Prison of Hope (3 page)

“So they can’t extend it at all?” Kasey asked, slightly shocked.

“There is very dark blood magic that allows witches to extend their life by hurting and killing people. Some witches aligned themselves with certain powerful people in Avalon who
convinced
them that sorcerers were keeping the magic from them. That was a few thousand years ago, and over time witches have maintained a very bad view of sorcerers. They think we’re trying to keep them down and not allow them to reach their potential—that we show off just to rub their noses in it.”

“They’re jealous?”

I nodded. “That’s the sum of it. After such a long time of being told it, many witches believe the lie.”

“And what do sorcerers think of witches?” Kasey asked.

“We don’t,” I said with a shrug. “They’re not powerful enough to concern us for the most part, and those that are will kill
themselves
well before they become noticed by Avalon.
Occasionally
, one of them does some dark stuff—killing a
sorcerer
for blood was an old trick of theirs—but for the most part, witches are seen as people to ignore. Because they’re aligned with
Demeter
and Hera, they have enough members that they can affect a vote in Avalon, but that doesn’t happen often.”

“Why align with Demeter?” Kasey asked, clearly in her
element
of being able to ask every question her quick mind could think of.

“Demeter, Hera, and a few others were the ones who convinced witches that sorcerers were out to get them. They arranged the witches to support them in Avalon matters in return for information on how to obtain true power. Information I don’t think they’ve ever actually followed through with.”

“So, do all witches think this?”

I shook my head. “No, just the stupid ones. I’ve met some very smart and pleasant witches. And I’ve met some evil ones too. A witch in a quest for power has the worst of human nature wrapped up in the ability to hurt a lot of people.”

“A lot of witches are very nice people,” Emily said, making an attempt to show that not every witch was a power-hungry nutcase. “Some of them only use magic to help others and try to spread a message of peace.”

“Unfortunately, those who are in league with Demeter undo a lot of that good work. The witches think they have power
and a
say in what happens, when actually they’re just being used to further the aims of those who would throw them to the wind the second they needed to.”

“Yes, but like I said,” Emily stated, “not all witches are like that. Some actually use their brains and don’t want to follow l
ike sheep.”

“I’d like to meet more of them,” I said, and then a horrible thought occurred to me. “You’re a witch, aren’t you?”

Emily nodded, and Tommy laughed out loud, gaining a few glances in our direction from other adults.

“Are you a member of the coven?” I asked, ignoring
my friend.

Emily nodded again. “Have been for a few years now. You don’t seem all that embarrassed. I could have been offended.”

“But you’re not, so you either agree with me, or you don’t care. I’m going with the former.”

“I agree with you. Too many witches crave power and are easily swayed to a life of serving those who don’t really care about us. A portion of the coven would slit their own throats if
Demeter
told them to. Fortunately, they’re in the minority. The coven leaders normally manage to shut them down before they start
ranting
.”

“And Mara belongs to that smaller group, I assume,” I said.

“Yes, she’s probably in charge of it, although I have no proof of that. She’s certainly not shy about her feelings toward sorcerers.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“My pleasure. They’re mostly all talk, though.” Although she smiled as she spoke, it was the word “mostly” that stuck in
my mind.

CHAPTER
2

W
hy couldn’t we just fly here?” Kasey asked as we all exited th
e tr
ain in the town of Mittenwald, after a journey of over twe
lve hours.

“Because some of the children are unable to fly,” Emily said. “Not every species on earth likes to be tens of thousands of feet up in the air.”

Tommy chuckled. “Yeah, ask Nate.”

Emily looked at me, a question ready on her lips.

“Don’t like flying,” I admitted. “Not unless alcohol is involved. Trains I’m okay with.”

All along the private platform, more and more people piled off. The noise from so many people talking grew every few
seconds
until it was just an indistinguishable din. I had the
sudden
urge to get back on the train.

Several of the teachers motioned for everyone to follow them, and soon we were all setting off once more. It was like some weird version of the Pied Piper, with a clipboard and
whistle
, leading the children and adults out through the small train
station
and into a huge car park, where three massive buses were parked. Each bus was a long single-decker, all of them painted yellow and blue.

Kasey had met up with some of her friends and had merged into the throng of school children, leaving Tommy, Emily, and me to sit back and wait to see what happened.

“Have you been here before?” Emily asked me while I watched the teacher in charge try to actually
take
charge.

“Lots,” I said. “Those buses are what they use to ferry all the kids up to the main complex.”

“Are they safe?”

“Run-flat tires, bulletproof windows, and reinforced shells,” Tommy said. “I’ve seen these things take a point-blank shotgun slug to the engine and keep going. Nothing short of a missile strike is going to stop it.”

“Are you worried we’ll get attacked?” I asked.

Emily shook her head. “No, I just worry about driving in places I’ve never been before.”

“The hotel for everyone is ten minutes outside of town, next to Lake Ferchensee. It’s another twenty minutes to one of the single most secured places on the planet. It’s why the kids come here from
every
Avalon school all over the world. Hades and his people do this every month. Besides that’s why the parents and guardians are here.”

“The guardians are mostly witches, who by your own words aren’t something most worry about.”

“
Most
sorcerers,” I corrected. “And I’ve met a few witches I wouldn’t want to cross. What is she doing?” I asked as the woman who had been glaring at me, Mara Range, was ushering selected people onto a fourth bus that I hadn’t thought was part of the trip. It was more of a mini-bus, although it had clearly been modified for more rugged travel. It was all happening much to the obvious irritation of one of the teachers.

“She wants all the witches and their children to travel separate from the rest,” Emily said.

“Why?”

“Because she’s a fucking idiot,” Emily snapped and walked off toward what was hastily turning into a row between Mara and the head teacher, a large woman who was possibly part troll.

“She’s going to get her head torn off,” Tommy said as
he rejoi
ned me after going off to help Kasey put their bags on the buses. Kasey and five more young teenage girls were alongside him, although I didn’t recognize any of the newcomers.

“She’s nuts if she thinks segregating the witches is a good idea,” I said, and one of the girls with Kasey said good-bye and stomped off unenthusiastically toward the ruckus.

“Mara is Chloe’s mum,” Kasey informed me. “They don’t
get on.”

“Poor kid,” I said, mostly to myself, although I heard a giggle from one of the girls standing with Kasey. “What about her dad?”

Kasey shrugged. “She was close to him, but he left her mum a year or so ago. Mara started to go a little . . .”

“Crazy,” Tommy finished for her. “You should see her at parent meetings; she’s like a tiny, slightly less mustached Stalin.”

“She still wears her wedding ring, though,” Kasey added. “Although if anyone brings up Chloe’s dad to her, she goes mad.”

Emily eventually reached the arguing women, and whatever she said appeared to work, as the teacher threw her arms in the air and Mara smiled triumphantly. She ushered the children and adults onto the bus, including Emily, who stopped to say something that made Mara bristle. Mara’s daughter, Chloe, was last on the bus, which caused Mara to stop her from getting on and say something that clearly upset the young girl.

“I don’t like her,” Kasey said.

“She’s horrible to Chloe,” agreed one of her friends, a short ginger girl, whose face was covered in tiny freckles.

“I can’t say that I’m a big fan,” I said as the bus’s engine roared to life and slowly moved out of the lot.

“Nice of them to wait for everyone else,” Tommy grumbled. “I guess this is setting the standard for her behavior for the next few days.”

“I think it’s more than just her,” I said, as the clearly irate headmistress ushered everyone else onto the remaining buses. “If what Emily said was true, there are several witches here who think the same as Mara. It could make for a very long stay.”

“We’ll just avoid them,” Tommy said as we climbed onto the bus and found seats near the rear. We were soon joined by Kasey and her friends, who kept glancing over at Tommy and me, probably sensing that there were more interesting things to come if they stayed nearby. I really hoped they were wrong.

The hotel near Lake Ferchensee was a sizeable ten-story building that held enough rooms for nearly five hundred people. In the various meeting, conference, and dining rooms that it contained, you could easily have walked its halls for several days without seeing everything it had to offer.

It took well over two hours to get all of the children, their minders, and teachers booked in, and even after another hour the massive foyer was still full of people asking for information or telling the staff that their room key didn’t work.

I took my bags up to the ninth floor, dodging various teenagers who were without constant adult supervision and had decided that the hotel was now their playground to run around in at will.

Tommy, Kasey, and her friends had already gone up to their rooms on the eighth floor. The school had wisely put into place a policy that ensured a certain percentage of adults on every floor. Tommy’s room was next to Kasey’s, so I imagined he was facing down nights of staying up to ensure she’d gone to bed at the appropriate time and checking for boys every five minutes—even though Kasey wasn’t really the type to either stay up all night or party with boys.

I dropped my suitcase on my comfy-looking bed and slumped down on a leather armchair next to the large window, which gave me an exquisite view of the lake and woodland surrounding it. Germany has always been a beautiful country, especially in the autumn and winter months, and the southern part of the country was one of those places that was just a little too special to stay away from for long.

It helped that Hades and his family often spent a lot of time in the area; I always had a place to stay. Even when the country was scarred by war and evil, Hades and his compound had remained untouched. Hades helped where he could to ensure that those who needed to vanish from the ever-present gaze of the authorities at the time did so without fuss, but he was
reluctant
to get
too inv
olved. The war was a human problem, and if Hades had fully involved himself, there was no telling how much it might have escalated. Hitler and the Nazis had support of the nonhuman variety too. People will always want more power, no
matter
how much they wield, and some will align themselves with
madness
to gain it.

I remember wondering at the time, if Avalon and its allies
had
involved themselves, whether the war would have even taken place, but the answer was probably still yes. The only difference is that it would have been much, much worse.

I cast my melancholy aside and took the kettle that was on a nearby table to the modestly sized bathroom, to fill it up in the sink before returning it to the table and switching it on. I liked to have a cup of tea after a long journey; it was nice to just take a few minutes to sit and relax while taking in new surroundings. I knew a few people who did something similar with alcohol,
but I dou
bted any school trip would be too impressed with one of the guardians producing a bottle of scotch and settling in for a few hours, so tea it was.

I prefer white tea, which isn’t tea with milk in it, but will gladly drink green or black. Never instant, though, which is pretty much like drinking muddy water. I grabbed a small sachet of brown sugar and tipped it into the mug before dropping in the green tea bag and pouring the water in. I’d just settled down to enjoy the drink when my mobile rang, the sounds of “Behold a Pale Horse,” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, filling the room.

I sighed and picked up the phone and discovered that it was Tommy calling. I placed the tea on the table before answering. “This had better be good,” I said.

“You should come down to reception. Quickly.”

I was about to ask what had happened, but Tommy had ended the call, so with another sigh I stood and left the room, grabbing my jacket on the way.

I took the lift down to the ground floor, where the sounds of shouting reached me before the doors fully opened to reveal an irate Mara Range screaming at the hotel manager.

I found Tommy nearby, standing next to several more adults from the trip, all of who appeared to be watching with a mixture of interest and humor. “What the hell?” I whispered, unsure what the acceptable volume of speech was while watching a witch shout at the hotel manager.

“She’s pissed off,” Tommy explained.

I stared at him for a second. “No shit, really? I did wonder what the yelling was for. Any idea why?”

“She’s mad at you.”

That made me pause while my brain processed the new information. “Umm . . . what?” I eventually managed.

Before Tommy could reply, Mara turned toward me and raised a bony finger in my direction. “I refuse to share a floor with filth like him,” she snapped.

I glanced with mock surprise all around me before looking back at Mara, as those to either side of me made a point of quickly stepping aside. I was unsure whether Tommy didn’t move out of loyalty to me or a desire to be closer to the action. “What did I do?”

“Sorcerer!” she almost shrieked. “We were told that the witches had the ninth floor, and that
only
witches would be allowed there. Instead, you place one of
his
kind there too.”

“I’m very sorry for your upset,” the manager tried to explain—something I imagined he’d been trying to do calmly for some time. “But whoever booked Mr. Garrett was clearly unaware of this arrangement,” the manager—a tall, thin man with a somewhat haggard expression—said.

“Then remove him from floor nine this instant.”

“As I’ve explained several times,” he told her, this time with slightly more force, “we will not make anyone move rooms just because another guest tells us to.”

“Would you be happy sharing a floor with a member of the Nazi Party?” she demanded to know.

The manager’s face hardened, and I got the impression that Mara may have just launched herself over whatever line of good taste existed when one was accusing someone of being a psychopath. “Madam Range, I think there’s a difference here between someone having to share a floor with those who actively hate others, and you having to share a floor with Mr. Garrett, who, to the best of my knowledge, has done nothing untoward to either you or your witches.”

“I don’t hate witches,” I very happily told everyone. “If it helps, I’m not a member of the Nazi Party either. Just sayin’, in case this conversation goes in that direction.”

There were stifled laughs from those behind me.

“See?” the manager told Mara. “He wishes you no harm.”

“We’ll see how that goes when he’s murdering us in our sleep,” she said.

“I promise to clean up after I’m done,” I said.

The manager gave me a “Was that really necessary?” look while someone behind me made no effort to conceal his or her snigger. Apparently my time of helping was over.

Mara Range stomped toward me and placed a finger on my chest. “I’ll be watching your attitude toward my witches on this trip. If you step out of line, you will regret it.”

I looked down at the digit and wondered for a second if I should remove it for her. I decided that would make matters much, much worse and ignored it. “So, I guess asking you out for a drink isn’t going to work?”

“You’re not taking me seriously,” she snapped.

“That’s because you’re a fucking idiot,” I whispered to her and then smiled while her face contorted with rage and she stormed off toward the lifts.

Everyone watched while she pressed the button and waited. After about ten seconds, I could sense that people wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare. Another five seconds made it unbearable. Finally the lift arrived, and she stepped inside, causing everyone in the foyer to burst into laughter at once.