Strange Ways

by Gray Williams

  ‘I’m getting you both out,’ said Steph.

  ‘Stephanie, don’t,’ said Karina, heading back to the door. ‘Steph?’ When there was no answer, she rounded on Amanda. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done.’

  ‘She’s getting us out. We’re doing no good just sat in here.’

  ‘You are selling that girl out again.’

  ‘She knows the cost this time. I’m not tricking her. She’s making a decision.’

  ‘She doesn’t understand the cost.’ Karina was in tears now. ‘And neither do you. You have no idea what she’s capable of. Watch that door. You’ll see.’

  They didn’t have long to wait.

  Amanda was about to move away from the door when there was noise up the corridor, a shout and a crash.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Only Zoe can unlock the door,’ said Karina, her face drawn, eyes closed like she was trying not to be sick.

  The glass was cold under Amanda’s cheek as she pressed her face to the window, holding her breath so as not to fog it. A flash of light cast elongated shadows up the wall, a brief impression of limbs and struggling bodies. There were more crashes, shards of glass spraying and tumbling across the floor.

  Then silence, followed by the squeak of shoes on the tiles.

  Zoe stepped into view and Amanda stepped back in shock.

  The woman’s hair was a mess, like she’d run her fingers through it the wrong way. Across half her face was a red sunburn mark, the shape of a handprint, up her cheek, the fingers across her eyes and mouth – one finger too many.

  Blinking, Zoe looked down. The whites a dusky pink, there was a fearful look in her eyes.

  Sigils flared again, the lock clunked, and she tugged the door open.

  Amanda pushed her way through. Zoe flinched away, falling back against the wall. Amanda’s nose curled at the smell of her, sweat, burned hair and cooked flesh from the scorching of her face. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Help me.’ The second word barely had the strength to escape Zoe’s teeth.

  ‘Oh my god,’ said Karina, pushing Amanda aside, following the injured woman to the floor as she slid down the wall.

  ‘Don’t touch her.’ The runes across Steph’s hands were throwing strange shadows across her face as she stood in the middle of the corridor.

  ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘She tortured you,’ snapped Steph. ‘She invaded your dreams every night. You’re afraid to sleep. She deserves this.’

  ‘We’ve talked about this. We are not killers.’

  ‘Well maybe I am.’ There was a tremble in Steph’s voice, a crack in her conviction. ‘Get out of the way.’

  Amanda took Karina by the arm. The woman jerked, trying to break Amanda’s grip.

  ‘Don’t touch me. I’m not going to stand by and watch this. Stephanie, if you hurt this woman…’

  Amanda didn’t let up, pulling Karina to her feet, leaving Zoe slumped on the floor, curled up in pain.

  ‘Steph,’ warned Amanda, ‘I know I said we have to do what it takes. But look at her. She can’t do anything to you.’

  ‘You said she’d just keep coming,’ said Steph. ‘This is my chance to stop her.’

  ‘No.’ Zoe’s lip trembled, tears running down her right cheek. ‘Please. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stephanie, you can’t do this,’ pleaded Karina.

  ‘There are other ways,’ said Amanda. ‘We just need to figure what they are.’

  ‘That’s rich coming from you.’ The young woman was shaking from head to foot, looking from Zoe to Karina to her and back to Zoe. ‘You tortured my friend.’

  ‘I had to. I was following orders. I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘You chased me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to. Look, if you just let me go—’

  ‘I heard you laughing. I was running and I heard you laughing. You’re nothing but a selfish, stone-hearted criminal, using people and doing whatever you want so long as it benefits you. And now I have to let you go because I’m meant to be the better person. I’m the one who has to compromise.’

  Steph’s hands were falling to her sides, coming back up only when she remembered.

  ‘You are,’ said Zoe, getting to her knees, ‘better than me. You are. Believe me, I’ve been where you are and you don’t want to do this.’

  ‘But I do. I really, really do. Because, what choice do I have? You’ll just come back. You’ll chase after us again. You’ll hurt more people.’ The young woman’s agitation began to grow, breath hissing between her teeth. ‘Because that’s what you do. You just take and take and take and you never look at what you leave behind. You never think about it. You’re not getting away with it. Not this time.’

  Face turning a bright red, made dark by the strange light coming from her hands, she began to weave more cantrips.

  Zoe let out a shuddering breath.

  ‘Steph,’ Karina made a move to stop her, but Amanda pulled her back, holding the woman still.

  Magic began to crackle in the air, sparks spontaneously fizzing and dying around them. The runes in the cell doors shimmered like light on water. Amanda’s scars tingled, her gums itched, her heart trying to break free from her chest.

  Curling towards the floor again, Zoe let out a moan so low it was barely a sound at all, wind rushing from a shell. Like hot embers invigorated by a fresh breeze, light began to peek its way out of her collar, the cuffs of her jeans and jacket. The tattoo that ran up her neck had started to glow the deep, smouldering red of lava in fissure, the flesh around it sizzling.

  ‘Stephanie, stop!’ Karina yelled. She’d stopped struggling, her whole body stiff. Like Amanda, she was unable to look away, her hands coming up to her nose and mouth to keep at bay the smell of cooking flesh.

  Zoe was wheezing, trying to scream but unable to take the breath – a sound Amanda knew that she was never going to forget. Breath was clouding out from her nose and mouth, not smoke but steam, glittering with ice crystals, the space around her freezing while she cooked. Where her bare hands touched the floor, water was condensing, frosting in an expanding circle.

  The young woman’s expression was fixed in furious concentration, her eyes locked on Amanda’s face.

  Are you seeing this? her gaze demanded.

  Amanda was seeing, only now realising how right Karina had been. The girl she’d known, the girl she’d hurt, had not been capable of this.

  The time it took for Zoe to collapse was only moments, but felt like a lifetime. The cloth where her tattoos touched the material of her coat blackened, exuding a greasy smoke. The criminal’s arms finally gave in. Ash sprayed across the floor as she fell face first to the tiles. A final shudder, and she was gone. Her skin continued to snap and pop, the ice around the corpse’s fingertips fading to nothing.

  ‘Stephanie…’

  The young woman flinched at her name, the weight of emotion the single word carried enough to rock her back on her heels. The look of remorse in her eyes quickly curdled to anger.

  Scowling, Steph worked the cantrips she had performed in the forest and the air bent around her, the walls warping a moment before…

  Snapping back, the girl was exactly where she had been.

  Huffing with annoyance, she tried again to the same result.

  ‘Steph,’ Karina stepped forward, her voice regaining some of its strength.

  The young woman threw out an arm.

  The blast hit Amanda like a wall. It was a wave of numbness, a lack of sensation. All that she knew disappeared for a split second, her senses switched off. When they returned, she was on the ground a few feet from where she’d last been standing, her ears ringing, her vision smeared and her mouth experiencing a wave of tastes before she was able to start putting everything back together. She was staring up at the buzzing strip-lighting, a breeze playing across her face. Then she remembered what had just happened and sat up.

  Karina had somehow gone from in front of her to behind her,
lying on her side further down the corridor, her back to Amanda, her hair thrown in every direction. She wasn’t moving.

  Steph was missing, the only clue to her whereabouts the melted hole in the far wall, the trees beyond whipped by wind.

  Rolling onto her hands and knees, Amanda’s vision pitched and yawed, making her feel nauseated. She thought she caught a glimpse of Steph, heading out through the trees at a staggering run.

  Karina stirred.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Amanda, her ears were ringing, her whole body humming like a tuning fork.

  Karina was pushing herself up to a sitting position, still catching up on how she’d found herself on the ground.

  ‘Come on.’ Amanda pulled herself to standing. The ground wouldn’t stay true under her feet as she staggered over. Did she have concussion? That wasn’t good. She put a hand to Karina’s shoulder, trying to pull her up. ‘We have to get after her.’

  The girl was already gone; a few more moments and they would lose her entirely.

  ‘Steph?’ Karina looked to Amanda, confused. ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘Nowhere good. And we won’t find out unless you move right now.’

  The pair leaned against one another, Karina’s sense of balance just as off-kilter as Amanda’s was.

  The hole in the wall was warm to the touch. Brick shouldn’t melt, Amanda thought as they stumbled through, her eyes fixed on the gap in the trees where she thought she had seen Steph disappear.

  Her legs didn’t feel like her own and, from the way Karina tripped and faltered at her side, she wasn’t the only one feeling that way.

  ‘Where is she going?’ winced Karina.

  ‘Only building out this way is Fitzackley’s house,’ said Amanda. ‘Seems like she wants a second crack at Mallory. Something tells me the second attempt’s going to be any better than the first. She’s walking right into their hands.’

  ‘You pushed her to it.’

  ‘I didn’t think she’d go that far.’

  ‘I told you. She’s changed.’

  ‘I thought she was just angry at me. I didn’t know what else she’d… OK, I did. You told me. But I didn’t understand it.’

  ‘You didn’t want to understand it. So long as you’re getting what you want, you don’t care how it affects other people.’

  ‘I was never going to lie down and die for your beliefs. I’d just never seen her so…’

  ‘Wild?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Karina sighed. ‘Me neither. I’d always worried, but I’d hoped she wouldn’t be capable of… of that much cruelty.’

  They were speeding up now.

  The sun was well below the treeline, a burnt orange glow peering under the leafy canopy. In the dark of the lengthening shadows, images of what had happened played out over and over behind Amanda’s eyes.

  It occurred to her that she’d lived far longer with the memory of what she had done to Steph than she had with the girl herself. All those times she’d tortured herself with recollections of her decisions, it had just been a shadow, a dark projection of her guilt. The little girl in her was simply another reason for her to punish herself for surviving. Now she’d met the girl again, a young woman shaped by that same fateful week, a living, breathing, changing human being so different to the pitiful character in her mind.

  This was the woman she’d helped create, who had taken what she’d learned from the train and carried it out into the world with her. A woman marked by her exploitation, who lived with Amanda’s shadow, every bit as much as Amanda herself had lived with Steph’s.

  Back in that hallway, she’d treated her like the girl she’d dealt with on that train carriage. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ she said aloud. ‘What she’s done, it’s a step, but it’s not the whole journey. We can still stop this.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  They kept to the trees to avoid detection.

  Neither woman spoke, concentrating on maintaining their footing, lost in their own thoughts, each wondering what they would find ahead.

  There was still no sight of Steph and they could only hope that Amanda’s guess at her destination was correct.

  There were all kinds of killers, Amanda knew; she couldn’t do what she did without meeting a great many, and she knew that anyone was capable of it if they were pushed far enough.

  The lights of the house on the coast began to wink at them through the trees. As they neared, Amanda could make out shapes moving in the living room.

  How long had Steph been there now? How far ahead of them had she managed to get? Five minutes? Ten?

  Amanda paused at the treeline, but Karina kept going, rushing onto the short, clean stretch of decking that led up to the door. Opening her mouth to protest, call the woman back, Amanda thought better of it and hurried after her. Steph wasn’t the only one tired of running. She held the key to saving Michaela; it wasn’t like Amanda had much of a choice.

  The front door was hanging open and Karina slipped inside without a look back.

  The sound of the wind and ocean died as Amanda entered, the magical soundproofing of the house closing around her like a fist.

  The hallway was just as pristine as before: featureless walls and polished floors. It gave the silence a church-like hush, quiet stone that forbade the sound of life.

  Karina rushed towards the living room, her heavy boots thudding across the floorboards.

  The woman disappeared ahead and the house seemed to swallow her too. The sound of boots ceased, her call for Steph sucked into a gasp.

  Amanda followed.

  The living room was utterly destroyed. The seating was overturned, tables smashed, lamps shattered. The pristine glass walls that looked out over the ocean were marked and scratched in a dozen places.

  As it was, wherever Amanda looked she could see her pale reflection standing out over the ocean, hovering over the beaches, her mouth hanging open as she took in the tableau in the middle of the room.

  Steph’s expression was tight, her hands down by her sides, blinking at the intruders. There was blood on her fingers, a smear of it on her cheek.

  Fitzackley sat before her, tied into his office chair. His head was slumped forward in submission, the thin nylon cords around his wrists and chest the only things preventing him from sliding to the floor at her feet.

  Karina had stopped by the doorway, her eyes pleading as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing and what it meant. Her jaw was set like she could force the scene to explain itself without anyone having to utter a single word.

  Amanda came around to meet Steph, approaching the girl like she would a wounded animal.

  Steph didn’t resist when Amanda took her arm and pulled her away. The touch seemed to spur Karina forward, and she came to tug the girl towards the door.

  Amanda crouched in front of Fitzackley. He’d been stripped naked, his body a patchwork of bruises, his midriff a storm cloud of purples, reds and blacks.

  His fingers were broken and twisted like old tree roots. Ribs caved in, his knees and ankles swollen and shattered, his toes crushed.

  ‘Is he dead?’ asked Karina, aghast.

  Holding her breath, Amanda lifted the man’s head. His face was a waxwork, his mouth hanging open, eyelids drooping – hell of a final expression. ‘Looks like Mallory got what he was looking for.’

  ‘He deserved it,’ said Steph.

  ‘Stephanie,’ Karina warned.

  ‘I’d have done it myself.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Karina. ‘Look at your hands.’ She pulled the young woman’s arms up, palms towards them, smeared with red.

  Steph jerked them from her grip. ‘I’ve seen worse. There are still four of them out there.’

  ‘Not to mention Drummond and his guards,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Stephanie, you just murdered someone. Don’t you understand? There’s a body back there. A woman’s life is gone and that’s down to you. She�
��s dead, Steph. And what has it solved? Are you the slightest bit sorry for what you’ve done?’

  Steph pulled away, furious. ‘So what do you want us to do? Nothing? You always do this. You just accept it. We have to do something. You’re the only one playing by the rules. It’s so stupid. Like those papers, all your little scribbled bits of evidence. Like they were going to make a difference. You just sit there thinking you’re so fucking smart, thinking you’re better than them, but they are winning. All the time, they’re winning and you just let them. Like you think your pride is more important. You and her are exactly the same.’ Steph waved a wooden finger between the two women. ‘You think your principles are so important that the world will bend around you, and you don’t care who gets hurt. You think you’re heroes, but all you are is a pair of tired old women who think that the world revolves around you. I lost my hands to you, and you cost me my freedom and I—’

  ‘Don’t you say another word.’ Karina whispered the words, but that was enough, the anger like the first underground tremor, low and deep and felt in the bones. So full of hurt that even Amanda recoiled.

  It stopped Steph. Amanda watched the shock shift to anger shift to terror as she took in her guardian’s expression.

  Karina’s face was drawn, tired and wounded, her hurt expression amplified by the thin lighting that tossed back her reflection in harsh relief.

  Pain filled the room, the silence drawing out, gaining weight, thickening.

  ‘Do you honestly think I enjoy things the way they are?’ Karina’s voice was heavy. ‘You think I like watching people say whatever they like? Dragging my values through the mud, ranting about tradition, pointing to all the people and the reasons that led to magic being banned in the first place? To see myself being compared to people like her father?’ she jabbed a finger at Amanda. ‘To people like Mallory and Harry? No matter what I do, no matter what I say, or how I act? Always being watched, judged, being pushed.

  ‘You never understood. The slightest slip from me, just a frown or a clipped comment, and they analysed it. They picked it apart like it was evidence of something. I couldn’t be tired or harassed or angry. Every time I let them get to me, I fed them just what they needed to point and say, “There, that’s her true nature, that’s what they’re all like.”