In the Air Tonight

by Lori Handeland

  Moments later another car pulled in; a woman I’d never seen before climbed out. That was odd in itself, considering this was New Bergin, even without her long, scarlet robe and the squiggly knife.

  Squiggly knife. Hell. It was the woman who wanted to kill me. Lately, who didn’t?

  “Mistress June.” Brad bowed.

  If the robe and the knife and the bowing hadn’t made me nervous, Brad’s reaching into his glove compartment and pulling out a Venatores Mali ring, which fit him just right, would have done it for sure.

  “Cloak the witch. Carry her,” June ordered, and strode into the woods.

  How did these people know I was a witch when I’d just found out myself?

  Henry! I need you. Now!

  I thought the words very hard. No Henry. Did I have to say them out loud? Perform the spell? Perform the spell out loud? I wish I’d known that before Brad had gagged me. I wish I’d known he was going to gag me before I’d gotten in his car. Unfortunately premonition was not one of my superpowers.

  Too bad. I would really have loved to avoid the clearing full of naked people, even before they began to chant. I think it was Latin, though it was hard to be sure. Brad hoisted me onto a tall, flat rock. I had no idea why, but I got the gist when Mistress June lifted her athame high above me, point down.

  I tried to roll out of the way, but several chanting underlings held me in place. I tried to fling Mistress June with the power of my mind. She took a single step back and cast me a considering look. She tightened her grip on the athame, so when I tried to toss it, nothing happened. I should have paid better attention in tossing class.

  If only there’d been one.

  The voices rose in pitch and volume and then, suddenly, stopped. The silence was chilling. So was Mistress June’s smile.

  “Welcome, master!” she shouted, and plunged the knife toward my chest.

  A shot rang out. Her shoulder jerked back. The knife stuck in my arm and not my heart. It still burned like a bitch.

  “Let her go.”

  Bobby stood at the edge of the tree line on the opposite side of the clearing. How had he found me?

  Suddenly the knife was pulled from my arm—ouch!—and pressed to my neck. “Back off or I’ll slit her throat.”

  Bobby froze. I wanted to shout bullets beat knives! but I was still gagged.

  My arm was bleeding pretty badly. My entire left side felt both damp and on fire.

  The naked followers began to chant again, and the world kind of shimmied. My head went light, my eyesight dark. I must have lost even more blood than I’d thought.

  *

  “What the fuck?” Bobby muttered as the sky above the altar rippled.

  Raye had gone limp. He hoped she was playing possum, but from the amount of blood dribbling over the sides of the rock, he didn’t think so. He needed to end this, but he wasn’t sure how.

  Though Franklin had no doubt called for backup, Bobby didn’t think help would arrive in time. It was just the three of them. However, if Franklin and Cassandra walked out of the woods with guns, it would only cause the crazy lady to panic. With that knife at Raye’s jugular, panic would be a bad thing.

  “He’s coming,” the woman said. “The sacrifice of a witch by a Venatores Mali with the most kills. Add the chants of the worthy believers and our master will rise.”

  “You think you’re raising a dead witch hunter?” Bobby knew she did, but if she was talking to him she wasn’t speaking Latin, even though all the rest of them were.

  The air crinkled again. Though he shouldn’t take his eyes off the woman, Bobby couldn’t help but stare as the sky seemed to stretch outward, as if something—someone—were, indeed, coming.

  “Group delusion,” he said.

  The followers chanted louder, faster, and the woman laughed. “You should have killed me right away. Now it’s too late.” She lifted the knife above her head, her knuckles nearly touching the shifting, shimmering air that looked so much like the face of a man that—

  Bobby pulled the trigger. Everyone stopped chanting.

  The woman stood for another instant, poised above Raye, knife just about to swoop down. Then blood bloomed across her chest, and she fell.

  The face in the sky stared right at Bobby. The eyes blazed like stars; the mouth curled. He thought he actually heard a snarl, right before the thing disappeared.

  “You bastard!”

  Bobby was so freaked by the face that couldn’t have been there but somehow was that he wasn’t thinking, or moving, as fast as he should have been. Brad had his gun pointed in Bobby’s direction before he remembered the kid was there.

  He was going to get shot, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.

  Then Brad’s gun flew through the air and landed fifty feet behind him in the trees. The officer stared at his empty hand, then his fingers curled into fists. He lifted his gaze and started across the clearing in Bobby’s direction.

  Bobby could take Pretty Boy, no problem. Even without the gun.

  Then someone jumped Bobby from behind, and he went down in a flurry of fists and feet and fury.

  *

  I wasn’t out long. I heard June, Bobby, the Venatores Mali. But everything sounded so far away.

  Until the gunshot. That was very close.

  My eyes snapped open as Mistress June fell backward. Above me the sky rippled. I blinked, but the face was still there. In the sky. Behind the sky. Trying very hard to get out.

  The thought made me so dizzy I shut my eyes for a minute, but that only made everything swirl faster.

  Something snarled, and my eyes snapped open again. The face was gone. The sky was just sky. So what had snarled? I’d only heard a sound like that once before.

  From my mother.

  I tried to call out, Pru? but my mouth was still full of cloth.

  I sat up, glanced around for my wolf mother, and saw Brad lifting his gun, pointing it at Bobby. Panic flared so bright my chest hurt. Then the gun flew out of Brad’s hands.

  Just like a ghost’s agitation increased its ability to connect with the living, my agitation appeared to increase my ability to toss things.

  Brad started toward Bobby, who also had a gun and seemed about to use it. Then one of the naked people jumped on Bobby’s back, and all the rest followed. He fell beneath them, amid the dull thuds of flesh on flesh.

  A dark-haired man in an equally dark federalish suit and tie appeared at the edge of the clearing. He slid a bit on the damp grass and fallen leaves. Bright, shiny shoes were not the best idea in the forest. He pointed his gun first at the pile, then at Brad who appeared ready to join in. “Stay,” the man said.

  Brad smirked. “You can’t shoot all of them with him in the middle. And you can’t make them stop unless you do. They’ll tear him apart.”

  My heart jittered again, and one of the followers flew across the clearing. Both Brad and the fed glanced in my direction. I kept tossing. The more I did it, the easier it became. Embrace the panic, let it expand, send that energy outward, and voilà. Flying people.

  The instant Bobby was alone, Brad took a step forward, so I tossed him too. He hit a tree, slid down, and went still. Considering that he’d kidnapped, punched, and gagged me, I didn’t feel bad about it.

  The rope at my ankles had loosened. Had I done that or was luck coming my way at last? Didn’t matter.

  I jumped off the rock and ran to Bobby. I didn’t even consider that he’d left me behind, disbelieving and furious, at what I’d told him. I had to make sure he was all right.

  I fell to my knees; at first thinking the ground was wet, then realizing my clothes were covered in blood. My arm should hurt worse than it did. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.

  Bruises had begun to darken Bobby’s face. Several livid scratches marred his neck. His lip was swollen and bloody. Anger bubbled, and I glanced at the nearest venator, who had started to get shakily to his feet. He flew another three feet and lay still.

&nb
sp; “Whoa.” Bobby touched my leg. “Calm down.”

  I tried to talk, chewed on cloth instead. He pulled away the gag. His fingers traced my jaw, which must have a matching bruise from Brad’s left cross, and his gaze was gentle, the way it had been before I’d mentioned Genevieve’s name. Hope blossomed.

  A movement at the edge of the forest had my head jerking up, my eyes narrowing. A dark-haired woman with a white streak in her hair stepped into the clearing, her hands lifted in surrender. She was so tiny I wondered for a minute if she was a fairy.

  “Still a skeptic?” she asked Bobby.

  Another of the Venatores Mali moved, and I gathered my energy to make her stop. But the new arrival said, “I’ve got it,” then began to chant in a language I’d never heard before. It sounded French and then again it didn’t.

  Whatever she was doing, saying, worked because the faces of the groggy Venatores Mali took on an even more dazed expression, as if they’d all been conked on the head with a brick.

  “Voodoo priestess,” Bobby said, and sat up.

  I tried to get my mind around that, then gave up.

  “Blood loss,” I murmured. “Cheapest high in the world.”

  Bobby pulled the knots free and released my wrists. “We need an ambulance.”

  Concern flooded me. “Are you hurt that badly?”

  “Not me, Raye. You and the crazy woman.”

  “Crazy?” I repeated, then followed his gaze. “Oh, Mistress June.”

  The fairy girl walked behind the stone. “No ambulance for her. She’s gone.”

  “Morgue then.”

  “Not gone dead. Gone gone.”

  “But I killed her.” Bobby got to his feet, and I followed.

  “’Fraid not,” the woman said. She peered into the trees. “Should I go after her?”

  “No.” That was the federal agent. “I called for backup. I need you here, Cassandra.”

  Cassandra crossed the clearing toward us. “I should probably do something to stop the bleeding.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll need to sit so I can reach.”

  “Okay,” I repeated, and sat abruptly in the grass. I probably shouldn’t have gotten up in the first place.

  “Raye?” Bobby sounded panicked.

  “Shh,” I said. My head swam.

  Cassandra shoved it between my knees. “Breathe.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need your shirt.”

  I lifted my head as Bobby shrugged out of his. I wanted to enjoy the view, but the bruises on his torso and my still swimming head prevented it.

  “Lie down before you fall,” Cassandra ordered, and because she was right, I did. She tore Bobby’s shirt into strips, made a pad out of the largest one and pressed it to my wound. The pain that had been numbed by adrenaline came screaming back.

  “Sorry.” She set her hand on my forehead, chanted a few words in that pretty language, and when she lifted her hand, the pain withdrew. “Better?”

  “Mmm.” The pain was still there, but removed, as if I’d been stabbed weeks, not minutes, ago. “What are you speaking?”

  “Haitian.”

  The idea of this itty-bitty white woman speaking Haitian made me smile.

  “I know,” she said. “I feel the same way every time.”

  I wondered momentarily if she could read minds, but the idea made my mind hurt, so I let it go. There was enough for me to think about right now to make me need extra strength Tylenol for the next several years. I wasn’t going to worry about a voodoo priestess too.

  “Just lie still and stay calm,” Cassandra said. “Help’s on the way.”

  Almost immediately sirens shrilled, and they sounded close, but out here in the middle of a great big nothing, everything did.

  Cassandra moved off to speak quietly at the edge of the clearing with the suited guy. Bobby sat next to me and took my hand. “You’re cold.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “No thanks to me.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “After I put it at risk by leaving you.”

  “You couldn’t have known Brad was a lying, witch-hunting bastard.” I hadn’t and I’d known him all my life.

  “True.” Bobby took a breath, then continued very softly. “But it would have been nice to know that you were a witch.”

  My gaze met his. I should have told him, except—

  “You didn’t believe me about the ghosts. I certainly wasn’t going to tell you about…” I waved at the clearing. “This.”

  “I’m sorry I behaved the way I did.”

  I tilted my head. “You believe me now?”

  “You tossed a dozen people while your hands were tied. Either I’m seeing things or you’re special.”

  “Everyone’s special in their own way,” I said in my best Miss Larsen voice.

  “Got that right.” He rubbed his thumb along mine. “How did you manage to hide what you were for so long?”

  “I didn’t do a very good job.” I lifted my chin to indicate the still dopey Venatores Mali. “They knew.”

  “But no one in New Bergin did.”

  “That’s not true.” I kept my gaze on Brad. Perhaps knowing him all my life meant that he, in turn, had known me. He’d seen something, told someone.

  “I always saw ghosts,” I continued. “But I learned not to talk about it. Freaked out my parents.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” he said, and I tightened my fingers around his. We’d need to talk about Genevieve, but not yet.

  “That I’m a witch too is new information.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was adopted.”

  “I thought you were abandoned and had no idea who your natural parents were.”

  “I was, or I thought I was but—” My mind whirled at all I needed to tell him. By the time I was done, those sirens were closer. At this point, they had to be.

  “Your dad’s a ghost and your mom’s a wolf,” he repeated. “From seventeenth-century Scotland.”

  “Yes.”

  “And as they died at the stake, they cast a time-traveling spell to send you and your sisters, whom you’ve never met, forward.”

  “Technically, they sent us to a place where no one believes in witches anymore.”

  He grunted and his gaze wandered around the clearing. “I’m not so sure they sent you to the right place.”

  “Who would have thought an ancient witch-hunting society would be revived in this day and age?”

  “Not me.”

  “Franklin,” Cassandra said. “You got silver in that gun?”

  Something in her voice, if not her odd question, made my skin prickle. I lifted my head as Pru stepped into the clearing.

  “Always,” Franklin answered and pointed his weapon at my mother.

  I tried to toss his gun, but the man had already seen my show and held on tight. I leaped up, nearly fell back down.

  “No!” I cried. I couldn’t lose her when I’d only just found her. She wasn’t the usual mother, but she was the only mother I had.

  Cassandra glanced in my direction. “You know this wolf?”

  “It’s—uh—” My gaze met Bobby’s, and he shrugged. “My mother.”

  Chapter 26

  “When was she bitten?” Franklin asked.

  “Could be cursed,” Cassandra put in.

  “Bitten?” Bobby repeated. “By what? Cursed? By whom?”

  Cassandra spread her hands.

  “Look at her eyes,” the FBI agent said. “Human eyes in the face of a wolf.”

  Now that he mentioned it, the wolf’s eyes were strange. “What does that mean?”

  “He thinks she’s a werewolf,” Raye said.

  Bobby laughed. No one else did.

  “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “Silver bullets? Bitten? Cursed?” Raye rolled her eyes. “Have you completely missed every werewolf book, TV show, and movie ever made?”

  “Apparently. Thou
gh I guess you haven’t.” He glanced at Franklin. “What’s your excuse?”

  “I deal with things like this all the time.” He kept his gun trained on Raye’s “mom,” who had stilled at the sight of it. Raye stepped between them, then Bobby stepped between Franklin and her.

  “Cass?” Franklin asked.

  “I’ve got her.”

  Bobby glanced over his shoulder. The voodoo priestess had produced a shiny knife from Lord knew where. It sparkled silver as the moon lifted beyond the trees.

  “Is everyone slightly nutso?”

  “Seeing is believing, Doucet.” Cassandra’s fingers flexed on the hilt of the knife. “And believe me, I have seen.”

  “She’s not a werewolf.” Raye put out a hand and the knife flew from Cassandra’s palm to hers. She scowled at the blade. “What does silver do?”

  Cassandra contemplated her empty fingers for a instant before answering. “If you touch her with it and she doesn’t burn, she’s not your usual werewolf.”

  Raye laid the flat of the blade on her mother’s nose. The wolf gave a disgusted huff, but she didn’t burst into flames.

  “See?” Raye handed the weapon back to the voodoo priestess.

  “She might not be the usual werewolf, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t something else,” Franklin said.

  Bobby turned to the man. “Are you really with the FBI?”

  Franklin appeared offended. “Of course!”

  “No one would dress like that on purpose,” Cassandra said. “He gets the specialty cases.”

  “There really is an X-files division in the basement?” Raye asked.

  Franklin cast her an annoyed glare, and Cassandra snickered.

  “You’d better get the wolf out of here before my backup arrives,” he said.

  Cassandra stopped laughing. “You didn’t.”

  “Of course I did. What was I supposed to do after…” He used his gun to indicate the clearing.

  “He’s right.” Cassandra rubbed her forehead. “The wolf needs to go.”

  “Why?” Raye asked.

  “Our boss is coming, and he’s the greatest werewolf hunter of all time.”

  “Don’t start.” Bobby had just gotten his mind around the witches and now they were talking werewolves. When did it end?