A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) (23 page)

‘It means I’ve got a massive target on my back,’ I said, suddenly cold. ‘That’s what my mother knew, isn’t it?’

I began pulling on a jumper. I had no idea what I was going to do – I just knew that whatever was coming, I didn’t want to face it cold. There was a clap of thunder outside and the rain spattered again. It sounded like there was hail in the gusts that blew against the window.

Abe too was shrugging into his shirt.

‘We have to go back,’ I blurted. A picture of my grandmother – thin, spectral, dying – rose up in front of my face. Maybe it wasn’t too late – for a witch who could heal the unhealable?

‘Yes, we have to go back,’ Abe said grimly. ‘If this is right …’

‘Oh God, that witch,’ Emmaline said, her face suddenly white. ‘She wasn’t after the riddle, Anna. She was after
you
.’

‘I’ll call the airline,’ Abe said. ‘Em, you start packing. Anna—’

‘I’ll get Marcus,’ I said.

‘Anna,’ Abe growled, and I knew he was going to start again, start on the stupidity of involving this unknown man in our plans.

‘Abe,’ I cried, ‘just shut up. Please. He saved my life. Do you get that? And Emmaline’s. He took a stab-wound to the chest to protect us. I am
not
leaving him bleeding in some seedy Russian hotel while we skip town. I’m just not.’

‘Fine!’ Abe held up his hands. His face was angry, but he knew when he was on a losing streak. ‘Whatever. Tell him what you like. But if he’s not ready to leave town by this evening, I don’t want to know about it. Here,’ he chucked a key fob across the room at me like a missile. ‘Take this. Go.’

I went.

The cut on the back of my head was already healing as I knocked gently on the door. When I put my hand up to touch it, my hair was still damp, and the skin beneath was tender but unbroken. I shivered and knocked again.

No answer.

‘Marcus!’ I whispered through the crack.

Still no answer.

The door was locked, but Abe’s key turned in the keyhole and I opened it quietly.

Marcus was lying on his back on the bed, the dim light from the rainy St Petersburg afternoon filtering across the room. His eyes were closed and his face, even in sleep, was twisted with pain. One side of his shirt had fallen open and what I saw beneath made me gasp: a huge puncture wound that split the skin below his ribs on the right, ugly with clotted blood and swelling.

I came closer and closer, watching the painful rise and fall of Marcus’ chest, the gummy stretch and gape of the clotted wound beneath the cloth.

I felt sick – but perhaps … perhaps …

I put out my hand towards him and felt the magic gather and build and tingle in my fingers like fizzy water in my veins. I had never felt it so strongly – not since the first time I’d come to Winter, with seventeen years of pent-up magic trapped inside me, roaring to get out.

I sat beside him on the bed very carefully, trying not to disturb his sleep and hurt him any more than he was already. Then I laid one hand on the hot, squelching wound on his side, pouring all my magic into healing the gash. It looked dreadful. It looked unhealable.

But the hideous, maybe mortal, wound began to close. Underneath the blood I could see the skin was knitting together beneath my fingers and with my free hand I gently drew back the other side of his shirt, trying to expose the wound fully, work out what I was dealing with.

Beneath the other side of his shirt was something odd. A dressing, a magical one like the ones I’d seen Maya prepare. It was a white cloth, bound around a handful of twigs and herbs, and scrawled with a charm on top. Had he been hurt before?

The gash had half soaked the bandage, blurring the charms and turning the herbs to a bloody sludge, so I peeled it away.

In the very centre of his chest was a huge black hole. Around it was shiny melted skin, fused into a hard pink welt that covered half his chest. It looked – it looked like a
burn
. But the kind of burn that only a chemical weapon could inflict. The kind of burn that you couldn’t – shouldn’t – survive.

I froze, my hand still suspended over the half-healed gash.

‘What the … ?’ I whispered. ‘Marcus?’

He opened his eyes and blinked blearily a few times. Then suddenly he seemed to focus and he was clutching, clawing at the sheets, desperate to cover himself. His movements were animal, full of a bestial desperation – and then, just as abruptly, he gave up. He slumped back on the pillow, his breath coming fast, his lip curled in an involuntary snarl.

‘Marcus,’ I repeated, stupidly, ‘what – what happened?’

He only stared at me, a creature at bay.

And then – I knew.

A picture filled my head: a huge black crow in vicious attack, its claws gashing at my eyes, and Seth, standing with a flare gun in his hand. He raised the gun, pointed it at the crow.

And fired.

A blue, blazing fire in the centre of the bird’s chest.

The stench of burning feathers and scorched flesh.

And the crow wheeling desperately into the sky, spiralling away into the storm.

I’d always known that bird wasn’t just a bird. It was a witch. One of the Ealdwitan. But I’d never stopped to wonder
who
at the Ealdwitan. I’d never asked myself whether that witch had survived, if he still bore the scar of Seth’s attack.

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid Anna.

I felt very cold.

Marcus saw all this flicker across my face and his expression twisted into something halfway between amusement … and hate.

‘Well …’ he drawled. ‘Now. This
is
rather inconvenient.’

‘Marcus – please, tell me this is a mistake.’

‘This is a mistake,’ he said. But there was no conviction in his voice. Only an amused, ironic resignation that he’d been caught, just when he’d almost snagged the prize.

None of it made sense.

‘Why?’ I whispered.

‘You don’t know?’ he laughed.

I shook my head angrily. ‘That’s not what I meant. I know what I am – I’ve found the riddle: “The Mistress of Death”. But why did you hunt me, betray me, only to save me?’

‘Because you were not the prize,’ Marcus said softly. ‘You were nothing but a chip. A bargaining piece. A means to an end.’

‘What was the prize?’ I asked, a crack in my voice. But even as he smiled, with a shrug that said,
Don’t you know?
I realized.

The Ealdwitan.

He
was the spy.

He was the one betraying secrets. In return for – what? Power? Being installed as the Head of the Chairs, what his father had fought for and failed to achieve?

‘I was stupid in Winter,’ he said softly. ‘But you made me angry – with your arrogance and your ignorance of the pearl you held in the palm of your hand. When I found that you knew nothing of what you were, I realized that was your greatest strength – and your greatest weakness. I could use that against you. As long as you had no knowledge of what you were, I could bend you to my will. As long as you trusted me.’

‘That was why you helped me,’ I said. My voice cracked. ‘It wasn’t for my mother. It was to get my trust.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your father – d-did he know?’

‘He had an idea – but he hadn’t known Isabella like I did. I was the only person she kept in touch with, after she left. When she abandoned me, I traced her footsteps obsessively. It was easy to look up her dissertation, to realize what she’d stumbled upon. To realize what I could have, if I played my cards right. But I couldn’t find you – her spells were too effective. Even with everything I knew, I couldn’t track you down. And then one day, I had a call, from Winter. Vivian Brereton had no inkling of what he’d found, none at all. But a new witch? A new witch of the right age, with an apparently outwith father? I came to check you out, as I’d checked out every false lead for years and years. And it was you.’

‘And the rest – did Thaddeus know about your plan to betray the Ealdwitan to the Others?’

‘Him?’ Marcus waved a dismissive hand. ‘Of course not. He had no vision. He wasn’t part of my plan. I’d always known he’d have to go, when the hour came. But you forced my hand with your demand for an interview. I couldn’t afford for you to go and see him. It would have come out – what really happened in Winter. You see,
he
would have recognized your description of the crow you wounded.
He
would have put two and two together, and in the end he would have followed the trail through and realized who was at the bottom of all the conspiracies and betrayals: his own son. He was already suspicious, I think. But your grandmother was right. He couldn’t bear to think the worst of one of his own camp. He was partisan. That was
his
weakness.’

Oh my God. Thaddeus. I put my face in my hands, thinking of his final moments, his son coming into his room, something in his hand. And then …

I felt sick.

‘You bastard,’ I choked out. There were tears running down my face. ‘You traitor. You killed him – you killed your own father.’

I felt weak with hate, so overwhelmed by it that I could barely find the words.

‘At least I don’t have to pretend any more,’ he said softly. ‘It was getting rather trying, to be honest, feigning concern, feigning
interest
.’

Despair rose up in my gullet.

My mother. My grandmother. They’d both trusted him.

Me.
I’d
trusted him.

It was hard to breathe, the tears constricting my throat.

And then suddenly it was
really
hard. Not just emotion choking me, but something real, as real as hands around my throat. I couldn’t breathe.

‘M—’ I tried. Only a whimper came out.

My ribcage heaved like broken bellows. I could hear pathetic squeaks from my lungs.

Everything was dissolving into black. I groped for a spell, trying to remember my grandmother’s charms, but I didn’t have the breath to say the words. I fell to my knees and felt the carpet rough against my cheek as my face thudded to the floor.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. There was a roaring in my ears and sparks of red and black in front of my eyes.

My fingers scratched at the short pile of the carpet, scrabbling uselessly for a hold, for a weapon.

Then very, very faint above the roaring in my ears I heard Marcus laugh.

The fury broke through like a scouring wave, brutally crashing away the threads of Marcus’ spell.

I scrambled to my feet with a vicious slashing blast that sent Marcus flying backwards across the room, crashing into the window with a force that cracked the panes. He howled, a dreadful sound of fear and pain, and pressed his hand to the blackened hole in his chest. I should have followed it with another blow to send him spinning into the street, but at the sight of his agonized face I faltered for a second.

A second was all it took.

He lashed out with a smashing wall of light that left me blind and I stumbled to my knees, groping for something to hold on to, frantically gabbling out spells to clear my vision. Another blast caught me on my left side, sending me crashing into the wardrobe. The louvred door groaned and collapsed, the thin wooden slats splitting like matches.

‘
Forescieldnes!
’ I gasped, my arms clutched around my head, trying to protect myself from the blows raining down. How was he so strong? This was magic like I’d never encountered before. It felt like I was being battered by twenty people, not just one. I remembered the rumours I’d heard about the Others; the illegal procedures, the way they drained people …

Another blast rocked the cupboard, hangers and chunks of wood raining down. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see how close he was, where he was. I couldn’t see the next blast coming. I could only hear, above my own gasping, panicked breath.

‘
Forescieldnes!
’ I wept again, begging for protection more than invoking it. A weak shield enveloped me and in the moment’s respite I tore at my eyes, too scared to remember a charm now, just working from blind instinct.

Somehow it worked – partly – and when I blinked I could see Marcus, dimly, over the far side of the room, as if through a fog. My eyes were watering as if I’d walked through mustard gas and I swiped again with my sleeve.

But he raised his hand and I cowered, prepared for another blinding blow, and flung a charm beneath his shield before he had time to protect himself.

It exploded in a hail of ice and snow, freezing him to the ground and, while he was cursing and shrieking charms to try to free his arms and legs, I scrambled out of the wardrobe and ran for the door.

I was almost there, when I felt his magic whip round me like a lasso, yanking my feet out from underneath me so that I fell with an agonising crash, sprawling across the floor. He pulled tighter and tighter, reeling me in across the floor, the carpet burning my face. I struggled, clawing at the carpet and sobbing charms over my shoulder, but it was impossible to think with the pain in my face and the pain in my head. The room was filled with a smoky swirling darkness: the darkness of too many spells gone wrong, of magic burned by magic. With a huge effort I managed to twist myself so that I was on my back, instead of face-down on the floor, and I could see him through the smoke.

‘Don’t fight me, Anna!’ he said, between clenched teeth. ‘Stop fighting, you stupid girl.’

He was standing with his back to the far wall, his muscles standing out with the effort of restraining me.

‘What’s the point in resisting?’ he panted. ‘If you get away, you’ll just be condemning Abe and Emmaline along with you. Is that what you want?’

Four feet away … three feet … I thrashed in his grip, lashing out with spells that had no effect. This wasn’t working. Fighting wasn’t working.

But I’d
got
to get free.

I’d got to.

‘I’ll have no compunction about turning you in,’ Marcus said. He grimaced and heaved again, the veins in his neck standing out like cords. ‘And they’ll come and get you. All of you.’

A foot away. There was no fight left in me. Only despair.

‘You can’t save yourself. But you can save them.’

And then he was hauling me to my feet, his muscles taut with the effort, even though I was no longer fighting him.