Belle, Book and Candle: A Fantasy Novel by Nick Pollotta

by Nick Pollotta

  “How did you do that?” a flabbergasted Rissa asked in a small voice.

  “A shotgun slows down everybody,” Colt declared confidently, yanking out the smoking cartridges.

  “Seems so. What is in those?” Rissa asked suspiciously.

  “Rock salt,” Colt said, going to the mantel and getting down a cardboard box full of ammunition.

  “Why would you have shotgun cartridges loaded with rock salt?” she demanded, resting the skillet on a shoulder.

  “For the alligators, of course,” Colt replied, reloading the shotgun. “They’re on the endangered species list. I don’t want to hurt ’em, just chase them away.” He grinned wickedly. “These also work on tourists and paparazzi. The rock salt stings worse than acid and takes a full day to dissolve.”

  “Apparently it also neutralizes an animation spell,” Rissa said with a marked degree of satisfaction. “Any more rock salt?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is there anything salty in the kitchen that we can use? Potato chips, pretzels, pork rinds ... stuff like that?”

  “Sorry, just a lot of canned chili, beer, and succotash,” Colt replied, stuffing the extra cartridges into a pocket of his uniform jacket.

  Succotash again? It must be a Southern thing. “What about pistol ammo?” she asked, pulling Lady Magenta from a pocket.

  “Only shotgun shells.”

  Muttering in annoyance, Rissa stuffed the useless revolver away once more. “Any gasoline? We could make Molotov cocktails using rags, laundry soap, and empty whiskey bottles!”

  Sneaking a glance through the window shutters, Colt slowly turned. “Now, where in the world did you learn how to make Russian firebombs?”

  “Eros Films, The Crawling Eye, 1958.”

  “Good flick! Slow beginning.”

  “Opinions vary.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s no gasoline,” Colt continued doggedly. “We’re on the grid, so everything here is electric, aside from the fireplace.”

  “Damn!” Thoughtfully, Rissa stroked one of the nine rings. “All right, then how about—”

  Moaning an inhuman battle cry, another zombie appeared in the doorway. Scrambling for the shotgun, Colt again cut loose with both barrels and the zombie went flying backward to land in the swamp, bubbling and hissing as it sank out of sight in the swirling black water.

  “How many of those do you have?” Rissa asked, flexing her empty hands.

  “Sixteen,” Colt said, stepping into shoes. “No, fourteen now.”

  “All of them salt?”

  “Yes. Modified them myself. There’s another two boxes of shells, but they’re double-ought buck.”

  “Excellent! And that is ...?”

  “Buckshot ... stainless steel pellets that can blow a grown man in half at three feet.”

  She frowned. “What the hell do you have those for?”

  “In case the rock salt doesn’t work.”

  “Clever boy. Any other surprises?”

  “Wait until the honeymoon.”

  Just then a mottled face appeared at the broken window, moaning and surrounded by fat buzzing flies.

  “This one’s mine!” Rissa snarled, gesturing grandly with both hands. “Die!”

  Boiling lances of ethereal power blaster from her open palms, but nothing happened as the zombie came ever closer.

  She tried again. “Disintegrate!” There were still no results, and Rissa started to back away. “Dissolve! Burn! Sleep! Shrink! Freeze! Explode!”

  Totally unaffected, the zombie moaned even louder.

  “Lightning!” Rissa bellowed, stiffly gesturing with both hands. Her entire body tingled for a painful moment, her hair radiating outward in every direction. Then a thunderous discharge exploded from her glowing fingertips, the quasi-solid bar of raw electricity slamming into the zombie with stentorian force.

  Stumbling backward, the zombie crashed into the wall as its hair and clothing burst into wild flames. But, undamaged, the animated corpse advanced once more, dripping fire, its collection of insects and worms crackling like hellish popcorn.

  With a scowl, Colt triggered a single barrel of the shotgun, and the zombie was blown outside minus a head.

  “T—thank you,” Rissa panted, waving the hot rings to try and cool them off. It felt as if she had attempted to get a tan by sticking her hand into a working microwave oven.

  “Got your six, babe,” Colt muttered, quickly reloading. “What happened, running low on magic?”

  “Let’s find out,” she growled, gesturing at a wooden chair with one hand. “Explode!”

  Her fingers tingled and an ethereal explosion filled the shack, closely followed by a wild barrage of splinters and roiling smoke.

  As the fumes cleared, Rissa waved a hand from behind the ripped sofa. “My rings are fine!”

  “Are you sure?” Colt asked sarcastically, brushing mounds of sawdust off his torn uniform. “My chairs sometimes do that all by themselves. Better try it again.”

  “Oh, you’re a riot, Gracie.”

  “Thanks, I’ll be here all week.”

  “My guess would be that zombies are resistant to magic,” Rissa muttered, stiffly rising. “If not outright magic-proof.”

  “Which is probably why Laura and Dominic sent them,” Colt said, knocking the shotgun against a leg to clear the barrels. “Speaking of which, where does my antiques dealer fit into all of this?”

  “He’s Dracula, she’s Renfield.”

  That movie reference he understood. Master and slave. “So who does that make us?” Colt asked. “Han and Leia?”

  She snorted. “More like Butch and Sundance unless we find some way to take them out first!”

  Just then, the stomach-turning stench returned.

  Moving fast, Colt and Rissa retreated to the middle of the room and braced for combat. The rear door of the shack rattled hard, but the locking bolt held, and the stink slowly diminished as the zombie shuffled away.

  Swiftly taking a position near the broken window, Colt stood guard while Rissa took a fast peek out the front door. She didn’t see any zombies near the shack. But at the next island over, three rotting corpses were shambling from the graveyard and coming their way, while a dozen more were clawing their way out of graves and loudly moaning.

  “Emile, it’s time to go,” Rissa said, gently closing the dilapidated door.

  At the use of his first name, Colt raised both eyebrows to the breaking point. “How many zombies are there?”

  “All of them.”

  Curling a lip, Colt snarled a word that most Southern gentlemen pretended did not even exist. “Where do we go this time?”

  Briefly there flashed through Rissa’s mind every place she had ever been— home, the store, school, Melissa’s apartment, her occult store, high school, the Regal Theater, the supermarket, hairdresser, doctor, dentist, Camp SleepAway, the back seat of Victor Layne’s Ford Fiesta ...

  “I don’t know of anywhere totally safe,” she admitted honestly, trying not to blush.

  If Colt noticed, he gave no sign. “Me either,” he stated, resting the hot barrel of the shotgun on a shoulder. “Laura has been with me for years, and knows everyplace I have ever been.”

  Rissa smiled. “Ah! But—”

  Colt frowned. “Trust me, by now that woman knows everything about you, too. Home, work, and friends. We need to go somewhere that we’ve never been to before.”

  “Impossible, my love. I need for one of us to have seen a location before I can go there!”

  “Damn. Any chance you can fly?”

  “Haven’t tried yet, and now is not the time to experiment. If we crash in the swamp ...” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “Looks like we make a stand,” Colt stated, tossing the shotgun onto a table, then shoving the sofa across the floor to block the front door. “At least we have the home field advantage, eh?”

  “I wonder,” Rissa muttered, chewing a finger.

  Unplugging the refriger
ator, Colt shoved it against the rear door. “No, really, we do. I know every inch of Mud Island.”

  She flashed a tolerant smile. “Not that. I wondered if I need to actually have been to the location I want to Jump to, or would merely seeing the place be good enough?”

  “Meaning what exactly?” he asked, retrieving the shotgun.

  Moaning loudly, a reeking zombie shuffled to the doorway, closely followed by a dozen other walking corpses in a wide variety of clothing. They stared at the sofa in confusion, then began savagely ripping away chunks of fabric with their clawed fingers, exposing the tan foam inside.

  “No time to explain,” Rissa said, taking his hand. “Ready to drive off a cliff, Thelma?”

  “Lead the way, Louise!” Colt said, giving a reassuring squeeze.

  Summoning a mental picture of the wanted destination, Rissa felt her heartbeat rapidly accelerate as every ring grew both warm and cold; then she exploded another bubble of manna, and the shack vanished from around them in a bright flash of ethereal light.

  ***

  As the man and woman disappeared, the zombies paused, uncertain what to do next.

  A split second later, a dark cloud appeared overhead and antique cars came tumbling out of the sky. The rain of classic vehicles crashed into the shack to the thunderous sound of splintering wood, violently hammering it flat, and then obliterating every thing, living or undead, on Mud Island ...

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As the after-effects of the frantic Jump faded away in a swirl of rainbow sparkles, Rissa released her grip and Colt turned around fast with his shotgun at the ready.

  They were now standing on the grass berm of a dirt road that sharply curved past a mountainous cliff and back into the steaming jungle. The air smelled of exotic flowers, colorful birds sang in every tree, and the freaking largest snake Colt had ever seen slithered out of the underbrush to disappear back into the shadowy foliage with a fully grown pig held tight in its powerful jaws.

  “Clear! No sign of zombies,” Colt said, keeping the shotgun aimed at the snake until it was gone from sight. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Somewhere in southern Mexico,” Rissa panted, massaging her aching temples. Apparently, the further the Jump, the more of a drain it was on her physically. Which unfortunately made sense. It would seem that even magic followed the laws of physics.

  Some of them, anyway, she noted dourly. Several of her new smaller rings felt cold and heavy, and had turned a dingy brown just like the big original.

  “I thought you had only been to Cancun,” Colt started in a warning tone.

  “Ah, spring break,” Rissa sighed in blissful memory. “That was where I learned how to ... ah ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Water ski,” she finished lamely.

  Resting the shotgun on a shoulder, Colt said nothing, but he was clearly not fooled by the feeble attempt at decorum.

  “Anyway,” Rissa continued quickly, all four of her cheeks blushing, “no, I’ve never been here before, but I remember seeing it in that Kathleen Turner movie, the one written by Diane Thomas?”

  Brushing away a buzzing fly, Colt frowned. “Costarring Michael Douglas? Yes, excellent flick. Wait, are you saying that now we can both teleport—”

  “The term is Jump.”

  “Excuse me ... that we can Jump to anywhere you’ve ever seen in a movie?”

  She smiled. “Seems so!”

  “My God, there’s no way Dominic could ever find us again,” Colt muttered. “I’ve been watching Anthony Bourdain for years ... Just a minute; you said this was Mexico. But didn’t that Kathleen Turner movie take place in Columbia?”

  “The story did,” Rissa smiled, brushing away several flies. “But the movie was actually filmed in the jungles of Mexico.” The splatters of zombie gore on their clothing were attracting every buzzing insect in Mexico, of which there seemed to be an unlimited supply.

  “Better and better,” Colt chuckled in relief. “Okay, what’s our next move, Glinda?”

  “Hey, I got us this far,” Rissa said, sitting down on a large rock. “It’s your turn to be clever.”

  “Fair enough,” Colt said, pulling out his wallet. “The first thing we need is supplies. Our clothes reek, and I’m down to only a handful of shells.”

  “Not to mention the fact I’m starving.”

  “Then I won’t mention it.”

  “Most amusing. How did you came up with a plan so fast?”

  “Remember? Self-made billionaire, sweetheart. I think fast in the clinch.”

  “So it would seem,” Rissa muttered, every ring briefly flashing as she mentally banished every flying insect for a mile.

  “Besides, it’s only sort of a plan,” Colt admitted honestly. “A half-plan, if you will. More like a plan-ette, if there is such a word.”

  “Not in that connotation, bubala.”

  Riffling through his wallet, Colt ignored the accordion fold of credit cards and only counted the money. There weren’t a lot of bills, and none of them were of a particularly large denomination. “I only have a thousand in cash. That will not be enough for everything we need. Got anything, my love?”

  “Fifty-seven bucks and an Amthrax coupon,” Rissa said, patting her sticky pockets.

  “Damn ... wait, what was that again?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she muttered, moving both hands in a swirling motion. Instantly, both of them were engulfed in a soapy whirlwind. It dissipated a few seconds later, leaving them clean, washed, pressed, shaved, and shampooed.

  “My deepest thanks,” Colt sighed, running a manicured hand through his neatly combed hair. “Pity you can’t do that with money.”

  “Can’t I? Let’s see,” Rissa said, bending down to take a rock from the ground. “Gold!” she commanded.

  Instantly, her pulsed quickened as manna flowed through her veins. Steadily increasing in temperature, her palm grew uncomfortably hot as the gray rock briefly shimmered out of focus to abruptly change into an irregular lump of shiny yellow metal.

  “That enough?” she asked, tossing it over.

  Making the catch, Colt expertly weighed the nugget in the palm of a hand. “Hmm, three pounds of solid gold ... seems to be 14 karat ... with the last price on the Paris Stock Exchange going at ...” His eyes clouded for a moment.

  “Well?”

  “Oh, yes, this is more than sufficient!” Colt grinned, tucking it into a pocket of his security jacket.

  “I can easily make more if needed,” Rissa said, gesturing at the rocky ground. “What do you plan on buying, anyway?”

  “Ammunition, new clothing, lunch, a cell phone, breath mints, a dump truck, fifty feet of black rope, and some dynamite.”

  “Whoa there, Guy Fawkes!” Rissa said, holding up a restraining hand. “Dynamite?”

  “Only a little,” Colt said, taking a few steps down the road to try and see around the curve. More jungle came into sight, the dense foliage stretching all the way to the distant horizon. “Damnation, it will take us days to walk to a town large enough to have all of these items!”

  “Maybe I can fix that, too,” Rissa said, rubbing her hands together.

  There was a bright flash, and the two of them were standing on a sidewalk alongside the world-famous water fountain in front of the Bellagio Hotel Casino in downtown Las Vegas.

  “Good enough?” Rissa said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Christ, no!” Colt gasped, trying to hide the shotgun behind his back.

  Across the street, two LVPD police officers dropped their Styrofoam cups of coffee and drew handguns as they charged into the stream of traffic.

  “Hold it right there!” the older officer yelled, firing a warning shot into the air.

  “Open carry?” Colt hopefully shouted in his defense.

  “Drop the weapon now!” the female officer bellowed, assuming a firing stance.

  With a yelp Rissa gestured, and they were back in Mexico.

  “S—sorry about t—that,�
�� she panted, slumping onto the rock. In gradual stages it changed into a leather recliner, and she leaned back with a weary sigh.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Colt said, kneeling down to wrap both arms around the exhausted woman. “When you’re ready, we’ll try again.”

  “G—got a lo—cation?”

  “Maybe. I think so. Of course,” Colt said, looking sideways at nothing in particular. “I have an online friend who runs a blog about classic cars. It’s my private account, and Laura does not know the password to gain access. Edgar’s got everything we need. I’ve never been to his home ... but he once posted a jpeg of it on Facebook.”

  She gave a sloppy grin. “Good ... enough. Ha—how ... far ... away?”

  “Florida.”

  “Oh—kay, l—let’s go ...” Rissa muttered, rolling over to nestle into the arms of the man.

  As she started to softly snore, Colt gently wiggled free and laid his security jacket over the sleeping woman. Then he sat down on the damp ground with the shotgun cradled in his lap.

  “We’ll also need backpacks to carry everything,” Colt muttered thoughtfully. “Along with a can of mace, handcuffs, barbed wire, a jar of peanut butter, and a brand-new Frisbee ...”

  ***

  Maneuvering swiftly through the multiple streams of honking traffic, a Savannah Police car braked to a squealing halt at the curb. Out stepped a strapping young sergeant. Going directly to the iron gate of the Harmond mansion, the police officer pressed the button on the intercom.

  “Good morning, this is Sgt. Willard Dunbar of the SPD!” he announced. “May I see a Melissa Diane Somner, please?”

  “What’s the problem, sergeant?” Melissa asked in a pleasant tone.

  “Ma’am, I need to speak with you immediately. Could you come out, please?”

  “Why don’t you come inside?” she countered. “The gate is unlocked.”

  With a frown, Sgt. Dunbar hitched up his gunbelt. “Ma’am, I really must insist that you come out. Lives are at stake.”