Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

21

"You know Thomas?"

"Oh Alice, that isn't what you should be focusing on. I should have known after seeing him behave like a lovesick puppy the first time around."

That was a slap in the face. And probably just what I needed to get my mind back on track. Thomas was not really in love with me. He was in love with the memory of my ancestor, the Pendle Witch Alice Gray.

Just where she fit into James's story had yet to become clear. The family histories that I'd studied with Anne told only of the time after she had established our homestead in Sheffield.

The one time it would have been welcome, he didn't interpret my thoughts. I needed to know more about the original Alice's role in the Pendle coven. I couldn't trust the stories she wove in my dreams. I needed James's witness statement to try and piece together the truth. But James assumed that I was still caught up with thoughts of Thomas. I suppose it was understandable, my heart rate increased and my body practically vibrated with lust every time I thought about him.

Like I was thinking about him right now.

My physical responses would scream out to any vampire, and James was exceptionally astute.

Changing tactics, I decided to foster his rare mistake. "How do you know Thomas, is there a vampire Facebook group or something? No, let me guess, you all meet for a monthly book club?"

"No need to be smart, Alice," James snapped, the twinkle in his eye contradicting his tone. The amusement twisted out of his face as he answered with a grimace. "We had a patron in common, if you can call him that. Thomas Knyvet made us both."

Ok, so I might not know much about vampires. But even I knew what that meant. Knyvet had changed both James and Thomas into vampires in the space of a few years. He was their maker, but no longer their patron. How did that work?

I knew who Knyvet was because after finding out that Thomas was the Thomas Potts who wrote The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, I downloaded a copy.

It wasn't easy to get through, and not just because of the old English language. Thomas had represented the Pendle Witches as decrepit old crones, devoid of morals and in league with the devil. If you were to believe the text, the judges were stellar figures in society: above reproach and stoic in their administration of seventeenth-century justice.

When I'd challenged him about it, Thomas excused himself with the fact that he was still human and naïve about the real world at that point. He'd lectured me, unwinding the history of the time so that even I had to admit that it was difficult to judge his behaviour by modern ethics.

Pacing up and down the small cottage back in Sheffield, he'd delivered his points with razor sharp precision:

It was a different time, people gave credence to all sorts of myths.

There was no science to disprove any paranormal phenomenon.

Religion was the cornerstone of society and the Reformation of the previous century had created fear and instability.

Superstition thrived when education was scarce and knowledge was disseminated through an oral tradition.

These interweaving strands of religious and civil unrest were agitated further by petty grievances between members of the community. Tensions filtered through to the dregs of society. And dregs, Thomas had proclaimed arrogantly, was what the Pendle Witches were.

But really, all Thomas had done was follow orders. Folklore teeming with confusion between magic and religion was rife for the manipulation of dangerous men with complex agendas. The judges had commissioned the Discoverie to justify the hanging of so many people together. Thomas had received specific instructions to lean his report towards the king's treatise on witchcraft, Daemonolgie, in order to curry favour with the monarch. The only thing that he'd transgressed in was the misrepresentation of Alice Gray as part of the Samlesbury group instead of a Pendle Witch.

Thomas had done that for love.

The Wonderfull Discoverie was dedicated to Thomas Knyvet and his wife Elizabeth. But he'd never told me that Knyvet was his maker.

"How are vampires made?" I asked, too caught up in my thoughts to consider just what it was I was asking.

My mistake was obvious as soon as the words left my mouth. James's eyes flashed red as his power surged through the air in the small room.

I tried to hold mine back but I had no mastery over it. As the dull weight of James's oppressive power descended, my magic pushed back, silver strands knitting together from the particles multiplying out from my body. Buzzing filled my ears, soon to be replaced by a chiming sound that rang in my head, increasing in volume and discordance as the seconds ticked away.

James's dead power was no longer the focus of my silver magic. There was better prey. Prey with beating hearts alive with clean energy.

I moved towards the open door, directed by the force that surged out of me, reaching in wisplike tentacles towards the light that throbbed in the Inn's patrons.

The humans stood motionless.

As one, their heads snapped up. They turned to me in unison. A glow of silver returned my gaze from every pair of eyes.

They were mine.

Oh no! Can Alice gain control of the silver?
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