Chapter 6 Hector
HECTOR
My bedroom had become a shrine to the occult. Once white-painted walls were covered in torn pages from non-fiction books about witchcraft. Some posters I’d drawn myself, including an enlarged, and very helpful, guide to runes and their meanings.
The windows were shut, and the black-out curtains drawn. I took a deep inhale, the air thick with the incense I’d burned. Frankincense, sandalwood and white sage smoke merged into a rather pleasant scent like grey serpents.
Romy didn’t mind that I’d ruined her uncle’s furniture with the sheer number of candles that took up almost every surface.
At first, I’d used plates beneath them to catch the wax, but the clean-up became an issue.
The pillars melted freely now, coating oak-wood sideboards, desks and mantles, making the room look entirely covered in thick films of wax in an array of colours.
Red for passion, black for protection, white for clarification amongst other things.
Candle magic was a rather new practice, or at least my research suggested that it had come into use after the witch trials of old.
But for the sake of what I needed to achieve, I made sure I wasn’t cutting any corners.
I wanted, no—I needed success.
I’d made myself an altar in the heart of the bedroom. I sat myself down on a worn eclectic rug, the wool itching beneath my hands as I tried to find a comfortable position to sit on. Before me was the overturned shoebox covered in a black velvet sheet. How very ‘Nancy from The Craft’ of me.
Whenever I tapped into the old magic, a rush of excitement flooded my body. Something that had been forgotten for so long, and since I’d partaken in the Witch Trials, I’d become rather in tune with the practice.
With a swift hand motion, whilst picturing the elemental sign for fire in my mind’s eye, the room erupted in light. In a wave of heat, every single candle lit with a proud flame. The kiss of fire across my skin reminded me of Arwyn, so much so that I was distracted for a split second.
I allowed myself a few moments to close my eyes, lean my head to the side and imagine Arwyn’s hands upon my neck, soft searching fingers roaming over my skin.
I could still feel his imprint from our encounter.
Perhaps I should’ve showered, washed him off and forgotten about him, but deep down it was the last thing I wanted to do.
Once the pleasant memory faded to disgust, I focused back on my task at hand.
I reached for the small plate of salt, running my fingers through it whilst picturing the element for earth.
I begin to chant.
“Spirits of earth, Watchtower in the North, I call upon you, ground me in my craft, and strengthen my intentions.”
As soon as I finished speaking, my body grew heavy as if weights had been put beneath my skin. It was a strange feeling, but a sign that the old magic was working.
I shifted my focus to the single white feather to the right side of my altar.
I didn’t need a mirror to know my eyes were glowing.
Air was my element and I belonged to it, as it belonged to me in equal measure.
A rush of euphoria speared through me, swelling my lungs and making me lightheaded in a ‘let’s smoke some weed’ kind of way.
I could do with a spliff. A nice thick one.
Later, Hector. Get this over with.
“Spirits of air, Watchtower in the East, fill me, lift my words to your highest peak, hear my plea, amplify it and heed me.”
The feather rose, pulled skywards on an unseen breeze.
“Spirits of fire,” I continued. “Watchtower in the South, burn with my passion, charge my words with energy, burn any trepidation that lingers in my soul and beyond.”
A bundle of sage gathered by red twine sparked at the charred ends without the need for me to bring a naked flame towards it. All it took was picturing the element for fire, and it burned, bringing a fresh and potent smell of sage.
The final element was always the hardest for me to call.
This was why witches once worked in covens of four, one to represent each element to help with calling the quarters before big spell work.
But alas, the old magic was mostly dead to witches of our generations and I was the only one practicing.
That was not entirely true. If Romy was home she’d be spell-casting with me.
But she had little time to dabble as her focus was in trying to regain some control of the Coven, not re-learning ways long forgotten to modern witches.
I took a deep breath in, picturing every molecule of liquid in my body to help hone my focus. “Spirits of water, Watchtower in the West, cleanse my desires, guide me upon your welcoming surface to success, hear my vow and see the purity of my needs.”
The brass bowl of water was still. I repeated my call, focusing as hard as I could on the element for water. It was like a child was drawing the symbol in my mind, making the lines wonky and misplaced. After a third attempt, the bowl chimed as though tapped with a gong.
I sagged with relief as the water began to ripple.
“Time to start,” I said to myself, reaching for the rolled map at my side.
I opened it, laying the wrinkled paper upon the altar whilst using the four representations of the four elements as paperweights.
The map of the United Kingdom was slightly scuffed from the number of times it had been used in the past few weeks.
My eyes searched over the map, whilst my inner thoughts focused on Father Tomin and Arwyn and where they were hiding.
To my left side was the athame I’d stolen from the Witch Hunter’s flat earlier this morning.
I didn’t think Romy would appreciate me using her nail clippers to scrape skin and blood out from my beneath nails, so I took the athame’s sharp point and carefully dug out all of Arwyn’s gore until it coated the tip of the blade.
Resting the athame, point down, in the bowl of water, I waited for a few moments until the blood had soaked and mingled in the water.
Once satisfied, I took my pointer finger—once I’d held it in the stream of sage-smoke to cleanse—and swirled it clockwise in the bowl of water.
Three times I did it, once for desire, the second turn for intention, and the third to solidify a habit and strengthen what I needed.
I’d studied the runes and knew them now like the lines on the back of my hand. But I still looked over to my poster, took the three runes I needed, and started tracing them into the murky water.
I started with the rune for insight, followed by the rune for revelation and finished off with the rune for need. All the while my mind was focused on the Hopkins. For extra measure I painted a final rune-mark for success.
“You better bloody work.” I lifted my finger up out of the bowl, drew it over the map and let the fat droplets fall upon the map. “Please… please…” I repeated over and over, refusing to blink in case I missed anything.
Ink smudged beneath the water which sat proudly upon the map—unmoving. I was practically holding my breath, waiting for something—anything—to happen. Finally, after what felt like hours, the droplets began to move.
My eyes widened, my breath catching as I fixated on the droplets. They gathered into a single puddle in the middle of the map. It was hard not to get my hopes up, but for the sake of the spell I decided to let them rule, fusing them in with the magic that was swirling around me.
The puddle shivered and then it split. Once, twice and then… three times.
That was the first sign that something was wrong.
I got up onto my knees until I was leaning over the map from a bird’s eye view.
Swift as a falling star, the three spots of water moved.
One came to rest in the far north of the map somewhere near the top of Scotland.
Another came to rest in the midlands, settling into a thin and obvious line atop one of the major roads that cut down from the north to the south.
But it was the third droplet, an unknown third member of the Hopkins’s bloodline, that held my attention.
It settled directly over the small mark for London.
“Impossible.” My hands trembled as I gripped the edge of my makeshift altar.
My mind was a storm as I ran around my room, looking for a much smaller map.
I finally found it in a book. It was no larger than an A4 sized paper but showed only London as a location.
I ripped it out of the book, rushing back to the altar and laying it atop the larger map.
I was prepared to repeat the spell again, but there wasn’t a need.
As soon as I laid the map of London down, the water seeped through the back of the map.
Again, it gathered as per its own will, puddling in the centre of the page before moving slowly to its destination.
“Fuck,” I exhaled as I took in what the scrying was showing me.
The droplet had gathered atop a location I was all too familiar with.
This had to be a trick. Maybe the spell had failed? Refusing to believe what it was telling me, I took the rest of the bowl of water and tipped the entire thing over the page. It swirled around, shifting like a whirlpool before resting, again, over the location the droplet had formed over.
The White Tower.
Fuelled by my panic, every candle in the room flared hot and bright before dissipating in a gust of conjured wind.
I was up and out of the room before I could think straight.
My phone was in my hand, shaking fingers fumbling to locate Romy’s number.
I pressed the screen three times before I finally hit the ‘dial now’ button, and it began to ring.
“Pick up, pick up, Romy, pick up.”
The phone went straight to voicemail after ringing and ringing.
I tried again, already out of the flat’s front door, not bothering to lock it behind me.
I was not thinking about consequences or the fact that I was the Coven’s most-wanted criminal.
All I could think about was that someone related to Father Tomin—or perhaps Tomin himself—was in the White Tower.
Which meant Romy’s life was under threat as well as the hundreds of witches hiding behind those stone walls.
By the fifth time I tried to ring her, she answered.
Relief knocked the strength out of my legs. Romy was on the other end hissing my name as if she had a hand cupped over the phone and her mouth. “Hector.”
“You need to get out of there!” I screamed down the line.
I was now on the street outside, between our home and the White Tower.
A group of tourists holding extended selfie sticks looked at me like I was a madman, which I was.
I was mad and panicked and practically full of desperation.
Romy was all I thought about, her safety was all that mattered.
If she hadn’t answered the phone, I would’ve clawed my way through the White Tower’s walls just to reach her.
“Why—what’s going on, Hector. Are you okay?”
“It’s Tomin!” I shouted, even though I didn’t know if that was entirely factual. There had been three obvious marker points on the map, suggesting three people with Hopkin blood. “He’s here! He’s in the tower with you. You need to get out.”
“Shit, okay!” Romy’s voice became muffled for a moment, as if she was shouting a command at someone else out of earshot. “People are going to ask questions if I raise an alarm.”
“I don’t care about them,” I spat. “I care about you. You need to get out.”
Her silence pained me, but I had no room for guilt. I was still moving, directly towards the White Tower which was a short run away. I could see the walls of the Tower of London ahead of me, surrounded by innocent humans just going about their exploring.
“I can’t just leave our people defenceless,” Romy finally said, but those weren’t the words I wanted to hear. “If Tomin is here, we are under threat. People could get hurt.”
“I don’t care about people, Romy.” I was running, feet hitting the ground, my words coming out breathless and rushed. “I’m coming. Whether you leave… or I get you out myself!”
“Hector, stop!” Romy hissed. “Don’t you dare come. You know what will happen if you—”
Romy couldn’t finish her warning when an earth-shattering explosion rocked the world.
A great force ripped me off my feet, sending me flying backwards.
My spine screamed in pain as I hit the ground, blinded by a billowing cloud of smoke.
I rolled over, groaning out for the air that was knocked from my lugs.
I tried to shout for Romy, but the phone was no longer in my hands and my throat burned.
Disoriented and in sheer agony, I rolled onto my side to find other people laid beneath the rubble and shattered stone.
It was like the world had fallen into a horrifying silence, but it shattered in a wail of screaming.
Out of the rubble and gathered cloud of dust and destruction, grey-coated people hobbled and ran—not towards the White Tower, but away from it.
As the smoke and dust settled, I got my first look at the destruction. The White Tower—a building that had stood proud and gleaming through time—was now a ruined mess. The side of the wall looked as though it had been torn out by a great clawed beast.
Before I could get to standing, the next assault began.
A swarm of leather-clothed bodies marked by a large upside-down pentagram swarmed out of the panicked crowd like ants, their focus on the ruined heart of the Coven.
Their focus wasn’t on the witches inside of it, but the innocent humans around us.
I counted no more than ten, but my vision was slow and my head aching so badly I saw double.
I didn’t need my vision to clear to recognise the sound of death though. A keening cry lifted through the chaos, and ended abruptly. I blinked through dust, just in time to witness the murders begin.