Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
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Chapter Three: Amon
The door to Kate's apartment was open.
Amon stood in the long stretch of hallway that lead to the door, and considered carefully his next move. Experience had taught him that if something looked to good to be true, it usually was.
Not that anything about this situation could be considered good by any stretch of the imagination. He couldn't claim that he would regret hunting Kate. She was a witch, and witches were hunted; this was one of the few undeniable truths in his life. But he did regret the need to hunt her. They had never been close; he had never particularly liked her, and over the last few weeks the look in her eyes whenever their paths had crossed had bordered on loathing, as if she had known what was going to happen. Perhaps she had. He had watched as her Craft had slowly but progressively had become a danger, and she had failed to get it back under control. He had listened with only minimal surprise as Zaizen informed him that Kate had been betraying the STN-J's secrets to the witches, and that SOLOMON headquarters had ordered her hunted.
He had hardened himself to the necessity of her death... and if his sleep became a little less peaceful after tonight, well, no one but himself would know about it.
Gun in hand, he stepped through the door.
Kate was standing in the middle of her living room. The TV lay in a dilapidated ruin in the corner, beneath a sizable dent in the wall. The rug had been pushed unceremoniously to one side to reveal the hardwood floor beneath, and she had been drawing on the surface in chalk. It was a witch's circle, dizzying in its complexity, and she stood at the center of it. He hadn't even thought that Kate was capable of creating such a thing. Then he realized that the lines were smudged and scuffed, turning what might have been a powerful threat into an ineffective scribble – he knew enough about the methods used by witches to know that the symbols had to remain intact for it to work, especially in something as intricate as she seemed to be attempting. His eyes moved away from the drawing to focus on his quarry instead.
With her white-blond hair hanging rumpled around her face, and chalk dust on her fingers and her chin, Kate looked much younger than her twenty-two years. There was something wild and desperate in her eyes as she looked at her failed chalk diagram.
Then she looked up at him, and the desperation disappeared, replaced by mad, seething hatred. Her lips curled back into a snarl that was almost animalistic in its ferocity. It was jarring to see such a look on Kate's pretty face. He was used to such mindless anger from the witches that he hunted, but it felt strange and wrong to have it directed at him from someone he knew, someone he saw every day.
He shouldn't have been surprised. Hadn't his own mother become a stranger to him, turning into a monster – a witch – before his very eyes? Kate was a witch now; it was not so remarkable that she should act like one.
"You've come to hunt me," she said, and her voice sounded oddly normal in spite of the bestial snarl that had contorted her lips.
"I have."
The odd half-smile that found its way onto her face was not entirely sane, and almost more disturbing than the snarl had been. "You'll wish you hadn't. I'll make you wish you hadn't."
The fight was over more quickly than he had expected.
The force of the power that she threw at him ripped the front door off its hinges and flung it back into the hallway behind him. He remained unmoved, the Orbo in his cross glowing for a moment with the effort of deflecting her attack. Two shots were fired, unbelievably loud inside the confines of the apartment.
Kate fell back, gasping, onto her carefully drawn pattern. Blood bubbled up out of two holes in her chest, spread in an ever-widening circle beneath her. He glanced at the circle, and frowned. That was strange...
Too late he realized that she hadn't failed in her spell casting. The blood flowed over the chalk, tracing the circle in glistening scarlet and strengthening the blurry white lines. At the center of the diagram, beneath Kate's writhing form, a rune glowed, shaped like an arrow pointing upwards. It remained that way for a moment, before the whole pattern turned the same dull, angry red as old blood.
But nothing happened. No bang, no surprise, no threat. It was almost a disappointment. "You failed," he murmured.
"I didn't," she replied from the floor, and, even though it seemed like each word was an effort to force out, she sounded triumphant. "The rune is tyr, Amon. Justice. You reap what you sow. As SOLOMON has betrayed me, so will it betray you. As I have been hunted, so will you be. You've taken my life..." She took a stuttering breath, her chest rising and falling in spite of her wounds, then continued, "...so I will destroy yours. Within the next year, you'll watch as your world crumbles around you. I..."
She stopped, and did not speak again.
Amon stood there impassively for a moment, and wondered how her eyes could contain so much loathing, even in death.
"I don't believe in curses, Kate," he informed her, almost gently. Not curses like that, at least; he had no doubt that she wasn't the first witch to curse his name, and so far nothing had come of it. He reached forward, with the intention of closing her glaring eyes, but let his hand fall back to his side before he touched her. There had been no trust, no tenderness between them. He couldn't pretend otherwise now that she was dead. He didn't really want to.
The powers of a witch were a poison. They ate you up from the inside, until everything that had once been beautiful about a person was gone. His mother, Kate... They had both sipped from the same forbidden cup, sampled the same toxin, and they had both been consumed by it. SOLOMON was right. Witches had to be hunted; they had to be contained if they couldn't be killed. To save them from themselves, as much as to protect those around them.
Amon knew that now, more than ever. And as long as he remained secure in that knowledge, what Kate had foretold would not come to pass. SOLOMON would note forsake him; they would have no reason to do so. How could his world crumble to dust as long as he had that one truth, that one mission to hold on to?
"I don't believe in curses. I'm sorry."
What he was apologizing for, even he couldn't say.
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And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
- William Blake, 'A Poison Tree'.
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Disclaimer: Witch Hunter Robin does not belong to me, nor do the characters and situations depicted in this fic.
Notes: Many thanks to auntie-mom for beta reading this for me.