The Last Witch in Space

The Horror

The formation was broken, the ritual incomplete. All our work, all our plans, had been for nothing.

But the worst was still to come.

My grandmother wheeled on Clemency, her pale face a mask of fury and despair. She raised her uninjured arm to strike and I rushed forwards without thinking. "Wait!" I called. It wasn't Clemency's fault. She didn't even want to be here. She wanted to be tucked in her bed, dreaming of love instead of spells.

Before I could reach her, another sound shattered the silence of the grove: the noise of metal cutting through air. I caught the glint of a silver tip flying through the torchlight, then an arrow embedded itself in my grandmother's sternum. She crumpled silently to the ground, blood blooming from the wound.

Screams echoed around the pentagram; high pitched and shrill; panic bordering on frenzy. It cut across the noise of the other arrows, the ones that embedded themselves in my mother, my aunt, my older cousins. The arrows that took my family out, one by one. Until only Clemency and I were left.

Clem lay frozen on the ground ahead of me, her mouth opened in a wide 'O' of shock. "Come on, Clem," I said, scrambling towards her and attempting to pull her to her feet. We had been betrayed. The next volley wouldn't be far behind.

The ground slipped beneath my feet; blood was pooling from the bodies. My stomach heaved, but there wasn't time for revulsion or panic. I didn't understand why we hadn't been killed yet, but we needed to use this time to try and escape.

"There's no point, Faith," Clem whispered, her eyes locked on the horror of the body in front of her. The body I refused to look at, knowing that I would find my grandmother staring blankly at the starless sky.

Tears threatened, I could feel them welling behind my eyes. It was getting hard to breath as I struggled to keep down the sobs that fought to overwhelm me, but despair was a luxury I couldn't afford. I needed to move, and I needed to take Clem with me. We were the last of the Feys. The last of the witches. There would be time for the sorrow to take hold, but now wasn't it.

'Where will we go? There's no escaping them, you know that." I did. There was no where to go but that didn't mean we couldn't try. It didn't mean we should lay down and accept our fate. If I was going to die tonight, I would do so fighting for my life.

"Goodbye, Faith," she said, her eyes a flood of tears. "I love you."

"I love you too," I said, forcing her to her feet. I would drag her from these trees if I had to. "Which is why I refuse to say goodbye." I would find cover, cut our hair, change our names. I would -

The thought snapped like unstitched thread. Now that we were both upright, we had become easy targets once more. A final arrow flew through the trees, piercing Clem straight through the heart. Blood bubbled from her mouth, trickling over the arms I still had wrapped around her, holding her on her feet. She looked at me as the light faded from her eyes. I let out a low, animal moan as I held my cousin's lifeless body in my arms, cradling her to my chest. I refused to let her go to. She couldn't leave me. I wouldn't let her. "Please, Clem," I wailed into her hair. "Please."

It was then that the lights appeared; a dozen of them, trailing over the death and destruction of the clearing, accompanied by voices shouting orders. I was too numb to realise that I had been spared. Too devastated to care.

"Faith Fey," the voice was a low growl, and familiar. My eyes flew from Clem's body to the man opposite me, who was illuminated by the new torchlight. Commander Rhys Hellwatch, keeper of the peace, and the father of my girlfriend.

Behind him, her face a mess of snot and tears, was the girl I thought had loved me, the blood of those I loved the best splattered across her new white peacekeeper's uniform.

"You have been charged with witchcraft," Commander Hellwatch 's voice was monotone, but his eyes burnt like coals from hell itself.

"I'm so sorry, Faith!" Bella sobbed behind him. "I was worried about you. You've been acting so strangely lately. I thought you were in danger. I thought-"

"Enough, Bella. You may return to your room. We will speak more in the morning."

She began to protest, but he cut her off by gesturing for two other peacekeepers to take her away. I watched her go in silence; I couldn't bear to listen to her sobbed excuses.

"Why did you leave me alive?" I asked when we were alone.

Commander Hellwatch sneered. 'Bella came to me tonight because she was worried about you, but she said she would only tell me if I swore I wouldn't kill you." A cruel smile crossed his face. "She didn't think to make the same request of your family." I kept my eyes on his face to keep them from the carnage on the ground.

"You've left me all alone." The words came out as a whisper.

"Alone." He smiled, letting the word sit on his tongue and fizz like sugar. "Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it," I tried not to look at the bodies below, at the murder that had torn through the night air a few minuted before. "And hell is only a poor synonym. How do you think you will fair, Faith, without your kin to guide you?"

His smile widened and I realised the only reason he'd kept his promise to Bella, was that he thought I would suffer more this way.