Whiskey & Witchcraft

by Kiki Howell

  "You," he accused, hitting the floor. At that moment, he didn't like the weakness which overcame him any more than his monster did.

  "Yes. I had a secret that I needed to tell you, too," she said, calmly. "I believe I was the threat. I think that was the problem yesterday. With your defenses down, your demon sensed my magick. I'm a natural born witch. My magick is pure, not gained through sacrifice, not powered by trapped demons. I intended to tell you yesterday, especially when we agreed no secrets, but, right after that, if you remember, you said to give us one night. I swear, I planned to tell you today. I couldn't wait, in a way, since from what you've said, I actually had hoped that maybe in some way my magick could help you, if you know what I mean."

  As she spoke, the beasts around them continued on in their crazed state, jumping around as if the water around them were fire. Hell, maybe her ball of energy electrocuted them through it. How could he know? What did he know? Nothing apparently. Their large and powerful bodies he'd seen destroy houses, men, so easily, beat at her circle of light, hissing in pain, growling in frustration, unable to penetrate it no matter what they did. The energy in them, dark lines edged in blue, crackled over their fur, seemed to explode into a dark, hazy rainbow of colors whenever they touched her white light. Smoke came of the union of good and evil, clouding the scene, yet not blocking out the noise of the anarchy which ensued.

  One of his brothers, he thought, given the size of the beast, slightly larger than the others, grabbed what Ciaran assumed to be a boat in the water he hadn't seen initially. When it hit the wall of protective energy, he realized it in fact a coffin. As it split apart, he saw the contents as they blew around them: bones, black dolls, white flowers. He recognized the spell to contact a demon. He could almost smell the whiskey that had to have been poured over it all, enacting the spell which would bring more of them from the pits of hell to add to the coven's power. They hadn't gotten that far. They'd found him, grown confused as to their exact mission, and then this, this magick. Her magick.

  He didn't know whether to be pissed about the monumental omission, or be excited by the possibilities it held. Trapped within the evidence of her unbelievable revelation, his demon passing on its suffering to him, pissed, won out. Regardless, excitement brewed, inciting the beast within further, as it didn't seem the beasts around them were going to win him. At least, not anytime soon, which was fine with him. Still, he wanted—no, needed—answers.

  "You are more powerful than they are?" he asked, just one of the million questions zooming through his thoughts, causing an ache in his head to match the one in his stomach which radiated to his limbs as she continued to prevent the shift his demon so wanted to make. His bones literally felt frozen, as if one false move and they would break. Within this chilled mass burned a small fire throwing a hissy fit. The shrill buzzing sound, an eardrum piercing screech at times, made it so that it took everything in him not to cover his ears, though it would have been a futile action since the noise came from within.

  "It seems I am. I had suspected yesterday. You thought you were controlling your demon, but I believe I was. You were so caught up in the moment, in the problem, you couldn't see it."

  "We agreed no secrets," he accused. "Your mother, she was a witch, too?"

  "Yes, she is a very powerful one. Your father used her, and she let him because if sent back to Ireland, she'd have been persecuted for crimes she was or wasn't guilty of. Depended on her mood how she'd explain it."

  "How could you have kept this from me. All this time?"

  "All this time? Really? I was going to tell you today, I swear it, as I said, but, all this time? Come on! There was no time when we were teens. I was sent away before I got up the courage. Then, later, after I was gone, I learned your secrets, but I couldn't get in contact with you then. When I came back the other night, to your house, was hardly the time. In fact, there wasn't time at all with your beasts threatening, and all we had was travel yesterday, which would have been the time, maybe, only I still wasn't convinced this was a good idea at that point, that I hadn't made a huge mistake in letting my heart tell me to come with you. Then, once we were here and we promised no secrets, you didn't want to talk yet. "We were supposed to have one night, though your demon wouldn't allow it. With you out of control, how could I dare to tell you then? So, I not only held the information back, I also took you, as in screwed you, on terms the demon could live with. So, tell me, Ciaran, when have I had the time? I needed to test my theories, figure out the influence my magic was having on you before I could find a way to tell it all. I didn't want to get your hopes up, but, as we slept, my magick protected me, and that thing inside of you felt threatened, I guess, enough to call for backup. I'd call that a good sign, that I may be able to help you."

  "You think you could banish this thing from inside of me?" he asked, the sound of the magical battle raging around them just background noise now, welcome actually, as their lack of progress against her encouraged him.

  "I don't know, honestly, but, this, holding them back, controlling the thing in you, it is tiring me. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. They are so enraged. If I shut it down, what then? They kill us both? Or just me? Without my magick, I'm physically no match for them."

  At that moment, things around them went from bad to worse. The beasts, his beasts, he thought as a pain stabbed right through his heart, doubling him over as the demon clawed, literally it felt, inside of him. A swarm of black smoke smothered her light as the beasts, howling now in a horrible chorus of demonic hatred, put their own hands out, gathered together the black magick of their demons to fight back. Rage took them first, as an instinct, then the sanity to fight grew from that.

  The water, normally only ankle or knee deep depending, moved up into tremendous waves that beat against this layer of magic, equally powered at the moment, from both sides. Her light buckled in places, and in others it pushed back against the dark energy. Either way, lightning born of the clash shot through the white verses black, the sharp edges and the smoky haze mixed together in places to hiss, to burn.

  Allanah fell to her knees, bent over, sweating, her hands still out but trembling. On a destructive, I'll-try-anything-to-protect-her whim, he decided to use the rage of his demon to fight the others. If he had more power to replenish the suffering fiend, power that could only come from demons, then maybe he could silence the beasts around them. He knew himself more powerful than them, only his magick wasn't organic like hers. It took time, supplies, to make happen. The beasts outside had come prepared for a fight. What he needed was the organic magick trapped in the whiskey through the use of black magick, the demons. Then he could combine it with hers and give the beasts a good whack of something powerful to shut them the hell up.

  Unprepared, he hadn't dreamed this would happen. Of course, he hadn't imagined she would have magick. He still didn't understand how he hadn't known before, but he had to table that discussion for another time. Right now, he had to save her. No matter what.

  He grabbed for a sheet, placing it over the glass tabletop beside him, luckily in the room within her magick bubble. It wasn't exactly the round piece of glass they tied up and covered with a dark material to portal their evil friends, but he had to believe it would work.

  Laying down under it, holding it up with one hand, he grabbed her with the other to drag her under with him. While her energetic bubble broke a second, he yelled to her to use what power she had left to combine with his in order to knock the rest of them out. She listened, tried, even though he could see the uncertainty on her face. Their energy clashed together, an out of control spiral of dark and bright light, evil and good, sparking in places, dying away in others, igniting an unknown. Yet, the circle of beasts, who had fallen when her protection broke, got up, approached on them, dazed from fighting her.

  At some point, it all exploded around them, the alchemy, the glass, the water. Everything went dark.

  Chapter Eight

  Fighting for
consciousness from the haze of deep sleep proved slow, like trying to remove molasses from her brain. Her eyelids fluttered under the rays of warming sun, only to give up and stay closed despite the prickle of skin starting to burn. A body, with bones that had to be made out of bricks, held down her weary muscles from movement. The success of wiggling a few fingers and then toes wrought a faint smile, a light giggle, or whatever the strangled noise that actually came from her dry throat could be classified as. Memories of the night before tried to invade, hastening her from semi-coma to panic. She turned her head from the blinding light. Her cheek thumped lightly against a wooden floor, letting her open one eye despite the brightness.

  Seeing Ciaran there, his eyes closed, his face unburdened with worry, obviously sleeping or unconscious, had her torturously sitting up despite every numerous and insistent protest of her body. His chest showed the slight rise of life, letting her frantic grasp for breath come in a painful blast through her strained and scorched lungs. Images of beasts dawned in her brain, making him, as a naked man, sprawled out, give her a moment's pause.

  She took in her surroundings, found naked men everywhere. Given the men were creeps, of the most diabolical kind, she could only get excited about the fact they were unconscious. Each of them sprawled in various ways, surrounded by water littered with debris. They'd floated, faces up, rather than drown, and she just didn't know how to feel about that. The remnants of an explosion, the luxurious house brought to splinters and fragments of glass, filled the once gorgeous scenery as far as she could see. From what she could surmise, her and Ciaran had been at the epicenter of the blast, unaffected other than being rendered unconscious. She ached from the hangover of overused magic; absolute, sheer exhaustion. A sloth could move faster than her right now.

  The whisper of the idea of them waking up, too, got her moving, standing, bracing, her mind in overdrive for a way out, a way to outrun these men with an unconscious Ciaran who had to be double her weight in sheer muscle mass alone. With their magicks having battled, she had no idea how long he or the others would sleep, how long their power would be down and out. Hanging over him, she could feel it all alive inside him, just dormant, asleep, weary like hers. She had no idea at this moment how to wake him, or how he would wake, more man than beast or more beast than man.

  Options, each one worse than the last, rambled through her brain, raced against each other as they were each tossed aside for practical or fearful reasons. Each one left her more panicked, more desperate. Sheer survival mode kicked in when she'd tossed out the last thought, until another came calling again. An old spell, one she'd read as a child, that had been dismissed as 'dangerous' by a miffed mother, made it to the forefront of her thoughts again. Teleportation. It took a skilled practitioner, or it could end in disastrous results of magical cells raining down through the atmosphere. The spell, however, came to her crystal clear. She'd tried it before, truth be told, and lived to tell about it. Although, to be briefly honest with herself, she'd never taken someone along for the ride before. Ciaran wasn't exactly awake to ask permission of. And, if she remembered correctly, the fact she'd followed him blindly into some magickal situation last night, explained the explosion that had rendered them all unconscious.

  As the man she loved stirred, a sound in the water around them taunted her as well. Out of options if the other beasts woke up, she started the spell in a reckless, frantic, turn of words which tumbled from her mouth. She took Ciaran's hand in her own, gripped tight, eliciting a groan from him along with a slight squeeze back. She imagined an underground lair of sorts that her mother had told her about; one used when her mother had been a young girl in Ireland to practice her youthful and wild magick in. While Allanah had never been there, her mother had shown her pictures, told her many stories, so growing up she'd imagined it many times, longed to go there herself. So much so, she'd looked for it on a map, used the wonders of the internet to pinpoint its location.

  She'd always planned to go as a child, to teleport, pop in hopefully when no one was looking. So, she'd had the spell, the location, at the ready. Seemed like the best time to try it out. What other option did she have? Risking it all, only having an idea of what the place she wanted to go looked like, and hoping she'd gotten the location correct—the reasons that had held her back from trying it before—she began the teleportation spell. Recklessly, she continued, with love full in her heart, and an undying hope they'd actually make it to the lair. If not, she supposed anywhere in Ireland without beasts was better than in this place with them. However, this lair could possibly provide her with the answers she needed to save the man she loved. According to her mother, it was filled with old family grimoires that she had longed to read for years. Somewhere in them could be the key to dispelling Ciaran's demon.

  As she recited the words, again and again, conjuring her tired powers, she imagined herself by the fire as she let what magick that had recharged swirl around them. She pictured Ciaran in the cage she'd seen in the pictures, the one in the lair her mother had said was for animals, who had been used, never abused, in their spells. It had also been used a time or two for prisoners, dangerous witches from other covens, who needed to be questioned. Her mother, of course, had claimed to spend time in the cage herself, when her family had put her 'on trial,' as she'd called it, for magical mistakes made during the desperation of love. She'd managed to escape, the cage and Ireland, in ways she'd not told Allanah about, never to be able to return again. Hence, the whole deal with Ciaran's dad.

  Simple metal rods, close together, pushed into the floor and ceiling of a low, small crevice of the cave. The bars had been cemented and spelled into place. A door, spelled as well to hold, still held heavy chains and locks. A bed sat in the back, one they had put in for her mother during her stay there after her infamous screw up, something Allanah believed she'd never get the full story on. Again, from the stories of her mother's vivid, painful memories, Allanah felt she'd been there. So she hoped to make it there for real now, in one piece rather than as a blob of spelled cells exploded during travel as other witches had arrived, or more to the point, never arrived, in places they'd attempted to teleport to.

  She banked her magic on the desperation of true love, though, on the belief they had to make it or die trying. At this point, for her at least, there was no longer a life without Ciaran. If this short trip, their time apart since seeing him at the party, had taught her anything, lesson learned, the extravagant, well-lived life she'd had without him was not one she wanted to return to. Nothing mattered without this man in her life

  Sounds of the others stirring from around them, groaning, hastened her reticence of the spell. Just as Ciaran opened his eyes, looked into hers, the water around them, littered with debris of the beautiful home they had shared for one night, blurred, disappeared. The power of her ancestors called upon for help, the magick swirled in iridescent colors, blinding, dizzying, until she had to close her eyes. She fought, as well, the urge to cover her ears from the roar of the tornado-like wind around them. When the sounds stopped in an instant, her breathing heightened, rough, burnt her lungs. The tight grip they had on each other's fingers overshadowed any pain wrought of the desperation, a blessed reminder of being alive. She dared to open her eyes. The far reaching beauty of the water had been replaced by the dirt walls of a cave, her hand holding his through the wire trappings of a cage.

  "What the fuck?" he yelled, as their fingers fell apart.

  She brought her hand to her chest, sitting up, scooting back and away from him. She'd have started pacing if her rubbery legs could've managed it. She wiped at the sweat which had formed on her neck, wishing she could politely rid herself of what dripped between her breasts. Muscles jumped under her skin, yet as she observed her surroundings, she had to hold back a squeal, the need to high five someone for a job well spelled. She fanned herself, tried to calm her breathing, all while avoiding his scowl lest he dim her moment of astounding achievement here.

  "I did it," she
said, her words choked but high pitched as she did a happy dance in her head, one short and sweet as even for that she didn't have the luxury of time. "I transported us without killing us."

  "I'm in a fucking cage," he grumbled back, his voice deep and full.

  While she ignored a few more decadent seconds, he rattled the metal until she thought it would fall to pieces around him. Yet, it held, spelled to hold in even a bear or a powerful witch, her mom had told her. Looking his way, though, as his eyes flashed red, she wasn't sure it would secure a demon.

  "We are in a secret cave in Ireland, one my mother told me about. I'd never been here before, but had seen pictures, knew the location, and I needed to get my hands on the family grimoires if I had any hope of saving you...us. So, I brought us here. Having no idea what shape you would be in after last night, I took the precaution to imagine you in the cage. Odd thing is, the whole spell worked. While I had a pretty good idea as to where I wanted to go, if I walked out of here right now I'd have no idea what is above us. I mean, a house is, but from there I'd basically be lost in Ireland."

  "That's the odd thing?" He said, obviously pissed, his voice harsh in more ways than just angry would have made it. In fact, he seemed a bit scared, wide-eyed, rather than having them in tight slits. "You teleported us with a spell? You do that often?"

  "Well, no. Once before. Alone," she mumbled the truth, unsure why she felt the need to tell all. "A thank you or congrats on a job well done would be nice."