The Secrets of Life and Death (35 page)

The witch took a long taper and lit it from one of her white candles, then turned to the long, black candle to the east, inside her circle. She ignited it, and began chanting.

The air inside the church started to move, the dust rising like mist, tumbling around Jack’s feet. It seemed to be winding itself like a veil, catching on objects, streaming around the chapel, until it reached the easternmost summoning circle, where it arched itself around the edges and spun into a cylinder. Inside her shell, the witch’s candles were unmoved, lighting the shape as it revolved faster. Jack watched as it started to creep inside the summoning circle, forming a roughly human shape.

The air started to stir, lifting her hair, exploring vulnerable skin at neck and cuffs, touching her ankles above her boots. It built, sighing around her, tugging at the edges of her jacket, which billowed around her like a windsock. A keening sound was threaded through it, which developed into a moan.

‘
Jaaackkkk
,’ it mourned.

‘Jack!’ Sadie’s voice was wobbly but sharp. ‘It’s the tornado! The air elemental.’ Jack staggered in the force buffeting her from different sides, trying to throw her. She dragged one foot back, then the other, pace on pace, trying to reach the shelter of the pews. She could see the nearest bench tremble, lift off the floor and tumble towards her. She ducked, rolling onto her shoulder as it smashed into the tiles a foot from her head, the dark oak splintering into long shards. Jack was already moving behind another unstable pew, running, slipping and scrambling behind the seats, away from the epicentre. She caught a glimpse of the thing – the elemental – trapped inside the circle, writhing as if trying to get out. As she rounded the back of the pews, which shattered beside her, she dived for the back of the stone altar. Wood slivers hit it like shrapnel, and she curled into a defensive ball.
Shit, Felix, where are you?

Risking a glance around her, she caught sight of a heavy carved door to the right of the altar and saw Mac. The inquisitor was kneeling, holding a book in one hand. He seemed to be chanting something, but Jack couldn’t hear him over the thunderous gale. Felix peered past him, and at Mac’s nod, half ran, half crawled to Jack’s position behind the altar.

He pulled Jack close enough so he could bellow in her ear, the words barely audible over the storm. ‘We have to banish it!’

She could hear the words, but had no idea what he was talking about until he grabbed her sword arm and started dragging her towards the door, now slamming shut and wrenching itself open, the frame quivering with each impact.

Timing the scuttle through the door, they avoided being crushed, and huddled out of the extremes of the tornado behind Mac. Felix started sketching a few Latin words on the wall with a piece of displaced plaster. ‘Banishing!’ he bellowed, pointing at the first of the words, and speaking them. Jack mumbled along until she got the hang of the first phrases, then as Felix raised his hands, she started shouting them back at the wind. Doing something, even as ineffectual as screaming into a storm, was satisfying.

Decibel by decibel, the roaring softened, the debris smashing into the door started sliding into it, and the howling inside the whirlwind lessened. Before it had gone entirely, Jack tightened her grip around the hilt of the sword and went back.

She forced her way into the nave, scraping the floor clear of wreckage. The interior of the church was trashed, but swept clear in the middle. Shattered pews made a pile of kindling several feet deep at the walls; the door was only passable because it had been sheltered by the stone altar. The protective circle had shielded Sadie and the witch.

‘Sadie!’ Jack held the sword in front of her, now truly pissed off. Sadie was curled on the floor, both arms now dribbling blood.

The woman was standing tall, looking exhilarated, her arms outstretched. ‘You think you can stop me? You think many others, far more powerful, have not tried to defeat me?’ She lifted the chalice again, her eyes rolling back in her head in ecstasy. ‘Oh, the energy,’ she sighed, as she lowered the cup. ‘She is young, and strong.’

Jack studied the markings on the floor. The circle enclosing the witch appeared to be reinforced with small symbols at intervals in red. The summoning circles outside were drawn in black ink, and she walked over to the nearest one, which had enclosed the air elemental. It was blackened and charred, and she could pass a hand through it. Sidling to the next one, she could only get within a few feet of it.

From the side, Jack could see Sadie curled around her injured arms. The teenager’s eyes flickered open, and she looked at Jack. Their gazes locked, and Sadie seemed to gather some energy. She struggled to sit up. ‘Jack …’

‘You see the power of my friends? You think you can cope with water, or fire?’ The countess seemed to enjoy the taunting, so Jack tried to distract her.

‘You can say that because you think you are safe in your little haven. But you don’t dare tackle me yourself.’

‘What are you, really?’ The countess tilted her head on one side, a strangely Sadie gesture. ‘I know you are not a witch, and you are too ignorant to be a sorcerer.’ The woman licked her blood-crusted lips with every appearance of enjoyment. ‘I could kill you in an instant. You should be running for your life, but you are still here. A fly buzzing around a giant.’

She lit a taper, and touched the flame to the candle in the west.

Jack noticed a movement out of the corner of her eyes, and realised it was a rivulet of water dribbling from the ceiling, illuminated by the witch’s candles. The silver threads striated the wall, finding their way down the shattered plaster. As Jack watched, they joined into blobs, like mercury.

Felix and Mac slid out of the doorway, and made their way to her side. The witch smiled at them all, her teeth stained scarlet.

‘Dear, dear Stephen. Your sister has served me well, but now I need to move on.’ She turned to Felix. ‘And Professor Guichard. Yours will be a great loss to the academic community. There is much still to learn of Dee and Kelley. But we shall study the original journals, and refine Dee’s treatments.’

McNamara drew Jack aside. ‘We need to summon a counter-elemental,’ he breathed into her ear. ‘I can call upon the angels to help me, but we need to get out of here when it’s released.’

Jack turned her face away from the countess. ‘I’m not going without the girl.’ She turned to see Sadie, her hands flat against the floor, pushing up as if holding the world away.

Felix joined them, stepping over rivulets running around their feet. ‘I hope you can swim.’

‘I’m going to raise an earth elemental.’ McNamara sounded strangely calm. ‘You should both leave. No mortal can survive this.’

‘I am the only immortal here.’ The countess laughed from her sanctuary, the sound mocking, as water started dribbling from the roof. Jack could see the droplets running together in the bottom of the summoning circle.

Jack got a wild idea. ‘That’s not strictly true, is it?’ she whispered to Felix. ‘If I …’

‘If you … ?’ The idea formed in Felix’s mind, as Mac looked from one to the other. ‘Oh, God. Jack, no.’

‘If I drink blood, that will make me like her. I would have more power, at least for a short time.’

The inquisitor stepped back, his hand going to his crucifix. ‘You are a revenant?’ he whispered. He studied her face. ‘Yes. I should have seen it earlier.’

‘So, if I drink blood—’

‘—you will become like her. A fiend, a parasitical monster, feeding on the blood of others.’ McNamara’s face was rigid, and he stepped further back. ‘I would rather let the beast live than create a second. Go. I must raise the elemental.’ He placed his bag on the dais. He brought out a candle similar to the countess’s, but smaller. When he fitted it into a stand and lit the wick, it started to stink of burnt meat and sulphur.

Jack realised she was now standing in several inches of water, and turned to Felix. ‘Listen, I’m talking about our only chance. We would only have an advantage for a moment.’

‘I don’t want to lose you. If he’s right—’

‘He’s not. I’m me, Felix, not that psychopathic bitch over there. It’s Sadie’s last hope.’

He put big hands on her shoulders. ‘Can you even do it? It would have to be my blood, Jack.’

She reached up and kissed him, some sort of desperation in the embrace, and after a moment he hugged her against him. Jack felt as if both were trying to get a whole relationship into a moment. The water was up to the laces of her boots, and starting to roil. With a shocking blast of cold, it flowed onto the skin of her feet, and liquid fingers began to crawl up her legs. Mac was standing on the dais, holding the candlestick above the water, chanting in Latin.

Felix dragged her into the cover of the altar.

‘Have you got something sharp, maybe smaller than the sword?’ he whispered.

Jack peered around the stone, watching the countess swaying in some sort of ecstatic trance. As she moved her hands the water writhed inside the summoning circle. It was filled to waist height, water rushing out of the base across the tiled floor.

The dagger was inside the poacher’s pocket of her jacket. She offered it to Felix. He bit his lip, then drew the edge over his skin, scoring a thin line in his flesh. ‘Ouch.’ Dark blood welled up. ‘Go,’ he said. She bent over his arm.

As she touched her tongue to his skin, she could feel him flinch. The first drops tasted like salt, and little more. She couldn’t feel any difference, so put her lips against his skin and sucked gently. A small surge of hot liquid in her mouth made her gag for a second, then involuntarily swallow.

The change was immediate. Jack could feel her heart race, and she filled with heat. She sucked again, tugging at the edges of the split skin against her tongue, and the energy gushed into her with a fresh spurt of blood. For a moment she was lost in the almost forgotten sense of vitality that she had taken for granted in her childhood. She was greedily sucking and swallowing when she realised the bleeding was slowing, and bit his arm to make more. Felix’s groan of pain brought her back to her senses.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, but brought up the sword with both hands. She stepped around the altar, stepping off the dais into thighdeep water. She could hear McNamara chanting strange rolling words above her.
Gabriel, Michael, Raphael …

‘Elizabeth Báthory.’

The woman turned to face her, and opened her pale eyes.

Jack raised her arms above her head and brought the sword down into the protective bubble enclosing the centre of the building.

Jack had imagined it shattering, but in reality it felt like she’d hit a wall of toffee. The blade stuck fast, halfway up, but the woman reeled back inside as if she’d been hit. Jack tugged at the sword, dragging it free as the countess’s face changed. She stormed to the other side of the barrier, her mouth open, and claws reached for Jack as though she would grab her. Outside the protective circle, the water accumulating at her waist caught Jack, and dragged her away, and under.

She was swept along, mostly below the water, but with her new strength managed to force her head out of the top of what proved to be a wave travelling around the building. It was going so fast Felix couldn’t get out of the way, and it swallowed him whole.

Some small part of Jack panicked, but she shook the fear off. She had to focus on the countess. Mac and his pitiful candle were absorbed by the surge breaking over the altar. The darkness and cold seemed her element, she felt as if she could surf on the wave, stand on it, play in its strength. It took her head smacking against a timber to realise she needed to concentrate. It was one of the rafters of the roof. The waters had risen and filled the building.

She plunged into the wave, looking for the inquisitor, dragging him into an air pocket between the rollers. She reached to hold Mac’s head out of the water. After a moment of coughing, he began his chanting again.
Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, Jaramiel …

A rumble, as if the sea itself had invaded the waters, reverberated through Jack. McNamara was swept away from her as the waters reached the roof again. She plunged into the darkness, reaching for the air pocket inside the magical bell jar that the countess had conjured. A boom thundered through Jack’s world of dark and silence and pressure, and exploded it.

‘When you will summon any spirit, you must know his name and office; you must also fast, and be clean from all pollution three or four days before; so will the spirit be more obedient unto you. Then make a circle, and call up the spirit with great intention, and holding a wand in your hand, rehearse in your own name, and your companions (for one must always be with you) this prayer following, and so no spirit shall annoy you, and your purpose shall take effect. (And note how this agrees with popish charms and conjurations.)’

Johann Weyer
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
(1563)
British Library, handwritten bookplate with the name J. Dee inscribed

In our chambers, we spoke little about the events in the solar. I was shocked, and I think I have seen more of the world than Dee. He seemed downcast as he packed his most important possessions. Books, maps, journals were randomly tipped into bags, and I had to finish the task as he sat for some time with his head in his hands.

‘What have we done?’ The whisper reached me across the chamber, through the gloom of a single candle. ‘She is possessed by a demon.’

‘We have to leave.’ My mind ran from idea to idea, none of which seemed possible. I couldn’t believe we would be released. Guards stood outside our doors, swords in hands.

‘I do not deserve to be saved.’ He was shaking.

‘We did what was asked of us, by angels.’ I prayed that it was so, and we had not been led astray by demons.

‘But, the blood … that wasn’t in the ritual. They debased the angels we called upon, and contaminated them with their animal – rutting.’

I had no argument. How could this be the work of angels? We waited for our captors.

They came for us before dawn. Lord László led them, with a half a dozen Magyars and two hooded men.