Chapter 12 Hector #2
I began to speak aloud, aware that when I did her eyes snapped to my mouth as if reading my lips. “Ear comms are down. Must be a blocker in the vicinity. I’m going to get to Kai’s location soon so we can stay in contact.”
Romy drew back, looking over towards the direction Kai was hidden as if she understood me. When she turned back to me, her lips moved, and a single word sang across the wind as if skipped across it like a stone upon a lake.
“Okay.” I could hear the hesitation in the word, but at the same time I knew that she trusted me explicitly. “Be quick.”
Clearing the rune from my mind’s eye, I forged all my command into what I told Emon next, all whilst I turned around to face Father Tomin again.
Arms behind my back, Tomin didn’t notice the viper of darkness slip from out of my sleeve, drop to the ground and melt into the many shadows cast by the humans stood around.
“Are you ready?” he asked, tilting his head in a direction to his side. “There is a car waiting for us just over there.”
I nodded, taking a step towards him. “How do you trust that I haven’t just told Romy the truth about what is actually happening?”
Tomin’s smile faltered, although his eyes didn’t stop burning with a deep knowing. “Because if you are anything like your mother, you wouldn’t be so stupid.”
Fire bubbled beneath my skin at the second mention of her, all without the need for me to picture the symbol for the element. “You think highly of the woman you killed then?”
Tomin pouted. “I didn’t kill her, Hector. That was all Arwyn. Come on, you know this.”
Unseen hands squeezed around my throat, preventing me from breathing for a second. He said it so plainly, it chilled me to the core.
Tomin was right though. It was Arwyn who drove the athame into my mother’s body over and over, all to please the man who stood before me.
“I’ll take your silence as submission,” Tomin said. “So, shall we get a move on? If you want your friends to live longer than the next ten minutes, I need to give the command necessary for that. Once we are safely inside my car, I will call off the gunmen.”
I couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you need from me.”
“Something I’m sure we both are going to agree on. Only nine minutes left to call off the attack, Hector.”
Bile burned my throat, before I spat on the ground at Tomin’s feet. “There is nothing about us that is even remotely aligned, Tomin.”
His head tilted to the side, large hands wringing together before him as he contemplated his reply. “What about destroying Bahmet? Is that not what you desire the most? Even more so than seeking revenge and killing me, I’d wager.”
Once again, the darkness inside of me leapt up and sent waves of disgust throughout me. “That’s a very bold assumption.”
“Eight minutes. And believe it or not, I do need you alive. Because without you, I will never be able to destroy Bahmet. Am I right, or wrong, Hector?”
I paused, tongue swelling to stop the admission from proving that his theory was right.
Kai had suggested that Tomin wanted to destroy Bahmet, but I had to believe he was lying.
Because otherwise it would prove that he had sent Arwyn into the Witch Trials like a lamb to the slaughter, all to obtain Bahmet and destroy him.
“If you want to destroy Bahmet, then you don’t need me.”
“Actually, in a sense, I do. I need that little pesky part of the demon that lingers inside of you.” His smile widened until his handsome face split into a mask of horror. “Or is my insight wrong? Seven minutes.”
How did he know? Very few people knew of the part of the demon inside of me, and I might not know Kai well yet, but something told me he wouldn’t tell our enemies. So the blame fell upon one person, and one person alone.
Arwyn.
“You expect me to believe you want me to destroy the one thing giving you power to ruin witch-kind?” I asked.
“I think I have already successfully done that, Hector. Don’t you?
” He looked around to the crowd, pride practically glowing beneath his skin.
He turned his back on me once again, facing back out to the back of the crowd.
“I suppose if you don’t follow me, you’ll never know if I’m lying or not.
Although, again, with your magic I think you could work that out if you wanted to.
Isn’t that right? Oh, six minutes to go. ”
Tomin turned on his heel, and left me before I could reply.
I was rooted to the spot, watching the man whose death I had spent my entire life contemplating, walk away from me.
It would be so easy to kill him right then and there, to use my magic against him like the weapon he tried to tell the world about.
And yet my feet began to move after him, pushing back through the crowd as I followed.
At one point Tomin checked to see if I was following, and from the winning spark in his eyes, he knew I had.
Once we were free of the crowd, I saw a group of armed Witch Hunters waiting beside a large blacked-out van.
The door was open, and Tomin was gesturing for someone inside to get out.
I held my breath, half expecting Arwyn to climb out of the shadows inside, but instead seven figures, hands bound and faces streaked with tears, did.
Witches. I sensed their kinship even without the need for them to connect with their magic.
“Just in time, Hector. And with two and a half minutes to spare.” Tomin turned his attention to his Hunters. “Release the witches’ bonds, and let them go. See that no attack is taken out on the other two witches in the crowd… unless I tell you otherwise.”
Tomin had kept to his word. The truth of that unsettled me more than I thought it would.
I watched the terrified and bound witches like a hawk. Once they were each untied, they hovered nervously around, looking at me—for what, though, I wasn’t sure.
It was Tomin who made their hesitation clear. “They’re waiting for a command from you, Hector. Go on, tell them you have spared them with your cooperation and they’re free to go.”
I took my time looking at the witches, five compared to seven pyres. Tomin was right about having two spare… two for Romy and Kai.
This could be a test, or a trick. A way to make me think he was true to his word, when actually Tomin had another five witches hidden elsewhere still ready to be taken out to their death.
Regardless, these five lives before me were mine to save.
Clearing my throat, I emanated calm that would hopefully rub off on them. “You know where to go,” I said, hoping I was right. “Do so quickly.”
Their nods suggested they did, and slowly, not without fearful glances to the armed Witch Hunters, the five captured witches began to run. Not a single Witch Hunter followed, although my magic was poised and ready if they did.
“Now that has been sorted… after you.” Tomin gestured a hand towards the open door to the van, brows raised.
Not ready to waste another moment, I stepped over the littering of ropes that the witches had been bound in, and climbed into the car.
The sickly scent of pine poisoned my nose, the fresh leather concoction giving me an instant headache.
All discomforts faded when Tomin climbed in next to me, the door closed behind him.
“Without sounding like a concerned elder, buckle up,” Tomin said as the car began to move, a sense of rush in his words. “I’d hate for something to happen to you now we have finally carved out time to really sit down and get to know one another.”
I got the impression then that he was worried about something. Perhaps being sat next to me, fully formed with magic, when he didn’t even seem to have a gun on him.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
He looked sidelong at me before he replied. “To where it all began.”