Seventeen

Burn the Witch

 

Bright red flared along the netting around me as I sank to my knees.

Melinoë thrashed at my side. I called to magic, surged it crackling upward; it sizzled and faded immediately, the moment it hit the net.

Motherfucker—it created a dead zone.

No witch really understood the mechanics behind it or what it was even made of—probably some interdimensional substance or combination of ingredients. But my magic couldn’t penetrate it—no magic could.

Something struck my side and I tumbled over, Melinoë collapsing with me, and pain flared against my arm as I hit the ground. We were moving, then, the thin but heavy netting shifting and driving under us so we were completely cocooned. I stopped fighting and stifled my anger to switch gears and assess, twisting as best I could to glimpse past the netting at the darkness around. Footsteps crunched on the ground, and it sounded like multiple people—dragging us, though I couldn’t say where.

Melinoë did not give up—she flailed wildly, shouting and swearing. She managed to withdraw the gun and aimed the barrel between the gaps in the net. The weapon spoke, sound deafening with the proximity.

Moments later she cried out as it was knocked from her hands and a club came down again, smacking against the side of her head. Fury burned through me—impotent fury because I couldn’t do anything. I tried to wrap an arm protectively around her head but the club hit her exposed side next.

Melinoë was growling but she stopped thrashing and the clubbing stopped.

We continued to move over bumpy ground—I wasn’t sure but I suspected they dragged us back through the woods. I caught glimpses of light but it wasn’t from my spell—that went as soon as my connection was severed—so I figured they had flashlights. Suggesting humans.

Humans kidnapping us? Who in this shitty town would have that kind of anti-magic netting? It would’ve cost a fortune.

This might explain what happened to Dev, though. A place like this, his guard down as mine was. I didn’t trust anyone ever and I hadn’t expected this.

My cell phone was in my back pocket but the signal was spotty, and we might get clubbed again if they caught me using it. Last thing I needed was for it to get cracked too.

What I did do was shift and shuffle awkwardly, slipping the phone from my back pocket and keeping it hidden in my palm. When we rolled over a jostling bump on the trail, I pulled my legs up and wiggled the phone into my boot, the plastic hard against my ankle. At least if they searched me, they probably wouldn’t find it.

I met Melinoë’s eyes in the poor light. “You okay?” I whispered. A bruise was forming on her temple and blood rolled down her cheek, but it wasn’t as bad as head wounds normally were.

Her dark eyes were furious. “I’ll be fine as soon as I kill every single one of them.”

Her expression actually chilled me—and delighted me in turn, because I recognized her fury as my own. She would kill them if she had the chance, as would I. If we could just get out of the stupid fucking net, that is.

They were prepared for a witch. Ready to ambush and had some kind of plans for us. My stomach twisted in knots even as I tried to reassure myself. If this was what happened to Dev, we might find him still alive, and he and I could take out just about anything. Add Melinoë to the list and I was pretty confident we’d get out of this.

Of course, we were basing the possibility of Dev being here on some townies believing they saw him by the woods. This could all have been a setup—Dev might be long gone from this town.

Or he could already be dead.

Our captors tugged us over a wide stone that scraped my hoodie and arm—at least I kept my head protected—and I struggled, and failed, to figure out what direction we were headed in. The trees were thick enough that I couldn’t make out any glimpse of the moon, though it didn’t help that the netting flared red and disrupted my vision every time my magic flexed.

I picked through the sounds of footsteps and tried to place how many were out there—three, maybe, dragging our dead weight, but shuffling together with the rustle of dead leaves underfoot, there could be more.

The feeling beneath us changed abruptly to something smoother and I twisted to see wooden slats over dirt, some old path we hadn’t encountered in the hour we’d been wandering earlier. Light broke overhead, the orange of torches or maybe older lanterns. Hinges squeaked, boots on creaking wood. The echoes changed—we were definitely moving indoors.

Hands gripped the netting and we were hauled up, stumbling to get onto our feet before being thrust forward. The netting snapped and fell away and something collided with my back, pain spiking. I threw my hands out to catch my fall, then twisted and kicked as I felt someone rifling through my pockets. I called for magic—

It didn’t answer.

There was nothing. Not even a spark, not that hum along my skin. Silence. Panic—real, true panic—clawed its way across my flesh.

Melinoë screamed and threw herself at the retreating figures—they had the messenger bag and her gun must’ve been long gone. The door slammed and she threw her fists at the unyielding wood.

We were trapped and there was no magic. I had no magic. Goddessdamn it all—fuck.

I climbed to my feet and took a moment to close my eyes and breathe, pushing down at all the panic and fear. You don’t only have magic—you have many skills. You can do this.

I could do this. At least, I could tell myself I could do this, and maybe eventually I’d believe it.

I took stock of our surroundings, trying to pin down my whirling thoughts and focus. We were in a tiny room of wood-panelled walls, ceiling, and floor. Aged and weathered, though somewhat recently polished almost gold. There was no furniture, nothing but us in here and two lights on two of the walls. An old cabin, maybe, although no windows—no sign of one at all, like it had been built without. An internal room deep within a building, or was it intentionally built like this to prevent other methods of escape?

I pressed my hand to the nearest wall but felt nothing beyond—of course. Because no magic. No matter how I tried to call it, nothing worked—not a whispered smile, not the instinctual kind that hovered around me all the time. I was well and truly alone for the first time in my life.

Was this how a normal human felt? Good goddess, how did they stand it?

Melinoë wasn’t helping matters—she’d gone practically feral, throwing herself at the door and screaming. It was yet another side of her, pure rage that would’ve been frightening had she the power to back it up right now, and I wondered how often this fury was buried under that aloof and vulnerable exterior.

I pulled my phone from my boot and checked the screen. “Motherfucker,” I muttered.

At that, Melinoë stopped with a frustrated sigh and turned back to me. “What?”

I waved the phone at her and tucked it in my back pocket. “No signal.”

“Can you...spell us out of here?”

Well, that answered the question of what she could sense—she had some natural magic but clearly didn’t feel it at all times like I did. “It’s blocked.”

“Blocked?”

I peered around the room again, looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. I mean, completely. They’re prepared for magic users—that net would’ve run several hundred thousand on the black market if not more. And this room is spelled, not just warded.”

“Have you ever seen something like this before?”

“Only academically—basically, I’ve read about it. And I don’t know anyone who has successfully dismantled it—while I’m in this room, I have no magic.”

“Motherfucker.”

“Exactly. Did they leave anything on you?”

She checked her coat pockets, then those of her jeans. “My cell phone and Dev’s.”

Because they knew we wouldn’t have a signal in here. “Demon magic? Test and see if that’s blocked?”

She looked to the side and her eyes went unfocused. A prickle ran across my skin, not because I felt anything but I remembered Dev getting that look now and then.

At last she shook her head. “Nothing. I can’t even see anything, any trace of anything.”

“Neither can I.” If I could see the spelling over the room, maybe I could find a hole, but it was possibly woven right into the wood or something beyond.

Panic wasn’t going to help matters, but fuck, I really wanted to freak out. Howl and thrash and give into tears. But I didn’t know why we were here or how much time we had, and I wouldn’t waste any moment freaking out.

I took another deep breath and let calmness roll over me. My magic was dampened but I wasn’t powerless. “Let’s look around. Anything that can be a weapon—loose board or something? Or any sign of Dev.” Maybe if Dev knew Melinoë was looking for him, or assumed she’d go to me, he’d have left something for us to find had he been in here. Carved in the wood, stuffed between the floorboards.

Melinoë took the door while I worked my way around the room. I ran my fingers along the walls, the seams between the panels. Checked around the baseboards. While much of the room had been carefully put together, there were long nails sticking out of the odd spot where repairs had been done, some rusty and some not. The light sources were both open flames behind glass. Glass shards as a weapon? Risky, they’d probably see it was broken if not hear it shatter. Fire didn’t do me any good without magic to control it. Nowhere to hide, just a plain square box.

“Think you can pry a board up?” I asked, glancing back at her.

She shook her head. “Not unless we find one already loose. Nothing to pry it with.” She went through her pockets again as if she might’ve missed something. “Shoelaces? To garrotte?”

A possibility—I wasn’t sure I had the strength to pull that off but if her brain went there, she might. Of course that would leave me stumbling around in loose boots if we failed. “Let’s see if any of the ceiling boards are loose. Give me a boost?”

She nodded and walked to me, leaned her back to the wall and offered her hands. I stepped into them and she boosted me up; I pressed my hands to the wall for balance. I reached up and pushed on the tile above—no give, no budging at all. I tried the others I could reach, still nothing.

We repeated the process around the room, even in the center though she couldn’t hold me for long before we toppled over with a loud thump our captors likely heard.

Melinoë rose and paced back and forth, fury rushing off her. The cut on her temple had clotted but blood streaked still down her check, dried flecks flaking off. She swept a hand back through her hair. “This is fucked.”

Although I had a feeling we’d eventually find out what the hell was going on, it might be too late to do anything by then. I racked my brain for something, some possibility, that would explain all this. Did we accidentally encroach on some other witch’s territory? It was the wild west now, all the stories Dad told me of How It Used To Be no longer relevant. There used to be structure to the covens; now there was nothing. Good in some ways, bad in others, like now when I had no rules, nothing to fall back on, to get help.

I did inventory again of what was on my person—the athame was gone, either knocked aside in the woods or taken when they’d searched us—and then double checked from all angles of the room that I had no cell signal. Everything else was either in the messenger bag or back at the hotel. At least I’d told Dad where we were staying but he knew to give me space—it would be ages before he figured out something was wrong. Tanvi...maybe I should’ve risked the contact and told her.

Or I never should’ve been here to begin with.

“When they open the door, we jump them,” Melinoë said as she paced. “Just go right at them. No one’s prepared for that.”

“Unless they have your gun.”

“I can disarm them.”

My stomach churned. We were locked in here—they didn’t even need to come for us. They could just wait until we starved. Or more likely died of dehydration.

I eyed the door again—hinges were on the other side. There were multiple locks if not a bar. Maybe throwing our weight on it might make it budge, maybe not. No way to pick a lock if it was on the other side.

I sat silently on the floor while I thought, idly pressing my palm to my left thigh and squeezing my eyes shut.

I did not want to do it. It might not even work here, but that wasn’t really what scared me—what scared me was what it would cost me if it did work.

But we might not have another choice. Melinoë and I might not be close, but we certainly weren’t enemies, and I didn’t wish her ill at all—I couldn’t let an innocent die because I was stubborn about paying this price for potential help. And Dev was already missing. What would it do to Dad if both his kids disappeared without a trace?

I cleared my throat as I opened my eyes again. “I might have a Hail Mary pass if we can’t break free.”

Melinoë stopped pacing and turned to look at me.

“Literally last resort.”

Something in my expression must’ve warned her because her cheeks went ashen and expression was grave. “What do you need?”

“One of these nails.”

We found a good candidate with minimal rust and kicked at it until it bent. Back and forth a few times, the old metal snapped. I was left with about two inches of steel.

I scraped off some of the rust with my fingernail and tested the end—it was sharp, with enough pressure it could cut skin. Thankfully I was up to date on my tetanus shot.

I set it aside and unbuttoned my jeans, worked the zipped down.

“Uh, Elis?” she asked.

“I need to rip my jeans.” I got them down enough that there was some give to work with, roughly guessed where I need to tear, and used the nail to rip through the fabric.

Melinoë eyed the tattoo on my thigh. “I don’t recognize that.”

I raised a brow at that and glanced at her standing over me. “You don’t?”

“Should I?”

“It’s Enochian. The Aanzhenii use it.” The writing formed a sigil, with one gap in the center. There was no scar there—not once had I ever used this.

But worst-case scenario, this was our only potential option to get out.

I pulled my jeans back up and checked the tear—it was right over the center of the tattoo, right where the gap was. The nail, after running it through the open flame of the lantern on the wall and letting it cool, I worked into the sleeve of my hoodie in a tiny tear.

Now we had nothing to do but wait.

 

*

 

I checked my phone enough to know roughly an hour had passed when we heard steps outside the door. Melinoë flew to her feet immediately as the lock clicked and door started to open.

Just as a figure stepped through, she threw herself forward; a club cracked against her, tossing her back. I was on my feet then, crouched around Melinoë protectively.

Steps clomped on the floor as we were surrounded. I recognized our assailants, vaguely. Three of them in the room now, several crowding the hall outside the door—all townspeople. The man in front of me had worked the diner we’d been at, the waitress from the bar beside him—fucking bitch, we’d left her sixty bucks in tips. The nearest figure was a man I didn’t know but he had to be from the town as well. They all carried clubs that flared with foreign sigils, and the one I didn’t recognize had rope.

Our hands were bound and they dragged me forward first, Melinoë behind. With every step I called for magic but nothing answered. It wasn’t just the room, it was the entire building.

I couldn’t say any longer if it was a cabin or what. No windows, just a long winding hall that seemed to move downward though there were no stairs. Other locked doors, each with padlocks and pairs of horizontal bars. I heard nothing out of the ordinary, just our own steps.

At least my hands were bound in front. I shifted a little so I could reach the nail. It wasn’t enough to cut through the rope, but I just needed to cut skin.

Should’ve told Melinoë what to do. What if I’m incapacitated? But I hadn’t warned her because I had this one thing, this one possibility, tucked in my back pocket. I didn’t want to use it, swore I never would, and I didn’t trust she wouldn’t jump the gun if given a chance.

I still intended to get out of this another way.

At the end of the corridor, we were taken through a set of double doors into a wide hall that reminded me of a church. Rows of benches with an aisle between, but instead of a pulpit there was a large armchair with no back, the seat and arms plush with blue-hued fabric, and the base polished dark wood. Hand-built, and larger than an average chair.

There was a pit to the right of the chair, just two feet deep with a ridge of gray stone around the top and a floor made of wood, where Melinoë and I were led. I stepped down carefully while Melinoë took a shove to get her to join me. Nothing else out of place in the small round pit, but I was left unsettled. Still no use of magic for me.

We waited in the pit silently—Melinoë practically seething while my mind was whirling, trying to put together pieces when I knew I didn’t have all of them. The hall was lit by torches, my gaze following them up to the vaulted ceiling. Definitely church-like.

The double doors remained open and a few minutes later steps sounded beyond them, clopping along like an army. The people appeared, townsfolk we’d seen in St. Philip Point the past forty-eight hours.

At least it wasn’t a swarm of demon rats, but humans were just as bad in my experience.

None looked at us; they filed in, parting like streams onto the benches while staring straight ahead. Seeing them all together now, I realized most were wearing crosses, making this whole thing seem more and more like something religious.

Melinoë nudged my shoulder and lifted her chin in their direction, eyes wide.

I searched the faces until I saw the one she likely meant—Jim.

The man I’d killed last night.

He was dead in that ditch from a heart attack. Like really, seriously dead. His heart had stopped. He wasn’t breathing. Plus, I mean, I am good at what I do. I don’t leave survivors. I’d lost track of how many men I’d killed but I can say unequivocally none are currently still alive.

Except apparently this one.

Melinoë never saw a body the next day and no one mentioned the death. What the fuck was going on here?

When all were seated, filling the benches with more than a hundred people, the rear doors closed.

Not all of them were familiar, I realized. There were others I hadn’t seen in town, blank stares and weathered skin, clean clothes but something off and almost...dirty about them. The space filled with artificial scents like perfume, but beneath that was a rot.

There were no flowers in the cemetery.

A really ugly thought was starting to form, one I did not enjoy because if I was right, we were about to meet someone incredibly powerful and deadly—much more so than little me.

With all seated, silence fell among the group. None of them guarded us but there was nowhere for us to go—climbing out of the pit with our hands bound would be tricky, and the only door seemed to be the one we’d come through—which meant a lot of people to pass to get out. Who knew how many were outside the doors or waiting.

A long, sonorous hum came from those assembled then, a deeply disturbing harmony that left my skin prickling. I would’ve covered my ears if I could’ve, something about the noise just as strange as the whole experience had been. Melinoë cringed beside me, tucked close to my side as we watched and waited.

The humming came to a crescendo and suddenly ceased, the silence falling heavily like darkness. I inadvertently held my breath.

The air crackled in front of us around the chair at the front of the room, sparking but not with lightness and electricity—instead it was black nothingness, a void of energy, the opposite of what I did.

Oh no.

I moved back on instinct, the backs of my knees hitting the wall of the pit.

The black forking energy widened as the air rent, the dimension giving a painful, audible screech as something tore reality. A booted foot stepped out of nothingness, then the rest of the body followed, hands gripping the dimensional tear and pulling it open fully. The figure was over seven feet tall, clothing slate gray wrappings around its legs and arms, a tunic over its torso and past the hips. Black leather gloves covered hands with extra-jointed fingers, and the creature’s profile showed a long narrow face with pointed features, something vaguely human and yet not. Skin was paper-white, stretched over sinewy muscle and bone, almost translucent and showing foreign cells beneath.

Last were the wings, the same height as the creature and with a span twice that should they extend. They remained folded and I understood then why the chair was backless.

The air closed up again as he sat and turned terrifying white eyes to us.

All the humans fell to their knees, heads bowed in prayer.

Son of a bitch, these fucking humans worshiped Aanzhenii.