Devious Magic (21 page)

The first I knew that someone was in the passageway was when I heard the key in the lock and the heavy bar slide free. My eyes shot open as the door opened a crack and Annalise and I huddled further together, away from the sudden burst of light that penetrated the anteroom beyond and was now flowing into our light-starved eyes. For the first time, I saw Annalise’s sorry state; she was dirty and bloody. Then the door was fully open; a man filled the doorframe, blocking the light. Extending a hand, he indicated to me with one finger. “Get up,” he said, his voice gruff. I smelled the heavy odour of cigarette smoke on him; he was clearly a heavy smoker.

I felt Annalise tense, then rock back on her haunches. With a snarl, she leapt at him, knocking him backwards to the ground, snapping at his neck. A swat from her claws had him bleeding from a wound to his cheek and she kept up a relentless snapping, biting him. I kept low and made ready to run the moment the man gave up.

“Get it off me!” he shrieked, his hands flailing at Annalise’s brute strength.

Another man appeared in the doorway, his eyes darting over the scene of his fallen comrade. There was a brief flash of blue light and, with a howl, Annalise fell back, falling into a shaking heap on the ground. Her eyes were open but glazed over and I realised she’d been hit with a taser, the shocks still ricocheting through her body.

Just as I was about to scramble towards her, the second man rushed into the room, stepping over Annalise’s shaking body before grabbing me by my shoulder.

“Step back or I’ll tase you too,” he said, his voice emotionless, “and the master won’t like that.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and carried me kicking and screaming out of the room. The bleeding man had already scrambled into the anteroom, a wad of paper towel pressed against a cut on his face. As we cleared the door, the bleeding man stepped past us to slam the door shut and turned the key, turning slowly to face me.

“She’ll be fine. Now stop kicking or I’ll have to knock you out,” the man holding me murmured into my ear. He was dressed much nicer than the first, in black trousers and a polo shirt, and he smelled like mints and bread dough, fresh and warm. It was a strange contrast to the first man, who was looking at me with undisguised disgust.

“Pretty thing, ain’t she?” The first man looked me over slowly. “Bit scruffy, but definitely a pretty lass. Wonder if she’s got some magic in the bedroom, eh, Pete?” He stepped closer, a toothy grin on his face and stroked a calloused hand over my cheek.

I landed a kick firmly in his groin and watched him drop to his knees, howling, before the man holding me, Pete, hauled me back.

“The master said she wasn’t to be hurt,” Pete warned him. “And getting nasty with women isn’t my bag, my friend, so I reckon you deserved that.”

I continued struggling, but his arms were firmly hooked under my shoulders, forcing them upwards and pushing my shoulders to painfully over extend. I managed to stamp on his instep and he let go, smoothly grabbing my wrists behind my back with one hand, and pushing my arms upwards. “Despite what the master said,” Pete hissed in my ear, “I will knock you out if you do that again.”

I stopped struggling, falling limp. There was no point; I couldn’t get free from his tight grip and getting knocked out twice in one day seemed a little excessive, even for me. He waited until I calmed down before gripping each wrist and moving my arms down so that my wrists rested on the small of my back, his one, mitt-like hand wrapped around them both.

The nasty man in front of me straightened up, glowering, but he didn’t approach me again. Instead, he put his face to the door and looked through, nodding to himself. Stepping to the right, he hung the key on a hook above the door. Now that I wasn’t flailing, I could see a corridor that stretched far into the distance, but it was too dark for me to make anything out.

Pete gave me a little push towards the open archway. “That way,” he instructed, adding, “Mind your step!” as I tripped on a flagstone. I winced as the ankle I’d twisted previously sent a jarring shock through me. He caught me, helping me upright, without relaxing his grip once. I heard a small click and a light flicked on; long florescent tubes flashing on one by one. It was basic and austere and everything looked sinister in the unnatural glow. We faced a long corridor that seemed to pass through a number of interconnecting rooms via a series of archways.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, a small shove in my back making me move forwards, my captor propelling me along. From the looks of it, we were definitely in the cellar of Hawkscroft and it was a long winding path from our cell to wherever our destination lay.

“Upstairs,” Pete surprised me by answering, his footsteps echoing with mine.

Behind me, I heard Annalise whimpering, then Pete pushed me on, hurriedly. The second man limped behind him, cursing, as we walked on into the unknown.

Twelve

On our way up from the cellar, we passed through a series of other rooms, each with barely enough clearance for me to be able to walk through without ducking my head. I took some perverse pleasure in how annoying it must have been for my two attackers to have to keep bending down. With the speed of the walking, and the constant pressure on my back from the man named Pete, I didn’t see much as we passed through each room. Finally, we stepped into a room larger than all the others. It seemed to be some kind of storage area. Shelves ran across the walls, each one packed with boxes, lids taped down, like it was some kind of archive.

If I hoped that was it, I was wrong. From there, we changed direction, passing through another series of other rooms, each getting increasingly larger, the air slightly clearer. They were cluttered with large pieces of furniture; chairs, tables, consoles from all different eras, and dozens of boxes, thickly taped again. Passing through another corridor, we arrived at a set of steps.

Pete, the prison guard, gave me a rough shove forward, simultaneously releasing my wrists. Momentarily unbalanced, I slipped, throwing my hands forward, and scraping the heels of my palms on the steps. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop me from wincing because there was no way I was going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me in pain before I scrambled back up. I grazed some of the skin. Blood was already beading on the surface and it stung like a bitch as I started to ascend.

At the top of the staircase, Pete took my arm again, half pushing, half pulling me into a small room. Just inside, I bent over, resting my hands on my knees to catch my breath as if I were recovering from the fast walk.

“I’m going to let go of you. If you try to run, you’ll regret it,” said Pete. “All I have to do is yell and there will be twenty men in here.”

I looked up at him, then over to the second, still nameless, man who lumbered up behind us. He grinned again; his lips peeled back to show his missing teeth. Nameless took one last look at me, winked, and slid out of the room.

“He’ll be first in the door,” Pete warned in a low voice.

Yuck.
“You win,” I sniffed, straightening up. I took a moment to take in some air and regulate my breathing after the power walk. It wasn’t that I was out of breath; I just wanted it to look that way. Months of running almost every day had paid off; I was fit and healthy, but feigning a stitch meant I could take my time in looking around the room. It was windowless and seemed to serve as some sort of large catchall closet for household things like brooms, mops and other cleaning equipment. I guessed this was where they stored stuff ready for transport below ground and brought things back up again.
Like prisoners
, I thought ominously. Unfortunately, it looked like this room was the only way out of the cellar and, as we stepped out into what looked like the foyer, I realised that was a problem. It would be almost impossible to return unnoticed, or to leave.

Pete didn’t give me much time to look around, but I saw that the ceiling must have been twenty feet high, a huge glass chandelier twinkling under it. The walls were painted a rich, dark red and there were dozens of portraits of men and women in period dress in huge frames. The furniture looked old and heavy and the wood gleamed from decades of polish.

“Let’s go.” Pete nudged me forwards, but not before I scanned the room quickly, making a count. Four men flanked the tall double doors, the front doors I assumed; two more, sat at a table pressed up against the far wall, playing cards. Another man walked past, entering the foyer from one corridor and exiting by another. He didn’t even glance in my direction, though some of the others did. That made eight including Pete and this was a big house; Pete had already intimated twenty men were in earshot. It was best to assume he wasn’t lying.

The chances of me being able to get past all these guards and into the cellar, breaking out Annalise, then leaving the cellar by the same route and exiting the house, without getting caught, was looking decidedly sketchy. My heart plummeted and stopped somewhere around my toes.

“Through here,” Pete snapped, reaching for me again.

“Get off,” I hissed. For a moment, he stood there, staring down at me, like he was having some kind of internal struggle about whether he should take hold of me again or not. He must have concluded there were enough guards about that I wasn’t going to cause trouble because he just shrugged, pointing towards a set of double doors across the foyer, saying, “That way.” Where else could I go? If I attacked him, I’d have eight men pummelling me in an instant. If I ran, I’d get five feet before the same thing happened.

“Who’s there?” I asked, after a moment of staring up at the man. With his bland, emotionless face, I couldn’t fathom why, or how, he had gotten involved in this. Was he just a brutal killer or had he been sucked in by the lure of a cause intent on “defeating evil”? Was he a bad man doing bad things because he enjoyed it? Or a good man doing bad things for what he felt were good reasons? It was impossible to tell. Perhaps the lines had been drawn too closely together.

“You’ll find out, won’t you?” Pete was expressionless. For the first time, I got a good look at him. He was bald with a pale white face, probably somewhere in his early forties. He was well built, broad and muscular without an inch of fat. I wondered if he had been one of the witch hunters that chased me through the streets back when I was alone and afraid. I might have been alone and afraid now, staring up at him almost defiantly, but it was a different sort of fear. I had friends now, not to mention, hope. All I had to do was stay alive, which sounds so simple until you have to do it.

Call me crazy, but I was pretty certain that behind the doors now facing me, there wasn’t going to be anyone I liked or wanted to see. I thought about shimmering, but although I could feel my magic within me, I knew it wouldn’t do what I wanted while something else was suppressing it. Without my magic, I didn’t have a choice. If I were going to get Annalise and me out of here, I’d have to go forwards.

By the time I realised that, and made my decision, we had crossed the floor, coming to a stop outside the closed doors. Pete knocked and dipped his head towards the door, listening momentarily for something I didn’t hear. Then, he twisted the knob and opened the door, signalling for me to enter. When I passed through, Pete stepped back. The door closed behind me lightly and, for a moment, I was too surprised to do anything but stand still and wait.

At first, I thought I was alone. I was in a library, a very beautiful library. The ceiling was as high as the foyer, which was split in the middle by a narrow mezzanine floor, just room enough for one person. A matching pair of slim, spiral staircases stood at each end so that you could walk the entire circuit and exit without having to retrace your steps. Three walls of the library were covered in dark wood shelves, each one stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. The only exception was the door interrupting the shelving behind me. The fourth wall, facing me, had a large fireplace, probably just tall enough for me to stand in upright. Right now, it was blazing, the wood crackling in the grate and kicking heat out across the room.

Two leather wingchairs sat a little way back from the fireplace and between them was a low table, scattered with an open book, reading glasses and a notepad. All fairly innocuous things until I wondered whom they belonged to. To my right, there was a couch, set at a diagonal so people could move around it easily and access the books. A small table was parked in front of it and it also had a shallow stack of books, all very old volumes in excellent condition. Someone really took care of their books.

“Pleasant isn’t it?” said a voice. “I haven’t quite read every book, but I plan on doing so during my lifetime.”

I looked around, trying to locate the voice when I saw an arm reach out from the recesses of one wingchair and point to the other. “Sit down, Miss Mayweather. I insist.”

I skirted around the table and chair, keeping my distance from the arm that rested on the side of the chair, as well as the body attached to it. The man didn’t move at all until I was facing him, the empty wingchair between the two of us, giving me several feet of distance in which to appraise him.

He was sitting ramrod straight, legs crossed, a book open and face down over one leg. He was a solid looking man, not fat or particularly broad, just well kept with a neat beard. I guessed he was somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties. He wore a dark grey three-piece suit with a tie in muted stripes, giving him the air of a university professor or a businessman. I was sure I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place him.

“Sit down,” he said again.

I walked slowly around the chair, keeping my eyes on him while he turned his attention to the fire as if I were of no consequence to him whatsoever. I sat uneasily waiting for him to speak, but he stared at the flames for a while. Just when I was starting to fidget, he looked at me and smiled. It was a cold sort of smile, the sort that didn’t reach his eyes, or make me feel that he was in any way happy.

“Wouldn’t our meeting have been so much more pleasant if you had simply accepted my invitation? Oh, that’s a rhetorical question.” He slipped a leather marker into the book he was holding, closed it and leaned forward to drop it lightly on the table between us. “I’ve looked forward to meeting you, Stella. May I call you Stella?”