Skinned (12 page)

‘Release me,' Black Annis hisses. She pushes furiously against the unseen barrier, clawing at it with her sharp talons. But the snare is strong – too strong for her to break through in her weakened state. The man shakes his head and taps his chin as he regards her. Black Annis sees a large ring on the man's finger; a magical totem. She glares at him as he speaks again.

‘Black Annis, we seek your assistance. In return for your help, we can supply you with all the flesh you could desire. And you will not have to lift one beautifully manicured finger.'
The man pauses, and smiles
. ‘In fact, you won't be able to.'

Though Black Annis does not understand all of his words, she knows the man is pleased with himself. The woman next to him, the one with hair the colour of blood, laughs alongside him.

‘Black Annis obeys no one,' the crone snarls.

‘Oh, but you will. You see that we have brought you
a sacrifice? And we can bring you many more. Fret not, we shall take care of everything. This will all be for the greater good.'

The man clenches his fist, and the invisible barrier surrounding Black Annis tightens – she feels it pressing in on her. She writhes and struggles, but to no avail. Anger and frustration well up inside her, but Black Annis eventually stops resisting. She must chose her moment . . .

‘Good. That's settled then,'
the man says, his words coming through gritted teeth. He turns to the other members of his coven
. ‘Take her inside,'
he commands. Black Annis feels her feet leave the ground as the group raises their hands, and their human magic begins to drag her back down inside her own tunnel to her own lair. The stench of their adult bodies sullies the place Black Annis once called home.

The woman with the hair of blood turns to her leader.

‘I'll get to work then, shall I?'
she says with a slow smile. The man nods, and the woman turns and heads back up through the tunnel scratched out by Black Annis' bare hands.

‘Now,'
the man says, turning back towards the crone
.
‘You must finish your meal.'

They dump the stiffening body of the boy they had lured Black Annis with at her feet. The boy's blood still drips down Black Annis' chin. She is too hungry to protest. Swiftly, silently, she goes about ripping into his cooling flesh until nothing remains but his clean, white bones and a beautiful pure pelt.

Callum jogged back to the cottage after rugby practice and let himself in, his bare legs blue and red from perishing cold. The extreme weather had even begun to make the national news. There was a picture in the morning paper of people standing on the ice in the middle of the Manchester Ship Canal – as well as reports of another child going missing, this time in broad daylight from a supermarket. Maybe Black Annis had re-emerged, but Callum wasn't sure. Snatching a girl on the street and dragging her into an alleyway was one thing, but going into a
supermarket
and stealing a child seemed an unlikely choice for a Netherworld
demon. Still, if Black Annis had started her killing spree again, he needed to stop her, and fast. As he walked into the cottage, Gran and Melissa were sitting at the table in front of the wood fire, looking intense.

‘Still playing with the radio?' Callum enquired, putting down his rucksack.

‘No, no, we've moved on from that,' Gran said distractedly, rearranging things on the table in front of them.

‘I'll show you!' Melissa said eagerly. ‘Watch this, Callum!'

In front of them on the table was a pile of short, broken twigs. Melissa shook back the curly hair from around her face and concentrated. Her expression was focused, but also filled with radiant excitement. She reached towards the twigs slowly, but without hesitation, like someone reaching out to stroke an unfamiliar cat.

She didn't do anything obvious. She didn't mutter an incantation or wave her hands about to weave a spell. But she grasped the handful of twigs and rolled them between her palms for a moment as if testing them out.

‘These twigs are rowan – protection against evil magic, remember?' she murmured. ‘Now, watch this.'

She moved her fingers deftly, weaving the twigs into a little mat. This was the kind of thing Callum would have expected his artistic grandmother to be able to do, but she'd obviously taught Melissa well.

She began to stretch the small wooden trellis by pulling at the ends of the twigs. It was as though they were made of Plasticine. Callum caught his breath. It was amazing. In less than a minute, Melissa was holding what was more or less a shield the size of a tea tray.

‘See? Simple protection against evil. I can't make a barrier out of energy, like you can – I've got to use something physical to create wards. Just the way your gran does with the charmed herbs and plants in your garden, you know? But I've got to learn how to weave a deeper spell of protection into the shield. At the moment it's really just an overgrown rowan screen, pretty tame really. Although the magic I used to make it was pretty impressive, right?'

Callum nodded. ‘Yeah, pretty impressive!' he said with a smile. ‘Anyway, we should probably do a little
more work on the chime child books before you have to get home. We could go up to my room, get out of Gran's hair . . . if that's OK with you Gran?' he asked, though he didn't wait for an answer. Picking up a couple of the books from the table, Callum gestured to Melissa and they both headed up the narrow stairs to his room. He was dying to know what Melissa's idea was. He put the books down on his bed and he and Melissa sat cross-legged on the floor.

‘OK then, let me have it, Miss Mysterious,' Callum said. ‘What's your big idea?'

Melissa took a deep breath and looked around her conspiratorially. ‘Well,' she began in a low voice, ‘obviously you can see that I'm really starting to get the hang of this whole magic thing, right?'

Callum nodded, but said nothing. He wanted to see where she was heading with this.

‘I've been thinking – if we can combine my magic with your chime child powers, we could do something special. I think I can try to
make
you have a vision – one that might help us track down Black Annis, or get to the bottom of this coven.'

‘What?' Callum said, frowning in confusion. ‘Are you serious?'

Melissa sighed impatiently. ‘Yes, of course. Look, if we can deliberately trigger a vision in you somehow, then it could give us a head start, or a vital clue sooner, instead of waiting for something bad to kick one off.'

Callum was silent for a moment. Part of him wanted to congratulate Melissa on coming up with such a daring idea, but at the same time alarm bells were ringing.

‘I don't know, Melissa. I mean, you've only been learning magic for a little while. I know what you've been doing is impressive, but triggering a vision sounds like something else altogether. I'm not sure.'

‘Come
on
, Callum!' Melissa exclaimed, but then lowered her voice again – she was clearly wary of Gran finding out her scheme. Maybe she'd already suggested it to his grandmother and she'd vetoed it.

Somehow the idea of
that
actually made Callum want to try it. He took a deep breath. ‘OK. I guess it's not a bad idea, but how exactly do you plan to try and trigger a vision?' he said.

Melissa didn't answer. Instead, she reached for her bag and pulled out two batteries – big ones, like the kind Callum used to put in an old remote control car he had as a kid.

‘Uh, that's your answer? You're planning to charge me up?' Callum said with an uneasy grin.

‘Something like that,' Melissa replied. ‘Hold out your hands.' She placed one of the batteries in each of Callum's palms and then hovered her own hands over them. ‘I told you, sometimes it helps to use physical stuff to make the magic happen, right?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well I'm going to use the batteries to send a jolt of energy into you, and hopefully that will trigger your chime child powers.'

‘OK, hang on a second.' Callum wasn't sure he liked the sound of that idea but, before he could get any further, Melissa had closed her eyes and a look of keen concentration fell over her features.

At first, Callum felt nothing. Then, gradually, the batteries in his hands began to fizzle and heat up. He felt the prickle of an electric shock begin to pierce his
hands and he jerked them away suddenly. The batteries fell on to the carpet between them.

‘What the –?' he began.

‘Callum!' Melissa exclaimed at the same time. ‘What did you do that for? It was working!'

‘I don't know if it was working but it was definitely hurting my hands,' Callum said, rubbing his palms.

‘Don't be such a baby,' Melissa taunted, with a glint in her eye. Callum still fell for it.

‘Fine. Again, then,' he said, rolling his eyes and stretching out his hands. This time, he didn't pull away. As the electricity seemed to build in the batteries, he closed his eyes and tried to let the feeling pass through him. He was just beginning to feel his palms tingle when he heard a loud gasp.

Callum opened his eyes to see his gran standing in the doorway to his bedroom. She had a steaming mug of hot chocolate in each hand, and the warm liquid was slopping everywhere as they shook.

‘Melissa . . . Callum . . . What on
earth
do you two think you're doing?'

The three of them stared at one another in silence for what felt to Callum like hours. The defiance that had prompted him to agree to Melissa's scheme drained out of him under his grandmother's furious gaze.

At last, Gran spoke again.

‘I should have known,' she said through gritted teeth. ‘I absolutely should have known. What was I
thinking
, teaching the Craft to a girl who would come up with ludicrous ideas like this?' Gran shook her head emphatically as she spoke. Callum didn't think he'd ever seen her so angry. Gran turned to go back down the stairs, but Melissa jumped up to stop her.

‘Mrs Scott,
please
! I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have even tried it if it wasn't really important.'

Gran glared at Melissa so hard that Callum almost thought she was going to throw the hot chocolate over the girl's head.

‘Melissa, I don't think –' he began, trying to calm things down, but Gran interrupted.

‘I could sense it!' she said angrily. ‘The minute I set foot on the stairs, I could sense magic being used, but I thought, “No, Ethel, you must be imagining things”. I couldn't bring myself to believe that you would
actually
go behind my back like that, when I've expressly told you not to try any of this without my supervision. After all your promises! You betrayed my trust, Melissa. I knew this was a mistake.'

Melissa stood dumbstruck as Gran thundered back down the stairs. Callum heard her clatter the mugs into the sink in the kitchen. Melissa started down the stairs too, but Callum quickly stood up.

‘Don't,' he said. ‘Just leave her for a minute. I'll go down and try to talk to her.'

Melissa nodded mutely. She headed back into
Callum's room and slumped down on to his bed with a sigh. ‘Good luck,' she muttered.

Callum took a deep breath and then slowly made his way downstairs to confront his grandmother. She was still standing in the kitchen, her hands gripping the edge of the sink. She stared out of the window, and Callum could see that the rise and fall of her shoulders was gradually beginning to slow as her angry breaths returned to normal.

‘Gran?'

She didn't turn around, but Callum took her silence as a signal that he could keep talking. ‘Gran, we weren't trying to deceive you. It's just . . . things are getting kind of serious, and it was a last resort. We needed to do something, before the situation we're facing gets out of control.'

Finally, his grandmother turned around to him and folded her arms. Callum could see that she was considering her words carefully before she spoke.

‘Callum, I know that you want to do this on your own, this fight, dealing with the Shadowing. I know that's my fault. That my actions – even though they
were intended to be in your best interests – mean you're not as prepared as you might have been. But you have to believe that you
can
talk to me about this. About
anything
. We're family, Callum.'

Callum had been looking down at his trainers as his Gran spoke but, at that, he raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘I know, Gran,' he said. ‘Of course I do. But if I'd come to you and said, “Hey, Gran, Melissa and I are hoping to trigger one of my chime child visions using magic,” would you have said it was a great idea and jumped at the chance to help us?' He could feel a smile playing on his lips, and he could see his gran biting one back as well.

‘Fine, I may not have been entirely receptive at first,' Gran conceded. ‘But I really am here to help you, Callum. If only you'd let me. Why do you think I agreed to train Melissa, and let her read the chime child books? You wouldn't let me help you directly, so that was the only thing I could do. But magic is
not
something you can mess around with.' She tailed off as she heard Melissa slowly making her way down the stairs. She came into the kitchen, her face solemn.

‘I really am sorry, Mrs Scott, and I appreciate everything you've been showing me,' Melissa said quietly, beginning to gather her things. ‘I'll understand if you want to stop our lessons now.'

‘Wait,' Gran said, finally unfolding her arms. Melissa stopped and turned around.

‘You were trying to get Callum to have a
vision
using your magic?' Gran said.

Melissa nodded silently, and then glanced over at Callum.

‘And you think this will be important in getting somewhere with the situation you are facing?' Gran continued.