Page 78 of Night of the Witch
“GO!” I bellow, voice tearing with my own fear, and bodies are frantic to obey.
The crowd heaves, and I vaguely see shapes writhing over newly displaced stones, angling for the hole in the floor leading down into thick, inky darkness.
I turn to Jochen, dust coating his skin in a fine film. He leans on me, and the two of us begin climbing over the hazards and rubble, some of it shifting threateningly beneath our weight.
Outside the cell and the prison, voices shout. I could take one of the protection potions and throw my body as a barricade between these people and the coming jägers, and hope that magic is still as unpredictably potent as it was in Otto’s house fort and when I protected his sister. But nothing I do could help as much as the fog of chalky dust that blankets the room; the jägers can’t see the hole in the floor, the prisoners pouring out to safety. They don’t know exactly what is happening, merely that something exploded.
We climb down, desperation making us unsteady. I feel a sharp rock cut into my shin, but I push on, holding tight to Jochen as we leave the cold swell of the ruined prison chamber and plummet into the aqueduct’s shadows.
Water splashes in all directions beneath the patter of running steps, but otherwise, it is silent, fear wrapping everyone in a blanket of focus. No one cries, no one screams, just the rush of panting breaths.
“Leave,” I tell Jochen, wiping dust off my face, the taste of it bitter on my lips. “Leave—I have to go elsewhere.”
“Danke, Fräulein Hexe,” he says, and before my body can even feel the shock of his words—he knew? He knows what I am, what Ireallyam—he’s gone, the slush and stumble of his hobbled gait taking him off down the tunnel.
People still clamber down the rubble, and now I can hear hexenjägers shouting above.
“Stop!Halt!Hexen escaping—”
I shiver, arms around myself, and duck to the side, out of the way of the remaining prisoners.
Otto was due to light the fuse on the explosion, then run. He should be at our meeting place now; the routes he had me memorize took everyone out of the city, but the intersection where we’re to find each other is the only route that goestowardthe Porta Nigra. A risk, but there’s no way we’d find each other in the chaos of dozens of people rushing through tunnels.
What will he say when I tell him that I’m not leaving?
I promised to help him find his sister. But no one could find her better than Liesel; he’ll have to understand that.
He still doesn’t know what Dieter really is, does he?the voice whispers.
I shake my head, too disoriented in the blackness, my ears stillringing, my chest permanently tight with worry. Not now. Just get to Otto. If he won’t stay to help, I’ll find Liesel on my own.
I spin in the dark, feel for a wall, and hold there. I’m facing…east? I think? It’s all disorienting down here. But the Porta Nigra route should lie ahead, then two lefts, a right, another left—
I take a step forward.
Turn!the voice shouts.Turn around, Fritzi!
I stop, cold.
It’s never…yelledbefore. And it sounded panicked? Afraid?
Numb, I turn. I turn because I am sleepless and sick with worry and being told what to do, where to go, with even this modicum of authority has my body moving of its own accord.
My fingers scramble for the pocket in the slit through my skirt, and I yank out a protection potion. Wild magicwill notget me—I down the potion, the earthy, metallic taste a small comfort in the darkness. What will a feeble protection spell do againstwild magic, though?
I wait for it to laugh at me. For it to wax on about how I can’t hope to fight it.
But it’s silent now, which is even more unnerving. Did the protection potion cast it away?
I take another step, heart hammering, lungs burning, all sight deadened but sound coming in muffled bursts so I’m not even sure this is the right way, or if back was better; why am I following the voice, why am Ilisteningto itstill—
I reach a turn. If this is the correct way, then I need to go left.
I walk. Each step I take draws me farther from the sloshing of feet in water, the shouting of hexenjägers. Are they in the tunnels yet?
I start running. In the dark. Hands out in front of me. All of my faith in the protection spell coursing through my veins.
Instinct seizes me, and I come up short, palms going flat on a wall.
