Marcii (The Dreadhunt Trilogy Book 1) (5 page)

Chapter Eight

              Marcii was still shaken and the longer she spent out on the streets the more and more people avoided her. Avoidance now however was not simply a case of others walking around her. Instead, wherever the young Dougherty went, as soon as she appeared, the entire street cleared almost instantly, leaving her stood alone and deserted.

              Had she had her way, Marcii would have returned home and stayed there. But, as was always the case it seemed, she had been forced out by her demanding mother, and sent on another bout of errands.

              This time it was not the market though, thankfully. Marcii didn’t know if she would have been able to take that.

              No, this time her mother needed herbs and spices, and whilst there were merchants in the square who sold such items, their prices were always too steep, and their family had little money for such luxuries.

              And so, as she regularly did, every few weeks or so, Marcii was on her way to visit Malorie.

              The walk was not far: not even half the distance to the other side of town where she often stole away to meet Kaylm. Nonetheless, the journey felt as though it lasted a lifetime. There were eyes upon her from every corner of every street, and even when all around her the streets were emptied in avoidance, Marcii somehow still felt them watching her.

              She was more than a little relieved to finally see Malorie’s odd little cottage appear before her.

              It’s not that there was anything wrong with Malorie’s home, Marcii thought as she approached. But rather, like Malorie herself in fact, there was just something different about it: something unique that Marcii had never quite been able to place.

              It was a squat little house built from rugged stone blocks that seemed to be forever crumbling away here and there. There was a feel to it that Marcii had never found anywhere else, and when she visited she always felt more at home than she ever had done, even with her own family.

              As usual, though Marcii never managed to work out how, Malorie was waiting in the low, wooden doorway when she arrived, with a look of both sympathy and intrigue painted across her face.

              “Good afternoon Marcii…” Malorie greeted her gently. “Come inside child, you look troubled…”

              Marcii smiled gratefully and, without even the need to reply, Malorie whisked her immediately into her welcoming little home.

              The young Dougherty instantly felt better, for Malorie was a kindly lady.

She was older than Marcii, though hard as she tried the young girl could never guess exactly how old.

Certainly no older than forty, she imagined.

But then, she had been wrong before.

              Whilst she was not tall, and only very slight, there was most certainly something to Malorie that went beyond the physical. It was some kind of presence that Marcii could never quite place.

              Her deeply lined, yet youthful face was intriguing. It was framed with neat, dead straight, jet black hair and her eyes were so vividly violet that they engulfed Marcii whenever she looked into them.

              She too had lived in Newmarket, in this very house in fact, for as long as Marcii could remember, and probably even longer still.

              Marcii had yet to speak, as Malorie poured her a cup of tea from a mottled old mug. Her kitchen was tiny, with barely enough space within it for the wooden table and chair upon which Marcii sat.

              Still though, for some unknown reason, it felt like home.

              Three large black cats paced casually about the kitchen around where Marcii rested. They rubbed themselves on the table legs and up Malorie’s ankles and occasionally mewed and jumped on and off the table top, quite often finding themselves beneath Malorie’s affectionate hands.

              “I heard about Midnight…” Malorie finally spoke again, seating herself opposite Marcii and folding her tiny arms across the table top. Her voice was light and carefree, regardless of the fact that she was referring to a dreadful massacre.

              Marcii nodded in agreement, sipping her tea, but Malorie didn’t fill the silence, and eventually, only able to resist filling the quiet air for so long, Marcii finally spoke.

              “Is that all you heard?” She asked, and rather pointedly at that.

              Malorie smiled mysteriously.

              “I heard you found him…” Her voice had suddenly a much more serious tone to it. “I heard you knew exactly where to look. I heard people think you’re involved…”

              “I am not!” Marcii denied immediately, half rising to her feet in the face of adamant truth.

              “I know.” Malorie replied calmly, not seeming in the least bit surprised.

              Marcii’s cheeks flushed at her outburst and she took her seat again, dropping her gaze.

              “I’m sorry…” She apologised, embarrassed.

              “Don’t be, child…” Malorie replied immediately, and very kindly. “Rumours very rarely spread the truth…”

              “Why do you always believe me?” Marcii asked her then.

              It was not that she was ungrateful, and Malorie knew it. It was simply that this kindly lady, so unseemly and inoffensive, always believed Marcii without ever a scrap of evidence.

              “Let’s just call it intuition…” Malorie replied. “I know you’re telling the truth…”

              “Thank you.” Marcii replied immediately, though she was unsure what else she could say.

              “How did you find him there?” She asked next.

Her violet eyes searched Marcii’s face as she spoke, looking for every subtle hint that they could find. Not that Malorie relied on her eyes all that much for such things.

              “Vixen showed me.” Marcii replied immediately, as if that made perfect sense.

              “Vixen?” Malorie questioned, raising one eyebrow behind her perfect black fringe.

              “She’s an orphan…” Marcii tried to explain. “At least, I think she is…”

              “You think?” Malorie pressed, wondering who in the world this Vixen character was, and how she had come to know such a terrible thing.

              “She’s never spoken of parents…” Marcii attempted. “She’s only young. Eight? Nine? Something like that. I don’t know how she knew Midnight was in there…”

              “Do you think she was involved?” Malorie asked, and quite directly at that.

              “I should hope not!” Marcii replied, her words adamant once again.

              “I doubt she would have been…” Malorie mused aloud.

              “Why?” Marcii asked, seizing her chance to ask the questions.

              “Midnight was the only survivor.” Malorie explained. “I doubt an orphan child would have stood much chance.”

              “What chance would an elderly, deaf, dumb man stand?” Marcii questioned, and Malorie smiled in response.

              “Good point.” She replied, inclining her head slightly. “What chance indeed?”

              “What about you?” Marcii suddenly asked, and Malorie returned her gaze blankly for a moment.

              “What about me?” She repeated.

              “Do you have a family?” Marcii elaborated, realising all at once she’d been more than a little ambiguous in her question, and that her tenuous link from the mystery of Vixen’s parenthood had not been all that clear.

              “I used to…” Malorie replied and her eyes wandered off into the distance for a moment or two, lost in a memory. “I had my mother, and my brother…” She continued.

Marcii sat by in silence, intrigued by the mysterious woman’s words.

She had never really asked Malorie such a direct question before, and she didn’t know why now, all of a sudden, she felt so obliged to do so.

“But not anymore…” Malorie sighed. “All I have now is Reaper…”

“Reaper?” Marcii breathed, admittedly a little afraid even at the name of which Malorie spoke.

“He’s all I have left in the world…” She elaborated vaguely. “But even so, I haven’t seen him for so long…”

“Why?” Marcii questioned, frowning slightly. “If he’s all you’ve got left, why don’t you see him?”

Malorie didn’t speak for a moment, and instead only looked on at Marcii with her striking violet eyes, filled with pain and loss and regret.

“I can’t.” She breathed, and her words were bathed in sadness. “It’s too dangerous…”

Chapter Nine

              Things were getting desperately out of hand.

              Marcii didn’t even need to look upon the solemn faces of their neighbours to see that, once again, something was dreadfully wrong.

              There was organised chaos in the streets, but somehow also a silent agreement and understanding that emanated all around, as Marcii stepped out onto the cobblestoned ground and made her way nervously towards the square.

              Townsfolk moved about with much more urgency than usual, but until she reached the square at the very heart of Newmarket and discovered the truth, Marcii would never have been able to imagine the full extent of exactly why.

              If the killings that had plagued the town had not struck enough fear into the hearts of all those who lived there, Tyran’s next move most certainly would have done.

              All about the square, scattered and spread purposefully wide enough so that their presence had full impact, stood a forest of vertical spears rammed into the ground between the cobblestones. Skewered upon the spearheads, terrifyingly, were the carcasses of virtually the entire population of Newmarket’s black cats, which was quite a few to say the least.

              Clearly they’d still been alive when they’d been impaled and some were still twitching and jerking horribly. Blood ran freely down the shafts buried between the stones and spread out in vast, sickening puddles.

              But that was not even the half of it.

              In the very centre of the square, where Tyran always delivered his speeches from, knelt in a row seven townsfolk.

              They were surrounded by at least two dozen of Tyran’s police, enforcers, brandishing their heavy, menacing weapons.

Marcii saw that the kneeling townsfolk were all women.

Their hands were bound tightly behind their backs and there was rope about their ankles too, forcing them all to their knees.

Some were old and others were young, no older than about twenty or so.

They all had black hair, matted and unkempt and filthy, as if they’d been wrenched from their homes and dragged along the street.

With a chill that danced cruelly up and down her spine, Marcii imagined in fact that was probably exactly what had happened. She yearned to reach out and help the poor women.

She recognised four of them, though she couldn’t recall their names, but that made no difference.

What the hell was going on?

What was this!?

Suddenly, booming out over the terrified crowd, Tyran’s voice answered her questions, and indeed her fears.

“These creatures you see before you!” He bellowed, his tone towering and brutal.

At first Marcii thought he was referring to the impaled cats, but then, as he continued, she realised she was wrong.

“They are filth!” He continued. “They are but a handful of those responsible for the horrific massacres that have plagued our poor town!”

“WE HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING!!” One of the women suddenly screamed, shrieking her terrified words across the square towards Tyran, spitting venom at him from where she knelt, bound and helpless.

But Tyran didn’t speak to reply.

He didn’t even issue a command.

Simply on instinct, moving coldly and robotically, one of his enforcers stepped inward from the group that surrounded the women. The monstrous man reached out and picked her up by her long, black hair.

She screamed a deathly cry.

He was enormous compared to her. He didn’t even put her on her feet. He simply carried her off the ground, suspended by her hair, and walked over to the towering wooden platform that had been constructed behind them.

Marcii hadn’t even seen the platform before, regardless of its size. But now that she did, horror crept through her bones.

It was a stage.

The wooden plinth was raised high off the ground and had three towering struts that shot up towards the sky, each with a piece of rope tied into a loop suspended from its tip.

Marcii suddenly had horrible visions of the enforcer hanging the woman who had screamed her denial, but she wasn’t even granted that much effort.

Raising his hand high up above his head, still clutching the poor woman by her hair, the enforcer brought his arm down in a whip like fashion and cracked her head against the edge of the wooden stage.

Her skull split with a gruesome sound and she crumpled to the floor, bathed instantly in a torrent of her own blood.

The enforcer kicked her in the face for good measure, just to ensure that she was dead, and indeed her vacant eyes rolled as he struck her.

He grunted with grim satisfaction and returned to his place in the perimeter that guarded the remaining prisoners.

No one else resisted.

All fell silent.

“This is but the first step we must take to save our home!” Tyran pressed on without a pause, simply as if nothing at all had happened.

Marcii’s blood seethed and boiled and was ready to erupt. She was just about to bellow her furious outrage at the top of her lungs before a small hand that she felt suddenly rest upon her arm quieted her.

She looked down to find Vixen.

The young orphan’s eyes were troubled, though her expression remained level and unchanged.

There were so many questions that Marcii had for her.

So many answers that she needed.

But she could not speak a single one of them.

She could only look on helplessly as the Tyrant continued, seizing his audience with his words. The Mayor used fear and intimidation as if they were weapons to be wielded, and wield them he did.

“These witches have been summoning demons to hunt us!” He declared. “Their black magic is the work of the devil! They are powerful! And cunning! But we must fight back!!”

His voice was rising and the crowd was stirring.

He was putting a face to their fears, providing them with a common enemy, a common cause.

Against the fear of whatever had been killing their friends.

Against the fear he purposefully instilled whenever he spoke.

These poor women were not witches.

They had done nothing wrong.

Marcii saw straight through it all, yet she could do nothing to stop what was about to happen. Her heart throbbed painfully in her chest and she felt a lump rise in her throat.

“My police, as ever, will protect you!” Tyran went on. “They have killed the creatures within which these witches have placed their evil!” He explained, indicating the skewered black cats dotted all around. “As they rot, their foul stench will ward off any other evil spirits these witches dare to try to conjure!”

This was utter madness.

It was incredulous.

Marcii could not believe what she was hearing.

But, as she glanced around, with dread fear filling her eyes, she was horrified when she saw the overwhelming rapture on the faces of all the other townsfolk.

Tyran was their saviour.

She felt sick to the stomach.

The warmth of Vixen’s tiny hand upon her arm ceased. When Marcii looked down the young orphan stood at her side no longer.

“Their reign of terror will come to an end!” Tyran declared, his voice rising to a crescendo. “That I promise you!!”

Thankfully, Marcii thought that was it.

That was the end of the spectacle for today.

But she was wrong.

What followed sickened her perhaps more than a thousand words that Tyran could have spoken. Her fellow townsfolk erupted into applause and cheering, inevitably submitting themselves to Tyran’s reign of terror.

To the sound of their approval, likely upon Tyran’s preordained instruction, his enforcers led the remaining six women up to the hastily constructed wooden hanging platform.

To say they led them was perhaps more than a little generous.

Some of the enforcers dragged the struggling women up the stairs by their hair. Some pulled them along by their feet. And some simply kicked them in the general direction of the stage and refused to relent until they complied.

The more brutal they were, it seemed, the harder the crowds cheered, and Tyran soaked up their applause and their approval greedily, knowing there would surely be more to come.

Even the priests were there.

Often religion and violence can be misconstrued as one and the same sin.

Marcii hoped they might intervene, for surely this was not the work of God.

But neither she, nor the poor women condemned to death, had such luck.

Not all the priests were there. Only a handful had turned up it seemed. Marcii couldn’t see Alexander Freeman, her father’s friend, nor Francis Gold, the head of the Priesthood. But, she imagined, soon they would have little choice but to attend.

As the crowds cheered the priests that were there chanted something in an unrecognisable language, undoubtedly supposed to give the impression that they were helping to ward off yet more evil spirits.

What absolute rubbish, Marcii thought with disgust.

But the crowds loved it.

Marcii knew that Tyran had planned the whole thing.

She just remained silent, looking on at the unending horror.

What else could she do?

The first three women were hung with brutal and cruel efficiency.

Their feet had barely even stopped twitching when they were cut down and kicked hastily to one side to make room for the second lot.

The young Dougherty simply could not watch any longer.

She turned away even before the final three women had been led up to face their futile, pointless deaths.

This could not be happening.

The crowds cheered again.

It was disgusting.

Her stomach turned and her face blanched.

Stealing away from the masses and the chanting and the murder, cruel and unjustified, she went in search of sanctuary, seeking the one person whom she knew could hide her from this madness.

But, though she might have been able to hide, she knew in the very back of her mind she would not be able to escape this. Dread hung heavily all around as she raced through the narrow streets, tears streaming down her face, warm against her cold skin.

Those women were not witches.

Surely there was no such thing.

Tyran was the only evil here.

She wanted desperately to stop him, with all her heart and more. But Marcii knew she wouldn’t be able to. Especially now that, somehow, incredulously, Tyran had the might of the people behind him.

How this had happened?

Marcii had no idea.

Nevertheless, she knew it would not lead to anything good, and undoubtedly many more people would have to suffer before someone put an end to this madness.