Witch Way Out (Witch Detectives #3) (21 page)

I had to, more or less, carry Rebecca out of the Archive. After Niall had half-drained her, the effort of the spell she’d used to kill Elizabeth was simply too much for her. I put an arm around her, holding her up while we beat a retreat. It was quite a hasty retreat, because there were still plenty of witches in the Archive, all staring at us, all too frightened to attack us, but probably not forever.

Niall and I got Rebecca out onto the street, where she pulled away from me, standing up as straight as ever.

“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s done. She’s dead.”

“Thank you for saving our lives,” Niall said. “Even if your intervention wasn’t exactly as early as it could have been.”

Rebecca shot him a glare that suggested they weren’t suddenly about to become best friends. “I didn’t do it for you. She murdered Annette. She manipulated me. She tried to kill Elle.”

“Well, it’s done now,” Niall said.

Rebecca nodded. “It’s done.”

I wished that I could agree, but I knew that I couldn’t. I shook my head. “It’s not over yet.”

They both looked at me with obvious surprise.

“Elizabeth is dead, Elle,” Niall pointed out. “So is Nea. You stopped her from hurting Siobhan, and everyone in there heard what the two of them had done.”

“But they still succeeded in killing Ulm,” I pointed out. “It isn’t over, Niall. Flora and Lucille weren’t there, so where are they? They might not be in on this, but they’re still about to wage war on the goblins, and the goblins are coming up to meet them.”

Niall put a hand on my arm. “There are some things you cannot hope to stop, Elle. We can only try to weather the storm.”

“I have to do more than that,” I insisted.

“What
can
you do?” Rebecca demanded. “You think you can stop a whole contingent of battle witches? You think you can turn back a goblin army? You don’t even know where they’ll be coming up.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s nice to see the two of you agreeing on
something
at least. And as for where they’ll be coming up, I thought you could help us with that, Rebecca.”

Rebecca shook her head. “It’s not like they’ve given me any special information.”

“I meant that you could call them and ask.”

“What? Oh, right.” Rebecca reached for her phone, punching in a number. “Flora, it’s me, Rebecca. Yes, I know you’re busy. I just want to know where you are. You are? Right.” She hung up. “Arthur’s Seat. They’re up at Arthur’s Seat.”

How long did it take us to get there? Even with Niall’s car, it must have been ten or fifteen minutes before we came to a halt in the half-dark, starting the climb up the highest point of the extinct volcano beneath the city toward the site at the top that served as a gateway into the goblins’ world, Underneath.

The climb wasn’t easy for Rebecca. My leg had more or less healed on the way over, but she was still drained and exhausted, barely able to keep up with us. Still, we made our way upward. Ever upward, heading for the top.

I knew before we got there that we were too late.

“Down!” I yelled as fire flashed past us, diving for the ground and yelling up to the figures silhouetted against the sky above us. “Hey! We’re not the enemy! Probably.”

Above us, I could feel the battle now. I could feel the anger and the violence, the fear and the determination. I could feel the blood lust of goblins mixing with the trained calm of battle witches. I could feel the power, too, as magic flashed through the air, lighting up the sky above us in sudden flashes.

I ran for the top of the hill, not caring in that moment if the other two kept up. The scene at the top was worse than anything I could have imagined. Bodies lay on the ground. Magic flashed. Blood flew. The noise was even worse, with the screams of the dying and the furious roars of the combatants blending into something that almost made me wish I would go deaf so that I didn’t have to hear it anymore.

I saw Flora at the heart of the battle, her hands glowing with force as she threw magic around with almost total abandon. I saw a goblin almost torn in half by that power, while another was thrown back into a group of its fellows. I saw Kal not far from her, fighting his way toward her with teeth, claws, and any weapon he could grab. I saw Lucille down on one knee, slumped against a tree, blood flowing from a wound that still didn’t stop her from throwing around lethal-looking shards of ice.

“Stop this!” I yelled. “Stop this, you’ve been tricked!”

I might as well have saved my breath, because the battle atop Arthur’s Seat continued like nothing had happened. Goblins killed witches and witches killed goblins. Mostly, witches killed goblins, because the goblins simply didn’t have the strength to stand against an organized response from the coven. Elizabeth’s plan was working.

Down in the tunnels, when the goblins had thought I’d killed Ulm, I hadn’t tried to swallow their anger. It had seemed like too much. Something impossible. Fighting and running had seemed like the better options there. Now, I knew that neither one would do any good. Which meant that I had to at least
try
things the other way.

I walked toward the middle of the battle, somehow knowing that was where I needed to be. I could feel it. I could practically see it. A great nexus of emotional energy swirled around me as I strode forward, shoving aside those goblins and witches who got in my way. A goblin swung a crude ax at me. I tossed him aside. A witch raised her hands to cast a spell. I hit her with so much fear that she turned and ran before she could finish it.

I stood at the center of all the hatred, all the violence, and I drank it. I swallowed it down, gulp after gulp. I knew I couldn’t hold it, because it wasn’t mine to take, but I could hold it long enough. Long enough to transmute some of it. Long enough to use it.

“Stop!”

This time, my voice carried over the battlefield. With all the power of the battle itself behind it, how could it do anything else? It carried, and as filled with power as it was, people listened. One by one, they stopped. Goblins lowered their weapons, blinking at me in the twilight. Witches stopped in the middle of casting spells. One by one, they came to a halt. Only it wasn’t a halt. It was only a pause. I could feel that, too. I didn’t have long.

“Stop, all of you,” I said. “You have been tricked. Manipulated.”

“You helped the witches to kill Ulm,” Kal said, stepping forward from the crowd, his anger still burning dull and red inside him. “Why should we listen to your lies?”

“Because they
aren’t
lies. Less than an hour ago, Nea tried to murder Siobhan in my home. She killed Ulm. She and a witch named Elizabeth McCallum.”

“You’re blaming Elizabeth?” Flora’s anger was brighter than Kal’s, more like a blowtorch than a lava flow. She looked past me to where Rebecca and Niall were trying to catch up. “We heard what you did at the Archive. What
she
did. I got the call just after she hung up. She did
that
and then called me?”

I took her anger, and I took Kal’s, focusing on changing it. I knew I had to persuade them above all the others.

“Elizabeth was behind my mother’s death,” I said. “She has also been manipulating all of us from the start. She was trying to get witches and goblins to fight.”

Flora shook her head. “It’s a nice story, but that’s all it is. Elizabeth didn’t even want a fight. She told me so.”

“Well, she told a room full of witches the other version at the Archive,” I said. “She set this up. She set it up so that the goblins would be pushed into a fight they couldn’t win. So that you would be on hand to slaughter them. This needs to stop now.”

Flora shook her head. “It’s too late for that. The goblins—”

“The goblins are here because Elizabeth
wanted
them here.” I turned to Kal. “You cannot win this fight, Kal, and the ones who killed Ulm are dead. You should go home. Keep your people safe.”

Kal shook his head just as quickly as Flora had. “This needs to happen. Now is the time when we rise!”

A few of the goblins cheered, and I knew I was losing them.

“You see,” Flora shot back. “They need to be stopped. Now get out of the way. We have a battle to finish.”

I shook my head. “No. This isn’t going to happen. I won’t let this happen.”

“You won’t
let
it happen?” Lucille stepped forward beside Flora. “Arrogant girl, do you think that
you
can dictate to
us
what we are and aren’t to do? You would be better served running, after all you’ve done today. We gave you a chance to come back to the coven and you’ve thrown it back in our faces, killing one of ours.”

I could feel the hate coming off her, and I knew she would never believe me about Elizabeth. Niall moved beside me.

“There is nothing more you can do here, Elle.”

Flora nodded. “He’s right. Now, you can get out of the way, or we can go through you. Which is it going to be?”

Just for a moment, it felt like I could see what was going to happen next. I couldn’t, not really. No one could see the future. But I could feel the anger flowing back in. I could imagine Kal leaping forward to attack, or Flora throwing a spell, and then…

Battle. Death. Maybe even my city in flames.

My city.
I’d stayed when I could have run. I’d confronted Elizabeth when I could have been out seeking safety. I could almost hear her laughing at me for doing it now, for coming here when there was no hope of changing anything. Well, I wasn’t about to let her win that easily. Not from beyond the grave. Not anywhere. Not when she’d shown me at least one way of stopping people.

“Step
aside
, Elle,” Flora warned. “We have goblins to deal with now.”

“We’ll get to
you
afterward,” Lucille promised.

“
No
.” I said it quietly the first time, but the second, it carried well beyond them. “No. I will
not
allow this.”

“Just who do you think you are?” Lucille demanded, and her hands came up for a spell. “You think you can stop all of us?”

“Yes.”

That was the thing about my powers. An hour ago, I hadn’t been able to stand against one powerful coven witch, because I hadn’t had enough to work with. My magic was an inefficient thing. It needed so much emotion to run smoothly. More, if I didn’t quite know what I was doing. Yet, here on the battlefield above the city, with the fury of both goblins and witches running through me?

I let it in. I let it
all
in. The anger and the pain and the fear. I let in in, and I turned it into magic. I shaped it into the same spell that Elizabeth had used on me, only on a much, much larger scale.

I knocked them flat. Goblins and witches, warlocks and the rest. Flora and Lucille, Kal and his followers, Rebecca, even Niall. I didn’t have the control not to. But I did have power. There and then, I had a whole battle’s worth of power. I had the hopes of goblins who had tried to come up into the sunlight. I had the fears of witches who had tried to stop them. An hour ago, I couldn’t stop one witch. Now, I could have held them forever.

“Who do I think I am, Lucille?” I said, and in the sudden silence, my voice sounded louder than I intended. “I think that I am Annette Chambers’ daughter. I think that I am an
enchantress
. I think I am someone the coven has hunted and used. And I think…” I knew I had to say it, but even so it was hard to actually do it “…I think that this is my city. My home.
Mine
.”

Flora looked over at me. To be fair, every eye there was on me in that moment. “You can’t mean—”

I nodded. I could. I did. I’d had this conversation with the coven before, but last time, I’d tried to keep things small. Now I could see that keeping it small didn’t work. I couldn’t ignore what I needed to do.

“I can, and I am. I’m claiming Edinburgh as my domain. The coven has shown that it cannot be trusted here, so we’ll have to do things the other way. This is
my
city.”

“But you can’t
do
that,” Flora said.

I stared at her until she looked away. “Who is going to stop me? You? Do you think that you could stand against me, here and now?”

Flora struggled against the spell that pinned her for a moment, then looked away.

“
Do you
?”

“No,” she admitted. “So, you’re taking Victoria’s place then?”

“I tried to avoid this,” I said, softly. “I tried so hard. I almost signed your stupid deal. I didn’t want this. But now…yes. I’m taking her place, if that’s what you want to call it. I’m not afraid to say that now, because I’m not her. I’m so much worse for you than she would ever have been. Because I care about this city, and I have the power to do something about it. It’s my home, and you will not do this here.”

There it was in a nutshell. I had power, so if I cared at all, I had to use it. I could choose one way, or I could choose the other, but I couldn’t keep pretending that I didn’t have the power to make the choice. I couldn’t ignore the responsibility that came with what I was.

Lucille took up where Flora left off. “If you are laying claim to this city, then there are details that must—”

“No.” Again, I shook my head. “I’m not going begging to the coven for this city. It’s not mine because they say it is. It’s mine because it’s
mine
. My home. My life. Any witch who lives here can go on living here, but the coven office here is going to close. You and your battle witches have one day to leave. After that, I’ll
make
you leave. That’s all.”

“So, you’re just going to let the goblins come up and run about on the surface?” Flora demanded.

I sighed. “No. Kal, I want you to take your people back down Underneath. Ulm was right. The path to the surface is a slow one. It isn’t the time for them to come out into the light. Not completely. Not yet. Your people can come up if they need to, or if they want to, but you need to stay a secret for now. You don’t get to choose for the whole of the supernatural world.”

“And you do?” the goblin shot back.