Mathilda, SuperWitch (Mathilda's Book of Shadows #1)(105)

I had no idea it wouldn’t matter.

One of the witches came forward, opening a small metal case that carried a vial that was filled with a syringe and some neon pink fluid that looked right out of X-Men.

Ash coolly picked up the syringe and vial, pulled the cap off the syringe with his teeth and spit it out then filled it from the vial.

I didn’t fight when he grabbed my arm, plunged the syringe into a vein and pushed whatever the fluid was into my bloodstream.

I just stared at him. My eyes (I hope) filled with loathing.

And I thought, I hate you.

And the answering thought in my head was, No, you don’t.

The bastard.

* * * * *

Whatever was in the vial affected me violently. Chills slid across my body so ferociously that I fell to me knees then my side, curling into a fetal position and shivering uncontrollably.

“What’s the matter with her?” Darling asked, standing over me.

“It affects some like that,” Ash answered, also staring down at me.

“I thought it was meant to subdue her,” Darling carried on.

“She’ll calm in a moment, Agatha, not to worry,” Addison said.

And I did calm.

I became scary calm.

As in, body comatose, mind not comatose calm.

Ack!

When I did calm, Ash bent down and picked me up in the fireman’s hold again. Nothing so intimate as the way Aidan carried me, like a husband carrying his wife over the threshold. No, with Ash, it was all business.

Goddess, I hated this man.

We left whatever building we were in and they put me in a car.

My body was not my own.

My mind was there, active, I could see everything, hear everything but I could not move my arms, legs, head – nothing. It was like the whole of my body had gone to sleep including those annoying and painful tingles.

Why the tingles?

It was dark, it was late and it was Hallowe’en.

I wasn’t stupid; the Witching Hour was nearly upon us. I had a feeling I knew what they were up to.

I spent the time in my head calling out to my tree, to find power and strength and to ask it to send a message out through nature that I, The Chosen One, needed help.

What I was thinking, performing a ritual ceremony on Althea when I most needed my magic, I do not know.

A crazy sense of responsibility to Althea as a fellow witch?

She’d been wronged by witches and I was determined that she’d be righted by witches.

And that determination might be the end of me.

* * * * *

We arrived.

The glimpses I caught through the darkness were of fields. This time, Ash didn’t pick me up, one of the other men did. He carried me up a hill so steep he had to transfer me to another dude halfway up.

At the top the man dumped me on the grass, face up.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it.

St. Michael’s Church.

I was on top of The Tor.

Oh… crap!

* * * * *

Historians and tourists knew little bits and bobs about Glastonbury’s Tor.

Most gruesomely that in the times of Henry VIII, at the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey (whose ruins now nestled beautifully in the town at the foot of The Tor), the Abbey’s last Abbot was hanged on The Tor, his body quartered, the pieces sent hither and yon with his head staked at the Abbey.

But Glastonbury as a whole is a spiritual and mystical place for all faiths from Christianity (legend says Jesus visited when he was a boy) to paganism (mostly Celtic) to Arthurian Legend (the Holy Grail is, indeed, buried at the base of The Tor).

There is a reason for the utter importance and reverence of The Tor and its surrounding lands.

The prehistoric, manmade Tor was the site of Avalon.

Yes, Avalon – the mystical island that guards all magicks as well as the gate to the Underworld.

Over time, the sea has receded, Avalon has faded and the magicks have disbursed.

But The Tor remains.

Yes, the myth is true.

You know the Seven Wonders of the World?

The Supernatural World has the Thirty Magical Gates.

And Glastonbury Tor was Numero Uno.

* * * * *

This should have soothed me, to be at The Tor, a place of faith and ceremony, of history and power.

A place of immense magic.

The place that could heal me.

But somehow, right at that moment, it didn’t.

Wanna know why?

Because there were a lot of people up there.

A lot.

My eyes rolled around in my head and I took them all in.

There were witches in cloaks, men in overcoats, bats flying around, sorcerers and sorceresses wandering about.

I noted three magical carpets with Magi floating on them.

Wizards, trolls, goblins and I even saw a panting whirling dervish.

I also saw Endora Eccles.

And Jeremy Bligh.

And I saw the Scary Faerie from The Hobgoblin zoom in, sober as a judge, and alight on Agatha Darling’s shoulder.

Of course, that little shit was Agatha’s faerie.

Of course.

I was so stupid.

It was a big, freakish Supernatural Hallowe’en Night Come-See-the-Fall-of-The-Chosen-One Party.

Fuck me.

* * * * *

They took me into the St. Michael’s Church.

St. Michael’s Church was small, one “room” if you will. That room was open to the elements, both doorways had no doors and the top had no roof. The church went up, three, maybe four stories – a tall, narrow, imposing stone structure.