Gretel (39 page)

She made it home.

The smile and twitch of pride in the witch came not from an admiration of her Source’s individual effort, but from the blood that flowed in her veins, the blood that had fueled the remarkable accomplishment. Her own blood, the witch thought.

She waded slowly into the water until it reached her shins, careful to stay clear of the moon’s glow. She now had another decision to make: should she swim to them? It seemed an absurd idea at first, considering all the advantages she now possessed—particularly that of knowing their current location, as well as where they lived—but time was against her. No doubt The System was en route already—the marksman neighbor having certainly made that call—and though the one officer, Officer Stenson, had been a puppet in Marcel’s plan, as far as she knew, there was no influence on them otherwise.

The ability to swim the distance to the boat wouldn’t pose the problem; it was the ability to do it quietly, she reckoned. The lake was deathly still, and even with the occasional jumping frog or fish periodically rippling the surface, she didn’t see how she wouldn’t be noticed before getting even halfway to them. The witch considered her choices again, and as she stood on the lake bank, she heard the voices become clearer. The tones were hushed and deep, but they were steadily approaching. She wouldn’t need to swim to them, they were coming to her!

The witch ducked back in the thicket of trees where she had taken cover from the never-approaching neighbor. She narrowed her eyes and covered her head as far as possible with her cloak. Without a light source, she knew she was invisible from the bank.

The woman saw first the arrowhead shape of the canoe’s bow, followed instantly by the silhouetted shapes of her prey. She held her breath, exhaling only slightly during the rattle of the boat as the two women parked it on the gravel shore. She extended her fingers, brushing the back of her saber-like nails against the trunk of one of the small trees in the clump. It was the preparatory move of an animal, instinctive and lethal. She stood slowly from her crouch and opened her mouth wide, touching the tip of her tongue to one of her incisors, relishing the bite of the blade-like point.

The two Morgan women—mother and daughter—started up the slope to the house, apprehensive and focused in their movements. The witch stayed still as stone as they passed her, no small restraint given she could have touched Gretel—killed her, easily—without even having to extend her arm fully. But that wasn’t the perfect moment. She couldn’t risk letting the older one get away. Not again.

The witch ducked a branch and stepped out from the thicket, assassin-like, placing her first foot firmly on the path before bringing the second foot out beside it. She stood pleased for just a moment, smiling at the seemingly endless talents the potion now endowed her with, watching the women obliviously make their way up the path. They never sensed her as she appeared behind them, closing in with claws extended.

She’d made the decision to kill the older one—Anika—and to keep the girl for further blending. She was strong now, but there was simply too much to risk trying to capture and hold two prisoners, particularly since she didn’t yet know where she’d be living past today. So, yes, she’d kill the mother, and once she’d found a new location—a new lair—and had blended the new potion, she’d come back for the boy. She couldn’t let that much power go free.

Her clarity about the future was suddenly staggering, with thoughts and strategies now flooding her mind, giving her confidence and energy. Her mind felt
organized
, without disease or ambiguity.

The witch drew her arm back as if to throw a punch, but instead of forming her hand into a fist, she kept it open with her palm down and fingers stretched, the tips of her nails pointed directly at the base of Anika’s skull. The women had walked about ten yards from the witch when she began her advancement. She took two long strides at first and then skipped into some form of a human gallop.

Five yards away. Two. Her grin was wide with teeth shining.

And then the madness in her face changed at the sound of screams.

They had come from the women—both of them—and their shrieks had been bloodcurdling, as if the witch had suddenly materialized in front of them. But she hadn’t, and they hadn’t turned to see her; they had, in fact, made no sudden turns or suspicious pauses at all. Why the sudden terror?

And then she saw it—the figure—emerging from between the two Morgan women, crashing toward her like a giant warped arrow. Stunned, the witch opened her mouth to scream but the figure slammed into the bottom of her chin before a sound could escape. There was a sickening sound of cracking bone from the back of the witch’s jaw, and the bottom row of her teeth exploded in every direction, including down her throat.

The Orphist!

“Gretel go!”

In the moonlight, Gretel could see Odalinde at the edge of the lake, her face coated in what appeared to be a mixture of blood and mud. Her eyes were open, but they were weary and fading.

“Odalinde? Odalinde! What’s happening?”

“Go!” Odalinde repeated, this time with a wet cough culminating the statement.

“Let’s go, Gretel,” Anika said, beckoning her daughter up the hill.

“No!” Odalinde shouted, pulling herself to her knees. “Not that way. You’ll be trapped.” She caught her breath. “The canoe. Take it and go back to the Klahrs. Your father’s dead.”

“What about Mr. Klahr?” Gretel asked.

“He’s gone.”

“What?” Gretel cried.

“No, I mean…I mean he left. He’s okay. There’s no time Gretel. Go back!”

Gretel and her mother stood paralyzed, not sure whether to disobey the woman’s instructions—who, after all, may have just sustained a violent head injury—or to trust her and go.

“She’s still here, Gretel. She’ll have you trapped up there. Go back. You have to get back to the Klahrs!” Odalinde looked to the ground, composing herself, and then continued in an even tone. “Go back, call The System, and get ready with every gun the Klahrs have.”

Gretel suddenly considered the witch—whom she’d forgotten temporarily—scanning the area immediately in front of her and down by the lake. But darkness blanketed most of the area and she saw no one.

And then it came to her: the witch had been behind them. Hunting them. Ready to kill them both. And Odalinde had saved them.

Gretel grabbed her mother’s hand and they descended the path together, back toward the lake from where they’d just come, to the spot where Odalinde lay.

“Fine,” Anika said, kneeling beside Odalinde, “but you’re coming with us.

“I can’t,” Odalinde said.

Her exhaustion was palpable, and Gretel could see by the wounds on the side of her head that she was badly injured.

“You can and you will,” Anika replied, “My daughter came back for you, risked her life for you, so you’re coming.”

“Anika,” Odalinde whispered, the faint trace of a smile forming on her face.

Anika grabbed the woman under her armpit and lifted. “It’s nice to meet you. It looks like you’ve been through a lot. But still, I think you’ll find my story trumps yours. And I’ll never live with myself if I don’t discover whether or not you agree.”

Gretel had always marveled at this ability of her mother’s. She’d seen her do this trick with her father a thousand times, expressing things in such a way as to create the impression that any option other than the one she proposed was nothing short of absurd.

Odalinde was wobbly as she stood, and her eyes looked like they were fading into unconsciousness; but somehow she made it to her feet, and Anika held her steady as they shuffled toward the canoe where Gretel waited alertly, oar in hand and ready to push off.

“She’s coming,” Odalinde whispered, her words coming out dreamy and delirious.

“It’s okay,” Anika replied, “It’s going to be…”

But Anika Morgan never had the chance to finish her underscore of assurance. Before her muscles could react, before she could offer any semblance of protection, the witch had ripped Odalinde from her, yanking her by the hair. She held her still for just a beat, elevated, resting against her torso, before inserting her top row of fangs into the side of Odalinde’s neck. The image was nauseating, something from a nightmare, and made all the more grotesque by the witch’s twisted jaw and missing row of bottom teeth.

The witch tossed Odalinde’s corpse to the ground and stood glaring at Anika and Gretel, who were now screaming in horror by the canoe. There was no hesitation from the witch this time, and she lurched furiously toward Anika, focused only on the final slaughter of her once-captive Source.

The opportunity flashed in a blink, but Gretel saw it, clearly, and speared it like a fish. The witch’s single-mindedness toward her mother had given Gretel a moment of advantage, and, almost automatic in her motion, she swung the oar forward, rotating her hips and torso, creating drag with the weapon, and clipped the hag’s head just above the temple. Two inches lower and the witch would have been dead, Gretel lamented, but she’d stunned her badly, and the witch collapsed to the ground like a satchel of wet clay.

Wasting not another second, Gretel pounced into the canoe and anchored the oars in place. “Mother, let’s go!” she shouted, and before her mother’s second foot was off the muddy bank, Gretel was launched and rowing.

Positioned facing the bank as the canoe pulled away, Gretel stared in disbelief at the wreckage in front of her, assessing the danger which—unbelievably—was already recovering from the blow. Gretel’s breathing had been heavy and rasping from exhaustion and trauma, but was now escalating to panic at what she was witnessing. The witch was on her feet—already!—standing tall over Odalinde’s body with her arms high above her head. She was pulling and struggling, reaching for the sky, and Gretel quickly calculated the woman was disrobing, a suspicion that was confirmed when the witch’s ample cloak fluttered through the moonbeam into the clump of trees. But she didn’t appear to be stopping with the cloak, and continued to strip down to her underclothing, and possibly beyond. She was coming after them.

Gretel had launched the canoe in the direction of the Klahrs and had no plans to deviate from the course, frantic now to get across to the orchard and up to the house where she could warn the others and help fortify the grounds.

“She’s coming, Gretel. She’s coming after us.” Her mother had been watching the scene on the bank as well, and now turned her head back toward the front of the boat and Gretel, aware of the direction they were headed. “We can’t lead her to the Klahrs, Gret. Not to Hansel. Not to those people.”

“What?” Gretel continued in her current direction, not properly inferring her mother’s words.

“Rifle Field, Gretel, head down the lake to Rifle Field.” Anika’s words were restrained but tense, carefully intoned to elicit obedience. “She’ll follow us, Gretel, away from your brother. I need you to do this.”

“But Rifle Field! We’ll be trapped!”

“It’s the only place close enough. And if you can get us there—get us there fast—I have a plan.”

Gretel recognized the insistence in her mother’s voice, and, with a grunt of reluctance, deftly turned the canoe south toward Rifle Field and began carving the oars into the water with the possessed repetition of a galley slave, guiding them and turning them over as hard and fast as she’d ever done before. The canoe glided easily, rapidly, as though it were motor-powered or thrust by a blast of wind. Her mother was right—she was strong. And she was going to get them to their new destination.

Her mother had again turned away, looking to the bank where the witch had been standing only seconds before. “I can’t see her anymore, Gretel. I think she’s in.”

Gretel thought so too. In the dark, however, the bank had drifted too far away to see much, so she couldn’t be sure the witch had taken to the water. But Gretel, and apparently her mother, had sensed it. Surely they couldn’t be caught with the boat travelling at this speed, though, Gretel thought—particularly by a woman who was severely wounded. But…the woman had flown. Flown!

Gretel could see the first signs of the clearing to Rifle Field, and effortlessly decelerated the canoe and steered it toward the bank, guiding it slowly toward shore.

“I can’t believe I’m back here again,” Anika said flatly as she hopped from the stern seat into the shallow water at the shoreline, rushing to where she’d left her clothes.

“I never stopped believing you’d be back,” Gretel replied. She was winded, and the words came out rushed and emotionless, but as she looked over to see her mother dressing, she realized what she meant. “Wait. You mean here? At Rifle Field? You were here? Why?”

“Let’s go, Gretel, I promise you’ll know everything later. Right now, we have to dig.”

Anika threaded her arms through the sleeves of her shirt and pushed her head through the neck hole; how thankful she was now that she had left her clothes and shoes behind, dry on the bank. She looked over at her daughter, who seemed to have already created a gap beneath the fence large enough for both of them to squeeze through and was continuing to dig with abandon.

Anika would never be able to explain what had inspired her to toss the shovel from the cannery window, only that it seemed the prudent thing to do at the time. Perhaps it had to do with the instincts that apparently ran in her family, a result of her mother’s unique gift—a gift that had been revealed to Anika only hours ago—that had been genetically passed on to Anika, ever-ready to manifest itself in certain life-threatening situations to pull her to safety. She suspected this was the reason for her decision, but couldn’t honestly commit to it. Maybe her instincts had just sharpened over the last several months and were much more dependable now. Or maybe she was just lucky. Sometimes your decisions were spot on, she thought, and other times (trudging through the woods after a car accident, for example) they weren’t.

“Are we good, Gret?” Anika asked.

“I think so,” Gretel replied. “I know
I
can fit.”

Anika gave her daughter a cold stare. “Well, thanks a lot for that!”