Page 16 of Song of the Hell Witch

Ten

By all rights, Prudence shouldn’t have trusted the succubus.

The woman had just boiled a man’s brain with a single stare.

She should have given in to the fear and panic that seized her in the seconds before she’d launched herself out of the hold and swept Puck and Bea into her arms, then taken off over the rooftops.

But the woman’s power, a melody that complemented her own, made her feel more capable and less alone than she’d ever felt before. It reached across the river, beckoning her, and she couldn’t ignore the sense of kinship shivering through the air.

“Imogen Shearborn.” Those were the only words the woman had offered before Prudence flew back to the boat, and that was the name Prudence gave Puck as she rowed them toward the embankment, her wings and talons receding with each stroke.

By the time they reached the dock, she was human again, the back of her shirt torn to shreds, Jocelyn’s trousers soaked through with river and rainwater.

“Are you sure about this?” Puck’s rain-soaked hair tumbled into his eyes as he stepped out of the boat, cradling Bea in his arms. His daughter slept on, the gray veins spreading and swelling beneath her skin, like smoke in her blood.

The alarm bell tolled inside Prudence’s head again: You know what’s wrong.

She chased the thought, trying to find the answer beneath all the fear and exhaustion, but there was nothing. Puck’s daughter couldn’t be dying. It was obvious in how he bent to kiss the top of her head, how he pressed his eyes closed in what looked like prayer, that he wouldn’t survive losing her.

“Pru?” he barked at her.

“Sorry. I’m …” She looked to the Hell Witch, who stood with her hands folded in front of her, alabaster face framed by her hood. Prudence positioned herself between her and the Reeds, in case the succubus decided she’d rather attack a man than help him. “He wants to know if we can trust you.”

“I’m of the opinion you can only trust people when they’ve earned it,” the woman replied as she approached, hips swaying side to side in a rhythm Prudence might have found hypnotic if she hadn’t felt so exposed.

“Then I would point out that without me, you’d all be floating face down in that river.

And since the whole city’s looking for a duchess who doubles as a Spectabra Daughter—”

“Spectabra—” Prudence began, confused. The Spectabra were crystals rumored to still exist in certain caverns in Leora but largely destroyed over the centuries by agents of the Faith.

Outside of the Druid legend that Hell Witches had been made from the power of the crystals, she’d never heard the two connected before.

“Sorry, Hell Witch , as you all say in this ignorant corner of the world,” the woman continued. “Anyway, given there’s both a dead constable and a dead baker in the alley behind me, I’d say it’s probably best we get off the streets. Now.”

“Wait, dead baker? What baker?” Puck’s voice was hoarse, his spine rigid. Prudence considered taking his arm, calming him down, but thought better of it. “It’s not a woman, is it? You didn’t—”

“I would never kill a woman.” Imogen’s face creased in disgust. “The man back there’s been beating his wife since he came home from the war, maybe even before that!

Nearly killed her three times this past year alone.

She came to us for help on the last full moon, and as a Lady of Leora, I gave it to her. Do you take issue with that?”

“He doesn’t,” Prudence said before Puck could react. “I promise you he doesn’t.” Time crushed in, a noose tightening around her neck. “And you’re right, we need to find shelter …”

She spun around. Puck wouldn’t take his eyes off Imogen, but she had to believe he was listening, as desperate to get to safety as she was. “This friend of yours, this Marigold, will she still take us in? All of us?”

In answer, he crossed the cobblestones without a word, heading through the alleyway opposite Imogen’s victims, straight into the heart of the Podge itself.

Prudence tried sprinting after him, but her muscles protested, battered from the sudden transformation and the whole destroying-a-smuggler’s-hold situation.

As long as she kept him in her sights, she could follow at her own pace.

“Don’t really love chasing after a man, but … suppose it’s better than getting caught, isn’t it?” Imogen asked, falling into step beside her.

They took long strides until they were maybe ten, twenty paces behind him.

The gathering fog parted for him as he skulked along the serpentine streets, clinging to the mudstone facades as best he could, practically invisible within the shadows.

Prudence mimicked his path, keeping her ears pricked for boots on stone and hushed commands.

It couldn’t be long before they stumbled upon a Watchman.

And like she’d summoned them with her thoughts, they found a pair of them waiting around the next turn.

She and Imogen froze at the same time, the harmony of their power disrupted by the thud of the Watchmen’s boots up ahead.

Prudence started to whistle at Puck, but then he spun against the side of a shop, out of sight.

She and Imogen ducked under an awning, using the shadows as a veil.

“Why’re they pulling us out?” one of the constables asked as they raced past them, bayonets fixed to their rifles.

“’Cause duchesses don’t play in muck like this,” the other one answered. “They’re gathering a force up at Hornsgate; they want to make sure she can’t get away.”

“Heard she’s got a snake tail.”

“You think maybe that Hale bloke is right? That this whole place is going to hell ’cause we’ve let these blasted women steal our power?”

“Little pissants,” Imogen hissed.

Prudence didn’t breathe, not until their voices faded.

A peculiar sensation took hold as she stepped out onto the street, a surge of energy that made everything tingle.

As Puck took off and she and Imogen followed, the feeling crescendoed, morphing into a pleasant shudder that quivered down her spine.

The rush. The danger. Perhaps she’d missed it more than she knew.

Imogen matched her stride for stride, and the tingling intensified, becoming a charge that danced across her skin. It couldn’t all be adrenaline. Some of it had to be the presence of another Hell Witch. The vibrations of her song spun the air into lightning, reviving her second by second.

“Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?” She was too high on the magic to explain what she meant.

But Imogen smiled, like she didn’t need an explanation. “The Druids used to call it the Dark Mother’s Song. Incredible, isn’t it? That’s why they separated us over the centuries. Imagine the kind of power we could wield if we truly banded together.”

“But if you’ve been in Talonsbury this whole time, why haven’t I—”

“Oh, I don’t live here. No, I’m on rotation this month. The southern provinces. If you’d killed your husband a few weeks later, you’d be getting another Daughter entirely. We flit around the various regions in the country, go to the places where our services are most needed.”

“Services?”

Imogen frowned. “What, you think our sisterhood sits up in some castle eating sweetcoils all day? There are women in this country who can’t defend themselves, darling girl, women who need us.

Sometimes we shelter them in Stormlash. Sometimes we find more …

immediate solutions to their problems, depending on their specific request. It’s our duty, the responsibility that comes with our gifts. ”

A duty. A place where she might find not only acceptance but a renewed purpose. Prudence plucked these particular things out of Imogen’s explanation, along with the mention of a castle and sweetcoils, which would definitely make things more comfortable.

“Years ago, I met this woman in Belacanto. She told me about your sisterhood in the Wild Fang mountains. She invited me to join you.”

“Do you remember who it was?”

“She never said. But I know she was a vampiress.”

“Hetty.” Imogen’s smile was eerie, almost too perfect in its symmetry.

“She’s our unofficial leader. Well, consider this a follow-up invitation.

Honestly, I’m awed. I was on a simple job tonight when I heard a Spectabra Daughter was on the run.

I’d hoped to follow your tune and find you.

Never imagined I’d stumble upon a Subversal case too. ”

Subversal. Prudence could see the word on the page in Rubeus Frick’s ridiculous The Wicked and the Damned : the S drawn as an adder with jeweled blue scales, framed inside an ivy-bordered square.

The illustration of the condition came next, a hideous, two-dimensional portrait Frick had probably sketched himself.

A woman, head thrown back in unimaginable agony, screaming as green and purple veins slithered up her neck, down her arms.

The Subversed Hell Witch is that most forsaken of the Lightbringer’s creatures, for her magick’s song hath been caged within her body and thusly the song destroys all humours within and without, until there remains but a condemned corpse that must be purified with fire before commended to the earth.

Prudence seized Imogen’s wrist, pulling her to a stop. “Beatrice is Subversed?”

Over Imogen’s shoulder, Puck turned down Hopswitch Row. As far as Prudence could remember, it was a dead end, so unless someone had knocked down the wall at the other end of the alley, he couldn’t go far. Marigold’s place had to be close.