Anna's Hope Episode One (19 page)

She nodded, a firm resolution building in
her gut. She even patted a hand to her stomach, the first time
she’d stopped rubbing her chest. “Okay then, it’s simple. We bring
him to us. We fight here, now, and we end this before
12.”

Aaron and Luminaria shared a look. If
things weren’t so serious, Anna would take a picture to remind them
later.

“How are you going to bring the wizard to
you, you silly witch?” Luminaria asked.

At the same moment, Aaron talked over her.
“There’s no way to bring that wizard here.”

Anna
tightened her grip on her talisman.
She let her fingers wrap all the way around the plain wood. It may
have only been simple and drab, nothing but string and a stump of
stick, but she could feel its power.

I
t reminded her of herself. She was simple
and drab, but underneath it all, she was still a witch.

She levelled her gaze at them. “I think I
can bring him here.”

“Short of slapping a target on your head
and going outside to dance naked under the moon, it’s not going to
work. And I’m afraid even a naked séance dance isn’t going to get
that wizard’s attention. He has clearly been distracted by some
other task. Maybe he’s found a way to continue without your soul,
or maybe he’s concentrating on amassing a soul catcher army to come
breakdown Aaron’s door. The point is, Anna, there’s absolutely
nothing someone like you can do.”

Anna
let her eyes narrow on the
term
someone
like you.

It was a term she had heard all her life.
Someone like Anna couldn’t be a witch. Well someone like Anna
was.

Someone like Anna couldn’t be a magical
bounty hunter. Well someone like Anna was.

People kept trying to make her believe she
was someone she wasn’t.

And it was time to make them stop.

If Anna had been the kind to flick her
hair and plant her hands on her hips she would have. Instead, she
clasped her hands in front of her and took a deep breath. “I think
maybe you should both stand back, as this could get messy.” She
closed her eyes before anyone could say anything.

She heard Aaron walk
up to her, his
footfall thumping along the carpet as he hurried to her side. “What
are you going to do? It’s best for you to just sit down and
wait.”

She also heard Luminaria’s soft paws trot
up to her side. “Just give it a rest, Anna. Sit down and
wait.”

She did neither.

Anna
closed her eyes and she
concentrated.

Not on her magic. Not on her soul.

As weird and wonderful as it sounded, she
concentrated on her allergies.

Because what were her allergies other than
an exquisite sensitivity to magic? Sure, they gave her no end of
runny noses and sneezing fits, but underneath it all they meant her
body was just more attuned to magic than your average
practitioner.

Anna
had never thought of her allergies
this way. Her whole life they had been a nuisance. Yet right now
they could be the key to ending this.

She tuned out Aaron and Luminaria’s
continuing complaints. Anna instead focused on her sharp intake of
breath, on the way her skin prickled around her chest, and on the
intense pressure building in her sternum. Rather than give in to
the allergies, she tried to follow them. Like a path. One paved
with rashes and snuffly noses.

With another deep breath, she felt the way
her heart pattered and drummed in her chest. She fixed her mind’s
eye on the sensation of it racing, until she felt herself running
along with it.

“Anna, you need to be careful,” she heard
Aaron warn.

Careful? She’d spent her entire life being
careful. Boring too. She was the girl who stayed at home to look
after the cat, the girl who stuck to lacy socks and wooly cardigans
because they were safer than jeans and heels.

She could do this.

As she followed the sensations of her
allergies – the way they reacted to the building pressure in her
chest – she swore she started to feel something tapping on her
head. It wasn’t an enterprising bird who’d flocked in past
Luminaria’s defenses. A woodpecker hadn’t mistaken Anna’s noggin
for a nice winter’s home.

No. It was him. The wizard.

It was the connection between them – the
string that bound their souls. Or the chain, rather.

Anna
had never practiced soul magic. Soul
magic was particularly hard and particularly powerful. It would be
a great way of giving herself a pounding headache and an iridescent
rash that would last for a week.

And yet now as she searched out that wizard,
as she tried to differentiate his soul from her own, she felt an
odd kind of tingle escape over her flesh.

It was power. One more basic than sparks and
flame and crackles. One that stretched back to the dawn of
time.

You had to be taught to practice soul magic,
and there were few teachers willing to do the job. It was hard, it
was dangerous, and the only people who wanted to learn were
particularly evil and unlikely to pay their tuition fee.

Anna
had never been taught, and yet right
now she could feel herself practicing spontaneously. As she
searched out that wizard’s soul, she had to learn to wrangle with
the magic of destiny itself.

She may have sneezed, her body may have been
plunged into a terrible coughing fit – but she couldn’t tell. Her
mind was now pushed towards her task with all the single-minded
attention of a horse with blinkers.

There
.

Finally.

She could feel him.

Her brow slackened and her arms hung limply
by her sides. She retained only enough attention and control to
keep her body standing, but she could feel herself sway.

She latched her hands onto the wizard’s
soul, and she pulled.

At the same time, he pulled her.

A battle of wills
ensued. No, a
battle of
souls.

Though she wasn’t aware of it,
her talisman lit up like
a flare on a moonless night. It throbbed with a
bright orange-yellow glow as it hung against her chest. The wood
and string were transformed, coursing with so much energy they
looked like nothing but pure potential.

Aaron and Luminaria had to duck back or be
blinded.

Come on,
Anna said to herself,
you can do
this.

No, you
can’t
.
Another voice said in her mind. It was him.

The wizard.

Just as she heard his determined, cold tone
echo in her head, she felt something.

She also heard Aaron scream.

Anna
forced her eyes open, just in time to
see black energy surge down her chest, crackle into her legs, and
burst into the carpet. It ate into the wood below, sending long,
twisting dark marks over the expensive rug and
floorboards.

Before she could say or do anything, a hand
descended from the black pool of twisting, writhing energy, and it
latched around her suede boot.

She had enough time to level her gaze up
and stare at Aaron’s shock-filled expression, before Anna was
pulled down.

She couldn’t stop it. She
couldn’t fight it. With a crackle that burst through the air like a
thunderclap at close range, she was stolen from that room. From
Aaron, from Luminaria –
from safety.

Anna
slammed face-first into the floor.
The wind wasn’t so much knocked out of her, but stolen from her
chest. It felt as if tiny hands had ravaged her lungs, stealing
every scrap of air and energy until she was left weakened and
stilled.

She heard footfall. It came from thick,
heavy boots. Then there was the distinctly memorable creak of jeans
as someone leaned down close to her. She felt a large hand grab her
hair roughly, and her head was yanked back.

She looked up into the wizard’s gaze.

His lips kept kinking and twitching as if
he weren’t sure whether to smile or snarl. “I wasn’t going to get
you until later. I found a way to sustain myself without the scrap
of soul you carry. But look at this – you found me.”

He still held her by the hair, and there was
nothing she could do about it. Maybe it was the exhaustion of
practicing soul magic of her own, or maybe the wizard’s portal
spell had done something to her – but she couldn’t move. It felt as
if she’d swallowed an anchor, or someone had managed to turn the
air around her into concrete to pin her in place.

She barely managed breath after breath, and
only just had the energy to keep her eyes open.

She stared at him.

His lips finally settled into a satisfied
grin. “I’m going to enjoy using your soul, Anna. I was going to
keep you as an ordinary sacrifice – but I’ve got bigger plans now.
You’re going to come in real handy.” He brought up his free hand
and brushed two knuckles down her cheek.

“Leave her alone,” someone croaked. The
voice was so weak, it barely travelled.

She heard it though, and she knew from whose
tortured throat it issued.

Scott.

The dark wizard was back to looking like his
usual self. He no longer mimicked Scott, and once again wore his
trademark blue jeans and biker’s jacket.

He picked her up by the hair and yanked her
to her feet.

She saw she was back in the chapel. Somehow
there was still a full moon shining outside, casting its eerie
silvery glow through the stained glass windows lining the
walls.

Up on the pedestal, Scott was tied to a
chair. It wasn’t ropes that bound him – it was magical, writhing
snakes. They twisted around his hands and feet, holding him to the
chair, the undulating bodies slithering as blue-black magic
crackled over their scales.

Scott had a desperate, wide-eyed look on his
face. He was pale, beaten, bleeding, and clearly weak, yet he
mustered enough energy to beg “let her go.”

The wizard ignored him and dragged Anna
forward, finally dumping her next to the lectern. She fell to the
floor, her head slamming into the unyielding thin red carpet. She
couldn’t move, but she could stare at Scott.

“Fight him, Anna. Come on, you can do it,”
he pleaded with her. Blood was dripping down from a gash in his
brow, and his usually tied-back hair was loose and clumped around
his face.

She tried to push herself up, but her limbs
felt as thought they’d been replaced with mountains.

“Fight it,” he begged her.
“Don’t let him do this to you.
Come on.”

The dark wizard started to mutter some
spell. She could hear him leafing slowly through a book resting on
the lectern.

She’d called that wizard because she’d been
convinced she could fight him. The sorry truth was she didn’t have
a chance. She couldn’t stand, let alone muster the energy to
attack.

Scott’s expression paled, his desperation
giving in to a sickly resignation. He winced, closed his eyes,
swallowed, and looked at her one last time.

How had she thought she could fight this
guy? He had enough power to capture Scott – and Scott was ten times
the bounty hunter she would ever be.

This would be the mistake of her life. Her
soon-to-be short life.

She felt tears tumble down her cheeks, their
cold touch one of the few things she could feel as a detached
numbness started to pull over her limbs. It felt as if someone was
deleting her body from her memory. As if, one by one, her hands and
feet and legs and arms were being taken away from her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see
something climbing her body. Dark crackles of magic leapt over her
skin, sinking into the carpet and making it singe.

She whined, trying with every scrap of
energy she had to jerk away.

She couldn’t.

The wizard stopped mumbling. He turned
around, dropped to one knee, and grabbed her by her injured wrist.
She gasped in pain as he tightened his grip more and more, until it
felt as if he was trying to squeeze right through the bone until he
crushed her hand into dust.

“Just let her go. Please,” Scott begged.

The wizard did let her go. Suddenly, he
jerked back and stood. But while he removed his real hand from her
wrist, its phantom remained. Once again that ghostly grip was back.
It encircled her wrist like steel-reinforced stone.

The wizard flicked his hand to
the side, and
Anna was pulled up by her wrist. She screamed, but it did
nothing. What could it do?

She was beaten, and very soon, she would
die.

Tears filled her eyes, washing down her face
in waves as resignation stole away her last trace of hope.

The wizard shifted his hand again, and the
ghostly grip around her wrist pulled it back until her palm was
facing upward, her fingers held back as far as they would go.

“Anna, come on,
please fight
it.
He’s
about to steal your soul.
Fight it!”

“I bring you a witch,” the
wizard announced in a thundering tone that shook the windows and
floor. “
A
soul for you to do with as you please, great master.”

She heard a rumble from outside the chapel.
The room started to shake, the torches along the walls shuddering,
their light casting erratic, horrible shadows against the
stone.