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“You stand before us accused of witchcraft,” the judge presiding proclaimed, leaning forward to fix her with a look down his nose. “What say you to these charges?”
She smiled demurely and spoke after an uncomfortably long silence. “What do you know of witchcraft?” she asked. Bianchi tilted her head just so, letting her hair slip out from behind her ear, her full lips parted in an enigmatic smile that she knew would unsettle the panel assembled to arraign her because of the apothecary she owned and the feral cats that frequented her home. “What exactly am I accused of?”
“Witchcraft!” his voice boomed.
When he realized that he had failed to intimidate her, Bianchi tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Look at all of these men, afraid of a few kittens.”
“Ah yes,” a new voice said breezily, its presence pervasive but somehow without form or substance, “but kittens also have claws.”
The chief justice looked around, his panic beginning to rise.
But nothing changed in Bianchi’s demeanour, as if this was a regular occurrence. “And teeth,” she added. Then she turned her attention back to the judge. “But yes, I am a witch.”
The man’s eyes lit up as if he had caught her in his web, but her next words made his smug smile falter.
“Of the worst kind.” She watched him squirm. “What will you do with that knowledge? You can’t kill me in any way that matters.” She paused to allow him to splutter. “But would you like to try?”
“Such impudence!” The man looked at the panel of judges that sat on his either side, reeling back slightly when he saw the same dreamy smile on each of their faces.
Bianchi stepped forward, the lights in the room began to flicker and brighten as they filled with some sort of supernatural energy. The brighter it grew in the room, the longer the shadows that were cast and thrown about, criss-crossing and layering over each other until the contrast threatened to overcome them all.
Bianchi’s shadow on the wall seemed to tremor on the edges like a desert mirage, glowing hazily. A form began to take shape behind it, a silhouette of a man with feathery wings that oscillated between cold light and sinful darkness, tucked safely into her shadow, threatening to overflow, just brimming with untapped power and wild magic. But when the judge looked behind her, he saw nothing that could cast such an ominous and oppressive presence.
“Stop this at once!” he yelled, trembling in his seat as she continued to approach, pulling herself up onto the dais and leaned over until her lips brushed his ear and the collar of her dress dipped, tempting him closer. The others around him merely smiled dumbly, as if there was anything amusing at what they were witnessing.
“Witch!” the magistrate gasped.
Bianchi smiled wanly. “Yes, and?”
“Demon!” he cried.
“He prefers ‘angel,’” she replied lightly when the flames danced higher as the gas lamps struggled to keep up.
“If you don’t require anything else of me, I’ll be leaving now,” she murmured lowly in the judge’s ear, cupping his jaw in her long fingers, tilting his head back just enough to leave him vulnerable, with just enough volume to ensure that he was not the only one that had a shiver run down his spine. “You’d best be careful. There’s dark magic out there.”
She left a whisper of a laugh on his cheek and the faint scent of lilac and lemon verbena in her wake. Her eyes dared him to make a move. He didn’t; they were all under her thrall. They stared as she turned to leave, the smiling shadow of a spectre trailing at her heel, wings half unfurled as it moved like an angel in chains.
The first things she saw as she entered the dark apothecary were the white patches of Luce’s calico fur as the cat slept in a nest made in an empty crate on the counter. The matriarch of the colony had finally gotten comfortable enough in her presence to enter the shop and had begun spending more time indoors as she aged; she continued to sleep as Bianchi approached.
“There you are,” Bianchi murmured as amber eyes lifted from Luce’s sleeping form. “Renato,” she greeted. The black cat yawned, showing her his pink mouth before closing his eyes and returning to sleep as well, a sleek void curled protectively around Luce. “They mistook you for my familiar.” She chuckled quietly and lit the candles lining the space with a flick of her wrist.
Another cat pressed itself against her legs and she leaned down to give him a scratch behind the ears. “How wrong they were, right Fon?” It was hard to tell how old the feral was, especially given how spry he still was, but his once jet black fur had lost its pigmentation and he glowed a russet brown that was particularly red in the candlelight. He evaded her touch and disappeared deeper into the shop.
She watched him go fondly, seeing the small Russian Blue she had named Skull scamper after him. He had been the only one of his littermates to survive a particularly harsh winter, and now his gangly form shadowed Fon wherever he went.
“If you took any of them on as a familiar, they could stay with you forever, you know?” Bianchi felt the shift when his presence left her as if she were shedding a cloak. He materialized like a white shadow behind her. She didn’t bother turning to face him—he posed no threat to her so she went on to sort through her various sickles and knives.
“I already have you for eternity, my love,” Bianchi replied to the demonic presence as Byakuran floated forward to rest his chin on her shoulder, looking at the way she inspected each blade and placed each and every one precisely in its spot, lining them neatly beside the crucible.
“Until I tired of you, pet” he teased.
“Until I tire of you and send you back to that infernal realm that I summoned you from, darling,” she corrected.
“No, you wouldn’t!” Byakuran gasped with his eyes as wide as saucers. “As an immortal, hell does grow dull.”
“And you and your epicurean ideals simply could not be contained,” Bianchi said, stepping away to check on her greenhouse. Byakuran followed closely as she continued to poke barbs at him. “Except, that’s exactly what it was – you can’t sustain your form in this plane of existence without feeding off of my magic. Isn’t that right, dear?”
“I’m just another one of your charity cases,” he concluded, smiling down at little Skull who peered out at him from behind the safety of a cabinet. The kitten hissed and leaped away.
Bianchi ran her hands over the soft leaves of a silk sage plant, pausing to consider for a moment when the leaves crunch faintly –much too dry. There wasn’t a moment to spare to water it; there were more things to follow and she had to move things along.
Byakuran sensed the moment of hesitation and he took a half-step closer, and then away again when she gave him a look that was a little more forceful than necessary to remind him of his role.
His eyes narrowed, but he smiled as he held his hands up in feigned surrender.
She moved onto the next pot, pushing aside the fronds to check on the condition of the soil. The herb hadn’t seemed to be thriving as well as she’d hoped and she had crushed some eggshells to hopefully enrich the soil. She poked around the check the moisture and hummed appreciatively when she saw the fractured femur was dry of marrow and that the flesh had started coming off of the knuckles tucked into the roots –the plant would begin its recovery as nutrition was slowly absorbed.
“How is the dead man’s dill?” Byakuran asked conversationally.
“I know you don’t care unless it’s a flowering plant,” Bianchi said, to which he laughed, stepping closer to encircle her in his arms.
“I was hoping that once I escaped from hell I could at least stop and smell the roses,” he whispered with his lips on her ear.
“I’ll give you something better than roses,” she murmured, placing her finger in his mouth. He bit hard enough to draw blood and felt her magic flow, filling him with more of that energy until he was brimming with the madness and his dark wings unfurled behind them.
His tongue ran over her finger before he pressed a chaste kiss on the tip to stop the bleeding.
“Better than roses,” he agreed.
“Oh there’ll be more than roses, love” she promised.
They stayed like that for a while, swaying lightly, as confidantes in the low light, dangerous and untouchable. His voice was like crushed velvet, hers like sultry satin, his laughter like warm sugar, hers like a poisoned apple; both of them hardly soft and bitterly sweet.
He followed her to the graveyard, able to maintain a humanoid form at her side now that the world was asleep. Knowing his floral fixation as an aesthete, she wanted to give the demon enough to satisfy his greedy nature.
Finding a spot among the burial grounds, Bianchi drew the circle around her with her athame, carving it lightly into the ground. He felt the energy thrumming along the seam, and how it intensified as the circle was completed, letting her channel it freely.
The silky white robe she wore slipped from her shoulders and pooled on the ground by her feet. She slid a hand up her bare thigh and up her exposed arm. He followed the motion of her hand, gaze flicking over to her other hand as she beckoned him closer.
He took a few steps towards her, unable to get any closer than the circle’s barrier would allow. He watched her move: the tantalizing sway of her hips, the soft movements of her hands, the flutter of her lashes as she turned her face to the firmament. He had never seen someone so connected to the sky; the clouds had parted, letting the moonlight make her bare body glow and the stars dance in her hair as she turned slow circles with her arms raised. She looked like an angel, the picture of heaven, like a beautiful painting he would taint.
The blood blossom buds burst open, reaching for the energy she emanated. The moonvines grew around her feet, curling around the headstones in their vicinity, crawling closer until the flowers bloomed a brilliant white.
But something distracted him from fully appreciating the show.
There was a sound, a thudding, a pounding, repeating somewhere in the middle distance. So while Bianchi lost herself in the dance, Byakuran floated between the headstones to seek out the source of the sound, until he found the girl in the ditch, desperately clawing at the earth with her hands. He caught a glimpse of the hand that jutted out of the ground and the metal ring on the corpse’s finger and chuckled under his breath.
“Interesting,” he murmured, looking at the girl’s small frame as she and her beastly companions paused in their excavation. “So you’ve got something to do with that lovely man that wreaked havoc in hell.”
He floated back over to his mortal patron. That bit of amusement would only grow more interesting with time, aging like a fine wine, but he wanted to enjoy this moment with an angel before it was lost to time.
He saw her eyes fly open before he heard the first explosion, like a crack of thunder that shook the ground hard enough that she had to grip a headstone for support.
A dark figure flew past them in the opposite direction, stoic and steely-eyed, towards the graverobbing girl.
There was another explosion that shot fire between them, and he skidded to a stop, only to see Bianchi break the circle and make her way towards him, somehow still graceful while moving swiftly. He took her outstretched hand and pulled her close, his black wings wrapping them up as the fire raced along the edges of the graveyard. Loose feathers whirled around them, catching fire and taking flight.
“Hellfire not too hot for you I hope, darling?”
“It’s fire and brimstone, my angel; it’s the beating heart of stars, and it keeps me warm.”
The intensity of her words made him look into her eyes and really look—she was no longer acting. Bare of costume or disguise, she was somehow more than a skyclad sylph, more than passion incarnate, and he would gladly drink her love potion, poison and all.