Demon Witch (Book Two - The Ravenscliff Series)

by Geoffrey Huntington

  “No!”

  The cloaked figure drew closer. Devon couldn’t see its face. He couldn’t tell who—or what—it was. A demon—or something else?

  “Open the portal, Devon. It is your destiny. Your path to true power. Ultimate power. Beyond anything that’s been promised you so far.”

  Why did this figure terrify him so?

  “Who—who are you?” he asked.

  “You know who I am, Devon.”

  The voice. He’d heard it before.

  “Isobel?” he asked in a tiny voice.

  He heard Marcus scream. He turned, but couldn’t spot him in the midst of all the screeching, flying demons.

  “Your friends are falling,” the cloaked figure told him. “Come with me, Devon. Open the portal!”

  “Don’t do it, Devon!” It was Cecily. He saw her on the stairs, battling a beast with six arms. She stood in the exact spot where his vision had showed him she would die, in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs.

  “We can still win, Devon!” Cecily told him. “Don’t open the Hell Hole! No matter what happens, don’t open the Hell Hole!”

  She’s going to die! Devon thought, his greatest fear coming true. The vision was right! This is how it will end!

  The cloaked figure was nearly upon him. “Open the portal, Devon! Now!”

  The grandfather clock chimed nine o’clock.

  “No!” Devon shouted—and turned, running down the corridor toward the library, away from the door to the East Wing.

  I’ll draw them away from Cecily and the others! It’s me they want!

  Indeed the beasts followed, and Devon’s fear mounted.

  There’s no way out! Natalie and Marcus may already be dead. D.J., too. And Cecily—

  He heard her scream.

  A beast was upon him, sharp talons gouging into his throat. He struggled to fight it off, but he couldn’t. It was too strong—or he was suddenly too weak. Devon grabbed onto the nearest thing he could find to steady himself—the doorknob of a linen closet. The door swung open under his grip.

  He gasped, the talons slicing into his throat. He saw that the door revealed not a linen closet, but a staircase, leading down.

  Devon stumbled onto the stairs as he finally shook the demon from his back. He began to run down the steps as the thing pursued him, snarling and spitting at his neck.

  Only then did Devon fully understand that he was descending the Stairway Into Time.

  The Dark Tunnel

  “Here, Devon! This way!”

  A man was calling to him, and taking hold of his arm, trying to pull him from the stairs. With the demon breathing down his back, Devon wasn’t fully aware of who the guy was, and the sounds around him made no sense at first. There was light—bright, eye-squinting light. It occurred to Devon that, just like his first trip down this staircase, he found himself no longer inside the farther he went down the stairs, but outdoors. Bright sunlight dappled the last few remaining steps of the Staircase Into Time, which ended at a dusty cobblestone road.

  The demon lunged again, landing on Devon’s back. Its talons gripped him around the waist. Devon swung back with a fierce elbow thrust and the beast howled in pain.

  “Send it away, Devon,” the man was shouting. “You can do it!”

  Devon threw the brute off his back, spinning around to face it. The thing gnashed its yellow teeth, dripping great gobs of green saliva all over the cobblestones.

  “You have the power,” the man was urging. “You are Nightwing!”

  For the first time Devon realized who this observer was: the same man in the brown hooded robe and long white beard he’d seen on his first, aborted trip down the Staircase.

  “Banish it, Devon!” the man was telling him. “Before it attacks again!”

  Devon turned his attention back to the demon. It was about to spring, its hideous yellow eyes flashing.

  You have the power, Devon. You are Nightwing!

  “Back to where you came,” Devon called out. “I command you! Go back to hell!”

  The thing howled, its ugly snout lifted to the sky. Then it was sucked up into the air, rocketed away into nothingness.

  “You did it!” the bearded man exclaimed.

  Devon leaned against a building for support, breathing heavily. His eyes scanned his surroundings. A small crowd had gathered to watch the battle between the boy and the demon. Devon realized he was standing in a village square, and more people were gazing down at him from second-floor windows. From the architecture of the buildings—half-timbered black-and-white houses, flattened arches, checkerboard chimneys clustered in groups—Devon realized he was in Tudor England.

  I’ve gone back in time, he said to himself, awed. Back to the time of Isobel the Apostate.

  “The boy must be a sorcerer to do what he did,” one man shouted from the crowd. “He must be in league with the witch!”

  “You are fools to think such,” the bearded man told them. “You witnessed what he did here. He sent the filthy demon back to hell—the same kind of demon that has been plaguing your homes and families lo these many months. He can help you! He can stop the witch!”

  The crowd murmured to itself, still looking at Devon with disbelief.

  “I—I need to go,” Devon managed to say.

  “Yes, you have important business to attend to,” the man said, taking his arm. “My good people, what you witnessed here today marks the end of your suffering. From all over the world the great Nightwing are arriving in England, and they will be told of the devilry of the Witch of York.”

  Devon looked up at the man. He’d seen him before, and not just during his earlier trip down the stairs. Somewhere else, too…

  But there was no time to figure it out. “Look,” Devon told the man, “what I meant was that I’ve got to go. Back up the staircase. Back to my own time. My friends are in danger.”

  “But you have come to defeat the witch, have you not?”

  Devon managed a small smile. “I’m doing my best to accomplish that in my own time. Really, I’ve got to go.”

  The man released his grip on Devon’s arm. The teen took a deep breath and started across the square, heading back to the staircase. It was now just a series of stone steps that led up the side of a building to a wooden door.

  “Please!” an old woman cried, rushing out of the crowd. She was dressed in rags and her face was dirty. She grabbed Devon by the hand. “Do not leave us! She has killed my whole family! Save us from the witch!”

  “Save us!” someone else called out.

  Devon looked back at them uncomfortably. “Um, look, I’m really sorry and all—”

  “Burn the witch!” the crowd began to chant. “You must burn the witch!”

  “I—I don’t have time,” Devon protested, feeling ridiculously guilty. But then he remembered his friends: Cecily, D.J., Marcus, and Natalie might have been dead already. He’d left them right in the middle of battle, and every second he delayed made it more likely they would be killed. “Look,” Devon said, “I can tell you this much. She will burn. I know. I’m from the future. I read all about it. She’ll burn and you’ll all be safe.”

  He turned quickly, not wanting to see their dazed, pitiful faces anymore. He hurried up the stairs but paused outside the door to look back.

  “This is the door to the future,” he shouted down to them. “Please believe me that everything is going to work out all right for you.”

  The crowd remained silent, looking up at him with bewilderment.

  He opened the door.

  A woman screamed.

  “Help!” she called. “Thomas, help me!”

  She was taking a bath in a big round wooden tub.

  Devon gulped, looking around the room. This wasn’t Ravenscliff. This was a fifteenth-century inn. Thomas—Devon quickly pegged him as the woman’s husband—came barging through another door, his eyes bugging out of his head.


  “My mistake!” Devon shouted. “I’m sorry!”

  He rushed back out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

  The crowd below was laughing at him.

  “The door to the future?” one man shouted out. “The door to Mistress Bessie’s inn, I do think.”

  Devon felt his cheeks burn in embarrassment. The crowd was dispersing, laughing, shaking their heads, their belief in him gone.

  “Hey,” Devon called after them. “I still managed to kick that demon butt back to hell for you.”

  “And they are grateful for it,” the bearded man told him from the foot of the stairs. “But they are looking for a savior. Not a boy who bungles his way into a lady’s bath.”

  “But these are the stairs, aren’t they? The ones I came down when I arrived from the future?”

  “They are indeed,” the man said as Devon descended, scratching his head. “But the Staircase Into Time appears and disappears of its own accord. Who knows where it may appear next—if anywhere at all.”

  “But it’s got to,” Devon said, desperate now. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got to save my friends. They’re this close to getting killed.”

  The bearded man in the hooded robe looked down at him with wise old eyes. “My boy, your friends are in no danger.”

  “How can you say that? I just left them—the demons are loose and I know Natalie and Marcus are already down—Cecily was near to being taken out, too.”

  The man laughed. “My boy, it is the year fourteen-hundred-and-ninety, year five of our great lord King Henry. Your friends are in no danger. They will not even be born for more than five hundred years.”

  Devon looked into the man’s deep blue eyes. “Now I remember where I’ve seen you,” he said at last. “In my visions, when I’ve read The Book of Enlightenment. Except then you were always wearing a purple robe with stars on it.”

  “Ah, yes, my ceremonial garb. Which I will don tomorrow, for the opening day of Witenagemot.” He smiled. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Wiglaf, a teacher at the great school of the Nightwing in the southwest of England. I am a Guardian, and I have been waiting for you, Devon March.”

  Devon considered him a little suspiciously. “How do you know who I am?”

  “I was asked to meet you here at this spot. I was given specific instructions, and details about your situation. I was told you’d probably be a bit disoriented.”

  “Who asked you to meet me?”

  “There’s time for talk later,” Wiglaf told him, dropping his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “First we need to get you into proper clothing.” The Guardian shuddered. “Is this the costume to which we must look forward, half a millennium hence?”

  “Hey, these chucks cost me eighty bucks.”

  Wiglaf was reading Devon’s sweatshirt. “And who are Abercrombie and Fitch? Are they sorcerers in your time?”

  Devon laughed. “Only to teenage consumers.”

  The Guardian clearly had no clue what he was talking about. “Come with me. I have arranged for a proper doublet and a pair of boots for you. If you are going to attend the Witenagemot, you must not arrive in—” He hesitated, trying to remember the distasteful name. “Chucks.”

  They traveled about half a mile along the dusty cobblestone road. The gutters of the street stunk with rotting pig and chicken flesh, mixed with moldy human waste. Rats swarmed everywhere. A woman dumped a bucket of brown slop from an upper window as they passed. It splashed into the gutter, causing Devon to jump back.

  “Sewers haven’t been invented yet, I guess,” Devon said, holding his nose.

  “Sewers?” Wiglaf asked. “What are sewers?”

  “Oh, believe me. You’ll appreciate them.” He shuddered. “I’ll never take them for granted again.”

  “They must be very wondrous indeed.”

  “That’s not the word usually used in connection with sewers, but you’ve got a point.” They turned down a narrow alleyway. “So tell me about Witenagemot.”

  “No,” Wiglaf whispered. “Too many ears everywhere. And already news of your little exhibition earlier is spreading like wildfire throughout the town.”

  The Voice was telling Devon that he could trust Wiglaf. But as fascinating as he found the prospect of attending a Witenagemot, he remained uneasy about slipping out in the middle of a fight, leaving Cecily and the others on their own. And poor Alexander was still a skunk, trapped in a dog crate.

  But Alexander isn’t born yet, Devon reminded himself. Neither is Cecily, or any of them. So how can they be in danger? It boggled his mind. He just hoped he could get back in time to help his friends finish the battle.

  He followed Wiglaf through a small door of a wooden house at the end of the alleyway. Blackened oak timbers supported whitewashed plaster walls, with the second story of the house projecting out over the first. They climbed steep, narrow steps and emerged into a small room, unfurnished except for a wooden table and two chairs near the window overlooking the street. There was also an ornately carved wooden chest in the center of the room. Devon made out the engraving to be a sorcerer battling a dragon.

  “Sargon?” he asked Wiglaf. “Looks like pictures I’ve seen of him.”

  “Yes, indeed. The chest depicts the great Sargon slaying the dragon.”

  “None of the pictures of him resemble what he really looked like.” Devon smiled, a little smugly. “I know. I’ve met him in person.”

  “You’re his hundredth-generation descendant,” Wiglaf said as he opened the lid of the chest. “I’m sure he found a way of meeting you. Tell me, was he impressed?”

  Devon just grunted and looked away. When he looked back at Wiglaf, the Guardian was smiling. He seemed to know all about Devon’s less-than-satisfactory encounter with his famous ancestor.

  “How do you know so much about me?” Devon asked. “How’d you even know that I’m hundredth generation?”

  “Never mind that now. Put these on.”

  He handed Devon a pair of padded breeches, a tight-fitting doublet of satin brocade trimmed in fur, and a hat made out of fur, too. Ermine, Devon thought.

  He looked down at the clothes with a pained expression. “I’m supposed to wear this stuff?”

  “Well, you’re not supposed to eat it.” Wiglaf folded his arms across his chest. “Please, Devon. Don’t tarry. Just put them on.”

  Devon obliged. “I look like Little Lord Fauntleroy,” he griped, placing the mink hat on his head at a jaunty angle. “Cecily would so hate that this is real fur. She’s big into animal rights and all that.”

  “You look like a proper English squire, and that’s precisely what is necessary for you to move about with ease.”

  “So why am I here? I thought I just blundered my way down the Staircase Into Time. But you were expecting me.”

  “Yes, I was.” Wiglaf motioned for him to sit with him at the table. They looked out onto the street below. “You see, Devon, it grows dark. Look at the fear on the faces of the villagers. Watch how they pull their shutters inward, bolt them against the witch.”

  “Isobel the Apostate,” Devon said.

  “Yes. I have been told that is how she will be remembered in the Nightwing history. But now she is known simply as Lady Isobel Plantagenet, the Witch of York.”

  “She claims royal blood,” Devon said. “She’s trying to overthrow Henry the Seventh.”

  Wiglaf nodded. “And there are many, both here and on the Continent, who would like nothing more than to see the King usurped. She has made allies. Important allies who protect her. Meanwhile, she ravages the villages and the countryside, building her own army with the aid of her creatures from hell.”

  “So what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “That much I do not know. I was simply told that you would be arriving on this particular day from the future, and that you had a destiny with the witch.” Wiglaf smiled. “For a moment earlier today I thought my instructions might have been w
rong. For you appeared but turned around and went back up the stairs, disappearing back to your own time.”

  Devon laughed. “That wasn’t today. That was weeks ago.”

  Again Wiglaf smiled. “My boy, you need to surrender your concepts of time. Once one begins to travel through it, time is no longer linear. What was to you weeks ago was naught but a few hours for me.”

  “That’s freaky.”

  “I assume you mean that it is bewildering. Yes, it is. I had a difficult time grasping the concept myself at first. But, of course, I had the advantage of having it explained to me by one of the great Nightwing masters of time.” Wiglaf paused. “The very man, in fact, who instructed me, nearly two hundred years ago, to wait for you today.”

  “Who, Wiglaf? Who told you to meet me?”

  “His name is Horatio Muir.”

  Devon was stunned. “Horatio Muir? But that’s impossible! Horatio Muir isn’t even born yet. Just like my friends!”

  “What did I just explain to you? Horatio Muir built the Staircase Into Time. He has traveled both far into the past and well into the future.”

  “But I’ve never met him. He died long before I came to Ravenscliff.”

  Wiglaf gently knocked his fist against the side of Devon’s head. “Is your head made of wood, boy? Have you been absorbing anything I’ve said? Time is not the orderly progression you have always assumed it to be. You will meet Horatio Muir at some point. It hasn’t happened yet along your own particular time continuum, but it has along his. When he made his journey to the year 1304—when I was just a young lad of ninety-nine years old—he had already met you, and he knew of the battle you would wage against Isobel the Apostate in the early part of the third millennium. He also knew that you would arrive here in the year 1490—on today’s exact date—and he asked me to wait for you.” Wiglaf grinned. “He knew you would be a little confused.”

  “Confused doesn’t begin to cut it,” Devon said, rubbing his temples. “This is wigging me out, Wiglaf.”

  “Just keep your mind on the present. That’s all there is.”