Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

She climbed the stairs and pressed on one of the wooden doors. It was heavy, but as she strained, it lifted the barest amount. . then the solid clack of metal on metal marked the limit of its travel. A barrel bolt on the upper side of the doors was locking her in.

She was trapped.

Wind from the west whipped the treetops into a breathy susurrus, driving the women faster.

Suzette felt pushed, urged by dry fingers to a place and fate that was pregnant and black and waiting. She wondered again, as she had since her mother told her about Pritam’s death, if this was just another part of Quill’s plan.

‘What a trio we make,’ said Katharine as they strode side by side. Three women: one stern-eyed and pretty, one lean and quite beautiful, the other sliding into attractive late middle age, all with hair pulled back sensibly as they trotted with a fork or spade in hand and grim purpose on their faces.

Laine smiled. ‘Are we mad?’

Katharine slid a sure eye back. ‘Oh, yes. It’s good, isn’t it?’

Suzette recalled Nicholas’s words from days ago — days that felt like weeks. I thought you just liked gardening , he’d said. That was. . what? Hemlock and mandrake and double-double-toil-and-trouble shit?

‘Fire burn, and cauldron bubble,’ said Suzette. She looked at her mother. Katharine held her gaze and gave a small nod. It made Suzette smile.

‘That’s us,’ said Katharine. ‘Three witches armed by Bunnings.’

Laine let out a small laugh, but her smile soon evaporated.

The word ‘witch’ seemed to scare them all. They were silent, perhaps sharing the same thoughts. Where was Nicholas? Still in the woods? Had he found Quill? Had she found him?

The night was young but cold, and something was shifting on the air. Suzette noticed Katharine watching the sky, and followed her mother’s gaze upwards. Clouds, heavy as slate and swollen like the underbellies of diseased beasts, were rolling across the sky. Rain was coming. Heavy rain.

‘Do you feel small?’ asked Katharine. ‘I feel very small.’

By the time they reached Carmichael Road, their faces were toneless shadows.

‘What are those cars parked there?’

Suzette and Katharine followed Laine’s grey eyes.

On the dark strip of grass bordering the black trees were several cars.

‘I don’t know-’

Red and blue lights flashed on, dazzling the women, and a siren hoo-hooed once in warning.

‘Ladies?’ called a man’s voice. ‘Please step over here.’

After Rowena Quill had told her story, she’d fallen silent, tending her fire.

Nicholas had tried to turn away, to close his eyes, to think, to plan how to escape and kill her. . but then he had started watching her fingers.

The fire was fully birthed and breathing on its own, and Quill put down the poker and tongs so her hands were free. They began to weave the air above the flames, seeming to pull shadows and firelight through each other, drawing symbols in the shimmering, sparking air above the fire pit.

Nicholas stared, mesmerised. Her voice was a singsong of words he didn’t understand, but their tone was clear. Invoking. Inviting. Imploring. Please. Please. .

He was startled from the spell by the thudding of the first heavy drops of rain on the shingles above him. It was a short entree; in just moments, drenching rain stampeded down. Rain to deter the searchers. Rain to buy Quill time enough to kill Hannah Gerlic and move her body to be found kilometres away.

Nicholas rolled onto his back. The ropes dug painfully, pinching the skin of his wrists and cutting most of the blood to his feet, making them cold and numb.

‘Let the girl go, Rowena.’

For a while Quill said nothing, but cocked her head and listened to the tapdance on the roof.

‘She can’t go back,’ she said. ‘She will bring them here.’

‘You killed her sister, her parents are already-’

‘She won’t suffer,’ snapped Quill. She rose quickly to her feet and hobbled across the room. No sign of the young, svelte Rowena now.

He’d seen the terror on dead Dylan Thomas’s face as he was hauled, again and again, to a violent death that occurred somewhere near here. A death, Nicholas was sure, he would see tonight.

‘They suffer,’ he said.

She sent an angry glance at him, ready to bite again.

‘It’s an honour. They don’t know it, but they give of themselves so that others live.’

‘Trees,’ whispered Nicholas.

‘Yes, trees!’ snarled Quill. Orange light danced under her chin and eyes, so she seemed to rise like a fiery djinni. ‘And more than trees. There are secrets in live wood.’ She turned her full face to him and, as her passion rose, she again grew younger, so chillingly beautiful that Nicholas could only stare. ‘The woods ruled once, and men were tiny in them — tiny an’ afraid. The woods fed us an’ taught us an’ shared their secrets with those that listened to Him. Oh, how terrified they were when we learned fire! Fire an’ steel. Fire an’ steel, an’ the scales swung. Then we grew more plentiful than the trees. We became the blight on ’em, like that cursed fungus on our lumpers. Poisonous, infecting everythin’. One of them,’ she pointed out the window at the black panorama of hidden forest, ‘can grow five hundred years. Do you know how many people can breed from two humans in five hundred years? A million! A million mouths an’ bodies needin’ more fire, more wood, more food, more space.’

She shook her head and her long, blonde hair sparkled like silk. Her eyes probed his, desperate.

‘We’re the disease,’ she whispered. ‘What odds if a few young ones must die? There’s always more. Trust me on that.’

She lifted her head, her throat was long and slender and white. On the skin that plunged down from her neck to the curving tops of her breasts glistened delicate gems of perspiration. Nicholas found his skin growing hot, and looked away, angry with his body. The rain swelled on the roof. Rowena and he could have been the only people in a hundred kilometres, a thousand kilometres. Despite his fury, despite his disgust, his body wanted her.

‘It’s a lie,’ he whispered. ‘You’re a lie.’

She rose from her chair, lithe and light as air, and crouched over him. Her eyes sparkled.

‘This hair’s a lie?’

Her face hovered over his and her hair fell like gold curtains around them. Her teeth were perfect pearls behind thick, soft lips. She lowered her mouth till her lower lip grazed his forehead.

‘This skin?’ she murmured.

Her touch was electric. His blood throbbed and his groin ached.

‘It is fleeting now, yes,’ she purred. ‘But it needn’t be. I have only to ask. I have never asked for anything for me, just for me.’ Her head crept forward until her white throat was over his face, and her breath blew over his chin, his neck, his chest. Her breasts swung loose and full, tantalising centimetres from his eyes, his mouth. ‘We can be young together.’ She prowled backwards till her lips were above his.

Nicholas felt his heart thumping in his chest, so hard it shook him on the floor. He felt the pulsing rain outside was driving his blood, falling hard and alive, desperate to sink into the ground, to rise through roots and trunks, to explode in lush, bright leaves.

But Hannah. .

‘And what will that cost?’ he whispered.

The corners of her perfect lips curled upwards in a gentle smile. ‘She’ll not suffer long,’ she whispered back, a breath as young as saplings.

He could feel her heat. Smell her sweet sweat. The skin above him was so white and perfect that there was nothing else to the world — she could be his sky, his bed, his food. He gritted his teeth. It’s a lie , he thought . It’s all a lie. Her excuses, her double life, her names. Pretending to be part of a town that she fed off, that she bled, which she plucked children from as carelessly as weeds from a herb garden.