Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 23

Dogs. I see them in the rear-view mirror as I am slammed into the van window by a hairpin turn. I feel the G force hit me in the face as Mel screws on the speed, accelerating out of the turn. Empty rows of houses with boarded windows flash by.

Actual dogs, like a pack of dogs. Dogs of meat and bone and instinct. We're being hunted. And the van is now throwing its weight forward, improbably nimble for a white box on wheels. I pull my gaze away from dog pack.

Mel is frowning, driving us further into this warren of back streets somewhere near the river. We're heading into industrial land, the buildings now warehouses and office blocks, but the people that fly past as we bomb it down the little roads, they look like scavengers, shoeless street kids, even more starved and feral then the kids back in Riverside.

And the dogs get closer. We're fast but we have to keep stopping, stopping at lights and obstacles, places where the road is half blocked with drifts of trash. And then the dogs seem to be almost on us, and then I catch a glimpse in the rear view, and I notice my white knuckles, notice I haven't even breathed in a minute, and I see it, men on horses.

"What is happening?" I ask, weakly.

"Hunters, they must have your signature."

She isn't saying much. Pupils dilated. And she's slurring slightly, still got that dogBot poison in her veins. I look at her, trying again to assess if she's going to take me into a warehouse and cut my throat for some unknown deviance, she is a scary looking cat, muscles coiled like bunches of rope around her shoulders, scars, tats, broken nose, the whole nine yards.

I'm just thinking I want to go home so bad, want mom to just come along and flag us down, there has been some mistake, I'm taking my daughters back to New York thanks very much, back to our little heaven. I'm in a lot of pain. I'm in shock. I need to think. But who to trust? These lunatics chasing us on horseback? Or this psycho driving the van?

And Mel revs up the engine, the pack of dogs baying, I can feel the sound of it in my guts, and she is driving so fast I feel sick, right towards the barrier of a multi storey car park, and it lifts, right at the last possible second, and did Mel do something, to make it lift? Like she murmured something I couldn't really hear.

I want to be sick. And I ask her, "Why are they chasing us on horses?"

"Well, no tech. No tech, so they can't be hacked can they. Can't hack a horse, rewrite its software and send it off a cliff."

Jesus wept. I heard this before. Didn't quite believe it. Are the witch gangs really so powerful? I guess maybe it's hard these days to find a vehicle or a weapon that isn't connected to the internet. But surely not impossible for a government agency.

And we're driving up the levels of the car park, fast as possible which isn't fast enough, because we're lurching round in circles, swerving to avoid shelters and camps, whole place is a kind of bum motel, and I lean out the window just in time to see a great white horse appear over the crest of the ramp behind us, a soldier in white with a red cross, masked up, white night stick.

Mel yanks me back into my chair, one hand on the wheel.

"Where are you taking me!?" It comes out now, like why didn't I think to ask that until now.

My heart is pounding in my throat. Panic rising.

"To your coven sisters, Ursula. We need to make a gate to the secret school. I can't tell you anymore. If they take you..."

"What if they take me?"

"You'll tell them everything I tell you."

"I just want to go home; I just want to go home." I realise I'm whimpering.

The van leaps up the last ramp to the roof of the car park. The London rain is on us. I lurch to the left banging my head on the open window as Mel drifts the van across the wet tarmac, I blink tears out of my eyes and look ahead, someone has built a ramp over the edge of the car park.

A filthy rag doll appears in my face.

"Open your mouth, now"

I freeze.

"Ursula, they will hurt you. They will hurt everyone you love."

I feel Mel's strong hand on the back of my neck, she's leaned in close. I'm just do what she says. I can hear the dogs now, the clatter of hooves on tarmac. Is that a horn?

Mel shoves some kind of stick in my mouth, rubbing a rough brush against my cheeks hard. Then she pushes the stick into the doll and breaks off the handle.

"Give her a name and kiss her face."

The dogs. The panic now is like a high-pitched sound. Can't think.

"Elsa, her name is Elsa."

The moment I have kissed her forlorn lips she is snatched away. The van door flings open, Mel throws me over her shoulder like a sack of meat. We're running, Mel not even panting, somehow moving silently with my weight on her back. I can hear the van accelerating behind us.

We reach the opposite edge of the roof, Mel dumps me on the wall and vaults onto it, just in time I see the van go over the ramp, and the dogs follow it, the whole pack of them just follow it over, yelping and screaming, the white riders pull up short and I am yanked backwards so hard I feel the whiplash, and I am falling, the words all fall out of my head, just the falling.

Mel is wrapped around me, locking all my limbs up in her hers, head next to mine, and this ball of us is caught somehow in a long slowing embrace. Strings cut into my aching leg. Then Mel is rolling us, tumbling us towards the edge of a big net. Like London is her game board. She's always a move ahead.

And now we're on ladders. I'm just watching myself move. And we're in an alley, Mel has thrown a tarpaulin off of a gleaming air bike. She puts me on the back and wraps my arms around her middle.

"Hold on."

And then everything is a blur, and my stomach tries to escape through my mouth.

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