Blood Vengeance [COMPLETED]

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Silver

For a long time everything was silver, thick and viscous like mercury. Selene could see it running over her body as she passed through what seemed like a tunnel of it, circling around her, pulling her with a supernatural strength. All she could see ahead and behind were silver flames, leaping and brushing her skin, causing it to tingle, and she was pulled deeper and deeper inside, racing at a speed she could not fathom. In fact, she was surprised that her body had stayed intact under the extreme pressure now exerted on her flesh.

And then everything went black and she felt her body crumple as she slammed into a hard surface. She was sure every bone would be broken, but she felt no pain.

Keeping her eyes closed she uncurled first her fingers, then her arms and legs, finding that her movement was in no way hindered, and she felt no ache in her body.

She opened her eyes, and the brightness scalded them so she pressed them shut again, peeking from behind her lashes only when they multicoloured negative impression of what she had seen had faded from the dark screen of her eyelids.

Everything was the colour of silver and blue, and every surface rippled and glimmered as though it lived and breathed with some inhuman life force.

She peeked properly now, letting her eyes open slowly, accustomed to the brightness, but still found it uncomfortable to open them wide, and to protect her eyes she shielded them with her hands.

Now she understood why the witches' eyes had been so pale, so nearly blind. Down here, she imagined, they could see perfectly.

She sat up and looked about, seeing Hector and Cecily lying nearby, and the three witches standing, unaffected by the force of the tunnel that had heaved them into this place, wherever it was.

"Where are we?" she asked, noticing that her voice echoed in the empty space.

The witches turned to look at her, one shuffling forward, bent double, to pull Selene to her feet, which she did with a surprising ease.

She looked at Selene and murmured something incomprehensible.

"What?"

The witch repeated the sound: a gurgle that made no sense. A sound which, most definitely, Selene's human mouth could never replicate.

"It's where we are," she explained, encompassing their surroundings with a wide sweep of a trembling arm.

"How do you spell that?" asked Selene.

"You don't. No letters."

Just as Selene was pondering how a sound could not be expressed in words, she realised that Hector had come to stand beside her.

"Are you alright?" he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder, but removing it instantly in reaction to the intense heat of Selene's body.

"Yes."

She continued to stare about the room. "Have you been here before?" she asked.

"No."

"Then how did you know where to go?"

"There is a network of deliverers: servants to the witches who come into the mortal world and seek out those who search for them. They told me where to go."

"Not long, not long! She is waiting," said one of the witches, waving Hector and Selene over to where they stood, huddled together, one of them carrying Cecily's still unconscious body in her arms as though she weighed nothing at all.

The three witches began to shuffle across the great hall, which aside from the members of their party, was entirely empty; eerily empty.

"Does she know what she's doing, this great witch?"