Salem's Witches (Neitherlands Book 1), page 28
Betelgeuse jumped back. He believed he had broken something, but at least it wasn’t his nose. Before he could react, LeFlay was on him, delivering strike after strike with his cane. Betelgeuse did his best to avoid these but plenty of them hit their mark anyway, his arms and legs taking the most of the punishment. An attempt at throwing a book at LeFlay to defend himself failed: the man dodged it and laughed.
Betelgeuse ran around the room, hoping LeFlay’s desire to escape the building would be greater than his desire for violence and wanton destruction. As one would guess, it wasn’t: LeFlay pursued him through the room, hitting him and anything in the way with the cane all the while laughing like the maniac he was.
After three whole rows, where LeFlay trashed everything he encountered, Betelgeuse started getting tired while the madman chasing him seemed to be barely getting into it. In what he thought was a genius plan, Betelgeuse ran for one of the armchairs, grabbed it, and tried to use it as a shield to keep LeFlay away.
Pointing the armchair’s legs away from him, Betelgeuse approached LeFlay. “What are you going to do now, uh?” said Betelgeuse, panting. “Guess you can’t break through an armchair with that little cane.”
LeFlay didn’t bother answering or attacking the armchair. Instead he went for Betelgeuse’s hand, unprotected as it held onto the armchair. Betelgeuse stepped back but couldn’t avoid the cane. Shocked, in pain, his arms gave and the armchair fell over his knees, pushing him down to the floor.
LeFlay looked dissatisfied. “This is the most ridiculous fight I’ve ever been in,” he said. “What was your plan, boy? You saw me on that stage. You’ve seen what I can do. Did you think you could just come and challenge me, then win? Please.”
Betelgeuse tried to remove the armchair from himself, not sure whether he should keep fighting or just run for his life. As soon as he tried, LeFlay pushed the cane down on his neck.
“No, no, no, sir,” LeFlay said. “You have fallen, and you do not get the chance to get up and continue fighting. While I’d love to school you on how to fight properly, I just don’t have time for this. So we’ll have to end this sooner than I’d like.”
Betelgeuse stared at LeFlay pleadingly, while the man grinned at him. “I’ll make it quick,” he said.
Betelgeuse waited for LeFlay to kill him with the cane. He saw him raise it and bring it down on the side of his head, then saw nothing else.
Sarah left the elevator[44] before her friends and checked both sides: The hallway was empty. There was only a strange smell in the air, one of…was it cheap perfume?
“Is this what these people call air freshener?” she muttered, rubbing her nose.
“More like spices,” said Laura, “very cheap spices. Assassins use them, although you’re not supposed to smell them like this. If you smell them you’re already dead, they say.”
“Did you say assassins?”
She froze for a moment with the implication that such a supposition was true. For a moment, all three witches stared at each other, as if waiting for an assassin to suddenly kill one of them.
“Well, if we can smell them and we’re not dead, they can’t be really good assassins, or can they now?” said Veronika, breaking the tense silence.
“Let’s just hope they’re just not around, and not in there with Howard.”
Sarah went to the door and, without asking her friends or making sure they were ready, twisted the doorknob.
Nothing happened, because the door was locked.
In a hurry to know whether the leader of the cult was still alive, she knelt and peeked through the keyhole. The office seemed to be peaceful. It was huge, full of drawers and shelves and whatnot, and at its far end there was a desk behind which Howard sat. For a moment she doubted he was alive, but then the sound of his voice came and calmed her. Sadly due to the distance and the huge door between them, she couldn’t understand what he said, but it was clear he was talking to a parrotphone. Also, was that water she could hear?
Veronika grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her away, then got to work on the lock without even asking. The ease with which she had taken to opening any locks in her way was impressive, to say the least. She still refused to tell where she had learned to pick locks.
“Done,” said Veronika, pointing at the door. “Now, because I’m way more educated than a certain other person who almost opened the door on us without asking, I’ll ask: Are we all ready?”
Sarah positioned herself to the left of Veronika, while Laura did the same on her right.
“Breaking witch style!” they said in unison as Veronika kicked open the door.
The air inside the room was oddly cold, the smell of cheap spices notably absent. Sarah’s nose was grateful, although Sarah’s mind was busier with other, more important things: Peter Howard didn’t seem to have noticed three women had kicked open his door. Instead he stared at the parrotphone, babbling something about the media.
“What was that?” said the parrotphone, in the last voice Sarah had expected to hear—Salem’s.
“What was…” said Howard, as if he couldn’t understand the question. Or the language being used to ask it. Or the world the language belonged to. He raised his head and stared at the witches or, more precisely, through the witches. The man looked lost, his stare vacant and his demeanor most unlike what one would expect of the leader of an evil cult. Between his words, which came slowly and slurred, the noise of water filled the room: The man was washing his hands in a container that sat atop the desk.
“Oh…” said Howard at last. “It’s the strangest thing. There’re…three women here. I think they came to see me.”
“Three…What?” said Salem. You could see the surprise on the parrotphone’s face. “Bye!” He hung up the call.
“Were you just talking to Salem?” asked Veronika. For once she didn’t seem about to jump on the old man to beat him up. It seemed to Sarah she did know how to behave. Sometimes.
That or she was having a stroke.
Howard stared at the parrotphone for a moment, then looked through Veronika, Laura, and Sarah. “Salem…” he said, as if the name sort of rang a bell inside his head—a very tiny bell hidden atop the tower of a huge castle guarded by a dragon and infested with giant mites, all of this while a storm raged. “Yes, I was,” he said at last. “I was asking him for help. I think if he comes out and tells everyone how good I am, they’ll stop killing my child.”
“They’ll stop killing your…” Sarah wasn’t sure how to proceed, or exactly what part of the killing Howard was concerned about. There were two children of his there, none of them literal and both of them dead or dying. “Which child?”
“Did Desiderio send you?” said Howard, ignoring the question and staring through Sarah. Now that she had his attention she noticed his eyes were red, as was part of his face. He also kept washing his hands compulsively, all of this while hundreds of people died in his front yard, including his adopted daughter.
At least he wasn’t playing the harp.
“Desi… Who’s Desiderio?”
“Nice chap, said he’d help me,” said Howard.
Sarah wasn’t sure this Desiderio actually existed.
“Said he’d send help to get me out of here. I thought it was you, but it seems I’ll have to wait more for…” The man stopped talking and just sat there, staring at them. “Can you do something about the crows? They’re bothering me. I think they’re plotting something.”
“The…what?” said Laura, slowly approaching, along with Sarah and Veronika.
“They’ve been up there all morning, too many of them.” He pointed at the overhead window where, indeed, there were crows. “But they came before too. Spying on me, stealing my secrets. Can you send them away?”
“Sarah…” Veronika whispered, “We need to get him out of here. Doesn’t matter where right now, and we can decide later whether to give him to the Dominion as we had planned, or—”
“To a sanitarium,” said Sarah. “He’s not quite right in the head, is he?” Howard seemed to be ignoring them, going back to his hand-washing.
“I don’t think he is,” said Laura. “But you know what’s happening down there, and if the church loses, the resistance will eventually come up here. Angry mobs don’t care if their target is a senile old man…”
Sarah gave the man another look, then motioned for Veronika to go to him. If the man for some reason got violent, Veronika was the most likely person to be able to control him. She was better at it than Sarah, at least.
She was also better than Sarah at being on the receiving end of violence, on the account that Sarah didn’t quite enjoy receiving violence nearly as much as she did watching it.
Veronika took a step towards the man, as if gauging his reaction. When he ignored her, she advanced with a second, third, fourth step…
Then the man started screaming. Yet instead of screaming at Veronika, he did at the window, pointing at it while recoiling in absolute terror. Veronika hurried, while Sarah and Laura followed her, trying to both figure out what was going on and whether this would become a fight.
Then the window broke and what looked like a hundred crows came in, pushing the trio back and onto the floor.
Sarah didn’t know what had happened, and it took her a few seconds to gather herself. When she raised her head, somebody standing among the dust where all the crows had gathered.
It was Morrìgan, although this time in addition to the pale skin and dreadlocks, she was sporting two big, black crow-like wings. For a moment Sarah thought the wings were clip-ons, the kind one would use for a costume. Her doubts dissipated when the woman was actually flying with them[45]. She also had green ornamental daggers in her hands.
“Now, now, now, that’s very rude of you three, barging in like that. Why, a woman can’t spend months planning something without having someone else try to take it from her these days?” she said.
Sarah got up and looked around: Her friends seemed to be fine, although both of them had been thrown to the floor during the attack too. “Who—”
She never got to ask her question, for Veronika interrupted her by getting up and rushing at Morrìgan. Morrìgan, looking far from scared, simply waved at her direction. Veronika was instantly thrown back to the end of the room.
“I always supposed you three would at least be kind,” said the Morrìgan. “After all, I gave you the case of a lifetime. Isn’t this way more exciting than anything else you three ever investigated?”
Sarah had indeed been bored with Salem’s usual cases, most of which consisted in finding lost items or acting as private eyes for a number of fashion designers, all of them friends of Salem, and all of them unable to trust their partners. Then again, she sometimes did miss the simple life of not being a fugitive.
“The—” she said, only to be interrupted once again by Veronika, who persisted in her attempts to attack Morrìgan. This time, Laura intervened, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back.
“Veronika, for all that’s good and holy, if there is ever one day when you don’t pick a fight with whomever crosses your path, let today be that,” she said.
“Why?” asked Veronika, still thrashing and trying to break free. The scene was almost comical. “There’re three of us, and only one of her. I’m sure together we can take on an actual witch without any problem!”
“That’s the thing,” said Laura, still pulling Veronika’s arm but dangerously close to losing her grasp. “She’s not a witch.”
Sarah looked at her friends, then at the Morrìgan, who stood there, impassive. She seemed to be enjoying the scene, smiling while Veronika kept trying to break free. “Now, now, now,” said the Morrìgan, staring at Veronika, “this is becoming interesting, so I’m gonna need you to stop whatever it is you’re trying to do.” Her eyes flashed red for just a moment, and an instant later Veronika stopped trying to attack her. “That’s better. Now, my friend, you said I’m no witch. Pray tell then, what am I?”
Morrìgan’s grin looked like a challenge. A glance at Laura confirmed that something else was indeed going on. For once in her life, Laura looked sheepish about making her knowledge public. It was almost scary.
“She has to be a witch,” said Veronika, standing still. “She summoned crows, launched us flying through the air with but a flick of her wrist, and now she’s keeping me from attacking her. I’m clearly under a spell, but you two should try and get her before she can—”
“Not. A. Witch,” said Laura. That was more like her. “As you can see, she has no magic wand.”
“Is she…” Sarah was unsure of how to act if her suspicion was true. “Is she a goddess?”
The Morrìgan let out a cackle. “The gods wish they were like me. After all, they depend on belief whereas I do not. I just do as I please.” She turned to Laura. “Now, tell me. What am I?”
“You have no name.”
The Morrìgan laughed again. “Are you that scared of saying it? I’ll say it for you: Nameless. See? It isn’t hard. Now say it for me,” she added, her eyes shining red again for a moment.
“Nameless.”
“Better. Now, this has been a great meeting, but I have things to do and time is running out. So if you’ll excuse me, I will—”
“Wait!” said Sarah, “Can you…can you save Annabella?” She was sure the thing would say no. After all, the very few things she had read of her sort were anything but kind. She was scared, and in a way also proud they weren’t yet dead.
“I wouldn’t save that woman if I could,” said the Morrìgan. She moved her hands a lot while talking, constantly pointing at them or at places. “All right, let’s do this. Each one of you gets one question, and that’s because I’m nice. Also, because you three have helped me a lot.” She stared at Sarah. “Now, why would you want me to save that woman? Do you think she has a future in this city?”
“She was instrumental in your…your plan?” Sarah didn’t know what the plan was. She didn’t know if what she was asking was a part of the plan. She felt she had been little but a puppet all along, and that wasn’t good.
“Yes, I guess she was,” said the Morrìgan. The grin never left her face, and for a monster she seemed oddly charismatic. “But think about this for a moment: I save her, then what? Assuming the Dominatrix doesn’t get her, which she likely would because I know Madame Xantiplam, and she never turns down a scapegoat. What then? Back to the brothel, back to spreading her legs for whoever pays best after destroying Quackology? Is that a fitting ending for you?”
Sarah couldn’t answer. The way the Morrìgan put it was grim, to say the least. She believed Annabella would have been given help by her followers, but—
“Her followers will distance themselves from her immediately. She’ll be thought of as a liability, so there’ll be no salvation. And this city doesn’t give second chances. Trust me, that woman is better off dead than living as a burned-out hero in this dumpster of a city. Who’s next?”
“Why?” said Laura. “I mean, why do all of this?”
“If there’s anything I like less than idiots hailing gods who care little for them is idiots hailing deities that don’t even exist. I’m all for authoritarian regimes and all, but I like it when people are upfront about it.”
“Like the Dominatrix.”
“That’s one fine, upstanding woman you guys have here,” said the Morrìgan.
Sarah didn’t feel the same, but it would be dangerous to say anything. “So take it as what it is: I’m doing the city a favor by removing a group bent on taking over, along with an idiot who scorned me. Also, this has been a lot of fun, so why not? Nothing like a good old war to shake things up a bit and get rid of the monotony of the daily grind. Admit it, you three have had fun.”
“People have die—” Sarah suddenly went mute as Morrìgan’s eyes flashed again.
“Now, you already had your chance. Let your friends speak. Or your friend, the only one with a question left.”
Veronika cleared her throat. She started moving again, although she didn’t seem to want to jump on the Morrìgan anymore. “Do you really expect us to just turn back, go the way we came, and ignore what you’re doing here?”
“Turn back?” the Morrìgan laughed. It was all giggles with her. “Not unless you feel like dying in a fire, no.”
“What fire?”
“The one you started, of course. Don’t you remember the thing with the curtains and the candle and the pyromania? It has already reached the elevator, and therefore you lot can’t go back that way.”
“But you told me to do it!” Veronika looked aghast. Apparently she did draw a line somewhere, and it was right before pyromania. “You said the curtain would put itself out after—”
Sarah didn’t need to get into Veronika’s head to understand what she was thinking. There was, after all, a reason for the stupid plan of setting fire to a curtain instead of informing of the right moment with, say, a mirror or something like that.
“Well, yes, I said that. I lied. I’m prone to doing that,” said the Morrìgan, who seemed to be having the time of her life. “Now, I feel I owe you three something for all the help, so…there.” She pointed at a wardrobe and its doors flew open. Inside was a set of brooms. “They fly, and you can use them to escape after I’m done here. It’s about time you three live up to your name anyway.”
“Now, just give me a minute…” she said, turning to face Peter Howard, who was happily washing his hands, completely ignoring what was going on in the room. “I’ll deal with this guy and—”
“Why him? Why not the other man, LeFlay? Isn’t he more evil?” said Sarah, who had regained her voice.
“You can go after him if you want, I won’t stop you.” The Morrìgan didn’t even bother turning to face her. “But as far as I’m concerned, this Quackology nonsense ends here and now with this man. You might want to look away.”
She took three steps toward Howard, who seemed to finally notice her presence. He stared at her, silent.
