Witches (21 page)

For a moment, she gazed at Jonny’s body lying at her feet as her befuddled mind tried to reassure her.

He’ll be all right now. They’ll get him to a doctor. They’ll take good care of him. You don’t have to worry about him any longer.

Worry about yourself.

Get up and run!

Gasping, Amanda scrambled to her feet and darted into the forest on stick legs that didn’t seem to want to move, leaving Jonny’s body in the grass behind her.

Her only thought was survival. As she plunged through the hostile night world, attacked by trees and sharp brambles, slipping in holes and tripping over dead branches, she tried her magic again. Still nothing.

She didn’t have time for regrets or anger. All she could do was run. Escape. A miracle that she could even make her legs move. Amazing what fear could do.

The mob was breathing down her neck.

Amanda was gulping air, her body crying out against the abuse after everything it’d been through already that day. Holding her side in pain, she raced on.

She knew the woods better than they—but then it was as dark as a grave, and they weren’t as exhausted as she was. Her body was used up, spent. All she longed to do was collapse into the leaves and sleep. Instead, she crouched down behind a bush, holding her breath, as the mob streamed around and past her.

She took off in the other direction, unsure of where she was going or why. Knowing just that she had to get as far away from them as she could.

She’d thought she’d given them the slip until she heard the shouts again behind her and to her left. She couldn’t lose them. They were determined to catch her.

She kept running, tears creeping down her face, her heart pounding wildly in her chest like a
runaway freight train. What would they do to her if they caught her? Beat her up? Burn her? She
s
tifled a cry of terror. This was the twenty-first century, not the seventeen hundreds. Witches weren’t hanged and burned these days. People didn’t do that anymore.

Did they?

Amanda fell again and as she lay in the wet grass, panting and trying to quell the fire raging in her lungs, she listened. Above the sounds of human pursuit and the forest noises there arose other sounds. Unnatural sounds. Horses whinnying, hooves stamping...voices with strange accents fading in and out.

She’d heard those sounds and voices before and she recalled where and when. The noises she’d heard right before she’d first seen Rachel.

Rachel. She’d almost forgotten her.

That’s when she began to look around. She was back at Witch’s Pond, she was sure of it. She recognized the towering willow tree she was poised under, the tree she had braced herself against. Where she’d discovered and destroyed the coven; where she’d last seen Rachel.

The stench of burning flesh and malevolence still hung over the place like a pall. In the darkness, she could see the ghostly outline of the slab of bloodstained stone that had been the altar.

She tried to get away, but her legs buckled under her and her vision blurred. She clung to the tree or she would have passed out.

“Rest just a moment,” she groaned, wheezing like a sick horse. The whole damn town must be able to hear her. They weren’t that far behind. She could hear them. Then the decision of what to do next was swept from her hands.

The sounds of men on horseback had grown louder. They were so near they sounded as if they were practically on top of her. Trapped. She didn’t know whether she should go to the left or the right. Hide or start running again. Instead she scrunched down beside the willow’s trunk, forcing her breathing to quiet, as she scrutinized the section of blackness from where the din was originating.

God, she missed her powers.

A glowing, pulsating shroud of light was coming toward her. Pale and translucent. Larger and larger until she could see that it contained men on horseback, half there, half not...in archaic garments of cloth and buckskin with billowing dark cloaks. The men wore high boots and long hair. Wide-brimmed beaver hats cocked low on one side. Flintlock muskets sheathed alongside their saddles. Torches held aloft. If Amanda recalled her history correctly, their costumes were late seventeenth century. The horses reared as the men whipped them about sharply, bellowing and cursing, working their mounts into a foaming lather...stampeding them...right at her.

They could see her!

My God, who are they?
Amanda thought, edging away past the tree, her eyes full of confusion and filling with fear as she comprehended their meaning. They were phantoms.

They can’t hurt me. They’re only ghosts of what once was.

Then she thought of Rachel and the real physical damage she’d done.

Maybe not. Amanda turned and ran.

“Go away!”
She swore at them under her breath as she fought through the thicket of tangled brush and vines.

They kept on coming. Closer. Glancing behind her, she could make out their faces. Shadowy, grim, and bearded. Righteous, like the townspeople’s’ faces.

They bore down upon her in a cloud of noise and dust and knocked her to the ground, the thundering hooves narrowly missing her as she rolled and dodged under them, clinging to the earth.

She sprinted to her feet
after they’d passed, and kept on running.

They doubled back and charged her again.

She lost them and hid behind a low hedge of bushes, breathing hard. What the hell did they want from her? What had she ever done to them that these apparitions from the past were pursuing her so zealously?

Here they come again,
she thought as they discovered her new hiding place and she scuttled out of their path.

The clicking of bridles and the straining creak of leather told her how close they were. Too close.

Something lashed out at the side of her face, drawing blood, giving pain, and she reached up a shaking hand to touch the warm blood. One of them had caught her with a whip.

This was real. She absorbed the truth with a jolt.

Amanda evaded the next lash, and scurried the other way. Now the townspeople were in front of her. Searching the woods. She could hear them.

Where to go?

Then a man broke out of the woods directly in front of her and she almost collided with him. A man she recognized from town.

He had a gun.

“Here she is!” He yelled to those behind him. “I’ve found her!”

He aimed the pistol at her, it went off, and a sharp burning pain lodged in her right shoulder as the impact rammed her violently against a tree.

She couldn’t help herself and cried out with the pain, as she clamped her hand over the wound and the blood gushed freely.

She couldn’t believe they’d actually shot her. It was a
crime
. So wrong in so many ways. She melted away into some bushes and away from the man. Then ran.

If it hadn’t been so excruciatingly painful, she would have burst out laughing. They were so scared of her they’d actually shot her. Blamed her for a crime she hadn’t committed. With no real proof, no trial. They’d burnt her cabin, hunted her down like a criminal, and were trying to kill her. The situation made her head reel—or it could be the loss of blood, she wasn’t sure.

With a panicked gasp, she realized where she was. Witch’s Pond. Again. The willow loomed like an unholy sentinel high above her as she knelt in the watery mud along the bank, feeling her strength ebb swiftly away.

Hurt, bleeding, getting weaker...and her pursuers were closing in. The past and the present ones.

Now she knew what the damn fox must feel like. A horse whinnied. Tree limbs cracked. More shouting and gunshots.

She tried to witch herself out of harm’s way one last time, but it didn’t work.

Something warm and furry brushed against her leg but she was already losing consciousness, even as her tingling fingers reached out for it. She fell to the ground, clutching her shoulder, pain coursing through her body. She couldn’t move another step, her vision was blurring, the world was dancing around her. “I need a place to hide,” she whispered, her cheek kissing the mud. “I need to rest for just a little while.”

The last thing she saw or heard was the nebulous figure that’d come up behind her. A woman in a somber long dress with huge empty eyes. Hovering at the edge of the pond.

“Amanda.”

Amanda could only stare up at the ghost. She couldn’t move or talk. Couldn’t escape.

The apparition smiled a mocking smile, soft as a raven’s wing. It put a white hand out to Amanda.

“Sister, thou art in great danger. They are almost here, and they would kill thee.”

A grimace of hatred masked the ghost’s features.

Amanda shook her head, trying not to look at Rachel.

She’s putting a spell on me, Amanda thought dreamily. A spell. There’s not a thing I can do about it. My powers are gone.

For the first time she wondered: Rachel’s doing?

“Come
.
” The spirit reached out, captured Amanda’s hand, and yanked her to her feet. It was like touching ice.

Amanda couldn’t resist, though she tried. She could only follow mindlessly as the ghost led her toward the water.

“I know a place thou can hide where they cannot hurt thee. Will never find thee.” Laughter that could have been a sigh of the wind.

The rest of the world disintegrated as Rachel drew Amanda into the blue mist of the pond. The cold water lapped around her feet, her legs, and up around her shoulders...dragging her down into its murky depths...and then...echoing wet darkness...so cold...so endless...

Then nothing.

* * * *

Amanda came to gradually, layer by layer in startling clarity. Trees, sky, grass. Her clothes were soaked, her hair loose, tangled, half-dry—and she lay at the edge of the pond like a beached whale. The sun high in the sky. A sparrow was warbling happily on a limb above her. It confused her when she glanced down at her clothes and realized she wasn’t wearing the flannel shirt and blue jeans she’d had on before. The long dress was similar to what she usually wore, but definitely not one of hers. This dress was muddy, dirty and ripped almost to shreds. White skin showed where it shouldn’t.

She must have passed out last night from her experiences and the gunshot wound, and somehow gotten away from the mob that’d been chasing her. So damn lucky. A miracle.

Someone
was
watching over her, huh? She struggled to sit up. Too weak at first to even accomplish that small feat.

Her head pounded as if she had a tremendous hangover.

Suddenly, all the rest of it rushed back at her. The cult and what she’d done to them. Jonny. Her cabin burning. The phantoms. The angry townspeople; her crazy run through the woods. One of the men had shot her. Amanda touched her shoulder where the bullet had entered. There was nothing there now. No wound. No blood. No pain.

Had she dreamed it all?

Rachel. Now that hadn’t been a dream, had it? She’d tried to bewitch her. Amanda was sure of that. Rachel had dragged her into the pond...

She lurched up and, eyes mad with confusion, she studied everything around her. Listened intently.

No. She was alone. Totally. No frothing-at–the-mouth townspeople. Present or past. No charging manifestations. No Rachel. All gone with the night?

She remembered her last minutes of awareness and a small warm animal body rubbing up against her.

“Amadeus?” she called, her throat full of cotton. “Are you here, Amadeus? Don’t play games with me right now, puss.” Her voice broke. “I’m in no mood for it.” She looked at her surroundings uneasily as she talked.

She couldn’t see him anywhere. In her whole life, she could never recall being separated from him longer than a few hours. He’d always been there for her. Maybe he’d returned home, though that even seemed out of character for her familiar. Unless he’d been hurt worse than she’d suspected, he would have come back looking for her. She knew it. Thinking of home had brought instant sadness. Her home was gone. Gone.

Unless that had been a dream, too?

She
crawled to the nearest tree, circled her arms around it and hauled herself to her feet. As far as she could see, she wasn’t hurt in any way. Other than feeling so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.

She’d go to Mabel’s. Find out what really happened last night. Mabel would know. Find out if Jonny was all right. She’d take her in, if no one else would.

The tree on the edge of the pond’s bank she had her arms around was a willow tree. A small
willow tree. Amanda gawked at it, amazed, lost her grip, and slid back to the ground. She lay there, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. No. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. The willow at Witch’s Pond was much, much older. Much, much larger.

The willow she was looking at now was a young one. Barely a sapling, with a circumference of perhaps eight inches.

Her eyes examined the pond tediously, noting every detail. It looked the same, yet, it didn’t. It’d rained heavily last night. Why wasn’t anything wet?