"You're a disappointment," Grimalkin said, leaning back against the trunk of the final tree and pointing her daggers downward so that the long blades crossed against her knees. "I've heard so much about you, and despite your youth I hoped for more. Now I see that you're just a child and hardly worthy of my skills. It's a pity I can't wait until you become a man."Then let me go, please," I begged, seeing just a faint glimmer of hope in 'what she said. "They told me that you like a kill to be difficult. So why don't you wait? When I'm older, we'll meet again. Then I'd be able to put up a fight. Let me live!"I do what must be done," she said, shaking her head, genuine sadness in her eyes. "I wish it were otherwise but…" She shrugged and allowed the blade to fall from her right hand and bury itself in the soft earth at her feet. Then she held her right arm wide as if offering an embrace. "Come here, child. Rest your head against my bosom and close your eyes. I will make it swift. There will be a brief moment of pain-hardly more than a mother's kiss against your throat -and then your struggle against this life will be over. Trust me. I will give you peace at last."I nodded, lowered my head, and approached her, my heart racing. As I took the second step toward her waiting embrace, tears suddenly flowed down my cheeks, and I heard her give a deep sigh. But in completing that step, I flicked the Spook's staff from my right hand to my left. And with all the speed and strength that I could muster, I drove it hard at her so that the blade went straight through her left shoulder, pinning her to the trunk of the tree.She uttered no sound at all. The pain must have been terrible, but her only reaction was a slight tightening of the lips. I released the staff, leaving it still quivering in the wood, then turned to run.

The blade had gone deep into the tree and the staff itself was rowan. She would find it difficult and painful to free herself. Now I had a chance to reach the safety of Mam's room.I'd only taken two steps when something made me turn and look back toward the witch. She had reached across with her right hand and taken the blade from her left, and now, with incredible speed and force, she hurled the knife straight at my head.I watched it spinning toward me, its blade reflecting the red light of the moon. End over end it came. I could have tried to duck or even step to one side, but neither movement would have saved me from the speed and force of that blade.

What I did was not done consciously. I had no time to think. I made no decision. Some other part of me acted. I simply concentrated, my whole self focused on that spinning blade until time seemed to slow.I reached up and plucked it out of the air, my fingers closing about the wooden handle. Then I cast it away from me onto the grass. Moments later I was climbing the fence and running across the field toward the farm.The farmyard was still and silent. The animals were being cared for by our neighbor, Mr. Wilkinson, so that wasn't alarming in itself. It was just that I felt very uneasy. A sudden fearful thought pushed itself into my head.What if the Fiend were already here? What if he were already inside the darkness of the farmhouse? Lurking inside one of the downstairs rooms, ready to follow me up the stairs and pounce as I tried to unlock the door of Mam's room?Thrusting the thought aside, I ran past the site of the burned barn and across the yard toward the house. I glanced at the wall, which should have been covered in a profusion of red roses. Mam's roses. But they-were dead, blackened and withered on their stems. And there was no Mam waiting to greet me inside. No Dad.

This had been my home, but now it looked more like a house from a nightmare.At the back door, I paused for a moment to listen. Silence. So I went in and ran up the stairs two at a time until I faced the door to Mam's room. Then I pulled the keys from my neck and, with shaking fingers, inserted the largest one into the lock. Once inside, I locked the door behind me and leaned back against it, breathing deeply. I gazed around at the empty room with its bare floorboards. The air here was much warmer than outside. I felt the mildness of a summer's night. I was safe. Or was I?Could even Mam's room protect me from the Devil himself? Hardly had I begun to wonder about that when I remembered again something that Mam had said.If you're brave and your soul is pure and good, this room is a redoubt, a fortress against the dark…Well, I was as brave as I could manage under the circumstances. I was afraid, true, but who wouldn't be? No, it was the bit about my soul being pure and good that worried me now. I felt that I'd changed for the worse. Bit by bit, the need to survive had made me betray the way that I'd been brought up.

Dad had taught me that I should keep my word, but I'd never for one moment intended to keep my bargain with Mab. It had been for a good reason, but nevertheless I'd deceived her. And the strange thing was that Mab, a witch who belonged to the dark, always kept her word.And then there was Grimalkin. She had a code of honor, but I'd beaten her with guile, with sly deceit. Was that why the tears had gushed from my eyes as I'd pretended to step toward her deadly embrace? Those tears had come as a complete surprise to me. An emotion had welled up inside, and I'd had no control over it. Those tears had probably put Grimalkin further off her guard: She'd assumed I was crying in fear.Had they in fact been tears of shame? Tears because I knew I'd fallen so far short of the behavior that Dad had expected of me? If my soul was no longer pure and good, then the room might not protect me, and my lies had merely put off the moment of my destruction.I walked across to the window and peered out. It overlooked the farmyard, and in the light of the blood moon I could see the blackened foundations of the barn, the empty pig and cattle pens, and the north pasture reaching to the foot of Hangman's Hill. Nothing moved.

I paced back toward the center of the room, growing increasingly nervous. Would I see the Devil approach? And if so, what form would he take? Or would he simply materialize out of the empty air? No sooner had that scary thought entered my head than I heard terrifying noises from outside-loud booms and bangs, thuds against the walls-and the house actually began to shake. Was it the Fiend? Was he trying to break into the house? Smash through the stones?It certainly sounded as if something were battering at the walls. Next, powerful rhythmical thumps came from above. Something heavy was pounding on the roof, and I could hear slates falling down into the yard. There were fearful bellowing and snorting sounds, too, like those of an angry bull. But when I rushed to the window again, there was nothing to be seen. Nothing at all.As suddenly as they had started, the sounds ceased, and in the deep silence that followed, the house itself seemed to be holding its breath. Then there were more noises, but from within the house; from down in the kitchen. The smash and crash of cups and saucers. The clatter of cutlery on stone flags. Someone was throwing crockery hard onto the floor; emptying drawers of kitchen utensils.

Moments later, that ceased, too, but into the brief silence intruded a new noise-that of a rocking chair. I could hear it clearly, creaking as its wooden runners made rhythmic contact with the flags.For a moment my heart leaped. I'd heard that sound so many times as a child: the familiar noise of Mam rocking in her chair. She was back! Mam had come back to save me, and now everything would be all right again!I should have had more faith, realized that she wouldn't leave me to face this horror alone. I reached for the key, actually intending to unlock the door and go downstairs. But I remembered just in time that Mam's chair had been smashed to pieces by the witches who'd raided the house. The crockery had already been broken, too, the knives and forks scattered on the flags. They were just sounds, re-created to lure me from the safety of the room.That sinister rocking faded and ceased. The next sound was much nearer. Something was climbing the stairs. It wasn't the thump of heavy boots. It sounded more like a large animal. I could hear its panting breath, the pad-pad of heavy paws on the wooden stairs and then a low, angry growl.Moments later, claws started scratching at the bottom of the door. At first it was exploratory and halfhearted, like a farm dog lured by the appetizing smell of cooking but remembering its place in the scheme of things and trying to get into a kitchen without doing too much damage. But then the clawing became more rapid and frantic, as if the wood were being ripped to shreds.Next I had a sense of something huge; something far larger than a dog.