The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set (42 page)

“What’s that?” asked Pueblo, his tone shifting from anxious to not-amused-in-the-slightest.

“Zimovane.”

“Sleeping pills? I don’t take drugs.”

“You won’t be grinding it down and snorting it,” shot back Elena.

“I don’t take
any
drugs.”

“
This
is the only way we can all get into the Shanka world as a unit. I’ve magically imbued these pills. It’s the lowest strength you can get on prescription – which is why it’s Zimovane and not Temazepam – but the magic will make it more potent
and
it will keep us all connected when we reach the other side. It’ll ensure we fall asleep together and wake up together, so no one gets lost. And,” she added, begrudgingly, “it’s the only way I can get the demon in me to sleep at the moment. I’ve spent weeks working this out.” She stared at Pueblo, imploringly, with those big brown eyes. Amy had to hand it to her – Elena had the pleading look down to a fine art. She couldn’t figure out if came from the virgin or the succubus.

“Please, Pueblo, my mum’s been in there for a month now… I need you. You’re physically strong, you’re a demon
and
you can shift…”

Amy could tell he didn’t want to swallow any synthetic pill. Hell, he read the back of food packages for anything artificial – her kitchen cupboards had had a major restock over the past two weeks – but she also knew he had a soft spot for mothers. He couldn’t save his own, but he could help to save Elena’s.

His jaw clenched under the weight of Elena’s watery stare. His eyes flicked over to Karl who just smiled at him, bemused, as if to say, ‘You’ve lost, mate. When she looks at you like that, you’ve lost.’

“So what’s the plan?” he muttered in defeat.

Elena beamed a hundred watts at him, then launched into her plan. “We all swallow one of these pills at the same time. It should be pretty fast acting because of the magic coating it, and we’ll all be connected through that magic. I’m practised at dreaming – lucid dreaming and astral projection, I mean. As soon as we’re all asleep, I’ll be able to enter dream state, and my doing so will pull you all into dream state too because of the connection. Then we can enter the Shanka dimension together. Once we’re there, I’ll be able to find my mum using a location spell – actually, it’s a version of the location spell—”

“The
Lumen Umbra
?” asked Amy.

Elena nodded.

“Good. It’s easy, quick and accurate.”

“Yep. Although, this is the part of my plan that is no longer … er … planned. Once I know where my mum is … well, I want to go in and get her, but I don’t know what happens next in terms of obstacles. There could be Shanka guarding her, or anything we’ve not allowed for. My thoughts are that Karl and I go to her, and bring her out, while Pueblo and Katarra deal with any demons that get in our way.”

Katarra yawned.

“Oh, am I boring you?” Elena directed at her.

“God, yes!” she exclaimed, as if finally thanking her for noticing. “Let’s just go to sleep already.”

“What about me?” asked Amy.

Elena fidgeted. “Well, I need someone at this end to make sure our bodies are safe, and to wake us all up if something goes wrong.”

Amy crossed her arms in indignation. That sounded an awful lot like a dismissal. “And that someone is me? Why? Because I’m not half-demon, or half-angel?”

Elena’s guilty expression said it all.

“I’ve got Pueblo’s blood in me—”

“That doesn’t make you any less human—”

“And my magic is second to none, by the way – I had a damn good teacher.”

Oh, shit.
She’d just gone and flung that out there like bad diarrhoea.

Elena looked stung, and Pueblo noticeably stiffened by her side.

Great. Let’s have another think about how to tell him my little secret, shall we?  
“I’m sorry … but I’m pissed off. You’re all going in there, and you want me to stay here by myself while I … what? Twiddle my thumbs? Play Scrabble with my own reflection?”

Pueblo made a ‘humph’ sound, and looked even more worried than he did before. “Maybe leaving Amy alone isn’t such a good idea.”

“Hey! I’ve done okay on my own the past twenty-seven years, thank you very much!” Although given what had happened to her, that statement sounded a little ridiculous. She glared past the absurdity of it, and silently dared anyone to disagree.

Surprisingly, it was Karl who reached across the table, and took her hand in his. She was immediately reminded of the first time she’d met him when he’d turned up, very much not dead, at Mary’s flat, and took her in a grateful embrace as if she were family. The same benevolent expression that he’d worn then, lined his face now. There was something about his compassionate nature that called to her own. She instantly calmed.

“I recommend Cluedo over Scrabble, and Monopoly over thumb-twiddling.” He smiled, his eyes holding an unforced patience she lacked.

The patience of angels
, she thought to herself.
He really is how I’ve always imagined angels to be.
 

“But joking aside, you
are
a powerful witch, Amy. Whether you’re human or not, we need someone capable of bringing us back should things go tits up. We’ll put a protection shield around the house too, but the four of us getting trapped in the Shanka’s world is not an option. You know as many spells as Elena, and you can think straight in an emergency.”

He held her gaze, waiting for the answer that he hadn’t actually asked for.

Damn, he’s good.
“You’re lucky I brought a book with me.”

His grin was one hundred percent charming, and his eyes were one hundred percent grateful. He squeezed her hand in silent thanks, and she found herself smiling back.

If she was being honest with herself, she
was
exhausted – she had been for the last week. Heading off into a dangerous shadow world was not in the least bit appealing to her bone-tired body and mind.

“Thanks, Amy,” offered Elena, quietly.

She sighed, but nodded. “Seriously though, are you sure you don’t just want to write your mother back here with the Pen?”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it, believe me. But the last time I wrote with it, I was controlled by a Shanka and killed a plane full of people. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something like that happened again … and imagine how my mum would feel if she was the reason I used that Pen and something bad happened…” she trailed off.

 Karl took her hand.

She cleared her throat and looked up. “Besides, I think Gwain’s got it. He carries it around in his pocket.”

“You’re joking!” Amy exclaimed.

“He reckons that’s the last place anyone would look.”

“Reckless,” mumbled Karl, under his breath.

Elena shrugged. “So … is everyone okay with the plan?”

“In so much as we can be,” said Pueblo. “How do we bring your mum back from that side?”

“She needs to be asleep. She needs to take one of these pills at her end when I find her, then when we all come back, she’ll automatically be pulled back with us.”

He nodded. “We going in tonight?”

“Yes. In a couple of hours I hope.”

Katarra groaned. “Two hours? Why are we waiting? What are we going to do for two hours?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” quipped Karl, as he reached down for a pile of what looked like research papers, on the floor by his chair, and hauled them up. He let them fall heavily onto the table. “We’re going to talk about prophecies…”

Everyone looked at the papers in trepidation.

“…And the end of the world.”

~*~

Mary had assumed they would reappear in the human dimension in the same place she had disappeared – back at the prison. Instead, they hurtled through the road directly under Wellington Arch, in Hyde Park, not too far from where they’d all closed Elena’s portal. Atop the arch loomed the angel of peace statue, descending upon the chariot of war.

How very fitting.

Gwain half flew and half fell against the wall of the arch, coming to a halt as his body slumped forwards. To his credit, he didn’t drop either Sophia or herself.

It was night time, although judging by the still dying tinge of traffic fumes in the air, Mary guessed it wasn’t too late – perhaps around 10 p.m. It was hard to know – London never slept. At least the arch was closed off to the public now, which meant that most people were on the other side of the park. Still, they’d literally broken through the crust of the planet, and somebody nearby was bound to have heard or felt that. They should probably get out of here quick before anyone saw them in the state they were in … and because it was bloody freezing. Puffs of mist left her mouth with her every breath – it couldn’t be much above zero degrees. She could also smell the onset of rain.

“Gwain,” said Mary, disentangling herself from him. She searched his body for any injury, not that it was easy to tell new injuries from old ones at the moment – on either of them. “You okay?”

He managed a nod, although it seemed the ascent had taken it out of him, and his right hand was a bloody mess.

She went to help Sophia off him. The demon was rigid, and her eyes were squeezed shut.

“Hey,” said Mary, gently. “We’re back.”

“We are?” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “We made it?”

“Yeah, we did.” She took hold of the girl’s arms and prised them off Gwain’s neck, then carried her to the ground.

She cautiously lifted her lids, took in her surroundings, then stood up straight. “I have to get back to my tribe, but I’ll be back soon.”

Before either of them could say a word, she’d dematerialised.

“Not even a fucking thank you,” muttered Gwain.

“Handy trick that. I could do with that ability right now, what with us looking the way we do and my skin about to turn blue from hypothermia.” She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

“Come on,” said Gwain, levering himself off the wall. “It’s not too far to my place.” He held out his hand to her, then must have decided she was taking too long, because he grabbed the front of her shirt – his shirt – and pulled her towards him. One of the last two surviving buttons broke free from its thread and tumbled to the ground, and Mary cared more than she’d like to admit. Not because of her state of clothing – or lack of – but because, somehow, the shirt had come to symbolise her fight for life. If it could make it, then so could she. Well, they weren’t quite safe and sound just yet, and now, a single button was all that stood between her and possible doom.

“And you think I’m dramatic,” he smiled, before meeting her lips with his own.

He was reading her mind? He had to stop that
now
.

His insistent mouth drove any further thought on the matter out of her head, although she couldn’t respond in kind as her shivering was getting worse.

Gwain scooped her up without any effort, in spite of his forlorn state. At five foot eleven, she never thought she’d see the day when anyone would be able to do that. Once again, she found herself wrapped around him.

“We’re going up,” he said.

“I don’t know if I can,” she chattered, her words sounding like she was being wheeled across cobblestones. The first drop of rain fell on her head.

“Five more minutes, that’s all – I’ll fly quickly.”

She silently groaned, knowing damn well everything would feel ten times colder once they were speeding through the October night … if it was still October.

“You can do it,” he encouraged.

She nodded, but winced when she caught the ice-cold blast of the air, unrelentingly tearing across her skin as he took off.

She wondered how fast they were really going. Fifty miles an hour? Sixty? More? Could birds even fly that fast? But then, angels weren’t birds, were they.

Exhaustion streamed through her body. What a crazy few weeks it had been. At some point, the rain, which had started to cascade, turned into hail. She suddenly jolted in his arms – oh, God, had she fallen asleep? She squeezed herself tighter around Gwain and hoped she’d managed, because she couldn’t feel her arms, legs or feet anymore. Was she even gripping him at all?

“Don’t let me fall,” she whispered through numb lips.

“Never, Mary. I’ll never let you fall.”

The forest rose up all around her.

She jerked fully awake.

How did I get here?

Above her, the sun shone through a clearing in the canopy, making the thick and twisted tree trunks seem a little less eerie. Jasmine flowers peppered the forest floor, their syrupy scent dancing up her nostrils as if they were invisible tendrils trying to seduce her.

A rustling to her right had her swinging around, ready to bolt … and then she saw him.

Standing tall and looking more than a little deadly, he leaned against the tree, his black hair glistening under golden rays.

It took her more than a few heart-thumping seconds to realise that this was not, in fact, Abaddon, although his height and frame looked so similar. This man’s eyes were as black as coal, not the piercing blue of Satan’s. He had no beard, and he had no wings that she could see.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said.
 

“I’ve lost consciousness, haven’t I?”
 

He nodded.

Shit. Gwain will be having another meltdown.

“Is this a dream?” she asked.
 

“No. Not really. You’re journeying. You’re not really asleep as such – your soul has just left your body.”
 

“And it decided to come here?”
 

“It appears so,” he smiled. From behind his back, he brought out an apple and took a bite. “The Jasmine is beautiful, isn’t it? The flower of the revolution. Can you smell it, Ymari? The scent of a new power rising?”
 

“Who are you?”
 

“I am the light.”
 

“You look more like the dark.”
 

“Looks can be deceptive, as can what you find in the dark. I have many names. You can call me Lucifer.”