The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (20 page)

“Anyway, ze ritual I was speaking of,” Collette said, unfazed by the change in our speed.

“And the friends you mentioned,” I said.

“And the church,” Luther added.

“Oui. First, ze friends. I am taking us to meet a group of witches I know.”

“Witches?” I asked.

“From my past. Some of zese witches have flown far and wide to be here today. All of zem have had zeir lives touched by ze devil’s witch.”

The temperature in the car seemed to drop a few degrees, as if someone had just turned the air con on at full blast.

“Touched? How?” Luther asked.

“Zey have all lost someone or something precious to zem but have managed to escape her eye before it fell upon zem. Now zey have a story to tell, but more importantly, zey have a reason for wanting her dead. And zat makes zem allies.”

“I didn’t know you had so much influence, Coll,” I said.

“An advantage zat comes with age. Many of zem are old friends of mine; friends I have not seen in a long time and am happy to see again. But zis is more zan a simple reunion. Zey are going to help us with a ritual; a ritual of trans-location.”

“No,” Luther said. His aura shot out from him, bitter like before, but cold this time to boot. A great fear had gripped him; reached right into his stomach and grabbed it tightly.

“Are you okay, Luther?” I asked.

“I know what she’s going to ask,” he said, “And it’s insane.”

“Is it?”

“Collette?” I asked, “What are you planning to achieve with this ritual?”

“My goal is to bridge a connection between her and us, and zen use zat connection to kill her.”

Kill her.

“Just like that?” I asked. The smile spread across my lips like a brightening horizon.

“No,” Luther said, “Not just like that. The ritual only allows the caster to open a bridge to travel through; the killing part is the hard part. Just how do you intend to do that?”

“I don’t intend to do anything; it’s Amber who will do it.”

“Me?” I should have seen that one coming. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Ze simple fact iz zat we have been relying on our affirmation zat ze Red Witch will be her doom, but we do not know if zat is true; and even if it iz, we do not know exactly how ze Red Witch will kill her. Perhaps she will be adverse to your mere presence.”
“And if she isn’t?”

“Zen we move to plan B.”

“Which is?”

“We tie her up and figure it out later.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“You are under ze assumption, ma cherie, zat killing her must be difficult. But if you are ze one who will kill her, ze deed could indeed be easily accomplished.”

“I don’t like all this talk of killing,” I said, “It’s morbid.” The Necromancers shared a look now, and I could tell what they were thinking by the way their eyebrows went up.
Morbid? Do you know who you’re talking to?
“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Collette said, “But zis iz ze only way. She is not expecting us, not expecting an attack. She probably believes she iz impervious wherever she calls home. But we have our conduit.”

“A conduit with a name,” Luther put in.

“Of course,” Collette said, conceding. “Now you are briefed, what do you think?”

“Think?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure what I thought. We had gone from flying half way across the world to find a witch who could tell us Linezka’s weaknesses to being a mere few hours away—I was assuming—from potentially meeting the fabled witch in person. I had my poker face on, but I also had to grip the wheel on the Renault a little more tightly to stop the sweat from making them slip.

Maybe I was a little nervous.

As luck would have it we ran into heavy traffic coming into greater Berlin, so my sweaty palms couldn’t contribute to a fiery, road-related accident even if they had wanted to. Getting into busy Berlin wasn’t a quick affair, and sheets of rain were falling from the sky onto the car by the time we made it to Museum Island and the massive grounds at the foot of the Berlin Cathedral. But we had made it, and there it was.

Despite the haze being thrown up by the rain—droplets of water falling so hard and fast they seemed to bounce off the ground—I found myself marveling at the main church building as if it had been my first time laying eyes on it. It was a tall, wide, beige monstrosity covered in angels, cherubs, crosses, and depictions of holy characters made of brass which had gone green with time. And as we idled beneath the arch leading into the church, listening to the rain fall on the car and looking up at the glorious marvel of classical architecture before me, my mind went hurtling through time, back to my first taste of European architecture.

This was what I wanted from Berlin. If we had gotten nothing else out of our trip to the German capital, what I truly craved was to experience
this
feeling.

I wanted the warmth of awe to fill me and bring color to my cheeks, to listen to history itself speaking from the lines and cracks and dents in the stone and the masonry, and to reconnect with a past I had almost left behind. A previous part of myself who wanted to learn about Religion and Mythology, to better understand the secrets of the real world as humans understood it. And there, sitting in a red Renault Clio beneath the Berlin Cathedral with its triple green domes, massive arches, and holy icons, I had gotten what I came for.

CHAPTER 21

“The last time my nose bled like this was during a Nine Inch Nails concert,” Frank said, “I did not see that elbow coming.”

When Damien had seen Frank staggering down the stairs—
so much blood—
his stomach twisted into itself and threatened to empty its contents right there on the carpeted floor. It wasn’t so much that he had an aversion to seeing blood; he had just never been exposed to so much of it in one place, at one time, and in the flesh.

Damien had loved watching scary movies before his family moved into the compound. Classics like Friday the 13
th
, Nightmare on Elm Street, even the Exorcist, had a knack for burning themselves into his child’s mind and haunted his dreams for weeks after having watched them. This wasn’t a good thing, of course, by any means. But in a way, the movies had prepared him for the truths about life which he would later become intimately acquainted with.

Death.

Betrayal.

Demons.

Dark Fire.

And while Damien could stomach most of the otherworldly horrors which he had faced down to date, it was the mundane ones—like severe nose-bleeds—that turned his legs to jam.

There was one scene particular, in the Exorcist, which chilled Damien even to this day. The scene covered a medical examination of Raegan, which took place after the initial stage of her possession. She was being hooked up to a machine which and part of the exam involved the doctor piercing a line straight into Raegan’s neck and then inserting a tube into it.

The process was simple, but there was a moment—after the doctor pulled on a plunger to make the blood flow, but before he attached the tube to collect the blood—where Raegan’s blood squirted out and all over her gown while her mother watched on, powerless to help her little girl.

It had been the mundaneness of the situation that made Damien go cold and avert his eyes, and it was the mundaneness of Frank’s nose-bleed that made him want to hurl upon having seen it. Anyone can have a tube stuck in their neck and anyone can get a nose-bleed, after all.

Two aspirins, a cigarette, and a blood-soaked tea-towel later, Frank seemed to have returned to his usual self.

“You alright?” Damien asked.

“Fine and fucking dandy,” Frank said, “How the fuck are you?”

“Hey,” Aaron said, “Ease up, Frank.”

“Fine, but only because you asked so nicely.”

Frank took a sip of water from the cup Damien had left at the table next to him. The cup had bloody fingerprints on it now, and Damien tried not to look at it.

“What happened?” Damien finally asked. “We heard noises—thumps, bumps—things got crazy down here.”

“Crazy?” Aaron asked, “It sounded like a whole damn football team was running practice up there.”

“I told you it would get weird,” Frank said.

Aaron squatted, grabbed Frank’s collar—where the neck meets the shoulder—, and stared at him. Damien stood, frozen for a moment, his eyes going from Aaron, to Frank’s neck, to the cup with the bloody print on it.

“What did you do?” Aaron asked.

“
What
I did,” Frank said, unfazed by Aaron’s size or the intensity of his gaze, “Isn’t Scooby’s concern.”

“Listen to me and listen carefully. The last time I felt this way, the last time I… sensed what I just sensed was during the time when that thing was trying to possess Amber.”

Frank fell silent. His eyes went to Damien. Maybe he was looking for a nod of reassurance, but Damien didn’t have any for him. Hell, he needed reassurances himself. He had known Frank’s magick came from a dark place, but he had never looked into that dark place before. He wanted to know too.

A long sigh escaped Frank’s lips. “Grab me a beer,” he said. When Aaron and Damien looked at him like he was crazy, he said, “I need to be relaxed if I’m going to relay the information I’ve got floating around inside my head.”

Damien nodded, headed for the fridge, and grabbed a cold bud. He popped the cap with the bottle opener magnet tagged to the fridge and brought the beer to Frank. When he handed it over their fingers met, and Damien felt a jolt when they did. The sudden snap of electricity made him recoil and put his fingers in his mouth like a child might have done.

Frank didn’t seem to have been hit with the jolt, but he looked up at Damien from over his bottle of beer with surprise in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Damien took his fingers out of his mouth and looked at them. His fingertips were red and they stung like he’d just touched a hotplate, but the redness was fading fast. He nodded. “Yeah, just a jolt,” he said.

Frank nodded too. “Alright,” he said, “While I was under, I saw some stuff.”

“While you were under?” Aaron asked. He had been quiet for some time, but he was standing now and seemed less tense; like a guard dog, sitting on its haunches with its tail curled around its legs. Still dangerous and ready to strike at a moment’s notice, but docile enough.

“I… went to see a friend who lives inside me.”

“Don’t make us play the question game,” Aaron said—the dog snarled, teeth bared, and went back to being docile.

“Last year,” Frank said, “I had a conversation with Amber about demons. She was worried I would get hurt, that the thing would come and get me like it almost got her. I told her I would be fine, that I had methods of protecting myself against them, but I wasn’t specific. I also lied to her.”

“Lied?” Damien asked, brow furrowing.

“I told her no one could keep a demon as a pet… that anyone who makes deals with them is looking for trouble, but that wasn’t strictly true.”

“No.” Damien shook his head. “No, you can’t expect me to believe—”

Frank tilted his gaze toward Damien, cocked his head, and grinned. “Surprised?”

“Are you telling me you… you have a demon as a… a pet?” Aaron asked.

“Not exactly. I like to think of it more as a work colleague; someone I don’t necessarily want to see every day but is there nonetheless.”

The skin on Damien’s arms began to prickle and break out into goose-flesh. He didn’t like what he was hearing, but a part of him had known Frank was capable of something like this. Frank’s Magick was cruel and unforgiving. He remembered, now, the first time he saw Frank use it; they were in the woods, fighting the hooded men. All Frank had to do was touch one of them and they went down, screaming and bawling like frightened children.

“Why?” Damien asked. “Why are you close to a creature that almost possessed one of our friends?”

“In his defense, he had nothing to do with her possession. In fact, I have him under control most of the time… right here.”

Frank fished a necklace from out of his shirt and displayed it. A simple brass pentacle hanging from a black leather throng. Frank had had it for as long as Damien could remember. He never took it off. Not even to sleep. A word suddenly came to Damien’s lips; one he had read in a book once. Probably one of Amber’s.

“Reliquary,” he said.

Frank nodded. “Good work, Freddy. Now how about we stop grilling me for how’s and we start talking about what’s?”

“What’s a reliquary?” Aaron asked.

“A thing I keep bad shit locked away in until I need it,” Frank said.

“And you have a… demon in there?”

“I think somebody deserves a Rooby Rack,” Frank said in a mocking tone, and Aaron didn’t seem to like it. Damien put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder, gave him a hard look, and Aaron backed down.