me.
It was more than I could bear.
Accordingly, I held out the claw, and I raised my sword, which still glowed with the magic sharpness the Hag had given me, and I chopped it off in one horrible, but clean, stroke.
Thirty-Eight
I must have blacked out for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, confused and numbed, I was on the floor. The Preacher, Vance and Monika lifted me up and propped me against a relatively undamaged wall. The cold bricks felt good against my hot cheek.
“Tie it off, quickly now,” Wilton was saying, and even through the haze of pain and shock, I appreciated the professional concern in her voice. She was still part human, and I knew from having been part monster, that she was neither all evil nor all good.
The Preacher touched my face and gently guided my chin so I could see his face. “Gannon,” he said, “that was well done. I had not thought you would perform the necessary task yourself. I had thought my axe would have to pass judgment upon your twisted hand. I’m impressed and glad you could do it alone.”
I became vaguely aware that Monika was crying. Others were wrapping up my stump in some gauze and tape.
“Fine,” said Wilton, disgusted with the lot of us. “Just fine, if you’ve been asked to join two witches and refused, well I’ve been judged by the lot of you three times now, and that’s the end of it for me. I’m going off on my own, again, and I’ll not come back. If any of you should want my protection, you can come join me at my lab. Otherwise, you can all rot.”
So saying, she lifted up the lantern from the table and began to hobble out into the parking lot.
The Preacher was in front of her, blocking her way in an instant. His axe had appeared in his hand, and it was upraised.
I tried to struggle to my feet, sliding up against the wall of bricks, using them to steady me. It didn’t work, I felt sick and sagged down again. I thought about vomiting, but held it back.
She glared at the Preacher. “You’re no priest, you are a murderer!”
“I am no murderer.”
“You are a slave to that axe then,” she said, “It rules your mind.”
“The axe is only the executioner, I am the judge.”
The lantern flared up, showing its true brilliance. The prism inside burned brightly again. Perhaps it sensed a new master.
The Preacher’s axe flashed downwards. Several of us screamed. I hobbled forward. The lantern flashed intensely and blinded us all with a silent blast of light. It was like standing in the wake of a thousand dazzling flashbulbs, each of a different shining hue. My retina showed huge purple blotches.
I heard a crash and a tinkling sound. When my eyes could function again, I saw the brass lantern had been shorn apart. The prism inside had fallen and shattered into a spray of sparkling jewel-like shards.
Wilton fell to her knees, sobbing. I thought she was more filled with grief than I had been for my lost hand.
Everyone stepped quietly out to form a circle around her. She groped in the rubble, as if not believing the prism wasn’t there, that wasn’t still whole. She found a purplish shard, for each piece had a color, it seemed, and she held it up, shaking it at us.
“Fools! What great idiots you all are!” she sobbed, “you are like cavemen, striking down what you don’t understand. Trapped on a deserted island with a single radio, you would all gather to smash it in some primitive rite. Even you, John Thomas. I just didn’t believe anyone could be so stupid.”
“Beatrice,” said the Preacher gently, “you must leave us now. In fact, you should be slain for murder. Your body is too riddled with twisted flesh for you ever to survive an exorcism of the sort Gannon has.”
“The Hag would have killed you all if I had not been down in the basement covering your backs,” she retorted.
“Yes, and this is the only reason the axe has not yet taken your head,” replied the Preacher evenly. “But you wanted more than just to save us, Beatrice, you wanted to take the Hag’s place and rule us.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I tried to beguile you so you would help me defeat the Hag my way, that’s true. Perhaps we would not have so many dead now if you hadn’t stopped me.” She struggled to her feet, her hoof scratching a furrow in the powdered cement. The Preacher guided her elbow helpfully, but she shook him off. “I don’t want your help.”
In that moment, Mrs. Hatchel gasped and reached out desperately. A figure moved close to Wilton. The old woman gave a cry of agony. She pitched forward. A huge knife hilt stuck out of her bad leg. She glared back at Holly, who Mrs. H. had wrapped up in her arms. Both Holly and Wilton breathed hard and glared at one another. Wilton’s eyes dropped first.
“You might have killed her!” said Hatchel. “Holly, you don’t know what you are doing.”
“Yes I do,” said Holly. “Let go of me and I’ll show you.”
Wilton struggled to her feet again. She pulled the bowie knife out of her leg and tossed it aside. I was amazed she could get up. I began to believe that she had fought horrors down there in the dark basement and lived.
Wilton held the lavender shard in her hand up in the air for all of us to see. It pulsed and seemed to ripple. “Mind the shards,” she said, “there might be some power in them yet.”
Wilton determinedly hobbled away from us. I wondered how many witches with good intentions had been driven from villages in just such a manner over the centuries. It was dawn now, and we watched her go, remembering the last time she had left us on a fateful day.
The rest of us looked back at the shards on the ground. They sparkled with internal light. It was not the brilliant beam that they had presented us with before, but still, it was clearly supernatural.
“That piece of the prism,” said Vance thoughtfully. “It seemed enchanted.”
Holly knelt and gingerly poked at a piece that looked like an icicle of rich amber. “This one looks like a knife,” she said. “I need a knife that could kill a Hag.”
The preacher stopped Holly with a hand and put up his other hand with fingers splayed. Everyone stopped. “Let’s not take any more of this evil into our hands. We shall bury these shards far from here, without touching them. If you agree, Gannon.”
Everyone looked to me. I nodded, barely able to stand.
A new voice joined us then. It was a high-pitched voice, and I knew it in an instant. It was the voice of Malkin, the elf.
He tsked and clucked his tongue. We all looked up, and saw him looking down at us from the ruined roof of the waiting room.
I took a breath, the others raised their weapons and stared up with wide eyes.
“Are you here to harass us or help us, Malkin?”
The elf walked slowly around the hole in the roof, looking down at us as he replied. “You have done me a favor. You have ridden this place of the Hag. For that, I owe your people. I recognize this debt.”
I noticed that the preacher’s axe was in his hand and it was twitching excitedly. No doubt, it wanted to chop Malkin in half.
“What will you do to repay your debt to us, elf?” I asked. I recalled that in the old stories of his kind, wagers and debts and promises mattered greatly.
Malkin stopped circling up there and pointed down into the mess that was the waiting room around us. We followed his eyes and saw my hand lying on the floor. Blood had leaked to form a dark pool around the severed hand. I looked at it and blinked in recognition. It was strange to see a part of yourself lying on the floor. Everything seemed dream-like at that moment.
“Do you notice a difference?”
I heard a few of the others gasp. I looked at my severed hand again, and in a flash I realized what he
