A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) (33 page)

‘Abe,’ I said desperately, ‘Abe, please, just one word. What is it? You
know
, I can see you know.’

But he just shook his head, almost imperceptibly, wincing at the movement.

‘Emmaline!’ I said, turning to her. ‘I’m begging you.
Please
tell me. I can heal you if you tell me. Can’t you see? I can’t –’ I found I was on the verge of tears, my voice shaking ‘– I can’t risk it. Please, just say it! What’s she carrying?’

Emmaline’s lips moved; her voice was thick, slurred.

‘A handbag.’ Blood welled from the sockets of her teeth as she spoke. I wanted to weep. They
knew
. Why were they doing this?

And then suddenly I realized. I realized what that look had been about. It
was
Emmaline and Abe. But they knew what their role was: hostages. Hostages to force me into doing what the Russian witches wanted.

And they knew that if I wasn’t sure if it was really them lying bleeding on the floor, I’d hold out for longer. Maybe until the end.

‘No,’ I said, my voice suddenly fierce. ‘I know what you’re doing. Stop it.’

Neither of them said anything, they just lay there. Angry tears spilled down my cheeks.

‘I don’t understand,’ Seth said, looking from the broken bodies on the floor to me. ‘Is it them? Why won’t they answer?’

‘Because of their bloody stupid self-sacrifice!’ I shouted. ‘Because they don’t want to be used against me. They think if I’m not sure, I’ll let them die more easily. But I won’t! Do you hear me?’ I turned to Emmaline, to Abe, the tears running down my face now. ‘I know it’s you. I know it!’

They stayed silent. But then I saw Em’s fingers move, almost imperceptibly. As I watched, she stretched out her hand towards Abe’s, across the concrete floor, and I saw their fingers, slick with blood, gently interlock.

My heart felt like it was breaking.

‘No!’ I wept. ‘I won’t abandon you. I know it’s you. I don’t care – I’m going to heal you anyway.’

I put out my hands to them both, letting the tearing, suffocating love boil up and over, spilling out through my fingers into their souls.

‘No!’ Abe groaned as he felt his back begin to heal. ‘No! Stop it, you stupid girl! Don’t waste your power!’

‘Keep it for fighting!’ Em said painfully. She scrambled to her feet and stood in front of me, her face streaked with blood and tears, her cuts and bruises not healed, nothing like it, barely even
half
healed. But half healed was better than nothing – wasn’t it?

‘It’s too late,’ I said. I let my hands drop to my sides.

Abe gave a groan and rolled on to his knees. He crouched for a moment, gathering his strength, and then he sat up painfully.

‘I’ve got nothing left,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nor has Em. They’ve beaten seven bells out of us. It was all Em and I could do to keep ourselves alive. All my magic’s gone, spent. Otherwise we’d have healed ourselves.’

‘What do they want you to do?’ Emmaline asked. Over her shoulder I saw Seth’s worried face and knew that he’d been wondering the same thing.

Cold prickled up and down my spine.

‘Did they bring you through that big room, the one they call the Cathedral?’ I asked. Em nodded. ‘Did you see the bones in the middle?’

‘The stuff that looked like old firewood?’

‘Yes. They’re the bones of their last leader. Some dead Russian. They want me to raise him.’ I spat out the short sentences like pieces of glass, feeling them cut my mouth. ‘Then he’s going to lead them in a war against the outwith.’

‘They’re nuts!’ Em said blankly. ‘Surely? I mean – we’re talking fruitcake crazy, right?’

‘Does that matter?’ I asked bitterly. ‘When we’re all dead we won’t care if they were a little eccentric round the edges or bonafide bat-shit.’

‘And your role in this?’ Abe said.

‘Aside from raising the Holy Master? Well I presume I’m supposed to go marching after them, healing them if they get a bit low, and raising the head dude at regular intervals if he gets slain again. Kind of like having your own personal “save and reload” button on life.’

We were all silent for a moment at the picture. It was not a pretty one.

‘And if you say no?’ Em said at last.

I couldn’t say it.

But Abe knew. I could see it from his face, from the way his eyes went to the glass flagon, to the chair, and back to me.

‘Anna?’ Em prodded.

‘Excision, right?’ Abe said to me. I shrugged.

‘Hang on.’ Seth’s face was baffled. ‘Can someone please explain for the dumb outwith over here?’

‘Excision is a process where …’ Abe stopped. He looked sick. For a moment I wasn’t sure if he’d continue, if his wounds had got the better of him again. But he forced himself on. ‘Magic is a physical substance – like blood, or bone marrow. And you can extract it. It’s dangerous. If you lose too much, you go into shock. And if you go past a certain point, it’s irrecoverable. The magic never replenishes itself. You’re crippled for life. You’re no longer a witch.’

‘But,’ Seth said slowly, ‘that’s what you did for Anna, wasn’t it? You gave her some of your magic, so she could escape the Malleus. And you weren’t crippled, right?’

‘No,’ Abe agreed. ‘It wasn’t fun, but I didn’t suffer any lasting harm. But what they did to me wasn’t an excision. With excision …’ Abe swallowed and carried on. ‘With excision they take
all
the magic. It’s almost always fatal.’

‘Fatal?’ Seth said. His face was white and suddenly he looked as sick as Abe.

Abe’s eyes met Seth’s and in that moment their faces, so unlike, wore the same expression.

‘But why?’ Emmaline said furiously. ‘What would it achieve? They want Anna alive, don’t they, so she can raise their stack of holy firewood?’

‘Ideally – yes, they want her alive,’ Abe said. ‘But failing that – they want her power. If they drain her magic and give it
all
to one single witch, that witch gets a shot with Anna’s abilities. Only for a limited time, because they can’t regenerate Anna’s magic; when it’s gone, it’s gone. But one shot is better than none.’

‘What are you saying?’ Em demanded. ‘Anna caves – they get to control her power. Or she holds out, we all die – and they still get a shot?
That’s
the choice?’

‘It’s still better though, isn’t it?’ I said. I spoke to Abe, not to Emmaline. ‘It’s better they get just one try. They might not succeed.’

‘No, they might not,’ Abe said quietly. ‘We don’t know how this works, after all. Yours is a power no one else has ever had. We don’t know if it will transplant.’

‘So that’s it?’ Emmaline looked from me, to Abe, to Seth, and back to me. ‘You’re giving up? You’re going to die?’

‘I don’t know what else to do!’ I cried back. ‘What can I do? You tell me!’

My voice rang round the room, shockingly loud. Then we all stopped, suddenly frozen, listening. There were footsteps in the corridor.

‘Listen,’ Abe said hurriedly. He grabbed my wrist. ‘Anna, there’s one thing – they can’t extract your magic unless you use it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I stared at him.

‘I know from when they took my magic –
you
have to unlock it. If you don’t do a spell—’

But the door flew open and Tatiana stalked into the room, flanked by Danya and Marcus.

‘
Udalit!
’ Tatiana spat and Emmaline, Abe and Seth flew backwards across the room, crashing into the walls with a crunch that made me cry out. They hung there, immobilized by Tatiana’s spell, and as the witches moved across the room, I realized what the rings were for: shackles. For when the room was not used for a single operation, but for multiple drainings, the victims lined up like cattle.

‘
Framdaþ!
’ I shouted as they closed in on them, ropes and chains in their hands. ‘
Framdaþ!
’ Begging them,
ordering
them to stop.

But there was nothing there. There was nothing left. I screamed and sobbed spells as they went about their task with businesslike determination. I might as well have been singing nursery rhymes. They didn’t pause – they didn’t even flinch. They just ignored my spells like they were flies buzzing around their heads.

I’d have to try something else.

I took a deep breath, gripped the syringe more tightly in my fist, and leapt towards Tatiana.

I never reached her. She didn’t miss a beat, didn’t even look around. She just shouted a curse over her shoulder in Russian. It hit me like a blow to the stomach, catapulting me across the room into the draining chair. The syringe skittered out of my hand across the concrete floor and lay useless in a corner.

For a minute I just lay in the chair, agonizingly winded. All the breath had been knocked out of my body and I couldn’t seem to get it back.

But then I saw the witches straightening from their tasks and turn, and I realized I was next. I flung myself out of the chair, ready to fight, ready to bite and scratch and kick.

It was useless. I knew that even as I thrashed and struggled, in a horrible re-enactment of Irina’s last fight. They didn’t even have to use magic to restrain me – without spells I was pathetically easy to subdue. Danya held me down while Tatiana closed the shackles on my wrists, my ankles, around my throat.

Marcus watched from the sidelines, his brown eyes meltingly soft, as I fought and wept.

At last every part of me was locked down and the only thing I could do was scream.

‘A
nna …’ It was a whisper, soft in my ear. ‘Anna, wake up.’

I turned my head away from the sound. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go back to a world where my friends were in chains and my mother was dead, once and for all.

‘Anna, you can’t ignore this. Look at me.’

I opened my eyes. Warm, brown eyes stared into mine. A hand stroked my face, smoothing back my sweaty, tangled hair.

I spat. And the face recoiled. Marcus wiped his cheek theatrically with his sleeve and then began to laugh.

‘You really don’t know when you’re beaten, do you?’

‘No,’ I croaked. It was hard to speak with the shackle around my throat, crushing my windpipe.

‘Tatiana?’ Marcus said with a shrug.

She stepped forwards. Her face wasn’t grim – there was too much sorrow in it for that. But it was uncompromising. And she held in her hand a long, steel needle. It was about the thickness of my thumb, dwindling to a blunt point. On the other end snaked a rubber tube.

I felt myself grow sick with fear. My heart began to beat so hard that I could hear it in my ears – a rushing thud of irrepressible blood and life. If I could have stopped it at that moment …

Tatiana raised her arm, holding the steel needle high in the air.

‘No!’ Seth shouted. His voice was cracked and his chains gave a rusty shriek as he struggled to his feet, yanking at them with vicious strength. ‘For God’s sake, are you mad? Don’t! Please don’t!’

‘You can’t help her,
Cuzestranec
,’ Tatiana said, but not unkindly.

And she brought the needle down with all her force.

There was an audible crack as the thing went through my ribs.

And then the sound of my own scream, echoing in the small room. And my panting breath, sobbing out inarticulate sounds of agony.

The temptation was to lash out, to protect myself, to stop it hurting – but somewhere in the hot red agony I heard Abe’s voice
.
He was shouting.

‘Remember what I said, Anna! Don’t use your magic!’

Tatiana flung out a blast of magic that smacked him in the face and he fell silent, wiping blood on his sleeve – but I’d heard him.

It took every bit of control I had – but I kept it in. I wouldn’t cast a spell. I
wouldn’t
. I just had to hold on to that. I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the hot tears stream down my face, listening to my own whimpering sounds of pain, and everything seemed to shrink down to this room, to this chair, to the burning pain in the centre of my chest.

‘Listen to me …’ I heard Marcus’ voice through the red mist and when I opened my eyes he was squatting beside the chair. He ran his hands through his hair, the immaculate shining waves glimmering in the electric light from overhead. ‘You can’t get out of this – you do understand that? You’re not going to get out of this place alive and with your magic intact. But your friends
can
walk away. If you cooperate. Are you selfish enough to put them through this?’

‘Shut up!’ Emmaline spat from across the room. ‘I’ve always hated you, you smug upper-class cock. Anna, if you do as he says—’

Marcus took two quick steps across the room and punched her, hard, right across the cheekbone. Emmaline gasped and fell sideways, only the chains around her wrists stopping her from falling completely. Then she laughed. It was a horrible sound in the silence of the room.

‘I’m going to make you beg,’ Marcus said. ‘Not for your own life – you’ll be too far gone for that. But I’ll make you beg Anna to do as I say. Do you understand?’

‘Shut up,’ Emmaline said contemptuously. ‘You’ve watched too many Bond movies for your own good.’

Marcus took another step – but not towards Em. Towards Abe.

Em made a sound – halfway between a gasp and a cry.

Marcus looked at her and smiled. Then he drew back his fist and hit Abe, hard, in the gut.

I expected Abe to crash back against the wall with the force of the blow. But instead, Marcus’ fist seemed to sink unnaturally into Abe’s stomach – up to the knuckles … then up to the wrist.

Abe gave a strange, strangled whimper.

Then Marcus started to pull and Abe’s face went completely white, sheened with cold sweat. He barely made a sound as Marcus withdrew his fist, slowly … slowly.

Marcus’ hand was wet with blood to the shirt cuffs and he was holding something dark red and purple, which glistened in the electric light from above. Then, with a noise like a sigh, Abe slumped in his chains, unconscious.

It took me a moment to realize what Marcus was holding: Abe’s guts. He’d reached inside Abe’s body and pulled out a handful of his intestines.

Emmaline’s face was almost as white and sick as Abe’s and she watched in helpless horror as Marcus dropped the loops of flesh to hang loose against Abe’s belly, where they rose and fell with his gasping, shallow breaths.