The 5th Witch (28 page)

At first he couldn’t understand what they were trying
to tell him. But then he thought:
They’re all wearing
masks. Maybe they’re trying to show me that none of this
battle against the witches has been magic at all. It was all a
charade, but I was tricked into believing it
.

If that were true, though, who was tricking him and why?

He turned around. The black jaguar had disappeared, and he realized that it had only been a shadow.

He turned back toward the ocean. One of the figures was approaching him through the surf, a woman wearing a mask that looked like a cat’s head. She was young and slim with rounded breasts, and the ocean breeze had stiffened her nipples. Her vulva was waxed, but it was elaborately decorated with henna flowers. Around her forehead she wore a narrow cord of tightly braided hair that had a heart-shaped silver clasp.

“You’ve been deceived,” she said, and her voice sounded very close to his ear. “Didn’t I tell you that some people are not what they pretend to be?”

She came up very close to him, and then she took off her mask. It was Gayle, and she was smiling at him benignly.

“This has all been a trick? All of this witch stuff? Michelange DuPriz and Lida Siado and Miska Vedma? What about Rebecca Greensmith?”

Gayle turned back to look at the other figures on the ocean. “Oh, Rebecca Greensmith is real enough. Rebecca Greensmith is the only one who is real. But the witch you think is Rebecca Greensmith—that isn’t Rebecca Greensmith at all.”

“I’m totally confused. If
she
isn’t Rebecca Greensmith, then who is?”

Gayle stood on tiptoe and kissed him, and it was then that he found he wasn’t walking along the beach at all; he was lying in bed, and Gayle was lying on top
of the sheet beside him. She had one leg across his, and he could feel the weight of it and the warmth.

“Who do you think Rebecca Greensmith really is? Who’s the most powerful witch you know? Who’s the
only
witch you know?”

Dan sat up. “You’re talking about
Annie?
”

“Think about it, Dan. Doesn’t it all fit into place? When she saw how those four witches were taking control of the whole of the city, Annie persuaded you to help her destroy them and to steal their powers, one after another. Who better to have as her familiar than a police detective? A police detective can open all kinds of doors that even magic can’t open.”

“So what’s she going to do now?”

“Who knows what dark plans she has? She now possesses all the magical powers that once belonged to her sister witches, and without that power, none of those three mobsters can survive for even a day. They are beholden to her now, completely, and that means she personally holds sway over more than half the organized crime in Los Angeles. Drugs, extortion, prostitution. These are the devil’s delights, and Rebecca Greensmith has acquired them all, in homage to her master.”

Dan switched on the bedside lamp and climbed out of bed. Gayle sat up, and in the lamplight she was just as beautiful as she had ever been. Her green eyes, her glistening lips, the curve of her hip.

“What the hell can I do to stop her?” asked Dan.

“There’s only one way. You’ll have to kill her.”

“Kill her? I can’t do that.”

“She helped the Colombian witch kill your friend Ernie, didn’t she? She’s helped kill scores of police officers, too.”

“How do you
know
all this?”

Gayle knelt up on the bed. “I know it because I have been sent as an agent from the one who opposes Satan.”

“You’ve been sent by
God?
Oh, come on. Of all the people in the world who can help Him fight the devil, God chose
me?
Talk about scraping the barrel.”

“Of course He chose you. It makes absolute sense. You are the only one Annie trusts to come close to her, and you are the only one who can kill her.”

Dan picked up his pants from the floor and pulled them on. Then he opened his closet and took out a black polo shirt.

“How do I know that
you’re
not deluding me?”

She climbed off the bed and came across to him and linked her arms around his waist. “I’m Gayle, Dan. You know it’s me.”

“Yes, my dead girlfriend. My very dead girlfriend.”

“Ssh. God has it in His power to give me back to you, alive, as your reward for vanquishing Satan. If you kill Annie, He will breathe life back into me, and we can be lovers again.”

Dan looked down at her for a very long time, biting his lip in indecision. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go down and talk to Annie about this, confront her with it.”

“No! You can’t do that. You have to surprise her, or she’ll destroy you on the spot. Suffocate you or burn you or shake off your arms and legs. You won’t stand a chance.”

“So how do I kill her?”

“You walk straight into her apartment and you take this cord and you strangle her with it.” She reached up and untied the braided cord around her head. “It’s woven from the hair of sacrificed witches. It’s the only way you can kill her.”

She gave him the cord, and he held it up. It was very tightly braided—blond hair and titian hair and silver hair, too. It was fastened at one end with a silver clasp, which at first glance looked like a heart, but on
closer inspection turned out to be the face of a horned demon.

“I can’t do this. Are you sure I’m not dreaming?”

Gayle took his left hand in hers, and drew it down between her legs, guiding two of his fingers up inside her. “You could have me, Dan, just as I was. But if you don’t do this for me, you won’t ever see me again. Ever.”

“But
Annie
—”

“Don’t you understand? She’s
not
Annie! She never has been Annie! Did you ever meet her parents? Did she ever tell you where she came from? She’s a three-hundred-year-old witch who lives only to give sacrifices to Satan. She’s lewd and she’s sadistic and blasphemous. She’s evil incarnate. You have to kill her!”

Dan felt as if his skull were shrinking. He lifted the braided cord again, and then he thought:
yes, this does
make sense
. Why had Annie been so determined to destroy all those other witches, even though it was so dangerous? It had nothing to do with her destiny or what her mother and her grandmother had taught her about always fighting evil. She had wanted their magical power for herself.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s finish this witch business, once and for all.”

When they went down to Annie’s apartment, they found that the lights were still on, and music was still playing. Dan turned to Gayle and said, “She hasn’t gone to bed yet.”

Gayle was loosely wrapped in his dark blue satin bathrobe, and she looked even prettier and more vulnerable than ever. “You can still surprise her. Just be quick, and don’t give her any time to realize what you’re doing.”

Dan nodded and nervously sniffed. Then he rang Annie’s door chime.

At first she didn’t answer. Maybe she was in bed, after all. But then he heard her slippers flip-flapping on the floor, and she opened up.

“Dan! Can’t you sleep, either?”

Without a word, Dan pushed her back into her hallway and manhandled her into the living room. Malkin jumped out of the way with a squeak and scurried behind the couch.

“Dan! What are you
doing?
Dan, you’re hurting me!”

Dan didn’t say anything, but forced Annie facedown onto the couch, with his knee in the small of her back, and deftly looped the braided cord around her neck.

“Dan! What are you doing! You’re crazy! Stop it! You’re really hurting me!
Dan!
”

Gayle came into the living room and stood close by, watching and biting at her thumbnail. “Do it, Dan! Do it now! Strangle the witch before she can cast one of her evil spells on you! Do it!
Do
it!
Do-
it-
do-
it-
do-
it-
do-it-
do-
it!
”

Dan twisted the braided cord so that it cut into Annie’s neck. She let out a guttural choking noise and clawed at the cord in a futile effort to pull it free, but Dan tightened it even more.

“Strangle the witch!” Gayle repeated. “Strangle the witch!”

There was a moment when time stopped. When the incense from Annie’s joss sticks hung suspended in midair. When there was no sound, no music, no clocks ticking. This was the moment when Annie had only one breath left.

Then suddenly, Dan heard the Scissor Sisters on Annie’s CD player.

“
When I was a child I had a fever…my hands swelled
up like two balloons…eee! eee! eee!
”

He heard a hollow, metallic sound, like somebody blowing down a metal pipe. He slowly turned and saw to his horror that Gayle was standing in the middle of the living room with a sawed-off scaffolding pole embedded in her face, her eyes staring at him in desperation like the eyes of a flatfish.

“You’re not Gayle!” he shouted at her. “Jesus Christ! You’re not Gayle!
Annie!
”

With fumbling fingers he unwound the braided cord and dragged it away from Annie’s neck. He turned her over onto her back. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were pale blue.

Gayle came stiffly toward him, both hands held out like a zombie.

Dan said, “Get away! I don’t know who the hell you are or
what
the hell you are, but get away!”

He took a deep breath, opened Annie’s mouth, and blew into it. He did it again and then again, and then Annie coughed and opened her eyes.

“Dan—” she gasped. “Dan, what’s—”

She caught sight of Gayle, and her eyes widened. Dan said, “It’s okay. Somebody nearly made me do something terrible.”

He stood up and faced Gayle. She stayed where she was, swaying slightly, the front of her dress plastered in blood.

“I don’t know any magic incantations,” said Dan. “I don’t know any spells, and I don’t have any magic dust. But you’re not Gayle. Gayle is dead, and you are nothing but a mockery of Gayle, and I dismiss you.”

Gayle blinked once, and she uttered that strange piping sound again, and bubbles of blood crawled out of the end of the scaffolding pole.

“If you’re Rebecca Greensmith—go back to the place where you belong, and don’t ever come back. If you’re
not, then whoever you are, rest in peace. But if you see the spirit of the real Gayle, you can tell her this:

“Tell her that Dan begs her to forgive him. Tell her that Dan was drunk and careless and arrogant and failed to protect her. Tell her that he still grieves for her every day, and that he’s sorry.”

Gayle listened to this, still swaying slightly. Then, suddenly, her head erupted, like a huge geyser of boiling oil, and her body burst open. She reared up in front of him, a seething column of glossy black, and within the space of a few seconds he was confronted by a giant snake, like a python, with a flat head and a flickering tongue and the deadest of eyes.

“
This is my master
,” said a thin, half-strangulated voice. “
My master curses you forever
.”

The snake’s head veered from side to side, the tip of its tongue almost licking Dan’s face. He stood rigid, unable to coordinate his muscles. He was so terrified that he had forgotten how to move. He was so terrified that he had almost forgotten how to think.
Almost
—because he could see the name imprinted in his mind’s eye, as if it had been branded there and was still smoking.
Satan
.

Behind him, Annie sat up on the couch. She picked up a thin dried root from the table, and pointed it directly at the snake.

“
Busd de yad!
” she said, hoarsely. “
Mykmah a-yal prg
de vaoan, ar gasb tybylf doalyn od telokh!
”

The snake reared up to the ceiling, its shining skin rippling as if it had swallowed scores of living creatures.

“My master curses you!” it hissed. “My master will never let you rest until your final damnation!”

“
Mykmah vls de ageobofaly dluga toglo pugo a talho!
Busd de yad!
The glory of God!
Busd de yad!
The glory of God!”

The room was abruptly filled with a brilliant white light—so bright that Dan had to shield his eyes with his hand. The snake writhed and hissed, and its tail swung from side to side across the floor, scattering books and candles and cushions. But the light continued to grow more intense, and the snake’s glossy skin seemed to break up and crumble.

Something buzzed toward Dan and stung him on the cheek. A blowfly. And that was when he realized what was happening to the snake—it was disintegrating into millions of blowflies. The servant of Satan, the lord of the flies.

For a few seconds, Dan was confronted by an entire snake made out of blue, glittering blowflies. But then there was a sharp crack, and the snake was blown apart, until the whole room was thick with a whirlwind of blowflies. Dan tried to beat them away, but they pattered against his face like hailstones and caught in his hair, and even tried to crawl into his mouth. He spat and spat again and pinched them out from between his lips.

Through the hail of blowflies, he saw for a single heart-stopping second the same face that he had seen on the landing of Ben Burrows’s house when they had captured Rebecca Greensmith. Calm, placid, knowing, and so powerful that it was almost like staring into the sun.

Busd de yad
, the glory of God.

The blowflies started to flare up and burn, then fall to the floor as tiny clouds of white ash. For a moment, the room was filled with thousands of sparks.

Dan felt an extraordinary swelling of emotion. He was filled with hope, with love, and a huge surge of pride that brought tears to his eyes. At the same time, though, he felt painfully aware of his own mortality, that he would have to die one day, and of the mortality
of those he loved, like Gayle and Ernie and all the officers who had been slaughtered by The Quintex.

Annie got up from the couch and came over to him. Her face was alight with the same radiance. It shone from her eyes, and it seemed to give her a flickering halo. She put her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest, and the two of them stayed like that, holding each other until the last blowfly flared and vanished, and the light had died away.