Unholy

by Bill Bennett

  Immediately after renting the cottage, her mom had created not one but several protection cones around the place, which evidently had been a complex exercise, and one that had taken some time to complete – but it afforded them total peace of mind. It was like three or four levels of encryption that now shielded them from any malevolence, and it certainly allowed Lily to sleep well at night. The only thing that bothered her, and her mom, was the missing Book of Light.

  Since moving to Santa Fe, her mother’s work with Freddie and Kee and Gummi had been focused on getting the book back. As far as they knew, it had been taken to a place known as the Palace of Fires. They didn’t have a clue where that was – they suspected it was somewhere in Europe – but what concerned them deeply was that if ever they were able to break the book’s scramble spell that encrypted all of Cygnet’s most important craftwork, Baphomet would gain access to all their attack and defence secrets, and that would leave Cygnet completely vulnerable.

  The other thing they were focusing on in the Bunker was what Baphomet had called Ganglia. The dictionary definition of the word was that it was a bunch of nerve cells or something – but there was another definition that they were trying to analyse – an intellectual or industrial force or activity. What intellectual or industrial force or activity were they planning? All they knew was that it was going to be massive, whatever it was, and that it involved Snowboy – the young Golden Order witch who had caused the death of so many people at the Charleston fairground. Police investigators had been perplexed by the fairground crime, because they could find no evidence that explosives had been used.

  So what had caused that Ferris wheel to lift two storeys off the ground? What had destroyed all those stalls and fun-rides, and what had left a smoking hole in the ground twenty feet wide and eight feet deep? It had to be explosives of some kind – but the cops didn’t know what kind or how it had been used. They literally didn’t have a clue.

  Cygnet intel though had revealed that Snowboy had used energy to cause that devastation. So Cygnet was now wondering, was Snowboy Ganglia? Was he this force of industrial or intellectual activity? Kee was working overtime, Gummi too, to find out.

  ‘You want some hot chocolate before bed, Lils?’ Angela asked, turning to her.

  Lily was once again struck by how damned beautiful her mother was. She’d aged a little from her ordeal at the hands of Baphomet, but it hadn’t diminished her smile that lit warmth in Lily’s heart. And the purity of her love and compassion radiated from every cell in her body. There was no doubt she was physically a very beautiful woman, with her wide eyes, blemish-free skin, and a mouth that knew the expression of laughter and joy. Indeed, it seemed to Lily that since the Deep Sink Mine, her mother had finally shed herself of the patina of grief that had enveloped her after the death – the murder – of her husband, Lily’s father.

  But perhaps now her mom felt free, now that there were no secrets anymore between them – that with the revelation to Lily of her ancestry, and Cygnet, her mother no longer needed to lead a shadow life. She acted as though a huge burden had been lifted from her. And because there were no secrets anymore, it seemed that they’d grown closer. It might have been because Lily felt more adult as well, but since the night of Unholy there’d been a subtle shift in their relationship – less like mother and daughter to more like … what? … sisters? Or inseparable girlfriends?

  ‘Hot chocolate would be great, thanks, Mom,’ Lily said, momentarily taking off her headphones. She watched her mother walk down the hallway into the kitchen. She walked lightly, barefooted, always barefooted, to connect her to the Gaia energies of Mother Earth, as she always told Lily. She put her headphones back on and kept trying to grasp the phonetics of Japanese.

  Angela grabbed a handmade ceramic jug of milk from the fridge, took a saucepan from a cupboard near the sink, poured the milk into the pan, turned on a gas burner, put the saucepan on the low heat so as not to burn the milk and turned to the pantry to get the hot chocolate.

  She gasped.

  Because standing in front of her was a girl.

  She was a little older than Lily and looked a bit like her too. She was muscular, fit and in one hand she held by her side a knife with a stiletto tip.

  Before Angela could cry out, the girl lifted the knife and thrust it deep right into her forehead, into the space between her two eyes – into her third eye.

  ‘Hi Mom,’ Belt said, then with a jam jar she began to collect her mother’s soul as it slipped out of the crown of her head.

  CHAPTER 1

  Lily had her headphones on, trying to learn Japanese. She’d found the language difficult, until she made a breakthrough one day, realising that she’d been approaching it all wrong. She was trying to learn it analytically, through memory and logic, whereas she discovered that if she approached it intuitively, through its rhythms, in the same way she approached her aikido practice, then it became so much easier.

  She was third dan black belt in aikido, which for her tender age of sixteen was quite an achievement, but she’d started young on her father’s insistence and recently those fighting skills had come in handy. She shuddered at the memory of Unholy, the epic fight on top of that black mountain in West Virginia under a canopy of exploding stars.

  If not for her martial arts training she would not be here right now, sitting by the fire in the lounge room of a cute little cottage just off the Santa Fe Trail, a short distance from her Uncle Freddie’s mansion and the Bunker – the secret nerve centre of Cygnet. The Bunker maintained twenty-four hour surveillance on the activities of The Golden Order of Baphomet, the age-old organisation of elite witches hell-bent on bringing chaos to the world so they could then step in and take control.

  Lately Uncle Freddie and his team at the Bunker had become concerned about a major disturbance they were planning – disturbance being the innocuous term they used for a horrific terrorist-like attack, which invariably led to massive loss of life. All Freddie knew was that it was called Ganglia, and it possibly involved a young man named Snowboy, who evidently had extraordinary powers that enabled him to harness and focus energy.

  Lily looked up from her Japanese language book, which accompanied the tape she was listening to. She felt a sudden tingling sensation in her hand, her early warning signal that there was bad energy nearby, or approaching. Surely that wasn’t possible. They were totally protected in their home. The place was covered by very powerful white-light energy shields that no one could break through. It happened sometimes, that she would get random tingling. Her mother called it karmic imprints, from past lives, rippling through her DNA. Lily never understood any of this stuff. Her mom often spoke of stuff that no doubt she would one day learn.

  Angela had recovered surprisingly quickly from her ordeal on Unholy. And in these past few months living in New Mexico, setting up a new life and spending more time together, simply being grateful that she was still alive, Lily had grown even closer to her, if that was at all possible. Ever since the death – no, the murder – of her father, Lily and her mother had been inseparable, like sisters, each having enormous respect for the other. How could she not have respect for a woman who had devoted her life to keeping others safe from harm, on a global scale, without any need for personal recognition or even thanks?

  She replayed a section of her audio file. Japanese was hard. There was no way she’d be fluent before she’d have to leave for the island where she would train with a ninja master. He was more than one hundred years old, blind, and he lived alone on a remote mountain in the wilds. But he was revered within the ranks of Cygnet, and if anyone could help develop her nascent powers and heighten her fighting skills then it would be this man.

  Uncle Freddie had warned her it would be hard – much harder than her initiation, which had very nearly broken her, so she was nervous about what might be in store. But she was destined to be the future leader of Cygnet when her mom finally decided to step aside, so while other kids her age were studying for col
lege and skilling themselves for later jobs or professions, she was preparing herself to head up an organisation of white witches.

  She smiled at the thought. It all sounded so absurd. An organisation of white witches. It sounded like some cheesy two-season show on cable TV, the kind of show she would never watch. Or if she did, she’d laugh herself silly. But this was now her world, her new reality. Cygnet existed. Way off the grid, but it existed.

  Only a couple of miles down the road was a highly sophisticated underground control room that would be the envy of the National Security Agency, operated by a small team of dedicated white witches trying constantly to thwart the activities of Baphomet.

  That sounded cheesy too, and yet there was such an organisation as the Golden Order of Baphomet – they existed, and like Cygnet they’d been around, operating in utmost secrecy, for several hundred years. Each year, Baphomet grew in strength, its lack of moral code attracting new members in increasing numbers. Cygnet, on the other hand, struggled to find new recruits. White magic wasn’t nearly so sexy as black magic, it seemed.

  Why is Mom taking so long with the hot chocolate? Lily wondered. I’ll finish this section, then go see what’s happening.

  Japan had always fascinated her. She seemed to have a connection to the country that defied logic, as though she’d been a warrior there in a past life. A samurai, perhaps, or maybe even a ninja. It felt like that. She’d done some reading on ancient ninja and like aikido there was more to it than just cool fighting. It was a total head trip. The art of ninja lay in the spiritual philosophy underpinning it and that really did fascinate her.

  But that wasn’t the real reason she was going into the remote wilds of Japan. She needed an intensive program to heighten her fighting skills, because her number one priority was to get The Book of Light back.

  Cygnet’s ancient tome, the collection of all their most secret and powerful spells, was now in the hands of Baphomet. The book had been stolen out of the cave where Lily had been initiated – stolen by a terrifying little biker witch named Kritta – and Lily was determined to get it back. While ever Baphomet had the book, Cygnet was vulnerable. Their only hope was that the Golden Order hadn’t been able to break the ancient scramble spell that encrypted their most sensitive material in the book.

  Uncle Freddie, Kee and Gummi had been working around the clock in the Bunker trying to find out where they’d taken the book, but as yet they’d had no luck. What they knew, though, was that only a select few witches were capable of breaking the scramble spell. It required someone operating at a high vibrational level and there weren’t that many in the world.

  Lily felt guilty that the book had been stolen while in her care, and that’s why she felt it was her responsibility to get it back. But not only that, her mother had told her, in a note she’d left by her bedside the day she’d been abducted by Baphomet, that it was her birthright, her ancestry, her destiny. One day when she led Cygnet, when she became their commander-in-chief, the book would be hers to use in battle.

  She relished that thought. Doing battle with Baphomet. And she relished the prospect of one day taking ownership of the book. Until that time it was her mother’s, and she had to get it back not only for the safety of Cygnet, but also for her mom. It was her birthright, her ancestry, as well.

  What is Mom doing? Lily wondered. And she got another sudden wave of tingling. Her stinging bees, as she called it. I better go check, she thought.

  She put the book down, took off her headphones, stood and turned to go down the hall to the kitchen. She gasped. Because standing in the shadows of the hall, watching her, was a tall athletic-looking girl, a few years older than her. She was in silhouette, Lily couldn’t see her face, but in appearance the girl seemed a slightly taller, stronger, older version of herself. In one hand she held what looked to be a glass jar and in the other a strange-looking knife, with a long pointy end.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lily demanded, suddenly angry at this intrusion. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I have what I want,’ the girl said and she smiled. She held up the glass jar.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lily asked.

  ‘That’s your mom,’ the girl said, and added, ‘our mom.’

  She laughed.

  Lily, suddenly afraid, yelled out, ‘Mom?’

  There was no answer.

  She yelled out again, louder, more fearful. ‘MOM?’

  Lily rushed forward towards the girl but she held up her knife.

  ‘Don’t,’ the girl said. ‘Stop right there.’

  Lily stopped, quickly assessing the situation. She was unarmed and the girl was bigger than her, and looked like she could handle herself. And she was most probably a Baphomet witch, Lily thought, but how the hell did she get through all the protection cones around the house? She must be a very powerful witch.

  Her main concern, though, was her mother.

  ‘Where’s Mom? And what do you mean “our mom?”’

  ‘You’ll soon figure it out,’ the girl said. ‘I could have killed you too, taken your soul, but where’s the fun in that? It would have been too easy. When I kill you I want to make a show out of it. I want to make it an event.’ The girl laughed again. It sent a chill through Lily’s body.

  ‘I’m a fun girl,’ she said. ‘You’ll learn that about me.’

  Lily rushed her, the girl thrust forward with her knife but Lily was already on the floor, sliding towards her with her legs out, wrapping them around the girl’s legs and scissoring them shut suddenly. The girl fell back, dropping the knife. Lily then grabbed for her throat, both hands pressing down hard into her windpipe, the girl gagging, but she kicked up hard with her knee, into Lily’s stomach. She gasped, the girl then smashed her elbow into Lily’s nose, splattering blood onto the walls of the hallway.

  Lily jerked back, shocked, sudden pain searing through her body. She grabbed at her nose, felt warm blood on her fingers. Distracted for just a moment, she didn’t see the girl plunge the knife into her chest. But she felt it. Strangely, it wasn’t painful. Her nose hurt more. She watched, fascinated, as the girl withdrew the knife from her body. She felt herself topple back onto the floor.

  The girl stood up. She quickly searched through Lily’s pockets, found her phone and dialled 911. As Lily lay on the floor, battling for breath, the girl called for an emergency ambulance. When she’d finished the call she threw the phone onto Lily’s stomach.

  ‘See? I want you to live. When we next fight, it won’t be a girly little catfight like this, it’ll be for real. I want to enjoy killing you. And then I’ll be the only one left.’

  Then she turned and walked away into shadow, and was gone.

  Lily dragged herself up onto her feet, wheezing and rasping, and slowly made her way down the hall, leaving bloody palm prints on the wall where she steadied herself, until she finally came to the body of her mother.

  She collapsed on the floor beside her, one arm flung over her mother in a last embrace, while in the distance, an ambulance siren wailed, a pitiful cry to the cruel vagaries of the night.

  Bill Bennett is a former award-winning journalist and one of Australia’s most experienced and respected feature filmmakers. His more than fifteen movies have won awards at some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals and The Age describes him as ‘one of the best film realists in the world’. He’s an adjunct professor of creative industries at one of Australia’s leading universities and lives in Mudgee, New South Wales, with his wife, Jennifer. Unholy is the second book in the Palace of Fires series.

  ALSO BY BILL BENNETT

  Initiate

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  First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2018

  Text copyright © Bill Bennett, 20
18

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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  ISBN 9781760146658

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