Witching Tree (Alice Gray Book 1)

46

           
I felt it, the moment that my intention failed.

The release had been so majestic that the dull ache of disappointment that followed throbbed in my brain, clouding my reason and twisting my judgment.

People enclosed me in a large circle. Maddened that I had been thwarted, I willed the power back to my aid. Just as I was about to strike, I noticed a figure on the floor beside me, withered and frail.

Evan.

But something was terribly wrong. Silver filtered through his once pure blue life-force, leaving little of its original hue. That was Jonathan's power.

Or mine.

I recoiled, horror dissolving my fury and scattering particles of silver from my life-force into the atmosphere.

As the silver buzzed around Evan's prone figure, his outline flickered, further distorting the once smooth lines of muscle and skin. A vision of twisted limbs and a painfully contorted torso intruded into this reality. It was horrifyingly familiar.

Evan was degenerating into a gargoyle before my eyes.

"Do something," I screamed, unable to abide the sight of my power's destructive force.

Eyes flicking around the room, I realised that everyone's attention was directed at me, no-one spared a glance at Evan's changing form. Reluctantly dragging my eyes back to the awful sight, I saw just a faint shimmer travel over Evan's figure, leaving his body a shade more transparent than before.

This was all that the others saw. They didn't know what was happening to him, the torture that Jonathan inflicted on his prisoners.

Soon his form would disappear from this reality. He'd be a gargoyle, trapped in Jonathan's realm, at the mercy of a mad man.

I had to tell them, to make them see.

I scanned the circle, recognising Anne, her hands joined on either side with the others. Their power merged into one life-force, strands of gold and blue entwined, strong and bright.

Fear and disgust twisted the features of the witches that I didn't know. They continued to chant and the circle held firm.

They thought it was me, that I was the enemy.

I faltered, a part of my soul shattering when I realised that they might be right.

My legs became numb lumps as cold despair spread through me. I landed on the floor with a painful thud.

"Thank God, I thought she'd lost it for a minute there," Anne said.

As darkness descended, I heard Thomas's voice, fraught and urgent, calling my name.

I thought it was a girl come to beg some victuals when I saw the small figure at the kitchen door.

"Come in child," I called, busying myself wrapping a loaf and a hunk of cheese for her to take on her way.

The girl didn't speak. When she moved, I saw that her belly was heavy with child. Eight months, I'd say. It was that which had distracted me from her life-force. Blue, but with tiny lightning bolts of crimson.

"You!"

Staggering back I grasped the table to stop myself falling.

Jennet Device didn't move. She didn't speak. She just smiled and hummed the tune of the White Paternoster. A wordless curse.

And then she was gone.

It was later that I found the note. A crude, childish drawing of a tree, ten figures hanging from its branches, mocking the haven that I had built for my own unborn child, denying the source of our power, the fragile oak sapling growing in the garden.

I'd thought that the Pendle Coven was dead with that girl's family.

I'd been wrong.

I woke, the dream fresh in my mind.

It was her. That woman in old-fashioned clothes from Anne's cottage. She'd been in my dreams.

Sickly fear crept through me as I realised she'd been with me for months. She looked and sounded so much like me, that my own brain hadn't noticed. I'd let those dreams float away like the odd pantomimes our subconscious uses to work out problems gathered during waking hours.

But it wasn't me.

It was the Pendle Witch, the first Alice Gray.

She had something to tell me: something about that family song, about the tree, about the coven.

The coven whose voices were buzzing around me right now.

The floor was cold and hard. They'd left me where I'd fallen. I kept my eyes closed, unsure of the reception that was waiting for me, distrustful of the people whose eyes had shone with loathing.

As I listened to the hushed conversation going on around me, I understood why I was still lying alone on the floor. My fate yet hung in the balance.

"Were we too late?" Anne asked, a tremor hitching in her voice, "her eyes."

"We should finish her now, while we still can," a girlish voice said, the hard words contrasting strikingly with the youthful tone.

Jenny, the waitress from the restaurant. Surely her jealousy of me and Evan wouldn't drive her to such cruelty.

Evan.

He was still stuck with Jonathan, his body caught in the painful transformation to a gargoyle. I had to help him. But I had to help myself first. I forced myself to stay down.

"Who knows what she's done to Evan. I bet she's hurt him, he might die. His body is barely hanging on. Did you see how little control she had? She was consumed."

"That's enough Jenny," an older woman's voice interrupted sharply. "Evan volunteered to go in after her, he knew the risks".

No wonder Jenny wanted to kill me. It was obvious that she loved Evan, even if their relationship was over.

Had Evan sacrificed himself for me?

The thought was too terrible to dwell on. I could only cling to the hope that Jonathan was trying to manipulate me. It was Jonathan's power controlling Evan. I needed to believe that to save my own sanity. 

"That boy is a fool." 

My heart sped at the sound of Thomas's deep voice. He was close, I could feel him. He was guarding me.

"No-one will touch her."