As we rolled up on the mausoleum, he said, "It's cool. Water under the bridge. This is the one?"
I nodded.
"Show me."
I took the single step and said a quick spell to undo the padlock, easy as pie, and swung open the wrought-iron gate. Next came the heavy oak door. As it creaked open, dying light spilled in and caught fluttering dust motes. It looked like they were dancing. Dead flowers curled in one corner, chalk remains of Cathy's spell and a rust-colored bloodstain in the middle of the floor.
"Let me guess. Yours?" Blythe asked.
I nodded. "I brought some salt scrub. I'll clean it all up."
He got rid of the flowers while I scrubbed the floor. Magic crackled in my fingertips when I got to the chalk and the bloodstain, but it was old. She'd buried the wand we used as a focus somewhere. She'd have it now—or soon, anyhow. All that magic, buried all year, waiting and growing until the next October full moon.
I felt a little sick to my stomach. Blythe was an exact practitioner, and I did have some pretty decent raw power. But this was… big.
I smelled herbs burning. I'd been so stuck in my own head, I hadn't noticed Blythe walking the perimeter of the little mausoleum, chanting under his breath and waving sage. Between that and the salt, the place was starting to feel normal. As normal as a tiny stone house full of dead bodies could, anyhow.
When we finished the cleansing, we sat out on the step and watched the sun sink below the treetops.
"Are you really gonna make me do a binding ritual?" I asked.
Blythe sighed and sprawled, long legs out in front of him. He'd put on a pair of jeans before we left, thanks to the chill. I kinda missed his legs, too white or not. He said, "Nah. That'd be shitty. Just—I wish you weren't so dumb."
I winced.
"Sorry." He tossed his head to get some bleach-blond hair out of his eyes. "I don't mean that. Well, I do, but not in a mean way. I just think you need to be careful about who you run with if you're going to play with that kind of magic."
"How come you never played with it?" I asked.
"I did, when I was younger." He shrugged. "Wasn't worth the price. And the people are fucking weird."
That was true, anyhow. After another silent minute, I said, "Blythe, I'm really sorry. I should've come back and helped you cleanse your apartment. I seriously thought—"
"I know. Benito is a fuckstick." He shook his head. "It's cool. I mean, you and me weren't really tight or anything, so there was no reason to expect you to—"
"I caused the problem, so I should've fixed it." I frowned. "And I'm real sorry. I'm gonna make all this up to you. I swear."
One corner of his lips pulled upward. "How?"
"For one, I'm gonna stop using blood," I said. He was right: the people were weird. Power-hungry. Users. Made sense, now I thought about it. I used blood magic because I was curious, because I wanted to know everything. Because it was mine and so why shouldn't I? But the price wasn't worth it. There were always consequences. Like this. "And for another, I'm gonna owe you…"
I wanted to ask him on a date. But that was stupid, right? I needed to earn his trust back. Maybe I could ask him if—
Suddenly, Blythe leaned forward and caught my mouth in a kiss. At first, all I could think was how soft his lips were—puffy, like what they called bee-stung, especially the lower lip. I tilted my head into the kiss, and he pressed in, barely opening up. But before it could get any further, he pulled back, looking guilty.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I had that warm tingly feeling a good kiss gives and couldn't think beyond that.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to imply—like, that you owed me—that. I just—I don't know. It was there. I thought—"
"It was good," I interrupted once I found my words. "Real good. I just didn't expect… I mean you tried to slam the door on me a few hours ago."
"Yeah, well." He scratched at the back of his neck. "I didn't know you actually felt bad about the haunting thing. And I didn't know why you didn't come back to help with it. Anyhow, sorry for the emotional whiplash. It's weird to be around you when I—like you but can't… you know."
"Because of the black magic?"
"Yeah. But if you mean it about not using the blood anymore…"
"I mean it. Shit, I woulda promised a long time ago if it meant I had a shot with you."
He smiled and it was kind of dopey. I figured that was what he looked like when he was less guarded. It was pretty, and I meant to see a lot more of it. Once we averted this mini zombie apocalypse, anyhow.
***
The sun went all the way down like tonight was nothing special, and the full moon glowed silver and sweet. Blythe said, "Thank the Goddess it's not closer to Samhain. Can you imagine the damage this witch could do?" He fingered his pentagram charm again.
I shook my head. "Don't want to. You feel that?"
He closed his eyes and held out both hands. For some reason, hands are more sensitive to magical energies—or maybe it's just how our brains interpret it. But it was there, that almost electric feeling jumping up and down my skin, tickling at my brain. Big, fat, fuck-off magic was coming up out of the ground.
"Wish you knew where that wand was," Blythe mumbled.
"Wouldn't have needed you if I did."
He snorted and opened his eyes. There was a huge crackle of energy, and we shivered in unison. A sound like grass being ripped up and dirt moving filled the cemetery. A nearby grave marker shifted then cracked. The ground looked like a boiling swamp, uncertain and roiling as the dead clawed their way out of coffins and into the moonlight.
"I can't believe I let myself get talked into this. I am such a sucker." But Blythe didn't sound or look scared. I felt him gathering energy around himself like a protective cloak, but also like a battery. He was saving it up for another, more powerful cleansing.
I did the same, but instead of a cloak, my magic was like a spiral around me, a spring ready to pop the tighter I coiled it. It wasn't pure like Blythe's, but it could hold some undead off for a while—or feed into him, if he needed a power source.
The first dead person hoisted itself out of the ground and crawled in our direction. Blythe pointed at it. There was what looked like an explosion of moonlight in the corpse's musty ribcage, and it rattled to the ground in a pile of bones.
"Okay," I said. "That's a good start. What'd you do?"
"There's no spirit in them," he said through clenched teeth. "It's just magic holding them together. All we have to do is blow it away."
"That all?" I laughed. "How about I lend you mine?"
He nodded and started picking off would-be zombies as they emerged. These ones were all skeletal, since we were in the oldest part of the cemetery—I could just imagine how gross it looked in the modern part, though. And smelled. Jesus Jumping Christ, what a shit show, and it was just getting started.
I pushed my magic towards him by uncoiling the top of my imaginary energy-spring and turning it in his direction. He reached out and touched it with the hand nearest to me, then pulled it into his magic-cloak and started braiding it up. It's a weird feeling, like two people inside the same shirt—or maybe a tug o' war team that's all tied to the rope instead of just holding it.
"Fuck, slow down for a second; that's a lot," he said.
I did, but kept gathering. I could hold a lot—it'd be ready when he needed it. In the meantime, he was still zapping the odd skeleton as it emerged. The full moon let me see into the distance. There was movement all over the place, and unless I was losing my mind (hard to tell at this point), a lot of them were coming in our direction.
On the one hand, that was weird, since I was pretty sure Cathy's plan was to take out the town… or just take over it, who knew with her. On the other hand, if we felt all her magic, she probably felt ours. "The good news is, I think she's distracted by us."
Teeth still clenched, Blythe asked, "What's the bad news?"
"She's distracted by us," I re
peated.
He laughed, though it came out like a grunt. "Gonna go for a big wave. Feed fast when I let it go, then slow down when I fill up?"
I wasn't real sure how to tell if he was filling up on energy or not, but I said, "Okay," since we didn't have a lot of time for explanations. The dead were coming through the trees, bones glinting white in the silver light, feet shuffling over dirt and raggedy grass, slamming into headstones and bowling them right over. No pain, no reason, just their orders. Which pretty clearly involved us.
Blythe went down on one knee, curled up and consolidating his power. His lips moved in an incantation that was more like a prayer, though I had no idea to what or whom. Some other thread of power was winding up with his and mine; it took me a second to realize he was drawing on the moon.
Kind of a shortcut there, buddy, but I didn't figure now was the time to be a smart ass.
In a language I didn't recognize, Blythe shouted something guttural and pushed all his power outward. It was like a supernova of magic, visible and almost glittery, stirring up the air until it tingled. I kept gathering and pushed a ton of my power into him the second the explosion happened. Blythe wrapped it around himself and sent out another wave, then another, then another.
Finally it stopped, and Blythe slumped on both knees and sat back on his heels. He held his head in both hands, his long Mohawk like silver threads in the dark. "Fuck."
I knelt next to him and stopped feeding magic into him. He felt shaky; he was too weak to do it again. He needed a second.
"Get my sage," he whispered.
I jumped up and ran into the mausoleum. The protective circle radiated calm. The candle flames burned still and steady. I took a deep breath, then headed back out to Blythe with his incense. I lit it for him and knelt again. He reached for it.
And a voice I knew way too well said, "Ah, I wondered where you learned that kind of magic. I didn't think you'd bring a friend."
In unison, Blythe and I looked up and said, "Cathy."
Blythe had called her "dominatrix witch" for a reason, and that had gotten even more accurate since we'd split. Her hair was chopped short, almost like Mr. Spock's, and she had gorgeous make up, all black and glitter around the eyes. With her sweet, pixie-like face, short black dress, stiletto boots, and metallic faux-claws on each finger to complete the look, she wasn't fucking around.
"I like the nails," I said. "That's new."
"I'll bet you do," she said.
What can I say, I have a masochistic streak. Which I guess explains a lot.
"You can't beat us," Blythe said. "He's got the power, I've got the spells. Just hand over the wand and go home."
Cathy reached into her belt and produced the willow wand we'd used to focus the spell. "Fuck off. I waited a loooong time for this thing."
"You stole the power from Griffin," Blythe said.
"Is that what he told you? He wasn't complaining when we were fucking in that mausoleum." Cathy smirked and flicked the wand. The nearest piles of bones popped right back into skeleton form and started toward us. Then another. Then another.
I could feel Blythe still hadn't re-gathered his energy, so I punched out with mine and a quick force incantation. The skeletons shattered against trees fifty yards away.
"All brawn and no brain, lover," Cathy drawled.
"You told him it was so you could talk to your ancestors, not so you could fuck over the whole town with dead bodies," Blythe said. "Pretty sure he woulda said no if you'd been honest."
"Would you?" Cathy took a step closer. She was trying to give me sex eyes.
She had sexy eyes, don't get me wrong. But fuck that. "Hell yes, I would! You woulda told me if you really thought that. Damn, Cath, you're even shittier than I thought."
I felt about twenty times dumber for not realizing that part of it, that she'd basically stolen from me. I had given up the power—the blood—freely… but I hadn't realized what for. Not exactly consent, then, is it? Not even a little.
"Come on, Griff. It'll be fun. You and me and the zombie army." She held up her arms and a bunch more skeletons hopped back to "life".
For a second, all I could think of was that old Danse Macabre cartoon, the one with Death playing the violin in the graveyard and the skeletons partying. Except it was Cath with the violin. It was so ridiculous but so real.
"Fuck." Blythe grabbed my arm and put his lips to my ear. Goosebumps rushed down that side of my body, partly from his magical energy, partly from just… lips. Real nice ones. He whispered, "She's not even sweating. If she can keep doing that…"
"Offer's off the table," Cathy announced. She pointed in our direction. More skeletons reanimated, and the ones already on their feet clattered toward us. Fast.
"Protective circle!" Blythe tugged me inside. "Need a second to think!"
I grabbed the sage on our way, then slammed the oaken door behind us and locked it. Cathy said something outside, but I couldn't make it out. There were no windows, but I could feel her there, moving in a circle around the mausoleum.
Blythe knelt in the chalk circle and mumbled some more incantations. Whatever he did pushed the protective energy outward, lining the stone walls. Just us and some non-animated dead guys, now.
I sat beside him. "I didn't think… shit."
He shook his head. "Okay, we can do this. We just have to… You look through your notes again. I'm gonna see what's in my bag."
I did exactly what he said, because he was totally the brains of this operation. Within seconds, scratching on the walls started. Beyond Blythe's protective barrier, ugly magic swirled like muck in a rocky river, around and around, banging off the stone walls.
All she had to do was keep us in here all night. She could reanimate the whole damn graveyard, go off into town with her army of grossness, and let her skeletons keep us busy. We had Blythe's protective circles scattered around the graveyard for an escape route, and we could totally get from one to the other without death by Danse Macabre. But then what? We follow her into town and keep trying to supernova cleanse everywhere?
Like he was finishing my thought, Blythe said, "We have to take out that wand. End her power."
I should've guessed that before. Like always, I'd fucked up, and then failed at fixing my fuck up. I grunted in agreement, but kept flipping through the notebook pages on my tablet, one after the other, searching for an answer, for how to unravel the ritual. "Is there any, like, general way to undo a spell like this? Pick it apart?"
"Not that I know of—not one that's consolidated its power for so long." Blythe squeezed his eyes shut just as a long, ugly scratching sound dragged the length of the east wall. "It's hard to think like this."
I stared at the ritual page. Blythe leaned over my shoulder to look, too. I asked, "Nothing in your bag?"
"Nothing." His breath was hot on my ear.
"So we get to sit here while she does fuck knows what to the town." I sighed.
Blythe didn't answer.
I turned to look at him, nearly smacking my cheek off his, but he didn't even seem to notice. His gaze was fixed intensely to the page with the ritual.
I suddenly had a wild idea. Apparently he did too. We turned to look at each other and ended up nose to nose.
"You don't… I mean you wouldn't be willing…?" I couldn't even bring myself to ask.
Blythe flushed, obvious even in the dark. "You remember how you did it?"
I nodded.
"If we could get outside, I could draw on the moonlight. It wouldn't make it as strong as being buried for a whole year, but… between the two of us…" He bit at his bottom lip. "Bet we could make enough power to get that wand back, at least."
My blood rushed in my ears. "Okay. Yeah. If you're willing… Ah man, I'm pretty ready to go whenever, but screwing in the middle of a graveyard surrounded by rotting dead is gonna be rough."
"The roof," Blythe said. "The protective circle will work up there, too. You'll have to be the one to hold the power—you have a b
etter chance of counteracting, since it was your magic to start with."
"You sure?" I frowned.
"It's not ideal, but…" He nodded. "Long as you don't mind taking it in the ass, it's our only option. Anyhow, you can hold more."
"Dick, or power?"
He snorted out a laugh. "Yes?" But that was a question.
I smirked a little. Because yeah. I can take a dick. Alllll day.
"Grab your knife," he said. "You're about to do your last blood magic ever."
***
Cathy was gone when we opened the door. It was just wave after wave of nasty skeleton—and one or two with a few rotting fleshy parts from the newer graves had joined them. I exploded them backward with a force incantation, and we used a nearby tree to get up to the roof with only a few bumps and scrapes on the way. The shingles were rickety, but it'd have to do—there was only the four-foot diameter safe space of the protective circle below us.
Blythe looked over the edge of the roof and made a face. "Shit, I seriously hope you don't have performance anxiety."
Yeah, there were skeletons trying to kill us and my ex-girlfriend was on her way into town to wreak havoc with a zombie legion. But I narrowed my focus to Blythe, the silver tingle of his magic and the way he looked all sparkly with it in the autumn moonlight. And, okay, danger turns me on, that's been established. "I'm good. You?"
He glanced over his shoulder and winced.
"C'mere." I pulled him into the circle and settled him on his back. The roof slanted to a point, so it left him sort of upright. I climbed on top of him and straddled his lap, then leaned down to kiss him.
He reached up and threaded his fingers through my hair. His magic encircled me; I'd never felt that before, like being wrapped up in a moonlight blanket against the chilly air. I slid my hands beneath his tank top and traced his abs, kissed him gently, then opened his mouth with mine and licked at the roof of his mouth before starting it over again.
Scraping started on both sides of the mausoleum, in long, steady strokes. It didn't stop. The fuckers were trying to whittle through stone with bone.
"You sure about this?" I whispered. He was right, it's not like there was a choice… except there always was.
Witchy Boys: The Complete Collection Page 2