Anna's Hope Episode One (7 page)

She dropped the candle, whatever
compulsion that had forced her to hold it disappearing.

She gasped and took a lurching
step backwards, right into Scott’s firm chest. He settled a strong
hand on her shoulder and anchored her in place.
“Just take a breath; it’s not
controlling you anymore.”

“W-what just happened?”

“I’ll explain in a second.”

“What? Tell me now. I – what did I just
do?”

“I can’t tell you now – that wall’s about
to explode.”

On cue, the wall shattered. It didn’t
detonate like a bomb going off, and neither did it break as if
under some great pressure.

No, it shattered like glass, cracking and
tumbling to the ground in shards that sizzled with white-hot
power.

The broken wall revealed a set of stairs
leading down. Despite the fact the wall was easily ten meters
across, the stairwell was small enough that she could reach her
arms out and touch both walls.

Space was warping, twisting downward towards
those dark steps.

“Holy—” Meredith began.

“This is where I leave you, ladies.” Scott
walked past Anna. “Thanks for finding the door, Anna – it would
have taken me all night. I’ll see you around.” With that, he tipped
his head in a brief bow, toted his gun, and walked down the
stairs.

“Oh my god, it’s a travelling hell door,”
Meredith stuttered – the very first time Anna had heard the bounty
hunter display anything other than confidence or
contempt.

A travelling hell door was all in the name.
It was a portal that could be summoned – with extremely strong dark
magic – to take someone to whatever nefarious location they needed
to get to.

Anna
had read about them, she’d never seen
one. She’d certainly never stood on the brink of one, facing the
brunt of its foul energy.

It broke against her in wave after wave of
dread. Though she was standing and breathing, she felt like she was
drowning at the bottom of the darkest lake.

Just before she could turn away, something
happened. Something caught hold of her chest and pulled.

It wasn’t a hand or a tail or a
tentacle. She couldn’t see anything – she only felt a ghostly grip
latch itself around her torso and
wrench her forward.

She stumbled down the stairs, managing to
push into the wall to stop herself from free falling down the steps
and breaking her neck.

Before she could do anything she heard an
ominous clap.

The portal closed. The doorway back into
that room and Meredith closing with it.

Darkness swelled in around her, the only
sound her beating heart as it industriously tried to hammer its way
out of her constricted chest.

She shook, her hand slicking with sweat as
she used the wall for purchase, pushing into it until she stood on
her shaky feet.

“Oh my god,” she whimpered.

The magician had been horrible, but
manageable. This … this was ….

She took a step down the stairs. She didn’t
want to. Christ, she wanted to crumple to her knees and cry into
her hands.

Something was pulling her down, guiding her
towards whatever lay at the bottom of this circular staircase.

She wasn’t stupid enough to think it was her
curiosity getting the better of her. It was the compulsion, it was
back. Even though she no longer held the candle, her fingers
stiffened as if its phantom was still in her hand.

“Oh god, oh god,” she kept whining to
herself as her footfall echoed down the stone steps.

As she walked, and the staircase wound
around and around, she came across the occasional window. Suddenly
the darkness would be cut in half by a ray of the brightest
moonlight.

Which was pretty odd considering the moon
was waning at the moment. Yet as she arched her head towards the
long, slim window, she saw it was full, hanging in the sky like a
luminescent crystal ball.

The windows were too high to look down
through. She could be in some tower that overlooked Marchtown, or
she could be halfway around the world – she had no way of
knowing.

She kept walking down the stairs.

Step after step, that grip around her chest
tightened. It became hard to breathe, but she didn’t stop
moving.

Soon her echoing footfall stopped. She
reached a door. It was heavy, large, and covered in runes. They
glistened in the moonlight cutting through a window beside it,
making the symbols dance in an eerie silver-grey glow.

Anna
was a good witch. She may not have
been the strongest witch, but she did know how to handle herself
around magical doors like this. The very last thing you wanted to
do was touch them.

So what was the very first
thing she did?
Touch it.

She reached out a hand, let her fingers
settle against the wood until the runes squirmed underneath her
skin, and then she pushed.

The door creaked open with all the portent
of a flock of crows fleeing a cemetery.

It opened to a room. A massive one. The bar
may have been large, but if she needed any more evidence she wasn’t
in it anymore, this was it.

She walked forward into a chapel.

It was carved from blocks of sandstone,
their mottled creams and browns a soft warm palette.

Along the wall, and right at the far end of
the room, were stained glass windows. They were massive, majestic,
and stunning. Rich blues, greens, golds, and reds lit up with the
full-glow of the moon beyond.

Lit torches were arranged around the walls,
casting twirling patterns over the walls and floor.

Anna
, truly in a daze now, walked
forward, her mouth slack, her arms loose by her sides, and her eyes
out of focus as she stared at the wonder.

She’d never been in a more beautiful place.
It went beyond stunning – it did something to the mind.

She walked forward, her long skirt swaying
against her ankles with every languid step.

The chapel stretched out before her, carved
wooden pews neatly arranged along the walls.

Though she didn’t realize it, she made her
way towards the pulpit at the end.

If her mind had been free from the fog
encasing it, she would have stopped, turned, and run away with a
hearty scream. She certainly wouldn’t have languorously walked up
to the empty pedestal bathed in colored light shining from the
massive stained glass window behind it.

Anna
patted a hand down her face sleepily,
disturbing her hair and pushing it messily over her
eyes.

She didn’t care; she kept walking.

All fear was gone. The panic that had
punched through her when she’d first been pulled into this
travelling hell portal had disappeared entirely.

Now all she wanted to do was curl up under
that lectern, under the light of the full moon, and fall
asleep.

She reached the pedestal, climbing the
red-carpet covered stairs. She rounded the lectern, smiling
sleepily at it.

There was a book resting open on the carved
wood.

She saw the symbols, but she couldn’t
recognize them.

“I’m so tired.” She put a hand up to her
head and blinked heavily.

“Then you should sleep,” someone suggested
from behind her.

She had just enough energy left to turn
around.

A man was standing behind her. She hadn’t
heard him walk up, nor was there a door through which he could have
come.

He was just there.

That made enough sense to her tired mind
that she didn’t immediately scream and throw the lectern at
him.

“I was only expecting one offering
tonight,” the man admitted.

He was a wizard. She might have been dead on
her feet, but she could feel that.

He wore blue jeans, a dark-blue t-shirt, and
a biker’s jacket.

She swayed on her feet, almost succumbing to
sleep while inconveniently standing up.

The guy tilted his head down to follow her
move. He offered her a smile. Had she been sufficiently awake to
notice, she would have realized it was the creepiest smile lips
could be forced to make. “You look tired, Anna. You should
sleep.”

She kept her hand pushed into her head.
“W-why am I here?”

“You found me,” he chuckled lightly, “you
sought out my magic, and you brought yourself here. I already have
my sacrifice for tonight, but if you sleep through tomorrow, I’ll
be ready for you then. What do you say, Anna? Aren’t you
tired?”

On the word
tired
, she swayed back, banging into the
lectern. She struggled to keep her eyes open, let alone her feet on
the ground.

“W-who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I … I ….” She fell to the floor, her
limbs crumpling as the fatigue cut them down.

The guy walked up to her. With one hand
resting casually in his pocket, he looked down at her. He didn’t
say anything, he just stared.

Anna
rested her head against the cold
sandstone, her knotty hair tumbling over her face and covering her
eyes.

He leant down, his jeans creaking. She
could feel him as he brushed back her hair. “You’ll make a good
sacrifice. It was lucky you found us. But now it’s time to sleep,
Anna. You won’t have to wake up again.”

Sleep. Yeah, she wanted to fall asleep. Her
whole body tingled with the urge to let go and drift off ….

….

Anna
suddenly coughed, sneezing herself
awake.

Her sneeze was so violent, she jerked back
from the kneeling man and hit her head on the sandstone.

It was also violent enough to wake her up.
Not just from her impending slumber, but from the sleep spell
itself.

Her allergies kicked into gear. With a
runny nose, bleary eyes, and a fantastic rash covering her hands
and arms, she stared up at the guy above her. The creepy wizard who
had just tried to put her to sleep and kept promising to sacrifice
her tomorrow.

Oh – my – god.

Anna
jerked back, slamming her foot into
the guy’s knee as she tried to get to her feet.

Her allergies had saved her life. If they
hadn’t woken her up, she’d be ….

The guy struggled forward, snapping towards
her with all the pent-up energy of a cheetah pushing into a
run.

She scrabbled around the side of the
lectern, her hands leaving sweaty prints on the dusty
sandstone.

The guy didn’t say anything. Not a word. He
pushed around the lectern and snapped towards her.

She didn’t have a weapon, but her hands
instinctively grabbed the only thing they could find – the book –
and she threw it at him.

As soon as she snatched it off the lectern,
a strange echoing crack wrought the air. It sounded like every
stained glass window suddenly shattered, sending their mounds of
glass tumbling to the stone floor.

The wizard jerked backwards as if he’d been
hit.

Though Anna had woken up from a sleep
spell, and her allergies were beyond intense, she realized what was
happening.

The wizard had been sustaining his spell
through the book. By closing it, she’d broken the connection.
Violently.

He was stronger and faster than she was,
but this gave her an opportunity.

She lunged for the book. If she could get to
it and keep it from his grasp, she could hamper him.

The wizard, still confused and injured,
stumbled back, then his eyes drew wide in panic. It was the first
emotion other than cold hatred she’d seen him show.

He snapped forward.

The book had fallen behind a pew.

She threw herself towards it, her fingers
brushing the spine.

He jumped right over the pew, landing on the
wood and kicking it into her.

Though it jammed against her outstretched
arm, crushing her fingers, she managed to keep them pressing into
the book.

And that was all it took.

With every scrap of determination and
attention she could muster, she fought against her allergies, and
blasted magic into every page. She didn’t have time for a
well-thought-out spell. Instead, magic – undifferentiated and
dancing in a whirl of sparks and flame – surged from her touch,
dashing against the book and sinking into the cover.

The man was right on top of her, ready to
pull her back. But he stopped. His body jerked to the side as if it
had been struck by a train. Off balance, he latched a hand onto his
stomach and wheezed, stumbling into the very same pew he had kicked
over, and toppling over it.

Anna
kept her hand outstretched. She kept
her fingers pressed as hard as they could be, right into the front
cover of that ominous red-spined tome. Squeezing her eyes shut, her
lips curling flat in a grimace, she gave it everything she
had.

In a hail of whirling blue fire, finally
it exploded. The pages shredded, sending blazing magical symbols
plummeting through the air, scattering against the sandstone and
leaving great singe marks in their wake.

The wizard shuddered back, just as he got to
his knees, gave her a surprised look, then fell over.

He was out cold.

He’d clearly been using the majority of
his power to sustain the spells enshrined in that magical tome.
Which was curious. While a sleep spell was tricky, that wizard
looked more than capable of casting one without too much
effort.