Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-five

My mind danced through so many of the women I knew from Orcop and Garway. Who were the other eight witches in the legend? Who would be in the Garway coven? Had I passed them every day without even knowing about it? Was it old Edna who walked her old Labrador every morning through Orcop village, or the goth girl who lived at the old pub in Garway, with the faded sun tarot card as a tavern sign? What about Amy, who everyone knew as the crystal healing lady?

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Hans said.

I stared up at him with a raised eyebrow.

“You already know, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer, just turned his attention back to the embroidered phrase.

There’ll be nine witches from the bottom of Orcop to the end of Garway Hill as long as water flows.

“Come on, Hans,” I pushed. “Who are the other eight witches? Do I know them?”

“That’s a surprise for you to uncover yourself. Not one to be handed out to you. It would be cheating you out of a revelation.”

I could have laughed out loud. I didn’t need any more revelations this lifetime. I’d had more than enough to last for centuries. Still, despite the carnage I had a strange sense of euphoria. It was bursting through the chaos and pain of memories long gone like a phoenix rising. A weird excitement, as though my true self was peeking her head above the turrets for the very first time.

Seeing life through Mary’s eyes seemed different to mine. They were like mine – Katherine’s – with an extra magical shine on them. Mary’s magic and mine combined.

“Yes, your hearts and souls are two as one,” Hans said. “And the others will be pleased to see it. The ninth witch coming home.”

My heart sped up.

“I’m going back to Herefordshire? To live in Orcop? Is that what’s supposed to happen?”

His eyes were so steady on mine.

“No, Katherine. We’re going back to Herefordshire.” He looked so happy, it was beautiful. “Don’t worry, I’ve got my eye very tightly on the clock. Events are unfolding, just as they should be.”

I didn’t know what he meant. I narrowed my eyes, trying to read him the way he read me. He must have sensed it, because he kept the stare locked between us, as though he was giving me the chance.

“I can’t do it,” I said. “I’m not a mind reader.”

“Stop digging so hard. Rather than searching for answers, listen for them. Let the instincts come.”

I looked at him again, trying. But nothing came.

“I can’t hear anything.”

He didn’t give up, even though I had.

“Tell me the first words that come into your head, right now.”

“Halloween,” I replied. “Halloween and… Garway.”

I thought I was stating some obvious guesses, but he gave me a nod of acknowledgement.

“Good. Keep going.”

“Keep going?” I took a breath, trying to clear my mind.

Instincts.

I let myself sink into my subconscious until I was back in the woodland, staring at the trapdoor, no longer afraid of what I might find in there. I looked into the depths and focused on nothing. Quiet.

Instincts.

My voice sounded distant when I spoke again.

“Halloween night… Garway church. Moonlight on the gravestones, and you, and me. Running. Dancing.” I kept my eyes closed. “The ritual. That’s what I hear, Hans. Ritual.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Let it flow.”

His encouragement kept me there, staring into the darkness in my imagination, and this time I saw images there like motion paintings in the depths. Like an overlay of instincts on instincts that didn’t make any sense. Imagination within my imagination.

I saw Garway church, and I saw us there, me and Hans. I felt my bare feet on the grass as I spun in the grounds like I used to do when I was a little girl, but I wasn’t young anymore. It wasn’t just Hans’ legs I bumped into when he appeared in front of me this time. My whole body pressed against his, and his lips met mine.

And then it ended. The motion paintings stilled and disappeared. But they left something.

I opened my eyes.

“I’m going to taste your blood,” I said, with crystal clarity.

He nodded gently.

“Yes. I’m certainly going to give you your first taste.”

“Am I going to be a vampire?”

“That will be your choice, Katherine, not mine.”

It was an easy choice to make.

“I want to be a vampire with you. I’m not going to lose you this time.”

He took my hand and kissed it.

“That’s a beautiful statement, but it needs to be the right time. You’re still a youngster in the world. You still have early sunrises, and afternoons with your friends, and twilights in the meadows to enjoy.”

The idea of having friends still felt alien to me, let alone having friends back in Orcop. I’d been an outsider my whole life.

“Do you mean the other witches?” I asked him. “Are they going to be my friends?”

“The witches and the blood players, as well as all the people you’ll meet now you’re allowed to become who you truly are.”

The thoughts were exciting, but that didn’t change anything. I wanted to be a vampire with Hans. I’d known that in my soul from the very second he’d chased me along the cobblestones. My soul was just singing a lot louder with Mary’s voice along with mine.

Hans was still an awful lot better at reading thoughts than I was. He was still holding my hand as he gestured further along the wall.

“Do you want to look in the mirror of old times? Do you want to see yourself as you used to be?”

He led me further into the room until we were standing beside the window, and there, up on the wall was a painting. A portrait of a woman that made me gasp.

It was me, in times gone by. Her eyes were like mine and her smile had the same quirk as mine, with one side raised slightly higher, and she even had the same dusting of freckles on her forehead. But Mary’s hair was longer and lighter. She was wearing a simple dress in white, sitting by Garway spring. I recognised the low walls on either side.

But there was something else behind her smile and her simple white dress. A tiny tickle of want in her that most people wouldn’t have seen, just like the one in me.

She wanted to explore the pleasures of the flesh with Hans. Like I did.

“I didn’t know you’d look so much like her,” Hans told me. “I knew you were going to be her soul reborn, but I didn’t foresee that your family chain would be strong enough to give you the same beautiful eyes and smile and grace.”

There was something so eerily stunning about seeing myself like that, in ancestor form. I’d sat in her position many times as a younger girl, oblivious to the fact I’d been there in a life gone by. Mary had been lucky enough to see the spring in its gorgeous flowing glory. She looked as transfixed by the spot as I’d always been.

“It’s an artist’s interpretation,” Hans said. “But it’s very accurate.”

“Who painted it?”

His eyes spoke louder than his mouth did. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know the answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I painted it. This must have been at least my fiftieth effort. The image was imprinted in my mind for a long time before my paintbrush could do it justice.”

“I didn’t know you were a painter.”

“I’m not. I’m just well-practised in many things. I can play five different instruments at orchestral level and speak almost every language in the world.” His eyes were mischievous. “Who knows, little one. You may well be an awful lot better than I am at any of them in a few hundred years.”

He fascinated me more and more every second, if that was even possible.

We both stood looking at the portrait of me on the wall, and it was a stunning silence. I felt so assured in myself standing there, as though I’d truly come home to life. My thoughts sounded more wistful in my head, my intuition speaking at a deeper depth, and I was confident in my own heart. No longer just a girl running away from Orcop, afraid of being myself.

“We’re heading back to Garway for Halloween, are we?” I asked Hans. “That’s what the ritual is about.”

“That is my plan, yes.”

I was coming to know him so well.

Hans was a brooder. A planner. A thinker.

He’d been planning this for years.

“You knew how things were going to go, didn’t you?” I pushed. “You had the timings mapped out from the start.”

He was so perfectly honest and simple in his answers.

“Yes. I did.”

“That night when you chased me along the cobblestones, you knew we’d be in Garway a week later.”

“Fate can never be predicted fully, but yes, I had high… expectations, but the choice has always been yours to make. It still is.”

My questions kept coming.

“Did you always know you’d come for me at eighteen?”

He hesitated for a few seconds before he answered.

“I hoped I’d be able to hold back and let you live your life a little more fully without me invading your reality, but it’s one of the few times I’ve failed in my selflessness.” He looked at me and not Mary. “I couldn’t risk losing you again. I’m sorry, but I had to take the earliest opportunity.”

I squeezed his hand.

“I’m glad you did. I wouldn’t want to live my life without you. It wouldn’t be full without you in it. I didn’t even know what living meant until I met you.”

I looked at Mary in the painting.

“Is that how I looked at you in real life?”

“Yes. It’s exactly how you looked at me in real life.” He paused. “Just like you do now.”

“We didn’t get the chance to consummate our passion then though, did we?”

“No. We didn’t.”

The needs in me were rising, looking at Mary looking at Hans that way, even in oil paint. Yes, I was right. She was as hungry for him as I was. The attraction between us really did run between lifetimes.

“We need to remedy that,” I said. “Mary will be in me now. She’ll be able to have what she couldn’t have then. I need it more than ever and I know that she does too.”

“What do you need?” he asked. “Say it.”

I couldn’t imagine Mary speaking filthily to Hans. It seemed almost perverse.

He shook his head.

“Mary may have had a pure outlook, but her heart was as dirtily beautiful as yours. Speak for both of you.”

A sudden burst of hot tingles surged down through my chest and swirled around my stomach, intense enough to take my breath away. I swear… the girl in the painting… her cheeks appeared redder than before.

The words came unbidden. “I need you to fuck me, Hans.”

He liked that. I could see it in his eyes.

“Keep going.”

I looked up at Mary again, trying to sense her spirit inside me, and those tingles pulsed in the pit of me. She was as desperate as I was. She wanted his vampire cock as much as I did.

Maybe even more.

“She wanted you so badly,” I whispered. “She would have been desperate to feel your teeth in her.”

He pulled me close, his huge dick pressing into my stomach.

He stroked the hair back from my brow. “She’s here in the present. In you. Where does she want my teeth now?”

“Where I do,” I said, and took hold of his ass to pull him closer. “I want you to give me the dirty bite. I want to know what it feels like.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Sarah has made quite an impact, hasn’t she?”

It felt like years since Sarah’s filthy scene, despite it being a few short hours. My mind was able to switch between moods like lightning.

“I wanted your teeth in my pussy anyway. She just gave me a little teaser.”

“Hmm. But, Katherine…” He gazed into my eyes. His green eyes so… different. As if he was seeing deeper into me. “…the dirty bite is quite something. I’m not sure if –”

“If I can handle multiple orgasms all at once?”

I was buzzing so much at the thought of his fangs either side of my clit that I could feel the wetness on my thighs.

Hans smirked, showing just the points of his fangs. I moved against his hard cock, and he licked his full lips. His mouth was watering at the thought.

“Mary’s soul is in mine,” I said, still pressing against him. “I think she deserves it along with me, don’t you? You’ll be biting both of us now.”

“Steady,” Hans whispered. “Keep talking like that and I’ll be biting your pussy right here in front of her picture.”

Confidence bloomed in my chest like never before.

“Why don’t you? Isn’t that what you want? To bite my pussy and drink my blood until I come like the most desperate girl in the world?” I smiled a smile like Mary’s. Like mine. “Come on, Hans. Give her spirit what she wants along with mine.”

He hitched me tighter against his cock this time, then grunted to let me know the feeling was entirely mutual, and I really thought he was going to do it. I thought he was going to pin me down on the rug in front of Mary’s portrait and suck the blood from my pussy as I came for him.

But he shook his head no and looked at the window.

“Now isn’t the time to be fucking you until you’re screaming on the rug. The sun’s about to rise.”

“Oh dear, is it bedtime, then?” I asked, teasing.

“You already know the answer to that.”

I slid a hand between us, grabbed his hard-on through his pants.

His hand grabbed mine.

“If you want to earn your reward, little one, you’d better get your sweet little ass upstairs and spread yourself wide. I’m sure we’ll be at it all day long.”

There was a lightness to my feet when I turned tail and raced away from him with a laugh. It wasn’t just me bounding up the stairs. It was Mary, too. She’d have been as adventurous as me.

She deserved it a hell of a lot more than I did. The poor girl had been waiting centuries. When I heard the force of Hans’ steps pounding after me, there was no doubt about it.

All those years of waiting would be very, very worth it indeed.