Chapter Thirty-One

Melissa gave Callum a desperate look. Without thinking, she stepped towards him, and Callum’s heart sank as a trap snapped shut around her ankle too. He found he couldn’t move a muscle; the bones were somehow keeping them both frozen to the spot. Try as he might, Callum couldn’t pull himself free of the supernatural trap. He could see that his friend was beginning to mutter something intently under her breath.

‘Melissa? What are you doing?’ he hissed.

The bones around her foot began to twitch and Callum’s eyes widened hopefully. She seemed to be trying to counter the magic that was holding them. But Melissa was cut short as they saw a light in the tunnel ahead of them begin to grow brighter.

Someone was coming.

Footsteps grew louder, and a pair of shadows began to loom around a bend in the tunnel. Callum’s heart quickened. Finally he saw two women approaching them. He struggled to free himself, but it was hopeless. Soon the two women were in front of them.

‘Who are you?’ one of them asked. She was tall and willowy and, in the flickering light of the flaming torch she was carrying, Callum could tell that she had long red hair. He remained stonily silent, but the woman had now turned to Melissa and was eyeing her closely.

‘A magic user – I sense it. Foolish girl, to think you could undo this spell.’ The woman turned back to Callum and held her hand in front of him, as though trying to detect something.

‘Hmm,’ she muttered. ‘But in you, young man, I do not sense the same sort of power. What brings you here, if you –’ She broke off suddenly and raised her eyebrows in realisation. ‘Goodness me, who would have thought?’

She turned to her elder female companion and laughed, the mockingly melodic sound of it bouncing off the walls of the tunnel.

‘Maeve, I think what we have here is the last of the chime children!’

She made a sweeping gesture with her hands. Callum and Melissa’s arms were suddenly pinned to their sides. Callum struggled desperately to try and manifest the power that was building furiously in his hands, but it was no use. His hands remained flat against his legs. A moment later, the traps around their feet fell open, and Callum felt himself being dragged off the ground and up into the air.

‘No – stop!’ he said through gritted teeth, but the woman just smiled slowly.

Moving his eyes to the side as much as he could, Callum saw the same thing happening to Melissa. She let out a cry and he could see her trying to blink back tears of frustration. They were being pulled through the air by the women’s magic, through the tunnel towards the lair.

In the pale light, Callum could tell that many of the bones scattered down the length of the tunnel were still fresh, with scraps of flesh still attached and teeth marks evident. It was grotesque and sickening, but Callum forced himself to keep his eyes open. He had to be aware of what was happening, wait for any chance to break free.

The passage now opened abruptly into a cave. At last they had reached Black Annis’ lair.

Callum surveyed the scene in horror.

A pair of pale glowing orbs slowly became visible in the murkiness of the cavern. They were Black Annis’ eyes, the sickly luminescent green of decay. Strewn around her feet were the partially eaten corpses of half a dozen children, surrounded by a large, elaborate pentagram drawn on the dusty floor in what Callum was almost certain was blood. Two men stood on either side of it, holding their arms slightly away from their bodies with their eyes closed. It looked as though they were somehow keeping the prison intact.

As Callum’s eyes searched further, he was shocked to see a small group of children standing in one corner of the cave. They were still alive, but their eyes were glazed and their bodies stiff. They gazed unseeing into the darkness, obviously under some kind of spell too. Callum suddenly remembered his earlier vision of a kid wandering to the front door like a zombie. He cursed silently.

And then, finally, Callum’s eyes came to rest on those of Jacob. He swallowed hard as he saw the Born Dead and Doom caged in separate iron prisons. Jacob’s black eyes were narrowed with a hard, pained stare, and Doom began to emit a relentless, otherworldly whine.

Callum finally felt his feet touch the ground, though he and Melissa remained frozen by the women’s invisible magic.

‘Oh, poor little ghosts – they don’t seem to like iron very much,’ the red-headed woman cooed. Callum’s mind darted back to a conversation he’d once had with Jacob, in which the Born Dead had mentioned that iron could be used as a ward against Netherworld beings. He clenched his jaw and spoke.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Callum snarled.

‘Don’t you worry yourself with the details, chime child,’ the red-headed woman retorted. ‘Suffice it to say that your feeble attempts to thwart our plan have proved futile. What did you expect – that you, one little chime child, and your pathetic band of friends would be able to stop us?’

‘Aradia,’ the older woman said, interrupting. ‘We don’t have much time before Varick returns. We should get rid of them.’

Callum’s heart quickened as the woman called Aradia stepped towards him. Her face threateningly close to his own, she answered the older coven member.

‘And just what, my dear Maeve, do you propose we do with them?’

The white-haired woman paused, and then her face twisted into a callous grin.

‘We should feed them to the hag.’