Chapter 43 Hector #2
“From your face I guess your familiar has just explained how…” Kai said, noticing the subtle shift of my attention down to the creature around my arm.
“He has. My question is how did you work this out?”
“Well, I gathered that the demons were out of Bahmet’s parameters. It was a risk the first time, but doing so was necessary. One that worked out.”
“Show me,” I demanded.
“Hector, no.”
I silenced Emon’s response with the soft brush of my fingers across his diamond-shaped head. “I need to see your familiar leave, and return. It’s not that I don’t trust you, I’ve just always been more of a see-something-to-believe-it kind of person.”
Kai swallowed hard, clicked his tongue and summoned his familiar. A few beats of silence passed and I gathered from it that they were communing. Unlike Emon’s storm-cloud disposition, the shadow-kitten bounced around on his paws like an excitable child.
“I haven’t perfected the crossing yet,” Kai explained as he rolled his sleeves up and set a focus on his face. “Apparently the path I can create keeps leading back to a local fast food chain that was near my apartments…”
“Yes, I guessed as much.” I eyed the proof scattered along the floor. “As long as it gets us… you all out of here, then that’s all that matters.”
“My point exactly,” he replied, dusting his hands down his trousers before he got to work. “If you don’t mind keeping quiet for a second though. I’m not the best at concentrating, which is the most important ingredient in showing you this could work.”
I zipped my fingers over my lips.
Kai focused on the air before him, a space of insignificance that looked normal to the bare eye.
Brows furrowed, he slowly reached up with two fingers.
I didn’t know what he was doing until those fingers seemed to stab through the air and part it like a curtain.
He drew his hand down, bending as he went, creating a frayed seam in this hellish realm.
A dark heat radiated from the spindle, shadows thrashing like serpents as they attempted to reach for one another, all in the hopes of stitching back up the unnatural seam that had been created.
“Quickly, Faustus,” Kai said, shivering slightly as if he held a heavy weight on his shoulders. “Stay in the shadows. Return when I call for you.”
His familiar, apparently named after a fictional doctor who sold his soul to the devil, pounced through the pathway between realms, disappearing from view.
I found myself holding my breath, impressed by Kai’s skill with an ability he didn’t even know he had until three days ago. It was clear he was struggling, from the dampness across his forehead, and the slight tremble in his knees.
Stepping to his side, I laid a hand on his shoulder, offering him silent encouragement.
All whilst my mind roared with all the things I would have to do if this worked.
I gasped when Faustus came traipsing back through the seam, an exploded pot of ketchup pierced between his little fangs, red sauce smattered like blood across his nose and whiskers.
It worked. It actually fucking worked.
Kai released the power and sagged backwards into my chest. I gave him a moment to settle, helping him into a seat before unloading everything that had been building in my mind.
“Happy?” Kai said with a shiver of exhaustion.
“I’m not sure that’s the word for it. But convinced, yes. I’ll do it. But before you start celebrating, I have something huge that I need to ask of you.”
Kai blinked heavily, brought to the edge of exhaustion by his extended, and repeated, use of Bahmet’s power. “Anything.”
Proceeding with freeing Verena, and staying back to win the Witch Trials, opened up more issues.
Bahmet wasn’t stupid. He had been scorned before, and wouldn’t waste the time to take control of my body completely.
Without thistlebane to quell him, I would be helpless to stop whatever the demon would use me for.
We needed a plan for our plan.
And to our luck, I thought had the perfect one.
Fixing my eyes on Kai, I knelt down before his chair and kept myself focused on his tired eyes. “What I say must stay between us until I win. Romy must think I’m leaving with you all when you go.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if Bahmet sensed exactly how this would all turn out.
Perhaps the demon lord watched from the shadows.
To be sure he didn’t hear my plans, I leaned in close to Kai and brought my mouth to his ear.
In a hushed whisper, I told him everything.
He waited patiently until I finished, adding no comments like he would’ve before these deathly trials began.
Only when I was done, did he offer me a single nod and his final words of encouragement.
“Just don’t die, Hector. Lying to Romy for the interim is one thing, but losing you will be an entirely different issue.”
“Me… die? Oh, come on, Kai. Don’t be sappy.” I smiled, patting his thighs before I pushed myself to standing. “I need a pen and paper. Stat.”
“What for?” Kai pondered.
I lifted a finger to my lips, scanned my eyes around the room, all to remind Kai who could be listening. Apparently that was sufficient, because Kai asked no more questions. Within three minutes I had a piece of chalk in one hand, and a torn scrape of brown-paper bag in the other.
Another two minutes later, I was out of the tavern’s door, running into the foggy distance in search for Tomin Hopkin.
I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Not Kai, and certainly not the two other members of my coven who I loved dearly. If I hadn’t run out of the tavern, I probably would’ve never left.
Wherever Tomin was, I would find Verena. I left armed with the only weapon I needed in my pocket, and I didn’t look behind me to where Kai was stood watching my departure from the tavern’s front door.
It had been a while since I had toyed with my past. Years I had spent lurking in the shadows, tracking down my enemies for me to end them. Although this time I had no plans on killing the Hunter who I had in mind. But at least the thrill of the hunt was back. I felt, all in all, like myself again.
Find Verena. Free her. Win the Witch Trials. Become Grand High. Save the mortal world. Then, in the end, save witch-kind from the grasp of their previous demonic saviour.
“That is one hefty shopping list,” Emon hissed into my mind. His presence may not have been as comforting as Caym, but it was still better than nothing.
I smiled to myself, wind and fog whipping my face as I ran into the distance. “Never say I do things in half, Emon,” I panted, lungs burning as they filled with cold air. “Now, are you ready to play your part in saving the world?”
“Just do not blame me if this goes south, witchling.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
The slim shadow my body cast across the ground beside me shivered.
In a blink, Emon had us falling sideways into the puddle of shadow, sinking into the darkness as we slipped out of sight, and out of mind.
It was like plunging into a cold body of water.
I held my breath, clenching my eyes shut until the sensation departed.
It lasted but a few seconds, although in this twisted realm, it felt more like days.
By the time my eyes adjusted to the light’s return, the shadow-realm left behind us, I came face to face with the first person I’d set out to find.
“Verena,” I exhaled, heart beating as the witch turned around, back haloed by the orange flame of a candle.
Her bruised eyes widened, as much as the swelling allowed, A small, broken sound left her cracked lips, followed by a sentence I had almost expected. “You shouldn’t be here.” Panic overcame her, forcing her words out in a choke. “Go. Leave quickly.”
“Can you stand?” I asked.
“Why aren’t you listening?” she shouted back. “Silly boy.”
I shrugged, eyes drinking in the small, suffocating surroundings. “I hear that a lot.”
Verena’s dark gaze flickered to something over my shoulder. Her mouth parted in what would’ve been a scream, if she’d had enough time to release it. Panic jolted through me a second before a heavy, dull object cracked into the back of my skull.
The world tilted on its axis. Once again I fell into the shadows, but this time it wasn’t demon conjured. It was a darkness made from agony. And then, there was nothing but peace, and quiet.