“You come any closer, I cut the bitch!”
“With what?”
“You blind? With this!”
“You who have a knife at her throat
Put it down or be turned into…shit!”
They were both staring at him. And the knife was still jammed against the underside of the woman’s chin.
“What’s this? Rhyming an’ shit?”
“Help me, you idiot,” the woman practically hissed, glaring at him.
“Wait, wait, I’ve got it.” Chris closed his eyes and concentrated on the mental image he needed.
“If you keep robbing ladies,
You’ll come down with rabies.
Not to mention scabies.”
“Stop with the poetry and call. The. Police,” the woman grated.
“Man, you are nuts. You—” He stopped suddenly and clutched his throat. “Oh, man…I am so hot. Are you guys hot?” He coughed and spat and spat again. “Where am I? Who the hell are you guys?” He dropped the knife. “I’ve got to get out of here!”
“That seems like a good plan,” Chris agreed.
“I-I—garrggh!” The would-be rapist started foaming at the mouth and actually barked at him.
“What the hell?” the woman said, twisting away from her assailant. “Did you just give him rabies?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Will he die?” The woman warily watched Sir Foams-a-Lot, as he darted in and out of a nearby alley.
“No, it’s only temporary. Of course, every time he tries to bother a lady, it’ll come back. Either that,” he added thoughtfully, “or scabies will get him. That’s some kind of skin condition, isn’t it?”
“He was right,” the woman said, backing away from him. “You’re nuts.”
“Hey!” he yelled at her rapidly departing form. “Don’t thank me or anything!”
She waved a hand over her shoulder, but never slowed down.
Chris sighed and kept walking, stepping over the knife like most men would step over dog poop. He was not really thinking about what he was doing, he was just automatically avoiding something unpleasant. He thought about turning it into a banana, but for the life of him couldn’t remember anything that rhymed with banana.
Why did he even bother? They never hung around. No matter what he did for them, what magic he could make, they always got scared and ran away. For two cents, he’d give them something to really—
He stopped walking and pressed his palms over his eyes. Don’t think like that. You’re one of the good guys, remember?
Yeah, sure. As if he could fight three centuries of ingrained behavior.
You’d better.
Or what?
You know what.
He snorted. His inner voice sounded weirdly like his late grandfather…who had been killed by a witch-hunter from the Goodman line. His father had died at the hands of a Goodman twenty years later.
Now it was his turn. Unless he could prove to Goodman that he wasn’t a danger to society.
Because if he could fight three centuries of conditioning, she sure as hell could.
Hell, he was as much of a demon fighter as a witch…how many demons had he vanquished? How many lives had he saved?
Did you do it for them, or for you?
What difference did it make?
But sometimes, when sleep wouldn’t come, he’d burn with the desire for revenge. The Goodmans had been killing his family for centuries. Wasn’t it time the de Meres got back some of their own?
He’d shove the thought away, try to be a good enough guy, but it always came back. Freakin’ always.
Mixed feelings or not, he’d spent the last five years tracking down just about all the Goodmans in the country. And he had satisfied himself that, in every past case, the surname was just a coincidence. And he’d had many pleasant conversations as a result…and even a few free meals. Not that, as a Mere, he needed free anything. But still, they had been nice. They gave him hope for what was to come.
Annoyingly, the last batch lived in—ugh—Massachusetts. Salem, to be exact.
Salem. Just reading the name on a map gave him chills, never mind driving there.
Salem, land of the disenchanted and intolerant. Salem, the killing grounds for twenty accused witches (only one of which, by the way, had been a witch). Salem, where hundreds were accused of witchcraft during the rising hysteria between June and September 1692.
Come to think of it, he probably should have started there and saved himself several years of looking, but he couldn’t bring himself to take that step until it was absolutely necessary. As far as he knew, a Mere hadn’t set foot in Massachusetts in more than two hundred years, maybe longer. And there was a good reason for that. The freakin’ state motto was, “By the Sword We Seek Peace,” for God’s sake! No, he had been right to avoid the state, at least until it was absolutely necessary to his plan.
Unfortunately, now it was. It gave him the creeps to even be crossing the state line, never mind lurking in Boston’s dark alleys, tracking down more friggin’ Goodmans and vanquishing the occasional smelly demon.
Not that he expected the witch-hunter to be listed in the Yellow Pages under “Hunters, Witch.” Fortunately, lots of things rhymed with Goodman, and his magic was helping him methodically track them all down. And—and maybe it was just a fable, after all. Maybe all his antecedents had died of natural causes.
Ha. Were being burned at the stake or hanged on the gallows natural causes anywhere but Salem?
Still, he’d go. Then he’d talk, try to make peace. If only Goodman wouldn’t set him on fire before he could explain that he was one of the good guys…
Assuming he actually was. Sometimes he wasn’t too sure.
Chapter 3
“Again, Rhea. Again!”
Panting, she lowered the crossbow and glared at her father. “I don’t see you out here slinging arrows of misfortune. And for an ex-hippie, you know entirely too much about how to kill people.”
“I watched my father train my older brother,” Power replied, absently running his hand over his bald spot—a sure sign he was distressed. “We never did find his body.”
“Oh, great.” Disgusted, she aimed the crossbow, and the arrow thwacked the mannequin right in the groin.
“That’s not a lethal wound,” her father snapped.
“No, but I bet he wishes it was.”
“Rhea, stop it! This is a serious business. You have to fulfill your destiny, to—”
“That’s another thing. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“Think, Rhea. Why?”
She sighed and reloaded the crossbow. “Don’t even tell me. Twenty-first-birthday ritual?” Oh, great. She’d been legal-drinking-age for twelve whole hours and was doomed to kill a powerful magic user and get killed in the process. “So you let me have twenty-one years of blissful ignorance, is that the way it works?”
Power nodded.
“Great. Any idea when Hot Shit Magic Guy is going to show up?”
“You’ve got a couple more years to train. So we have to be ready. Again.”
None of the weapons were new to her. She’d been training (for fun, she had thought) in the barn for more than ten years. But shooting a man-shaped mannequin or a scarecrow wasn’t the same as pointing a gun or a crossbow or a knife at a real man and finding the will to drive home a lethal stroke.
She’d never killed anything in her life. Heck, she’d never even swatted a fly.
But her parents pooh-poohed her worries, telling her that killing was in her blood, that with proper training she would do her duty when the time came.
“For what?” she had asked.
Her mother had finally stopped crying. “What do you mean, Rhea?”
“What’s the point? According to you guys, another witch and another Goodman—one of the ankle biters’ kids, I’m betting—will be born in the next generation, and the whole stupid thing starts all over again.”
“Your point
?” her father had asked.
“Why do it at all? It’s fruitless.”
“We do it,” her mother had said, sounding firm for once, “because it is our family duty. And we do it to rid the world of evil. I don’t want to lose you, Rhea, but I’ll see you dead by my own hand before I’ll let you turn your back on the world, on your family.”
“Great, Mother. Just wonderful.”
Still trying to reconcile the fact that her parents were fine with seeing her dead—by a witch or by their hands—Rhea groped for her Beretta and obliterated the mannequin’s face with eight rounds.
It didn’t make her feel much better.
Chapter 4
Chris drove the rental car through the gate and up the winding driveway, admiring the trees lining the drive, their leaves in full summer glory. It must be amazing in the fall, he thought.
The house and barn loomed before him, the barn a traditional red, the two-story house cream-colored with black shutters. Horses grazed in the field beside the barn, their coats glossy in the July sun. It was too idyllic for a hotbed of born-and-bred killers, which cheered him. He braked, yanked on the parking break, shut off the engine, and got out.
Just in time to practically shit his pants when a voice behind him shrilled, “Kill the witch! Kill the witch!”
He whirled, frantically trying to think of a rhyme to save himself, only to see a girl around seven years old pointing a toy six-shooter at him.
“Yeesh,” he said.
“Kill the witch! Pschow, pschow!” She aimed the toy gun between his eyes and fired twice. She was grinning hugely, showing the gap between her front teeth, the sun bouncing off the golden highlights in her light brown hair, dark eyes sparkling with fun. “You’re dead, witch!”
“Uh, run along, kiddo.”
“You’re dead, witch!”
“Okay. Bye now.”
With a final “pschow!” she darted past him and up the porch steps, disappearing around the corner.
Chris took long, steadying breaths. Okay. I clearly have not prepared for this encounter. It’s okay. Deep breath. The kid caught you off guard, and you’re on edge anyway, because nobody’s tried the “let’s just talk” approach, ever. And you’re breaking years of tradition by showing up before your official “coming of age” ceremony. Deep breaths.
He attached little importance to the witch game; the kid had, after all, grown up in Salem. They probably soaked up “kill the witch” with their mother’s milk. Instead, he shrugged off the encounter and mounted the front porch steps, then rapped politely at the front door.
It was opened almost immediately by a middle-aged woman, late forties or early fifties, a woman who would have looked very nice if her eyes weren’t so red and swollen. Allergies, he thought. Or she’s been crying for a while.
“Yes?” she asked in a watery voice.
“Uh, hello, I’m looking for your eldest.”
“My—you mean Rhea?” She pulled a tissue out of her sleeve and blew her nose. “Who are you? Are you from her school?”
“My name’s Chris Mere,” he replied, not expecting much in the way of consequences. He’d done this thousands of times in the past five years.
So the woman’s reaction was startling, to say the least. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, and she started to slam the door, on his foot, which he’d thrust forward.
Bingo!
“You get out of here, foul thing! You’re two years too early!”
“I like to plan ahead. Uh, ma’am, you’re crushing my foot.”
“Pity it isn’t your head,” she snarled, shoving harder.
“Look, I just want to—ow—talk. I’m not here for a fight.”
“Too bad,” the woman replied, half a second before a walloping pain slammed into his left ass cheek.
He staggered and went down on one knee. “Ow, damn it!”
“You get away from her right now,” a female voice said coldly, behind him and to his left.
Shot me in the back, he thought, astonished. He clutched his ass and fell on his side. His other side, luckily. One of the friggin’ Goodmans shot me in the back! The pain of it was like nothing in the world; the thing felt like it was coming out his belly button.
He heard steps running up the porch and rolled his eye up to see her. Arrows? Flying? Flying arrows? No, arrows flying true. That was it, by God.
“Rhea, watch out! You’re not ready yet!”
Rhea, he thought.
She pointed the crossbow at his forehead. Not ready, his bleeding butt! He assumed she was the eldest Goodman; she looked about the right age. And the good looks he’d hardly noticed in the child and hadn’t seen in the mother were unmistakable in this one.
She stared down at him, and time seemed to slow down, giving him a chance to take in her excellent good looks. Shoulder-length brown hair with gold and red highlights. Fair skin, freckled nose. Big dark eyes, currently narrowed to thoughtful slits. About five-seven, one-thirty. A foxy little pointed chin. Curves in all the right places, though the muscle definition was clear, because she was wearing khaki shorts and a red tank top. Red, the color of blood.
Her finger tightened on the trigger. From his vantage point (writhing in pain on the front porch) the arrow looked very, very big and very, very sharp. He could actually see her finger whitening as she slowly squeezed. Summer sunlight bounced off the arrow’s silver tip.
I’m going to be killed, he thought, by the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
Chapter 5
Rhea heard the car come up the drive, but paid little attention. Her parents were always having friends over, salesmen often called (her parents were notorious for having trouble saying “no, thanks”), old school chums dropped by, people occasionally got lost in the country and stopped for directions. So she kept practicing until her father decided to check the stock. Then she made her escape.
Fuck destiny, she thought. It’s too nice a day to think about killing. Or being killed.
Weapons were so much a part of her upbringing that she actually forgot to put the crossbow and quiver away; the bow was like an extension of her hand, and she didn’t even notice the weight of the quiver. By the time she realized it, she saw her mother try to slam the door on the tall stranger.
In all Rhea’s twenty-one years, her mother had never slammed the door. Not even on the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
So she shot him. Not to kill. To get him to remove his foot from the bottom of the doorway. And it worked splendidly. He went down like a ton of saltwater taffy. She was more than a little amazed; had she worried so much, just an hour ago, about her ability to wound or kill?
She darted up the steps in time to see the tall man curl on his side like a shrimp and frown up at her.
“Rhea, watch out!” her mother shrilled. “You’re not ready yet!”
She stared down at him, bringing the crossbow up in slow motion. At least, that’s what it felt like. Everything was happening so slowly, she had plenty of time to get a good look at the guy.
Unmistakable: a de Mere. Short, sandy blond hair. Eyes the color of wet leaves. Tall, very tall (his head had almost touched the top of the doorway, before she shot him). Thin, but his broad shoulders were in evidence through his black T-shirt. His long legs looked even longer in the tight, faded jeans.
He looked exactly like the pictures of the de Mere her great-great-great-great- (how many greats was that?) grandfather had burned at the stake (except for the modern clothing). She had seen the archives, the drawings. Fairy stories, she had thought. About witches and the warriors who protected the world from their evil. And the demons some of the witches would call forth.
At last, the crossbow was in place. Her finger tightened on the trigger. This is it! I’m going to kill him on my own front porch, and I’ll live to a ripe old age. Why the hell were my folks so scared of him?
“Arrows, arrows, flying true,” he rasped.
“Form instead a cloud of blue.”
The arrow in hi
s butt vanished in a puff of blue smoke. The arrow loaded in her crossbow vanished as well. And her quiver suddenly felt pretty light. Horribly light.
“That’s better,” he mumbled, climbing to his feet with difficulty. He staggered for a few seconds, clutched his butt, then muttered,
“Arrow’s wound paining me,
Form instead a—shit!”
“Are those supposed to be poems?” Rhea asked, reaching for her Beretta, then remembering she’d locked it in the barn after practice. Oh, great.
“You shot me in the back,” he snapped, still massaging his ass. His hands were red to the wrist. “That’s why I’m the good guy, and you’re the bad guys.”
“The hell!” she almost shouted, then realized her mother was still standing in the doorway, utterly shocked. Rhea darted forward, shoved her mom back, and slammed the door. Meanwhile, the witch was hobbling around the porch, dripping blood all over the place and mumbling “Ooh, ow, ouch, God help me, ow ow ow…”
“You’re wrong,” she snapped, freshly outraged. How dare he accuse her of villainy? He’d come to her home uninvited and terrorized her mother. For that last one, if nothing else, she’d see him dead.
Her blood was still humming; her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She itched for a weapon, or a stake, some rope, and a box of fireplace matches. Because she wanted to kill him. She needed to kill him. Everything that was in her, centuries of tradition, cried out for it.
It was like, until she saw him in the flesh, her life had been rudderless.
“The hell,” he retorted, and she tried to remember what they had been talking about. “I’ve never shot anybody in the back in the twenty-eight years I’ve been running around on the planet. You can’t say the same, Rhea. Hell, your little sister runs around yelling ‘kill the witch’ at complete strangers.”
“Shut up.” She wondered if she could kick him to death. Surely it was worth a try. “You’re the foul evil magicks bringer and demon raiser, not me. I’m protecting the world from you. It’s not the other way around.”
“Magic,” he sighed, straightening. “And I don’t raise them. I just get rid of them. That’s an old wives’ tale, that we raise demons. Magicks. Jesus!”