Chapter 7: The Wicked Witch of Cestrescir and An Attempt at Exorcism

It was in the wee hours of the next morning that Alix found herself in Middlesex swearing quietly in Lurakil after rounding a corner and losing Este's trail. She listened for a few minutes, trying to relocate her prey, but there was only silence even if she could still feel her nearby. A chill crept up Alix's spine causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end like raised hackles as her blood began to whisper that something was very wrong and she turned, searching the shadows for anything that seemed off. She felt the presence on her left and her stance relaxed in her disappointment as she cocked her head in Ests's direction.

"You're losing my interest," she broke the silence, "that's not a wise thing to do."

"Hello again, Rhiannon," Este's violet eyes glittering with flecks of gold in the dark, "it's been a few centuries, hasn't it? And you're still stalking me? I'm beginning to think you like me," Este said with a charming smile and Alix almost pulled a face.

"You're not pretty enough to make up for that lack of brain or personality," Alix paused to let that sink in, "I tolerated you before, and now I simply don't wish to anymore." Her smile was predatory, an untouchable hunger filling her gaze as her irises sparked with hellfire and spread to paint the rest of her eyes in black flame. The temperature dropped in the street as Alix's now unhidden presence sapped all warmth from the area; Este's breath fogged in the air as the silence stretched between them like a living thing for a moment of eternity. They were waiting to see who made the first move, but Este's patience ran out first and she let out a battle cry in ancient Greek as she called ice forth from the cool night, drawing symbols in the air to send spikes shooting toward the places Alix had stood only seconds before. Alix drew the kinjal from within her coat with lightning speed and now she charged Este while the woman scrambled to draw a barrier. The sharp black blade sang as it bounced off the ward and Alix let out a low growl. Este cast another spell to conjure a row of ice spikes from the safety of her barrier, but Alix dodged swiftly out of the way. They continued like this until enough shattered ice projectiles were littering the street to look as though it had snowed and Alix was growing tired of the game they played. "Gu Nok," at her command in Lurakil the world seemed, for a moment, to stand still; she was done playing games. Este took an unconscious step back as Alix advanced on her, her cursed blade lowered, but still singing its call for blood. Quickly she gestured for more icy projectiles, but Alix didn't so much as flinch as the first two whistled past and the third… Este stared, stumbling back, her eyes wide. A mad smile slowly worked its way across Alix's face as the ice crumbled in her hand.

"Please no," Este's voice shook as Alix pressed a hand flat against the protective ward unflinching when it lashed out against her. Frost spread across the invisible surface, radiating out from her palm until her signature Hellfire flickered to life in the center and raced across the surface chasing the frost like oil. Again Este stumbled back, falling over her own feet and landing in a mess of skirts on the cobblestone. She reached up to draw one last desperate spell in the air, but Azrael caught her wrist midline and held it in place with an unyielding grip as she brought the kinjal down on Este's shoulder in one fluid motion, severing the limb at the joint with the ease of a hot knife through butter. Her expression didn't change from her icy mask as she tossed the limb aside and Este stared in shock at first as if she couldn't quite grasp what had happened. It didn't much matter to Azrael whether or not she understood as she raised her blade to finish the job just as Este's face began to twist in agony, but by some stroke of luck—or more likely, divine intervention by the Caretaker, the irony of which was not lost on Alix even unappreciated as it was—a pair of hunters appeared down the street and misunderstood the situation in Este's favor.

"Hey!" The woman shouted as she and her brother ran towards a rather confused Este and mildly annoyed Azrael. Este reacted just a fraction of a second quicker, pulling the small silver thread scissors from her belt and stabbing the other woman in the side of the knee before fleeing for her life. Alix snapped back to herself at the sudden pain, her knee giving out while mercury and hellfire trickled from the wound and she swore colorfully in just about every language she knew. She started to give chase but found the hunters in her path

"Don't move," the young man spoke, a silver-tipped bolt loaded into the crossbow he had aimed at Alix's heart when she looked up. For a moment, she simply studied the duo in silence from where she knelt in the false snow.

Then she started to laugh.

The woman glanced at her brother, worry written plain across her face, but if he shared her concern, it didn't show.

"Go ahead, shoot me," Alix grinned wider, her mercury eyes glittering in the gaslight as her voice turned sinister, "I'll eat you both and go back to my hunt." The threat was all bared teeth in animal hunger.

"Nathaniel, we should try exorcism first," the young woman caught hold of her brother's arm and, after a moment, he lowered the crossbow slightly. She lifted the Rite of Exorcism in her hands and began to read, but Alix only shook her head in exasperation.

"Exputaegis," at the word, the clouds raced across the sky, bringing in a storm as the wind whipped the fallen shards of ice up into the air in a blinding blizzard. By the time it began to snow in earnest, Alix had already long slipped away.

#

A fire roared in the fireplace on the first floor of Alix's library and she sat beside it cleaning the last of the blood from her kinjal while trying to place where she'd seen the two hunters before. She breathed a heavy sigh before sheathing her blade and moving to climb the spiral staircase to her desk; loathe as she was to record her second failure to deal with the Wicked Witch of Cestrescir, it needed to be done.

#

The docks at Burnham were always bustling with activity and today was no different as Alix wove through the throngs of people with well-practiced ease. She slipped inside a small pub and inn, an easy smile spreading across her lips when she found her favorite living sailor sitting at a corner table with a few of his crewmates and some dice.

"Miss Swanson!" Adam Walker grinned when he saw her approach, already halfway through what Alix guessed was his third drink by the looks of him so she didn't see much of a point in correcting what name he called her by, "Come to shake the elbow with us, eh?" She laughed lightly at his drunken cheer as she pulled up a chair beside the young man. He was tan, even for a half Navajo, and the ocean still clung heavily to his scent.

"You just got back from the States, right?" The other two sailors looked up in surprise, tipping her off that they hadn't even been here long enough for word to spread, but Adam was used to her tendency towards picking up on things others missed. After all, most people couldn't tell one "Indian" from the next, let alone spot a potential yee naaldooshii, a skinwalker, just by looking at them.

"Nothing too interesting going on over there I'm 'fraid," Alix breathed a sigh of disappointment before Adam pulled a well-used deck of cards from inside his tiger skin vest and she perked up, "Poker?"

"You going to cheat?"

"You joking? How else we supposed to have a chance at beating you?" The group laughed and Alix managed to shove Este's escape to the back of her mind… with the help of a few good strong liquors mixed with holy water from her flask to numb the dull ache in her healing knee.