by Ginny Lynn
“We’re running out of time, so we either start checking every piece of the estate or we concentrate the effort on only the most likely of places.”
“You’re right, but I don’t want to split up since we’re easier prey alone.”
“Fine. Let’s go to the attic first, then the library on the way back down.”
And we were at it. Well, as quickly as my wound would allow us. At one point, I shifted the bandage a little as to not show that the blood had already soaked the area showing. Something had to be done since I could not simply lie down like a victim and take this. Unfortunately, there was no book, or any of her items, left in the attic and no sign of anything in the library.
“You know you’ve lost your chance of being uncursed after you banished her out of me, right?” I asked as we made our way to the front door. But one of my legs wavered on the second to bottom step, spilling me to the wooden floor like a rag doll.
This was the worst possible moment to have my next vision. It seeped into my mind like the blood that trickled into the grooves of the polished wood flooring. I wondered if I was dying as I saw myself in a growing puddle and tangled limbs. Feeling as if a magnet had been placed inside of my floating transparent body, I was slowly drawn away from the distraught look on Kenrick’s face as he tried to wake me up. Thankfully, the attempt wasn’t working as I shifted to the kitchen, hearing a hum coming from the drafty door in the kitchen. It shifted from being a pull at my center to a cold gust which blew my thoughts around as I focused on what could be causing this to happen.
I heard Kenrick yell, “Come back to me, Renata. Please don’t leave me. We were so close to finishing this shit. Just come back and I swear to fix everything.”
It nearly broke my heart to hear the desperation in his hoarse voice. Was he crying? If my body was dying then the bitch couldn’t have it anymore. I could accept that fact but I didn’t want to leave the chance I had for a new life. Reaching for the door, my hand went through the knob in a blinding speed. Shit. Don’t let me be dead. I had to help Kenrick. If I couldn’t be used then Aster would find a way to still get back at Kenrick, even if it meant possessing a body long enough to kill him. I knew it.
The air still yanked at me like wind pulling at a lonely kite. Saying a prayer, I let it take me and when it did I suddenly found myself on the other side of the wooden door and shooting down the eerie darkness of the tunnel. My speed kept me from knowing how far down I had gone and I wondered if I would appear on the other side of the field in a flash of color and speed. No, I was stopped with a sudden force and aimed at the cold stone wall. Why? Not being able to move forward or backward, I turned and examined the wall itself. There. A small crevice was evident near the floor and I bent down to it since I had been allowed more movement by my metaphysical bonds. I had to be close to something important because the energy was concentrated in this one specific spot.
My hands disappeared into the porous surface of the concrete wall and swept around as I fought to see what was hidden there. After several attempts and nothing, I did the unthinkable and jammed my head just above the indention in the wall. The humming came back and rang so loudly that my head ached with it. How could it even be possible? Then I realized the noise was coming from the leather-bound book hidden inside the wall for safe keeping. I bet she hadn’t ever guessed I’d be able to find it here.
Just as I put energy into reaching for it, a throbbing focus at my fingers become more dense, I felt the wind pulling me back out of the wall. No! I had to get the book for Kenrick. Grabbing for purchase anywhere, I was helpless against stopping the suction as I was being evicted from the hallway and hauled back into the kitchen. The door slammed against the frame in the supernatural force that zapped me back into the bleeding body under Kenrick’s life-saving lips.
Eyes aching and lungs heaving, I spasmed after my spirit was forced into my frame worse than a head-on collision. His hands were still on my chest, where he’d been performing CPR on me. No wonder they hurt like hell.
“Book. Escape hall. Kitchen.”
That was all I could choke out as he put pressure on my hip wound again.
“It stopped bleeding. What did you do?”
“Get the book!” I croaked out as I pointed in the general direction of where my spirit had found the witch diary. “Now! No time!”
He must have believed me because he ran straight to the kitchen and skidded to a stop at the passageway door. I heard the slam as it ricocheted against the wall and then nothing as he raced down. Shit. I hadn’t told him how far down it was or what to look for. He’d never find it. Using my hands as best as I could, I wrenched my body up as I held tightly to a spindle on the stair banister. Trying to yell at him, it wasn’t audible to my own ears, let alone his as he ran down the dark tunnel. Half limping and half yanking myself from one sturdy piece of furniture to the next, I ran out of things to cling to once I got over the threshold to the kitchen. Gathering all of the air I could in my tortured lungs, I screamed, “Halfway down. Floor crevice. Right side. Focus on your curse!” And then I let myself hit the floor as my strength refused to hold my weight any longer.
Lying there, I felt no discomfort, which was odd when you’re a mass of bones on a cold wooden floor. Shouldn’t I be feeling more pain with that jolt? Did I care as long as he found the damned book and beat Aster to death with it? No. Not really.
Blackness grew larger and larger in my view as oblivion asked to claim me for its own. I teetered on the verge of accepting when I heard a woot of happiness from Kenrick and then stomping as he came back to me. Trying to smile, I touched at the blackness weighing heavily on me but it was flung away as my lover scooped me up into his warm embrace. I held onto my narrow ray of hope.
“No. I didn’t get this far to see you slipping away. You’re no slug, lady.”
I would have laughed if I could have gotten it out of my lungs. Eyelashes fluttering, I heard him rummaging through the musty pages of the despicable book.
“There has to be something here. She had too many tricks to not have one for this kind of thing. Where the hell is it?”
Flip flip flip went the stiff pages. It sounded like the wings of a black swan coming to carry me away.
“Hold on, damn it! Fuck, here it is.” He sounded so frightened but nothing would ever be as scary as Aster the reborn witch.
Latin words spilled from him as he held me close to his chest. Sounding like a heady mix of sexual innuendo and guttural language, they wove around me as I didn’t want to fight anymore. Muscle cramps of monster proportion sank into me like shark teeth. Going rigid, he held me as if I might possibly disintegrate. Screaming as if it was the last thing that I would ever accomplish, it all went away as the air heaved out of me. Gasping, my eyes popped open to look up at the burning topaz of the man who had just spelled me back to a better state of health. Frantically, I swept away the ragged fabric at my hip and saw the skin scabbed over and looking more like a nasty scratch than any stab wound should ever appear.
“You saved my life,” was the first thing uttered from my lips. At least it wasn’t the word golly.
“We’re not out of the woods yet. Can you manage to get up?” he asked as he slowly straightened up.
“Let’s go kick some witchy ass.”
Hand in hand, we ran for the cemetery as he had the diary under his left arm. Once we passed the greenhouse, the pressure changed and my ears popped as an unholy cry broke along the tree line. This was no storm-riddled wind. This embodied the rage of a witch powered ghost who had found a way to come back at us.
“Run and don’t look back!” Kenrick yelled to me over the roar around us.
The ground shifted apart, we had to jump over the cracks that ripped at the grass in front of us and the shifting walls of the greenhouse shattered like a mirror in a bonfire. It felt like ant bites along my exposed skin as tiny fragments of glass flew around us in a whirlwind of bloodletting. My feet were a mass of wounds as we scampered across t
he debris-covered ground to the crest before the weeping willow tree. Jolts of adrenaline kept me from skidding across the rocky wall as I flung myself over the barrier and behind its low protection.
“Can we make it to her plot?” I asked him as we caught our breath.
“We’re going to have to. On the count of three…” And we were off, battling the wind.
He led me to where her tombstone stood and we fell to our knees as the wind buffeted around us and he fumbled around in his pocket.
“What are you doing?” I screamed at him.
Then Aster appeared on top of him and the book of matches flew from his hands. Slamming him into the trunk of the willow, leaves shook down with the impact of his body hitting it.
“You dared to stab me? You loathsome cur!”
Frantically, I fumbled around for the damned book as the grass bobbed around it in the wind from Aster. Taking several tries to keep it in my grip, I saw there were only two matches left in the tatty matchbook. I only had two chances to burn this book and I didn’t think she’d be gracious enough to stop the wind so I could melt that book into fucking ashes.
Kenrick howled as she kept smacking his head into the wood of the tree. Just as she was about to toss him at me, I struck the match and held it to the center of the book pages. Smoke began to rise and Aster hurled him like a bowling ball right at me. When we struck, my teeth jarred and my leg went out from under me in a sickening crunch. Kenrick had blood seeping from the back of his head and a collar of red slid around his strong neck. It was about to get nasty. I had to console myself with the image of his chest taking in air.
Aster was a purple and black cloud of menace above us as her hands began moving in a graceful dance and Latin wove out of her lips. She was either going to blast us to hell or toss a curse of satanic proportion down on us. The stirrings of it hit and electricity branched across the sky. Then I realized I was laying on the diary and the last match.
“Kenrick, do you hear me?”
“Mmmm,” was all he managed.
“Can you try to distract her?”
He went to nod but then grabbed at his injured throat. I knew he understood me. Gripping a handful of tall weeds, he pulled himself away from me. I stayed as still as possible so she remained focused on him and not my actions.
“Hey, bitchy witch, looking for me?”
The words were the wrong thing to say as she flung a bolt of energy into his chest. Hating the amount of pain he had to be in, I still had to destroy her. So I edged the lone match up and struck it under my lowered chest. It took flame and began to burn at my skin as I set it upon the dried-out pages of the dreaded book. Tears streamed down my face as a ragged cry came from Kenrick and I heard him slump to the ground. But the pages were lit and I wasn’t going to release it unless it planned to take me with it. Even that was debatable. The flame wicked enough to catch onto my shirt and I had to tear it over my head as I struggled to turn over onto the grave under me.
The leather in my hands began to warp under the searing flames and spread at too slow a pace for my liking. I didn’t have time for this. Aster emitted her hideous laugh and called out to me. I wouldn’t look at her for fear she could somehow bespell me. I wasn’t dying anymore so she had to have a backup plan for possessing me. She hadn’t survived a century of time without having some of it spent on ways to keep her spirit alive. Just as she reached those dead hands out to me, I slammed the burning book against the desecrated name on the tombstone and held it there for all I was worth. Red hot nails dug across my back and buttocks as she tried to yank me away from her place of power.
Smoke curled in a tail of a wisp up from the stone and Aster stabbed her nails into my hips as she screamed the world down around us. Branches were jagged splinters, stones were bullets against my human skin. The wrath of a ghost scorned rained upon me and then I saw nothing. Felt nothing. I said goodbye and prayed my love weathered the storm.
Chapter Eighteen
A soft white glow greeted me and I sighed heavily as the scent of gardenias filled the air.
“She’s coming to, Mr. Giles,” said an unrecognizable female voice above me.
My eyes were so heavy it took effort to make them open but I had to see who was in my room. The feminine voice belonged to an older lady with silver threaded hair and she had a tablet in front of her.
“Who are you and where am I?” I whispered to her.
“I’m Nurse Ann and I’m going to go let the doctor know that you opened those pretty eyes. I’ll be right back,” she said and closed the door behind her. I deduced that I had been admitted to a hospital, but she hadn’t said which one.
“I’m glad to see you’ve joined the living again,” said a familiar masculine voice from the right side of my bed.
“Have I?” came the best humor in me at that moment.
“Yes, it was touch and go a few times but you’re too stubborn to be anything but extraordinary.” He knelt by the side of the bed.
I began to reach for the tray on the other side of the bed and realized I was sore in too many places to count. There appeared to be a heavy bandage around my throbbing hand. Then I remembered not only the slice in his palm but the book burning as the world had cracked open around me.
“Aster! What happened to her? Oh God, is she going to come after us?”
He pushed me back into the pillows. “Shh, it’s taken care of.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said to him as I waited impatiently for the words I needed to hear.
“What do you remember?”
I relayed the images, even of him being slammed into the tree plus him getting the attention off of me as I set the last match to the pages of the book.
“I’m sorry you got hurt because of me. How are you?” I asked as he slipped the cup of ice chips to my uninjured hand.
The cold felt good against my desert-dry mouth, and I let a few pieces melt on my tongue as I waited for him to respond.
“How about we make a deal? You forgive me for killing the taste buds off of my tongue faking that witch out and I’ll forgive you for throwing me to her tender attention so you could burn yourself up like a hot dog,” he said as he put a hand out for me to shake.
“I like how you put it but I have a hard time getting that image fried from my cells,” I said as I ignored his hand.
“Then I have a lot of work ahead of me as I beg you to forgive me. But can you at least be satisfied it happened in a dream and not in the flesh?”
He had a good point, so I said, “I’ll give you a few years to persuade me to trust you again, slut.”
As he looked at me in shock, I started to giggle but then noticed my chest aching beyond the confines of the pain medication. Leaning back against the institutional pillows, I relaxed so the pain would subside a bit. When it did, Kenrick was looking at me with a pleased expression on his face. His neck had turned a nice shade of dusty eggplant as it showed the print of the fingers that had tried to choke the life out of my lover. I’m glad he didn’t let it happen.
“I’ll give you a few years, if it’s what you want,” he questioned with a sexy look in those eyes.
“Fine, three years tops.”
“We can seal it with a kiss, right? I am still Cajun.” He used his old line on me again.
He was bold in asking but I had to be worse for wanting it. Not turning him down, he took it for an acceptance. His warm lips were on mine and I closed my eyes as I felt him lick the edge of my top lip. Just when I thought he would deepen the kiss, he pulled back. The look on his face kept me from complaining as I saw raw need in his gaze.
“Going gentle on me, old man?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m just saving it up for a rainy day.”
That made me think of the rain we kept having at the house but in a good way.
“So, fill me in on the rest of what happened plus go over my injuries. I know there is a list, so you can just get it all over with in one big breath.”
; “You have a burned hand from holding the flaming book to the headstone for so long that we almost had to pry you from it. You already had the healing hip, which I couldn’t explain to the doctors, several cuts from all of the shrapnel you went through at the cemetery, plus a random assortment of claw marks across your backside. That gave you a total of three which are glued shut and two having thirteen stitches all total for both of those being closed up. The worst of it is the broken leg from when she catapulted me onto you.”
“Shit. How’d the other gal look?” I joked.
“She had some psychic chick hold her soul to a burning stone and got busted into a bazillion little pieces of mummified corpse.”
Softly chuckling came from me. “No way. She was a ghost and they don’t do that.”
“I exaggerated. But her soul did explode and there’s no way to come back from having your essence splashed across three properties.”
Ick.
“Are you sure she can’t come back? And she can’t try to possess me again?”
“Let’s just say that I did a little undercover work while they set your leg, and you’re safe from the old bitty. The bad news is you accidentally absorbed all of her power away from her before you shoved it into the grave dust where she belonged.”
“I’m glad I did something right. It’s a shame she couldn’t have taken your curse with her. Well, if you still have it,” I hedged.
“Sadly, I still have it,” he answered.
“What are you going to do about it?” I swallowed my fear to ask but it added up to nothing compared to what I’d been through already.
“There’s this girl I know that really enjoys naps. Maybe I can convince her to help me out until I find someone who can counter curse me,” he mentioned as he looked at the door.
“No fucking way!”
He laughed and it was wonderful to hear. “Hun, I’m talking about you.”
I had to have turned four shades of red, realizing he was pulling my broken leg. If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have thrown my pillow at his mocking face.