He?
As I stood, paralyzed with fear, my mobile in my hand buzzed with another call.
I took it away and looked at the screen.
I had no idea whose number that was, but I didn’t hesitate to take the call.
“Yes?” I answered.
“Miss Honeycutt, I’m sorry to call at this hour of the morning. This is Percival Saunders. I’m an aide to the Prime Minister. We’ve sent a car. It should be there in ten minutes. Please dress and meet the car. We need you at Downing Street immediately.”
Oh my Goddess, oh my Goddess, ohmyGoddess.
“You and Mr. Wilding,” he went on.
I flew into motion while talking on the phone. “Mr. Wilding isn’t here.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Wilding isn’t here.” I let that go because, in order to keep my shit, I couldn’t say it again, and I moved on to something else which I knew to my soul wasn’t something else. It was why Ash wasn’t there. “What’s happening?”
“My apologies, but the Prime Minister wants to discuss this with you in person, though he wishes to do that urgently.”
I was dragging clothes, warm ones, out of the wardrobe, when I repeated, “What’s happening?”
“Again, my apologies, Miss Honeycutt, but the PM—”
“Get his ass on the phone to tell me what’s happening!” I screeched.
“It’s sensitive.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“There’s no need to use that—”
“The Dark Lord is here, isn’t he?”
Nothing.
“She made him, didn’t she?” I pushed.
More nothing.
“Fuck this,” I muttered, disconnected, tossed the phone on the bed and dressed quickly in cords, a thin thermal, a bulky sweater over that, thick socks, boots, and I was winding a scarf around my neck when my phone rang again.
I snatched it up and took the call.
“What?” I snapped, reaching for some gloves.
“Miss Honeycutt, it’s Bertram Kensley—”
“Prime Minister, I’m a little busy right now,” I cut him off to say, phone between ear and shoulder as I yanked on the gloves.
“So you know,” he stated, his voice grave.
Yeah.
I knew.
Cold straight to my bones.
And Ash was not here.
I reached for a knit cap, nabbed it and darted back to my nightstand, but I didn’t say anything.
He did.
“We’ve sent in the military.”
In the midst of grabbing my wand, I stopped dead.
“Sorry?” I whispered.
“It’s unknown, the body count. It’s early. As we understand it, the situation just started under an hour ago, and we haven’t been able to get close. Still, satellite images…” He cleared his throat. “We’re estimating it’s over one hundred, but under two.”
Holy shit.
Holy crap.
Holy shit, crap, shit!
I had friends there.
My coven was there!
I tucked my wand in the back waistband of my cords and yanked the cap on my head.
“We’ve decided to attempt an evacuation and pin the culprits there,” he continued. “But as their power is…formidable, until we have a better understa—”
“Keep everyone out. The military. Everyone. Order the troops to form a perimeter around the town. And use media, TV, phones, internet, to tell the citizens of Clevedon to lock their doors and windows. Shut their curtains and blinds. And head to their cellars, but only if they have access to them from inside their house. They do not leave their homes. They do not go to their cars. They do not watch out the windows. They hunker down and wait until I sort this shit.”
“You’re going to—?”
I’d grabbed my broomstick and was tugging open the front door, Daphne again on my heels.
“I’m on my way.”
“Thank God,” he murmured.
I didn’t reply because I’d torn out of Ash’s flat and slammed right into Mack in the hall.
I stepped back, took my phone from my ear and asked him immediately, “Do you know where Ash is?”
“We assemble the team,” was his reply.
Okay.
Sar, Trae and BecBec were still in the Realm because Cystien wasn’t back, and with the situation on the surface the way it was with humans and supernaturals, they didn’t want to fuck up, pick the wrong guards, and have Maithieliel get loose again.
So the team was Su, Gabe, Mack, Anita and me.
In other words, my brother, my sister, a dude I liked a whole lot and a chick I didn’t know all that well, but I’d gotten a good sense about her since the beginning.
Tracking the Big Bad before he turned into the BIG BAD was one thing.
Putting them in the line of fire of the BIG BAD was another.
I was Mathilda, SuperWitch.
I was the Prophesied One.
So, okay, I’d never read the Mathilda Prophesies with my own damn eyes (lest I let some of the less-fun Prophesies come true just because I believed them) so I didn’t have any real clue.
But if they said The Chosen One and her Elite Team of Badasses saved the world, I had a feeling someone would have shared that info.
No one told me that.
I was going to save the world.
I was.
Boiling that down…
No way—in hell—were my sister, brother, Mack or Anita going anywhere near whatever was happening in Clevedon.
At The Gables.
In my home. The Honeycutt seat.
Do not ask how I knew that was where they were.
But I knew it.
They’d chosen a place that was important to me to draw me out.
Those assholes!
“I’m going alone,” I told Mack.
“You are not,” Mack told me.
“I’m going alone!” I repeated (louder) to Mack.
Mack said nothing.
“Do you know where Ash is?” I asked.
Slowly, he shook his head.
I wanted to cry. I really did.
Or scream.
Really, really loud.
I did not do either of these things.
I sprinted down the hall to the steps and then down those, Daphne coming with me.
And Mack coming after us.
We hit the pavements and I steadied my broom.
It hovered beside me.
Daphne jumped up and rested her kitty booty on the bristles.
I’d deal with my cat in a second.
“Mack,” I whispered.
He tipped his head to the side.
Then he started jogging down the pavement, the jog turning to a run, then a sprint.
Then he was flying.
Right into the sky.
Because he’d turn into a hawk.
“Well, shit,” I muttered, staring, stunned, and because that was cool as all hell, even in that moment of urgency, I had to give time to thinking how cool as hell that was. I shook that off, looked back to Daphne and said, “You aren’t coming either.”
She lifted a paw, licked it, put it down and sat the broom, blinking at me.
Well, whatever.
It was time for up, up and away.
Which was what we were as I bent forward, held tight to the wood, Daphne hunkered into the brush, and we streaked through the sky.
I was kind of hoping for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (or his ilk).
Or threatening clouds with muted lightning strikes behind them hovering over the town of Clevedon.
Something familiar.
Something from fiction.
The kind of fiction where I knew the good guys won.
Me being the good guy.
I came, I saw, I kicked his ass.
That kind of thing.
But it wasn’t like that.
The town was in blackout.
T
here was nothing but the moon shining on the Bristol Channel, pinpoint lights in Wales dotting the distance.
And every window in The Gables lit bright and eerie.
Yeah.
They were here.
And they’d picked here to draw me out.
It had not taken long to get there because I went as the crow flew, not as the M4 ran (though, that motorway was a relatively straight run, just not straight enough) but I went a lot faster than a crow would fly (and definitely the M4 could ride).
Apparently, the impetus I needed to learn to sit my broom without falling off was the end of the world as we knew it.
Again with the bright side.
Because…
Whatever worked.
Regardless my time flying wasn’t long, during it, I’d come up with a plan.
So I’d already done a quick spell to cloak myself, my broom and my cat.
When I got close, I swooped down, and after seeing them down there, I did this avoiding looking at the streets where the bodies lay.
Bligh and Darling had done the deed elsewhere.
And made their way to The Gables.
Leaving death in their wake.
I dashed down Old Church Road, up and around Poet’s Walk and in, doing the whole Return of the Jedi scene (but a lot shorter, and without a wheel-less motorcycle) through the trees.
Until I got to mine.
My tree.
The one that gave me my wand.
And, I suspected, some of my power.
We’ll just say that I might not have made a graceful stop and dismount.
But I did take heart when I felt the pulse of goodness coming from my tree.
Man, especially right at that moment…
It was good to be home.
I stepped to it, put my hands to it, then my forehead.
I felt something else then.
A charge.
It was telling me something unnatural was near and nature abhorred the unnatural.
“It’s okay, I’ll see to it,” I maybe (maybe not, still bright siding this shit) lied.
Daphne mewed.
I looked to her in the leaves.
“Stay right here.”
She scampered away.
Damn cat
Fuck.
I couldn’t chase after my cat.
I just had to settle into the fact she had nine lives, and as far as I knew she hadn’t wasted even one, and she would live them right, especially now.
I turned and sat cross-legged at the foot of my tree, rested my back to it after I’d retrieved my wand, and folded both hands over my wee twig at my heart.
I closed my eyes.
“Ash, if you’re out there doing something dangerous thinking you’re protecting me, when I find you, I’m gonna kick your ass,” I muttered.
A leaf fell on my head.
Apparently, my tree agreed.
I drew in breath.
I centered myself.
Instead of drawing the circle physically, I drew it magically, hearing leaves rustling and shifting all around me.
The vision I’d had at Bewitched weeks ago on my mind, so I didn’t screw the pooch right off the bat and go rushing in (to my death), I did the only thing I could (or I was going to attempt to do the only thing I could).
To get the lay of the land at The Gables, I was going to astral project myself there.
I started humming.
Then rhyming.
Then chanting.
The branches on the trees started swaying.
I opened my eyes and admonished, “Shh. Do you want them to know I’m here?”
The branches stopped swaying.
I closed my eyes and centered myself again.
This had to work, and fast, because I didn’t want to walk in there blind and I had to get a move on.
And…
Gak!
I was in!
I knew I was in.
But how was I in?
There was light coming from every window of The Gables when I flew into town.
But even though I knew I was there, I was in the pitch dark.
“Shit,” I whispered as it hit me.
I’d astral projected myself to the damn Dungeons.
“Okay, all right, I can do this. Just close your eyes and sense…” I started muttering to myself.
“Witches.”
I shot straight.
My astral self and my real self by the tree did this when I heard that word hissed.
“Do you know how annoying it was to watch and watch and watch and watch all you fucking witches have so much and then do nothing with it? Nothing. Nothing with all…that…power.”
Bligh.
The Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord was down there with me.
I reached to my wand.
But I wasn’t me.
I was the Astral Me.
My wand was out there with me at the tree.
Okay, this wasn’t a disaster. I’d just go back and…
“Do you think you can go back?”
Uh-oh.
I tried to go back.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t go back!
He’d trapped me in the Dungeons!
My vision was coming true.
Shit!
“I’m disappointed,” he said.
Was he coming closer?
I couldn’t see.
Just hear.
But his voice seemed to be getting closer.
“You made it so easy,” he went on. “I’ll keep you here and I’ll go out there and take care of you. Your body can’t move while your conscious is in here. I’ll find you. At your tree. And yes, Mathilda, Dr. Seymour, like any good member of the Institute, recorded where you got your wand. And rest assured, I paid a good deal of attention to Seymour’s reports about you. So I knew exactly where you’d go to make sure your power was topped up before getting up the nerve to face me.”
Great.
I loved Aidan.
But I didn’t love all that.
“And Sir Sebastian will also know where to find you,” Blight continued. “So he’ll find you there wearing a new necklace, as I know you’re so fond of accessorizing. The one I make when I slit your…THROAT.”
Holy fuck!
He was right on top of me!
I took off down the dark hallway, my hand on the cold stone, my breath uneasy, my heart thumping.
Totally time to panic.
Toe.
Tah.
Lee!
“It was the heart,” he said, suddenly in front of me.
I stopped on a skid and started edging back.
“It was the consumption of the heart that sealed the deal.”
Now he was talking at my back.
I whipped around, trying to see anything (and failing, I was flying completely blind, literally, and not knowing the Dungeons, figuratively), and again, I walked backward.
“So healthy, was Agatha,” he whispered, right in my ear.
I hated to admit it.
But I let out a scream.
Then I ran.
I hit a wall with my shoulder, rebounded off it, hit another wall and nearly fell to my knees.
“The English like their veg,” he called from what sounded like far away. “They like their wanders. Nothing like a good, long walk in the brisk, cool British air for a well-bred Englishwoman. Healthy heart, healthy lifestyle. Her heart was perfection.”
Oh my Goddess!
He ate Agatha’s heart!
I told her he’d turn on her.
Did she listen?
NO!
Did anyone ever listen to me (read: Ash, who I now hoped to the Goddess was doing something that would piss me off instead of being very dead because he’d already done something to try to protect me, which would kill me)?
NO!
No one ever listened to me.
The wall at my hand disappeared and I suspected it was
another hallway.
I raced down that.
Okay.
I needed to calm my shit and get my bearings.
Where was up?
I needed to get up.
I needed up and out.
Up and OUT!
I had to get back to my body.
My wand.
Me!
I slammed face-first into something.
Something very hard.
Bligh burst out laughing.
I ignored the pain in my nose, the moisture rushing from there over my lips, turned and went back from where I came, fast, but not too fast. One hand now to the wall, the other out in front of me.
“She can learn,” he taunted, his voice like he was floating above me.
I didn’t hear wings flapping.
Maybe he didn’t need wings anymore.
“So you killed your only ally, not a smart move, jackass,” I said.
Up and out. Up and out.
I had to get up and out.
Why didn’t I ask Ash to draw me a map of this fucking place so when my vision came true, I could find my way up and out?
“Oh, she’s not dead.”
I stopped in surprise.
He laughed again.
“I thought you ate her heart.”
“Well, I did. But I can’t do everything, Mathilda. To rule the world, I need at least another pair of hands. First, we have to take care of you. Then, we have to take care of that coven of yours. Then, your fiancé. After that, your family. Le Société. The British Witches Council. And after that, well, I don’t know. I think I fancy living in Buckingham Palace for a spell before we move on, maybe to Spain. It’s sunny there. Ambrose has been asked to the Palace, but as usual, he didn’t take any of us with him.”
I stopped and turned to his voice.
“If you ate her heart, how’s she going to help you do all of that?”
“Do you have any idea of my powers?”
Indeed, I did.
Chiefly in that moment.
But I couldn’t think on them at the mo’.
His words came so close, I felt his lips brush my ear.
I batted at that ear and stepped away.
But…
How could I feel his lips as Astral Me?
I didn’t have a real ear as Astral Me.
“I reanimated her, of course,” he said from behind me.
Oh man.
Gross.
Right…right, he’s toying with you, Matty, don’t get caught up in his rubbish.
Think.
Okay. I was Astral Me.
I was Astral Me in The Dungeons.
How could I feel him?
Think, Matty, THINK!
“So she’s walking around without a heart?” I asked to buy time to think.
The Rise of the Dark Lord Page 28