But it was too late.
In her last moment of panic, her pleading fell away to fury and vicious content as she commanded the Witch Hunters to lift their guns and shoot. Although, their bullets didn’t meet their mark; if anything they continued to fill the already cold bodies of the Witch Hunters Bahmet had killed to save us.
I was in the void—drowning in shadows. For the most part, my will was still my own, and yet my body wasn’t. Bahmet was in control for the majority, but there was a part of me left to claim, as if it fit the missing part in Bahmet’s form.
“This is not how it should be,”the darkness spat at me, filling my head and the dark shadows around me with pleading. I sensed the presence speaking with me, in me, around me.“I should have your soul completely, and yet youstillresist.”
Everything was passing so quickly. Beneath the wild rush of time I sensed Bahmet’s disappointment.
The demon was furious, the taste sour and rotten in my mouth.
Not at me as I first thought. The demon was furious with himself. His failure to successfully gain full control over me, not like he had with all the victims of his possessions before.
“You must submit to me,”Bahmet demanded, trying to swell beneath my skin until he could fill me entirely.“It would be easier for us both if you do. Give yourself to me, and we will save the man who occupies your heart. Only I have the power to give you want you want as I have given hundreds of witches before you the same. Heed me, Arwyn Hopkin.”
Hector. At Bahmet’s alluding to him, I gained some purchase with the darkness. As if he was enough to wake me, or fuel me in my need to save him.
There was disgust from Bahmet that was impossible to ignore. Just like I could taste the Witch Hunters’ fear when I woke, I sensed the same from Bahmet. But it was different. As if Hector was his greatest hate, and his greatest concern. Either way, I fought for that purchase in the power, sunk my iron-clad fingers into it and gave my own demand to Bahmet.
“Weare going to save him. YouandI,” I spat, focusing on the desire to reach him before my father set the pyre aflame. My mind went out to Hector as if it could reach him, calling upon the part of Bahmet that he had within him, wondering how deep that connection went.
“Save him? It is us who should be saved. Hector is the one who can destroy us.”
Bahmet had just confirmed the one theory I had birthed from his reactions to Hector.
“You. Destroyyou. Not me,” I replied, smiling to myself even though I didn’t have a physical form in such a strange place. I shifted my intentions to Hector, hoping he heard me and knowing Bahmet did because he wailed and clawed against my intentions.
“Enough.”
I silenced Bahmet with the truest words I’d ever spoken. “I’m coming for you, Hector.”
12
HECTOR
Something was wrong. The sensation thrummed from the tip of my skull, all the way down to my toes, making every muscle in my body sensitive. But it was the broken shard of darkness buried inside of me that set my unseen meter to ‘way-too-fucking-high’.
A crowd of humans buzzed around me, bodies squashed together like sardines in a sticky tin. The concept of reaching the front of said crowd was easier said than done, considering every apology or shoulder I tapped, resulted in a grumble of displeasure.
It was like being at a concert, trying to get space at the barrier, not making my way to the front of a crowd for a witch burning. But alas, apparently Father Tomin had opened the floodgates of hate that people hid, and an entire mass of them had come out today.
Emon squirmed beneath the baggy sleeve of my knitted jumper, tightening around my forearm a little too hard just to make his feelings known. I shot him my displeasure down the cord of our connection, continuing the ‘don’t talk and distract me’ command I had given when Romy, Kai and I left the underground almost an hour ago.
A static buzz crackled in my ear before a voice spoke. “Testing, testing… three, two, one.”
I smiled at the light lilt of Romy’s voice, wondering where about in the crowd she’d fought her way to.
“It’s one, two, three,” I said out the corner of my mouth, hoping anyone who saw me in that moment would think I was talking to myself, and not into the device stuffed in my ear.
“Alright, know it all. Could you lecture me on my wrongdoings after, maybe?”
“I look forwards to it,” I said, trying to keep my mouth as still as possible. “How are you getting on?”
“I’ve made it to the front, and I can see Kai over on the other side. We’re in position. You?”
I gave up trying to apologise to the people I pushed through, and started to just barrel through. A few swore at me, but my resting bitch face—which had been well tuned over the years—kept them from following up their threats with a physical action. “I’m close. It’s like navigating a maze in here.”
All these bodies, all the noise, could that be what unsettled me?
