by Bill Bennett
‘And rejects God?’ Molly asked, as she scribbled notes. Quince machine-gunned off a flurry of shots of the Hag.
‘There is not such a thing as God,’ the Hag said sharply. ‘It is a construct of needy people. That is all. It gives hope to the pathetic. It gives grace to the graceless. If there is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world? Tell me that. Would God allow such terrible things as happen each and every day? No, there is no God, so there is nothing to reject.’
Molly scribbled furiously. Quince took pictures furiously. Belt looked over at the Hag, wondering what she was doing. It was against every principle of Baphomet to talk to anyone about their activities, much less the media. Was this part of some plan to strike back against the Golden Order?
It took a further ten minutes or so for the poison to take effect.
The Hag took Belt’s hands. They were standing opposite each other, the two bodies at their feet.
‘Stare into my eyes, and repeat what I say, and through me you will lift,’ the Hag said. ‘I will lift you into the cosmic mind, and then into the space between spaces, and you will then follow me, and do as I say, do you understand me, girl?’
Belt nodded. She didn’t know what was going to happen but she trusted the Hag. And whatever it was, it was sure to be cool.
The Hag began intoning ‘So hum’ and so did Belt. She felt the words begin to resonate within her body, to seep down into her very being. The Hag’s chanting became louder, and more intense, and Belt could feel the venerable witch’s energy shifting into her own body, through their clasped hands. She felt herself becoming lighter, insubstantial, as though every cell in her body had become a buzzing ball of light, and flesh and blood and bone were no longer meaningful.
In the distance, did she hear, or did she feel the Hag say, ‘I will take the woman, you take the boy. Now come.’ And she watched as a glowing energetic film of the Hag entered the body of the dead reporter at their feet, and she began to stir, and then stand.
And then she felt herself step out of her body, and enter the body of the dead photographer. He too then stood. The reporter and the photographer looked at each other, then across at the Hag and Belt, who were still standing, hands still clasped but eyes now glazed.
‘Come,’ Belt felt the Hag say, and she followed her out the door – each in their new bodies. They hopped into the Ford Pajero four-wheel drive parked out front and drove back down the track away from the shack, headlights cutting through a fog that was swirling in off the lake.
Belt sat in the passenger’s seat as Quince, while the Hag as Molly drove. ‘What are we going to do?’ she tried to ask the Hag, not sure if she spoke the words or somehow transmitted them telepathically.
‘We deal with this,’ the Hag as Molly said, and kept driving, her eyes fixed on the track.
They drove back towards town, then pulled up beside a sports field. The field was lit but empty. There was no one around. They parked by some bleachers then the Hag reached back and pulled a shotgun from a rack on the rear windshield. She found a box of shells, then said, ‘Come.’
She got out of the truck carrying the gun and the ammunition, and walked off. Belt followed. They walked into the centre of the field, under the harsh floodlights, and the Hag cracked open the shotgun and loaded it.
‘What are you doing?’ Belt felt herself asking.
‘I told you, I am dealing with this.’
She flicked the gun shut and then handed the weapon to Belt. ‘Now shoot me. In the head. Point blank.’
‘What?’ Belt asked, incredulously.
‘Do it. Then when you have done that, put the barrel in your mouth and kill yourself.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Belt said.
‘You cannot kill me and you cannot kill yourself. We are space. We are the space between the spaces. You cannot kill space. But we can dispose of these bodies. Once you have killed that pestilent photo-taker then we will go back. But this you must do, and fast.’
Belt took a step back and raised the shotgun. She pointed the barrels at Molly’s head. She hesitated.
‘Do it!’ the Hag screeched.
Belt pulled the trigger. The woman’s head exploded in a spray of blood and grey matter and shredded bone. Molly collapsed to the ground, blood gushing into the place where her head once had been.
Belt then turned the barrel around, opened her mouth, and felt the cold sharp taste of gunmetal. She clamped her teeth down hard, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger again.
CHAPTER 18
Lily strode out front clasping her newly made wooden staff, her weapon. Skyhawk was two steps behind. Lily was unsure whether that was to cover her back, or because he was reluctant to do this; to see if The Book of Light was in the back of the Mustang. She was aware that the sound of their footsteps seemed to be hyper-loud – but perhaps that’s because all her senses were alert, on guard, aware of any slight movement or sound or shift in light that could signal danger.
At the far end of the parking lot was the motel’s office – the lights still on but the reception desk unattended. There was a VACANCY neon underneath the motel’s signage, but it was late and probably everyone was asleep. The lot was scattered with only a few cars – about a third full, Lily estimated.
Skyhawk stepped up beside her. She noticed that he now had his knife drawn, its large lethal blade glinting in the light from the strip fluoros that hung outside each room. She could tell that he too was on full alert, his eyes scanning his surroundings constantly, his body moving with a tensile agility, ready to attack or defend in an instant, if required.
As they got closer to the Mustang, Lily noticed that the lights were on inside the room that the car was parked out front of. Same with the room beside it. Were there four of them? Had they taken two rooms? If there were four – Kritta, Kevin Johnstone, the black warrior woman and the small chunky one – then if it got to a fight it was a fight she and Skyhawk could not win, even with her staff and Skyhawk’s incredible ability and bravery. They would be no match for three witches and … Kevin Johnstone. Could he possibly be a witch too? One of them?
Lily slowed and stepped lightly as she approached the Mustang, which had been parked nose in, trunk out. She felt waves of love and beneficence radiating from the trunk. As she got closer she also felt a throbbing heat coming from the leather pouch that contained the Cygnet charm. The Book of Light had to be in that car. She now had no doubt.
They stepped up to the trunk. She reached out and slowly, silently, tried the latch, hoping that it might be unlocked – but of course it was firmly locked. She walked around to the side of the vehicle, peered in through the front driver’s window. She saw there was a button on the dash that would unlock the trunk, if only they could break into the car.
Skyhawk quietly stepped up beside her, like a shadow dark on dark, and whispered into her ear, ‘Stand back.’
She took a step backwards and watched as he jemmied his long-bladed knife down through the rubber sealing strip by the window, down to the door lock. He jiggled the blade, pushed down harder, and the lock sprung open. He quietly opened the car door. Then Lily reached in and quickly stabbed the button for the trunk release. They both heard it pop open.
The noise sounded like a cannon firing in the quiet of the parking lot.
They walked quickly around to the back of the car and Lily stared down at her mom’s battered old Samsonite suitcase. She knew the book was still inside because she felt a sudden overwhelming sense of love and her heart felt fit to burst.
She’d last seen the suitcase in the cave, when she’d been initiated. She remembered Luna deftly opening the old Samsonite with a spell, revealing the magnificent Book of Light inside. The remembrance of Luna, of how she later died allowing her to escape, sent a dagger of pain through Lily’s heart.
They heard the motel door opening. Skyhawk quickly shut the trunk and they ducked down. Lily peeped around the side of the Mustang and saw Kevin Johnstone opening the motel room
door. He was wearing boxer shorts, that’s all – the light from above the door highlighting his wash-board stomach and muscular chest, but keeping his face in shadow. He stood at the doorway, looking out to the car, then beyond to the parking lot. The tiny biker girl, Kritta, stepped up behind him, wearing only her underwear. Her upper body was tattooed with a giant swirling serpent, jaws opened wide, fangs dripping poison. She put her arms around him. With her diminutive height, she barely reached above his waist.
‘Come on, it was nothing,’ she said, her words slurred as though she’d been drinking. Or taking drugs. ‘Come back to bed.’
Lily noticed that Kevin Johnstone seemed to be swaying slightly too. But as he looked around he seemed focused, as though all his senses were on alert. He shook Kritta off him. ‘I’m telling you, I heard something. Like the trunk shutting.’
‘Well, it’s shut now.’ Kritta grabbed the back of his boxer shorts and, giggling, she playfully tried to drag him back inside, into the motel room, but Kevin Johnstone slapped her hand away and walked over to the car.
Squatting behind the car, at the back of the trunk, Lily and Skyhawk looked at one another, Skyhawk signalling with his eyes to stay completely still and not make a sound. They heard Kevin Johnstone’s bare feet on gravel as he stepped off the pavement outside the motel room’s door and a soft crunching sound as he walked across to the driver’s side of the Mustang.
‘Holy crap,’ he said, quietly.
‘What?’
They heard Kritta come over and stand beside him. Lily bent down slightly so she could see under the car and saw their bare legs by the driver’s door.
‘What is it?’ Kritta asked.
‘Someone’s broken into the car. It’s unlocked. And I locked it. See the scratches there? I know every inch of this car. They’re new. Someone’s forced open the lock.’
Lily strengthened her grip on her wooden staff. She looked over to Skyhawk again. He had his knife at the ready. Were they going to run? Or fight? If it was two on two, with the biker chick and KJ affected by alcohol or drugs, it was a fight they could probably win.
She heard another door opening. The room next door. ‘Hey, what’s up?’
To Lily, the deep rich voice sounded like the tall African-looking woman.
‘Yeah, you two lovebirds, what’s going on?’
A second voice – definitely the short nuggety one. The one that looked like a bulldog. So it was no longer two on two, it was two on four, with two of those four sounding like they weren’t in any way affected by drugs or alcohol. Should there be a fight, the odds were now not in her and Skyhawk’s favour.
Lily felt a sudden anger. An outrage. That here she was, hiding behind a car outside a cheap motel in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, and inside the trunk of that car was her book. Her birthright, her ancestry, her destiny, her mother had said. What right did these people have to take that from her? To take her destiny from her?
And how could she have been so wrong about Kevin Johnstone? How could she have even contemplated any kind of romantic involvement with him? Standing only a few yards from her, half naked, embraced by a psychotic killer in her underwear. The woman that had abducted her mother. Surely there was no doubt now that he was a part of this obscene plan to sacrifice her mother to Satan.
‘Looks like someone’s broken into KJ’s sexy muscle car,’ Kritta said and giggled again, as her two friends walked over.
‘We emptied it out, right?’ the bulldog girl asked. ‘We didn’t leave anything inside, did we?’
‘What about the suitcase? In the trunk. Oh my God, the book,’ Kritta said, her giggling suddenly gone, her voice razor-sharp.
Lily heard the driver’s door swing wide and suddenly, beside them, the trunk popped open.
Lily heard footsteps running towards them.
She and Skyhawk stood, as Kevin Johnstone and Kritta rushed up. They stopped for a second, shocked to see them standing by the open trunk. Lily used the moment to swing her staff around in a whirling arc and strike Kevin Johnstone on the side of the head. He staggered back, dazed.
Kritta screeched in rage and with her hands extended she threw herself at Lily, reaching for her throat to choke her, but Lily, like a masterful matador, deftly side-stepped and as the tiny witch rushed past, Lily delivered a roundhouse whack to the back of her head with the staff and Kritta went sprawling face-down onto the ground behind her.
Skyhawk, parrying with his knife, was keeping the other two at bay – but the bulldog girl snarled ferociously and rushed him with her razor-sharp teeth bared. Skyhawk stepped forward to meet her, flicked his knife and cleanly sliced off her ear. She stopped, bellowing with pain, clutching the side of her face where her ear once had been, blood now pouring from the wound.
Lily turned back to the trunk. She looked down at her mother’s battered old Samsonite suitcase. Inside was her birthright, her ancestry, her destiny. She reached in to grab it but two huge muscular arms wrapped around her chest from behind in a vice-like grip. It was the African woman. Lily dropped her staff. The woman squeezed tight and Lily, her arms pinned to her body, felt like her ribs were about to crack. It was impossible to breathe. The woman squeezed again, harder this time, expelling all the air from Lily’s lungs. She could feel her chest bones starting to break. She was gasping for breath but her lungs just couldn’t work.
With her last remaining strength, Lily kicked back savagely with one of her heels, striking the woman hard in the shin. She yelled, relaxed her grip for an instant, which was enough for Lily to grab one of her hands and bend back a finger with such force that she broke it. The woman let her go, reaching for her busted finger to nurse it with her other hand. Lily, gulping air, picked up her staff and thrust the sharp pointed end into the woman’s face, narrowly missing her eye but smashing into her nose, which suddenly sprayed blood.
Lily turned and saw Kritta, back on her feet now, rushing to her motel room. Kevin Johnstone was standing dazed, blood pouring from a wound on the side of his head where she’d hit him with the staff. Perhaps he was concussed.
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, swinging her around. She was just about to thrust her staff into the chest of the person, but stopped in time. It was Skyhawk. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he yelled.
Lily paused. She looked at the suitcase in the back of the trunk. It was heavy, she knew that. Even with Skyhawk’s help it wouldn’t be easy getting it out of the trunk, and then they would have to drag it or carry it all the way back to their vehicle. The only way she’d be able to do that was if she knocked out, or killed, all four of her attackers. And she didn’t want to kill anyone.
‘Lily, watch out!’
Skyhawk pushed her to one side and she heard, she felt, something whizz past the side of her head. She heard a thunk behind her and turned, saw a knife still quivering, embedded in a tree trunk. She turned back and saw Kritta standing at the doorway to her room, still in her underwear but wearing her knife belt now, reaching for another blade.
Skyhawk grabbed Lily and they ran.
Kevin Johnstone, seeing them running off, began to chase after them. He was a champion sprinter in track and field, and even though he might have been concussed, he could still run fast. Lily could hear him behind her, pounding the concrete. She glanced back to see Kritta with the nuggety woman, half covered in blood from her missing ear, turning her into a pit bull. How did she do that? Lily wondered in amazement. Kritta patted the dog, as if launching her in pursuit, and the pit bull tore off.
Kritta then reached for another blade, lined up and took aim, ready to throw – but Kevin, chasing after them, was in her way.
‘Move, you idiot,’ Kritta screamed and ran several yards to one side to get a clean shot.
They heard the knife behind them. Like an incoming missile. The sound of the blade cartwheeling through the air, splitting the dark, slicing the night with a searing surgical precision. It sent a rush of terror through Lily. She had a sudden vision o
f the blade slamming into the back of her head, at the base of her skull, embedding itself into her brain, up to the hilt.
She ducked and felt the knife cut through her hair, just missing her scalp as it whizzed past, smashing into a parked car somewhere up ahead, setting off its alarm. Lights came on in several motel rooms. Doors began to open.
Skyhawk and Lily kept running towards their car.
She heard a grunting snorting sound behind them and claws scuttling on gravel. Lily had a sudden flash of her nightmare, of the beast with two heads – a goat and a boar – chasing her through the ancient stone corridors, carrying with it a presence of unimaginable evil. She glanced behind and saw, racing after them through the shadows, the pit bull – half covered in blood from an ear that had been cut off, strings of saliva slinging from its jaws, its powerful haunches propelling it at a speed greater than theirs. It was catching up to Kevin who was slowing – concussion or alcohol or drugs having their effect.
Up ahead was their car. The Mercedes SUV. Lily knew they wouldn’t make it. The dog would get to them before they got to the car. But then she heard a thud and Kevin yelling in pain. She looked back to see that he’d fallen and was sprawled on the ground. The pit bull crashed into his body and it too went flying head over tail, hitting the concrete with a yelp. But then it was back on its feet again, quickly regaining full stride.
The fall was enough to give them a chance. Skyhawk pulled ahead of her. Behind her, she could feel the pit bull gaining ground. It was getting closer. She could almost feel its foul hot breath on the back of her neck. She sensed that it was getting ready to pounce and pull her to the ground and rip her to pieces.
Skyhawk got to the car, Lily several yards back. She glanced behind and saw the dog begin to leap. She threw herself down and tumbled along the ground in an aikido roll. The dog flew over her – Skyhawk suddenly opened the side passenger door and the dog slammed into it, bounced off and thudded to the ground, unconscious.