Witch Fire (32 page)

Finally, they came to a halt and the hood was removed. The forest had begun to thin, for they had reached the foothills of the mountain range. Sunlight filtered in sequins through the trees and into a small clearing. There was a group of efficient-looking tents, but the encampment had a temporary air. Wherever the guerrillas had their base, this wasn’t it.

Lucas’s hands were untied. More people emerged from the tents. Then the flap to the largest tent was untied from the inside, and an elderly woman emerged. ‘La Bruja Blanca,’ she announced.

Chapter 31

‘You look just like your father,’ said the woman who stood before him. Her voice was British, accent-less, and she had a pale, fine-featured face. ‘But I suppose everyone says that to you.’

Lucas didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He was face to face with Edie Starling, in the middle of a South American jungle.

And when he finally found his voice, he blurted out, ‘I thought you were old.’

The guerrillas laughed softly.

‘A young beauty one day, an ancient crone the next – that’s the story, isn’t it? Neither true, I’m afraid. The first La Blanca was old when I met her, and had been in the mountains with her revolutionaries for many years. But with one blonde witch-woman succeeded by another . . . well, people are easily confused. And then there’s Ana here.’ She indicated the elderly woman who had introduced her. ‘Ana stands in for me on occasions. No witchwork; just sleight of hand.’

Although Edie’s platinum hair was threaded with silver and the skin around her eyes was lined, her figure was girlish and slight. Lucas couldn’t see Glory in her face. Her daughter’s sallow colouring, her strong jaw and dark brows, came from elsewhere. But there was a jaunty red scarf tied around Edie’s neck, at odds with her utilitarian clothes, and he thought, well, Glory would like that.

‘Why have you brought me here?’

‘We’ve been watching you since you first arrived in San Jerico. And my daughter, of course.’

Lucas shifted uneasily. He wondered how much she knew about his and Glory’s history. Perhaps this meeting was about to turn into an ambush, as part of some complex revenge plot against his father. Edie Starling’s manner seemed almost too casual to be true.

‘You see, I have a number of informants,’ she told him. ‘One of them works at the Carabosse Club, another for Senator Vargas. They, and many others, are troubled by the idea of the Inquisition returning to Cordoba. But a society where witchwork runs riot can be a kind of tyranny too.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Which is what Endor’s after.’

‘Yes. Endor wants this country to slip even further into anarchy. It’s the ideal base for the crime that funds them, and the terror they export. They’re hoping to establish a stronger presence here, which is why they were determined to sabotage Vargas’s campaign. My friend in the Senator’s household had his suspicions about Rose Merle from the start. The hexing of Vargas’s child proved him right.

‘I have something to show you. Come.’

She beckoned Lucas out of the clearing, and he felt another prickle of nerves. Before she left, she stopped and spoke softly in Spanish to the old woman, Ana, and then to one of the men of her own age. He was grizzled but handsome, and as she moved on, caught her hand and smiled.

Ah
, thought Lucas.
Poor Patrick
. His thoughts flashed back to London, to his and Glory’s old lives, and the subsequent lurch of incredulity made him stumble. He suddenly couldn’t think what he was doing here or how it had happened. Yet he had no choice but to keep going.

Edie Starling led him through the trees to a small but steep ravine. There was a woman’s body lying in the creek at the bottom of it. Her head had been cracked open on the rocks. It was the fallen glasses Lucas recognised first; large and unfashionable. Then the missing finger-joint.

‘You knew this woman?’

‘Um. She was a . . . therapist. At this school I went to. With Glory. We think she was working for Endor.’

Edie’s face was impassive. ‘I used to know her too. Many years ago, by a different name. We had reason to believe she was Rose Merle’s handler. So when I heard of Glory’s arrest, it was time to bring your so-called therapist in.’ Lucas barely had time to register how Edie skimmed lightly over her daughter’s name. ‘My men intercepted her the day before yesterday. She died last night, in the course of trying to escape. By then, fortunately, she had already given us most of what we needed.’

She sat down on a stone outcrop and invited him to sit too, producing a small plastic bag from her pocket. It contained two small curved pieces of metal, and a sprinkling of dirt.

‘
This was her ring. It turned out to be hollow inside, and filled with sand.’

Lucas remembered it. Large and plain, like everything Dr Caron wore. ‘She used sand in her therapy sessions. For us to, er, play with.’

Edie smiled thinly. ‘Sand-play is a recognised therapeutic technique. Dr Caron’s use of it was not.’

Dr Caron might not have been a real therapist, but the feelings she had drawn out of him in their sessions had been real enough. Lucas thought back to those long hours in the tower room, fingers trailing in the sand, forming it into shapes, crushing it into nothingness . . . burying his conflicted feelings in its depths.

‘When my men found her,’ Edie continued, ‘she was on her way to the southern border, to meet with another Endor operative. As you know, Endor has no command centre. Once an integrated network, it has fragmented over the years into a loose association of regional groups. Dr Caron and her associates feared their base here was no longer secure. Perhaps they were aware that my people had begun to watch the place. Either way, they were already preparing to evacuate. The aim was to establish a new clinic elsewhere, with a new source of patients. And so Dr Caron was in talks with another Endor cell. She needed their support for the enterprise.’

‘You know about Cambion, then? And Wildings?’

‘I do now. Dr Caron was not going to her meeting empty-handed. She intended to demonstrate the success of the Cambion project.’

Edie drew out a slim laptop from within her shoulder bag. ‘Encrypted, of course. Luckily, this jungle is home to an expert hacker or two.’ She gave another thin smile. ‘Some of the data was lost or corrupted during the decryption process, and it’s not the full story by any means. Still, there are a number of things of interest.’

She switched on the machine and clicked on a picture file. It was an X-ray of a human skull, face on. There was a little white splinter above the right eye.

‘
There – one of the so-called “implants”, though it hasn’t been planted particularly deeply. Only the outer layer of the membranes around the brain has been breached.’

‘What . . . what is it?’

‘A fragment of bone,’ Edie answered coolly. ‘Any kind would do, but it’s a finger bone in this instance. Not exactly high-tech.’

Lucas felt queasy. ‘I thought Dr Caron damaged her hand in a car crash.’

‘No. The removal of the fingertip was self-inflicted. But the crash was real enough. It’s what induced Rose’s own collapse.’

‘So last year, when Rose came home after the surgery, and it seemed she’d literally lost her mind – when she was without memory and sensations and emotions –’

He was thinking of Jenna’s description of a golem: a body without a soul.

‘Dr Caron was in a comatose state; Rose was feeling the effects. The witchwork she had undergone was not as straightforward as its pioneers believed. When they bound the heart and mind of one witch to the bone of another, they failed to anticipate there would be a strong physical connection as well as the mental one.

‘Dr Caron recovered and so – to a certain extent – did Rose. However, the connection between them must have been weakened. Rose began trying to mentally resist, to fight back, using her own fae. Her struggle intensified last night. As a result, Dr Caron grew confused and distracted, and therefore much easier for us to manage.’

‘But then the doctor made her own bid for freedom.’

Edie frowned. ‘I admit we let our guard down. She might have been confused, but she was still Endor-trained. Unfortunately for her, it was dark and raining and she didn’t see the drop.’

From where he was sitting, Lucas couldn’t see it either, or the broken body in the creek. He was glad of it. ‘Rose heard a voice in her head. She told Glory it was her fae. She’d even given it a name, Alice. But it was Dr Caron, right? Using some kind of telepathy?’

‘Yes. There are recordings of the process stored on this computer, and I will show them to you. I’ve already downloaded all the uncorrupted data on to a USB stick. By now, it should have been delivered to the inquisitorial squad at the clinic. Once I am sure of their intentions, I will give them this laptop and the ring. Their forensic team will want to take a look.’

Lucas blinked. ‘You’re putting this in the hands of the United Council of Inquisitors?’

‘
This is an international issue, and only they have the necessary resources.’

So Edie Starling the outlaw wasn’t so revolutionary after all. Lucas should be glad she wasn’t some mad-eyed jungle queen. It was clear she had influence and authority, as well as mystique. What would Glory make of her, though? How could she be prepared? His heart tightened. For a new possibility had occurred to him – that this life was something Glory might want too. Edie might want it for her. She could be La Bruja Blanca the Third: righting wrongs, fighting tyranny, folk-heroine and celebrity.

Edie cut into his thoughts. ‘I don’t intend to deal with the UCI directly and I’m sorry they arrived before we could reach the rest of your companions. I would have preferred to have met you all first.’ She turned to face him. ‘Nonetheless, I’m glad of the opportunity to speak to you on your own.’

Lucas tried to prepare himself. Though he didn’t think this was an ambush any longer, it was still a reckoning. ‘My fath—’ he began.

‘Can you tell me –’ Edie said at the same time and he felt silent, not least because of the unfamiliar hesitation in her voice. ‘Can you tell me . . . Glory . . . what is she like?’

He could feel the intensity of her gaze, like heat. It took a moment to collect himself. ‘She’s strong and she’s brave.’ He paused. ‘An extraordinary witch, though you probably know that already. Stubborn as hell, but not quite as tough as she thinks she is. Exasperating. Generous. Loyal. She’s – well. She’s the best person I know.’

‘
Thank you.’ Edie suddenly looked, and sounded, very tired. ‘Ashton and I . . . we talked about the two of you. It was a long time ago.’

‘I’m sorry about what my dad did.’ The words came easily now. ‘I found out how they blackmailed you – he and the others at the Inquisition. I know he regrets it. It was a shameful thing.’

Edie nodded slowly. ‘When I met your father,’ she said, ‘he was in the grip of a terrible grief. Sometimes it seemed like anger. Behind it all, I thought he was a decent man.’

Lucas felt a great unclenching inside, like a cluster of knots untying itself. But he had one more confession to make.

‘Endor wanted to do it to me – what they did to Rose. But there’s nothing genuine about the Cambion treatment, is there? The fae can’t be blocked.’

Edie shook her head.

‘But if it could be . . . if the procedure was known to be safe . . . if things had been different . . . I would have said yes.’

‘And now?’

‘No.’ The last knot had loosened. He smiled. ‘I’d say no.’

Edie Starling smiled too, then sighed. ‘I think it’s time I met my daughter.’

Chapter 32

‘Surrender yourselves!’ boomed the man with the loudspeaker.
‘
This witch-hunt has been authorised by the United Council of Inquisitors! Cease and desist all witchwork! Lay down your arms!’

Glory put down her gun in the doorway of the clinic and followed Jenna and Raffi outside, hands behind her head. One instant they were surrounded by hulking black-clad men bristling with weaponry; the next, they were pushed to the ground, arms wrenched behind their backs and cuffed in iron.
Here we go again
, she thought.

It took a lot of arguing, explaining and telephone calls before it was accepted that Glory, Jenna and Raffi were not Endor terrorists. On the way out of the building, Glory had ordered the others not to breathe a word about Lucas if he wasn’t already in custody. She was boiling with frustration and anxiety about him. Would she be able to sense if something bad had happened to him? And could Jenna be trusted to keep her mouth shut?

The leader of the squad was a stocky German. Glory recognised him from the fundraising party for Senator Vargas. He curtly introduced himself as Major Carsten von Dernbach, Witch-Hunter First Class.

‘Senator Vargas requested our intervention – the police here are impossible and he’s lost confidence in the private security firm he was using. Then we had a tip-off from the WSA regarding this facility.’

The WSA was otherwise known as the US Inquisition. Jenna did not look happy.
‘
This is a Section Seven-led operation. The WSA has been appraised of our progress but –’