Spook’s: I Am Grimalkin Read Free

blade. It skitters away uselessly and he surges towards me, roaring in fury, wielding a large club in one hand and a barbed spear in the other. He swings the club and jabs with the spear. But I have moved before either reaches me.
    The heavy sack bounces against my back as I change direction again. Then, with my long blade, I cut the abhuman’s throat, and he falls choking, a stream of blood spraying upwards. Still without checking my stride, I run on.
    Now I must deal with the third enemy – the familiar witch.
    I am running widdershins, against the clock, so that my left and more deadly arm is facing towards the slope and the remaining witches, who are still moving upwards in my direction. A witch attacks, but not the one I seek. I ram the hilt of my blade into her face and she falls back. She will live, but without her front teeth.
    By now the powerful familiar witch has sensed my attack, and she turns to face me, sending dark enchantments like poisoned spears towards my heart. I flick them aside and head directly towards her. I hear the beating of wings and something swoops towards my face with claws outstretched. It is a small hawk – a kestrel. I sweep my blade upwards in an arc and the hawk screams, its feathers falling upon me like blood-flecked snow.
    The witch shrieks as her familiar dies; she shrieks again when I cut her the first time. My next blow ends her life, and the only sounds now are the slip-slap of my feet on the ground and the wish-swish of my breath as I accelerate down the hill and leave the cover of the trees.
    I speed eastwards out of the wood, leaving my enemies to find their dead. As I run, I go over in my mind what has happened . An assassin must evaluate both her successes and her failures; she must always learn from the past.
    I consider again the means by which they have found me. The witch was powerful, but her familiar was just a small hawk. Their combined magic could not have seen beyond the cloak that I had cast about myself. No, it has to be something else.
    What about the strange presence advancing with the larger group further back? What is it? Is it this that has discovered me? If so, it must be powerful. And it is something that I have never encountered before. Something new.
    It is wise to be wary of the unknown. Its unfamiliarity makes it dangerous. But soon it will be dead. How can it hope to defeat me?
    I am Grimalkin.

Each day say to yourself that you are the best, the strongest and the most deadly. Eventually you will start to believe it. Finally it will come true. It came true for me. I am Grimalkin .
    JUST BEFORE DAWN I rested for an hour, drinking cool water from a stream and chewing my last few strips of dried meat. My supplies were almost exhausted and I would need fresh meat to keep up my strength. Rabbits would have been easy to trap, but I was still being pursued and could not afford to rest for more than a few moments. The majority of my enemies were almost two miles back now, but one of their number had come on ahead of the group and was closing on me. It was the unknown creature that I had first sniffed in the wood.
    It was moving faster than I was. Whatever the danger it presented, soon I would have to turn and face it. But first I had to know more. So I took a small mirror from its sheath on my shoulder strap, muttered a spell and then breathed on it.
    Within moments a face appeared. It was that of Agnes Sowerbutts. She was a Deane but bore no great love for her own clan. She lived apart from the life of Pendle and had helped me before. We had a bond between us – a common interest. She was the aunt of Alice Deane and a close friend of Tom Ward, the Spook’s apprentice.
    Agnes is skilled in the use of the mirror. Few are her equal in locating people, objects and dark entities. But she keeps herself to herself and few know that she is also a powerful scryer – far better than Martha Ribstalk, our greatest Malkin seer, who is now dead.
    It was too dark for Agnes