22

“Now, that’s good company. I am always happy to welcome visitors, just ask my children. Unfortunately, I rarely have guests who are not witches. But today, I have a lycanthrope, a manticore, a vampire and… my favourite – a necromancer! How are you, Constantine? I hear lately you’ve been having trouble with your extracorporeal travels.” Mada laughed with the voice of a small girl.

From where he was lying, Mikhail couldn’t see the witch, but he did notice Constantine’s face lose colour in the light of the candles.

“I could help you with that,” the hooded figure continued, “but you upset me greatly when you killed my dear Irene.”

Constantine remained quiet for a moment but his expression gave out that this was new information for him.

“I did not kill Irene,” he said.

“Really? Then how did her necklace end up in your friend’s possession?”

Mikhail heard footsteps approaching. A shadow swept over him, and someone pulled the medallion out of his pocket.

Diana stepped forward. “He didn’t kill the witch.”

“Ah, Bloody Diana… You’ve come to ask about your brother, I imagine?” Mada sounded bored.

“That’s right. And I can also tell you who last visited Irene. Because when the necromancer left her place, she was still alive. The ones who came after him…were probably the ones who killed her, judging by what you’ve said. I will tell you everything I know. All I ask in exchange is for you to let the manticore and lycanthrope go,” the vampire said with a confidence that, Mikhail suspected, was backed up by absolutely nothing.

“You expect me to believe a polished fabulist like you?”

“Excuse me?” The vampire’s jaw dropped.

“You cleared out my entire bar upstairs with that lie about the neighbouring building being on fire. Am I not right?”

“Well—” Diana’s face had the question how the fuck do you know that? written all over it.

“And, to top it off, the necromancer forced out all my staff who refused to leave, took their keys to the main entrance and locked up behind them. That alone is reason enough for me to not only distrust both of you, but to kill you. Your brother, Bloody Diana, is a lost cause. Don’t trouble yourself with him. And as for that witch, I actually couldn’t care less who killed her.” The hood ordered her subordinates, “Tie them up, too!”

Constantine took out a gun, pointing it right at the hooded figure. “Not. So. Fast.” If the warning in his tone wasn’t enough, the way he smoothly flicked off the safety catch left no doubt he was ready to fire.

Mada’s laugh was even more horrifying than before. “Don’t threaten me! Back when humans invented firearms, I protected myself and my children against them with powerful magic. It wasn’t cheap. It cost me almost all of my skin, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Constantine pulled the trigger. The bullet whizzed towards one of the witches but, just before it reached her, froze mid-air and dropped to the floor. “Hmm. You weren’t joking.”

The cave shook with the cacophony of the witches’ laughter. Mada waited for them to calm down and shouted, “Not at all!”

The witches lunged at Constantine and Diana. The vampire swiftly drew her sword and struck first, cutting them off before they could land a blow.

Traces of every hit taken stung all over Mikhail’s body but what pained him the most was his helplessness. He could only observe while the vampire knocked witches down one by one, flinging her weapon as well as the sharp spikes on the tips of her boots. She swung her sword and chopped off the head of a nearby witch. Drops of fresh blood splashed across her face.

Constantine was also blocking attacks, but for every witch he threw to the ground, two more appeared before him. Probably another trick. How much longer could the two of them last if their enemies were endless?

All of a sudden, Constantine collapsed. The confusion on his face suggested that he, too, had been struck down by the same paralysing magic that was keeping Mikhail on the floor.

The vampire kept fighting, though. She leapt and pierced the tip of her sword through the eye of one of the witches as she landed back down. Her skills with the weapon were impressive. The pool of blood around her expanded with every passing second, along with the pile of corpses surrounding her.

“ENOUGH!” Mada’s voice boomed through the space, causing the candlelight to flicker.

Diana stumbled to the ground in an instant. Clutching her sword, she attempted to stand, but her efforts were in vain. Soon, Mikhail knew, she would also realise she was bewitched. The witches around her paused their attack to watch her desperate attempts to free herself from the spell. For a short moment, Diana’s miserable moans were the single sound in the chamber.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the cave. Mikhail cursed his immobilised body. The only thing in his line of sight was Diana’s struggle to break loose from the magic slowly creeping up her muscles and paralysing her. He couldn’t move his eyeballs, so he had no idea what was happening to Viktor and Constantine.

Mada’s figure passed before him when she hovered through the room. The edges of her robe were inches above the ground but every step she took caused the earth to shake. She halted in front of Diana’s helpless body and removed her hood.

The creature bore no resemblance to anything Mikhail had ever seen before. An ashen face with patches torn open in places, revealing scarlet-red skin resembling raw meat. The mouth was a sewed line. On either side of her nose were two little black holes, above which was another set of larger ones, probably the creature’s eyes. In the middle of her forehead, a strange spinning circle glowed in alternating shades of blue, slowly expanding and shrinking in a rhythm.

Mada nudged Diana with the tip of her would-be boot. “Knockout, Bloody Diana.” And even though the creature’s lips hadn’t moved an inch, her voice echoed through the cave.

***

Although he was still breathing, Mikhail sensed an imminent threat to his existence that he couldn’t ignore. In moments like these, he longed for mortality and the ability to die, but his supernatural form refused to surrender so readily. Captured, tortured – it didn’t matter. He would suffer for days, or weeks, until the necrosis from his wounds spread through every cell, causing ulcers, bleeding, destruction, and increased agony.

Mada would not gift him with a merciful death. The witch clearly held a personal vendetta against him that he didn’t understand. Not that there was a point in trying to. His death would be his relief. And didn’t he deserve some relief, after all this time? An excuse to not fulfil his promise to regain the regenerative abilities of the immortals… A task that seemed impossible on the best of days. A task that everyone had pointed out was not his to be burdened with.

Something inside him stirred. He couldn’t die today. His human side might have been defeated, but the beast refused to bow. It wanted out. It was in control now. If he could somehow turn, he’d free himself from the spell.

Then everything stopped. Again.

A loud growl shook the walls of the cave.

It can’t be…

The growling intensified; screams and undistinguishable words followed.

Mikhail smelt aggression and fear. A dead body landed on top of him. Warm blood spilt across his face, but it wasn’t his own .

“ Impossible !” Mada’s voice rose in pitch, a hint of desperation creeping in. “STOP!”

Whoever or whatever she was shouting at didn’t obey, because the cries continued. And with every passing moment, corpses accumulated in front of Mikhail while the fight unfolded behind him.

“Get away, you beast! Stop! No! No ! S-stop him… S-someone… For the love of all the gods, stop him !”

A desperate shriek filled the room.

Mikhail’s body surged back to life—the paralysis was gone! He jumped to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his right ankle, which was likely broken. His ribs and hand throbbed with pain, and he suspected his internal organs were ruptured.

Chaos reigned around him – mutilated bodies, decapitated heads, torn limbs. Among the bodies, he caught sight of Diana rising to her feet. Her eyes darted around as if searching for something and, when she found it, she leapt forward. Within seconds, she’d regained her sword from the ground and had it aimed at…a wolf.

Their saviour was a wolf.

“Viktor?” Mikhail could not believe the sight. It was impossible to tell the animal’s fur colour beneath the blood that covered it from ears to tail. It sat on its hind legs, cleaning its bloody snout with its tongue. When Diana took a step towards him, Mikhail yelled, “He’s harmless! Put the sword down!”

She ignored him, gripping the sword’s hilt tight. “Didn’t you see what it just did? I wouldn’t call that harmless .”

In truth, he hadn’t seen it, because everything had happened behind him.

His attention immediately shifted to the skeleton walking in the middle of the cave.

“What the hell is that?!” Diana pointed the sword away from the wolf and towards the skeleton.

Mikhail frowned. “Constantine…”

“What’s he doing?” The vampire kept shifting her sword between the wolf and the skeleton, as if unsure which one was more dangerous.

Next to the wolf lay Mada’s lifeless carcass, black blood pouring out of her holes. The skeleton knelt beside it, opened its jaw for a moment, then closed it back again. Mikhail recognised the act. It was something Constantine detested and avoided but, for some reason, had chosen to do it to the witch.

“He’s eating her soul,” he said.