Page 26 of Destiny of the Witch

‘Let’s go to her room,’ I said tightly. ‘2C.’ We turned off the lights, trooped back down the stairs and knocked on her door. There was no response.

‘Hannah?’ I called through the door. ‘It’s Amber. I need to speak to you.’ Still no response.

‘I’ll remove the wards.’ Bastion’s eyes glowed as he carefully removed the wards from her door. ‘There are two magical signatures,’ he warned, ‘and one of the wards was a containment one.’

As he ripped them away it became clear what the containment rune was for. A terrible odour started to fill the corridor. Bastion looked at me, his eyes sympathetic.

I knew that smell, too. It was the stench of death.

Chapter 19

Bastion turned politely to Benji. ‘Would you like to kick the door down? You need to put your boot just here.’ He pointed to a part of the door beside the lock.

Benji nodded, his expression serious. ‘I would like that.’ He reared back and kicked. The door flew off its hinges and landed with a thump onto the sofa inside the room.

‘Maybe a little less force next time,’ Bastion said lightly, but he grinned and clapped Benji on the shoulder. ‘Good job.’ Benji beamed at the praise.

‘I want to kick in a door,’ David complained.

‘Next time,’ I promised vaguely, busy thinking about what I would find inside the apartment. For some reason, my feet didn’t want to move forward. Death awaited me in there; the only question was who had died? I didn’t want to find out.

Bastion moved forward to check the room was safe before I entered, and that was enough to galvanise me into action. When he called the all-clear, his voice grim, I strode in. I would not be cowed.

He was in the bedroom, so I followed him there. The stench thickened and I had to work hard not to cover my nose and mouth with my sleeve. Instead I breathed shallowly through my mouth.

Hannah lay on her bed, tied down and spread-eagled. She had been wearing nightclothes but the shirt had been wrenched open and she had been cruelly sliced into. Her whole body was dusted black, covered with the shadows of an oath death. In the end, she had broken her oath under torture.

An oath death had taken her, but looking at the cruel marks on her body I knew it was not her fault. Anyone would have broken with the agony she must have suffered. She hadn’t betrayed me, not knowingly, not willingly. I struggled to hold it together.

I tried to examine the body critically, battling to shove my emotions into a box somewhere deep inside me. This wasHannah.I had been so proud of her and I had identified with her so strongly. She was so hardworking, and her future was so damned bright. Or it had been.

Damn it, I would not cry here. She deserved to have me witness her suffering and I would not balk at it.

‘Can you cut her free?’ I asked Bastion tightly. I hated seeing her bound and prostrate like that.

His hands shifted to claws and he effortlessly cut the ties that held her down. There was no point worrying about preserving the scene because I wouldn’t be reporting this to the Connection. It was an in-house matter – and when I found out who had done this to her, I was going to plunge my athame into their cursed heart.

I swallowed hard, stepped forward and picked up Hannah’s hand. The muscles flexed and moved; rigor mortis had come and gone, which meant she had died between one and four days ago. The blood on the sheets had dried, so she’d probably been dead at least a couple of days. The containment spell had kept the scent of blood, death and faeces locked in the room.

The horrific signs of torture on her body told me that she hadn’t willingly given up the circus, and tears filled my eyes despite my best intentions. I had been thinking the worst about her and all this time she’d been lying dead all those floors below.

‘Edward,’ I said suddenly as my brain clicked into gear. I blinked away the useless wetness in my eyes. ‘Edward gaveyou and Benji drinks. He was supposed to guard her so there’s no way that he didn’t contact her for two days.’ He hadn’t been on my suspect list because he was a wizard rather than a witch, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t work for the evil witches.

‘I’m on it,’ Oscar growled.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Benji said fiercely. ‘This is not right.’

‘It is wrong,’ David agreed. ‘I will also help capture this Edward.’

‘We need to question him,’ I said firmly. ‘Bring him to me alive.’

The three men nodded and left me alone with Bastion and Hannah. She was in her late twenties but in death she looked painfully young. I looked around but there was no sign of Fifi, her blue corn snake familiar. ‘I’m sorry Hannah,’ I murmured aloud. ‘I failed you.’

‘You did not,’ Bastion snarled. ‘How many times must I tell you that you are not responsible for the actions of those around you? All you can do is control your own behaviour. You did nothing wrong.’

‘I believed the worst of her,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I thought that she had betrayed us.’

‘Because theevidence suggested she had,’ he argued. ‘You are only human, Amber. You can only follow the evidence.’

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