Chapter 45
NOW
Ollie was in Meg’s cottage, staring around him. He wasn’t sure why he was here. He didn’t like the place; he didn’t feel welcome there. But something had forced him there.
‘No. This is bloody ridiculous,’ he said out loud. ‘This place is an animal shed! What the hell am I doing here?’
It was almost as if he’d had an out-of-body experience. One minute, he’d been in Newbrough village, and the next, he was here. But he must have driven here, because he had the car keys in his hand and he didn’t feel wet enough or cold enough to have walked all the way…
Ollie turned around, fully intending to leave the cottage and leave the entire area just as soon as he could, but as he took a step towards the door, he got a searing pain across his temple.
He cried out and clutched at his head, squeezing his eyes shut, and the scene played out like a movie behind his eyelids.
He was there, on the moorside, in the snow. He was standing dangerously close to a woman with long, white-blonde hair, who was daring to disobey him.
Even worse, he saw her lift her arm, and lightning flash across the sky as something glinted in her hand—
A man’s voice burst into his thoughts: Find it. I must have my revenge.
Ollie forced his eyes open, but it was as if a shutter came down in his mind and he blinked.
The room wavered in and out of focus. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw a man standing glaring at him, before the image collapsed into a black, swirling mass and rushed at him.
He felt a cold blast of energy and his thoughts and deeds were no longer controlled by himself.
Find it, the man’s voice commanded him from within his mind. Tear the bitch’s hovel to pieces and find it. It must be here; it has always been here. The witch will regret ever causing me harm.
Ollie saw, in the flash of lightning, the image of that white hand plunging a dagger into his body, just near his shoulder. He saw the woman who did it, and he knew her. He knew her in this life as Violet; he’d known her in that life as Meg. The Snow Witch.
Ollie’s shoulder began to throb, and he felt the sensation of warm blood oozing from his body…
Ollie suddenly clenched his fists and roared in fury, a veil of red-hot anger descending over him, blurring his vision as a new strength filled his body.
It would take them both – both the men who inhabited his body and soul that day – to find that weapon.
That dagger, he knew, was the key. The thoughts tumbled into Ollie’s head, but they weren’t his thoughts, and the part of him that still existed in the twenty-first century felt as if he was fighting against the tide trying to stop them—
That damn Snow Witch always had that dagger with her.
Then Emory took it, and the bastard dared use it against me.
Is it any wonder I wish to seek revenge?
I was protecting that village from witchcraft; I should not have been persecuted because Emory liked to fuck the bitch.
It should never have happened, he should never have attacked me.
I have had to wait lifetimes for a man of my bloodline, a man who understands me, and who is willing to claim that bloodline, to help me.
But now I shall have my revenge against the witch and my so-called brother. Because now, we are all together again…
Because all their lingering spirits had reconnected and found their earthly homes. There was unfinished business for the three of them. And it was anyone’s guess who would finish it first.
Ollie’s vision cleared, and his mind calmed down, his thoughts becoming more logical as he stood in the centre of the cottage, looking around him. Where would someone hide a dagger? Where could it have lain for centuries, undiscovered?
Then he saw it. A fresh scraping of mud where something might have been dragged a short way, a slightly uneven flagstone…
Had someone been here already? Somebody with the same idea as him? Someone who wanted to find the dagger?
Violet.
The idea came into his head.
Violet was far too invested in Meg and the Witch Trials. Violet had seen things, just the same as he had. Meg had shown herself to Violet, the same way Charles had shown himself to Ollie.
What if Violet – or Meg – had got here first?
Ollie stepped forward and put the toe of his boot on the flag. He leant his weight into it and it rocked. Here – it might very well be here. There was a strange energy about that area, a heaviness as he stepped closer to it, a feeling that he shouldn’t disturb whatever secrets it hid.
Ollie knelt and reached out, pulling the flag up.
The space beneath it was empty, but he saw something he recognised.
A charm from a bracelet in the shape of a book, lying on top of the soil.
In the soil was a faint imprint of a bladed object, as if that object had lain there for four hundred years or so and just nestled itself into the earth, trying, perhaps to hide there or bury itself or give itself back to nature…
She had been here. Meg, Violet, he didn’t fucking care who had it.
The Snow Witch had the dagger. And that could not be allowed.
Where the hell had she gone with the damn thing?
He stood up and stormed outside the building, looking up and down the fields, peering through the blizzard, his fists clenched. If he saw her, if he found her…
Then his gaze alighted on the Burn and he knew. He knew without a doubt where the Snow Witch would be.
It was time to find her and finish this for good.