Alice (5 page)

‘Thorne!’ I shouted, for she was still under the water. ‘A skelt!’ I didn’t take my eyes off it as the rest of the spindly creature extricated itself from the crack.

The two segments of body were ridged and hard, as tough
as armour. It was a cross between a lobster and a giant insect, but with eight rather than six legs. As it stared at me, I felt the strength slowly starting to leave my body. There was power in those eyes; the ability to freeze its prey to the spot while it approached them.

Skelts were very dangerous. I’d witnessed them in action killing victims as part of a ritual practised by water witches; they’d also attacked Tom Ward at the watermill north of Caster – Bill Arkwright had killed that one.

The long snout was a bone-tube which it would stick into the throat or chest of its victims in order to suck out their blood. The creature was a vicious killer – bigger than I was, and a lot stronger, and very fast.

I knew I could fight it off with my magic, but that had to be a last resort. There were lots of reasons why I needed to keep my use of magic to a minimum; I had realized very quickly that I might need all my reserves to do what I had to do and escape from the dark.

The skelt was moving slowly towards me now, its joints clicking and creaking as it stepped delicately over the warm rocks. I could feel its power as it attempted to control my mind and freeze me to the spot as a stoat does a rabbit. I struggled and began to resist, but my strength was still draining away. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Thorne running towards me. She held a dagger in each hand, and her face was twisted with pain.

Before she reached the creature, it sensed her and turned, ready to meet her attack. I was suddenly free of its influence.

This was my chance. I picked up a rock – a heavy one that I could only lift with two hands. Then I did what Bill Arkwright had done when he saved Tom Ward. As the skelt lifted its two front legs, ready to fend off Thorne’s attack, I brought the rock down on the back of its head with all my strength. There was a crack, then a crunching, squelching sound as the skelt’s head split open. Its legs collapsed under it and began to twitch and shake. It was dead or dying.

To my shock and astonishment, Thorne said nothing. She replaced her blades in their scabbards, knelt down beside the skelt and began to lap the warm blood and fluid from its shattered skull.

I stepped back, horrified.

Thorne looked up and saw the expression on my face. Her lips were covered in blood. It began to trickle down from the corner of her mouth and drip off her chin. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?!’ she shouted. ‘It’s what we need to keep up our strength. It’s what the dead have to do in the dark. How else could we survive?’

She continued to drink the blood in greedy, desperate gulps, ignoring me.

Sickened, I couldn’t watch; I turned my back on her and walked slowly away from the rock face, heading back towards the boiling lake. As I walked, I gradually began to calm down. Lots of Pendle witches used blood magic, but usually it was only small amounts. The rest of the time they ate normal food, like mutton, bacon and bread. It was true that Lizzie had had a good appetite for rats’ blood, but the only witches who
gorged themselves on blood as Thorne was doing now were dead ones, bound to their bones, like those in the dell east of Pendle.

The rules must be different here – as I was starting to find out. This was the dark, and the dead here needed blood. How then could I judge or blame Thorne? She was just doing what was necessary in order to survive.

Although I was still some distance away from the lake, I realized that I could already feel warmth on my face. It was giving off far more heat than could be accounted for by the hot water flowing into it. Maybe there was volcanic activity directly below it? What if it suddenly exploded in a great surge of fire and boiling water?

I came to a halt. Suddenly I was afraid of the bubbling, churning lake. I sniffed quickly three times, trying to find out what threat it posed. I’ve always been good at sniffing things out. Some witches are better at it than others, but the skill came easily to me. It was one of the few things that seemed to impress Bony Lizzie when she first began my training. This time I was having difficulty gathering information. I tried again – three more quick sniffs.

I still couldn’t find precisely what the threat from the boiling lake was: I felt that something might emerge from it at any time.

Then, as I watched, some small creature came crawling out of the lake towards me. How could that be? How could anything actually live within water of that temperature?

Another of the creatures emerged, and then another. Within seconds there were at least a dozen, all heading in my direction.

That was when I realized that they were not small, after all. The lake was much further away than I had thought. The creatures only appeared small because of the distance between us. But they were moving fast, and getting larger and larger – which meant they were getting steadily closer.

Suddenly I knew what they were. The fact that they’d been some distance away and had crawled out of a boiling lake had delayed that realization.

They were skelts too!

I turned and ran back towards Thorne. ‘Skelts! More skelts!’ I shouted at the top of my voice.

She looked up from where she was still feeding from the skelt’s head, and at first did nothing but stare. I knew she was looking towards the lake beyond me. She too would be able to see the creatures.

Slowly she came to her feet but stayed where she was. She was brave, Thorne, and I knew that she would wait until we were level before running herself. She was truly loyal – Grimalkin had made sure of that – and would not flee while I was still in danger.

I was right. As I came alongside her, Thorne gestured towards the plateau, and we sprinted towards it stride for stride. We ran hard, and soon the breath was rasping in my throat – though Thorne seemed full of energy, her breaths still coming easily. Was that a result of the blood that she’d just drunk?

I glanced back a couple of times, but although the skelts still seemed to be following us, they were not gaining on us.
I needed to catch my breath, so I paused at the edge of the narrow ravine, pulling Thorne to my side, and looked back.

The skelts seemed to have abandoned their chase. They had turned and were slowly moving back towards the steaming lake.

Why would they give up? Perhaps they didn’t want to venture too far from their home?

Thorne and I turned and continued at a brisk walk.

‘They came out of boiling water,’ I puzzled. ‘Skelts couldn’t live in such conditions back on earth.’

‘Things are different here,’ Thorne reminded me. ‘These are skelts that died back on earth. Different rules apply . . . Now that they’ve retreated, we need to climb again. We need to look for signs of the gate.’

I didn’t know what she meant. ‘Are we looking for another wall of rock and a cave to take us back onto the path between the domains? Is that what you mean by a “gate”?’

‘No – getting out of a domain is not the same as getting in. An exit gate is so full of magic it usually gives off a beam of maroon light. It’s easy to see in the dark, but very difficult if a domain is well-lit. Don’t suppose it ever gets that light in this one, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble. But we’ll see it more easily if we’re higher up.’

Soon, after crunching up a windy, steaming path of volcanic rock, we did indeed catch sight of it. Thorne spotted it first, but had to point it out twice before I saw it. It was a thin vertical beam of maroon light.

We took careful note of its position, then set off down
the slope towards it. We were both nervous that the owner of the domain might find us before we could get away.

‘Sniff it out!’ Thorne commanded. ‘And tell me what it smells like.’

I sniffed three times, and instantly got the direction of the beam, which was invisible from our present position. There was a strong stench of rotten eggs.

‘Eggs!’ I cried, wrinkling my nose. ‘It’s like stinky eggs!’

‘That’s right, Alice. So remember that smell – it’s another way to locate a gate. Sometimes you can’t see the maroon light.’

As we approached the gate, Thorne led me to the left and we approached it at an angle. What had been a vertical line changed first into a crescent, gradually giving way to an oval shape. When we were standing directly before it, I saw its true form.

The gate was made up of three concentric rotating circles of maroon light floating in the air at about waist height. Through it I glimpsed another landscape – something very different to this volcanic wasteland.

Its position made it difficult to access. I approached it nervously.

‘You have to dive through without touching the edge,’ Thorne instructed. ‘Catch it by accident and you could lose a limb. The edge of the gate is sharper than one of Grimalkin’s blades! You go first. I’ll follow. Once you’re through, go into a forward roll.’

So I prepared to dive through the gate – into who knows what.

I THREW MYSELF
into a forward roll, as Thorne had told me, and hit soft ground. She came to her feet behind me, clutching her blades, looking ready for anything.

It was night, but the air was warmer than the County on a summer’s day: there was that same damp feeling, as if, despite the clear skies, rain wasn’t far away. It was quite a relief after the dry heat of the last domain. The sky was black and seemingly clear of cloud, though I could see no stars.

Directly ahead of us was a grassy slope; without speaking, we began to climb it. As we came to the summit, I saw a full moon low on the horizon.

It was blood-red.

I had witnessed such a moon before, on the night the Pendle witches brought the Fiend through a portal to our world; the same night the Malkin clan had sent their witch assassin to hunt Tom Ward down and kill him.

Somewhere ahead, I heard seabirds calling and, before we reached the summit, another harsh, rhythmical sound – the surge and ebb of the sea on a shingle beach.

At the top we paused and looked down. Below us was what appeared to be a large coastal town. Its huddle of narrow streets sloped down to meet the wide curve of a bay. Fishing boats bobbed at anchor or lay stranded on the beach, where a red tide was lapping hungrily at the pebbles.

‘Is this the Fiend’s domain?’ I asked, staring up at that scary red moon – sure that I was right and very relieved to have found it so quickly.

But to my dismay, Thorne shook her head, looking tense; I thought I saw fear in her eyes. ‘I’ve never been in the Fiend’s domain so I don’t know what to expect,’ she explained, ‘but I do know where we are now . . . This is one of the most dangerous domains of all. It’s where most of the human dead who belong to the dark congregate. It’s full of dead witches and abhumans, not to mention daemons and other entities that prey upon them. This is where I first came when I died. I got out of here just as quick as I could!’

‘It was the blood-moon that made me think this place belonged to the Fiend. It’s like the scary one we all saw that night he came to earth,’ I said.

‘That moon never sets here – it’s fixed in one position. It’s
always dark. This is a terrible place . . .’ Thorne murmured.

‘Ain’t no point in going down there, then, is there? Best thing we can do is follow in your footsteps,’ I told her. ‘We need to get out of here right away.’

But Thorne shook her head. ‘I wish it were that simple, Alice . . . I
do
know the way out. There is only one in this domain – but it’s down there in that ugly, dangerous town. If we want to leave this domain, we have to go down into those streets.’

This was bad. A town full of such entities offered a whole range of threats. And if the place scared Thorne – said by Grimalkin to be one of the bravest people she’d ever met – it certainly scared me.

‘I could have lots of enemies down there,’ I told her. ‘Will they know I’m here? I did my best to cloak myself.’

Thorne nodded. ‘Even with the most powerful cloaking imaginable, there are still ways, especially as you’re still alive. It’s very rare to see a living person here. It sends out strange ripples into the dark, and some of the dead will be skilled at sniffing out where you are.’

‘Wouldn’t like to meet up with Bony Lizzie . . .’ I said. She was the first of many enemies who came to mind. There were lots of things that witch would like to pay me back for. I remembered how I’d helped Tom escape from the pit near Chipenden where Lizzie had imprisoned him. That had led to Old Gregory capturing her and throwing her into a pit in his garden. But she wasn’t the only one I needed to fear.

‘And there are others whose days I’ve ended or helped to end. They could all be waiting for me,’ I told Thorne.

Thorne wouldn’t meet my gaze. She bit her bottom lip and turned her back on me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

She swivelled round to face me. For a moment I thought I saw her eyes glisten with tears, but then I wondered if it was just a trick of the light. That strange moon had made it look like they were filled with blood.