Cat Magic (51 page)

The glass shattered. Amanda cleaned out the shards and, levering on the window frame, was able to pull herself over onto the sill. The crows flew past her into the room.

Connie lay on her bed with her hands folded neatly on her breast. Her face was in repose. Flames were popping up through the floorboards. The doorway was a sheet of fire. Even as Amanda watched, the bedclothes caught with a snapping sound.

The crows rushed madly about in the room, becoming smoking, blazing meteors in the superheated air near the ceiling. Their voices high with suffering, they tried to protect Connie with their bodies.

“Connie, wake up!”

The combination of the crows and Amanda’s screaming did it at last. Connie’s eyes opened. For a long moment she simply stared at the ceiling, which was shot with fingers of red flame from the doorway

“Connie, come to me! Quick!”

Her eyes met Amanda’s. “Don’t be a fool. You can’t protect me from my fate. Get out of here!”

“Come with me.”

She sat up on the bed, and when she did, something terrible happened to her. There must have been a layer of superheated air in the room just above the level of the bed. Her hair burst into flames. She screamed then and began beating her burning scalp. Then she leaped to the floor. Her eyes were wide, her lips twisted away from clenched teeth. “Goddess!”

The whole top half of her body started on fire. She danced. She made barking noises. Urine sprayed around her. Then she pitched back onto the floor, burning fiercely. Her legs hammered, her arms moved in slow arcs.

A white-hot stone of grief and rage slammed into Amanda heart. Robin screamed above the roar of the fire. “Hurry, Amanda! The wall’s caving in!”

The frantic voices and the heat compelled her to turn away from Connie. To keep from catching fire herself she had to crouch low. In seconds the room was going to be a mass of fire. She reached the window, climbed out, swung to the gutter. With a wrenching scrape it separated from the wall. The ground whirled beneath her. Bits of burning tar from the roof dropped past her like meteors. If she didn’t get away from here, she was going to become a torch.

Dark figures raced about in the reflection of the flames. The garden hoses played frantically. Excruciating pain stabbed her shoulder. There was fire on her but she couldn’t even slap at it without losing her precarious grip on the gutter.

Flames now poured out of the window of Connie’s room. Above the window the roof was a pillar of fire.

The hoses had managed to put out the fire on her shoulder, but another brand of tar hit her arm. She screamed in agony.

The gutter began to break. She braced for a thirty-foot fall to the ground.

Then there were arms around her, big, burly arms.

Robin and Ivy’s dad. “Steven!” He was on top of the longest free-standing ladder they had been able to find. Balancing, grunting with effort, he carried her down.

Then she was being dragged away by grasping, struggling people. She managed to get up and run with them, and not a moment too soon. With a roar and a great burst of withering beat the whole side of the house gave way.

They went far out into the herb garden before they turned around. The house was an inferno.

Beyond it red lights twinkled. The township’s volunteer fire department was arriving.

Silence settled over the witches. There was nothing they could do, nothing the firemen could do beyond making sure that the conflagration didn’t spread to forest and field. They stopped their truck in the front yard and began deploying hoses.

Amanda felt tears on her cheeks. She was not sad so much as bitter, and incredibly angry with herself for being so careless. Despite the clearest portents and warnings, she had underestimated Brother Pierce and his followers. Sheriff Williams came running up, his pistol m his hand. His eyes were stricken. “Did they get her? Is she killed?”

Their faces told him. He dropped his pistol and sank to his knees, shaking hands covering his face. “I love you. Constance! I love you! O Goddess, help me!”

Steven held Amanda, and Robin kissed her face, kissed it frantically. His eyes spoke the terror he had known when she was in the house.

Ivy came rushing up and put a salve on her arm and shoulder. “Third degree on the arm,” she muttered.

“Not too much of it, though.”

The salve helped.

Father Evans was back, and most of the others who had attended the initiation. “My dear girl, I’m so sorry for you all. I just want you to know that it wasn’t my people who did this, not a bit of it! I have preached to them that you aren’t evil, that you are simply doing things differently from us.” He faced the rum of the house. “Please forgive them. Lord, those who did this thing.”

“It was Simon Pierce,” Sheriff Williams said. “I’m going to put that man away for the rest of his life! And I’m going to disband that Tabernacle of his as a menace to the public safety.”

“You do that,” Amanda said. Her heart was full of woe and fierce hate for the ones who were oppressing the Covenstead She intended to make Maywell safe for the people she loved. They had as much a right to the freedom of their practice as anybody, and they were not going to be denied that freedom.

After his speech, the sheriff had bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. He stood swaying and silent.

“Sheriff Williams,” she said. She put her arm around his shoulder. “Come on. We need you now.”

“She’s dead! I loved her, you know. I loved her every day of my life for fifty years. She was a wonderful woman. Truly, one of the greats.”

“I know how much you loved her. And I respect it enormously.”

“I hope she’s happy I have faith that she is.”

“I know where she went,” Amanda said. “I can tell you for certain that she’s happy.”

“You—”

“I do know.”

“That means an awful lot to me. Thank you for saying that.” He was silent a moment. “I remember her first coven. Back in 1931 it was. We were just kids! Hell, I wasn’t even twenty. That was the Appletree Coven. We met around a crab apple tree out by the edge of the woods.” He gestured off toward the dark. “Hobbes and her and Jack and me and five or six others. It was quite a secret.” He stopped. His shoulders shook. “She was so beautiful. Like you are. Her skin was like pearl. I just fell for her. Totally and completely. I’ve been on her side ever since.” He hugged himself. “She was the Goddess personified, as far as I was concerned.” There was a long silence. “Oh… all that went so bad… there were terrible times! Hobbes—” The sheriff sobbed. “Why couldn’t she have gone peacefully? Why did she have to burn?”

“I saw it happen. She didn’t even know. She never felt a thing.” Best to keep the truth to herself. She needed this man to get himself together. He was very important to them now. He took something from his pocket. “I keep these as trouble stones,” he said, hefting a small object in his hand.

“To me trouble is a piece of flint.” He threw the stone. “Earth bind it, no one find it!”

He took a deep breath and contained his grief, at least for me time being. “Okay, let’s get to work. Can I assume arson?”

Robin spoke. “The whole downstairs caught at the same time. And we all smelled burning gasoline.”

The sheriff went to his car He spoke into the radio. “This is Williams. Constance Collier’s just been killed in an arson fire. I want you to go get that Brother Pierce of yours and lock him up until I get back to question him.”

“On what charge?”

“Murder one! Now, move or it’s your ass!” He put me microphone back on its dashboard hook “I shoulda gotten rid of that damn Peters months ago.” He shook his head. “Who’d have known how crazy they really were. How damn crazy!”

The house now consisted of five standing chimneys and two blackened columns. The rest was flaring nibble.

Amanda thought of the treasures that had been lost with Connie. The library now consisted of a couple of stacks of scorched, sodden books. The magnificent Hobbes Faery was not among them.

Steven remained close beside Amanda She suspected that he was as drawn to her as his son. “Thank you,” she said, and kissed his cheek. She tasted the tears there.

Robin hugged her.

Amanda realized that the whole Covenstead had gathered around her. For a moment she was afraid, but then her ages of experience came to her aid. On behalf of alt the witches she spoke:

“We’ve had a loss. A terrible loss. But I want all of you to think not of what has been taken from us, but of what Constance Collier gave us before she died. And what she would want us to do. What she would demand of us if she were here. We all want to mourn. I’d like to go crawl under a rock somewhere and just forget this world exists for a while.”

“But we cannot do that, not one of us. Connie would scorn us if we did. We’ve got to save this Covenstead, and the way to start is to protect it from further damage right now, tonight. I don’t think we can assume that Pierce will give up until the whole place is destroyed.”

“Nor can we assume that he’s gone. Every one of us is in danger. So I want every coven to be aware of where all of its members are at all times. Nobody wanders off.” She motioned to Sheriff Williams.

“Before we organize, find out if anybody’s missing. Look around you. Are you all accounted for?”

There was general movement. “The Nighthawks are in the volunteer fire department. They’re over by the pumper.”

“Except for the Nighthawks? Good. Now I want everybody who knows how to handle a pistol or a rifle to step forward ” About a third of the coveners, most of them from the town, gathered around Amanda and the sheriff. Generally the town witches kept guns. What weapons were on the Covenstead had been stored in the house. “Deputize them.”

“I did that before I came out, like you said on the phone. I was Just finishing up when the fire alarm came through. We were planning to get here a little early, just to be on the safe side.”

It hurt to hear that. But Amanda continued. “I think we ought to divide up. The main group will go to the village, some people armed. And get some fire extinguishers from the truck. I’m sure they’ve got them.

That thatch could go up in a matter of seconds if our friends manage to get to it with a torch. I want the Rock Coven to stay with me.”

“If you shoot,” Sheriff Williams said, “do so only in self-defense.”

Most of the coveners went off toward the village. Amanda watched them go, the moonlight gleaming off their weapons long after they themselves could no longer be seen.

“Now I want the rest of you to guard the Covenstead. That means the main gate, the West Street entrance near the blackberry patch, and the old road through the graveyard.” She left them to do their own organizing and went over to the pumper. A couple of the firemen were sitting on the running board drinking coffee. “How long do you intend to stay?”

“Until we’re sure it isn’t going to flare up again. Probably means all night, a fire this big.”

“Good. Watch the horizon, too. Especially toward the fields and off in the direction of the village. The same people who started this fire might not be finished.” With that she went back to the sheriff.

“Amanda,” he said, “I wish I could convince you to hide out in town until I have Pierce behind bars.”

That was out of the question. “I can’t leave the Covenstead.”

“I know that. Just wishin’ out loud.”

“Robin and Ivy, let’s go back to the village. That’s where I belong.”

They crossed the path through the herb garden and descended into me dark of the fairy mounds. The moon rode the middle sky.

On their way Amanda cried, silently, privately. Without speaking Ivy and Robin took her hands.

The village was very quiet.

“Where are they?” Ivy asked, standing among the cottages. “Hello?”

“Don’t move an inch. Don’t even breathe.”

The voice was hard and scared and mean. A man came hesitantly forward from between two cottages.

In one hand he held a shotgun. A flashlight flickered, paused a moment on Amanda’s face. Her throat tightened, her tongue felt thick in her mouth. They were being captured, right in the middle of their own village.

“Well, look what we got,” said another voice. It was terrible to hear, mad but powerful, cruel but ever so smooth. She remembered it well. Hate came forth in the shape of a man, smiling. “The rest of your people are under guard in that barn over there,” Brother Pierce said. He was Alis of the Alesians, he was the Bishop of Lincoln.

Other men were bringing the three guard covens toward the village. “Looks like we got the drop on you folks,” Brother Pierce said. “We’ve just been waiting and watching. We knew you’d fall into our trap.”

He motioned them into the barn with the others, but when Amanda started to follow, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Not you, young woman. You’re coming with me. There’s a lesson I want to teach you.”

Brother Simon Pierce put a rope around Amanda’s neck, knotted it, and led her off toward the dark face of Stone Mountain.

In the dark Amanda stumbled and fell hard against her burned arm. The pain drew an involuntary shriek.

She hadn’t wanted to scream, she had wanted to go in silence.

Nothing was served by this man seeing her weakness. He stood over her, his rifle crossing his chest, a tower in the moonlight. She looked up at the gleaming face, the amethyst eyes. Did he, too, remember the other times, when he was other men… Did he know the kinship between the two of them, the long association. In some ways he was as much the dark side of her own spirit as Tom was of the
Leannan’s.

How had so few of them managed to capture so many witches? For a moment it seemed almost impossible, even with the advantage of surprise.

Then she saw the help they had.

It was visible as thin smoke, hanging just beside him, the handless girl and also something else, at one glance lace and blue, at another slow-clicking claws.

“Abadon.”

“That’s one of God’s words. Don’t you make a spell with it’” He brandished his rifle. “I’ll blow your brains out right here and now!” She fought her panic back just enough for silence.