Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 72

We're walking together across Black Heath at dusk, me Ty, Vash and Mel. It's an open stretch of grass cut in four pieces by roads in the heart of East London. One of the many villages swallowed up by urban sprawl. It's where Londoners build bonfires.

And above us there are seven drones lent to us by our new friends in the gang. They're military quadcopters, bodyguard drones armed with assassination weapons, and they're meant to be highly visible, a deterrent against open assault from Witch Hunters.

This gives us the protection we need to comb the ground beneath our feet for clues. We're sifting through the wreckage of a party of sorts. There's a lot of rubbish. There were a lot of people here last night, maybe couple of thousand according to Mel.

And here we are as night falls, can still smell the old burning smells. There were lots of fires lit across the heath, a few were so large that they still smoulder now. But we're trying to find evidence that somebody was dragged here, maybe hurt here, maybe even killed here.

The Witch Night parties have been springing up all over town, and our associates in the Dead Foxes warned us that the hunters are arranging for witches to be 'accidentally on purpose' dragged out of custody by mobs. And London is full of mobs now.

The witch craze it is at a peak.

So many people are furious. So many people believe that they can have back some imagined golden age if they just burn all the witches in London.

I cannot describe how terrified I am, because they said that there were two girls, young girls, abducted near here. And they had dark hair and they looked like sisters. And I can feel my soul falling through my feet and deep into the cold cold earth.

I can only try to focus on looking, looking without judging, at the sprawl of detritus left out here on the Heath. And we're getting closer to the centre of the whole event, and there's an urchin there. A kid actually covered in wet mud and ash, just scavenging by the looks of things, putting stuff into a shoulder bag, doesn't see us in time to run.

And when we arrive at the site of the main bonfire, the kid tries to scurry into some big bits of blackened wood to hide. Mel drags her out by the ankle.

"I ain't don nothing! I ain't done nothing!"

Mel leans in and threatens her.

"You tell us what we want to know and you won't get hurt. I'll even let you keep your stuff."

"Please let me go!" She sits and shivers, defeated, at Mel's feet, occasionally letting her eyes dart around, looking for an escape.

And then Ty calls out to us to come and look, and we follow over to look and there are bits of clothing, almost unrecognisable, and an area of fattiness, like when you burn fat in an oven, when you're making grilled cheese and the cheese drips onto the oven floor.

And then she pulls a hair band, not the hair band itself but the tiny metal link that would have held the fabric together.

We dig and trawl through this debris, until we've found enough scraps of evidence to know for sure.

Two people died here.

They must have taken the rest of the remains away with them at the end of the party.

"We didn't know! Says the urchin. They was in a big box, we thought the screaming was part of the show. Thought it was like bonfire night. There were fireworks an all sorts. We didn't know they was real girls in the there. I wouldn't have watched If I knew. I swear."

And I lean into her. and I think to myself, she's an innocent, but I need information.

"I think you know a little more than you are saying, buddy." And Vash is tense, seeing something in me she doesn't like.

Mel puts her on her feet. Mel lifts her and holds her arms behind her back. I summon something really nasty and rest my fingers around the girl's throat. And I send tendrils into her, straight into her neck and into her spine and up and into her cerebellum. And I upload a malicious thing, a shiver made of hallucinogens and spite, a mind control spirit, and I make her speak to me like a puppet with my hand in it, only I'm using her memories to make the words come out.

"We all knew. We done a deal with the Hunters. We bargained with them. My parents sent me back here to look for jewellery, look for valuables people might have dropped at the party. We're so poor. Some days we only get one meal. And my brothers all died of the yellow sickness and the witches made that so it's only fair. It ain't nice but burning them's the only way. Only way to end the curse."

I drop her. Mel drops her. Vash stares at me. Ty looks downcast.

I know that little girl never be quite normal again.

But then she barely was already.

We leave the Black Heath and return to the safety of the underworld.