by Curtis, Greg
There was a lot of blood in the bucket. Far too much. The girl looked pale – too pale – and James realised he had only arrived just in time. Because she was close to fainting. And after that he was sure death would not be far away.
“The Illuminati sent me. You're under arrest.”
He told the witch the bad news as he stepped fully into the dungeon and watched the woman turn pale in turn. She knew who the Illuminati were and what they would do to her. All those with magic did. Though actually they hadn't sent him after her. They'd told him to investigate the disappearances of a number of young girls. It was just that the investigation had led him to her.
Without warning the witch's shock and fear turned to desperation and murderous intent. But then he didn’t need any warning. James had always known she wouldn’t let herself be caught if she could help it. Rogues never did.
“You have no right!” She screamed it at James even as she snatched the dark blade lying on the table by her victim and hurled it at him. But she was far too slow.
James had expected the move – witches and wizards usually tried to kill him when they were caught breaking the Illuminati's rules – and it was the work of barely a reflex to dodge the blade as it flew past him. It wasn't the first knife to be hurled at him. James heard it thunk into a wall somewhere behind him but paid it no mind. Nor did he worry when he heard her utter a spell of confusion and cast it at him. He'd expected that too. This witch was obviously one who dealt in the magics of the mind as well as the body. But he was doubly protected against them as well.
Still, there was no point in taking chances and letting her complete the spell. So even as she cast it at him he ran for her, moving with all the speed he could find, and a few seconds later smashed his fist into her nose as hard as he could. She didn't even have time to raise her hands in front of her face. Five years of mixed martial arts training had made him more than capable with his hands.
The witch went flying backwards, a muffled scream on her lips, and whatever magic she'd tried to cast on him failed. It would keep failing. There was a reason that he went for the nose whenever he could. A witch or a wizard generally needed two things to cast a spell; concentration and words. When he'd broken her nose the pain had stolen the first from her while the injury itself muffled her ability to speak. Of course, there were many witches who could cast without the need for spoken words, using gestures or thoughts instead. The gift was different for everyone. But the pain still stuffed them up. At any rate, it felt good to hit her.
He could have shot her of course, and considering her crimes it would have been a form of justice, but he didn't like killing people. Not even the most evil of rogues. And his bosses would not have been happy either. They tolerated the fact that he kept his Sig. They even lived with the fact that he sometimes used it when he had to. But killing would not be acceptable. They had given him a magical ray gun – at least that was the only thing he could describe it as – and they expected him to use it. The only problem was that the damned thing was so unreliable that using it was like playing a lottery.
She crashed to the hard floor and then went sliding backwards. He had hit her very hard, he thought with satisfaction. Maybe to others it would have seemed wrong, punching a middle aged woman in the nose and probably breaking it. But she was no suburban housewife and he knew simply from looking around that she had done far worse.
She was down, and despite knowing that his next job should have been to make sure that she stayed that way James went to the girl. He had to save her even though it wasn't why he had come and it wasn't his job. But he realised immediately that she needed more help than he could give her just then. There was nothing nearby to staunch the flow of blood from her wound. Which sent him back to the witch. Every instinct he had as a father and a human being said to help the girl. But his training said secure the assailant first. She had to be restrained before he took the girl away to treat her wound. You could never leave a dangerous criminal loose. That was the way people got killed. And she was dangerous.
Hers was vampiric blood magic. He'd recognised it in the instant he'd seen the girl lying on the table with blood gushing from her arm. When he'd worked as a cop one of his most useful skills had been the ability to walk into a crime scene and know instantly what had happened. And now in his work for the Illuminati he still had that ability. The crimes were just different.
The girl on the table was gifted. She probably wasn't very powerful nor trained in her gift – if she had been the witch wouldn't have been able to catch her or bind her so easily – but she still had a trace of the magic in her. And the witch had been planning on stealing it. Actually she'd been planning on taking everything from her. Her magic along with her life energy. There were no actual vampires in the world as far as he knew, but this woman was as close to one as he would ever find.
“Bastard!” The witch screamed it at James, though it was difficult to make out exactly what she was calling him as her nose and throat were filling with blood.
Of course just then she didn't look very much like a vampire. Not as she tried to sit up on the stone floor and then fell back and cursed him with all the bile she could find. Not as she held a hand up to her nose and tried to stop the bleeding. She didn't look like much of anything really. Not even a witch. She looked broken.
And she should, James thought.
James didn't care what she called him. He didn't care that she might still be trying to spell him. Her voice was badly muffled as the blood ran down the back of her throat. But he knew that shortly she would recover and he had to make sure she was harmless before that. Even with all the protections he had had cast on him, he wasn't game to risk being spelled. So he crossed the room to reach her, grabbed her by the collar and rolled her over on to her front. And then while she was lying there, trying desperately to summon up a spell to hit him with, he put a knee in the small of her back, pulled her arms up brutally behind her back and cuffed her.
Now she was harmless.
Of course the cuffs he used weren't standard police issue hand cuffs. She could have unlocked those with ease once she'd regained control of her voice and her pain. If she had the right magic that was. The blood magic he doubted would make her strong enough to snap them. She wasn't a mega. And if she could bend thoughts the chances that she could also bend metal were small. Those among the gifted who had more than one gift usually had gifts that were closely related. But he wasn't a policeman anymore and she wasn't a simple criminal. So instead of police issue steel cuffs he was using cold steel manacles. Thick, heavy, iron manacles that looked as though they'd been crafted by a blind man from the middle ages with little in the way of talent.
Cold steel though was something that every witch or wizard feared. It was the basest of irons with a tiny bit of carbon added to the mix, beaten into shape by hammers and sweat instead of forged. It was crude and rough. But it had one property that modern forged steel didn't. It blocked magic. He didn't know why exactly. He wasn't gifted so he couldn't feel what it did. But he understood that it was something to do with the crudity and toil that went into making them. But the only thing that mattered to him was that the moment the shackles clicked shut around her wrists he knew she was harmless.
After that he left the rogue lying there cursing him bitterly and rushed back to her victim. She was the one who needed his attention.
The girl was still lying there, craning her neck around as far as she could to try and see what he was doing, her eyes wide with either fear or hope. He thought she looked even younger than he'd initially guessed. Maybe only fourteen. A year older than his own daughter. Fourteen and terrified – and barely conscious. He started working on her bindings and tried not to think about what sort of monster would do this to a young girl.
“You're going to be alright kid.” James tried to comfort her as he started untying her. But even as he told her that he worried that she wasn't going to be alright. She was going to be free and escape this dungeon if she
survived. And she was going to get medical attention soon. He would make sure of that. But dealing with that wouldn’t mean she could then return to her old life. The girl had a gift, however large or small, and she had no idea. She had no magical family to tell her of such things. The rogue witch wouldn't have gone after her if she had been part of a family with magic. There would have been too much risk of being identified or caught. And now that the fact that she had a gift had been identified her life was going to change. It might be for the better – he certainly hoped so – but change was never easy.
Still, that wasn't something he could help with. All he could do was free her, bandage her wrists and try to bring her a little comfort. If he could get the damned cords untied!
“The woman's not going to be able to hurt you and there are some people coming who'll tend to your injuries. They'll bring you home too.”
“Are you the police?” she asked, her eyes rolling back a little in her head as she tried to stay awake and alert.
“Yes.” James answered her instantly, proud to be a cop. But then the truth came rushing back to him. That was years in the past. “Of a sort,” he added.
He had been a cop. A detective. He had earned a Masters degree in criminology. He had been immensely proud of both those achievements. But that was the past. Now he worked for the Illuminati. And while he was their hunter, catching those who practised the darkest magics or risked exposure, he was no longer a cop. More a bounty hunter – but without the bounties. He just wanted to keep thinking he was a cop – even five long years later. Maybe he just wanted to pretend. The girl didn't seem to notice his admission though, and he suspected she was close to passing right out.
“She's a witch!” The girl managed to push that thought out, but then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed all the way back on to the table, the last of her strength gone.
“I know kid. I know. But she's harmless now.” James gave up on untying her, spotted the knife sticking out of the door, ran and grabbed it and then started cutting. Then when the last of the bonds were finally gone he gathered her up in his arms and carried her swiftly to the door. He wasn't worried about the witch any longer – he would come back for her – but the girl needed help.
She needed her wound bound urgently. She needed fluids and probably a blood transfusion judging from the amount of blood in the bucket and the pallor of her skin. And he didn't have time to waste.
The girl was light and he got her up the stairs without trouble, even avoiding the trap, and then carried her into the kitchen where he found some orange juice and started trying to get her to drink it. The fluid and the fruit sugars would help he thought. If she could stay awake long enough to drink it.
It took time to get her to even drink a glass and she ended up choking some of it back up. But at least he'd got something into her. Enough he hoped to keep her going while he set about bandaging her cut wrist with a wet tea towel and some parcel tape he found in a drawer. It would stop the bleeding he hoped, but the girl needed a hospital and quite probably a blood transfusion. He had to call an ambulance.
His bosses weren't going to be happy about that. They hated the idea of those with the gifts ending up in the care of the authorities before they knew the score. Before they knew what they could say and what they couldn't. But that was their problem. James had expected to find the girl here, but not in such immediate peril. He knew that she was at death's door. He didn't have time to take her to his people for treatment. She wouldn't survive the trip. And Corinth couldn't open a portal to a place she'd never been before. So if it was a choice between sending her to hospital and risking her saying something or letting her die, it wasn't really a choice for him. The girl had to live.
After he'd finished with her he went back down to the basement to grab the witch. Being heavier than the girl but also due to the fact that she was struggling, carrying her up the stairs was more of a challenge. But she probably had a fair idea of where she was going and what the Illuminati would do to her when she arrived. She didn't want to go. Still, he got her upstairs quickly enough before turning back to deactivate the traps. He couldn't let the cops run into them when they got there. At least it was quick. A heavy weight on the trigger step and simply wiping the handle on the basement door was enough to make sure that there would be no dangerous surprises. Magic traps as with any other sort of trap, didn't rearm themselves.
Once he was ready he called the emergency services, pretending to be a concerned citizen having heard screaming and discovered a crime in progress.
Naturally James gave them only the barest of facts. That there was a girl in need of medical care, and that he'd found her after hearing her crying out for help, tied to a leather covered table with blood dripping from her hand into a bucket. He also told them that he'd seen a woman running out of the house into the darkness, but gave sufficient details to identify the witch as the home-owner. Naturally he didn't give them his name.
Just before he left he saw that the girl had by then passed out lying on the kitchen table, well beyond being able to confirm or deny anything of his story. But she was still breathing and the crude bandage he'd tied around her wrist wasn't soaked in blood. He just hoped that that wasn't because she had so little left. When she finally woke up in the hospital others would probably be there to make sure she said the right things. Everything would be taken care of. For all their failings the Illuminati were thorough. Meanwhile he needed to leave.
Throwing the witch over his shoulder in a fireman's lift he carted her out to his car, hoping that the neighbours didn't see him. Fortunately it was dark by then, and no one was about.
The witch didn't struggle when he carried her out, probably because she'd heard the call he'd made, and knew her future was bleak. Of course getting away was something of a tall order given she was bound. But even if she could somehow escape those bonds and get away from him she was still likely to be picked up by the police in short order. By the morning she'd no doubt be the lead item on the news. A devil worshipping nutter preying on children. One with her own dungeon in the middle of suburbia and who was busy draining the blood of children. All the magic in the world couldn't save her from the man hunt that would follow.
If she stayed behind the police would immediately arrest her and charge her with a plethora of crimes. If she ran she would be caught. There was only so far you could twist someone's thoughts unless you were a true fascinator. And there was no lie she could tell that could save her. Not when the police would find her dungeon and her victim. Of course she could try telling them the truth; that she was a witch who'd been stealing the life force and magic of young victims. But that would be of no help to her. Even though they wouldn't believe any of the magic stuff, the cops would accept everything else as a confession. That would be enough to label her a satanist and throw her in jail or an institution for the rest of her life. And if she actually did manage to escape the Illuminati would quickly hunt her down. It wasn't as if she would have any friends who would shelter her either. Not after what she'd done. And not when everyone knew the Illuminati were hunting her. Many gifted didn't like the Illuminati but no one went against them. But she did still manage to curse him with every breath she could find.
“Save your breath bitch. You're caught. You should think about what you're going to say to the judges.” Of course he knew there wasn't much she could say. She did too. And she had no rights before them.
The Illuminati weren't like an official body. Not even within the magical realm. They were simply the biggest and most powerful clan in the world of magic. In fact they were practically the only clan. And what they said went.
The world of the magical was divided in two. There were the Illuminati, who comprised probably thirty or forty percent of the witches and wizards. They were the ones with the most powerful gifts and the best training. And then there were the rest who were basically freelancers. Independents with the gift. Sometimes they were individuals. Sometimes they were famili
es. A few of them had some training in the art. But none of them could stand against the Illuminati. None of them could afford to cross them either. None of them would be stupid enough to try.
As the largest, most powerful group in the world, the Illuminati set down the law for all the gifted, be they affiliated with them or not. Whether they had the right to do that or not was a pointless question. They did or they didn't – it didn't matter either way. Regardless they set out their laws and expected others to follow them.
Fortunately it was easy to know what the rules were. And there were really only two rules. There were certain magics that people weren't allowed to practice. And no one was allowed to reveal the existence of magic to the wider world. It was simple really.
And if someone broke the rules, then the Illuminati sent hunters like him to track them down and arrest them.
“I am going to kill you for this!” The witch finally managed to regain enough self-control to threaten him. It was unfortunate really, because her nose and mouth were still bleeding profusely and she spat blood with every word. James looked down at his now blood spattered jacket and sighed. He’d just had the damn thing dry cleaned!