red sat up to realize he wasn’t on a beach; he was in a sandbox. It was just a standard child’s sandbox, complete with a plastic bucket, a doll, and a teddy bear. The owner of these items sat on the edge of the box. She was a little girl with the same red hair and blue eyes as the redheaded girl back in Aggie’s basement, except this girl was a couple years older and clad in pink overalls with a duckling on them. Since there was no one else around, he assumed she had spoken to him. “How do you know?” he asked.
“Because it’s my backyard.” The girl pointed to her right, to an ordinary two-story house. “That’s where Mommy and I live.”
“I see. So what am I doing here?”
“I brought you here.”
“You?”
“Yes. We don’t have much time. You have to go where Daddy went.”
“Where’s that?”
“Heaven.”
“Oh,” he said. He wondered if this was some kind of bizarre dream.
“You’re not dreaming.”
“You can hear my thoughts?”
“Of course. I hear all their thoughts.”
“You’re one of us?”
“No.”
“So who are you?”
“My name’s Joanna. But people call me Red because of my hair.”
“So you are one of us.”
“I already told you I’m not.”
Red shook his head; he saw no sense to argue the point with the little girl. “Fine, you’re not. Why did you bring me here?”
“To help Aggie. And Akako. You know her?”
“She’s the one who married the other Aggie.”
“Yes. We can help her, but we have to be quick.”
“What are we going to do?”
“You just sit on the side of the box. And don’t move.”
; “That’s it?”
“Yes.” Despite that she couldn’t be more than four, the little girl glared at him with an adult’s authority. “Now be quiet so I can concentrate.”
Red moved over to sit beside Joanna on the edge of the box. He didn’t have any idea what would happen. How would this help Aggie?
He began to understand a moment later when a woman appeared in the sandbox. Her head appeared first, the face of a young Asian woman with glossy black hair and brown eyes. He had seen this face before; she was one of the two hundred twenty-seven. “Akako,” he whispered.
The rest of her came up through the sandbox to collapse onto her back as Red had. He reached out towards her, but Joanna slapped his hand. “Don’t touch her. Or you’ll mess it up.”
Akako groaned and put a hand to her head. She sat up on her own to stare at Joanna. “You were the one who called to me, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Then the young woman turned to Red. “And you’re Red, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The one who works with the witches. Unbelievable.”
“Believe it,” Joanna said. “That’s where you’re going. If you want.”
“What are you talking about?” Akako said.
Joanna jerked a thumb in Red’s direction. “He’s dead, but you can take his place.”
“What? I couldn’t—”
“You have to decide quickly. I can’t hold it open for long,” Joanna said. Despite her icy calm, Red saw sweat had plastered the bangs to the little girl’s forehead. “It’s your choice.”
“But I can’t leave my world. My parents and my sister—”
Red understood now another reason Joanna wanted him to remain here. “I know how much you miss your Aggie,” he said. “I’ve felt your pain. But you’ve seen my Aggie. She’s different, but she’s the same. You know what I mean?”
Akako said nothing for a moment, but then she nodded. “I know what you mean. But if I go, will I still be me?”
“Yes,” Joanna said.
Akako looked down at the sand. Red could hear her thoughts. Her parents weren’t exactly homophobic, but they hadn’t been the most open and accepting people either. They hadn’t really accepted her Aggie yet before he died. And would this Aggie accept her as a woman? “I don’t know—”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 26