“I should have.”
A single tear sparkled into existence at the base of Collette’s left eye and then raced down the side of her cheek. I watched it trail a line across the landscape of her perfect skin, pool beneath her jaw, and then drip to her lap. Time itself seemed to have slowed to a crawl as if to allow me to witness that moment with perfect clarity. It was as if time had said here you go, Amber, drink this moment in.
Why? I didn’t know then. Not as I was watching. But the moment that tear hit her lap, something started to happen.
First, my chest started to buzz as if I had stuck my finger in a power socket. Then all manner of orange and brown leaves threw themselves at the car windshield, assaulting it seemingly with the intent to crack the glass itself. A moment later, the sky darkened, churned, and roared. Collette’s face lifted, and her eyes went wide.
I didn’t know what she saw in them then, or what it was that scared her, but she said “Amber… my hand… you’re hurting me.”
In one quick movement I released her hand, opened the car door, and marched around it and right back into the woods. The cold autumn wind was whipping at my face as I walked, but the leaves and twigs being picked up by the gust seemed to avoid me entirely. Around me they swirled as if caught in a tempest of my own creation. And maybe I had created a tempest and not known it. But I was running on instinct now.
And I was mad as all hell.
Mad at Luther, mad at Aaron, mad at myself, mad at Linezka. But most of all, I was mad at fear.
It was fear of missing my chance at vengeance which drove me to summon the succubus against Kyle after he cheated on me. It was fear of being with the wrong type of man which blinded me to the fact that the right man—Aaron—had been there all along. It was fear of losing my best friend that had kept me up so many countless nights these last couple of months. And it was fear that had caused Luther to abandon his responsibilities as a witch, and as a human being, and choose to hide when the right decision, clearly, was to fight.
High above, the sky growled and snarled in a song to match my growing anger.
“Amber!” Collette’s voice ripped through the wind, which had now kicked up to a howling bluster.
When I reached the old withered tree, I stopped and turned around to look at Collette. The wind was pushing outward from me, pulling and tugging at her black hair and dress. Her tears were gone, now. On her face, her beautiful, sad face, all that remained now was concern and protest.
“You have to stop!” she said.
“Why?” I asked, and thunder cracked as if in to echo my.
“Zis isn’t ze right way!”
“I’m tired of the right way, Collette,” I said, raising my voice above the sound of the wind. “We need his help, and we need to kill Linezka to secure our future.”
“What are you going to do?”
The roar of the wind and the thundering boom from high above dulled down to a muted hum just for a second, for the briefest of instants, like clouds parting to reveal a lick of daylight on a dark day. And in that moment, I remembered a song I had heard a bunch of times as a child. In that moment I felt like I was floating outside of myself and looking down at a copper—fire—haired girl surrounded by a tempest of whipping and whirling twigs and leaves. I saw, then, what Collette could see now and what she had seen back at the car. It was in my eyes and all around me; it was in my hair and in the orange and reds of autumn.
I saw the Red Witch.
The Sorceress.
And dancing on the back of the muted and muffled tempest, a chorus was singing:
“Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?
The big bad wolf?
The big bad wolf.
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Tra la la la la.”
The roaring sounds and earthy smells came rushing back to me like the unexpected wave that hits you over the head and pulls you under. And then it becomes a mad struggle as you try to right yourself, to find up and down, and claw your way to the surface. Then, as you reach the top, you breathe deeply, shake it off, and do one of two things; wade toward the shore with your tail between your legs or cough out salty water, whoop excitedly, and wait for the next one.
“I’m going to blow his house down,” I said.
“Amber, no! You can’t!”
Ever mind the rule of three, said the voice of reason that lived in the back of my mind. But the rule of three didn’t apply here. I was doing a good thing. A good thing. The right thing. Karma couldn’t come back and bite me in the ass if I was doing the right thing, but Karma would come and get Luther if he didn’t help us. I was saving him.
That’s exactly what I was doing.
My consciousness stretched out, reaching, reaching, until my mind’s eye was everywhere. It was hovering an inch above the pond by the old oak, its once calm water now turned turbulent and wavy. It was in the leaves, in the bark of the Oaks watching nearby. It was in the dirt, crawling with the earthworms and the beetles. And it was in the Nether; in that invisible, dull landscape that existed superimposed above our own, where the words real and matter didn’t mean shit.
Searching. Stretching. Reaching. Hunting. Tempest roaring, leaves and twigs flying, birds fleeing. Then I found them; the anchor points for Luther’s protective Magick. All witches employed them when they wanted to ward an area against intruders or discovery. They existed in the Nether, and revealed themselves to a witch only if she knew what to look for. Anyone else may have missed Luther’s anchors, but Collette had taught me what she could of her Shadow Magick, and that knowledge laid Luther’s Magick bare to me.
“Zey look like Shadows darker than night,” she had said to me in the dim, candle-lit glow of my attic, “Every witch has tells to their Magick. For Necromancers, zis is shadow.”
“And mine?” I had asked.
Collette smiled and said, with wide-eyed enthusiasm, “Fire, cherie. In ze Nether, you are fire.”
Fire.
The world was howling around me. Collette had her hands wrapped around her waist, just below her breasts, and her hair was flailing wildly around her face; as was mine. I couldn’t see her with my own eyes, but I saw her all the same. Beautiful and dark. Then my mind’s eye turned to a dark spot, the anchor, and raced toward it, my invisible hand a ball of heatless fire. And when the fire touched the dark, the anchor vanished and the scream of a thousand voices came ripping into the Nether. A maddening, deafening screech to attack the mind and chill the heart.
The wail of the dead.
When I opened my eyes again, my true eyes, and the wind began to die and the leaves and twigs fell and settled where they would, I saw that Luther’s Magick had unraveled before my eyes. The forest around the pond seemed denser, now. As if more trees had somehow sprouted into existence in the time between my astral projection and my return to my own body.
And there, between the trees, was Luther’s cottage; chimney puffing peacefully.
Collette walked up beside me, crunching brittle leaves beneath her feet, and stopped. Waited. Then said “Will he come out?”
“The little piggy’s house has been blown away. If he doesn’t move, the wolf will get him.”
A blustery silence hung in the air but slowly, the once quiet woods were returning to normal. Although the sky would remain grey and dark up here for a while, in Berlin it had started to rain.
“In ze story of ze three little pigs,” Collette said, “Ze wolf is ze one who does ze blowing... so, what does zat make you?”
“I’m just a witch with a bone to pick with the wolf. She shouldn’t have eaten my grandmother.”
Whatever objections she may have had before, they were gone now. I could see it on her face. Pride? Maybe. I hoped she was feeling the same kind of spine-tingling exhilaration I was feeling; that warm, buzzing that comes when you’ve just done something awesome, or you’ve read an inspirational quote that electrifies your skin in a sudden rush.
As we watched, the cottage d
oor opened with a groan that echoed through the forest. Luther emerged a second later and his tall, lanky form came striding out of the house, across the garden, beyond the gate, and around the oak tree. He stopped some twenty feet away, eyeing us both with contempt. And all I could think about was how his hair was so deftly defying the wind that so badly wanted to mess it up.
How much product was he wearing?
“Why?” he asked, simply, “Why have you done this?”
“Because,” I said, “I wanted to show you something.”
“Show me what?”
“Ze power of ze Red Witch,” Collette put in. She glanced my way, grinned, and turned toward Luther. “Are you convinced?”
His mouth was open, working inaudibly. It looked like he was picking food from out of his teeth with his tongue.
“Yeah,” he said, approaching, “I’m convinced. You’re the Red Witch. The one I’ve heard about. The one she fears.”
That sudden warm rush returned and I realized I really like being called the Red Witch. “Will you help us?” I asked.
“Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice now, do I?”
No. It didn’t seem like he did.
CHAPTER 19
Aaron was a liability. His muscles twitched with unease, caught up in the nonsensical rhythms of trapped nerves, the hairs on the back of his neck were starting to stand on their tip-toes, and his heart was beating hard enough to rival a damned hummingbird. Ever since his transformation into a werewolf his body had become ultra-receptive to the vibrations in the air and beneath his skin, and his body was buzzing now.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said to Damien.
They had gone down to the living room after having been given instructions from Frank. “Don’t come in here,” he had said, “No matter what you see or hear, don’t come in here and don’t leave the house.”
Well shit. In the movies, that was the kind of thing someone said right before things started to get weird. Aaron didn’t know just how weird things would get, but he suspected that if Frank had thought it important enough to issue a disclaimer—no, it was a warning—then it was anyone’s guess as to what was about to happen.
On the outside, Damien Colt didn’t seem to be much fazed by what Frank had told him, nor did he seem to be worried about what was going to happen. But Aaron knew. He could smell the perspiration on Damien’s skin, no matter how slight, and could see the ends of his clasped together fingers trembling. The witch hid his fear well, but the fear was still there, hanging over them like an unwelcomed houseguest.
“Don’t say that,” Damien said. He was looking at the ground, or at his hands dangling between his open knees.
“I am. I don’t feel like this is for me.”
“We don’t have a choice. Frank told us not to leave.”
“Fuck what Frank said. What does he know?”
“More than you think.” He looked up then and the conversation stalled.
“What’s going to happen?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know,” Damien said.
“C’mon. You’re a witch too. Don’t you have any idea?”
Damien thought for a moment, silent. “Frank and I are… different. His magick comes from a place I can’t reach.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frank’s magick is… darker… than mine. I tie my magick to the elements, to the corners, and to light. Frank can do the same, but his final tie is to the dark—not to the light. I can’t explain it.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“What does that mean?”
Aaron’s throat warmed like he’d just taken a shot of bourbon. “You think I’m too thick to understand?”
“What? No, I—”
“You think I wouldn’t be able to wrap my head around the difference between light and dark? Do you forget where I’ve been?”
Damien rose to his feet and Aaron pushed himself off the counter he had been leaning on and arched his back into a combat-ready stance. It was a quick, hot, primal movement; one not triggered by conscious thought but by instinct. Threat, his heart had told him, and his body had reacted much in the same way a wolf would have at sensing the approach of a dangerous animal or a rival wolf. He could hear Damien’s heart pumping hard and loud inside his chest—Lub-Lub-Lub—, could see the veins on his neck bulging with the beat, could feel the fearful heat coming off him in waves. But then Damien put his arms up, and tension released Aaron’s body from within its vice-like grip. He relaxed, deflated, like a balloon being slowly drained of helium. And then he saw what he had done to the counter.
He had been leaning against the unit with his hands stretched away from him and had, without realizing, gouged great deep tracks in the wooden surface with his own nails. Aaron approached, aware of the fact that behind him Damien was approaching too, and inspected the marks as if they had been made by someone else; by some other too-tense-for-his-own-good werewolf.
“Jesus,” Damien said. “Amber’s going to kill you.”
Aaron shook his head. “I can’t stay,” he said, straightening up. “It’ll be worse if I stay.”
“Worse? How?”
“I don’t know, Damien. I just have a feeling. My being here isn’t a good idea. I can feel it, and you have to trust me on that.”
Damien didn’t say anything for a long while. Minutes, maybe. Maybe hours. But what did it matter in this kitchen where time didn’t seem to hold any sway? Aaron must have looked at the time on the wall a half a dozen times and the long arm had barely moved over the quarter past mark.
“You have to stay,” Damien said, “Frank told us not to leave, not to do anything, and we shouldn’t. Magick is a delicate art. We don’t know what leaving will do to his concentration, and if I know anything at all about magick—even his brand of magick—it’s that he’ll need every ounce of control until he’s finished.”
Control.
There was a word Aaron understood. Control wasn’t so much a word to Aaron, though. Control was like the flaky, good friend everyone has. When he’s there, everything is good. He’s funny, loud, tells great stories, and makes you laugh. But he does more than just that; he gives you hope, too. Hope that you’re worth more than a damn. He makes you believe in yourself.
Until he cancels on you last minute.
Then you watch as your world crumbles around you. Without Control there to make you feel great about yourself and to give you hope, you fall prey to your own worst self. For some people, the worst part of them enjoyed drinking alone until it was piss-drunk and throwing up insecurity and feelings of inadequacy all over the bar.
For Aaron, the worst part of him was a murderer.
Yes it had been self-defense out there in the woods that night. And yes, those men would have done something terrible if he hadn’t had intervened—if my worst self hadn’t intervened—but it was still murder, and it was something he would have to live with for the rest of his days. A cross to bear, as they say.
Ever since then, Aaron had been trying to reconnect with control; to invite him out for a round of beer and an order of nachos at Joe’s. But control was absent more times than he showed up, and if that wasn’t a bad sign of a drying relationship, then he didn’t know what was.
“So, are we supposed to just wait?” Aaron asked.
Damien nodded. “We have to wait and see what—”
Aaron felt the vibrations before he heard the footsteps. It was as if the motions had occurred in reverse order—first the tiny tremor comes with each footfall, and then the thud. Upstairs, he thought, a second before Damien reacted to the sound. There’s someone walking around upstairs. They shared a look and then circled out of the kitchen and into the living room where they could get a view of the stairwell.
“Frank?” Damien asked. “Is that you?”
Silence.
“Frank?” Aaron now, his body taut and tense like a guitar string being slowly tightened.
More footfalls. This time the sound came
faster and harder, and in stereo surround. It was as if someone was running across the hall upstairs, not just walking. Aaron looked up and saw a cloud of dust fall from the ceiling. He went to inch toward the stairwell, but Damien reached for his shoulder, grabbed him, and shook his head.
“That’s not Frank,” Damien said, mouthing the words.
Boom, boom, boom! Aaron flinched and pulled away from Damien’s hold. He flicked his head up at the ceiling and dust fell upon his face. The growl that slipped from his throat was guttural and low, primal, a warning. But a warning to who? To what? Whoever, or whatever, was up there was jumping around in Aaron’s bedroom, and every thud made Aaron’s body shake.
His eyes went to Damien, then up at the ceiling, then to Damien again. It seemed like the angry jumping had ceased, but there were still footsteps to be heard. And there weren’t just one set of footsteps either, but a whole bunch of them. People, it sounded like, were opening and closing doors, wandering up and down the hall, and looking around in bedrooms.
People.
At one time Aaron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he was about to launch himself at it when he realized what he had seen and the spiders crawled up the length of his spine. It was a shadow at the stairwell; a tall, still shadow blotting out the majority of the light falling into the stairwell from the window just above it.
Aaron turned toward it fully and stared hard at the figure. It was humanoid, and it was breathing in silent heaves that made its shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall. A challenge, Aaron thought. It’s challenging me, waiting for me. But Aaron’s body was trembling, now, much like Damien was. He could see the shadow too, and maybe the witch’s logical mind knew what it was he was seeing. But Aaron knew what it was because he had felt its vile presence before.
“Fuck you,” Aaron said, his voice sailing through the air like a sledge-hammer.
The figure moved, and when its shadow disappeared Aaron heard its footsteps coming down the stairs, down to greet him. Aaron had accepted its challenge and it was coming for him now, but like fuck if it would catch him off guard. Aaron made for the stairs. Damien reached out to stop him, screaming his protest, but his hand slipped off the werewolf’s leather jacket and he was gone.