Chapter 43 Hector
HECTOR
All the tables and chairs had been pushed back to the corners of the pub’s main room, creating enough space for Kai to sit cross-legged on the floor in its centre. There was a peaceful grace about him, with his eyes closed and breath even, except his face was screwed hard with concentration.
It wasn’t his impossibly quiet nature that shocked me, but what was happening just to his left side.
Kai’s familiar was rolling around in a familiar brown, grease-stained paper bag. He pounced in and out, small paws attacking the pile of… salted fries that were scattered around the overturned bag.
Sensing my arrival, Emon uncoiled from his perch on the bottom step, and lifted a head towards me.
“If you do not make that monster stop doing this to me, I am going to be forced to sink my fangs into his fucking throat.”
I scoffed at the serpent, nudging him out of my way with my foot. “Kai,” I called out, announcing my arrival. “My familiar has expressed his disdain for you. Care to explain why?”
Kai cracked a single eye open, and then sprung up from the floor as if caught in an act he wasn’t supposed to be doing. “Oh my god. Romy managed to pull you away from Arwyn’s side then,” he said, completely ignoring my question. “It feels like Christmas day.”
“I never thought there’d be a day you would be excited to see me.
” My eyes fell back to the overturned fries when I noticed more strange shapes.
Burgers, some half-eaten, others nothing but corpses of gherkin and bun.
“If Romy told me you found some fast food here, then maybe I would’ve come down sooner.
” I gestured to the mess, unable to ignore the pungent smell of grease and salt. “What’s all this?”
It was… quite possibly the most glorious sight I’d ever laid my eyes upon.
“I’ve been busy,” Kai said, stretching out his arms.
“Eating your weight in processed food or something else?”
Kai rolled his eyes. “Bit of both.”
“IF YOU MAKE ME GO BACK I WILL STRANGLE YOU, WITCHLING.” Emon’s panicked screech was so loud and sudden, it made me stumble over my footing. “NO MORE. NO MORE!”
I clutched the side of my head as Emon’s internal screech threatened to give me an award-winning headache. “What’s going on?” I asked, fingering my temple.
Kai’s posture straightened, his shoulders rolling back. He took in a deep breath, held it and then answered, “I think I can get us out of here.”
My heart thundered in my chest, but I also felt it in the tips of my fingers and toes. Every inch of my body became sensitive, as if his admission had flayed me down to my nervous system. “Excuse me?”
“Correction. I can get us out. It was pretty simple to figure it out too, after you admitted what you gave me when you brought me back from the dead. Using Bahmet’s magic, I can literally open a curtain from this reality, back to the world we left behind. The fast food behind me is proof.”
My heart beat a million miles a minute. “As is the sheer panic that my familiar is currently drowning in I gather?”
Kai chewed his lip, shooting a nervous glance to Emon. “Yes, sorry about that. Needs must and all. I didn’t want to risk being the one who left, just in case I couldn’t come back. The little demons were the perfect testers.”
“Animal testing is bad,” Emon croaked in my mind. “Really bad.”
The headache wasn’t getting any better. My urge to join Kai’s familiar on the floor and start rooting around in the bags of food was becoming too hard to ignore. “Is it safe?”
“That’s a loaded question,” Kai replied. “Safe in terms of us leaving the Witch Trials before the final game, then yes. I think so. But what is waiting for us on the other side… that’s a more difficult answer to give.”
“Why?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“The Hunters are still in control,” Kai said. “Witches are being gathered across the globe. Hysteria and panic. Tomin Hopkin may be stuck here with us, but his poison has continued to spread even without him. The real world isn’t the same anymore.”
My urge to eat the food around me faded, like ash caught on the wind.
I felt sick to the core, like my mind hadn’t paid any care to the world we left behind.
And yet, everything Kai had just admitted felt justified.
Like information I’d already worked out, but dared not admit for fear that would make it real.
“I need you to tell me everything,” I said, leaning onto the wall for support. “And I mean everything.”
“And I will. But I can do that once we get out of here,” Kai said. “Romy is going to be getting Arwyn ready. He needs to see a doctor, you know that. I’ve been perfecting the… size of the curtain that leads us out of here and I think I’m almost there.”
I figured it all out in that moment. This was all planned. Romy had got me out of the room to speak to Kai, so she could work on getting Arwyn into a position that was moveable. Those three days I’d lost beside him, and the coven hadn’t stopped planning.
Something Romy had said repeated in my mind.
They’ll both will be stuck in a never-ending loop. Tomin’s suffering, Bahmet’s failure. Over and over.
I locked eyes with Kai. “We can’t leave until we find Verena and bring her with us, can we?”
Kai nodded once. “Which is where I’m hoping you’ll come in.”
“You want me to go and find her?” I already knew the answer just from the way Kai looked back at me. “Is that safe?”
“It’s either you, or Romy. The only reason she hasn’t gone yet is because I convinced her to go and take over the watch for Arwyn.
If you’d refused her, she would have already been out there looking for Verena by now.
” His eyes hardened like diamonds of determination.
“I can’t let her go out and risk herself, not again. ”
Checkmate. Kai was playing a game of manipulation, moving the pieces of the board himself.
“You have been busy, haven’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, but more of a statement.
“I can’t comfortably let Romy go out there alone,” Kai admitted. “We both know that Romy isn’t going to be satisfied finding her… Verena. She will go after Tomin. Hekate knows what would happen if she came across him.”
“But you’re okay with me going?”
Emon slithered across the floor, wrapped around my leg and began traversing my body until he came to rest on my forearm. The demon’s tight grip calmed me, if but a little.
“Do you really need me to answer that?”
I balled my hands into fists, trying to steady the violent tremble that took over my limbs. “What’s to say I won’t do the same… I could go after Tomin myself.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m okay with it, exactly.”
“But,” I added for him.
“But I certainly feel a lot better.” Kai itched where he stood, hopping from foot to foot with nerves.
“The world is still in danger, Hector. We leave here with nothing to show for it, and we have no way of turning back the tides. There’s no point wasting more energy on a man like Tomin who doesn’t even fear death.
There’s nothing you can do to him that will hurt him enough.
Nothing that would justify going off plan. You know that, I know that… we all do.”
“I think I see where this is going, Kai.”
His silence was confirmation enough.
“I can’t believe I’m going to admit this.
We need Bahmet, Hector,” Kai said, jaw set with the tension that came from saying those words.
“With a power like Bahmet, there’s no saying what change we can set back in the world of witches.
Just like the demon fixed the issues of the past, it can happen again.
The world is… off. Dangerous for people like us.
If there was a way we could reverse it, surely that would be worth the risks presented before us? ”
“Do you want me to save Verena, or win the Witch Trials?”
Kai didn’t pause before he replied. “Both.”
It was all beginning to make sense. Kai had planned this.
“How much does Romy know of your little plan?”
“Not much.” Kai looked down to his feet. “But just enough to keep her on side.”
“She won’t take kindly to being manipulated, you know that, right?”
“If it means keeping her safe from any more harm, then I will face the consequences at a later date.” Kai picked up a handful of fries from the pile, swatting away his demonic kitten who thought it was all some big game.
“Arwyn needs medical attention. Getting him out is paramount, as is all of us leaving. Verena included. You heard what Tomin confessed. He can’t win these trials…
he needs a witch. Romy’s convinced if we all leave then we can leave Tomin here, stuck with Bahmet, and they both will not get what they want. ”
“Which would’ve been a great plan if the world we return to doesn’t require Bahmet’s power to right the balance back in the witches’ favour.
Got it.” And I did. Except I was hyper-aware of every inch of my skin against my clothes, the beads of sweat trailing down my temples and soaking into my dirty strands of blonde hair.
“Forgive me, Kai, but I think I’d feel better going along with this if you showed me what the real world was like.
Not to mention what we do with Bahmet if I do win.
Let’s say I’m successful, what happens when we get out of here and then there’s the issue of Tomin to deal with?
He isn’t going to trust me, and the concept of trust is also not something possible in regard to him either. ”
“I know it’s a big ask,” Kai said. “Risky. And I wish I could show you myself, but I haven’t attempted leaving this realm yet. I worry that if I do then Bahmet will sense it, and start the final trial before we’re all ready to go.”
“So how do you know what’s happening on the other side of the veil?”
Emon’s scales pinched the skin on my arm as he coiled harsher. “He sends me off to babysit that feline, and then demands answers the second he conjures us back. I am warning you, Hector Briar. If you send me out there again, I will ruin your life.”