Chapter 40
40
At the exact same time as the stream of light came shooting through Dora’s head whilst inside Sephy’s bathroom and unleashed her full magical powers, George Corwin opened his eyes and stared out of the Boston hotel room window into the fast-approaching darkness. It was as if someone had turned on a beacon in the distance and he was drawn to it.
He sat up and looked around. The room was filled with shadows, but they didn’t scare him. He was made of darkness. He crossed to the window. He could no longer see the faint white light that had for the briefest of moments filled the early evening sky, but he knew what it meant. Somewhere, someone – and that someone was most likely to be a witch – had found their powers or had used them and they were in the general vicinity of Salem. This gave him great cause for concern because as far as he knew the only witch who didn’t know she was a witch in that area was Isadora English.
He pressed his hands to the glass, staring over the lights of the city out into the darkness, a smile curling his lips and whispered, ‘Let the games begin.’
He knew he was on borrowed time; if he left those women unsupervised, they would try to break the curse. But he wasn’t too worried. He knew that they had tried and failed throughout all their lives and he always overcame them. He thought of that fool Corey. Despite the fact he’d used his cane to push the man’s tongue back into his mouth, Corey’s curse had managed to awaken something deep inside George that had scared him a little and then fascinated him. He found he himself had strange and unusual powers that could not be explained. They had been weak at first and he had ignored them, but at the time of Corey’s last mortal breath he had inhaled his soul – for want of a better word – and felt that small grain of power grow stronger. His uncle, the overzealous fool, had been so caught up in the witch trials and accusations the afflicted girls had made, he had unwittingly brought George new victims without realising it. Every time Jonathan Corwin had ordered an innocent person to be hanged for the crime of witchcraft, George was there, in the shadows, waiting to come forth and steal their souls. He didn’t care that they had been tortured enough and should have been sent on their way to heaven to be welcomed into the arms of God. Instead, he interrupted that journey and took them inside him. Eventually he had been so overcome by the power he had harnessed that it had caused him to die a rather sudden and untimely death.
He had fallen in love with Lenora English the moment he had set eyes on her in her too tight petticoats.
He had tried so hard to make her fall in love with him, but she’d turned him down and walked away, leaving him so furious and full of hatred that he’d decided if he couldn’t have her for himself, he would take not just her soul, but the souls of those she loved so dearly – her sisters, even the girl. They would all hang and he would be there to take away their essence at the last moment. Only it hadn’t gone to plan.
Of all the innocents accused of witchcraft in Salem, he thought that the only true witches were the English women. They were good people, they harmed no one and helped everyone who needed it, and he admired that trait in them. They always worked hard and provided for themselves, taking care of each other, and he was more than a little envious of that. If Lenora had not spurned his advances each time they met, he would never have started the rumours about them. But she had and little did he know that hanging them would only be the beginning of their lives. He had discovered that turning lust into hate was a pretty good use of the wasted emotion and because of that he had been able to track them down in every lifetime they lived.
If he was honest with himself, he was getting a little weary of it. They made it too easy. Seraphina never left Salem, which amused him because the townsfolk had tortured and killed her. He had tried to take her soul, but it was not his to take. Neither hers, Lucine’s now Lenora’s, which at first had puzzled him greatly. He had been there, watching from the sidelines as they kicked and gasped their last breaths, yet, unlike the others, nothing released his way. They had clung onto theirs and for each sister’s hanging a black crow had been nearby, soaring away at their moment of death. Of course, there were always crows around on the trees near Gallows Hill when a hanging was about to commence, waiting to peck the eyes out of the unfortunate victim.
This crow was different though; George had studied it with great interest and there had been something about its eyes that was more human than birdlike. The other crows were waiting for the chance to peck at the bodies, eat the eyes and get their fill of soft, warm flesh. Not this one though, it never came back to scavenge like the rest of them.
When they took the English women that night after luring them to the captain’s house, that idiot cousin of his had helped the girl Dora to escape, but for some reason she had come back to fight him. She was brave, he’d give her that, foolish too, and he’d overpowered her, giving Lenora one last surprise before she hanged. When they had been loaded onto the cart and taken up to the ledge in the shadow of Gallows Hill, their beloved Dora was already there with a noose around her neck. Oh, how he’d savoured the anger that radiated from Lenora. He’d found her exhilarating that day.
It had pained him to watch the woman who could have led a comfortable life as his wife swinging from the branch of the old tree, but it was her own doing. Ambrose had fought him, but he was a boy and no match for a man like him. He had given the lad a beating that had left him bedridden for days and his uncle could not say anything about it. Ambrose had turned traitor, he should have hanged him too. George thought about that crow, and it occurred to him then that the crow might be the key to the English sisters and their immortality. He suspected that it was some kind of guardian sent to watch over them. But nothing could stop him now, not even the damn book that Ambrose had been so keen to search for his last few lifetimes. It was entertaining to see them searching for it, but there was no book on earth that could stop him.