Banshee Hunt

by Curtis, Greg

  “But you won't die. I promise you that. I'm not that merciful. You are going to spend the rest of your life powerless, stuck in a prison camp with all the others I've put away there. Armless, legless and filled with hatred for me. Useless, pathetic hatred. Because you'll never be able to strike at me again. Not without your power. I may even decide to burn your face off as well. I haven't decided yet.”

  “But one thing I will make certain of. For every second of the rest of your miserable life you'll know only one regret. One absolute piece of pain that will cut you deeper than any blade ever could. Especially when you see the others turn away from you in horror. Or hear them gasp in shock when they see you. The knowledge that if only you hadn't gone after my daughter you could have had some sort of life.”

  “But you did. And now it's too late for you. So hurry up and kill the bitch so I can get started on you!”

  “But …! But …!” Soo Chi stood there in shock, her face showing all the signs of someone lost in terror and struggling to find something to say. And eventually she found something. “But she's innocent! It was your brother. He controlled her with his magic. You know that! You can't blame her!”

  “And you think I don't know that?” James smiled cruelly at her. “You think I care? Five years ago I beat my little brother to death. It was just unfortunate that he survived. But he'll never walk again. Not properly. He'll never smile either. His face is too broken for that. And the brain damage has left him incontinent and in permanent pain. His suffering is one of the few things that brings me joy in this world. Didn't Daniels tell you that?” It was hard saying that, because it was too close to the truth. There was a monster within him, and admitting it was hard. But suddenly he had to. He had to use it.

  “As for the slavers he sold Matti to, I used a shotgun on them. All eight of them. They may still have legs. Some of them at least. Those who survived. But none of them have the bits and pieces that made them male. I enjoyed removing those parts of them. I removed other parts too. With this very gun as it happens. They're alive in a supermax prison, but not one of them will ever know a moment of happiness again. Not when every day they're raped by their fellow inmates.” Somehow James managed to let a smile grace his face, even though all he could think was that she was going to slit Sheryl's throat in front of him. He was playing a very dangerous game. Almost daring her to kill Sheryl. And it could so easily go wrong. He had never been so scared of anything in his entire life, save for when the slavers had had Matti.

  “And then two weeks ago when you sent the giant after me, I initially assumed it was Francis who had sent him. So I set him on fire. I literally chained him to a tree, covered him in petrol and threw matches at him. You should have heard him scream. He even shat himself as he burnt. But what do you know – he was innocent of that crime at least. So now he still lives. More or less. The mind has gone of course. What little remained. Burnt off with the skin. The warden wants to have me locked up as a savage. The shrinks think I'm nuts. Actually they say I'm psychotic if you can believe that. And the elders don't know what to do with me. But hey – it was worth it. It was fun!” He smiled, hopefully letting her know fear. And she was frightened. He could see it in her eyes.

  His only problem was that Sheryl was listening too. And she was utterly terrified as she lay there in her bed. She was making strange, desperate sounds that didn't sound at all human and was currently trying to crawl away from both of them through the wall behind her. Soo Chi had her in a tight grip but Sheryl was panicking. If she went too far she was going to trigger things.

  “You really should have paid more attention to what Daniels told you. You'll have to wait a little bit though. I blew his brains out a few hours ago when I realised he was your traitor. But I'm sure he'll be waiting there in hell for you to arrive.”

  Soo Chi blanched when he said that. She had definitely heard what Daniels had said. He could see that awareness in her eyes. She had heard but now she was thinking that she hadn't fully understood what Daniels had told her. It was always the way. The evil couldn't imagine that there were others out there more evil than them. That they could actually be outplayed at their own game. They always imagined that the fact that they were willing to do such terrible things made them more dangerous than anyone else. That was why he was sticking so close to the truth. The best lie was always one that was closest to the facts.

  “You wouldn't!” Finally the banshee responded, trying to deny what he was saying. But she couldn't. She didn't believe her own denials. He could see it in her eyes.

  That was James' chance.

  “Oh to hell with it! This is taking too long. I'll just shoot you, slit her throat and say you did it.” He levelled the gun at her head and instantly every one of the banshee's instincts went into overdrive.

  She shrieked, calling all of her victims to her without thought, not realising that they were all already down. Then she threw herself desperately to the side, thinking he was about to fire, and she hurled the knife at him in the same frightened move, hoping to kill him with it. In that moment she was his.

  The knife hit him and bounced off his thick duffel. Knife throwing was an art and one that was almost useless save to an expert with a set of heavy, balanced knives. A carving knife simply wouldn't do. And of course she went flying to the side, off balance and out of control, which gave him all the time he needed to cross the floor, pistol whip her and then smash her hard in the face as she tried desperately to keep her footing.

  She went down in a heap, sliding along the floor, blood already pouring from her face and making strange noises.

  After that the battle was over. The banshee was down, lying on the floor, bleeding and completely stunned. She wasn't a young woman and he'd punched her very hard. There was likely a broken face as well as a broken nose. The warden was going to be pissed! Meanwhile Sheryl was screaming hysterically, lost in terror as she thought he was going to kill her. She'd somehow got out of her bed and was crouched in the corner of the room with her arms over her head, no doubt wanting to escape the room but too frightened to try and run past him to reach the door.

  James holstered his weapon and went to her. He had to, because somewhere deep inside he suddenly remembered something of what she had once meant to him. And he couldn't let her suffer any more. He couldn't let anyone suffer like that. It had been too much and for too long.

  “It's over Sheryl. The crazy woman's down and harmless. And you're safe. I promise.” He had to repeat that a few times before she would listen. And a few more before she could actually lower her arms and look up at him and then across the room to where the Asian woman lay bleeding. The banshee was still conscious, sort of, but she wasn't going to be causing much trouble for a while. Not when her movements were more involuntary than intentional. In fact she looked a little as though she was having some sort of slow motion fit.

  Sheryl didn't look that much better though. And why would she? She'd been through too much. She'd heard too much. And quite probably a lot of it wasn't making sense to her.

  Abruptly things were made a lot worse when the broken door unexpectedly burst open again and a number of men in military style garb came charging into the room. One of them launched some sort of energy ball at the banshee and Sheryl gasped. At that point James guessed, any thought about secrecy had left the room.

  “You're safe.” James kept telling her that, knowing that there wasn't really a lot else he could tell her. Not while all the craziness was going on. So he kept repeating it while the banshee was manacled in a pair of cold iron cuffs – something else Sheryl noticed – and then led away. Actually she was more carried than led, and he suspected she would soon be seeing a doctor. He had hit her very hard.

  After they'd gone – and he had to shoo them out of the room – he thought he could at least start getting his ex-wife to find some sort of calm. But it was going to take time.

  “Come on you. Let's get you up and back into bed. You've had a lot of shocks for the day and yo
u need to rest.”

  It was strange he thought how the old mannerisms came back to him so easily. As if none of the past seven years had happened. And even stranger how he could suddenly forget his anger for her. Maybe those dark emotions had been burnt out of him by the passage of time. Or maybe it was just seeing her like that that had destroyed them. Either way, he simply didn't hate her anymore. He didn't love her either. It was more as though she was an old friend and he simply didn't want to see her hurt. Maybe too it was the policeman inside him taking charge as he identified a victim.

  It took a while to coax her to her feet. To get her to at least trust him enough to take hold of his hands and let him lift her up and guide her back to the bed.

  She was different to how he remembered. Still the same face. Still the long curly blond hair and the demure features. A woman of breeding as his mother would have said. Actually as she had said. But she looked so much older. Tired. Drained. Thinner. The the last seven years had not been easy on her. She might have won the divorce, but really both of them had lost everything. Everything that was except for their daughter. Matti was in the end, all that remained of their lives.

  “You told her to kill me.” Finally she said something.

  “Had to. She would have killed you otherwise. I had to get her to think you were no use as a hostage, and that if she killed you she would lose everything. I had to get her to come at me with the knife instead.”

  “But did I shoot her?” He indicated the bare floor where she had been lying, proof that he hadn't, despite everything he'd told her he was going to do to her. There was no body there. “No. I was lying to her. Telling her what she needed to hear so that I could control the situation. Doing what I had to do to save your life.”

  “Now I want you to get some rest. We have a daughter that's going to need you up and at your best as soon as possible. So you need to start looking after yourself.”

  Sheryl didn't respond to that. She just lay there silently and let him pull the sheets and blankets over her and tuck her back in. But James guessed she wasn't going to be going back to sleep any time soon. So he pulled up a chair and sat with her. If nothing else they had things to talk about. Aside from their daughter James had no doubt she’d want to talk about what she'd just heard and seen.

  “That woman said it wasn't my fault.”

  Of course she asked about that. That was the guilt that had got her admitted to this place. It was the poison that had eaten at her life. Aged her twenty years or more. And James knew she couldn't be left with it anymore. It was too great a burden. The banshee had told her some of it. It was time for her to learn the rest.

  “It wasn't your fault.” He could have lied to her. He probably should have. Pretended that she'd been hearing and seeing things. But he simply couldn't do that. Not to her – the woman he had once loved with everything he had. Not to someone who had had her life torn apart by magic. And not to the mother of his daughter. He could not perpetuate the crime.

  “She said I was controlled. That pawns like me were always controlled.”

  “You were.” James admitted the truth.

  “Then …?”

  “There are people in this world who can do amazing, impossible things. Magical things. And Francis was one of them. He could control people. Make them see the world however he wanted them to. Make them do things. He could bend thoughts to his will. And he was a monster. He still is. He wanted revenge on me. And so he bent your mind. First he bent it to sleep with him. Then to divorce me. And finally to sell Matti to the slavers.”

  “Revenge?”

  “For saying no to him while he was growing up. Because I have a touch of it too. But my magic is only that I can't have my thoughts bent. I'm immune to his magic. You weren't.”

  Once more silence returned to the room as she tried to take in what he'd told her. But it took time. Even having been through what she had and having seen what she had, it wasn't easy to just accept that the world wasn't the simple, straight forward place it had always been. Magic was the stuff of fairy tales and dragons and all those childish dreams that you grew out of. It couldn't be like that. Not really. He remembered it hitting him just as hard when he'd found out.

  “And you knew?” Suspicion suddenly flared in her voice.

  “No! I had no idea at all. Not until the day you sold Matti, and he came and bragged about what he'd done. What he'd made you do. That was when all hell broke loose. That was the day I thought I killed him.”

  “So she …?”

  “She was a bit wrong. I was mostly lying. I beat him to a pulp. And I did think I'd killed him. He's got a busted shoulder and walks with a limp. His face isn't that pretty either anymore. But as for the brain damage and incontinence, I just threw that in to scare her. And I didn't set him on fire either. Just scared him a bit.”

  “And the men? You didn't …?”

  “Oh no, I did. They were always going to live. I was a cop back then. But most of them were never going to have children. They were child sex traffickers. They had Matti. They were going to sell her to people who would do unspeakable things to our daughter. I thought that they might have already done so. And there were other children too. That was never going to happen.” He had no trouble admitting that. He felt no shame in it. Whether it was legal or not, it had always felt like the right thing to do.

  “So you did that? What you said?”

  “Yes. Eight pieces of filth are now spending the rest of their days in prison singing falsetto. Some of them lost a leg or two as well. I won't say I was a cop that night. I didn't obey the law. But it was a genuine gun fight not a massacre. I was just faster on the draw.”

  “And Francis?”

  “Locked away for the rest of his life in a different sort of prison. He could bend minds with just a few words. So no normal prison could hold him. Not even a supermax. But the magical have their own prisons. He's had his magic blocked. So he's safe as long as they keep him locked away. And they're never going to let him out. But I didn't burn him alive. I covered him with spelled water that he thought was petrol and threw matches at him. It was the only way I could be sure he didn't have his magic back. If he had I would have been attacked by an army. But he didn't which was how I knew he wasn't guilty. He wasn't hurt. But he did scream a lot and the warden's made a complaint about me.”

  “Good.”

  “That the warden's complained about me?” James was surprised by that.

  “That he screamed.”

  “You're okay with that?” James was even more surprised by that. If there was one thing Sheryl had always been it was a great believer in the law.

  “If he did that. If he made me do what I did. Then yes.” She said it simply and without any hint of doubt in her voice.

  “Good. Because there's one more thing we have to talk about.”

  “Let me guess. That this is all some sort of great secret. That I can never tell anyone about it because the witches will turn me into a frog. The Asian bitch mentioned that. She said they were afraid of people like her. That they were scared of what she and her family could do.”

  “Yes, she's dangerous. And her family's declared war on the Illuminati. But the Illuminati want this kept secret for a very different reason. They're not really in to power. They don't want to rule the world. They just want to live normal lives. And most important of all the gifted don't want to find themselves burnt at the stake. Once was enough.”

  “But they won't harm you. Not like the bitch claimed they would. They don't need to. There's a thousand other ways to hide things, and the easiest way is simply to discredit someone. After all, this is magic we're talking about. Fairy tales and myths. It's not real. Therefore anyone who thinks it's real is out of their tree.”

  “So no. They don't want you to talk. But you don't want to talk either. You have a far more important reason to keep silent. The most important reason there can ever be for either of us. Much more important than anything they could threaten either of u
s with.” James had her attention at least.

  “Go on.”

  “Magic travels in families. My parents have gifts. They're minor. My father can shape things with his thoughts. My mother has a green thumb. I have a fraction of it. Not really even a gift at all. I didn't even know I had one until that night. Francis though was the most powerful fascinator seen in decades. And he destroyed everyone's life. But the only thing that matters now is that Matti has the gift too.”

  “Matti?” Suddenly Sheryl pushed the sheets aside and sat bolt upright in the bed. “Is she …?”

  “No. Not like Francis. There are lots of different gifts. And hers is in the animus. In health and the body. And though her magic is only just beginning to grow, she shows great promise. The academy that she goes to; it's a specialist school for those with magic. They're teaching her how to use her gift and also how to hide it. I have hopes that one day when she's grown up she'll become a doctor perhaps with the gift of healing. She could have a great future. But that can never happen if the secret gets out.”