Authors: Joseph Delaney
Alice
Contents
Chapter 3: What Manner of Creature?
Chapter 11: Do You Need Blood?
Chapter 15: Elizabeth of the Bones
Chapter 16: The Dance of Death
Chapter 22: The Bones of Beelzebub
Chapter 23: The Blood-Filled Eye
‘A lot of dark stuff happened when I was young that I’ve never even told to my dearest friend, Tom Ward. Dark and scary things that I hoped I had left behind for ever . . .’
Over the years, Alice has fought side by side with the Spook and his apprentice, Thomas Ward. But now Alice is alone – in the realm of the dark. And the creatures she has helped to banish there, now have the chance to take their revenge.
Alice must seek the final weapon to destroy the Fiend. If she fails, the world will fall into despair and darkness. If she suceeds, it means facing her death at the hands of her dearest friend. But can she prevent the darkness from overtaking her completely . . . ?
The penultimate instalment of the Wardstone Chronicles follows Alice, Thomas Ward’s loyal companion, to the most terrifying place of all.
for Marie
ALICE
Alice is related to two of the most evil witch clans (the Malkins and the Deanes) and was trained as a witch against her will. Whilst she was born of a union between malevolent witch Bony Lizzie and the Fiend himself, Alice counts herself as an ally of the light, and for years she has fought alongside The Spook and his apprentice, Tom Ward. In her battles she has increasingly been forced to rely on dark magic to save her friends, and she fears that every time she does will draw her closer and closer to the dark.
BONY LIZZIE
Bony Lizzie was a powerful witch who murdered children and used their bones in dark rituals. For two years she trained Alice to become a malevolent witch. After freeing her grandmother, Mother Malkin, from a pit in the garden at Chipenden, Lizzie found herself bound by the Spook in the exact same pit. She subsequently escaped and was briefly able to establish rule over the Isle of Mona, but she later died there after the bird witch Adriana summoned a flock of seagulls to peck her to death.
GRIMALKIN
Grimalkin is the current assassin of the Malkin witch clan. Very fast and strong, she has a code of honour and rarely resorts to trickery. Although honourable, Grimalkin also has a dark side and is reputed to use torture. Recently she has forged an unlikely alliance with Tom Ward against their common enemy, the Fiend. But can a true servant of the dark ever really be trusted?
THE FIEND
The Fiend is the dark made flesh, the most powerful of all its denizens and the very oldest of the old Gods. He has many other names, including the Devil, Satan, Lucifer and the Father of Lies. Together, Tom Ward and his allies managed to sever the Fiend’s head in battle, but their fight to destroy him once and for all had only just begun . . .
Hell has many names.
Some call it the Underworld,
Others Hades or the Abyss.
We witches simply call it ‘the
dark
’.
It is our beginning and our end.
THE DESTRUCTION OF
the Fiend may be achieved by the following means. Firstly the three sacred objects must be to hand. They are the hero swords forged by Hephaestus. The greatest of these is the Destiny Blade; the second is the dagger called Bone Cutter, which will be given to you by Slake. The third is the dagger named Dolorous, sometimes called the Blade of Sorrow, which you must retrieve from the dark.
The place is also important: it must be one especially conducive to the use of magic. Thus the ritual must be carried out on a high hill east of Caster, which is known as the Wardstone.
The blood sacrifice should be made in this precise manner.
A fire must be constructed – one capable of generating great heat. To achieve this it will be necessary to build a forge.
Throughout the ritual the willing sacrificial victim must display great courage. If she once cries out to betray her pain, all will be lost and the rite will fail.
Using the dagger Bone Cutter, the thumb-bones must be taken from the right hand and cast into the flames. Only if she does not cry out may the second cut be made to remove the bones of the left hand. These also are added to the fire.
Next, using the dagger Dolorous, the heart must be cut out of the victim and, still beating, cast into the flames.
I WAS BEING
trained as a witch, wasn’t I, when I first met Tom Ward, the Spook’s apprentice. We should have been enemies, but after a very uncertain start we ended up friends. I helped him and fought the dark by his side, and it was during that time that I learned a terrible truth about myself – I was one of the Fiend’s daughters, and Bony Lizzie was actually my mother.
But I carried on helping Tom and Old Gregory, the Spook. Despite my background I couldn’t let myself go over to the dark. We fought the Fiend together, with the help of Grimalkin, the witch assassin, and eventually we dealt him a terrible blow: we chopped off his head and bound his body
with silver spears so that he was trapped within his dead flesh.
Knowing that his servants would pursue us relentlessly, Grimalkin went on the run with the Fiend’s head wrapped in a leather bag, fighting any creature she encountered. It would only be a matter of time before she was caught, I was sure – not even the powerful witch assassin could defeat so many dark entities. Once they killed Grimalkin and retrieved the head, they would take it back to Ireland and reunite it with the rest of the Fiend’s body; then he would be set loose in the world once more and a new age of darkness and terror would begin.
There is just one chance to stop him – just one way to destroy him for ever. My friend Tom Ward has to complete a sacrificial ritual at midnight next Halloween, now less than four months away. It involves the use of three blades known as the hero swords. Tom already has two of these weapons in his possession, but the third is located in the dark, and it is up to me to retrieve it.
The details of the ritual had been communicated to him by his own mother, who was the first and most powerful of all the lamias. She’d died in Greece fighting the Ordeen, one of the Old Gods, but her spirit was still very strong and she had been trying to aid us in our attempt to deal with the Fiend.
But there was something about the ritual that Tom had withheld from me. Something that I’d had to find out for myself . . .
It involved a sacrifice. There had to be a ‘willing sacrificial victim’. Someone had to die.
Tom had to sacrifice the person he loved most of all.
That someone was me.
So I am off to the dark to find the dagger called Dolorous – the blade that will eventually be used to kill me.
Just one thing worse than the dark, ain’t there? And that’s what’s inside it – the things that call it home . . .
