Brew (Salem's Revenge Book 1)

  BOOM!

  Hex is barking his head off and Trish is clutching at my arm and I can see bone-shrapnel flying through the air. “C’mon!” Laney yells, grabbing Trish’s hand and pulling her down the steps, right toward the skeletons. By my current count, this girl is at least three kinds of crazy, but I suspect that number will rise into the double digits soon enough.

  With no other choice, I plunge after her into the darkness, Hex at my heels.

  In front of us, Laney yells, “Die boners!” and I almost—almost—want to laugh. Her shotgun erupts in flame and sound and I hear the tinkle of shattered bones raining around us.

  Suddenly, the room is thrust into visibility. Hex’s entire body is glowing like a white neon light. As I take in the scene, I almost wish Hex would just keep his powers to himself.

  Dozens of skeletons, some barehanded, some carrying meat-cleavers, large two-pronged forks, and meat-tenderizers, stand before us. Their jaws slide open and their cracked upper and lower rows of teeth separate to reveal terrifying emptiness, a soundless war cry that I can almost feel in my chest rather than hear in my ears.

  “Oh no you didn’t,” Laney says, ripping off another shot. One of the skeleton’s heads explodes, the individual pieces of bone torn into pieces so small they’re like chalk dust.

  That’s when the skeletons charge.

  The first boner—am I really thinking of the reanimated skeletons using Laney’s nickname?—that reaches us gets the butt of Laney’s shotgun in the head, severing its skull from its spine. It crumbles lifelessly to the floor. The second gets the edge of my sword to the jugular—if it still had a jugular, that is.

  Even as I hack away with my blade and Hex leaps at the closest enemy, Laney whips her gun around with two hands, like a Big Leaguer swinging for the fences, knocking mindless skulls from bony shoulders like a child clobbering balls off a tee. “I will not…be taken…alive,” she mutters with each swing, as if the skeletons are looking to arrest us rather than tear us limb from limb.

  She takes a particularly vicious cut at one of our attackers, and the poor pile o’ bones’s head flies past me, nearly cracking me in the temple. “Watch it, Babe,” I say, instantly wishing the words back.

  Not missing a beat, she swings the gun around to firing position and discharges a shell point-blank into a boner that leaps at her carrying a horror-movie meat cleaver. I’d recognize that skeleton anywhere. The chef from the kitchen, the one with the huge hole in its head. What’s left of its skull disintegrates. “Babe?” she says. “You can’t call me that on our first date.”

  I hack the legs out from under a thick-boned skeleton before slashing its spine to ribbons. “I meant Babe Ruth,” I say. “You know, like the famous homerun-hitting baseball player?”

  “Sure you did,” she says, but the smirk on her face doesn’t believe me.

  When Hex springs past me and rips the head off another skeleton, I realize he’s doing his “big cat thing” again, where he turns into a lion. Very good boy, I think.

  And then, abruptly, they’re all dead…again.

  Hex morphs back into a dog.

  Laney stops blasting at anything that moves.

  My arm drops, the tip of my sword jabbing into the wooden floorboards.

  And Trish starts drawing in the air again.

  Laney watches for a moment, and then announces, “She says I took out two more boners than you.”

  I just gawk at her. I’m beginning to think she’s missing some vital link between brain and mouth. Hex chuffs and it’s obvious it’s a laugh. “You can wipe that grin off your face,” I mutter, but he keeps smiling. To Laney, I say, “That’s not what she’s writing.”

  I make my way over to where Trish is staring off into space, her finger moving in elegant swirls. “G…O,” I say. She repeats the message. “Go. Now that sounds like a great idea. Those Necros are going to be coming to investigate any second. See you later. Or not.”

  “Mind if we tag along, Zorro?” Laney asks, raising her eyebrows.

  Yes. “Umm…”

  “It’s the least you can do considering it’s your fault our hideout’s been discovered.”

  “My fault?” I say, unable to mask my disbelief.

  Laney taps her toe impatiently. “We’ve been living here for months,” she says. “It wasn’t until you and your witch hunting dog showed up that the trouble began.”

  Good point. “Coincidence,” I say, annoyed at how unconvincing my voice sounds. Do I have a choice? Probably, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some company, even in the form of a slightly-insane-but-impressively-capable teenage girl. “Okay. Let’s go. The Necros could come back any minute.”

  “Lead the way, Harry,” she says, looping one of her thumbs through the strap of a backpack I didn’t even notice she was wearing.

  I draw a blank. “Harry?” I ask stupidly.

  “Harry Potter. You know, like from the books?”

  “One, I’m not a wizard. Two, if you haven’t noticed, the witches out there make Hogwarts look like a beach resort. And three, I’m much taller than him.”

  “Height is just genetics,” she says. “And you wear glasses.”

  “So I look like every other person who wears glasses?”

  “Pretty much,” she says, and by the finality of her tone I can tell this is yet another argument with her that I’m not going to win.

  “Follow me,” I say, heading down the steps, bone fragments crunching under my trod. Hex pads silently in front of me.

  Laney’s backpack clinks as she follows.

  “Why is your backpack so loud?” I ask.

  “Ammo,” she says. “Loose shotgun shells. I’ve had this backpack prepared for months, just in case.”

  Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.

  “Where are we going anyway?” Laney asks.

  “To follow the Necros,” I say.

  “Why?”

  Good question. Because I want nothing more than to destroy each and every one of the witches and warlocks that belong to the Necro gang, especially the Reaper, making them pay for killing my friends. “Why not?” I say.

  Apparently I’ve stumped her, because she’s silent as we make our way through the now-empty restaurant dining room. This time, I use the customer entrance onto the main road. Is that a scream in the distance, to the south of the town? It might be the wind, but either way, Hex heads north, and I’ve learned to trust his instincts as much as my own.

  Thankfully, Laney stops with the questions and remains silent as we steal out into the darkening evening, ducking behind bushes and the corners of buildings. Fearless followers. Shadow stalkers. Purposeful prowlers. A bad poem that I tentatively title Stealth springs to mind but I blink it away. Ten blocks later I spot the rear of a pickup truck just as it turns a corner.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually following the witches,” Laney mutters beside me. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “No one’s forcing you to come,” I say, which shuts her up. But she doesn’t turn back, stays right with me, holding her silent sister’s hand.

  I keep my eyes glued on our prey, who are chugging across town slowly, careful not to miss any other bodysnatching opportunities. Their vehicles travel noiselessly, fueled by magic rather than gasoline.

  As the college town transitions to countryside, I see signs for I-79 North. An interstate, which probably means a major highway, presumably with four lanes and a grassy median. I’ve got a map in my pocket, creased a thousand times and split around the edges. The Tri-State region: West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

  We stop and Hex stands guard, making sure none of the Necros double back.

  Laney crowds over my shoulder. “Last I checked, this road goes north,” she says.

  The map confirms her words. The interstate runs mostly north across the state line into Pennsylvania, all the way to Washington, PA. From there it turns northeast, Pittsburgh being the next big city it reaches. I run my finger absently over Pittsburg
h. Is that where the Necros are going? What’s in Pittsburgh other than the home of Heinz Ketchup, which I’m pretty sure isn’t producing anymore fry-sauce these days, and a couple of successful sports teams that won’t ever make another tackle or take another slap shot?

  “You want to go to Pittsburgh?” she asks.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “There’s nothing in Pittsburgh but salads with fries and Terrible Towels,” Laney says.

  “There’s nothing here,” I retort.

  “We could be safe here,” she says. For the first time, I notice a slight tremble in Laney’s voice. “You, me, Trish, your dog. I’ve got enough food for a while, and I know where to get more.”

  “I wish I could,” I say, somewhat surprised that I actually mean it. The thought of stopping and settling down again is a temptation I can’t succumb to. My only path is toward revenge, and I’ve already delayed my mission for too long. And then I don’t know why I say, “But you’re welcome to travel with Hex and I as long as you want.” Do I really want two more passengers on a train bound for hell? Two more people to worry about, to need to protect? But no, Laney doesn’t need protecting any more than I do.

  “Well, I guess we’ll go with you as far as Pittsburgh,” Laney says. “But only because I’ve always wanted to try salad with fries.”

  Hex licks her hand and she laughs. A swell of warmth bursts in my chest and I can’t stop the smile that forms on my lips, so I turn away to hide it.

  I return the map to my pocket. The Necros are fading away into the distance, pushing their body-filled truck to cruising speed, likely anxious to reach the next town full of dead people. We’ve got to get there before they move on, so it looks like it’ll be a late night for us if we can’t find a faster way to travel. While we were in town it was like following a slow-moving garbage truck, but the Necros will be impossible to keep up with now that they’re on the highway.

  Everyone, including—to my surprise—Laney, stays silent until we’re well past the city limits and on the road toward Pittsburgh. Trish doesn’t even try to draw anything in the air.

  The highway stretches miles out in front of us, under a surprisingly blue spring sky. Even the weather is ignorant to the darkness that plagues the earth.

  Laney’s blond hair is radiant in the sunlight, so much so that it’s slightly unnerving seeing her carrying the shotgun with both hands.

  Hex pees on the flat tire of an abandoned dirty old pickup truck. His urine glows blue and then red, something not even I’ve ever seen. Laney laughs. “Your dog’s a crack up,” she says. “I’ve never seen a witch animal.”

  “He’s not a witch. Just a witch’s experiment.”

  “Well, whatever he is, he’ll come in handy if we run into anymore magic-born. That lion thing he did back at the restaurant? Priceless.”

  I can’t argue with that. Since we’re having such a nice, friendly conversation… “When did your sister stop speaking?” I ask.

  “After I killed our parents,” Laney answers without hesitation. There’s no emotion in her voice, like they’re just words. As if her act was like brushing her teeth or changing channels on the television.

  “How did she know those two witch gangs were coming?” I ask.

  “She didn’t.”

  “She wrote ‘They’re coming,’ in the air…and then they came.”

  “She’s got good hearing,” she says.

  “Not that good.”

  “Coincidence,” Laney says, throwing my word back at me.

  “Touché,” I say.

  Our progress is slow as we’re hampered by Trish’s short strides. At this rate, it’ll take days to reach the next town.

  For a short while I had a motorcycle, something I found along the way, but eventually it broke down and I had to leave it. Rumbling motors draw too much attention anyway. There’s an old, rusty bike in the overgrown ditch between the incoming and outgoing traffic lanes. The previous owner is still there, his or her corpse decaying against the black bike frame. A desperate attempt to escape the witch apocalypse, cut short before it really even started. I’m not against using a dead person’s bike, but with two flat tires it won’t help much.

  Trish stops briefly to inspect the bike and dead person. Apparently she’s got her sister’s same iron stomach.

  We move on, walking fast at first, and then easing into a light jog. Hex charges out in front of us, seemingly intent on scouting ahead. Twice he’s distracted by something that entices his uber-sensitive nose and we manage to pass him, but each time he easily catches us and moves off down the road.

  Occasionally we pass cars and trucks with starred windshields or dented door panels, many of them flipped over, as if a giant child has been playing with them. Either there was a spontaneous game of demolition derby—not out of the question for West Virginia—or the witches methodically worked their way down this very road, killing the fleeing humans in undoubtedly creative and painful ways. Merciless. Deadly. Evil.

  Are all witches evil? It’s a question I posed to Mr. Jackson after a month of training to kill witches. His answer: Only the evil are evil. Thanks for that, Mr. Jackson.

  I think maybe he meant for me to judge witches and warls the same way I’d judge humans. With an open mind and without prejudice. Kind of hard when they’ve killed your family and abducted your friends. Well, I haven’t met a witch who hasn’t tried to kill me, so I’m thinking the sample size is enough to prove a pattern of sorts.

  “Where you from, Carter?” Laney asks, trotting beside me. Trish is beside her, impressively keeping up with us by moving her legs twice as fast.

  “Georgia.”

  “Hotlanta?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “What happened to your folks?” she asks.

  “I never knew them.”

  “Oh,” she says. Surely announcing that I’m an orphan will stop her chatter.

  Or not. “We’re all orphans these days,” she says. Her eyes meet mine, and the truth of her words sink in. Friendless. Parentless.

  “Guess so,” I say.

  The sun is long gone and we’ve been running for miles and miles when we see the sign. “Welcome to Pennsylvania.” There’s a black line spray-painted across “Penn,” with thick, red, scrawled letters spelling “Tran” beneath it. Transylvania. Clever, but I think the miscreant got vampires and witches slightly confused. I guess they hadn’t read Harry Potter and Twilight to learn the difference.

  I’m tired, but not exhausted, my muscles accustomed to long hours of use after traversing a good chunk of what’s left of the United States. But I don’t know about the others, who’ve been holed up for months, probably getting limited use out of their legs.

  “Do you all need to stop?” I ask Laney.

  “I can run every bit as long as you can,” she says.

  Choosing to take the high road, I say, “I meant your sister.” I meant them both.

  “She’s fine, too,” she says. “We did daily exercises together. I wasn’t about to let a little thing like the witch apocalypse stop us from staying healthy.”

  Why does that not surprise me?

  “Fair enough,” I say. So after only a brief stop to rehydrate, we push on, following our quarry late into the night. Hours later we reach Waynesburg, PA, twenty-six miles from Morgantown, WV based on my map. A marathon. It’s not the first time I’ve run a marathon in a single go, and surely not the last time, but unlike the sporting version of the event, there are no cheering crowds and volunteers handing out water bottles and free t-shirts. The end of our marathon is met with silent, trash-filled streets.

  To my surprise, Trish doesn’t even look tired. Obviously there’s more to her than an air-drawing traumatized little girl. Laney, on the other hand, looks ready to keel over. A few pointed comments run through my mind, but I leave them there, determined to keep the peace with my new companion.

  The hot glow of a dozen trashcan fires burns somewhere in the distance, likely set by the Ne
cros. We’ve caught them.

  But wait, something’s not right.

  Why would the Necros build their fires in trashcans, like homeless people? I’ve never seen them do that before. Typically they just create fire in thin air, blazing red/orange balls floating like helium balloons, able to heat food from the top, bottom and sides. Three-dimensional fires. Not powerful enough to be weapons, like the Pyros, but good enough for warmth and cooking.

  Unless…

  “No,” I breathe, already a step behind Hex, who figures things out a second before I do.

  “Wait!” Laney shouts. Her footsteps settle in behind me more slowly.

  My own legs protesting, I sprint toward the fires, throwing caution to the light breeze cooling my sweaty arms and legs. When I reach the first trashcan, Hex is growling and barking at the black metal cylinder, which has bright red, yellow and orange flames poking from the top, like strange, spiky hair. I know what I’m going to see when I peek over the side of the can, but I look anyway, because I have to be sure…

  Charred bones, free of skin.

  A burnt out skull, bald, with gaping pits for eyes, a triangular cavity where a nose used to be, and a lipless mouth full of fire-blackened teeth.

  I’ve seen bodies disposed of this way many times before, by a wayward sect of a club in which I’m a somewhat reluctant member. They call themselves The End, and I’ve seen them in action twice since I left Mr. Jackson’s house. They’re violent and arrogant and deadly as hell. A magical weapons supplier I met a while back named Tillman Huckle seemed to know everything there was to know about The End, and he was happy to share it all with me.

  Laney catches up, breathing heavily. She scans the trashcans, her eyes wide and white.

  “Bad witch hunters,” she says.

  Trish starts drawing in the air.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bankers and housewives and teenagers today,